Chapter 3: The Intent and Sense of the Threatening in Genesis 2:17 and 3:20

We must distinguish between the intent of the threatener, and the intent and sense of the threatening.

Law-threatenings may be well expounded, by the execution of them, upon persons, against whom they are denounced: As, (1 Kings 11:30) compared with (1 Kings 12:15-16). Ten Tribes are taken from David's house according to the Word of the Lord. Because therefore the threatening of death was executed upon Christ, (1 Peter 3:18) (Galatians 3:10-14) then must the threatening, (Genesis 2:17) (Deuteronomy 27:26) have been intended against the Man Christ, and because believers die, as all do, (Hebrews 9:27) the threatening must have been intended against them also, for that they sinned in Adam, and because it is out of question that the reprobate die the first and second death, the threatening must also have been intended against them. And therefore, in the intent of the threatener, the threatening was mixed, partly legal, partly Evangelical; according to the respective persons, that the Lord had in his eye: He had therefore in his heart both Law and Gospel. It is therefore to no purpose to ask what kind of death, and whether purely legal, which the Lord threatened to Adam: For the question supposes that the Covenant of Works was to stand, and that the Lord was to deny a Saviour to fallen man. But we may say what death the Lord actually inflicts, that death he intended to inflict, nor did the Lord decree to inflict a merely legal death personal first and second, upon Adam and all his race.

Objection. Adam was to believe he should certainly die; For so was the threatening, (Genesis 2:17) if he should sin, or then we must say, that Adam was to believe he should not actually die, the latter cannot be said, for then he was to believe the contradicent of the Lord's true threatening; which was the lie of the Serpent, (Genesis 3). Answer. He was to believe neither of the two according to the event, for there are two sorts of threatenings, some pure and only threatenings, which reveal to us, what God may, in Law, do, but not what he has decreed and intended, actu secundo & quoad eventum, to do, and bring to pass; these threatenings contain some condition, either expressed in other Scripture, or then reserved in the mind of the Lord. 1. Because the Lord so threatened Adam, as he remained free and absolute either to inflict the punishment, or to provide an Evangelical remedy, even as Solomon, (1 Kings 2:37) says to Shimei (in the day you pass over the brook Kidron, you shall surely die) that is, you shall be guilty of death, reus mortis: yet it cannot be denied, but Solomon reserved his own kingly power, either to pardon Shimei, or to soften, or change the sentence. 2. The words of the Law do reveal, what the magistrate may do, jure, and what the guilty deserves by the Law, but do not reveal the intention and absolute decree of the Law-giver, and what punishment actually, & quoad eventum shall be inflicted upon the guilty, and what shall come to pass as a thing decreed of the Lord: So, (Genesis 9:6) the murderer shall die by the sword of the magistrate, and (Exodus 22:18-20) the witch, the man that lies with a beast, he that sacrifices to a strange god, shall die the death jure, merito, and by law-deserving, but it follows not, but such as commit these abominations, do live, as is clear in the kings of Assyria, Chaldea, and many of Israel, who were not put to death, but lived quoad eventum, though contrary to the Word of God. 3. The express precepts of the Decalogue, You shall have no other gods before me, etc. You shall not kill, You shall not steal, etc. do show what in Law we ought not to do, but not what actually shall come to pass: For there are not a few who do actually, & quoad eventum, worship strange gods, kill, and steal. But there are other threatenings which are both threatenings, and also Prophecies, and these reveal both the Law and the fact, and what the Law-giver may, jure, and, in Law, inflict, and what shall actually come to pass upon the transgressors, if they continue in impenitency, (Romans 2:1-3) (Romans 1:18) (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Objection. Then in all threatenings and promises we are not to believe, that though we sin, we shall actually & quoad eventum die, and though we obey and believe, we are not to believe that GOD shall fulfill his promise, and that our salvation shall come to pass, only we are to believe jure, that we deserve to die, and that we shall have eternal life, jure promissionis, but not actually and according to the event. Answer. Something is to be said of the threatenings, then of the promises: As touching the sense, we are to believe. In the conditional threatenings as (yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed) and (in that day you eat you shall surely die, in your person and all yours the first and second death) we are not to believe the event, nor is it carnal security, not to believe such an event, we are only to have a godly fear and to tremble, at the dreadful deserving of such legal threatenings, as always are to be expounded and believed by all within the Visible Church, with an Evangelical exception of repentance. If therefore Adam did believe that he and all his should in their own persons actually suffer the first and second death, and that irrecoverably, he had no warrant, for any such belief, and the like may be said of Nineveh. For when the Lord said, in the day that you eat you shall die, the first and second death, you and all your children personally; His meaning was, except I provide an Evangelical remedy and a Saviour. Godly fear trembles more at the darkening of the glory of the Lord in a broken Law, than at the event of inflicted wrath, were it even Hell's fire.

Objection. Adam was to believe no such exception. Answer. True. Because it was not revealed, nor was he to believe the contrary that he should irrecoverably and eternally perish, because that was not revealed: But the threatening of the Law does not deny the Evangelical remedy, as it neither does affirm it.

Objection. Then was Adam to believe, it was true which the Serpent said, you shall not surely die, & quoad eventum, but you shall be as gods living and knowing good and evil.

Neither does that follow, for in the meaning of the liar, it was not true, that they should not die, either by deserving (for Satan brangles the equity and righteousness of the Law and threatening) or actually and in the event, for both were false and neither revealed, and faith is not to go beyond what is revealed of God. And Satan disputed against both the equity of the threatening, as if it had been unjust, in Law, and against the event, as a fiction and a thing that should not come to pass in the event, which indeed did not come to pass: but not according to the Serpent's lying and false principles.

Obj. Was then Adam to despair and to believe nothing of a Savior? Ans. He was not obliged to despair, but to rely, by virtue of the first Commandment of the Decalogue, upon God infinitely powerful, merciful, gracious, and wise to save, for that was revealed and written in his heart, and that is far from despairing. But in the interval between the fall and the Lord's publishing the blessed Gospel, and news of the seed to come, he was so to trust in God for possible deliverance in general (as the Law of Nature requires) but he was to believe nothing of unrevealed particulars, far less of the mystery of the Gospel, which was kept secret, since the world began (Romans 16:25).

Obj. Then may also the damned in Hell, who are not loosed from their obligation to the Law of Nature, and the first Commandment, be obliged to rely on an infinite and Almighty God, for their deliverance, for they are not obliged to despair, nor is there an obligation to any sin.

Ans. There is not the like reason, for though the damned be not loosed from the Law of Nature, but are to rely upon God in his whole all-sufficiency, yet with exception of his revealed justice and truth: Now he has expressly revealed, that their worm never dies, and their fire never goes out. And to believe that, is not to despair. Obj. What are then such Heathens to believe as touching that threatening, who never heard of the Gospel? Ans. They are under the Law of Nature, and to believe that sin deserves wrath, according to the infiniteness of the Majesty, against whom it is committed, and to obey the Law of Nature, and read the Book of the Creation carefully. But if the news and rumor of a Savior come to their ears, their sin cannot but be Evangelical, in not pursuing the reality and truth of such a sovereign remedy. Yet it is not to be thought, that though the Gospel has come to all nations (Romans 16:26), that that is to be meant: 1. Of every generation of all nations; or, 2. of the individual persons, either young, or come to age, of every nation under Heaven — experience and Scripture speak against both.

Obj. But is not the Covenant of Grace contrary to the Law and Covenant of Works? Ans. A diversity there is, but contrary wills in the holy Lord cannot be asserted. Indeed the Gospel may be proven out of the Law, and from the first Commandment of the Decalogue, if any act of the Lord's free will and infinite wisdom shall be added to prove the Assumption. So,

If the first Commandment teaches that God is infinitely wise, merciful, gracious, just, and able to save, then, if so it please him, he shall save;

But the first Commandment teaches the former: And the Gospel revealing the unsearchable riches of Christ (Ephesians 3:8) expressly says so much. Therefore.

As to the promises, they contain not only the right, equity and goodness of the thing promised, but also that the Lord shall actually perform, yes and intends to perform, what he has promised upon condition that we perform the required condition. And in this the promises differ not a little from those threatenings, that are only threatenings, of what God may do in Law, but not from those threatenings which are both threatenings and also prophetic predictions of what shall come to pass, therefore must we here distinguish between threatenings, and such and such threatenings.

The promises are considered as they are preached and announced to all within the Visible Church, and as they are made in the intention of God with the Elect and Sons of the promise: The same way the threatenings admit of a two-fold consideration. The promises to the Elect as intended of God, reveal that both the Lord intends to give the blessing promised, and the condition that is grace to perform the condition, and so they are promises Evangelical both in the matter, and in the intention of the Lord. But as proposed to the reprobate, who are always from their birth to their death under a Covenant of Works, really as touching the Lord's holy Decree, they are materially Evangelical promises, but formally and in the Lord's intention legal, as every dispensation to them is legal, insofar as the Lord has decreed to deny the grace, by which they may or can fulfill the condition of the promise, which is proper to the Law, as it is peculiar to the Gospel, that the Lord both gives the mercy promised and also the grace to fulfill the condition of the promise.

The threatenings to believers, especially such as are legal (if you believers fall away, you shall eternally perish) are to believers, though materially legal, peremptory, and admit no exception, yet they are formally and in the Lord's intention directed to them upon an Evangelical intention, nor do they say that the Lord intends and decrees that they shall eternally perish, for he has predestined them to the contrary, to wit, to grace and glory (Ephesians 1:4). Nor that he wills that they should believe either their eternal damnation, or their final and total falling away, which inevitably leads to that. For they, knowing that they are in Christ (2 Corinthians 13:5; Romans 8:16-17) and freed from condemnation (Romans 8:1), are to believe the contrary of the former, to wit, life eternal (John 4:24; 1 Thessalonians 5:9; John 3:16), and the contrary of the latter, to wit, the promise of perseverance made to them (Jeremiah 32:39-40; Isaiah 59:21; John 10:27-28; John 17:20-21; 1 Peter 1:3-5; Matthew 16:16-17, 19). Therefore these threatenings are not to be believed by the regenerate, as certainly to come to pass in their persons, but only as Law-motives to press them to work out their salvation in fear and trembling, and to cleave so much the closer to Christ, as the condition of such as are under the Law is apprehended to be dreadful. But reprobates and unbelievers are not to believe that God decrees and intends to them the thing promised, and grace to perform the condition, but only to believe their obligation to fiducial relying upon, and Gospel-faith in God, revealed in the Mediator; and that if they continue in a way of opposing Christ, they not only deserve by Law (which Law-deserving also believers are to apprehend) to be broken, but actually and quoad eventum shall eternally perish. Believers are to believe the Decree of God to save them, though they hear the threatenings, for it is revealed. But the Reprobate are to believe only the sense and Law-deserving and event of the threatening, if they repent not, but are to believe no decree to save them.