2. But although man was made in the image of God, yet he was not made immutable. This would have been inconsistent with that state of trial, in which God was pleased to place him. He was therefore created able to stand, and yet liable to fall. And this God himself apprized him of, and gave him a solemn warning against it. Nevertheless _man_ did _not abide in honour_: he fell from his high estate. He _ate of the tree whereof the_ Lord _had commanded him, Thou shalt not eat thereof_. By this wilful act of disobedience to his Creator, this flat rebellion against his Sovereign, he openly declared, that he would no longer have God to rule over him: that he would be governed by his own will, and not the will of him that created him, and that he would not seek his happiness in God, but in the world, in the works of his hands. Now God had told him before, _In the day that thou eatest_ of that fruit _thou shalt surely die_. And the word of the Lord cannot be broken. Accordingly in that day he did die: he died to God, the most dreadful of all deaths. He lost the life of God: he was separated from him, in union with whom his spiritual life consisted. The body dies, when it is separated from the soul; the soul, when it is separated from God. But this separation from God _Adam_ sustained in the day, the hour he ate of the forbidden fruit. And of this he gave immediate proof; presently shewing by his behaviour, that the love of God was extinguished in his soul, which was now _alienated from the life of_ God. Instead of this, he was now under the power of servile fear, so that he fled from the presence of the Lord. Yea, so little did he retain even of the knowledge of him, who filleth heaven and earth, that he endeavoured to [6]_hide himself from the_ Lord God, _among the trees of the garden_! So had he lost both the knowledge and the love of God, without which the image of God could not subsist. Of this therefore he was deprived at the same time, and became unholy as well as unhappy. In the room of this, he had sunk into pride and self-will, the very image of the devil, and into sensual appetites and desires, the image of the beasts that perish. 3. If it be said, “Nay but that threatning, _In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die_, refers to temporal death and that alone, to the death of the body only;” The answer is plain; to affirm this, is flatly and palpably to make God a liar: to aver, that the God of truth positively affirmed a thing contrary to truth. For it is evident, _Adam_ did not _die_ in this sense, _in the day that he ate thereof_. He lived in the sense opposite to this death, above nine hundred years after. So that this cannot possibly be understood of the death of the body, without impeaching the veracity of God. It must therefore be understood of spiritual death, the loss of the life and image of God.