Chapter IV. The Sentence of Death—The Ruin of the Old World, and the Preservation of a Remnant

The Peace and Safety Cry

“There is no peace to the wicked saith God.”

The allegorical signification of the sentence became the plan of “the foundation of the world,” under the altered circumstances which sin had introduced. It constitutes the earth the arena of a terrible strife between two hostile powers; which was not to terminate until His law gained the ascendancy over the sin of the world; and but one sovereign will be obeyed by the sons of men. The enmity He put between these parties was not a mere unfriendly verbal disputation, but one which reeked of blood. It began with the dispute which caused Abel to lose his life, and has continued unto this day. For nearly 6,000 years has this enmity made the earth a field of blood, and yet the war is not ended. The sin-power still lords it over the world, and is marshalling its forces for a last decisive blow. The “powers that be” have laid low the saints of God in all the countries of their dominion; they have bruised them in the heel; and are now taking up their positions, and preparing themselves to arbitrate their relative and future destiny by p. 111 the sword. They have forgotten, or are indifferent to, the enormities of the past. They know not that the righteous blood they have shed upon the earth cries loudly for vengeance in the ears of God. Truth, justice, and equity their souls hate; and all that they propose is to destroy the liberty and happiness of mankind; and to make eternal their own vicious and hateful rule.

But God is as just as He is full of goodness, mercy, and truth. “The death of his saints is precious in the sight of the Lord:” and He will not permit them to go unavenged. The “powers that be” can therefore no more perpetually exist than convicted robbers and murderers can escape the punishment due to their crimes. The law of retribution to which God has assigned the adjudication of their punishment says, “Give them blood to drink, for they are deserving; because they have shed the blood of saints and prophets:”^a “Reward them even as they have rewarded you, and double unto them double according to their works; in the cup which they have filled, fill to them double.”^b

But, though the scriptures of truth are so explicit with respect to the blasphemous and felonious character of the governments of the world; though they denounce the judgments of war, pestilence, and famine upon the nations subject to them; though they declare that the wicked are the Lord’s sword to execute his judgments upon one another; though they most emphatically and solemnly aver that God says “there shall be no peace to the wicked;”^c and though men see, and profess to deplore, the whoredoms and witchcrafts of the Roman Jezebel, and the enormities of the cruel tyrants who pour out her victims’ blood like water to uphold her: notwithstanding all this, there are multitudes of people who pretend to take the Bible as the rule of their faith; who claim to be “pious,” and class themselves among the saints of the Lord: I say, men of these pretensions, headed by political and spiritual guides, are clamouring for the abolition of war, and the settlement of all international differences by arbitration!

Such persons may be very benevolent, or very covetous; but they are certainly not very wise. Their outcry about “peace” evinces their ignorance of the nature of “sinful flesh,” and of the testimony of God; or, if cognizant of them, their infidelity, and shallowness of mind. Before peace can be established in the world, “the enmity” which God has put between good and evil, in word and deed, must be abolished. Peace is to be deprecated as a calamity by the faithful, so long as the Roman Jezebel and her paramours are found among the living. “What peace, so long as her whoredoms and witchcrafts are so many?”^d Will they destroy the divisions among powers and people, which God’s truth is ever calculated to make where it is received in whole or part? Arbitration indeed! And who are to be the arbitrators? The popes, cardinals, priests, emperors, and kings of the nations? Can p. 112 justice, integrity, and good faith, proceed from such reprobates? Do the Quakers, and financial, or acquisitive, reformers imagine, that a righteous arbitration could emanate from them upon any question in which the interest of nations as opposed to theirs were concerned? Really, the conceit of pious infidelity is egregiously presumptuous. If this peace mania be a specimen of “the light within,” alas! how great is the darkness of that place which professes to be enlightened by it.

But the most absurd thing imaginable is that the arbitrationists profess to advocate peace upon scriptural grounds! Because one of the titles of the Lord is “the Prince of Peace,” they argue that war is displeasing to God; and that Jesus came to establish peace as the result of preaching. But war is not displeasing to God any more than a rod is displeasing to him that uses it for correction. God instituted war when he put enmity between the serpent and the woman. It is a divine institution for the punishment of the transgressors of His law; and a most beneficent one too: for all the little liberty the world enjoys is attributable to the controversy of the tongue, the pen, and the sword. What would have been the fate of the thirteen trans-Atlantic Colonies, if they had been left to the arbitrative justice of George the Third’s contemporaries? The heel of spiritual tyranny backed by the civil power, would have trampled upon them to this moment. The weak who contend for liberty and truth, have everything to dread from arbitration. With sword in hand, they may extort justice from the strong; but, if under the necessity of expecting it at the conscience and tender mercies of “the powers that be,” the award will be a mockery of justice, and an insult to the sufferings of the oppressed.

Yea, verily, the Lord Jesus is “the Prince of Peace;” and therefore, no peace society can give peace to the world. It is he alone who can establish “peace on earth and good will among men;” for he only is morally fit, and potentially competent to do it. The peace of the arbitrationists is peace based upon the transgression of the divine law; and the hostility of the covenanters to the gospel of the kingdom. It is an impure peace; peace with the serpent power reigning over the blood-stained earth. Such a peace as this avaunt! Eternal war is better for the world than such a compromise with sin. The peace Messiah brings is “first pure.” It is a peace the result of conquest; the tranquility which succeeds the bruising of the Serpent’s head. It is consequent upon the establishment of God’s sovereignty over the nations, by the hand of him whom he hath prepared to “break in pieces the oppressor,”^a and let the oppressed go free. “In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endures. His enemies shall lick the dust; all nations shall serve him, and call him blessed.”^a Then shall he judge among them, and rebuke them, and speak peace to them;^b and they shall beat p. 113 their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”^a

But the Father did not send Jesus with the idea of bringing about this mighty revolution among the nations by preaching the gospel; neither did He propose to effect it in the absence of His Son. When he appeared in humiliation he came to take away peace from the earth, as both his words and history prove. “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay; but rather division. I am come to send fire upon the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled.”^b “I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his nearest and dearest relations. So that a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”^c This is the way the Prince of Peace spoke when on earth. The doctrine he taught is distasteful to the natural mind; and, by the purity of its principles, and astonishing nature of its promises, excites the enmity and incredulity of the flesh. Loving sin and hating righteousness, the carnal mind becomes the enemy and persecutor of those who advocate it. The enmity on the part of the faithless is inveterate: and where they have the power, they stir up war even at the domestic hearth. If the believer will agree to be silent, or to renounce his faith, there will then be “peace and love” such as the world, that “loves its own,” is able to afford. But the true believers are not permitted to make any compromise of the kind. They are commanded to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints;”^d and so long as they do this, they may lay their account with tribulation of various kinds. There is a vast deal of this false peace and spurious charity in the Protestant world. Men have become traitors to Christ, and betray him with their lips. They say, “O how we love the Lord!” and were he here they would doubtless kiss him; but, like Judas, they have colleagued with his enemies, and are as popular with the world as its god can possibly desire.

The truth is, judging from their arguments, the peace-mongers are not so man-loving as they pretend. The cry for peace is a piece of ventriloquism emanating from the pocket. Their strongest argument against war is based upon its cost. The taxes are burdensome because of the extravagance and warlike habits of past governments. This pinches them in the iron chest; and diminishes the profits of trade; and curtails the means of indulging the lusts of their flesh, of their eyes, and the pride of life. It is well these mammon-worshippers should feel the pinch. They are the enemies of God, and oblivious of His slaughtered saints, and, therefore, richly deserving of all the punishment the recklessness of “the powers” has entailed upon the world. Those who escape the sword and the famine groan under the expense of punishing the wicked at their own cost. Thus, the punishment re-acts upon p. 114 all classes. I say, these peace-criers are the enemies of God; for with all their profession of piety, they are at peace with the world, and in high esteem and friendship with it; and “whosoever,” says the scripture, “is a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”

Look at the peace congress at Paris,^a composed of popish priests, dissenting ministers, French politicians, self-illuminati of the Quaker school, English radicals, American pietists of all colours, rationalists, infidels, &c., &c.; all in such high favour with the liberticide dynasty of France, as to be let into “Egypt and Sodom”^b without passports, or custom-house scrutiny; and to be fêted by one of the state officials. In what way can the world show its friendship to the peace society more palpably; or the society its reciprocity of feeling with the most godless and christless portion of it? The peace society is the world’s beloved friend. The world wants peace, that it may find a respite from the judgments of God for its iniquity; and that it may enrich itself by commerce, and enjoy itself in all the good things of life. The society is the world’s employee; its zealous, utopian missionary; and, therefore, individually and collectively “the enemy of God.”

Still, even out of so impious a speculation as this peace society, “the wise who understand”^c may extract encouragement. They will discern a providence in the foundation of the Quaker sect. This unscriptural cry of “peace and safety” emanated from them. They have gained wealth in the temple of their god; and this, with their friend “the world,” is a sufficient guarantee of their worth and respectability. Whatever they were in the beginning matters not; they are now the most popular of all religionists with the masses; to please whom a man must pander to their propensities. All sorts of anti-government factions colleague with the Quakers in their cry of peace; not because they love peace for its own sake; but by curtailing the resources of the state, and so necessitating the reduction of armies, they think they can the more easily supersede the existing tyrannies by a still worse one of their own, as it would doubtless prove. This unhallowed coalition proclaims its outcry to be “the world’s cry.”

We accept it as such. It is the cry of the world, which echoes in tones of thunder in the ears of the true believers. It is a cry in the providence of God, which is a great “sign of the times”; announcing that “the Lord standeth at the door and knocks,”^d and is about quickly and unexpectedly to appear.^e It is the world’s cry, as the cry of a woman in travail, which has been extorted by sudden and tormenting pains. It blows a trumpet in the wise and understanding ear, sounding the approach of p. 115 “the day of the Lord as a thief in the night”; for “so it cometh; and when they shall say, PEACE and SAFETY; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.”^a Such is the divine mission of the Quakers, and their allies the Cobdenite Reformers. Not satisfied with crying peace, they cry “SAFETY” likewise. This is a peculiar feature of Cobdenism, which urges the disbandment of regiments, and the dismantling of ships, on the perverse presumption that danger there is none! Blind leaders of the blind. The groans of nations ascending to Heaven on every side; the kindling embers of war smoking in Rome, Vienna, and Constantinople^b—and yet ye cry “Peace and safety”; surely ye are incorrigibly demented, and ripe for capture and destruction.

Cain, Abel, and Seth

“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?”

The allegorical signification of the sentence upon the Serpent kindled the first scintillation of hope in the human heart of the appearance of One, who should deliver the world from all its ills, and advance it to a higher state. The promise of such a personage, and of such a consummation, was the nucleus of that “faith, which is the assured expectation of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen.”^c The belief, and spiritualizing influence, of this hope, became the ground of acceptance with God in the earliest times. Faith in this promise was established as the principle of classification among the sons of Adam. Belief in what He promises is belief in God; and its influence upon “the fleshly tablet of the heart” is most deifying in its effect; making the subject of it “a partaker of the divine nature.” Atheism in its scriptural import is not the denial of God’s existence. None but a fool would say, “There is no God.”^d It is worse than this. It is to believe that He exists, and yet to treat Him as a liar. To do this, is not to believe His promises; and he that is faithless of these, is “without God,” ἀθεος—i.e., an atheist in the world.^e

p. 116 In the beginning, this kind of atheism soon manifested itself in the family of Adam. Cain, who was conceived in sin, true to his paternity, was as faithless of God’s word as the Serpent; while Abel believed on God. Hence, the apostle says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a fuller sacrifice (πλειονα θυσιαν) than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.”^a This is an important intimation, importing that no religious services are acceptable to God, which are not predicated on the belief of His promises; “for without faith it is impossible to please God.”^b

This was, therefore, the ground of Cain’s reprobation. “The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and his offering he had not respect.” This made Cain fierce and sullen. He refused to “bring of the firstlings of the flock, and of the fat thereof.” He did not believe in its necessity, having no faith in the remission of sins by the shedding of sacrificial blood;^c nor in the fulfilment of God’s promise concerning Him, who, being “bruised in the heel,” or slain as Abel’s accepted lamb, should arise, and “bruise the Serpent’s head,” in destroying the works of sin!^d This is what Cain did not believe: and his faithlessness expressed itself in neglecting to walk in “the way of the Lord.” Nevertheless, he continued “a professor of religion;” for “he brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord.” But the Lord paid no respect to him or his offering; because, in neglecting the sacrifice, he had set up his judgment against God; and in being faithless had in effect treated God as a liar; for, saith the scripture, “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar.”^e

But Cain’s sullen anger against God could only wound himself. His refusal to obey Him could not injure the Most High. He insulted God with his “will-worship and voluntary humility,”^f and convicted himself as an evil-doer. Self-condemned and impotent, he vented his rage against his brother, whom God respected and had accepted. He was wroth against him; “because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”^g He was now a murderer in principle;^g and with this fratricidal feeling rankling in his heart, brought his gift to the altar.^h But God, who “discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart,”ⁱ called him to account for his lowering aspect, and anger against his brother, and said, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, a sin-offering lieth at the door. And his hope shall be towards thee, and thou shalt rule over him,” or have the excellency as the first-born and progenitor of the Seed. But Cain was a genuine “seed of the Serpent.” The thinking of the flesh called by Adam the Serpent, was strong within him. “He talked with Abel,” who, doubtless, pleaded for the things repudiated by Cain. But Cain’s p. 117 reasonings were perverse; well-doing was not at all to his taste; so that, having no faith in the promise, he preferred to follow his own waywardness; and being determined to rid himself of his brother’s expostulations, he mingled his blood with the dust of the ground.

Thus was slain by a brother’s hand the protomartyr of the faith. A righteous man, respected and beloved of God. His only offence was, that, in believing the promises of God and doing well, his brother was reproved. The fleshly mind hates righteousness, and those who practise it; so that between the two parties the truth and righteousness of God^a lie as an apple of discord. Abel was the first of Eve’s sons of whom honourable mention is made on account of “the obedience of faith.”^b As Cain was of the evil one by transgression; so Abel was of God by the obedience of faith, which evinced that “God’s seed remained in him.” Hence, though both of them were born of Eve according to the flesh, their spiritual paternity was as opposite as light and darkness. Cain was a man of Sin; and Abel an accepted son of God. In these characters, they stood at the head of two divisions of their father’s family; and proximately represented the seed of the Serpent, and the seed of the Woman. Cain bruised his brother’s heel; but God appointed a substitute for Abel in the person of Seth, by whom Cain’s headship was bruised, and his posterity superseded in the earth. Eve, says Moses, “bare a son, and called his name Seth: for, said she, God hath appointed ME another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.”

She had many other sons, but none of them are mentioned except Cain, Abel, and Seth. When, therefore, we are informed that Seth was “appointed instead of Abel,” and trace the posterity of Seth terminating through a certain line in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God; we are taught that Cain lost his excellency by sin, and was therefore set aside; and Abel provisionally appointed to be the progenitor of the seed, who is to bruise the Serpent’s headship over the world. But, Abel having been bruised in the heel, it became necessary, in order to carry out the divine purpose, and to answer allegorically the indications of the sentence upon the Serpent, to appoint another son of Eve in the place of Abel. According to this arrangement, Abel became the type of Jesus, wounded in the heel; but whose sprinkled blood speaks better things than Abel’s,^c which cried only for vengeance: while Seth typifies him in his re-appearance among the sons of men to bruise sin under foot, and to exterminate in the course of his reign the Serpent’s seed from the face of the earth.

Notwithstanding his crime Cain was permitted to live. But the seed of evil-doers never gets renown. Sooner or later their deeds of villainy consign their names to reprobation. God hid His p. 118 face from Cain, and exiled him from the settlements in Eden. He wandered still further to the East, “and dwelt in the land of Nod.” There he founded a city, and called it Enoch. His offspring multiplied, and found out many inventions. They became wandering tribes, dwelling in tents and tending cattle; others of them musicians; and artificers in brass and iron. Their women were beautiful, and as the descendants of Cain, untrained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, were vain in their imaginations, and demoralizing in their associations.

Seth’s descendants in the direct line ended in Noah and Japheth at the time of the flood. His posterity, in this and the collateral branches, multiplied considerably; but for a time constituted a separate community from the progeny of Cain. During the lifetime of Enos, son of Seth, “they began to call themselves by the name of the Lord,”^a or sons of God:”^a while the faithless and corrupt worshippers of the land of Nod were simply styled “men.”

The Antediluvian Apostasy

The Sethites and the Cainites stood related to one another as the church of God and the world; or, as the woman and the serpent. So long as the sons of God maintained their integrity, and walked in “the way of the Tree of Life,” the two communities had no religious association, or family intercourse. The time, however, arrived when the middle wall of partition was about to be laid low by a general apostasy. A spirit of liberalism had arisen among the sons and daughters of Seth, the result of an expiring faith, which predisposed them to a fraternity, or mixed community, with the Cainites; who, like their father, were religionists of a wilful stamp. The Serpent’s seed enjoyed themselves in those days as they do now. They were men of the flesh, grovelling in their tastes, habits, and pursuits; and devoted to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Their religion sanctified what pleased them best; and doubtless afforded a fair specimen of the same sort of thing in all subsequent ages.

It is probable, that the precepts and example of the sons of God had considerably modified the original impiety of the Cainites, so as to bring things to a similar state as that observable in our day. Sects, between whom there were no more dealings in their beginning than between the Jews and the Samaritans, are now so liberal, that they agree to be silent upon all controversial topics for which they once contended to the death, and to recognise one another as brethren in the Lord! Thus, if they ever had the truth, they have suppressed it by a tacit compromise; and have become highly respectable, and singularly amiable and polite; so that they “have need of nothing,” but to enjoy the good things of the world within their reach.

p. 119 The serpents had become so harmless, and even pious, under the influence abroad, and were withal so fair to look upon, and so enchanting in their ways; that the Sethites took them into their bosoms, and cherished them with the affection of their own flesh. “They saw,” says Moses, “that the daughters of men were fair; and they took wives of all they chose.” This was a fatal step. Can a man take fire into his bosom, and not be burned? The sons of God corrupted themselves in marrying the daughters of Cain. Instead of bringing them over to “the Way of the Tree of Life,” they were beguiled into “the Way of Cain.”^a For sons of God to marry daughters of Belial is to jeopardise their fidelity to God. This practice has ever been fruitful of apostasy.

Balaam was well aware of this; and knowing that the only way to bring a curse upon Israel was to involve them in transgression; he therefore taught Balak, the King of Moab, to tempt them with the fair daughters of his people, as the readiest way of beguiling them into the worship of their idols; which would cause God to hate them, and so facilitate their conquest by the Moabites. The policy succeeded but too well for the honour and happiness of Israel. Moses says, “They began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab.” The consequence of this licentiousness was that the women invited Israel unto the sacrifices of their gods: and they did eat, and bowed down to them. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-Peor.^b And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them; so that He slew four and twenty thousand of them.

After the same example, the union of the Sethites and Cainites was productive of the worst results. The offspring of this union were “mighty men of renown,” whose wickedness “was great in the earth;” for “every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.”^c Their apostasy, however, was not perfected without remonstrance on the part of God. There was one eminent man of whom it is testified, that “he pleased God.” He “walked with God” in the way of the Tree of Life for three hundred years after the birth of Methuselah. His name is Enoch. The spirit of prophecy was in him; and the gigantic wickedness of the Antediluvians aroused him to reprove their iniquity. Animated by the hope of the promise concerning the woman’s seed, he prophesied of the serpents of his own and future time, saying, “Behold, the Lord cometh with myriads of his saints, to dispense justice towards all, and to convict all that are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds which they have impiously committed; and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”^d But his expostulation was unheeded; and God graciously “translated him that he should not see death;”^e thus rewarding him for his p. 120 constancy, and giving the faithful a notable illustration and earnest of “the recompense of the reward,” and of the certainty of the punishment of the world.

Things went on from bad to worse; “for all flesh had corrupted ‘His Way’ upon the earth;” “and the earth was filled with violence.” Before, however, things had come to the worst, the Lord made another effort to reclaim the Antediluvians. He had resolved to put an end to the wickedness of man upon the earth; for, said He, “My Spirit shall not always strive with him, because he is but flesh.”^a This intimates a limit to His forbearance; that it should have an end, but not immediately; for it is added, “Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.”

Four hundred and eighty years before the announcement of this determination, a son was born to Lamech, the grandson of Enoch, whom he named Noah; that is, Comfort, saying, “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.” This was the hope of those who remained faithful of the sons of Seth. They laboured in hope of a translation into a rest from their labours, when the curse should be removed from the earth.^b In process of time, Noah was “warned of God of things not seen as yet.” Noah believed them; and “God, by his spirit” in him, “went and preached to the spirits (now) in prison,”^c that is, to the Antediluvians, “who were disobedient in the days of Noah.” He warned them of the coming flood, which would “destroy them from the earth;” and proved to them his own conviction of its certainty by “preparing an ark for the safety of his own house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”^d But, his faith thus made perfect by his works, made no salutary impression upon his contemporaries. “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not till the flood came, and took them all away;”^e leaving only eight persons of the sons of Seth alive.

Thus, was the mingled seed of Seth and Cain exterminated from the earth. Cain’s race became utterly extinct, and those only of Seth remained, who were upright in their generations, and who walked with God. The distinction of seeds was temporarily suspended. The generation of vipers was extinct; but sin in the flesh survived—a principle, destined in after times to produce the most hideous and terrible results.

p. 121The Foundation of the World

“Inherit the Kingdom prepared from the Foundation of the World.”

As the woman had so wilfully sought the gratification of her flesh, when the Lord God passed sentence upon her He made it the ground of her punishment. “I will,” said He, “greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be subject to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” This being her portion as the consequence of sin, the reverse would have been her condition, so long as her animal nature should have continued unchanged, if she had remained obedient. She would have brought forth children without pain, and would have had fewer of them; nor would she have been deprived of that equality she enjoyed in the garden, and consequently she would have escaped that degradation she has experienced in all the countries of the world.

The punishment, however, was not inflicted simply as an individual sorrow. The pain was personal, and the subjection likewise; but the multiplication of woman’s conception became necessary from the altered circumstances of things; which were then being constituted for the ensuing seven thousand years. In the war divinely instituted between the seeds of the Serpent and the Woman, there would be a great loss of life. The population of the world would be greatly thinned; besides which great havoc would be made by pestilence, famine, and the ordinary diseases of the flesh. To compensate this waste, and still to maintain an increase, so that the earth might be filled, necessitated that part of woman’s punishment involved in the multiplication of the conception, which is a great domestic calamity under the Serpent-dominion of sin.

We hear much in some parts of the world of the political rights and equality of women with men; and of their preaching and teaching in public assemblies. We need wonder at nothing which emanates from the unenlightened thinking of sinful flesh. There is no absurdity too monstrous to be sanctified by unspiritualized animal intellect. Men do not think according to God’s thinking, and therefore it is, they run into the most unscriptural conceits; among which may be enumerated the political and social equality of women. Trained to usefulness, of cultivated intellect, and with moral sentiments purified and ennobled by the nurture and admonition of the Lord’s truth, women are “helps meet” for the Elohim; and much too good for men of ordinary stamp. The sex is susceptible of this exaltation; though I despair of witnessing it in many instances till “the Age to come.” But, even women of this excellency of mind and disposition, were it possible for such to do so, would be guilty of indiscretion, presumption, and rebellion p. 122 against God’s law, in assuming equality of rank, equality of rights, and authority over man, which is implied in teaching and preaching. It is the old ambition of the sex to be equal to the gods; but in taking steps to attain it, they involved themselves in subjection to men. Preaching, and lecturing, women, are but species of actresses, who exhibit upon the boards for the amusement of sinful and foolish men. They aim at an equality for which they are not physically constituted; they degrade themselves by the exhibition, and in proportion as they rise in assurance, they sink in all that really adorns a woman.

The law, which forms a part of the foundation of the world, says to the woman, “He shall reign over thee.” The nature of this subjection is well exhibited in the Mosaic law.^a A daughter being yet in her youth in her father’s house, could only make a vow subject to his will. If he held his peace, and said nothing for or against, she was bound by her word; but if when he heard it, he disallowed it, she was not bound to perform; and the Lord forgave the failure of the vow. The same law applied to a wife. A widow, or divorced woman, were both bound to fulfil; unless their husbands had made them void before separation. If not, being subject to God, they had no release.

This throws light upon the apostle’s instructions concerning women. “They are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” And “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” The reason he gives for imposing silence and subjection, is remarkable. He adduces the priority of Adam’s formation; and the unhappy consequences of Eve’s talkativeness and leadership in transgression; as it is written, “Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression”^b first. And then, as to their public ministrations, he says, “Let women keep silence in the congregations; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but to be under obedience, as saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the congregation.”^c It is true, that in another place the apostle says, “Let the aged women be teachers of good things”; but then this teaching is not to be in the congregation, or in the brazen attitude of a public oratrix. They are to exercise their gift of teaching privately among their own sex, “that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God (which they profess) be not blasphemed.”^d

Christian women should not copy after the god-aspiring Eve, but after Sarah, the faithful mother of Israel, who submitted p. 123 herself in all things to Abraham, “calling him lord.”^a Nor should their obedience be restricted to Christian husbands only. They should also obey them “without the word”; that is, those who have not submitted to it, in order that they may be won over to the faith when they behold the chaste and respectful behaviour of their wives, produced by a belief of the truth.^b

Such are the statutory provisions enacted in the world’s constitution at the beginning, with respect to the position of women in the body social and political. Any attempt to alter the arrangement is rebellion against God, and usurpation of the rights of men to whom God has subjected them. Their wisdom is to be quiet, and to make their influence felt by their excellent qualities. They will then rule in the hearts of their rulers, and so ameliorate their own subjection as to convert it into a desirable and sovereign obedience.

A man should never permit the words of a woman to intervene between him and the laws of God. This is a rock upon which myriads have made shipwreck of the faith. Adam sinned in consequence of listening to Eve’s silvery discourse. No temptation has proved more irresistible to the flesh than the enticing words of woman’s lips. “They drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; and her steps take hold on hell.”^c Adam was a striking illustration of this truth, as appears from the sentence pronounced upon him. “Because,” said the Lord God,” “thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the Tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field: in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Thus, having passed sentence upon the serpent, the woman, and the man, the Lord appointed them a new law, and expelled them from the garden He had made.

These three sentences, and the New Law, constitute the foundation of the world. This is a phrase which occurs in various passages of the Bible. It occupies a prominent place in the following text: “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”^d The words in the Greek are ἀπο καταβολης κοσμου, which, more literally rendered. signify, from laying the world’s foundation. The globe is the platform; the world that which is constituted, or built, upon it; and the Builder is God; for “he that built all things is God.”^e

p. 124 Now, the world was not built out of nothing. The materials had been prepared by the work of the six days; and by the moral phenomena of the fall. At this crisis, there appeared a natural system of things, with two transgressors, in whom sin had enthroned itself; and who were endued with the power of multiplying such as themselves to an unlimited extent. This population, then, was either to act for itself under the uncontrolled dominion of sin; or, things must be so constituted as to bring it into order and subjection to the sovereignty of God. The result of the former alternative would have been to barbarise mankind. and to fill the earth with violence. This is demonstrated by what actually occurred before the flood when the divine constitution of things was corrupted and abolished by the world. Man when left to himself never improves. God made man upright; but look at the wretched specimens of humanity, which are presented in those regions where God has left them to their natural tendency, under the impulse of their uncontrolled propensities. Man thus abandoned of God, degenerates into an ignorant savage, ferocious as the beasts of prey.

If the Lord God had renounced all interest in the earth, this would have been the consummation of His work. Man by his vices would have destroyed his own race. But, though transgression upon transgression marked his career, “God so loved the world,”^a that He determined it should not perish, but should be rescued from evil in spite of itself. This He purposed to do in such a way as to make man reflect the divine nature in his character: and to display his own wisdom, glory, and power in the earth. But chance could not bring this to pass. Human life, therefore, was not to be a mere chapter of accidents; but the result of a well-digested and unvarying plan. Things, then, were to be arranged according to this purpose; so that in their original constitution should be contained the rudiments of a “glorious manifestation;” which, as a grain of mustard seed, should so unfold themselves under the fostering hand of God as to become “a tree, which is the greatest among herbs,”^b in whose branches the family of man might be refreshed.

In the acorn, it is said, can be traced by aid of the microscope, the branches of the future oak. So in “the Rudiments of the World” are traceable the things of the future Kingdom of God. These rudiments, or elements, are exhibited in the sentences upon the serpent, the woman, and the man; and in that institution styled, “The Way of the Tree of Life.” Out of these things were afterwards to arise the Kingdom of God; so that in constituting them, a foundation was laid upon which “the world to come” should be built; even that world of which Abraham was constituted the heir;^c and which, when finished at the end of six days of a thousand years each, will manifest the woman’s Seed triumphant over p. 125 the Serpent-power; resting from his work^a in the Sabbatism which remains for the people of God.^a

The things laid, or fixed, in the rudimental constitution of the world, may be summarily stated in the following particulars:—

1 Sin in the flesh, the enemy of God, contending for the dominion of the world.

2. Mankind in a state of nature, subject to the propensities; and to pain, trouble, and death.

3. Labour and toil the condition of existence in the present state.

4. The subjection of woman to the lordship of man.

To these things was established a divine antagonism, by which they might be controlled; and a system of things elaborated in conformity with the purpose of God. This part of the foundation may be stated as:

1. The law and truth of God as expressed in “His Way,” demanding unreserved submission to its authority.

2. Mankind under the influence of this truth assuredly believed, contending for it.

3. Divine power exhibited in the punishment of men, and in the performance of His promises.

The action and re-action of these agencies upon one another was to produce:

1. An enmity and war in the earth between the Sin-power and the Institution opposed to it.

2. A bloody persecution of the adherents of the truth.

3. The destruction of the Sin-power by a personage to be manifested for the purpose; and

4. The consequent victory of divine truth, and establishment of the Kingdom of God.

That the crisis of the fall was the period of laying the foundation of the world, in its civil, social, and spiritual relations, appears from the use of the phrase in the apostolic writings. The Lord Jesus, speaking of what was about to come upon the generation then living in Judea, said, “The blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world shall be required of this generation”; and to show to what period of the world he referred, he added by way of explanation, “from the blood of Abel,”^b the prophet of his day. The phrase is also applied by the apostle to the work of the six days;^c that is, as the basis, or substratum, in or upon which, the social and political system was constituted. There is further proof of the judgment of the transgressors being the institutional foundation of the world, in the words, “all that dwell upon the earth shall do homage to him,” the ten-horned papal Beast, “whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the laying of the world’s foundation.”^d By this is signified, that, when the Lord God appointed coats of skins to cover the man and p. 126 woman’s shame, Lambs were slain, which they were taught to understand were representative of the Seed, who should be slain for the sins of all the faithful; and with whose righteousness they should be clothed, after the type of their covering by the skins of their sacrifices. Thus, from the institution of sacrifice in Paradise till the death of Jesus on the cross, he was typically slain; and the accepted worshippers, being full of faith in the divine promise, like Abel and Enoch, understood to what the slaughtered lambs referred. Their names were consequently written in the remembrance of God,^a as inheritors of the kingdom; whose foundation was commenced in Paradise, and has been preparing ever since, that when finished it may be manifested “in Eden the garden of the Lord.”

The Constitution of Sin

“The creature was made subject to evil, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it in hope.”

The introduction of sin into the world necessitated the constitution of things as they were laid in the beginning. If there had been no sin there would have been no “enmity” between God and man; and consequently no antagonism by which to educe good out of evil. Sin and evil are as cause and effect. God is the author of evil, but not of sin; for the evil is the punishment of sin. “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”^b “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?”^c The evil then to which man is subjected is the Lord’s doing. War, famine, pestilence, flood, earthquake, disease, and death, are the terrible evils which God inflicts upon mankind for their transgressions. Nations cannot go to war when they please, any more than they can shake the earth at their will and pleasure; neither can they preserve peace, when He proclaims war. Evil is the artillery with which He combats the enemies of His law, and of His saints; consequently, there will be neither peace nor blessedness for the nations, until sin is put down, His people avenged, and truth and righteousness be established in the earth.

This is the constituted order of things. It is the constitution of the world; and as the world is sin’s dominion, or the kingdom of the adversary, it is the constitution of the kingdom of sin.

The word sin is used in two principal acceptations in the scripture. It signifies in the first place, “the transgression of law;” and in the next, it represents that physical principle of the animal nature, which is the cause of all its diseases, death, and resolution into dust. It is that in the flesh “which has the power of death;” and it is called sin, because the development, or fixation, of this evil in the flesh, was the result of transgression. Inasmuch as this p. 127 evil principle pervades every part of the flesh, the animal nature is styled “sinful flesh,” that is, “flesh full of sin;” so that sin, in the sacred style, came to stand for the substance called man. In human flesh “dwells no good thing;”^a and all the evil a man does is the result of this principle dwelling in him.^a Operating upon the brain, it excites the “propensities,” and these set the “intellect” and “sentiments” to work. The propensities are blind, and so are the intellect and sentiments in a purely natural state; when, therefore, the latter operate under the sole impulse of the propensities, “the understanding is darkened through ignorance, because of the blindness of the heart.”^b The nature of the lower animals is as full of this physical evil principle as the nature of man; though it cannot be styled sin with the same expressiveness; because it does not possess them as the result of their own transgression; the name, however, does not alter the nature of the, thing.

A defective piece of mechanism cannot do good work. The principle must be perfect, and the adaptation true, for the working to be faultless. Man in his physical constitution is imperfect; and this imperfection is traceable to the physical organization of his flesh, being based on the principle of decay and reproduction from the blood; which, acted upon by the air, becomes the life of his flesh. All the phenomena which pertain to this arrangement of things is summed up in the simple word sin; which is, therefore, not an individual abstraction, but a concretion of relations in all animal bodies; and the source of all their physical infirmities. Now, the apostle says, that the flesh thinks—το φρονημα της σαρκος— that is, the brain, as all who think are well assured from their own consciousness. If, then, this thinking organ be commanded not to do what it is natural for it to do under blind impulse, will it not naturally disobey? Now this disobedience is wrong, because what God commands to be done is right, and only right; so that “by his law is the knowledge of sin;” and this law, requiring an obedience which is not natural, flesh is sure to think in opposition to it. The philosophy of superstition is—religion in harmony with the thinking of the flesh: while true religion is religion in accordance with the thoughts of God as expressed in His law. Hence, it need excite no astonishment that religion and superstition are so hostile; and that all the world should uphold the latter; while so few are to be found who are identified with the religion of God. They are as opposite as flesh and spirit.

Sin, I say, is a synonym for human nature. Hence, the flesh is invariably regarded as unclean, It is therefore written, “How can he be clean who is born of a woman?”^c “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.”^d “What is man that he should be clean? And he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold, God putteth no trust in his Saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much p. 128 more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like water?”^a This view of sin in the flesh is enlightening in the things concerning Jesus. The apostle says, “God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin;”^b and this he explains in another place by saying, that “He sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh^c in the offering of his body once.^d Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus, if it had not existed there. His body was as unclean as the bodies of those for whom he died; for he was born of a woman, and “not one” can bring a clean body out of a defiled body; for “that,” says Jesus himself, “which is born of the flesh is flesh.”^e

According to this physical law, the Seed of the woman was born into the world. The nature of Mary was as unclean as that of other women; and therefore could give birth only to “a body” like her own, though especially “prepared of God.”^f Had Mary’s nature been immaculate, as her idolatrous worshippers contend, an immaculate body would have been born of her; which, therefore, would not have answered the purpose of God; which was to condemn sin in the flesh; a thing that could not have been accomplished, if there were no sin there.

Speaking of the conception and preparation of the Seed, the prophet as a typical person, says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”^g This is nothing more than affirming, that he was born of sinful flesh; and not of the pure and incorruptible angelic nature.

Sinful flesh being the hereditary nature of the Lord Jesus, he was a fit and proper sacrifice for sin; especially as he was himself “innocent of the great transgression,” having been obedient in all things. Appearing in the nature of the seed of Abraham,^h he was subject to all the emotions by which we are troubled; so that he was enabled to sympathise with our infirmities,ⁱ being “made in all things like unto his brethren.” But. when he was “born of the spirit” in the quickening of his mortal body by the spirit,^j he became a spirit; for “that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” Hence, he is “the Lord the Spirit,” incorruptible flesh and bones.

Sin in the flesh is hereditary; and entailed upon mankind as the consequence of Adam’s violation of the Eden law. The “original sin” was such as I have shown in previous pages. Adam and Eve committed it; and their posterity are suffering the consequence of it. The tribe of Levi paid tithes to Melchisedec many years before Levi was born. The apostle says, “Levi, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham.” Upon the same federal principle, all mankind ate of the forbidden fruit, being in the loins of Adam when he transgressed. This is the only way men can p. 129 by any possibility be guilty of the original sin. Because they sinned in Adam, therefore they return to the dust from which Adam came—εφ’ ῶ, says the apostle, “in whom all sinned.”^a There is much foolishness spoken and written about “original sin.” Infants are made the subjects of a religious ceremony to regenerate them because of original sin; on account of which, according to Geneva philosophy, they are liable to the flames of hell for ever! It original sin, which is in fact sin in the flesh, were neutralised, then all “baptismally regenerated” babes ought to live for ever, as Adam would have done had he eaten of the Tree of Life after he had sinned. But they die; which is a proof that the “regeneration” does not “cure their souls;” and is, therefore, mere theological quackery.

Mankind being born of the flesh, and of the will of man, are born into the world under the constitution of sin. That is, they are the natural born citizens of Satan’s kingdom. By their fleshly birth, they are entitled to all that sin can impart to them. What creates the distinction of bodies politic among the sons of Adam? It is constitution, or covenant. By constitution, then, one man is English, and another American. The former is British because he is born of the flesh under the British constitution. In this case, he is worthy of neither praise nor blame. He was made subject to the constitution, not willingly, but by reason of them who chose that he should be born under it. But, when he comes of age, the same man may become an American. He may put off the old man of the political flesh, and put on the new man, which is created by the constitution of the United States; so that by constitution, he becomes an American in every particular, but the accident of birth. This will be exact enough to illustrate what I am about to say.

There are two states, or kingdoms, in God’s arrangements, which are distinguished by constitution. These are the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God. The citizens of the former are all sinners; the heirs of the latter are saints. Men cannot be born heirs by the will of the flesh; for natural birth confers no right to God’s Kingdom. Men must be born sinners before they can become saints; even as one must be a born a foreigner before he can be an adopted citizen of the States. It is absurd to say that children are born holy, except in the sense of their being legitimate. None are born holy, but such as are born of the Spirit into the Kingdom of God. Children are born sinners or unclean, because they are born of sinful flesh; and “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” or sin. This is a misfortune, not a crime. They did not will to be born sinners. They have no choice in the case; for, it is written, “The creature was made subject, τη ματαιοτητι, to the evil, p. 130 not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it in hope.”^a Hence, the apostle says, “By Adam’s disobedience the many were made sinners;^b that is, they were endowed with a nature like his, which had become unclean, as the result of disobedience; and by the constitution of the economy into which they were introduced by the will of the flesh, they were constituted transgressors before they were able to discern between right and wrong.

Upon this principle, he that is born of sinful flesh is a sinner; as he that is born of English parents is an English child. Such a sinner is an heir of all that is derivable from sin. Hence, new-born babes suffer all the evil of the peculiar department of Satan, or sin’s, kingdom to which they belong. Thus, in the case of the Amalekites when the divine vengeance fell upon them, the decree was—“Utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”^c The destruction of “infants and sucklings” is especially commanded in divers parts of scripture. Not because they were responsible transgressors; but, on the same principle that men not only destroy all adult serpents that come in their way, but their thread-like progeny also; for in these is the germ of venomous and malignant reptiles. Had God spared the infants and sucklings of the Canaanitish nations, when they had attained to manhood, even though they had been trained by Israel, they would have reverted to the iniquities of their fathers. Even Israel itself proved a stiff-necked and perverse race, notwithstanding all the pains bestowed upon their education by the Lord God; how much more perverse would such a seed of evil serpents as the Canaanitish offspring have turned out to be?

It is a law of the flesh that “like produces like.” Wild and truthless men reproduce themselves in their sons and daughters. The experiment has been tried on Indian infants. They have been taken from their parents, and carefully educated in the learning and civilization of the white man; but when they have returned to their tribe as men, they have thrown off the habits of their patrons, and adopted the practices of savage life. The same tendency is seen in other animals. Hatch the eggs of the wild turkey under a tame one; and as soon as they are able to shift for themselves they will leave the poultry yard, and associate with the wild species of the woods. So strong is habit, that it becomes a law to the flesh, when continued through generations for a series of years.

But men are not only made, or constituted, sinners by the disobedience of Adam, but they become sinners even as he, by actual transgression. Having attained the maturity of their nature, they become accountable and responsible creatures. At this crisis, they may be placed by the divine arranging in a relation to His word. It becomes to them a Tree of Life,^d inviting them to “take, and eat and live for ever.” If, however, they prefer to eat of the world’s p. 131 forbidden fruit, they come under the sentence of death in their own behalf. They are thus doubly condemned. They are “condemned already” to the dust as natural born sinners; and, secondarily, condemned to a resurrection to judgment for rejecting the gospel of the kingdom of God: by which they become obnoxious to “the SECOND Death.”^a

Thus men are sinners in a twofold sense; first, by natural birth; and next, by transgression. In the former sense, it is manifest they could not help themselves. They will not be condemned to the Second Death because they were born sinners; nor to any other pains and penalties than those which are the common lot of humanity in the present life. They are simply under that provision of the constitution of sin, which says, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Now, if the Lord God had made no other arrangement than that expressed in the sentence upon the woman and the man, they and all their posterity in all their generations would have incessantly gone to dust and there have remained for ever. “The wages of sin is death.” Sinful flesh confers no good thing upon its offspring; for holiness, righteousness, incorruptibility, and life for ever are not hereditary. None of these are inherent in animal flesh. Sinners can only acquire them by a conformity to the law of God: who offers them freely to all who thirst after the water of life eternal.^b