2. Positively. The sacraments become effectual means of salvation only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ, by whom they were instituted. As, _without Christ we can do nothing_, John xv. 5. so without his blessing we can receive nothing. Ordinances are only the channel through which grace is conveyed; but Christ is the author and finisher of faith; and this he does by his Spirit, when he brings the heart into a good frame, and excites suitable acts of faith and love in those who are engaged in those ordinances, and maintains the lively impressions thereof, which have a tendency to promote the work of grace in the whole conduct of their lives. III. We proceed to consider, what sacraments Christ has instituted under the New Testament-dispensation. It hath pleased God, in every age of the world, to instruct his people by sacramental signs, as an addition to those other ways, in which he communicates his mind and will to them. Even our first parents, in their state of innocency, had the tree of life; which was a sacrament or ordinance for their faith, that if they retained their integrity, and performed the conditions of the covenant which they were under, they might hereby be led into a farther conviction that they should certainly attain the blessings promised therein: And, some think, that the tree of knowledge, of good and evil, was another sacramental sign, whereby they were given to understand, that if they sinned, they should die. And paradise, in which they were placed, was a sacrament, or a kind of type of the heavenly state; inasmuch as there is an allusion to it in that promise, _to him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life, that is in the midst of the paradise of God_, Rev. ii. 7. and heaven is, in another place called paradise, Luke xxiii. 43. Others think the Sabbath was a sacramental sign to our first parents, of that eternal sabbatism which they should celebrate in a better world, in case they yielded perfect obedience as being the condition of the covenant they were under. However, I desire not to be too peremptory as to this matter; it is enough to my present purpose, to consider the tree of life as a sacrament; whereby it appears, that God instituted such signs from the beginning of the world: But this having been insisted on elsewhere[56], we pass it over, and proceed to consider,