As I quietly and quickly turned past the copyright page, acting as if I hadn't seen it, I found another passage of The Second Adam & The New Birth (M.F. Sadler) to share. It relates to the significance of the reference "Second Adam" and is included in the chapter on infant inclusion in the Covenant.
One particular point of interest here is a view of "the kingdom of God" which I don't perceive as highly common in modern evangelicalism.
"What is this kingdom of God? ... It is a heavenly, spiritual state of things, instituted by our Saviour for the purpose of counteracting a carnal, sinful state of things, introduced into the world by the sin of the first Adam.
... a Second Adam was provided to be to us for life, righteousness, and salvation, what the first Adam had been for sin, death, and condemnation. The new state of things introduced by this Second Adam to counteract and destroy the power of sin and death is called "the kingdom of God"; and the Word made flesh, the Head of this spiritual kingdom, asserted the right of infants to a part in it when He said, "Of such is the kingdom of God."
... We cannot imagine that the laws of the kingdom of God's dear Son would, in the conveyance of its good things, be outdone by the laws of the kingdom of darkness, in the conveyance of its curse."
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