Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

2ly There is the derivation of a polluted, corrupted nature §. 17 from him; ^lWho can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? that which is borne of the flesh is flesh, and nothing else; whose wisdom and mind is corrupted also. a polluted fountain, will have polluted streams. The first person corrupted nature, and that nature corrupts all persons following; now from both these was Christ most free. He was never federally in Adam; and so not liable to the imputation of his sin on that account. It is true, that sin was ^mimputed to him, when he was made sin; thereby ⟨p. 71⟩he took away the sin of the world, Joh. 1. 29. but it was imputed to him in the Covenant of the Mediator, through his voluntary susception; and not in the Covenant of Adam by a legal imputation. Had it been reckoned to him, as a descendent from Adam, he had not been a fit High-Priest to have offered sacrifices for us; as not being separate from sinners, Heb. 7. 25. Had Adam stood in his Innocency, Christ had not been incarnate, to have been a Mediator for sinners, and therefore the Counsel of his Incarnation morally took not place ⁿuntil after the fall; though he was in Adam, in a natural sense from his first Creation, in respect of the purpose of God, Luk. 3. 23, 38 yet he was not in him, in a Law sense, until after the fall; so that as to his own person, he had no more to do with the first sin of Adam, then with any personal sin of one whose punishment he voluntarily took upon him. As we are not liable to the guilt of those progenitors who followed Adam, though naturally we were no less in them then him. Therefore did He, all the days of his flesh serve God in a Covenant of works; and was therein accepted with him; having done nothing that should disannul the virtue of that Covenant as to him; This doth not then in the least take off from his perfection.