Religion & morality > Human nature in its fourfold state

34 Dcflrim of the Stste I.
■devouring m^uth, but the vile body, Philip hi. 21.
and thole who have tinned, Job xxiv iq And God’s
fpecial care of his innocent creature, fecured him againft
cu ward violence. The apoftle’s teftimony is exprefs,
Kom. v. i 2 By one man Jin entered into the world, and
death by Jin. Behold the coor by which death came
in ! Satan wrought with his lies till he got it opened,
and fo death entered ; and therefore is he faid to have I
been a murderer from the beginning, John vhi, 44.
Thus have I fhown you the holintfs and happinefs of
man in this Rate. If any fay, What’s all this to us, who j
never taRed of that holy and happy Rate ? They mutt
know it nearly concerns us, in fo far as Adam was the
root of all mankind, our common head and reprefenta-
tive ■, who received from God our inheritance and Rock,
to keep it for himfelf and his children and convey it to
them. The Lord put all mankind’s Rock (as it were)
in one fhip ; and, as we ourfelves fhould have done, he
made our common father the pilot He put a bleding j
in the root, to have been, if rightly managed, duFufc-d s
into all the brandies. According to our text, making
Adam upright, he made man upright ; and all mankind «
had that uprightnefs in him ; for, If the root be holy,
Jo are the blanches. But more of this afterwards. \
Had Adam Rood, none would have quarrelled the
reprefentatior’.
Use I. For information. This fhews us, (1.) That
not Go 1, but man himfelf was the caufe of his ruin, j
God made him upright; his Creator fet him up, but
•he threw himfelf down Was the Lord’s dire&ing
and inclining him to good, the reafon of his woful.
choice ? Or did heaven deal fo fparingly with him,
that-his preffing wants fent him to hell to feek fupply ?
Nay, man was and is the caufe of his own ruin. (2.)
God may moR juitly require of men perfed: obedience 1
to his law, and condemn them for their not obeying it.
perfediy, though now they have no ability to keep it.
In fo doing, he gathers but where he has Rrawed. He
gave man ability to keep the whole law ; man has loft
it by his own fault ; but his fin could never take away
that