THE Author having confidered in this, and the two former volumes, a variety of religious topics, concludes the whole with a short comprehensive sketch of Christianity in one view. He confiders, I. The connection between the fall of man, and the revelation of the gofpel. II'. The preparation neceffary for the reception of the gospel. The truth of Scripture.. III1Y. IVY The proof of our Saviour's miffion from miracles and prophecy. Recapitulation of the whole. The last fermon, No. XXV. is fo clofely connected with the fubject of the foregoing twelve fermons, that the author prints it as a concluding difcourfe. I. SERMON XIII. I COR. XV. 22. FOR AS IN ADAM ALL DIE, EVEN SO IN CHRIST WHEN we look round the world, we cannot but discover in it many marks of imperfection. The earth produces corn and fruits with labour: but it teams of its own accord with weeds and noxious herbs.-The air is the feat of storms and blafting winds; and the ocean often overflows its bounds. In the brute creation we find the fame marks of imperfection. The whole state of animal life is a state of rapine and bloodshed. One half of it preys upon the other. Nor have we fewer marks of imperfection when we examine mankind, furnished, as we are, with reason. reafon. We all know enough, to be affured, we have within us a conftant inclination to evil, to which our appetites and paffions are continually tending. Now, on confidering all this imperfection, it appears probable at fight, that the earth and its inhabitants are in fome fallen state. The great queftion therefore is, How things came into this ftate? Whence is it, that God's creation here, so fair in many respects, should in others be fo deformed? Did God create evil? Did he make a bad world, and stock it with bad inhabitants, for no other purpose but to make them miferable? Alas! these questions have puzzled the wisdom of all mankind. The ancient heathen plainly faw the difficulty, and endeavoured to folve it; but in no way that was fatisfactory to himself. He faw how inconfiftent it was with the goodness of God to create evil: but it was not in the power of human reason to explain the mystery. Thanks be to revelation, we are better taught. A book is put into our hands-the word of Godwhich explains these things. Here we find, this world was not originally formed in the state in which we now fee it-it was formed originally in a state of perfection-it produced its fruits without labour and man was created in a state of innocence and happiness. Unconscious of guilt, he met his Creator with affurance face to face. The facred story proceeds to inform us of that fatal act of difobedience which the first man committed. It matters not in what his trial confifted. The act of difobedience was the offence. Some have treated the Mofaic account of the fall with disrespect. But let us be fatisfied with it, till we get a better-till we get one more confiftent with the moral and natural state of what we observe at present in the world *.-As to the agency of the devil, we are utterly ignorant of the power of evil fpirits-we are ignorant how far they were permitted then, or how far they are permitted even now, to tempt mankind. And as to the prohibition of the fruit of a tree, which some call trifling, who dare affirm, that a more proper one could have been fuited to *It seems no improbable conjecture, in answer to those, who object to the short period of a paradifaical state, that God might chufe to open the new world, meant to be a state of trial, with a melancholy event, which, like a table of contents to a book, might shew the fatal effects of disobedience. As to Adam, no doubt, his will was free, but God made use of bis difobedience, as he does of ours, 40 bring about his own wife purposes. the |