In addition to what is stated on this subject under the
article _Adam_, it may be necessary to establish the literal sense of
the account given of man’s fall in the book of Genesis. This account is,
that a garden having been planted by the Creator, for the use of man, he
was placed in it, “to dress it, and to keep it;”--that in this garden
two trees were specially distinguished, one as “the tree of life,” the
other as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;”--that from eating
of the latter Adam was restrained by positive interdict, and by the
penalty, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;”--that
the serpent, who was more subtle than any beast of the field, tempted
the woman to eat, by denying that death would be the consequence, and by
assuring her, that her eyes and her husband’s eyes “would be opened,”
and that they would “be as gods, knowing good and evil;”--that the woman
took of the fruit, gave of it to her husband, who also ate;--that for
this act of disobedience they were expelled from the garden, made
subject to death, and laid under other maledictions.
2. That this history should be the subject of much criticism, not only
by infidels, but by those who hold false and perverted views of the
Christian system, was to be expected. Taken in its natural and obvious
sense, along with the comments of the subsequent Scriptures, it teaches
the doctrines of the existence of an evil, tempting, invisible spirit,
going about seeking whom he may deceive and devour; of the introduction
of moral corruptness into human nature, which has been transmitted to
all men; and is connected also with the doctrine of a vicarious
atonement for sin; and wherever the fundamental truths of the Christian
system are denied, attempts will be made so to interpret this part of
the Mosaic history as to obscure the testimony which it gives to them,
either explicitly, or by just induction. Interpreters have adopted
various and often strange theories; but those whose opinions it seems
necessary to notice may be divided into such as deny the literal sense
of the relation entirely; such as take the account to be in part literal
and in part allegorical; and those who, while they contend earnestly for
the literal interpretation of every part of the history, consider some
of the terms used, and some of the persons introduced, as conveying a
meaning more extensive than the letter, and as constituting several
symbols of spiritual things and of spiritual beings.
3. Those who have denied the literal sense entirely, and regarded the
whole relation as an instructive _mythos_, or fable, have, as might be
expected, when all restraint of authority was thus thrown off from the
imagination, themselves adopted very different theories. Thus we have
been taught, that this account was intended to teach the evil of
yielding to the violence of appetite and to its control over reason; or
the introduction of vice in conjunction with knowledge and the
artificial refinements of society; or the necessity of keeping the great
mass of mankind from acquiring too great a degree of knowledge, as being
hurtful to society; or to consider it as another version of the story of
the golden age, and its being succeeded by times more vicious and
miserable; or as designed, enigmatically, to account for the origin of
evil, or of mankind. This catalogue of opinions might be much enlarged:
some of them have been held by mere visionaries; others by men of
learning, especially by several of the semi-infidel theologians and
Biblical critics of Germany; nor has our own country been exempt from
this class of bold expositors. How to fix upon the moral of “the fable”
is, however, the difficulty; and the great variety of opinion is a
sufficient refutation of the general notion assumed by the whole class,
since scarcely can two of them be found who adopt the same views, after
they have discarded the literal acceptation.
4. But that the account of Moses is to be taken as a matter of real
history, and according to its literal import, is established by two
considerations, against which, as being facts, nothing can successfully
be urged. The first is, that the account of the fall of the first pair
is a part of a continuous history. The creation of the world, of man, of
woman; the planting of the garden of Eden, and the placing of man there;
the duties and prohibitions laid upon him; his disobedience; his
expulsion from the garden; the subsequent birth of his children, their
lives, and actions, and those of their posterity, down to the flood;
and, from that event, to the life of Abraham, are given in the same
plain and unadorned narrative; brief, but yet simple; and with no
intimation at all, either from the elevation of the style or otherwise,
that a fable or allegory is in any part introduced. As this, then, is
the case, and the evidence of it lies upon the very face of the history,
it is clear, that if the account of the fall be excerpted from the whole
narrative as allegorical, any subsequent part, from Abel to Noah, from
Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, may be excerpted for the same
reason, which reason is merely this, that it does not agree with the
theological opinions of the interpreter; and thus the whole of the
Pentateuch may be rejected history, and converted into fable. Either
then the account of the fall must be taken as history, or the historical
character of the whole five books of Moses must be unsettled; and if
none but infidels will go to the latter consequence, then no one who
admits the Pentateuch to be a true history generally, can consistently
refuse to admit the story of the fall of the first pair to be a
narrative of real events, because it is written in the same style, and
presents the same character of a continuous record of events. So
conclusive has this argument been felt, that the anti-literal
interpreters have endeavoured to evade it, by asserting that the part of
the history of Moses in question bears marks of being a separate
fragment, more ancient than the Pentateuch itself, and transcribed into
it by Moses, the author and compiler of the whole. This point is
examined and satisfactorily refuted in Holden’s learned and excellent
work, entitled, “Dissertation on the Fall of Man;” but it is easy to
show, that it would amount to nothing, if granted, in the mind of any
who is satisfied on the previous question of the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures. For let it be admitted that Moses, in writing the
pentateuchal history, availed himself of the traditions of the
patriarchal ages, a supposition not in the least inconsistent with his
inspiration or with the absolute truth of his history, since the
traditions so introduced have been authenticated by the Holy Spirit; or
let it be supposed, which is wholly gratuitous, that he made use of
previously existing documents; and that some differences of style in his
books may be traced which serve to point out his quotations, which is a
position that some of the best Hebraists have denied; yet two things are
to be noted: first, that the inspired character of the books of Moses is
authenticated by our Lord and his Apostles, so that they must
necessarily be wholly true, and free from real contradictions; and,
secondly, that to make it any thing to their purpose who contend that
the account of the fall is an older document, introduced by Moses, it
ought to be shown that it is not written as truly in the narrative
style, even if it could be proved to be, in some respects, a different
style, as that which precedes and follows it. Now the very literal
character of our translation will enable even the unlearned reader to
discover this. Whether it be an embodied tradition, or the insertion of
a more ancient document, (though there is no foundation at all for the
latter supposition,) it is obviously a narrative, and a _narrative_ as
simple as any which precedes or follows it.
5. The other indisputable fact to which I just now adverted, as
establishing the literal sense of the history, is that, as such, it is
referred to and reasoned upon in various parts of Scripture: “Knowest
thou not this of old, since man (Adam) was placed upon earth, that the
triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for
a moment?” Job xx, 4, 5. There is no reason to doubt but that this
passage refers to the fall and the first sin of man. The date agrees;
for the knowledge here taught is said to arise from facts as old as the
first placing of man upon earth, and the sudden punishment of the
iniquity corresponds to the Mosaic account: “The triumphing of the
wicked is short, his joy but for a moment.” “If I covered my
transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom,” Job xxxi,
33. Magee renders the verse,
“Did I cover, like Adam, my transgression,
By hiding in a lurking place mine iniquity?”
and adds, “I agree with Peters, that this contains a reference to the
history of the first man, and his endeavours to hide himself after his
transgression.” Our margin reads, “after the manner of men;” and also
the old versions; but the Chaldee paraphrase agrees with our
translation, which is also satisfactorily defended by numerous critics.
“What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman,
that he should be righteous?” Job xv, 14. Why not clean? Did God make
woman or man unclean at the beginning? If he did, the expostulation
would have been more apposite, and much stronger, had the true cause
been assigned, and Job had said, “How canst thou expect cleanness in
man, whom thou _createdst_ unclean?” But, as the case now stands, the
expostulation has a plain reference to the introduction of vanity and
corruption by the sin of the woman, and is an evidence that this ancient
writer was sensible of the evil consequences of the fall upon the whole
race of man. “Eden” and “the garden of the Lord” are also frequently
referred to in the prophets. We have the “tree of life” mentioned
several times in the Proverbs and in the Revelation. “God,” says
Solomon, “made man upright.” The enemies of Christ and his church are
spoken of, both in the Old and New Testaments, under the names of “the
serpent,” and “the dragon;” and the habit of the serpent to lick the
dust is also referred to by Isaiah.
6. If the history of the fall, as recorded by Moses, were an allegory,
or any thing but a literal history, several of the above allusions would
have no meaning; but the matter is put beyond all possible doubt in the
New Testament, unless the same culpable liberties be taken with the
interpretation of the words of our Lord and of St. Paul as with those of
the Jewish lawgiver. Our Lord says, “Have ye not read, that he which
made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said, For
this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his
wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?” Matt. xix, 4, 5. This is an
argument on the subject of divorces, and its foundation rests upon two
of the facts recorded by Moses: (1.) That God made at first but two
human beings, from whom all the rest have sprung. (2.) That the intimacy
and indissolubility of the marriage relation rests upon the formation of
the woman from the man; for our Lord quotes the words in Genesis, where
the obligation of man to cleave to his wife is immediately connected
with that circumstance: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken
out of man. _Therefore_ shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” This is
sufficiently in proof that both our Lord and the Pharisees considered
this early part of the history of Moses as a narrative; for, otherwise,
it would neither have been a reason, on his part, for the doctrine which
he was inculcating, nor have had any force of conviction as to them. “In
Adam,” says the Apostle Paul, “all die;” “by one man sin entered into
the world.” “But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve
through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.” In the last passage, the instrument of
the temptation is said to be a serpent, ὄφις, which is a sufficient
answer to those who would make it any other animal; and Eve is
represented as being first seduced, according to the account in Genesis.
This St. Paul repeats in 1 Tim. ii, 13, 14: “Adam was first formed, then
Eve. And Adam was not deceived,” first or immediately, “but the woman
being deceived was in the transgression.” And he offers this as the
reason of an injunction, “Let the woman learn in silence with all
subjection.” When, therefore, it is considered, that these passages are
introduced, not for rhetorical illustration, or in the way of classical
quotation, but are made the basis of grave and important reasonings,
which embody some of the most important doctrines of the Christian
revelation, and of important social duties and points of Christian order
and decorum; it would be to charge the writers of the New Testament with
the grossest absurdity, nay, with even culpable and unworthy trifling,
to suppose them to argue from the history of the fall as a narrative,
when they knew it to be an allegory. And if we are, therefore, compelled
to allow that it was understood as a real history by our Lord and his
inspired Apostles, those speculations of modern critics, which convert
it into a parable, stand branded with their true character of infidel
and semi-infidel temerity.
7. The effect of the sin or lapse of Adam was to bring him under the
wrath of God; to render him liable to pain, disease, and death; to
deprive him of primeval holiness; to separate him from communion with
God and that spiritual life which was before imparted by God, and on
which his holiness alone depended, from the loss of which a total moral
disorder and depravation of his soul resulted; and finally to render him
liable to everlasting misery. See ORIGINAL SIN. For the effect of the
fall of Adam upon his posterity, see JUSTIFICATION.
FASTING has been practised in all ages, and among all nations, in times
of mourning, sorrow, and affliction. We see no example of fasting,
properly so called, before Moses. Since the time of Moses, examples of
fasting have been very common among the Jews. Joshua and the elders of
Israel remained prostrate before the ark from morning till evening,
without eating, after Israel was defeated at Ai, Joshua vii, 6. The
eleven tribes which fought against that of Benjamin, fell down on their
faces before the ark, and so continued till evening without eating,
Judges xx, 26. David fasted while the first child he had by Bathsheba
was sick, 2 Sam. xii, 16. The Heathens sometimes fasted: the king of
Nineveh, terrified by Jonah’s preaching, ordered that not only men, but
also beasts, should continue without eating or drinking; should be
covered with sackcloth, and each after their manner should cry to the
Lord, Jonah iii, 5, 6. The Jews, in times of public calamity, appointed
extraordinary fasts, and made even the children at the breast fast, Joel
ii, 16. Moses fasted forty days upon Mount Horeb, Exod. xxiv, 18. Elijah
passed as many days without eating, 1 Kings xix, 8. Our Saviour fasted
forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, Matt. iv, 2. These fasts
were miraculous, and out of the common rules of nature.
2. Beside the solemn fast of expiation instituted by divine authority,
the Jews appointed certain days of humiliation, called the fasts of the
congregation. The calamities for which these were enjoined, were a
siege, pestilence, diseases, famine, &c. They were observed on the
second and fifth days of the week: they began at sunset, and continued
till midnight of the following day. On these days they wore sackcloth
next the skin, and rent their clothes; they sprinkled ashes on their
heads, and neither washed their hands, nor anointed their heads with
oil. The synagogues were filled with suppliants, whose prayers were long
and mournful, and their countenances dejected with all the marks of
sorrow and repentance.
3. As to the fasts observed by Christians, it does not appear by his own
practice, or by his commands to his disciples, that our Lord instituted
any particular fast. But when the Pharisees reproached him, that his
disciples did not fast so often as theirs, or as John the Baptist’s, he
replied, “Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast while the
bride-groom is with them? But the days will come when the bride-groom
shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days,”
Luke v, 34, 35. Fasting is also recommended by our Saviour in his sermon
on the mount; not as a stated, but as an occasional, duty of Christians,
for the purpose of humbling their minds under the afflicting hand of
God; and he requires that this duty be performed in sincerity, and not
for the sake of ostentation, Matt. vi, 16.
4. Although Christians, says Dr. Neander, did not by any means retire
from the business of life, yet they were accustomed to devote many
separate days entirely to examining their own hearts, and pouring them
out before God, while they dedicated their life anew to him with
uninterrupted prayers, in order that they might again return to their
ordinary occupations with a renovated spirit of zeal and seriousness,
and with renewed powers of sanctification. These days of holy devotion,
days of prayer and penitence, which individual Christians appointed for
themselves, according to their individual necessities, were often a kind
of fast-days. In order that their sensual feelings might less distract
and impede the occupation of their heart with its holy contemplations,
they were accustomed on these days to limit their corporeal wants more
than usual, or to fast entirely. In the consideration of this, we must
not overlook the peculiar nature of that hot climate in which
Christianity was first promulgated. That which was spared by their
abstinence on these days was applied to the support of the poorer
brethren.
article _Adam_, it may be necessary to establish the literal sense of
the account given of man’s fall in the book of Genesis. This account is,
that a garden having been planted by the Creator, for the use of man, he
was placed in it, “to dress it, and to keep it;”--that in this garden
two trees were specially distinguished, one as “the tree of life,” the
other as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;”--that from eating
of the latter Adam was restrained by positive interdict, and by the
penalty, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;”--that
the serpent, who was more subtle than any beast of the field, tempted
the woman to eat, by denying that death would be the consequence, and by
assuring her, that her eyes and her husband’s eyes “would be opened,”
and that they would “be as gods, knowing good and evil;”--that the woman
took of the fruit, gave of it to her husband, who also ate;--that for
this act of disobedience they were expelled from the garden, made
subject to death, and laid under other maledictions.
2. That this history should be the subject of much criticism, not only
by infidels, but by those who hold false and perverted views of the
Christian system, was to be expected. Taken in its natural and obvious
sense, along with the comments of the subsequent Scriptures, it teaches
the doctrines of the existence of an evil, tempting, invisible spirit,
going about seeking whom he may deceive and devour; of the introduction
of moral corruptness into human nature, which has been transmitted to
all men; and is connected also with the doctrine of a vicarious
atonement for sin; and wherever the fundamental truths of the Christian
system are denied, attempts will be made so to interpret this part of
the Mosaic history as to obscure the testimony which it gives to them,
either explicitly, or by just induction. Interpreters have adopted
various and often strange theories; but those whose opinions it seems
necessary to notice may be divided into such as deny the literal sense
of the relation entirely; such as take the account to be in part literal
and in part allegorical; and those who, while they contend earnestly for
the literal interpretation of every part of the history, consider some
of the terms used, and some of the persons introduced, as conveying a
meaning more extensive than the letter, and as constituting several
symbols of spiritual things and of spiritual beings.
3. Those who have denied the literal sense entirely, and regarded the
whole relation as an instructive _mythos_, or fable, have, as might be
expected, when all restraint of authority was thus thrown off from the
imagination, themselves adopted very different theories. Thus we have
been taught, that this account was intended to teach the evil of
yielding to the violence of appetite and to its control over reason; or
the introduction of vice in conjunction with knowledge and the
artificial refinements of society; or the necessity of keeping the great
mass of mankind from acquiring too great a degree of knowledge, as being
hurtful to society; or to consider it as another version of the story of
the golden age, and its being succeeded by times more vicious and
miserable; or as designed, enigmatically, to account for the origin of
evil, or of mankind. This catalogue of opinions might be much enlarged:
some of them have been held by mere visionaries; others by men of
learning, especially by several of the semi-infidel theologians and
Biblical critics of Germany; nor has our own country been exempt from
this class of bold expositors. How to fix upon the moral of “the fable”
is, however, the difficulty; and the great variety of opinion is a
sufficient refutation of the general notion assumed by the whole class,
since scarcely can two of them be found who adopt the same views, after
they have discarded the literal acceptation.
4. But that the account of Moses is to be taken as a matter of real
history, and according to its literal import, is established by two
considerations, against which, as being facts, nothing can successfully
be urged. The first is, that the account of the fall of the first pair
is a part of a continuous history. The creation of the world, of man, of
woman; the planting of the garden of Eden, and the placing of man there;
the duties and prohibitions laid upon him; his disobedience; his
expulsion from the garden; the subsequent birth of his children, their
lives, and actions, and those of their posterity, down to the flood;
and, from that event, to the life of Abraham, are given in the same
plain and unadorned narrative; brief, but yet simple; and with no
intimation at all, either from the elevation of the style or otherwise,
that a fable or allegory is in any part introduced. As this, then, is
the case, and the evidence of it lies upon the very face of the history,
it is clear, that if the account of the fall be excerpted from the whole
narrative as allegorical, any subsequent part, from Abel to Noah, from
Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, may be excerpted for the same
reason, which reason is merely this, that it does not agree with the
theological opinions of the interpreter; and thus the whole of the
Pentateuch may be rejected history, and converted into fable. Either
then the account of the fall must be taken as history, or the historical
character of the whole five books of Moses must be unsettled; and if
none but infidels will go to the latter consequence, then no one who
admits the Pentateuch to be a true history generally, can consistently
refuse to admit the story of the fall of the first pair to be a
narrative of real events, because it is written in the same style, and
presents the same character of a continuous record of events. So
conclusive has this argument been felt, that the anti-literal
interpreters have endeavoured to evade it, by asserting that the part of
the history of Moses in question bears marks of being a separate
fragment, more ancient than the Pentateuch itself, and transcribed into
it by Moses, the author and compiler of the whole. This point is
examined and satisfactorily refuted in Holden’s learned and excellent
work, entitled, “Dissertation on the Fall of Man;” but it is easy to
show, that it would amount to nothing, if granted, in the mind of any
who is satisfied on the previous question of the inspiration of the Holy
Scriptures. For let it be admitted that Moses, in writing the
pentateuchal history, availed himself of the traditions of the
patriarchal ages, a supposition not in the least inconsistent with his
inspiration or with the absolute truth of his history, since the
traditions so introduced have been authenticated by the Holy Spirit; or
let it be supposed, which is wholly gratuitous, that he made use of
previously existing documents; and that some differences of style in his
books may be traced which serve to point out his quotations, which is a
position that some of the best Hebraists have denied; yet two things are
to be noted: first, that the inspired character of the books of Moses is
authenticated by our Lord and his Apostles, so that they must
necessarily be wholly true, and free from real contradictions; and,
secondly, that to make it any thing to their purpose who contend that
the account of the fall is an older document, introduced by Moses, it
ought to be shown that it is not written as truly in the narrative
style, even if it could be proved to be, in some respects, a different
style, as that which precedes and follows it. Now the very literal
character of our translation will enable even the unlearned reader to
discover this. Whether it be an embodied tradition, or the insertion of
a more ancient document, (though there is no foundation at all for the
latter supposition,) it is obviously a narrative, and a _narrative_ as
simple as any which precedes or follows it.
5. The other indisputable fact to which I just now adverted, as
establishing the literal sense of the history, is that, as such, it is
referred to and reasoned upon in various parts of Scripture: “Knowest
thou not this of old, since man (Adam) was placed upon earth, that the
triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for
a moment?” Job xx, 4, 5. There is no reason to doubt but that this
passage refers to the fall and the first sin of man. The date agrees;
for the knowledge here taught is said to arise from facts as old as the
first placing of man upon earth, and the sudden punishment of the
iniquity corresponds to the Mosaic account: “The triumphing of the
wicked is short, his joy but for a moment.” “If I covered my
transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom,” Job xxxi,
33. Magee renders the verse,
“Did I cover, like Adam, my transgression,
By hiding in a lurking place mine iniquity?”
and adds, “I agree with Peters, that this contains a reference to the
history of the first man, and his endeavours to hide himself after his
transgression.” Our margin reads, “after the manner of men;” and also
the old versions; but the Chaldee paraphrase agrees with our
translation, which is also satisfactorily defended by numerous critics.
“What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman,
that he should be righteous?” Job xv, 14. Why not clean? Did God make
woman or man unclean at the beginning? If he did, the expostulation
would have been more apposite, and much stronger, had the true cause
been assigned, and Job had said, “How canst thou expect cleanness in
man, whom thou _createdst_ unclean?” But, as the case now stands, the
expostulation has a plain reference to the introduction of vanity and
corruption by the sin of the woman, and is an evidence that this ancient
writer was sensible of the evil consequences of the fall upon the whole
race of man. “Eden” and “the garden of the Lord” are also frequently
referred to in the prophets. We have the “tree of life” mentioned
several times in the Proverbs and in the Revelation. “God,” says
Solomon, “made man upright.” The enemies of Christ and his church are
spoken of, both in the Old and New Testaments, under the names of “the
serpent,” and “the dragon;” and the habit of the serpent to lick the
dust is also referred to by Isaiah.
6. If the history of the fall, as recorded by Moses, were an allegory,
or any thing but a literal history, several of the above allusions would
have no meaning; but the matter is put beyond all possible doubt in the
New Testament, unless the same culpable liberties be taken with the
interpretation of the words of our Lord and of St. Paul as with those of
the Jewish lawgiver. Our Lord says, “Have ye not read, that he which
made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said, For
this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his
wife; and they twain shall be one flesh?” Matt. xix, 4, 5. This is an
argument on the subject of divorces, and its foundation rests upon two
of the facts recorded by Moses: (1.) That God made at first but two
human beings, from whom all the rest have sprung. (2.) That the intimacy
and indissolubility of the marriage relation rests upon the formation of
the woman from the man; for our Lord quotes the words in Genesis, where
the obligation of man to cleave to his wife is immediately connected
with that circumstance: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken
out of man. _Therefore_ shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” This is
sufficiently in proof that both our Lord and the Pharisees considered
this early part of the history of Moses as a narrative; for, otherwise,
it would neither have been a reason, on his part, for the doctrine which
he was inculcating, nor have had any force of conviction as to them. “In
Adam,” says the Apostle Paul, “all die;” “by one man sin entered into
the world.” “But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve
through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.” In the last passage, the instrument of
the temptation is said to be a serpent, ὄφις, which is a sufficient
answer to those who would make it any other animal; and Eve is
represented as being first seduced, according to the account in Genesis.
This St. Paul repeats in 1 Tim. ii, 13, 14: “Adam was first formed, then
Eve. And Adam was not deceived,” first or immediately, “but the woman
being deceived was in the transgression.” And he offers this as the
reason of an injunction, “Let the woman learn in silence with all
subjection.” When, therefore, it is considered, that these passages are
introduced, not for rhetorical illustration, or in the way of classical
quotation, but are made the basis of grave and important reasonings,
which embody some of the most important doctrines of the Christian
revelation, and of important social duties and points of Christian order
and decorum; it would be to charge the writers of the New Testament with
the grossest absurdity, nay, with even culpable and unworthy trifling,
to suppose them to argue from the history of the fall as a narrative,
when they knew it to be an allegory. And if we are, therefore, compelled
to allow that it was understood as a real history by our Lord and his
inspired Apostles, those speculations of modern critics, which convert
it into a parable, stand branded with their true character of infidel
and semi-infidel temerity.
7. The effect of the sin or lapse of Adam was to bring him under the
wrath of God; to render him liable to pain, disease, and death; to
deprive him of primeval holiness; to separate him from communion with
God and that spiritual life which was before imparted by God, and on
which his holiness alone depended, from the loss of which a total moral
disorder and depravation of his soul resulted; and finally to render him
liable to everlasting misery. See ORIGINAL SIN. For the effect of the
fall of Adam upon his posterity, see JUSTIFICATION.
FASTING has been practised in all ages, and among all nations, in times
of mourning, sorrow, and affliction. We see no example of fasting,
properly so called, before Moses. Since the time of Moses, examples of
fasting have been very common among the Jews. Joshua and the elders of
Israel remained prostrate before the ark from morning till evening,
without eating, after Israel was defeated at Ai, Joshua vii, 6. The
eleven tribes which fought against that of Benjamin, fell down on their
faces before the ark, and so continued till evening without eating,
Judges xx, 26. David fasted while the first child he had by Bathsheba
was sick, 2 Sam. xii, 16. The Heathens sometimes fasted: the king of
Nineveh, terrified by Jonah’s preaching, ordered that not only men, but
also beasts, should continue without eating or drinking; should be
covered with sackcloth, and each after their manner should cry to the
Lord, Jonah iii, 5, 6. The Jews, in times of public calamity, appointed
extraordinary fasts, and made even the children at the breast fast, Joel
ii, 16. Moses fasted forty days upon Mount Horeb, Exod. xxiv, 18. Elijah
passed as many days without eating, 1 Kings xix, 8. Our Saviour fasted
forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, Matt. iv, 2. These fasts
were miraculous, and out of the common rules of nature.
2. Beside the solemn fast of expiation instituted by divine authority,
the Jews appointed certain days of humiliation, called the fasts of the
congregation. The calamities for which these were enjoined, were a
siege, pestilence, diseases, famine, &c. They were observed on the
second and fifth days of the week: they began at sunset, and continued
till midnight of the following day. On these days they wore sackcloth
next the skin, and rent their clothes; they sprinkled ashes on their
heads, and neither washed their hands, nor anointed their heads with
oil. The synagogues were filled with suppliants, whose prayers were long
and mournful, and their countenances dejected with all the marks of
sorrow and repentance.
3. As to the fasts observed by Christians, it does not appear by his own
practice, or by his commands to his disciples, that our Lord instituted
any particular fast. But when the Pharisees reproached him, that his
disciples did not fast so often as theirs, or as John the Baptist’s, he
replied, “Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast while the
bride-groom is with them? But the days will come when the bride-groom
shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days,”
Luke v, 34, 35. Fasting is also recommended by our Saviour in his sermon
on the mount; not as a stated, but as an occasional, duty of Christians,
for the purpose of humbling their minds under the afflicting hand of
God; and he requires that this duty be performed in sincerity, and not
for the sake of ostentation, Matt. vi, 16.
4. Although Christians, says Dr. Neander, did not by any means retire
from the business of life, yet they were accustomed to devote many
separate days entirely to examining their own hearts, and pouring them
out before God, while they dedicated their life anew to him with
uninterrupted prayers, in order that they might again return to their
ordinary occupations with a renovated spirit of zeal and seriousness,
and with renewed powers of sanctification. These days of holy devotion,
days of prayer and penitence, which individual Christians appointed for
themselves, according to their individual necessities, were often a kind
of fast-days. In order that their sensual feelings might less distract
and impede the occupation of their heart with its holy contemplations,
they were accustomed on these days to limit their corporeal wants more
than usual, or to fast entirely. In the consideration of this, we must
not overlook the peculiar nature of that hot climate in which
Christianity was first promulgated. That which was spared by their
abstinence on these days was applied to the support of the poorer
brethren.