Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

There are four things to be remembered here, (1.) That all mankind (the man Christ excepted) are naturally branches of the first Adam, Rom. v. 12. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin: and so death passed upon all men. (2.) The bond which knit us unto the natural stock, was the covenant of works. Adam being our natural root, was made the moral root also; bearing all his posterity as representing them in the covenant of works. For, by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, Rom. v. 19 Now, there behoved to be a peculiar relation betwixt that one man and the many, as a foundation for imputing his sin to them. This relation did not arise from the mere natural bond betwixt him and us, as a father to his children; for so we are related to our immediate parents, whose sins are not thereupon imputed to us as Adam's sin is. It behoved then to arise from a moral bond betwixt Adam and us; the bond of a covenant, which could be no other than the covenant of works, wherein we were united to him as branches to a stock. Hence Jesus Christ, though a son of Adam, Luke iii 23, 38. was none of these branches; for seeing he came not of Adam, in virtue of the blessing of marriage, which was given before the fall, (Gen. i 28. Be fruitful and multiply, &c.) but in virtue of a special promise made after the fall, (Gen. iii. 15. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.) Adam could not represent him in a covenant made before his fall. (3.) As it is impossible for a branch to be in two stocks at once; so no man can be, at one and the same time, both in the first and second Adam. (4) Hence it evidently follows, that all who are not ingrafted in Jesus Christ, are yet branches of the old stock; and so partake of the nature of the same. Now, as to the first Adam, our natural stock: Consider,

First, What a stock he was originally. He was a vine of the Lord's planting, a choice vine, a noble vine wholly a right seed There was a consultation of the Trinity, at the planting of this vine,