derstanding darkned, lust of the flesh, and all evil inclinations, are but the impressions of that sin. Now, possitively it is this, the disobedience of Adam: neither is guilt any part of it: I say, guilt is no part of that sin, but the offence of that one man; for, guiltiness in the conscience, condemnation, blindness of mind, evil concupiscence, hatred of God and his law; all these are but the impression of that sin; for if all these be no part of our nature, but followed the fall,

then

guage as well as common sense, to call the gallows upon which a felon is hung, the rule of his life? it ends his sinful career, and is properly the standard of his death: just thus it is respecting the lav. of God: it brings death and destruction, it is so enfeebled by sin, that it can never give life but it condemns, it curses, it damns the soul. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid: nay, I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet; Rom. vii. 7. The law and sin are as opposite as light and darkness, and Paul never would have thought of such an enquiry, had it not been for the awful and dreadful ignorance of those who pretending to be something, prove that they are something (unimpressible, immoral marble) by the confounding property of their impenetrable dark

ness.

then these cannot be original sin, nor any part, for none of these in us is any part of that act of Adam, but the very impressions that this act had upon his own soul and body; we may see it upon his posterity, and feel it in and upon ourselves. For if sin, condemnation, death spiritual, corporeal and eternal, came in by one man, and by one disobedience of that one man, then it appears that there was no act required of any of the sons of Adam, as a condition upon which the sentence

Ress.

of

These enemies of God and men invert the order of things: who in the world would be suffered in natural things, to contend for such an absurdity as the following, without the charge either of idiotism, or a design to mislead the ignorant, that the eye which discovers, the object perceived, and the light which is the medium of the discovery, are one and the same; the eye perceives through the medium of light, the object it reflects; by the same eye and through the same medium, we discover a diamond of the first water and the most loathsome object, without the eyes being impregnated with the properties of either, or the medium through which it is discovered, affected in the leaft by the eye or the object. Thus it is with the law of God; it remains pure, though it is the medium through which we, by an eye of faith, discover the putrid

of life and death depended, or to make that disobedience of his theirs: but, the former is true, Rom. v. 12, to the end; Heb. ix. 27.

Let us now come to Christ; so I lay this doctrine, that there is no act required of the sons of Adam to entitle them in the covenant of God in Christ, no more than there was to entitle them in Adam's covenant; neither can any of the sons of Adam, by any act of theirs, prevent their being enrolled in these two great court rolls of Hea

ven:

sores of the mind, and though the oozing virus of these wounds are become intolerably loathsome, yet the eye of that faith, generated by the spirit of the living God, is not polluted by the discovery, nor the sacred medium through which it operates contaminated by its deadly exhalations. Divine faith being a belief of a divine teftimony, in proportion to its energy, admits into its receptive faculty, all that God hath said, and it is the same faith that believes the testimony of God respecting human misery, as relies upon the divine promise for a gracious deliverance.

When men attribute to the law, the power of conviction, independent of the co-operating influence of the blessed spirit, that gives the discovering eye, they are not aware of the absurdity of such an assertion :-for it is the same in a moral sense, as it would be naturally saying, that

the

ven: as for Adam's roll, it is a great one; that is universal; thou mayest quarrel with it, But (Isaiah xlv. 9.) woe unto him that striveth with his Maker: ver. 10, Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? And for the roll of Christ; Isaiah xl. 13, Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor, hath taught him? ver. 14, With whom took he counsel, and who hath instructed him So that as no act can interest in neither of these,

SO

the rays of light without the eye, discover objects; every blind and miserable beggar in the world contradicts the assertion.

If the law has a convincing power, how comes it to pass that it does not convince all ? What can be the reason that so many wise menmen of enlarged views of nature-and of the moral government of the eternal God,-yet still remain as blind as the grave, to that plague they carry in their bosom? Our blessed Redeemer informs us, that it is the work of the spirit, "When he the spirit of truth shall come, he shall convince the world of sin," by planting an eye in the soul to see its state; and it is the same divine principle, faculty, or power, (call it what you please) that sees the soul in the horrible pit and miry clay,-as views itself established upon a rock-with its goings ordered---with this dif ference

K 2

so no act can disinterest by way of prevention; Eccl. iii. 14. But for the first of these is, that no act is required of us to entitle us in the blessing of that covenant of Christ, no more than in Adam's, for if there had, then the covenant with Christ would not be so effectual to life, as Adam's was to death. Now if the covenant with Christ is not so effectual as that with Adam, it must be for some of these following causes.

First.

ference only, that the direction of the eye is changed, but the change of the direction is not a change of the eye itself;---in the former instance it is directed inwardly to see its own condition, in the latter it explores the wonders of the cross, and opens its mouth wide, and "catches the issuing blood." Thus the deformity of the mind and the pearl of great and inestimable price, are brought to view by the influences of the same spirit, as the medium of communication remains the same, unaffected, unimpaired by the misery discovered, and not benefited by the valuable objects brought to the view ;---neither can there be any transmutation of properties in the objects themselves. The subject discovered is not meliorated by the unspotted purity of the medium, neither, as was said before, is there any shade cast upon the brilliant countenance of the law. The law thus applied, becomes an unerring reflector, by which

the