Two: Adam, a Type of Christ

The first of them is the first Adam, who was so lively a representation of Christ, as that Christ is often called the second Adam (Rom 5:14). Adam was a figure of him that was to come. We will gather the resemblances between them into four general headings.

A type of Christ in Four Things

First, in respect of Creation.

Both of them were Sons of God: the one by eternal generation, the other by grace of creation.
Both were men. Adam’s: red earth, the first in his matter. The Second: not in his matter only but also in his bloody passion.
Both were sons of one Father, and both men but of no man their Father, neither of them having any other Father but God.
Both created in the image of God; the former (Gen. 1:27), the latter the express image of his Father’s person (Heb 1:3).
Both endowed with perfect wisdom and knowledge; the first Adam so wise as that he gave fit names to all creatures according to their natures; in the second Adam dwell treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).
Both possessed of a most happy and innocent estate; in which the one had power to persevere, but not will; the other had both power and will.
The first Adam was made in the sixth day of the week to the image of God; the second Adam towards the sixth age of the world appearing to restore that image which the first Adam quickly lost.

Second, in respect of office and sovereignty:

The first Adam was owner of paradise, the heir of the world; sovereign Lord of all creatures to whom they came for their names; the second Adam is Lord of heaven as well as earth, heir of the outmost bounds of the earth (Ps. 2:8). Commander of all creatures; whom the winds and seas obey; whose word the devils tremble at;
Adam was appointed to keep the garden and dress it (Gen. 2:15). Christ the second Adam was set apart to sanctify and save his Church, the garden and paradise of God (Eph 5:26).
Adam was king, priest, and prophet in his family: so is Christ in the Church, the family and household of faith (Rev. 1:5). As Adam was the first minster of the word in the Church, delivering the promise of the blessed seed with certain rites and ceremonies to his children, and they to their posterity; so the second Adam is the chief prophet and doctor of his Church, who always prescribed the pure worship of God for matter and manner in the Churches of all ages.

Third, in respect to joining.

Adam sleeping, Eve is formed; Christ dying, the Church is framed. Eve is taken out of Adam’s side while he sleeps; out of the second Adam’s side, while He was in the sleep of death, issued the Church.
Eve was no sooner framed but as a pure and innocent spouse, she was delivered by God to Adam yet in innocence: so God the Father delivered the Church as a chaste and innocent spouse to be married to the second Adam forever, to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
Of Eve married to Adam he receives both a Cain and an Abel into his house: so the second Adam has in his visible Church both elect and reprobates, sound and hypocrites, as by many parables is signified; as of the field, the net and sea.

In suspect of propagation:

Both of them are roots, both have a posterity and seed (Isa. 53).
Both of them convey that they have unto their posterity (Rom. 5:12 -14). As by the first Adam sin, and by sin, death came over all men; so by the second Adam came righteousness, and by righteousness life on all believers; and herein especially was the first Adam a figure of him that was to come.
As the first Adam merited death for all his posterity, so the second Adam life for all his.

Application follows

The ministry worthy for antiquity

To note the honor and antiquity of the ministry which not the first Adam only, but the second also exercised. Despise at your peril what they so honored; think it too base for your self to attend, for your sons to regard: Neither the first Adam, Lord of the earth, nor the second Adam Lord of heaven and earth, did so.

Antiquity of the doctrine of free grace.

To note the antiquity and authority of the doctrine of free grace by the merit of the Messiah, which both the first and second Adam taught; neither of them ever dreamed of the doctrine of works and human merits. What Adam learned of God in paradise he taught to his posterity; what his posterity heard of him, the same they delivered and left to their children; but they never heard nor taught any other way to salvation, but by the promised Seed: so also what the disciples heard of the second Adam, that they taught to the churches; but they heard the same of him (Acts 4:12). And our doctrine being the same with theirs, is not new, but more ancient than any other. For as this is the honor of all truth to be before error and falsehood; so of this truth, to have precedence of all truths; It truly pleads antiquity, therefore verity.

Seek life by Christ’s death

In that the church comes out of Christ’s side, being in the sleep of death, as Eve out of Adam’s, He sleeping, we learn to seek our life in Christ’s death. That death should be propagated by the sin of the first Adam, was no marvel; but that life by the death of the Second, is an admired mystery. Here is the greatest work of God’s power fetched out of the contrary; of rank poison and sovereign remedy by the most skillful physician of hearts. Let the Jews scorn a crucified God and refuse the life offered by a dead man; they know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God; who can and does command light out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:6), life out of death, all things out of nothing. How easily can he repair all things out of anything, who can fetch and frame all things out of nothing? He is of power to make of clay and spittle (fit to put out the sight) a remedy to restore sight. He can as easily save a world by the death of his son, as multiply a world by the sleep of Adam.

Get into Christ the second Adam, as you are surely of the first.

Labor to be ingrafted into the second Adam, that as you have borne the image of the earthly, so you may bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor. 15:49).

Because the second Adam repairs whatsoever we lost in the first. By the first we are enemies to God, by the second we are reconciled to him. By the first we all die, by the second we are all made alive (1 Cor. 15:22). By the first we are left to Satan’s power, by the second we are guided by the Spirit of God. By the first we lost all the creatures, by the second we are restored to the holy use of the all. By the first a necessity of death is brought in: Heb. 9:27, “it is appointed for all men once to die, and then comes the judgment”; but by the second we have a recovery of the blessings of immortality and life. Whatsoever the first Adam brings into the world by sin, the second carries out by his righteousness.
Because by Christ the truth, we recover more than we lost, or ever should have had by the type. For so the apostle, Rom. 5:16: the gift by the second Adam has exceeded the offence of the first. That as the first Adam by eating of the forbidden fruit has powered all evil into the souls and bodies of men though they eat not of the forbidden tree, so the second Adam by regeneration is made righteousness to those who had wrought no righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), and powered all good things into the souls and bodies of his members. The first Adam by sin helps us into misery, but the second Adam not only helps us out of misery, but advances us to the highest of dignity, to be, from sons of wrath, sons of God, brethren of Christ, members of his body, heirs of the kingdom of heaven. By Adam’s sin we are all driven out of paradise, an earthly pleasure, in which we should have enjoyed an inconstant happiness; but by Christ we are brought into the heavenly paradise, our Father’s house. By Adam’s sin we become unjust, but by Christ’s holiness we are not just only but sanctified, graced, confirmed, glorified, into whom by faith we come to be ingrafted.