praise of God’s glorious grace (Eph 1:6, 10, 12, 14; 2:7). My point in mentioning Adam in the above sentence is this: from the comparison which Paul draws between Adam and Christ in Romans 5:12–19 as representative heads of two covenant arrangements, it is necessary to postulate that had Adam successfully passed his probation, he would have been confirmed in holiness, moving from the state of being able to sin (posse peccare) to a state of not being able to sin (non posse peccare), and all his descendants