down, and power to take it up again. Thus he abolifhed and triumphed over death, deftroyed the works of the devil, fet life and immortality in the fairest light, and laid, for all his followers, a strong foundation of faith and hope of being made like him in his refurrection and glory.

He continued on earth a confiderable time after, but no longer than he judged it neceffary to confirm his difciples in the full affurance of his refurrection: he then afcended into heaven in their fight, entered into his glory, and foon after gave full proof of it by fuch an exertion of power and authority, as none but God could give; fulfilling the promise he had made them before his death, that he would fend them another comforter, who fhould lead them into all truth; and fulfilling it in a manner that one would think must have convinced the moft obftinately prejudiced unbeliever. And thus we have him prefented to our faith in a state of dignity infinitely above what the most pompous defcriptions of the prophets expreffed, every way worthy to be trufted with the moft affured confidence, for making good every part of his general cha

racter,

racter, as furety of the new and better covenant to convey the promised bleffings, and to fave to the uttermoft all that come unto God by him.

But yet there is another part of his character which it concerns us much to keep continually in view; that as all power in heaven and in earth is given into his hand, and the whole weight of government laid upon his fhoulders, fo all judgement is committed to him; particularly that final one, at the day which God hath appointed, when we must all appear before his judgement-feat, and have our eternal state of happiness or mifery fixed by his unalterable fentence. And fure it concerns us much how we treat him now, when he comes, as he does in the word of the gofpel, with all the attractions of redeeming love, to fave us from our fins, and the fnare of the devil, and the dreadful bondage in which we are all of us fo deeply involved, that nothing but the mighty power of God in his hand can relieve us.

The

12. The original state of Mankind after the entrance of fin.

TH

'HE original ftate of mankind, is a point of which those whom we call ancient writers have nothing to fay. The eldest of them are the Greeks, who knew nothing but the traditions they had of the barbarous condition of their ancestors; from which they very foolishly concluded, that all the rest of the world were fuch. Mofes is incomparably more ancient than the eldest of them, and had advantages, fuch as none of them had, or could have. I will fay nothing now of the authenticity of his history, but take the account he has given as he has laid it.

When our guilty firft parents concluded, that their hitherto munificent creator was now become their irreconcileable enemy, from whom they had nothing to expect but death and deftruction, the only expedient that occurred to them was, to keep themselves as much as poffible out of his fight; and had he left them to themselves, they and their posterity must

have funk into a ftate of greater and more wretched favagenefs than any of them have ever yet been found in. But he left them not long to languifh in fuch difmal anxiety. The great fovereign and judge of the earth fought them out, called them into judgement, and, by his wife and righteous fentence, fixed what was to be, and has been ever fince, the permanent and unalterable state of mankind. By which it appears, that the paradifiacal state, with all the perfection and happiness which attended it, was never defigned by perfect wisdom, otherwise than as a proper introduction to another. It is here, therefore, that we are to look for that divine conftitution or law given to mankind; the declaration of his eternal counfels and purposes, what measures he was to follow, what fhould be their duty in all time coming, and what fhould be the event and iffue of all; by which only mankind can know what they have either to hope or to fear from the hand of their creator.

Man is evidently fo made, as to be ftrongly connected with, and dependent on, the material fyftem, for the support and maintenance of this fhadow of life

which he poffeffes in a prefent world. I call this a fhadow of life, because it appears plainly, that he is capable of a way of living incomparably preferable to it; a life, by which he is as ftrongly connected with, and dependent on, the fpiritual and eternal fyftem. Hence, to take any thing like a juft view of the ftate of mankind, his fituation with refpect to both these systems must be attended to.

With refpect to the material fyftem, and his condition in the prefent world, he was evidently a great lofer by his tranfgreffion. The original law bound him under death; and accordingly fentence is pronounced, that he fhall return unto the duft, from which he was taken; and thus all hopes of the continuance of all or any of those pleasures and gratifications we are fo fond of, are utterly extinguished. And it becomes the vaineft thing that can be well imagined, to fet our hearts upon any of them; and the moft egregious folly, to value ourselves on fuch fhort and precarious enjoyments or poffeffions, as a prefent perishing and precarious life can admit of.

Nor was this all: The now unhappy man was deprived at once of all the pleasures and comforts

VOL. I.

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