A Key to the Bible Doctrine of Atonement and Justification; Or, a Plan to Harmonize the Scriptures, of the Old and New Testament in Thirty Sermons All of Which Originate from Gen. II, 17, and I Pet. I, 18, 19. in Two Parts with an Appendix (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3SERMON IL THE SENSE OF THE TEXT CONTINUED* jy.; Genesis ii, 17, textit{In ike day that thou eatest thereof thou shall textit{surely Die. I'i? is thought by some that this threatening implier not only spiritual, but eternal, death. For, say they, "The soul that sinneth, it shall textit{die." They mark the word textit{die with an emphasis, as if all sin must be punished with eternal death, and to establish the sentiment, they refer to Romans vi, 23, "The wages of sin is death." AH have sinned. Must all, then, textit{die an textit{eternal death? Is universal damnation the language of the Bible? It is not; it is far otherwise. On that text in Ezekiel, The soul that sinneth it shall die, we have remarked, already. And what does the apostle mean by this proposition? "The wages of sin is death." He cannot mean that all mankind are unconditionally threatened with eternal death. It is true, that "The wages of sin is death," and the meaning of the proposition is, the man who lives and dies1 in sin, must be cast into a lake of fire, "which is the second death." But was this death threatened to Adam in the garden? Did God threaten to cast Adam into a lake of fire, on the very day in which he should eat of the forbidden tree?* He did not; this is evident, because the threatening was not executed. But somedivines say, that God was not under obligation to ex. ecute the sentence on the day in which he did eat. But even if this were proved, that God textit{might not execute the sentence immediately, yet it does not remove the difficulty. For the fact is, it was textit{never executed, textit{perhaps, not upon Adam. And, certainly, not upon his whole posterity And if Adam, or any of his posterity, should be cast into a lake of eternal fire, it will not be, because he or the)', had eaten of the forbidden tr...