The Marrow of Modern Divinity - Chapter 2, Section II, Section 1
Section for Marrowcast Episode 6 (8/11/26)
SECTION II. — OF THE PROMISE.
Sect. 1. — The Promise made to Adam.
Ant. I beseech you, sir, proceed also to the second thing; and first tell us when the Lord began to make a promise to help and deliver fallen mankind.
Evan. It was the same day that man sinned,1 which I suppose was the very same day he was created.2 For Adam, having become the child of wrath by his sin, and being subject to the curse both in body and soul, and seeing that nothing was due him but the wrath and vengeance of God, he was “afraid, and sought to hide himself from the presence of God,” Gen. 3.10. Thereupon the Lord promised Christ to him, saying to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed;” he (that is to say, the seed of the woman, for so the Hebrew text reads) “shall break your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This promise of Christ, the woman’s seed (ver. 15), was the gospel; and it was the only comfort of Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the godly fathers, until the time of Abraham.3
Nom. Let me ask you, sir, what ground do you have to think that Adam fell the same day he was created?
Evan. My ground for this opinion is Psalm 49.12; Mr. Ainsworth4 makes the 13th verse to be this text, and reads it thus, “But man in honour does not lodge a night; he is likened to beasts that are silenced.”5 That may be taken, he says, both for the first man Adam, who did not continue in his dignity, and for all his children.
Ant. But, sir, do you think that Adam and those others understood that promised seed to mean Christ?
Evan. Who can doubt that the Lord had acquainted Adam with Christ, between the time of his sinning and the time of his sacrificing, even though both were on one day?
Ant. But did Adam offer a sacrifice?
Evan. Can you have any question that the bodies of those beasts, whose skins went for a covering for his body, were immediately before offered in sacrifice for his soul? Surely these skins could be none other but those of beasts that were slain and offered in sacrifice; for before Adam fell, beasts were not subject to mortality or slaying. And God’s clothing of Adam and his wife with skins signified that their sin and shame were covered with Christ’s righteousness. And without question, the Lord had taught him that his sacrifice signified his acknowledgment of his sin, and that he looked for the Seed of the woman, promised to be slain in the evening of the world, thereby to appease the wrath of God for his offence. Undoubtedly Adam acquainted his sons, Cain and Abel, with this when he taught them also to offer sacrifice. Gen 4.4
Ant. But how does it appear that this sacrificing was the very same day that he sinned?
Evan. It is said in John 7.30, concerning Christ, “That they sought to take him, yet no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come;” but after that, when the time of his suffering was at hand, he himself said, John 12.23, “The hour has come.” This day is expressly set down by the Evangelist Mark to be the sixth day, and ninth hour of that day, Mark 15.34, 42, when “Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered up himself without spot to God.” Heb 9.14 Now, if you compare this with Exo. 12.6, you will find that the paschal lamb, a most lively type of Christ, was offered the very same day and hour, even the sixth day, and ninth hour of that day, which was at three o’clock in the afternoon. And the Scripture testifies that Adam was created the very same sixth day; and this gives us ground to think that he sinned the same day. And do not the previously declared Scriptures afford us warrant to believe that it was the very same hour of that day, Gen. 1.26, when Christ entered mystically and typically upon the work of redemption, in being offered as a sacrifice for Adam’s sin?6
And surely we may suppose that the covenant (as you heard) being broken between God and Adam, justice would not have allowed one hour’s respite before it had proceeded to execution, to the destruction both of Adam and the whole creation, had not Christ, at that very time, stood as the ram (or rather the lamb) in the bush, and stepped in to perform the work of the covenant. And I conceive that this is why Saint7 John calls him the “Lamb slain” from the beginning of the world,8 Rev. 13.8. For as the first state of creation was confirmed by the covenant which God made with man, and all creatures were to be upheld by means of observing the law and condition of that covenant; so that covenant being broken by man, the world should have come to ruin, had it not been, as it were, created anew, and upheld by the Covenant of Grace in Christ.
Ant. Then, sir, you think that Adam was saved?
Evan. The Hebrew doctors hold that Adam was a repentant sinner, and they say that he was by wisdom (that is to say, by faith in Christ) brought out of his fall; yes, and the Church of God holds, for necessary reasons, that he was saved by the death of Christ; yes, says Mr. Vaughan, he certainly believed the promise concerning Christ, in whose commemoration he offered continual sacrifice; and in the assurance of it, he named his wife Hevah [Eve], that is to say, life,9 and he called his son Seth, settled or persuaded in Christ.
Ant. Well, now I am persuaded that Adam did understand that this seed of the woman meant Christ.
Evan. Assure yourself that not only Adam, but all the rest of the godly fathers so understood it, as manifested in the Targum, or Chaldee Bible, which is the ancient translation of Jerusalem. It has it thus: “Between your son and her son;” adding further, by way of comment, “So long, O serpent, as the woman’s children keep the law, they kill you! And when they cease to do so, you sting them in the heel, and have power to hurt them much; but whereas for their harm there is a sure remedy, for you there is none; for in the last days they shall crush you all to pieces, by means of Christ their king.” And this is what supported and upheld their faith until the time of Abraham.
Our author positively asserts this here, and afterwards he confirms it. And there is plain evidence for it from the Holy Scriptures, which determines the time of our Lord’s calling our guilty first parents before him, at which time he gave them the promise. Gen. 3.8, “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day;” (Heb, “At the wind of that day,” as Junius and Tremellius, Piscator and Picherellus, read it), which, as soon as it began to blow, might convince them that their aprons of fig-leaves were not fit covers for their nakedness.
Our author is far from being singular in this opinion. The learned Gataker [Thomas Gataker (1574-1654) English clergyman and theologian who served at the Westminster Assembly in 1642] (apud Pol. Synop. Crit. in Gen. 3.23) admits it as the common opinion, though he himself is of another mind, “That man fell and was cast out of paradise the same day in which he was created.” And he tells us (Ibid, in Psalm 49.13) that “Broughton most confidently asserts that Adam did not stand in his integrity so much as one day; and he says out of Maimonides [Moshe ben Maimon c. 1135-1204 – renowned Jewish scholar], that this is held by all the Jews, and also by the Greek fathers.” If I am not mistaken, this opinion is now less received than formerly, not a little owing to the cavils of the Deists who, to weaken the credit of the inspired history, allege it to be incredible that the events recorded in Gen. 1.24-26, and 2.7, 18, to the end of the third chapter, could all be crowded into one day (see Nichol’s Conference with a Theist). The reasons to support it, taken from the learned Sharp [John Sharp (c. 1572-1648) professor of Divinity in Edinburgh], one of the six ministers banished in the year 1606. (Curs. Theol. Loc. de Peccato.) 1. “Because of the devil’s envy, who, it is likely, could not long endure to see man in a happy state. 2. If man had stood more days, the blessing of marriage would have taken place, Adam would have known his wife, and begotten a child without original sin. 3. The Sabbath was not so much appointed for meditating on the works of creation, as on the work of redemption. 4. It appears from the words of the serpent, and of the woman, that she had not yet tasted any fruit. 5. When the Holy Ghost speaks of the sixth day, Gen. 1, and of the day of the fall, it is with the emphatic (compare Gen. 1. ult. and 3.8.) 6. He fell so soon, that the work of redemption might be more illustrious, since man could not stand one day without the Mediator’s help.” How the Sabbath was broken by Adam’s sin, though committed the day before, may be learned from the Larger Catechism, on the fourth commandment, which teaches that “The Sabbath is to be sanctified — and to that end we are to prepare our hearts — that we may be more fit for the duties of that day;” and that “the sins forbidden in the fourth commandment, are all omissions of the duties required,” etc.
In this promise was revealed, 1. That Man’s restoration to the favour of God, and his salvation, were not to be effected by man himself and his own works, but by another. For our first parents, standing condemned for breaking the Covenant of Works, are not sent back to it, to assess mending the matter which they had marred before; but a new covenant is purposed — a Saviour promised as their only hope. 2. That this Saviour was to be incarnate, to become man, “the seed of the woman.” 3. That he needed to suffer; his heel — namely his humanity — was to be bruised to death. 4. That by his death he would make a full conquest over the devil, and destroy his works, who had now overcome and destroyed mankind; and so he would recover the captives out of his hand: “he shall bruise your head, namely: while you bruise his heel.” This encounter was on the cross: there, Christ treading on the serpent, his heel was bruised, but he bruised its head. 5. That he could not be held by death, but Satan’s power would be broken irrecoverably: the Saviour being only bruised in the heel, but the serpent in the head. 6. That the saving interest in him and his salvation is by faith alone, believing the promise with particular application to one’s self, and so receiving him, in as much as these things are revealed by way of a simple promise.
Henry Ainsworth (1571-1622?) – Nonconformist theologian, Hebrew scholar, and a leader of the English Separatist colony in Amsterdam. At first a Puritan, Ainsworth joined the Separatists who broke entirely with the Church of England. Driven abroad in the persecution of 1593, he settled in Amsterdam (Ency. Brit.).
“From this text the Hebrew doctors, also in Bereshit Rabba, gather that the glory of the first man did not night with him [i.e. stay the night], and that in the beginning of the Sabbath his splendour was taken away from him, and he was driven out of Eden.”— (Cartwright apud Pol. Synops. Crit. in Loc.) The learned Leigh (in his Crit. Sacr. in voc. Lun) citing this text, says, “Adam did not lodge one night in honour, for so are the words, if they are properly translated.” He repeats the same in his annotations on the book of Psalms, and points his reader to Ainsworth, whose version evidently favours this opinion, and he is faithfully cited here by our author, though without the marks of composition — “lodge a night,” there being no such marks in my copy of Ainsworth’s version or annotations, printed at London, 1639. However, the word lun may signify to abide or continue; the proper and primary signification of it certainly is tonight (at, in, or with). I must be allowed the use of this word to express the true import of the original one.” Thus we have it rendered, Gen. 28.11, “tarried all night.” — Judges 19.9, 10, 13, “Tarry all night — tarry that night — lodged all night.” And since this is the proper and primary signification of the word, it is not to be receded from without necessity, which I cannot discover here. The text seems to me to stand thus, word for word, the propriety of the tenses also observed: “Yet Adam in honour could not night [stay the night]; he became like as the beasts, they were alike.” Compare the Septuagint, and the vulgar Latin; with which, according to Pool (in Synop. Crit.), the Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic agree, though unhappy in not observing the difference between this and the last verse of the Psalm. Nothing can be more agreeable to the scope and context. Worldly men boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, Psa 49.6, as if their houses should continue forever, verse 11; and yet Adam, as happy as he was in paradise, did not continue one night in his honour; it quickly left him; indeed, he died, and in that respect he became like the beasts; compare Psa 49.14, “Like sheep they are laid in the grave, death shall feed on them.” And after showing that the worldly man shall die, notwithstanding his worldly wealth and honour, verse 19, this suitable memorial for Adam’s sons is repeated with a very small variation, verses 20, 21 [Douay-Rheims], “Adam was in honour, but could not understand; he became,” etc.
That the promise was given the same day that Adam sinned, was evinced before: and from the history in Gen. 3, and the nature of the thing itself, one may reasonably conclude, that the sacrifices were annexed to the promise. And since the hour of Christ’s death was all along the time of the evening sacrifice, it is very natural to reckon that it was also the hour of the first sacrifice; even as the place on which the temple stood was at first designed by an extraordinary sacrifice on that spot, 1Chron. 21.18-28 and 22.1. “At three o’clock in the afternoon, Christ yielded up the Ghost (Mark 15.34) the very time when Adam had received the promise of this passion for his redemption.”— Lightfoot on Acts 2.1.
This word might well have been spared here; notwithstanding that we so read in the title of the book of the Revelation in our English Bibles; and in like manner, in the titles of other books in the New Testament, St. (i.e. Saint) Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, etc., it is evident that there is not such a word to be found in the titles of these books in the original Greek. The Dutch translators have justly discarded it out of their translations. If it is to be retained, because John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc., were without controversy saints, then why not on the same ground have Saint Moses, Saint Aaron (expressly called “the Saint of the Lord,” Psalm 106.16.), etc.? No reason can be given for the difference made in this point, except that it pleased Antichrist to canonize these New Testament saints, but not the Old Testament ones. Canonizing is an act or sentence of the Pope, decreeing religious worship and honours to such departed men or women as he sees fit to confer the honour of saintship. These honours are seven, and the first of them is, “That they are enrolled in the catalogue of saints, and must be accounted and called saints by all.”—Bellarmin Disp. tom. 1. Col. 1496.
The benefits of this (namely: of Christ’s redemption) “were communicated to the elect from the beginning of the world in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices in which he was revealed and signified to be the Seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head, and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world.” — Westm. Confess., chap: 8, art. 6.
So the Septuagint expounds it. Others, an enlivener, not doubting that Adam, in giving her this name, had the promised life-giving Seed, our Lord Jesus Christ, particularly in view, among the “all living” she was to be mother of.