The sacred text, _God formed man_ of the dust of _the ground, and breathed into him the breath of life_, is a short and full declaration of a most important truth, namely, that man was brought into being, _in a twofold nature_, having the nature of this outward world, and the nature of heaven; the former signified by his being formed of the dust of the ground, the _latter_, by the breath of God breathed into him. To be formed out of the dust of the ground, is the same thing, as if it had been said, that he was formed out of all the _riches_, _powers_, and _virtues_ that are in this whole visible world. For every property of nature is hidden in the earth. And man, so far as he was designed to be a creature of this outward world, is therefore said to be formed out of the earth, because the earth is not only the treasure-house of all that is in outward nature, but is the _mother_ of all the three other elements. And as all things of this world, whether animate or inanimate, are from the earth as their mother, so in the earth is there every power and blessing of life, to sustain every thing _that_ has its body from it; as appears by that fruitful power, which is continually giving forth itself in all kinds of vegetable food, _fitted_ to the wants of every living creature. * What therefore can it be called, but a most deplorable blindness in learned reason, to consider man as making his first entrance into paradise in no _better a state than that of dust and clay_, formed into a dead lumpish figure of a man, for this reason, because he was said to be formed out of the dust of the ground? Blindness indeed! when it is so evident, _that_ even now, after the curse is in the earth, yet every thing, even the poorest _weed_ that comes out of the dust of the ground, is in a much higher state, and enters into this world with a degree of life from its mother _the_ earth.――Had the Doctor never seen, or heard of any other things formed out of the earth, but such as our potters, and dealers in clay can make out of it, there might have been some sort of excuse for his _Adam_ of dead clay formed out of the earth. But when every day of his life has shewn him that almost infinite variety, powers, virtues and wonders in the kingdom of vegetables, all coming out of the earth, and nourished by it; when the scripture has told him _that_ the beasts and cattle of all kinds were formed out of the earth, and their flesh and blood from it, and their daily sustenance from its fruitful womb: it is strange to a degree of astonishment, that he should hold, _that_ out of this _rich_ earth, when in its paradisical state, when man, the glory of the creation, was formed out of it, and God the former, nothing would come forth, but a dead lump of clay in the figure of a man.