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brace them: So doth St. Paul at large, in the 5th Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, propound and prosecute the comparison; closing his Discourse thus: "Therefore as by the offence of one man, upon all men to condemnation; so by the righteousness of one, upon all men to justification of life." As guilt, wrath, and death, fore-mentioned, were the fruits of what Adam did, falling upon all; so pardon, grace, and life were (in design) the effects of what our Saviour performed relating unto all.

ORIGINAL SIN.

A Sermon, &c.

ROM. V. 19.

"For as by one man's disobedience many were made

one shall many be

sinners; so by the obedience of one shall

made righteous."

"AMONG doctrines which have been reckoned hard, that of Original Sin, or of the State of Guilt, and Corruption of Nature, derived by Adam upon all his posterity, undoubtedly ranks as one. So hard indeed has this doctrine seemed to certain Divines and Expositors, (and those too, in many respects, of principal note) that although it be not obscurely apparent in several places of Scripture, they have wished not to see it there; and have endeavoured to shade it from the view,

or entirely conceal it, by figurative meanings, and subtle interpretations.

THERE can be no doubt, that this desire to explain away the doctrine, has arisen principally (I mean in those interpreters who have not been drawn aside by an heterodox bias) from an anxious and laudable jealousy for the honour of God, and his holy attributes.-That the whole race should be brought under condemnation for the offence of one, was shocking to their moral sense. The everlasting destruction of even one sinner, cannot be contemplated without horror : --but the hiding of God's face from the whole multitude of mankind, the dooming of so many millions to eternal misery, for a sin which, so far from partaking in, they could not possibly have any knowledge of; seemed utterly intolerable. Surely, thought they, God's goodness and justice are here touched to the very quick; and if there be passages of Scripture which seem to speak this doctrine, they must, of necessity, have a different interpretation.

AND yet there are not wanting phænomena, the objects perpetually of our sight and expe

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rience, which might serve to abate, in some degree, the strangeness of this doctrine; and make us suspect, that there might be something of reality in it. The prevalence, in the world, of labour and sorrow; diseases, not only painful, but dishonourable, rendering man an ugly spectacle, and loathsome to himself and others; and these not seldom transmitted, by fatal inheritance, from father to son: above all, Death, the king of terrors, so abhorrent to our nature, so shocking to witness, so agonizing to undergo :these in the natural world: and in the moral world, the blindness and weakness of the understanding; the aversation from prayer, and communion with God; above all, the prevalence of wickedness, to so dreadful a degree, through the general depravity of nature, and propensity to evil; and these sometimes derived, in boisterous passions, and perverse appetites, by a strange propagation from parents to their children; and, even in the best of men, vestiges still remaining of that intestine war, by which "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh:"-these, I say, are phænomena really existing; visible, or rather sensible, to every one of us; which will not indeed suffer themselves to

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be concealed, but have in all ages loudly demanded investigation: in some of whose lineaments, especially in the propagation of bodily disease, and mental depravity, we cannot help acknowledging the features of Original Sin by which phænomena also, let me add, no less than by the doctrine in question, the Divine Attributes may seem to be touched :

FOR is this, might some one say, the world, which Infinite Wisdom, prompted by Infinite Goodness, conceived; and Infinite Power called into being? Is this the creation, which God surveyed, and saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good? (Gen. i. 31.) If this be indeed impossible; if this be indeed to call in question the Divine Perfections; then may we consider, whether the doctrine of Original Sin does not in reality present us with the clue, which is to lead us through the mazes of this labyrinth. But, whether or not we can perfectly reconcile this doctrine with the Divine Perfections; as we are not fully acquainted either with the natural consequences, or the moral deserts of sin, particularly of this sin; nor yet can discern all the means which Infinite Wisdom pos

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