IV.

it may not be discoverable unless revealed, DISC. is yet nevertheless founded on the state of human nature, it's relation to God, and it's various wants, at different times, and in different fituations. The observation, indeed, made by an eminent cafuift with refpect to human laws, holds much stronger with refpect to laws divine. "The obe"dience of that man is much too delicate, "who infifts upon knowing the reasons of "all laws before he will obey them. The

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legislator must be supposed to have given "his fanction from the reafon of the thing; "but where we cannot discover the reason "of it, the fanction is to be the only rea "fon of our obedience." This obfervation, I fay, is moft certainly a just one. But as a wife God acts not without the highest reason, so a gracious God, in his difpenfations to his reasonable creatures, has, in many inftances, with his commands, communicated the reasons on which they were founded, and has even condefcended to argue with his people, on Bishop TAYLOR.

the

DISC. the justice and rectitude of his proceed

IV.

ings.

Services outward and visible have been enjoined. They have always been enjoined. But then they have always been fymbolical of difpofitions and actions inward and fpiritual. When this is the cafe, from unimportant and infignificant, they become the most important and fignificant transactions in the world. An uninformed perfon, living in the times of perfecution under the heathen emperors, muft have been, to the laft degree, aftonished and confounded, when told, that a Chriftian was in danger of eternal rejection from the presence of God, if he scattered a handful of incenfe on the fire; and that he was bound, by his religion, rather to die in torments, than submit to do it. But every objection vanishes in a moment when we know that fuch an action, in a Chriftian fo circumstanced, was a token of renouncing his God and Saviour, and acknowleging a false object of worship.

Το

IV.

To come a little nearer to the point DISC. in question. Know we not, that the action of eating, in particular, from the beginning, both among believers and unbelievers, has ever been esteemed and constituted an action fymbolical of religious affection; and that, in the days of St. Paul, a man denominated himself either one or the other, as he partook of the Lord's table, or the table of an idol? What were these, in the new Paradife, the church Chriftian, but the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death? Why fhould it feem incredible, or abfurd, that, in man's original trial, the fame action should have been, in fome manner, fignificative of the fame affection? And if in that truly golden age of innocence, health, and felicity, the food allotted to man was of the vegetable kind, then the fruit of a Tree muft of course be the subject of the prohibition. In after ages, under the law of Mofes and the permiffion of animal food, the figurative fyftem of rites was artificial and fanguinary; but in the facred

IV.

DISC. grove of Eden, that first tabernacle or temple, planted for a place of worship as well as of abode, the whole of the religious scenery was composed of the beautiful and luxuriant productions of primeval nature, unstained with blood, when as yet there was no malediction upon the ground.

This confideration fatisfies the mind, and removes every objection made to the nature of the teft, and the wisdom of God in appointing it. For if in this, as in other dispensations, the action of eating was intended to be fymbolical of fome mental difpofition or affection, whether we can now ascertain particulars, or not, all the buffoonery of infidelity falls to the ground at once. The trial of Adam, like that of every other man, was, whether he would fo far believe in God, as to look for happiness in obedience to the divine command; or would seek that happiness elfewhere, and apply for it to fome forbidden object, of which the Tree must have been an emblematical representation.

You

IV.

You will afk, what that object was? DISC. and what information, as to the knowlege of good and evil, Adam could receive from the prohibition? By answering the laft question, a way may, in fome measure, perhaps, be opened for an answer to the first.

A due contemplation of the prohibition might naturally fuggeft to the mind of our first parent the following important truths; especially if we confider (as we must and ought to confider) that to him, under the tuition of his Maker, all things neceffary were explained and made clear, how obfcure foever they may appear to us, forming a judgment of them from a very concise narrative, couched in figurative language, at this distance of time.

Looking upon the Tree of Knowlege, then, and recollecting the precept of which it was the subject, Adam might learn that God was the fovereign Lord of all things: that the dominion vested in man over the

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