blessedness. By all which it is apparent how reasonable the conditions of the original agreement between God and man are.

2. God bath a power over our wills superior to that we our. selves have. If God offers a covenant to the creature, the terms being equal, it becomes a law, and consent is due as an act of obedience. And if a community may appoint one of their num. ber to be their representative, to transact affairs of the greatest moment, and according to his management, the benefit, or damage, shall accrue to them, because he is reckoned to perform the wills of them all; may not God, who hath a supreme dominion over us, constitute Adam the representative of mankind (Vid. Ward de peccat. Origin) and unite the consent of all in bis general will, so that as he fulfilled or neglected his duty, they should be happy or miserable? This consideration alone, that the first covenant was ordered by God, may perfectly satisfy all inquiries. As Salvian having confessed his ignorance in the reason of some dispositions of providence, silences all objections with this ; Nihil in hac re opus est aliquid audire, satis sit pro universis rationibus author Deus. (Salv, lib. 3. de Prov.) Neither is this a mere extrinsic argument, as authority usually is, because there is an intrinsic reason of this authority, the absolute rectitude and justice of God's nature," who is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works." Psal. 145. 17.

CHAP. IV.

The impossibility of man's recovery by his natural power. He cannot re

gain his primitive holiness. The understanding and will the superior fa. culties are depraved. The mind is ignorant and insensible of our corruption. The will is more depraved than the mind. It embraces only sensual good. Carnal objects are wounding to the conscience, and unsatisfying to the affections, yet the will eagerly pursues them. The moral impotence, that ariseth from a perverse disposition of the will, is culpable. Neither the beauty nor the reward of holiness can prevail upon the unrenewed will. Guilty man cannot recover the favour of God. He is unable to make satisfaction to justice. He is incapable of real repentance, which might qualify him for pardon.

а

WHEN Adam was expelled from paradise, the entrance was guarded by a flaming sword; to signify, that all hopes of return by the way of nature, are cut off for ever. He lost his right, and could not recover it by power. The chiefest ornaments of paradise are the image and favour of God, of which he is justly deprived: and there is no possibility for him to regain them. What can he expect from his own reason, that betrayed him to ruin? If it did not support him when he stood, how can it raise him when he is fallen? If there were a power in lapsed man to restore himself, it would exceed the original power he had to will and obey: it being infinitely more difficult for a dead man to rise, than for a living man to put forth vital actions.

For the clearer opening of this point, concerning man's absolute disability to recover his primitive state, I will distinctly consider it, with respect to the image and favour of God, upon which his blessedness depends.

1. He cannot recover his primitive holiness. This will appear by considering, that whatsoever is corrupted in its noble parts, can never restore itself; the power of an external agent is requisite for the recovering of its integrity. This is verified by innumerable instances, in things artificial and natural. If a clock be disordered by a fall, the workman must mend it, before it can be useful. If wine that is rich and generous, declines by the loss of spirits, it can never be revived without a new supply. In the

a

human body, where there is a more noble form, and more powerful to redress any evil that may happen to the parts; if a gangrene

seize on any member, nothing can resist its course but the application of outward means; it cannot be cured by the internal principles of its constitution. And proportionably in moral agents, when the faculties which are the principles of action are corrupted, it is impossible, without the virtue of a divine cause, they should ever be restored to their original rectitude. As the image of God was at first imprinted on the human nature by creation, (Ephes. 4. 24.) so the renewed image is wrought in him by the same creating power. This will be more evident, by considering, that inward and deep depravation of the understanding and will, the two superior faculties which command the rest.

1. The understanding hath lost the right apprehension of things. As sin began in the darkness of the mind, so one of its worst effects is, the increasing that darkness which can only be dispelled by a supernatural light. Now what the eye is to the body, that is the mind for the directing the will, and conducting the life. “ And if the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness.” Mat. 6. 23. How irregular and dangerous must our motions be? Not only the lower part of the soul is under a dreadful disorder; but the spirit of the mind," the divinest part, is depraved with ignorance and error. Ephes. 4. 23. The light of reason is not pure; but as the sun, when with its beams, it sends down pestilential influences, and corrupts the air in the enlightening it, so the carnal mind corrupts the whole man, by representing good as evil, and evil as good. The “wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God.” And the apostle describes the state of the Gentile world, Ephes. 4. 11. “That their understandings were darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts.” The corruption of their manners proceeded from their minds. For all virtues .are directed by reason in their exercise, so that if the understanding be darkened, all virtuous operations cease.

Besides, corrupt man being without light and life, can neither discern, nor feel his misery; the carnal mind is insensible of its infirmity, ignorant of its ignorance, and suffers under the incurable extremes of being blind, and imagining that it is very clear-,

66

sighted. More particularly, the reasons why the carnal mind hath not a due sense of sinful corruption, are,

1. Because it is natural, and cleaves to the principles of our being, from the birth and conception, and natural things do not affect us.

2. It is confirmed by custom, which is a second nature, and hath a strange power to stupify conscience, and render it insensible. As the historian observed concerning the Roman soldiers, that by constant use their arms were no more a burthen to them than their natural members. 3. In the transition from the infant state, to the age

of discerning, mạn is incapable of observing his native corruption: since at first he acts evilly, and is in constant conversation with sinners, who bring vice into his acquaintance; and, by making it familiar, lessen the horror and aversion from it. Besides, those corrupt and numerous examples wherewith he is encompassed, call forth his sinful inclinations, which, as they are heightened by repeated acts, and become more strong and obstinate, so less sensible to him. And by this we may understand, how irrcoverable man is by his own reason. The first step to our cure is begun in the knowledge of our disease, and this discovery is made by the understanding, when it is seeing and vigilant, not when it is blind. A disease in the body is perceived by the mind; but when the soul is the affected part, and the rectitude of reason is lost, there is no remaining principle to give notice of it. And as that disease is most dangerous which strikes at the life, and is without pain, for pain is not the chief evil, but supposes it, it is the spur of nature urging us to seek for curę: so the corruption of the understanding is very fatal to man; for although he labours under many pernicious lusts, which, in the issue, will prove deadly, yet he is insensible of them, and from thence follows a carelessness and contempt of the means for his recovery.

2. The corruption of the will is more incurable than that of the mind. For it is full not only of impotence, but contrariety to what is spiritually good. There are some weak strictures of truth in lapsed man, but they die in the brain, and are powerless and ineffectual as to the will, which rushes into the embraces of worldly objects. This the universal experience of mankind, since the fall, doth evidently prove, and the account of it is in the following considerations.

1. There is a strong inclination in man to happiness. This desire is born and brought up with him, and is common to all that partake of the reasonable nature. From the prince to the poorest wretch; from the most knowing to the meanest in understanding, every one desires to be happy: as the great flames and the little sparks of fire, all naturally ascend to their sphere.

2. The constituting of any thing to be our happiness, is the first and universal maxim, from whence all moral consequences are derived. It is the rule of our desires, and the end of our actions. As in natural things, the principles of their production operate according to their quality, so in moral things, the end is as powerful to form the soul for its operations in order to it. Therefore ás all desire to be happy, so they apply themselves to those means, which appear to be convenient for the obtaining of it.

3. Every one frames a happiness according to his temper. The apprehensions of it are answerable to the dispositions of the person. For felicity is the pleasure which arises from the harmonious agreement between the object and the appetite. * Now man by his original and contracted corruption is altogether carnal, he inherits the serpents curse to creep on the earth, he cleaves to defiling and debasing objects, and is only qualified for sensual satisfactions. The soul is incarnated, and it shapes a happiness to itself, in the enjoyment of those things which are delicious to the senses. The shadow of felicity is pursued with equal ardour, as that which is real and substantial. The supreme part of man, the understanding, is employed to serve the lower faculties, reason is used to make him more ingenious and luxurious in sensuality: so much more brutish than the brutes is he become, when besides that part which is so by its natural condition, the most noble part is made so by unnatural choice and corruption. From hence the apostle gives an universal character of men in their corrupt state,

Tit. 3. 3. “ That they are foolish and disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures." This pursuit of sensual pleasure is the service of a slave, which hath no other law of his life but the will of his master. vitude is divers, but all are slaves; the chains are not the same,

The ser

* Ο ποιο ποθ' έκαςG' εςι τοιοτο και το τελG φαινεται αυτώ. Arist, Lib, 3. Ethick.