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At length it pleafed God, in his infinite mercy, to fend into this loft and ruined world, his Son Jefus Chrift, as he had foretold he would do,, even at the very time of the fall of Adam; for when that curfe, which has been already spoken of, was denounced, God, who, in the midft of judgment, remembers mercy, was pleased to declare, that "the feed of the woman should bruise the ferpent's head;" a promife which implied, that one fprung from the woman should come to deftroy the power of the ferpent, or evil fpirit, and to triumph over him.

The Jews had become fo wicked, at the time of Chrift, that, inftead of welcoming him as their Saviour,, they even put him to death. Having thus filled up the measure of their iniquities, their city was taken, and trodden down of the Gentiles, their people were led captive, or destroyed, and they have become a by-word and a proverb among the nations unto this day, as had been foretold.

But have then the other nations of the world, been better than the Jews? No, the heathens around them were fo wicked and abominable, that the Jews were ordered to cut them off. And even fince the publifhing of Chriftianity in the world, how has wickednefs prevailed! Read whatever history you will, you will read an account of little elfe than the vices and follies of our race. What a wicked world is it that we live in at this hour! How different from that peaceful, happy paradife, which was just now

defcribed! Well may it be faid, that "the thorn and the thistle have grown up in it." Every where, alas! we fee proofs of the fall 1; for what are all the prefent wars among nations, together with the bloody revolutions which take place in ftates; what are all the conflicts for power among the great, and all the complaining. and repining among perfons of low degree; what are the feuds and quarrels in private families; what the malice and evil speaking, the fraud and lying, the impurity and the drunkenness, the irreligion and profanenefs, as well as the corrup tion even to Chriftianity itself-what are all thefe but fo many confequences of the fall of Adam, and so many proofs of that corrupt nature. has defcended to all his children.

And as the world has become finful, no wonder that it has become miferable alfo. It is diftreffed, at this day, with fo many evils, becaufe it has fo much that is offenfive to God in it. It is one part of his appointment, that men's own evil paffions fhall be a plague both to themselves and to each other. Death alfo has been fent into the world; for ever fince the days of Adam, that fentence has been executing, "Duft thou art, and unto duft fhalt thou return." And what forrows and diseases have been brought in together with death! What pangs of the dying, what affliction for the furviving friends! And above all, what terrors of confcience, and what a melancholly foreboding of a day of future judg ment afflict our guilty race!

The story we have now told of the fall of man, and of the corruption which has followed from it, ftands in the first pages of our Bible; it leads the way to all Christian truth, and without it all our other religious knowledge will be of little ufe. But how fhall we ever learn the neceffity of any change in our character and condition, unless we first know, that the natural state in which we find ourselves, as children of Adam, is altogether fallen and corrupt. "They that are whole," fays our Saviour, "need not a phyfician; but they that are fick."-" I came not to call the righteous, (that is them that think themfelves righteous,) but finners to repentance." We must know that we are finners, or we fhall never repent and receive the gofpel; just as a man must know that he is fick, or he will never go to the physician for his cure. "We must be born again;"-we have "an old man" within us, which must be put off; and we must put on that "new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holinefs."

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I know that many are not aware, that there is this natural corruption in them; but the reafon of it is, that they have not examined carefully the fcriptures, nor obferved fufficiently the evil that is in the world, whofe fashions, probably, they follow, nor looked strictly into their own hearts. Such perfons, in short, have no juft difcernment of right and wrong, and are far from judging every thing to be evil which God judges to be fo. I fay, therefore, let these people ftudy the

fcriptures. Other books varnish over the fins. of men, and flatter the world that it is better than it is; for the writers of them partake in the common blindness and corruption: But the fcriptures, which are the word of God, and which were written by men who were moved by the Holy Ghost alone, speak the truth. The fcriptures give the true picture.-They relate the hiftory of the world, and the hiftory they give, is little elfe than the hiftory of that controverfy, which God has had with man ever fince the fall of our first parent. Nay, the Bible, even in defcribing the best of men, defcribes them as acknowledging their own natural corruption, and as faying, with one voice, that they were "born in fin, and fhapen in iniquity," and that they "were by nature children of wrath, even as others."

But above all, let thofe, who are not aware of the corruption of their own nature, ftudy the law of God. Let them examine themselves by each of the ten commandments, explained as our Saviour has taught us to explain them, and as will be made to appear in fome of the following tracts. The ftudy of the law of God will not fail, unlefs we are wilfully blind, to teach us the fame leffon which the fall of Adam, and which the hiftory of the world, both ancient and modern, unite to teach us; I mean the finfulness of our prefent nature, and the neceffity which thence arifes for that redemption, which has been provided for us by Jefus Chrift our Lord. For

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let no one complain, that the doctrine of the fall is gloomy and uncomfortable; Chrift has taken away the gloom of it through the lively hopes, and through all the means of grace which he fets before us in his gospel; for Chrift is the fecond Adam. As Adam brought upon us the curfe, fo Chrift has come down to us with the bleffing; and "as in Adam all die, even fo in Chrift fhall all be made alive."-" The firft man was from the earth earthy, the fecond was the Lord from heaven;" and, therefore, if we are Chriftians, we may joyfully fay, that "as we have borne the image of the earthy, fo alfo fhall we bear the image of the heavenly."

In all our religious enquiries, let us, therefore, be fure that we take this knowledge of the fall for our foundation, and then we fhall proceed fafely, and build fecurely; whereas, they who fet out in religion with the vain notion of the natural goodness of their hearts, do but deceive themselves with a falfe philofophy, and indulge their own pleafing dreams in defiance both of fcripture and of experience.

NOAH'S FLOOD.

NOAH was an inftance of a righteous man living the midft of a very wicked generation. Though the world, which is now about fix thoufand years old, had been created only about

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