S. 59.
'Before Abraham was, I am,' is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in
some sense if I say it of myself, for I was not only before myself,
but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod
held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before
the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I
dead before I was alive;—though my grave be England, my dying-place
was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain.
Compare this with s. 11, and the judicious remark there on the mere accommodation in the 'prae' of predestination. But the subject was too tempting for the rhetorician.