Religion & morality > Human nature in its fourfold state

ilerul I. ‘The Explication of the 7ext. 43
ed a v:ne)ard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken,
and he was nncovered withea his tent. More than that,
God j;,ives the f..tne reafon againft a new deluge, which
he gives in our text for bringing that on the world :
1 will not (faith lit) again curfe the ground any more
for man's Jake, for the imagination oj man’s heart is evil
from his youth, Gen. viii. 21. Whereby it is intimated,
that there is no mending of tire matter by this means;
and that if he would always take the fame courfe with
men that he had done, he woifld be always fend big de¬
luges on the earth, feeing the corruption of man’s nature
remains (till. But tho’ the flood could not carry off the
corruption of nature, yet it pointed at the way how it
is to be done, viz. That men muff be born.of water and
of the Spirit, raifed from fpiritual death in fur, by the
grace of Jefus Chrift, who came by water and blood ;
out of which a new world of faints arife in regeneration,
even as the new world of Tinners out of the waters,
where they had long lain buried (as it were') in the ark.-
This we learn from 1 Pet. iii. 20,21. where the r.pof-
t!e fpeaking of Noah’s ark, faith, Wherein few, that is,
eight jculs, were javed by water, The like figure where¬
'll n to, even baptijm doth aifo now (ave us Now the
waters of the deluge being a Lke figure to haptijmit
plainly follows, that they fignilied (as baptifm doth)
thesewajhing of regeneration, and renewing of the Hof
Chofi. To conclude then, thefc waters, tho’ now dried
up, may ferve us for a looking glafs, in which to fee
the total corruption of our nature, and.the uecefllty of
regeneration. From the text thus explained, arifetb this
weighty point of Doctrine, which lie that runs may
read in it, viz. Man's nature is now wholly corrupted.
Now is there a fad alteration, a wonderful overturn,
in the nature of man : where, at firil, there was nothing
evil, new there is nothing good, in profecuting of this
dodhine, 1 fliall,
Firfi, Confirm it.
Secondly, Reprefuit this corruption of nature in its
fevera! parts
D 2 Thirdly a