Religion & morality > Human nature in its fourfold state

42 The Exp’icatio^i rf tb? Text. Stite IL
clay, Pi a!, j V. i, a, 3. Pfal.’V. 9. I’fal. cxl. pfa!. x. 7.
Plal. xxwi. 1. and from what Jeremiah faith of the
wicked in Jus day, Jer. ix. 3 and from what Ifaiah fays
of thofe that lived in his time, ifa. Ivii. 7, S. and con-
dudes with that, ver. 19. N:w ■•we know, tfcit vthat
things focvcr the !a'j> faith> it faith to them that arc un¬
der i/>£? law ; that every month ma^ he flopped, and ail the
world may become gui.ty before Cod. Had the Is i ft or y
of the dduge been t'ranfmitted unto us, without the rea-
fon thereof in the text, we might thence have gathered
the corruption and total depravation of man's nature r
for what other quarrel could a holy and juft God have
with the infants that were deftroyed by the flood, feeing
they had no actual fin r If we faw a wife man, who hav¬
ing made a curious piece of work, and heartily approved
of it when he gave it on: of his hand, as fit tor else ufe
it was defigned for, rife up in wrath and break it all in
pieces, when he looked on it afterwards : would we not
thence conclude the frame of it had been quite marred,
fin e made, and that it does not ftrve for that ule
it was defigned for? How much more, when we fee
the holy and wife God, deftroying the work of bis own
]sands,once folemifty pronounced by him very good, may
we conclude that the original frame thereof is utterly
marred, that it cannot be mended, but it muft needs be
new made, or loft altogether ? Gen. vi. 6, *v And it re- 'j
dented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and <
it grieved him at his heart : and the Lordfiid, I will de¬
fy o-; man, or blot him out ; as a man doth a fentence
out of a book, that cannot be corrected, by cutting off
fome letters, fyllables, or words, anddnteriiuing others
here and there ; but muft needs be wholly new framed.
But did the deluge carry off this corruption of man’s na¬
ture r Did it mend the matter ? No, it did not. God,
in his holy providence, That every mouth may he flopped,
and all the new world may become guilty before G d, as ']
well as the old, permits that corruption of nature to
bre..k out in Noah, the father of the new world, after
the deluge was over. Behold him as another Adam,
finning in the fruit of a tree, Gen ix, 20/21. He plant-