agree in fome Refemblance to their First Original; Facies non omnibus Una, Nec Diverfatamen; qualem decet effe Sororum; They all bear Likeness enough to each other, to prove themselves of the fame Family, and deriv'd from the fame Stock; Even that First Disobedience of Adam, (as all the Sins, that are descended from it) was Unprofitableness and Vanity in the Enjoyment, Shame and Confufion in the Confequence, and in the End Destruction and Death. For what Fruit gather'd our first Father from the forbidden Tree? what gain'd he by it? Knowledge of Good and Evil? he did indeed but of Good loft, and Evil got. What immediately follow'd? He faw himself naked, and was afham'd, and what was the End of all but Death? for in the Day that he eat thereof, He, and in Him all his Pofterity, did furely Dye. Yet tho' of fo pernicious and deadly a Nature, how foon did Sin overspread the Face of the Earth? With the Generations of Adam, which grew fo foon to be fo vaftly Numerous, it made an equal Progrefs; and as Man, the Work of God's hands, obey'd his Bleffed Command, Encrease and Multiply; So Sin, the Work of the Devil, feem'd to have had a Curfed Command from Him, and accordingly that too was Fruitfull and Multiply'd and Replenish'd the Earth. Whatever new

Cities were Built, wherever new Colonieswere sent forth, Murder and Rapin and Luxury and Luft and all other Wickedness followed and kept equal pace; and the whole History of the Beginning of Nations, and Rife of Monarchies, is nothing elfe but an Account of the new Territories and Conquests and enlarg'd Dominions of Sin. This then being the most Universal Contagion spread over all the World, as general an Antidote, as universal a Remedy ought to be fought out and apply'd to it. And my Text feems to be of this Nature; for it discovers the whole Progrefs of Sin, in its firft Commitment, its immediate Confequence, its laft End; it infinuates itfelf into all the different Sorts of Mankind: likely to be inveigled by it, by Motives fuitable to each one's natural Inclinations and Paffions; Thofe of a more fenfual or fordid Mind, whom Sin flatters either with Hopes of Profit or Pleasure, it teaches to confider, what Fruit is in it: To the more generous and noble Spirits, it uses the powerfull Argument of the Shame and difhonourable Nature of it and to those, with whom Fear has a greater Force, the more ftrong and univerfally prevailing Argument, Death: thus does our great Apoftle in these Words, as elsewhere he fays of himself, Become all things to all Men, that if poffible He may fave fome. There

after its Diffolution it should survive, Whether it was to be cloath'd with Air, or fome finer Body, and fly about the Earth at its Will, or retire to fome happy Fields, and pleasant Gardens; or inhabit fome Star, or whatever other Place or Office, the Fancies of the Poets, or Philofophers ever affign'd the Soul after Death, that was ftill altoge ther uncertain, and in the dark.

Nay, the Jews themfelves, the peculiar People of God, diftinguish'd from the reft of Mankind, by a more immediate Revelation, and a Law given 'em from Heaven, written by the Finger of God himself, feem to have had but a very imperfect and faint Apprehenfion of this future Life and Immortality, which our Saviour first brought to Light. Indeed fome few of the Beft and Wisest among 'em, had learn'd from Scripture, That the Soul of Man fhould ascend into the hands of God that gave it: But the generality were fo wholly taken up with the temporal Bleffings, and worldly Goods, that were the only Rewards, that their Law promis'd to the Performers of it, that they refted there, and had no further Profpact of a Bleffed Immortality. But then, as for a Life of the Body after Death, that That alfo could be rais'd, and fo glorify'd as to be Immortal that the scatter'd Particles of all that Duft, which for so many thousand Years has made

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up fo many Millions of Men, into what foever Shapes or Forms fince converted, whether in Earth, or Air, or Sea, or Fire', fhould be again united and compofe diftinctly and severally each the fame Body, which it did before, and from thenceforth become no longer fubject to Change, Corruption, or Mortality; This, I fay, was fuch a Myftery, as no wonder that it never fo much as enter'd into the most speculative Brain of all the Philofophers, nor so much as by any far diftant or doubtful beam difcover'd itself. No, this glorious Exaltation of our Nature was referv'd from all Ages by our Saviour, that He might declare it first Himself, and give both the first Experimental Proof and Example of it in Himself.

Being then thus rais'd above whatever Dignity our Nature was ever thought, or could be conceiv'd, capable of; thus freed from that anxious Torment of Mind, which for ever would have accompany'd the dark Notions which the World before had of a Future State, thus refcu'd from the Slavish Fears that debas'd our Spirits, afferted into Liberty from the Power of Death, a Way fhewnus to the fame Place whither our Saviour Chrift is gone before; can we do lefs in Gratitude to this Captain of our Salvation, than to ftrive to follow him, to rife with him, and feek thofe things that are above?

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above? Can we do lefs than endeavour, with the most intense Zeal and fervent Devotion, to entertain the Memory of this great Victory of our Lord's? Efpecially at and about the time of that great Festival inftituted for that Purpose, This chiefeft of all the Church's Festivals; This that St. Chryfoftom calls, copπle où gus pórov ämä j over, a Feftival celebrated not on Earth only, but in the Higheit Heavens. For, as that Holy Father goes on, if there be Joy in Heaven for the Converfion of one Sinner only, How much greater the Exultation, for the whole Race of Mankind being fnatch'd out of the Hands of Satan and Death? and what more proper or feasonable Meditation can we entertain, than to admire and adore the Glory and the Divine Might of our Saviour, triumphing in their own King. doms, over all the Baffled Powers of Death and Hell, breaking a funder it's strongest Bars, and, as the true Samfon, of whom the other was but a Type and Shadow, bearing away the very Gates of it, and opening from thence a Paffage for all Mankind to Life and Immortality. For tho' we dare not prefume, as fome of the Church of Rome have done, to give a punctual Journal of our Saviour's Infernal Expedition, nor follow him thro' all the gloomy Manfions of Hell, defcribing all its Territories

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