This text therefore contains that glorious promise which revived Adam and Eve and raised them again from death unto that life, which they had lost by their sin; though the life to which they were thus raised again was rather a life hoped for than a life possessed; as Paul also frequently speaks when he uses the language, "We die daily." For although we do not wish to call the life which we live here death, yet it is in truth nothing more or less than a continual living on to death. For as he who is infected with a pestilential and fatal disease begins to die from the moment of his infection; so from the moment this life of ours is infected by sin, it can no longer properly be called life on account of that sin and death, its sure punishment. For we begin to die even from our mother's womb. But by baptism we are restored to the life of hope, or rather to the hope of life. For this is the true life, which we live, before God, in our renewed state. Before we come unto that life, we are in the midst of death. We are ever dying and rotting on the earth like other carcasses are; as if there were no life at all in us. But we who believe in Christ possess a hope that we shall be raised again at the last day unto the life eternal. It was in this manner also that Adam was raised again from his state of death by sin through this promise, thus spoken by the Lord. Not that he was raised to a perfect life; for he did not as yet regain that life which he had lost. But he conceived in his soul a hope of that perfect life, when he heard that the tyranny of Satan was thus to be bruised and destroyed. Under the divine mind and promise, declared in this text therefore, is included redemption from the law, from sin and from death. And by the same text is set forth the plain and certain hope of resurrection from the dead, and of being called into another life after the present. For if the "head" of the serpent is to be destroyed, most certainly death is to be destroyed also; and if death is to be destroyed, with equal certainty that which deserveth death, namely, sin, is also to be abolished. And if sin is to be abolished, so also is the law; and not only so, but that obedience which was lost is to be restored. And as all these things are promised through this Seed of the woman, it is perfectly manifest, as a natural consequence, that human nature since the fall can neither take away sin by any powers of its own nor escape death, the just punishment of sin, nor regain the obedience to God, which it has lost by the sin of the fall. For all these things require a greater power, a mightier strength than is possessed by man.