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fresh into their mind, and "they wept aloud.' (Ezra iii. 12.) And have not we greater cause of sorrow, when we review the spiritual temple of the most High laid desolate, and "swept with the besom of destruction ?" Yea, when we feel our own concern in it, and find by nature in our hearts so doleful a contrast to that original excellence, when man was "polished after the similitude of a palace.” (Psal. cxliv. 12.) Now alas! desolation sits on the threshold, and within darkness and ruin are spread abroad. The glory is departed from us ; God hath forsaken us. Guilt spreads its gloomy horrors over the soul; fear trembles at the consciousness of certain judgment; the voice of joy is fled, and sorrow utters her remediless cries. The fiends of darkness shed their baleful influence around, and Satan, now become the sovereign lord, opens wide the gate, to welcome in every unclean and hurtful beast. Pride, malice, rancour, revenge, unbridled appetite, and inordinate concupiscence, with all their train, take up their abode in what was once God's temple and death, dreadful monster! death before unknown! stalks with his iron mace along the ruined fabric, continu-ing to beat it wholly down, and lay it low even in the dust. "O! who shall restore our desolations, and build up again these waste places of many generations!" (Isa. lxi. 4.)

2. The pride of man refusing to submit to the declarations of God, hath been one chief cause of the continuance of this his miserable estate. The account which God hath given, men will not believe; puffed up by their fleshly mind, and vain in their own imaginations, they have presumed to reason against the divine truth instead of submitting to it; and will not allow any such effects to have flowed from one man's disobedience,

as those above described: much less that God's wrath and damnation justly lies against the millions of our nature yet unborn." (Article IX.) For as all the subsequent proceedings of God in the redemption of man, are so intimately connected with this first view; where this is misunderstood or perverted, there the need of the Son of God, the necessity of an atonement, the want of another representative, and all the procedures of divine grace, must be mistaken or denied. From hence have sprung the heresies of Pelagius, Arius, Socinus, and the Deists, Man's fall, as it is recorded in scripture, they will not receive, and, unacquainted with the depth of our misery, see, not the necessity of the greatness of our remedy,

3. We cannot but admire the wonderous grace. of God, that had compassion upon miserable man, and would not execute upon him the death. he had deserved; but with the declaration of his high displeasure opens to him yet a door of hope; in the promise of "the seed of the woman who, should bruise the serpent's head." (Gen. iii. 15.) God hath not left us, as he left the angels, that sinned to their place of torment; but hath raised, up a new salvation for us; hath appointed us another and safer Covenant-Head, the second Adam, by whom we may escape from the dreadful ruins of the transgression under the first cov

This seed shall break our bonds from off our neck: he shall deliver us from the power of Satan he shall "raise up our ruined tabernacle, which is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; he shall raise up its ruins, and build it as in the days of old." (Amos ix. 11.) The manner how he shall effect this, by his incarnation, death, intercession, and final redemption of us, shall hereafter be more fully opened. Yet here it becomes us to trace God's love in the first

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beam of Gospel-grace, (Gen. iii. 15.) that darted forth upon fallen Adam's soul, and inspired him (for nothing else could have done it) with sentiments of repentance towards a pardoning God. May we see in this first promise the rich grace of our Jehovah, and feel a deep sense of the divine compassions and mercies; and as we trace the growing discoveries of these towards man more fully manifested, may they have an increasing and more effectual influence on all our hearts, and engage us to return to Him, from whom we have so greatly departed.

SERMON II.

OF THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN NATURE.

ROMANS V. 18.

BY THE OFFENCE OF ONE, JUDGMENT CAME UPON ALL MEN TO CONDEMNATION.

THE

HE Apostle in these words affirms the universality of that guilt under which the whole human race lieth at present. He had in the beginning of the Epistle proved by scripture and experience, that "Jews and Gentiles were all concluded under sin ;" (Gal. iii. 22.) and consequently exposed to suffer the penalty annexed to every transgression of disobedience.

In this and the foregoing verses he traces up sin to its origin, and shews by what means it entered into the world, and maintains its dominion; namely, by the first man's fail, and the corruption of nature which thence ensued: which points he labours to fix upon their hearts, both as a ground of deep and abiding humiliation, in the view of their deplorable situation by nature and as containing the strongest motive to embrace and highly esteem that Gospel of the revelation of the grace of God, wherein "life and immortality were again brought to light;" (2 Tim. i. 10.). and a relief provided adequate to the necessity of fallen sinful man.

The knowledge of this our fallen state from scripture, and a clear conviction of its truth from experience, are still the chief means the Holy Ghost uses to bring men into the dust of abase

ment, to plead for the mercy held forth in Christ Jesus, "He convinceth us of sin, then of righteousness." (John xvi. 8.) Our disease must be felt before our remedy can be sought. "Jesus came to seek and save only that which was lost. (Luke xix. 10.) They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." (Matt. ix. 12.)

Yet here the many stumble. Through unacquaintedness with the truth of their real estate, they "think more highly of themselves than they ought to think;" (Rom. xii. 3.) either con ceiting that man is still by nature as upright as ever, or at least that such powers and abilities remain with him, that he is of himself capable of pleasing God by the right exercise of his own reason and exertion of his sincere endeavours: or, as some imagine, that though of himself he is insufficient, yet the holy Spirit helping his infirmities, he hath still some moral powers remaining, which if he will exert shall effectually procure his acceptance with God. All which high imaginations, whilst entertained, cannot but puff up the vanity of man, naturally proud, and lead him to depend either more or less on himself, instead of submitting in helpless selfdespair to him, "who is mighty to save;" whose office it is "to justify the ungodly," and with deliverance from the punishment, to save his people from the power of their sins."

For the undeceiving of such as these; for the information of such as desire to know the truth; for the confirmation of the faith of the sincere, and for the greater humiliation of all, I shall endeavour at this time to prove it a fact,

That man is fallen, wholly fallen from God. May the Spirit of God assist me with clearness of argument, and send conviction of the

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