We go on to observe that the enmity, ants, Adam, at least, is left out, who being thus a superhuman thing, implant was neither the woman nor her seed. ed by God and not generated by man, But without insisting on the objection will not subsist universally, but only in under this form, fatal as it is to the proparticular cases. You will have seen, posed interpretation, we should not be from our foregoing showings, that a man warranted, though we have no distinet must be renewed in order to his fighting account of the faith and repentance of with Satan; so that God's putting the Adam, in so explaining a passage as to enmity is God's giving saving grace. exclude our common forefather from The prophecy cannot be interpreted as final salvation. You must see, that, if declaring that the whole human race we take literally the woman and her should be at war with the devil: the seed, no enmity was put between Adam undoubted matter-of-fact being that only and Satan; for Adam was neither the a portion of the race resumes its loyalty woman nor the seed of the woman. to Jehovah. And we are bound, there- And if Adam continued in friendship fore, before proceeding further with our with Satan, it must be certain that he interpretation, to examine whether this perished in his sins: a conclusion to limitation is marked out by the predic- which we dare not advance without tion-whether, that is, we might infer, scriptural testimony the most clear and from the terms of the prophecy, that the explicit. placed enmity would be partial, not universal.

We cannot, then, understand the woman and her seed, as Eve and her natuNow we think that the expression, ral descendants. We must rather be"Thy seed and her seed," shows at lieve, that as the seed of the serpent is once that the enmity would be felt by to be interpreted spiritually and symonly a part of mankind. The enmity bolically, so also is the seed of the wo is to subsist, not merely between Satan man. And when you remember that and the woman, but between his seed Eve was a signal type of the church, and her seed. But the seed of Satan there is an end of the difficulties by can only be interpreted of wicked men. which we seem met. You know, from Thus Christ said to the Jews, "Ye are the statement of St. Paul to the Romans, of your father the devil; and the lusts that Adam was the figure of Christ. Rom. of your father ye will do." John, S: 44. 5: 14. Now it was his standing to Eve Thus also, in expounding the parable of in the very same relationship in which the tares and the wheat, he said, "The Christ stands to the church, which specialtares are the children of the wicked one." ly made Adam the figure of Christ. The Matt. 13 38. There is, probably, the side of Adam had been opened, when a same reference in the expression, "O deep sleep fell on him, in order that Eve generation of vipers." And, in like man- might be formed, an extract from himner, you find St. John declaring, "He self. And thus, as Hooker saith, "God that committeth sin is of the devil." frameth the church out of the very flesh, 1 John, 38. Thus, then, by the seed of the very wounded and bleeding side of Satan we understand wicked men, those the Son of man. His body crucified, who resist God's Spirit, and obstinately and his blood shed for the life of the adhere to the service of the devil. And world, are the true elements of that heaif we must interpret the seed of Satan of a portion of mankind, it is evident that the prophecy marks not out the enmity as general, but indicates just that limitation which has been supposed in our preceding remarks.

venly being which maketh us such as himself is, of whom we come. For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning his church, 'Flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones.'" We cannot go at length But then the question occurs, how are into the particulars of the typical resemwe to interpret the woman and her seed? blance between Eve and the church. It Such expression seems to denote the is sufficient to observe, that since Adam, whole human race. What right have the husband of Eve, was the figure of we to limit it to a part of that race? We Christ, and since Christ is the husband reply, that it certainly does not denote of the church, it seems naturally to folthe whole human race: for if you inter- low that Eve was the figure or type of pret it literally of Eve and her descend- the church. And when we have estab

lished this typical character of Eve, it is represented by its head, which is Christ; easy to understand who are meant by the secondly, collectively as a body; thirdly, woman and her seed. The true church as resolved into its separate members. of God in every age-whether you con- We shall endeavor to show you briefly, sider it as represented by its head, which in each of these cases, the fidelity of the is Christ; whether you survey it collec- description, "It shall bruise thy head, tively as a body, or resolve it into its and thou shalt bruise his heel." separate members-this true church of Now the enmity was never put in such God must be regarded as denoted by the overpowering measure, as when the man woman and her seed. And though you Christ Jesus was its residence. It was may think-for we wish, as we proceed, in Christ Jesus in one sense naturally, to anticipate objections-that, if Eve be and in another supernaturally. He was the church, it is strange that her seed born pure, and with a native hatred of should be also the church, yet it is the sin; but then he had been miraculously common usage of Scripture to represent generated, in order that his nature might the church as the mother, and every new be thus hostile to evil. And never did convert as a child. Thus, in addressing there move the being on this earth who the Jewish church, and describing her hated sin with as perfect a hatred, or glory and her greatness in the latter who was as odious in return to all the days, Isaiah saith, "Thy sons shall come emissaries of darkness. It was just the from far, and thy daughters shall be holiness of the Mediator which stirred nursed at thy side." And again-con- up against him all the passions of a protrasting the Jewish and Gentile church fligate world, and provoked that fury of es-" More are the children of the deso- assault which rushed in from the hosts late than the children of the married of reprobate spirits. There was thrown wife, saith the Lord." So that, although a perpetual reproach on a proud and the church can be nothing more than the sensual generation, by the spotlessness aggregate of individual believers, the inspired writers commonly describe the church as a parent, and believers as the offspring; and in understanding, there fore, the church and its members by the woman and her seed, we cannot be advocating a forced interpretation.

of that righteous individual," who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." 1 Pet. 2: 22. And if he had not been so far separated, by the purities of life and conversation, from all others of his nature; or if vice had received a somewhat less tremendous rebuke from the blamelessness of his every action; we may be sure that his might and benevolence would have gathered the nation to his discipleship, and that the multitude would never have been worked up to demand his crucifixion.

And now we have made a long advance towards the thorough elucidation of the prophecy. We have shown you, that, inasmuch as the enmity is supernaturally put, it can only exist in a portion of mankind. We then endeavored to ascertain this portion and we found The great secret of the opposition to that the true church of God, in every Christ lay in the fact, that he was not age, comprehends all those who war such an one as ourselves. We are acwith Satan and his seed. So that the customed to think that the lowliness of representation of the prediction-a re- his condition, and the want of external presentation whose justice we have yet to examine is simply that of a perpetual conflict, on this earth, between wicked angels and wicked men on the one side, and the church of God, or the company of true believers, on the other; such conflict, though occasioning partial injury to the church, always issuing in the discomfiture of the wicked.

majesty and pomp, moved the Jews to reject their Messiah: yet it is by no means clear that these were, in the main, the producing causes of rejection. If Christ came not with the purple and circumstance of human sovereignty, he displayed the possession of a supernatural power, which, even on the most carnal calculation, was more valuable, because We now set ourselves to demonstrate more effective, than the stanchest appathe accuracy of this representation. We ratus of earthly supremacy. The peahave already said that there are three sant, who could work the miracles which points of view in which the church may Christ worked, would be admitted, on be regarded. We may consider it, as all hands, to have mightier engines at his

disposal than the prince who is clothed while success seemed to attend the enwith the ermine and followed by the war- deavor. There was a bruising of the riors. And if the Jews looked for a Mes- heel of the seed of the woman. "He siah who would lead them to mastery came unto his own, and his own received over enemies, then, we contend, there him not." John, 1: 11. Charged only was every thing in Christ to induce them with an embassage of mercy; sent by to give him their allegiance. The power the Father-not to condemn the world, which could vanquish death by a word though rebellion had overspread its promight cause hosts to fall, as fell the hosts vinces, and there was done the foulest of Sennacherib; and where then was the despite to God, in its every section, and foe who could have resisted the leader? by its every tenant-but that the world We cannot, therefore, think that it through him might have life; he was, was merely the absence of human pa- nevertheless, scorned as a deceiver, and geantry which moved the great ones of hunted down as a malefactor. And if it Judea to throw scorn upon Jesus. It is were a bruising of the heel, that he should true, they were expecting an earthly de- be "a man of sorrows and acquainted liverer. But Christ displayed precisely with grief," Isaiah, 53: 3; that a nation those powers, which, wielded by Moses, should despise him, and friends deny and had prevailed to deliver their nation forsake and betray him; that he should from Egypt; and assuredly then, if that be buffeted with temptation, convulsed strength dwelt in Jesus which had dis- by agony, lacerated by stripes, pierced comfited Pharaoh, and broken the thral- by nails, crowned with thorns; then was dom of centuries, it could not have been the heel of the Redeemer bruised by the proved incapacity of effecting tempo- Satan; for to all this injury the fallen ral deliverance which induced pharisees angel instigated and nerved his seed. and scribes to reject their Messiah. They But though the heel was bruised, this could have tolerated the meanness of his was the whole extent of effected damage. parentage; for that was more than com- There was no real advantage gained over pensated by the majesty of his power. the Mediator: on the contrary, whilst SaThey could have endured the lowliness of tan was in the act of bruising Christ's his appearance; for they could set against heel, Christ was in the act of bruising it his evident communion with divinity. Satan's head. The Savior, indeed, exBut the righteous fervor with which posed himself to every kind of insult and Christ denounced every abomination in wrong. Whilst enduring "the contradicthe land; the untainted purity by which tion of sinners against himself," Heb. 12: he shamed the "whited sepulchres" who 3, it is not to be denied that a strange redeceived the people by the appearance sult was brought round by the machinaof sanctity; the rich loveliness of a cha- tions of the evil ones; for suffering, which racter in which zeal for God's glory was is the attendant on sinfulness, was made unceasingly uppermost; the beautiful to empty all its pangs into the bosom of lustre which encompassed a being who innocence. And seeing that his holiness could hate only one thing, but that one should have exempted his humanity from thing sin; these were the producing all kinsmanship with sorrow and ancauses of bitter hostility; and they who would have hailed the wonder-worker with the shout and the plaudit, had he allowed some license to the evil passions of our nature, gave him nothing but the sneer and the execration, when he waged open war with lust and hypocrisy.

guish, we are free to allow that the heel was bruised, when pain found entrance into this humanity, and grief, heavier than had oppressed any being of our race, weighed down his over-wrought spirit.

But, then, there was not an iota of his sufferings which went not towards liquiAnd thus it was that enmity, the fierc- dating the vast debt which man owed to est and most inveterate, was put between God, and which, therefore, contributed the seed of the woman and the seed of not to our redemption from bondage. the serpent. The serpent himself came There was not a pang by which the Meto the assistance of his seed; evil angels diator was torn, and not a grief by which conspired with evil men; and the whole his soul was disquieted, which helped energies of apostacy gathered themselves not on the achievement of human delivto the effort of destroying the champi- erance, and which, therefore, dealt not on of God and of truth. Yea, and for a out a blow to the despotism of Satan.

So that, from the beginning, the bruising acceptance of the sons and daughters of of Christ's heel was the bruising of Sa- our race. The strong man armed had tan's head. In prevailing, so far as he kept his goods in peace; and Satan, did prevail, against Christ, Satan was having seduced men to be his companonly effecting his own discomfiture and ions in rebellion, might have felt secure downfall. He touched the heel, he could of having them as his companions in tornot touch the head of the Mediator. If ment. But the stronger than he drew he could have seduced him into the com- nigh, and, measuring weapons with him mission of evil; if he could have pro- in the garden and on the cross, received faned, by a solitary thought, the sanctu- wounds which were but trophies of vicary of his soul; then it would have been tory, and dealt wounds which annihilated the head which he had bruised; and power. And when, bruised indeed, yet rising triumphant over man's surety, he only marked with honorable scars which would have shouted, "Victory!" and told out his triumph to the loftiest orders this creation have become for ever his of intelligent being, the Redeemer of own. But whilst he could only cause mankind soared on high, and sent propain, and not pollution; whilst he could clamation through the universe, that dislocate by agony, but not defile by im- death was abolished, and the ruined repurity; he reached indeed the heel, but deemed, and the gates of heaven thrown came not near the head; and, making open to the rebel and the outcast, was the Savior's life-time one dark series of there not an accomplishment, the most afflictions, weakened, at every step, his literal and the most energetic, of that own hold upon humanity.

prediction which declared to Satan concerning the seed of the woman, "it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel?"

devil in one decisive and desperate struggle, and, though not itself unwounded, received no blow which rebounded not to the crushing its opponent.

And when, at last, he so bruised the heel as to nail Christ to the cross, amid the loathings and revilings of the multitude, then it was that his own head was Such is the first and great fulfilment bruised, even to the being crushed. of the prophecy. The church, repre"Through death," we are told," Christ sented by its head who was specially Jesus destroyed him that had the power the seed of the woman, overthrew the of death, that is, the devil." Heb. 2: 14. He fell indeed; and evil angels, and evil men, might have thought him for ever defeated. But in grasping this mighty prey, death paralyzed itself; in breaking down We proceed, secondly, to consider the the temple, Satan demolished his own church collectively as a body. We need throne. It was, as ye all know, by dy- scarcely observe that, from the first, the ing, that Christ finished the achievement righteous amongst men have been obwhich, from all eternity, he had cove-jects of the combined assault of their nanted to undertake. By dying, he rein- evil fellows and evil angels. The enmity stated fallen man in the position from has been put, and strikingly developed. which he had been hurled. Death came On the one hand, it has been the endeaagainst the Mediator; but, in submit- vor of the church to vindicate God's ting to it, Christ, if we may use such honor, and arrest the workings of wickimage, seized on the destroyer, and, edness: on the other, it has been the ef waving the skeleton-form as a sceptre fort of the serpent and his seed to sweep over this creation, broke the spell of a from the earth these upholders of piety. thousand generations, dashing away the And though the promise has all along chains, and opening the graves, of an been verified, that the gates of hell shall oppressed and rifled population. And not prevail against the church, it cannot when he had died, and descended into be denied that a great measure of sucthe grave, and returned without seeing cess has attended the strivings of the adcorruption, then was it made possible versary. If you only call to mind what that every child of Adam might be eman- fierce persecution has rushed against the cipated from the dominion of evil; and, righteous; how by one engine or anoin place of the wo and the shame which ther there has been, oftentimes, almost transgression had won as the heritage of a thorough extinction of the very name man, there was the beautiful brightness of christianity; and how, when outwardof a purchased immortality wooing the ly there has been peace, tares, sown by

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the enemy, have sent up a harvest of tion, and teaches the pagan to cast his perilous heresies; you cannot withhold idols to the mole and the bat; or whenyour acknowledgment that Satan has soever, assaulting mere nominal chrisbruised the heel of the church. But he tianity, she fastens men to practice as has done nothing more. If he have hewn the alone test of profession; then does down thousands by the sword, and con- she strike a blow which is felt at the very sumed thousands at the stake, thousands centre of the kingdom of darkness, and have sprung forward to fill up the breach; then is she experiencing a partial fulfiland if he have succeeded in pouring ment of the promise, God shall bruise forth a flood of pestilential doctrine, there Satan under your feet shortly." Rom. have arisen stanch advocates of truth 16: 20. who have stemmed the torrent, and And when the fierce and on-going consnatched the articles of faith, uninjured, flict shall be brought to a close; when from the deluge. There has never been this burdened creation shall have shaken the time when God has been left with- off the slaves and the objects of concuout a witness upon earth. And though piscence, and the church of the living the church has often been sickly and God shall reign, with its head, over the weak; though the best blood has been tribes and provinces of an evangelized drained from her veins, and a languor, earth; then in the completeness of the like that of moral palsy, has settled on triumph of righteousness shall be the her limbs; still life hath never been completeness of the serpent's discomfiwholly extinguished; but, after a while, the sinking energies have been marvellously recruited, and the worn and wasted body has risen up more athletic than before, and displayed to the nations all the vigor of renovated youth.

ture. And as the angel and the archangel contrast the slight injury which Satan could ever cause to the church, with that overwhelming ruin which the church has, at last, hurled down upon Satan; as they compare the brief struggle and the everlasting glory of the one, with the shadowy success and the never-ending torments of the other; will they not decide, and tell out their decision in language of rapture and admiration, that, if ever prediction were fulfilled to the very letter, it is that which, addressed to the serpent, and describing the church as the seed of the woman, declared, "it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel?"

So that only the heel has been bruised. And since, up to the second advent of the Lord, the church shall be battered with heresy, and persecution, and infidelity, we look not, under the present dispensation, for discontinuance of this bruising of the heel. Yet, while Satan is bruising the church's heel, the church, by God's help, is bruising Satan's head. The church may be compelled to prophesy in sackcloth. Affliction may be her portion, as it was that of her glorified Such is the second fulfilment of the head. But the church is, throughout, prophecy of our text. The church, conGod's witness upon earth. The church sidered collectively as a body, is so asis God's instrument for carrying on those saulted by the serpent and his seed that purposes which shall terminate in the its heel is bruised: but even now it offinal setting up of the Mediator's king- fers such resistance to evil, and hereafter dom. And, oh, there is not won over a it shall triumph so signally over every single soul to Christ, and the Gospel opponent, that the prediction, "it shall message makes not its way to a single bruise thy head," must be received as heart, without an attendant effect as of destined to a literal accomplishment. a stamping on the head of the tempter: We have yet to notice the third fulfilfor a captive is delivered from the op- ment. We may resolve the church into pressor, and to deliver the slave is to its separate members, and, taking each defeat the tyrant. Thus the seed of the individual believer as the seed of the woman is continually bruising the head woman, show you how our text is realof the serpent. And whensoever the ized in his experience. church, as an engine in God's hands, makes a successful stand for piety and truth; whensoever, sending out her missionaries to the broad waste of heathenism, she demolishes an altar of supersti

Now if there be enmity between the serpent and the church generally, of course there is also between the serpent and each member of that church. We have already given it as the description.