makes us so like unto him, and daily affords him so great an advantage against us?

(5.) Consider the brutishness of this corruption. Sin hurries the soul on with a blind rage and fury to such acts and motions, as men in their right reason would highly condemn. It is on this account that men are compared to brute-beasts and irrational creatures; as to the horse and the mule, to a wild ass, an untamed heifer, &c. The brute-creatures, though they be not capable to know God, yet they will know and take some notice of their benefactor, and such as feed and keep them. But men kick against God, they wound Christ, and reject and expel the Holy Spirit in his motions and operations. They bellow out reproaches against his servants, whom he hath sent forth to feed and nourish their souls, Prov. xii. 1. The brutal creatures have a strong inclination to those things which tend to their health, and to the preservation and continuance of their life and strength: but sin makes men averse to their own happiness, and all the spiritual means which have a tendency thereunto. The beasts are afraid of that which is hurtful and destructive to their being: but sin pushes men on in the ways of death; and the paths which lead to eternal destruction. It is said, Job xi. 12. that 'man is born like a wild ass's colt. He brings with him into the world a heart more wild, fierce, and untamed than any beast of the field.

6. Consider its vileness. There is nothing in the whole creation so detestable as sin. It is the abominable thing which the Lord hates. He cannot look upon it but with infinite abhorrence. There is nothing so base and so contemptible as sin. The scripture sets it forth under various notions, no single one being sufficient to express its vileness. It is called flesh, Gen. vi. 3. and Gal. v. 16, 17. This holds forth the vile degeneracy of man's soul since this corruption seized upon it. By creation it was pure and holy, heavenly and spiritual, near a-kin to the angels, yea, as like to the nature of God as a creature could be: but now it is transformed into flesh, made carnal, sensual, and devilish. It is vile both formally and effectively; filthy in itself, and hath made the whole man so. It is compared in scripture to those things which are most vile and detestable in the eyes of men, as filthy vomit, defiling mire, rotten members, putrifying sores, &c.

(7.) It excludes and debars from access to God and communion with him. There can be no friendship between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial, between an infinitely pure and holy God, and vile filthy polluted sinners. We have an important question proposed, Psal. xxiv. 3. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? and who shall stand in his holy place? The answer is given, ver. 4. He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart: who hath not lift up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.' And we are told, Psal. v. 4, 5. Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.' The heart is the temple of God, the chief place of his residence in man; and he will never dwell in it, unless it be made clean. There is no access to God here or hereafter without holiness, James iv. 8. Rev. xxi. ult.

The

8. Lastly, It exposeth to terrible wrath. It was sin that brought the deluge upon the old world: and it hath brought many fearful plagues and judgments upon the new one since. And it is this that lays men open to the wrath and vengeance of God in the life that is to come. Hence they are called 'children of wrath,' Eph. ii. 3. They are born to wrath by nature. This is their portion and inheritance. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven (says the apostle) against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.' curses and threatenings of the law proclaim the divine displeasure, and give warnings and intimations to sinners of what they are to expect. There is a day of wrath coming, and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, when the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. We are exposed to wrath on account of sin, in our conception, birth, life, and death, and through all eternity.

In the above three things, the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of the whole nature, consists in original sin. These three things make up this monstrous body. There lies our sinfulness which we are brought into by the fall.

How this corruption is conveyed to all the children of men, the scripture, even the text, makes it plain, that it is conveyed by natural generation, so as all that proceed from Adam

in the way of natural generation are infected with it. But if it be asked, how this original corruption is propagated from parents to children? how it comes to pass that our souls are defiled and tainted with original sin? Indeed the question is very hard and difficult. It may be this is one of those mysteries which are reserved for the world to come, about which we cannot in our present state solve every difficulty that may be moved. It is much more our duty and interest to be solicitous how to get sin out of our souls, than to pry and search into the way how it came into them. However, this is certain, that God doth not infuse it. Souls receive neither purity nor impurity from him, but only their naked essence, and the natural powers and properties flowing therefrom. He doth not infuse any impurity into men; for he cannot be the author of sin, who is the revenger of it. Nor doth he create mens souls in their original purity and rectitude; for the sin of Adam lost that, and God's justice withholds it from his posterity. As a pure and holy God, he cannot infuse any impurity into the souls of men; and as a just and righteous God, he may and doth with-hold from, or create them void and destitute of, that holiness and righteousness which was once their happiness and glory. Again, it is probably thought by some, that original sin comes neither in by the soul alone, nor by the body alone, apart from the soul, but upon the union and conjunction of both in one person. It is the union of these two that constitutes a child of Adam, and as such only we are capable of being infected with his sin.

Solid divines, without a daring intrusion into unrevealed secrets, proceed by the following steps in answering this question,

And so the propension of nature to that which is bad, seems to be by way of concomitancy with the want of original righteousness. No action can be holy which doth not flow from the image of God in the soul, as its root and principle. And therefore man being despoiled of this image of God, there is no action of any man in a state of nature but what is sinful and corrupt. But, as I said before, it much more concerns us how to get original corruption removed, than to inquire how it came in.

This corruption may well be called original sin, because we have it from our original, it being as old as ourselves; and because it is transmitted from Adam, the origin of mankind; and, which is the

Last thing, because all actual transgressions proceed from it, Matt. xv. 19.; as I have already shewn.

I shall shut up this point with a few inferences.

1. No wonder then that we are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward; that we are attacked and made pri. soners as soon as we come into the world. This says that the straight way in the course of justice would be, that we go from the womb to the grave, and that the cradle be turned into a coffin. For, in a spiritual sense, we are all dead born; and no wonder that natural death should seize those that are spiritually dead; and that all sorts of miseries should pursue those that are destitute of every thing that is good.

2. There is no ground for parents to be lifted up on the account of children, however numerous and fair. For though they may have fair faces, they have foul and deformed souls by nature; and natural beauty is far outbalanced by spiritual ugliness. Parents had much need to carry them by faith and prayer to the fountain of Christ's blood, to get them washed and purified from their spiritual uncleanness.

3. This doctrine lets us see the absolute necessity of Christ as a Saviour, who alone is able to save us from the guilt of sin by his blood, and from the filth and pollution of it by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, and from the dominion of it by the power of divine grace. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." John iii. 3.

4. Lastly, See the absolute necessity of mortification, of crucifying the flesh; for from it all actual sins proceed. A form of godliness will not do: No; we must strike at the root, otherwise the branches will never die. The consideration of the total corruption and depravation of our nature should make us all lie low in the dust before a holy God, watchful against every motion and temptation to sin, restless till we be delivered from it, and indefatigable in the course of the Christian warfare. And it calls every one to mourning and lamenting over the ruins of our nature, and to supplicating the God of all grace, that he may cleanse our polluted souls, and wash us from our sins in the blood of Jésus.

OF THE MISERY OF MAN'S NATURAL STATE.

Ком. v. 12.-Ву one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

TH

HESE words teach us a lesson that all the books of philosophers could never do. They were sensible of the depravity and misery of human nature; but how it was depraved, and what was the spring of all the troubles the life of man is exposed to, they were utterly ignorant. We all see a flood of misery let into the world; but what way the sluice was opened, we can only learn from divine revelation. And in this passage we have it; viz. By one man sin entered into the world, and misery followed it close at the heels. This one man was Adam, the natural root, and the federal head of all mankind, ver. 14. In the words we have,

1. A flood of misery passing over the world, Death passed upon all men. For understanding this, ye must compare it with Gen. ii. 17. ' In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.' This awful threatening is marked to be accomplished here. Death there implies loss of communion with God, which was evident in the fulfilling of the threatening, Gen, iii. 24. when God drave out the man, viz. from paradise, and placed a heavenly guard to prevent man's access to the tree of life. It also implies a being under God's wrath and curse, as the threatening imports. This is spiritual death. It further implies temporal death, a liableness to the miseries of this life, and to death itself, Gen. iii. 16.19.; and also eternal death; which appears from man's be