The purpose of these phrases is to show the true advantages for obedience that Adam and Eve had and that both their internal disposition and external motivation were highly conducive to continued obedience. The sentence in chapter VI, paragraph 1, “Although God created man upright and perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honor” is all unique to this confession.

Several substantial ideas are added in the 2LC beyond the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter 6, paragraph 1, that indicate their manly independence in engaging this issue. It would, in fact, have been grievous to them not to have had the exalted purpose of their very being to love God supremely, pervasively, unreservedly, and unremittingly and to have a command commensurate with the worthiness of God and the desires of their heart. Their being “fit” for the life to God is expanded in defining their position as image-bearers consisting of “knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.” In addition to these several other positive encouragements tending toward obedience for the first man and woman, they had “the law of God written on their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and yet under the possibility of transgressing.” They were, therefore, not left only to the internal propensity of holiness, but were given a command to bring it to immutable perfection-“a command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” They were not, therefore, tabula rasa, but had positive moral qualities of holiness and the operation of conscience that perceived the worthiness and moral beauty of God and held it as their primary duty, joyfully embraced, to know, love, and enjoy the presence of God above all other of the many pleasures with which he had surrounded them. Their relation to the moral consequences of being image-bearers of the divine and under the necessity of perfect obedience to him and unstained love to him rendered their cessation of existence a moral impossibility, if not a natural impossibility. God created man, male and female with “reasonable and immortal souls rendering them fit unto that life to God.” Their immortality was not a native and intrinsic property but a derived property from the fact that they were moral beings whose actions and attitudes concerning God’s nature, prerogatives, and commands necessarily had eternal implications. After one paragraph concerning the creation by the triune God of the world an all in it in six days and all to his glory, that chapter completely is devoted to the great advantages enjoyed by the man and the woman in their original state.

How did Eve and Adam, uncorrupted in nature, sin? The Second London Confession takes care to recognize the singularity of this phenomenon.

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