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by
Augustus Toplady (1740-1778)
This
following text was extracted from The Complete Works of Augustus
Toplady (1794; re-released in America by Sprinkle Publications in
1987) pages 409-416. The electronic edition of this text was
scanned and edited by Shane Rosenthal for Reformation Ink. It is
in the public domain and may be freely copied and distributed. In
this edition, Latin quotes have been retained and Greek
characters transliterated.
By
one man's disobedience, many were made sinners (Rom. 5:19).
Self-knowledge
is a science to which most persons pretend; but, like the
philosopher's stone it is a secret which none are masters of in
its full extent. The mystic writers suppose that before the fall,
man's body was transparent, analogous to a system of animated
chrystal. Be this as it may, we are sure that, was the mind now
to inhabit a pellucid body, so pellucid as to make manifest all
the thoughts and all the evil workings of the holiest heart on
earth, the sight would shock and frighten and astonish even_ the
most profligate sinner on this side hell. Every man would be an
insupportable burden to himself, and a stalking horror to the
rest of his species. For which reasons among others,
Heaven's
Sovereign saves all beings but himself
That hideous sight, a naked human heart.
The
most enlightened believer in the, world knows not the utmost of
his natural depravation, nor is able to fathom that inward abyss
of iniquity which is perpetually throwing up mire and dirt; and
which, like a spring of poison at the bottom of a well, infects
and discolours the whole mass Let the light of Scripture and of
grace give us ever such humbling views of ourselves, and lead us
ever so far into the chambers of imagery within, there still are
more and greater abominations beyond: and, somewhat like the ages
of eternity, the farther we advance the more there is to come.
The
heart of man, says God by the prophet, is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked: who can know it? -- In me, said
the apostle, that is, in my flesh, abstracted from supernatural
grace, dwelleth no good thing.--And, says a greater than both,
From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy,
pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and
defile the man (Mark vii). Is it possible that any who calls
himself a Christian can, after considering the above declaration
of Christ, dare to term the human mind a sheet of white paper? No
- it is naturally a sheet of paper blotted and blurred
throughout. So blotted and defiled all over, that nothing but the
inestimable blood of God, and the invincible Spirit of grace, can
make it clean and white.
Neither
the temptations of Satan by which we are exercised, nor the bad
examples of others which we are so prone to imitate, are the
causes of this spiritual and moral leprosy. They are but the
occasions of stirring up and of calling forth the latent
corruptions within. If (as David speaks) our inward parts were
not very wickedness,, if we were not shapen in iniquity and
conceived in sin, if enmity to God and holiness was not moulded
into our very frame and texture; temptation and bad example would
bid fair to excite out abhorrence, instead of engaging our
compliance, conciliating our imitation, and operating with such
general success. The truth is, we all have an inherent bias to
bad, which readily falls in with the instigations that present
themselves from without. Similis similent sibi quaerit.
Inward and exterior evil catch at each other by a sort of
sympathy, resulting from a sameness of affection, nature and
relationship. It is the degenerate tinder in the heart which
takes fire from the sparks of temptation. Hold a match to snow,
and no inflammation will ensue. But apply the match to gunpowder,
and the whole train is in a blaze.
How
must such a heart appear if exposed to the intuitive view of an
observing angel! And, above all, how black must it appear in the
eyes of immense and uncreated purity, of the God who is glorious
in holiness, and compared with whom the very heavens are not
clean! Judge of the infinite malignity of sin by the price which
was paid to redeem us from it, and by the power which is exerted
in converting us from the dominion of it. For the former, no less
than the incarnation and death of God's own Soil could avail. For
the latter, no less agency than that of God's own Spirit can
suffice.
The
hints already premised give us (as far as they go) the true moral
picture of a fallen soul: and such would all the descendants of
Adam appear in their own eyes, and feel themselves to be, did
they, by the light of the Holy Spirit, see themselves in the pure
unflattering glass of God's most perfect law.
This
likewise is the view in which the Church of England represents
the state of man by nature. "Man, of his own nature, is
fleshly and carnal, corrupt and naught, sinful and disobedient to
God! without any spark of goodness in him, without any virtuous
or godly motion, only given to evil thoughts and wicked deeds. As
for the marks of the Spirit, the fruits of faith, charitable and
godly motions, if lie have any at all in him, they proceed only
of the Holy Ghost, who is Le only worker of our sanctification,
and maketh us new men in Christ Jesus."
Strong
as this painting is, it is no caricature. Not a single feature of
our natural corruption is exaggerated or over-charged. You who
read, and I who write; yea, every individual of mankind that now
lives or shall hereafter be born; may with the Church of old
plead guilty to the whole indictment, saying, We are all as an
unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
I
have read of an English painter who after only once meeting any
stranger in the streets, could go home and paint that person's
picture to the life. Let us suppose that one whose likeness has
been taken in this manner should happen to see unexpectedly his
own picture. It would startle him. The exact similitude of
-shape, air, features, and complexion would convince him that the
representation was designed for himself though, his own name be
not affixed to it, and he is conscious that he never sat for the
piece. In the Scriptures of truth we have a striking delineation
of human depravity through original sin. Though we have not sat
to the inspired painters, the likeness suits us all. When the
Spirit of God holds up the mirror and shews us to ourselves, we
see, we feel, we deplore, our apostacy from, and our inability to
recover the image of, his rectitude. Experience proves the horrid
likeness true; and we need no arguments to convince us that in
and of ourselves we are spiritually wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind and naked.
But
how came man into a state so different from that in which Adam
was created? Few enquiries are so important; and no subject has
given occasion to more various and extensive disquisition.
Multitudes of conjectures have been advanced, and volumes upon
volumes have been written concerning the origin of human ill.
That
moral evil, in almost every possible branch of it; and that
natural evil, as the consequence of moral; do actualy abound all
over the world, are truths too evident to be denied. That the
matter of fact is so will not admit of a moment's dispute. But
concerning the primary cause and inlet of these evils, men are
not so unanimously agreed.
Some
of the more considerable and judicious philosophers of heathen
antiquity, particularly the oriental ones (from whom the opinion
was learned and adopted by Plato), supposed that the spirits
which occupy and animate human bodies were a sort of fallen
angels who, having been originally spirits of very superior rank,
were, for misbehaviour in a nobler state of pre-existence,
deposed from their thrones, degraded into human souls, and shut
up in mortal bodies. Of course those philosophers considered this
earth as a place of banishment, and bodies as a kind of moving
dungeon, where souls wander about like prisoners at large,
obnoxious to a vast variety of pains and inconveniences; by way
Of penance for past misdemeanors, and as a means of gradual
purification, prelusive to their eventual restitution to the
happiness from which they had fallen.
Conformably
to this view of things, Plato chose to derive soma the
Greek word for body; from sayma which signifies a tomb or
sepulchre: on supposition that the body is that to a soul which a
grave is to the body; and that souls emerge from the body by
death as a bird flies from a broken cage, or as a captive escapes
from a place of painful and dishonourable confinement.
Not
a few of the eastern sages pursued the idea of the pre-existence
of souls to such a length as to suppose that the immaterial
principles, which undoubtedly actuate the bodies of animalculae,
of insects, and of brutes, are no other than fallen spirits,
reduced to a class of extreme degradation: that, in proportion to
the crimes committed in their unembodied state, they were thrust
into material vehicles of greater or of less dignity: and that,
passing through a sucsessive series of transmigrations from a
meaner body to a nobler, they rise, by continual progression,
from animalculae to insects, from insects to birds or beasts, and
from these to men; till at last they recover the full grandeur
and felicity of their primitive condition. All these supposed
changes and removals from a humbler body to a higher were
considered, by the philosophers who adopted this hypothesis, as
so many stages both of punishment and of purgation; by which, as
by steps rising. one above another, the imprisoned spirit grew
more and more refined, its powers widened into greater expansion,
and itself approached nearer to its original and its final
perfection.
I
must own that this was a train of conjectures extremely
ingenious, and not a little plausible, when viewed as formed by
persons who had not the light of the Bible to see by. And I
believe that, for my own part, 1 should have fallen in with this
system, as the least improbable, and the least embarrassed, of
any other, had not the gracious providence of God assigned my
birth and residence in a country where the Scriptures of
inspiration kindly hold the lamp to benighted reason.
St.
Paul, within the compass of two or three lines, comprises more
than all the numberless uninspired volumes which have been
written on the subject. By one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin: and so [hootoas in this way, or by this
chain of mediums] death (di-ale-then) went through upon
all men; inasmuch as all have sinned. Rom. v. 12.
It
is evident, hence, that previously to the first offence of that
one man, who was the father of the human race, he was sinless,
and, of course, happy and deathless. --Let us for a moment carry
back our meditations to the garden of Eden, and endeavour to take
a view of Adam. prior to his fall.
The
sacred oracles acquaint us that the first man was created
spiritually and morally upright; nay, that lie was made after the
image of God; and was (in some respects, and with due allowance
for the necessary imperfection inseparable from a creature) the
living transcript of him that formed Him.
This
phrase, the image of God, is to be understood chiefly in a
spiritual, and entirely in a figurative, sense. It does not refer
to the beauty and to the erect stature of the body but to the
holy and sublime qualifications of the soul. The grand outlines
therefore of that divine resemblance, in which Adam was
constructed, were holiness, knowledge, dominion, happiness, and
immortality.
But
man, being thus made in honour, abode not as he was made. For
reasons best known to that unerring Providence which ordains and
directs every event, it was the Divine pleasure to permit an
apostate spirit (whose creation and fall were prior to the
formation of man) to present the poisonous cup of temptation:
whereof our first parents tasted, and, in tasting, fell.
Whether
any of the dismal effects which instantly ensued were partly
owing to some physical quality in the fruit itself; or whether
all the effects which followed were simply annexed to that act of
disobedienceby the immediate will and power of God; were an
enquiry more curious perhaps than important.
So
also is another question: which relates to the particular kind of
fruit borne by the forbidden tree. Whether it was a pomegranate
or a cluster of grapes; an apple or a citron, Scripture has not
revealed, nor are we concerned to know.
This
only we are sure of, from Scripture, reason, observation, and our
own experience; that mankind, from that day forward, universally
lost the perfection of God's image, that theia fusis, and homoiosis
toe theo, or divine nature, and likeness to God, as Plato
calls it: and sunk in to, what the same philosopher styles, to
atheon, a state ungodlike, and undivine. Our purity vanished.
Our knowledge suffered an almost total eclipse. Our dominion was
abridged into very narrow bounds: for no sooner did man revolt
from his obedience to God than a vast part of the animal creation
revolted from its obedience to man. Our happiness was exchanged
for a complication of infirmities and miseries. And our
immortality was cut short by onehalf: a moiety of us (i.e. the
body) being sentenced to return for a time to the dust whence it
sprang. The immortality of the soul seems to be the only feature
of the divine likeness which the fall has left entire.
Hence,
even from Adam's transgression, proceeds that ataxia or
disorder and irregularity, both of being and events, diffused
through the whole world. Hence it is that the earth brings forth
weeds and poisonous vegetables That the seasons are variable.
That
the air is raught with diseases. And that the very food we eat
administers to our future dissolution, even at the time of its
contributing to our present sustenance.
Hence,
also, proceed the pains and the eventual death of inferior
animals. All sublunary nature partakes of that curse which was
inflicted for the sin of man. Whether these ranks of innocent
beings, which are involved in the consequences of human guilt
shall, at the times of the restitution of all things (a) be
restored to a life of happiness and immortality, (which they
seem, to have enjoyed in paradise before the fall, and of which
they became deprived by a transgression not their own); rests
with the wisdom and goodness of that God whose mercy is over all
his works. It is my own private opinion (and as such only I
advance it), that Scripture seems, in more places than one, to
warrant the supposition. Particularly, Rom. viii. 19-21, which I
would thus render and thus punctuate: The earnestly wishful
expectancy of the creation, i.e. of the brute creation; that
implicit thirst after happiness, wrought and kneaded into the
very being of every creature endued with sensitive life;
virtually waits with vehement desire, for that appointed,
glorious manifestation of the sons of God which is to take place
in the millenniary state: for the creation, the lower animal
creation, was subjected to (b) uneasiness, not willing it, or
through any voluntary transgression comwitted by themselves; but
by reason or on account of (c) him who subjected them to pain and
death, in hope, and with a view, that this very creation shall
likewise be emancipated from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious, liberty of the children of God. What a field of
pleasing and exalted speculation does this open to the benevolent
and philosophic mind!
But
I return to what more immediately concerns ourselves.
When
Adam fell, he fell not only as a private individual, but also as
a public person: just as the second Adam, Jesus Christ the
righteous, did afterward, in the fulness of time, obey and die,
as the covenant Surety and representative of all his elect
people.
The
first Adam acted in our names, and stood in our stead, and
represented our persons in the covenant of works. And, since his
posterity would have partaken of all the benefits resulting from
his continuance in the state of integrity; I see not the
injustice of their bearing a part in the calamities consequent on
his apostacy. We cannot but observe in the common and daily
course of things, that children very frequently inherit the
diseases, the defects, the poverty and the losses of their
parents. And if this be not unjust in the dispensations of
Providence (for if it was unjust, God would certainly order
matter, otherwise); why should it be deemed inequitable that
moral as well as natural evil, that the cause as well as the
effects, should be transmitted, by a sad but uninterrupted
succession, from father to son?
Many
of the truths revealed in Scripture require some intenseness of
thought, some labour of investigation to apprehend them clearly,
and to understand them rightly. But the natural depravation of
mankind is a fact which we have proofs of every hour, and which
stares us in the face, let us look which way we will.
Indeed
we need not look around us for demonstration that our whole
species has lost the image of God. If the Holy Spirit have at all
enlightened us into a view of our real state, we need but look
within ourselves for abundant proof that our nature must have
been morally poisoned in its source; that our first parent
sinned; and that we, with the rest of his sons, are sharers in
his fall. So that, as good bishop Beveridge observes (in his
commentary on the ninth of our Church Article), "Though
there be no such words as original sin to be found in Scripture,
yet we have all too sad experience that there is such a thing as
original sin to be found in our hearts."
Heathens
themselves have felt and acknowledged that they were depraved
beings; and depraved, not by imitation only, but by nature; or
(as the Church of England well expresses it) by
"birth-sin." --Hence that celebrated saying, so usual
among the Greek philosophers, sumfuton anthropois to
hamartanein, i.e. moral evil is implanted in men from the
first moment of their existence. Plato goes still farther in his
treatise "De Legibus:" and directly affirms that
man, if not well and carefully cultivated, is zowon agriotaton
hoasa fuei gay, the wildest and most savage of all animals.
Aristotle asserts the same truth, and almost in the same words
with Plato. The very poets asserted the doctrine of human
corruption. So Propertius: Unicitique dedit vitiam natura
creato; i.e. "Nature has infused vice into every created
being." And Horace observes, "that youth is cerens
in vitium flecti;" or, "admits the impressions of
evil, with all the ease and readiness of yielding wax."
--And why? Let the same poet inform us. Nemo titiis sine
nascitur: "The seeds of vice are innate in every
man."
Whence
proceed errors in judgment and immoralities in practice? Evil
tempers, evil desires, and evil words? Why is the real gospel
preached by so few ministers, and opposed by so many people?
Wherefore is it that the virtues have so generally took their
flight? that
------Fugere
pudor, verumque, fidesque; In quorum subiere locum fraudesque,
dolique, Insidiaque, et vis, et amor sceleratus habendi?
Original
sin answers all these questions in a moment. Adam's offence was
the peccatum peccans (as I think St. Austin nervously
calls it), the sin that still goes on sinning in all mankind: or,
to use the just and emphatic words of Calvin (Institut. 1. iv. c.
15.) Haec perversitas nunquam in nobis cessat, sed novos
assidue fructus parit ; non secue atque incensa fornax flammam et
scintillas perpetuo efflat, aut scaturigo aquam sine fine egerit:
"The corruption of our nature is always operative, and
constantly teeming with unholy fruits: like a heated furnace
which is perpetually blazing out; or like an inexhaustible spring
of water, which is for ever bubbling up and sending forth its
rills."
So
terrible a calamity as the universal infection of our whole
species is and must have been the consequence of some grand and
primary transgression. Such a capital punishment would never have
been inflicted on the human race, by the God of infinite Justice,
but for some adequate preceding offence. It is undeniably certain
that we who are now living are in actual possession of an evil
nature; which nature we brought with us into the world; it is not
of our own acquiring, but was
Cast
and mingled with our very frame;
Grew with our growth, and strengthened with our strength."
We
were, therefore, in a state of severe moral punishment as soon as
we began to be. And yet it was impossible for us to have sinned,
in our own persons, antecedently to our actual existence.
This
reflection leads up our enquiry to that doctrine which alone can
solve the (otherwise insuperable) difficulty now started, viz. to
that doctrine which 'asserts the imputation of Adam's
disobedience to all his offspring. And which is, I. founded on
Scripture evidence; and II. adopted by the Church of England; and
III. not contrary to human reason. I will just touch on these
three particulars.
1.
God's word expressly declares that By the disobedience of one man
many were constituted sinners; Rom. v. 19. They are in the divine
estimation considered as guilty of Adam's own personal breach of
the prohibitory command. Now the judgment of God is always
according to truth. Ile would not deem us guilty unless we were
so. And guilty of our first parent's offence we cannot be, but in
a way of imputation.
By
the offence of one [di enos paraptowmatos, by one
transgression], judgment came upon all men, unto condemnation;
Rom. v. 18. which could not be unless that one transgression was
placed to our account.
By
one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin: and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. v. 12.
Yea, death reigned, and still continues to reign, even over them
that bad not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression:
v. 14. Infants are here designed by the apostle: who have not
sinned actually and in their own persons as Adam did, and yet are
liable to temporal death. Wherefore, then, do they die? Is not
death - the wages of sin? Most certainly. And seeing it is
incontestibly clear that not any individual among the numberless
millions who have died in infancy was capable of committing
actual sin; it follows that they sinned representatively and
implicitly in Adam. Else they would not be entitled to that death
which is the wages of sin, and to those diseases by which their
death is occasioned, and to that pain which most of them
experience in dying. A majority of the human race are supposed to
die under the age of seven years. A phenomenon, which we should
never see, under the administration of a just and gracious God,
if the young persons so dying had not been virtually comprehended
in the person of Adam when he fell, and if the guilt of his fall
was not imputed to them. Nothing but the imputation of that can
ever be able to account for the death of infants, any more than
for the vitiosity, the manifold sufferings, the imperfections,
and the death of men.
II.
This is the doctrine of the Church of England. "We were cast
into miserable captivity by breaking of God's commandment in our
first parent Adam." (Second Homily on the Misery of Man.)
"Original
sin is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man."
(Article IX.) The corruption, or defilement, is our's by
inherency: we ourselves are the seat of it. But original sin can
be our fault only by imputation, and in no other possible way.
"Dearly
beloved, ye have prayed that our Lord Jesus Christ would
vouchsafe to release [this child] of his sins." (Baptismal
office). In the estimation, therefore, of our Church, every
infant is not only chargeable with sin in the singular number;
but with sins in the plural. To wit, with intrinsic defilement as
the subject of an unholy nature and with the imputed guilt of the
first man's apostacy from God.
III.
There is nothing contrary in all this to human reason, and to the
usual practice of men.
There
is not a single nobleman, or person of property, who does not
act, or who has not acted, as the covenant-head of his posterity;
supposing him to have any.
Even
a lease of lives signed by a legal freeholder; and sometimes the
total alienation of an estate for ever, are binding on (perhaps
the unborn) heirs and successors of the person who grants the
lease, or signs away the property.
A
person of quality commits high treason. For this, he not only
forfeits his own life, but also his blood (i.e. his family) is
tainted in law, and all his titles and possessions are forfeited
from his descendants. His children and their children to the end
of the chapter lose their peerage and lose their lands, though
the father only was (we will suppose) in fault.
Thus
the honours and estates of all the heirs in England are suspended
on the single loyalty of each present possessor respectively!
Where,
then, is the unreasonableness of the imputation of Adam's crime?
Why might not the welfare and the rectitude of all his posterity
be suspended on the single thread of his integrity? And what
becomes of the empty cavils that are let off against those
portions of holy writ which assure us that in Adam all die?
But
wherein did Adam's primary sin consist? Of what nature was that
offence, which
"Brought
death into the world, and all our woe?"
The
scholastic writers, whose distinctions are frequently much too
subtle, and sometimes quite insignificant, seem to have hit the
mark of this enquiry with singular skill and exactness.
They
very properly distinguish original sin, into what they call peccatum
originans, and peccatum originatum.
By
peccatum originans they mean the ipsissimum, or the
very act itself, of Adam's offence in tasting the forbidden
fruit.
By
peccatum originatum they mean that act considered as
transmitted to us. Which transmission includes its imputation to
us, in point of guilt; and that internal hereditary pollution
which has vitiated every facility of man from that moment to
this. With regard to the latter, a very slight acquaintance with
ourselves must convince us that we have it. And as for the former
[viz. the article of imputation], it could not have taken place,
if Adam had not sustained our persons, and stood or fallen as our
legal representative.
Consider
original sin as resident in us, and it is very justly defined by
our Church to be that corrupt bias, "whereby man is very far
gone [quam longissime distet, is removed to the greatest
distance possible] from original righteousness, and is of his own
nature inclined to evil; so that the flesh lusteth always
contrary to the spirit." (Art, IX). Upon which definition
the life of every man is, more or less, a practical comment.
But,
Honos erit huic quoque pomo. Many, and of the utmost
importance, are the consequences deducible from this great
Scripture doctrine. I shall briefly point out a few.
1.
We learn hence that which the antient heathens in vain attempted
to discover; viz. the door by which natural evil (as sickness,
afflictions, sorrow, pain, death) entered into the world: namely
the sin of Adam. Though the reasons why God permitted Adam to sin
are as deeply in the dark as ever; what we do know of God
entitles him surely to this small tribute at our hands, viz. that
we repose our faith, with an absolute, an implicit, and an
unlimited acquiescence, on his unerring wisdom and will: safely
confident that what such a Being ordains and permits, is and must
be right; however incapable we may find ourselves, at present, to
discern and comprehend the full propriety of his moral
government.
2.
Hence, too, we learn the infinite freeness, and the unspeakable
preciousness, of his electing love. Why were any chosen, when all
might justly have been passed by? Because he was resolved, for
his own name's sake, to make known the riches of his glory, t. e.
of his glorious grace, on the vessels of mercy, whom he therefore
prepared unto glory.
3.
Let this, O believer, humble you under the mighty hand of God:
and convince you, with deeper impression than if ten thousand
angels were to preach it from heaven, that election is not of
works, but of him that calleth. Not your merit, but his unmerited
mercy, mercy irrespective of either your good works or your bad
ones, induced him to write your name in the Lamb's book of fife.
4.
So totally are we fallen by nature, that we cannot contribute any
thing towards our recovery. Hence it was God's own arm which
brought salvation. It is he that makes us his people, and the
sheep of his pasture; not we ourselves. The Church says truly,
when she declares that "We are by nature the children of
God's wrath: but we are not able to make ourselves the children
and inheritors of God's glory. We are sheep that run astray, but
we cannot of our own power come again to the sheep-fold. --We
have neither faith, charity, hope, patience, nor any thing else
that good is, but of God. These virtues be the fruits of the Holy
Ghost, and not the fruits of man.-We cannot think a good thought
of ourselves: much less can we say well, or do well of
ourselves," (Hom. on the misery of man). We are, in short,
what the Scripture affirms us to be, naturally dead in trespasses
and sins: and no dead man can make himself to differ from
another. Conversion is a new birth, a resurrection, a new
creation. What infant ever begat himself? What inanimate carcase
ever quickened and raised itself? What creature ever created
itself?
Boast
not then of your freewill: for it is like what the prophet saith
of Nineveh, empty, and void, and waste. They that feel not this,
resemble delirious persons in a high fever: who imagine that
nothing ails them, while in fact they are at the very gates of
death. Nay, mankind in their native state are more than at the
gates of death. The traveller, in the parable, who went down from
Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, is said to have
been left half-dead: but the degenerate sons of Adam are,
spiritually speaking, stark-dead to God. An unrenewed man has not
one spiritual sense left: no hearing of the promises; no sight of
his own misery, nor of God's holiness, nor of the perfect purity
of the law, nor of Christ as an absolute Saviour, nor of the
blessed Spirit as the revealer of Christ in the heart; no taste
of the Father's everlasting love, nor of communion with him
through the ministration of the Holy Ghost; no feeling of grace
in a way of conviction, comfort, and sanctification; no
hungerings and thirstings after spiritual enjoyments and sweet
assurances; no motive tendencies, no outgoings of soul after the
blood, righteousness, and intercession of Jesus Christ. If we
experience these, they are indications of spiritual life: and we
may take those reviving words to ourselves, Flesh and blood hath
not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.
5.
Beg the Lord to shew you the depth of your fall. Free grace,
finished salvation, imputed righteousness, atoning blood,
unchangeable mercy, and the whole chain of evangelical blessings,
will then be infinitely precious to your heart.
6.
Prize the covenant of redemption, which is a better covenant and
founded upon better promises than that which Adam broke. The
covenant of works said "Do, and live: sin, and die."
The covenant of grace says, "I will be merciful to their
unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no
more." The covenant of works insisted on a perfection of
personal obedience: the covenant of grace provided and accepts
the perfect atonement and righteousness of Christ as ours.
This
shews both the folly and wickedness of depending on our own works
for salvation. Which soul-destroying delusion is founded on
ignorance that the covenant of works was broken and annulled the
very moment Adam fell. I mean annulled, as to any possibility of
salvation by it: else it is still in full force as the
ministration of condemnation and death to every soul that finally
clings to it for pardon and eternal life. Man, unfallen, might
have been saved by works. But there is no deliverance for fallen
man, except by the free grace of the Father, and the imputed
righteousness of a sacrificed Redeemer. -Therefore,
7.
Let the sense of our original depravation, of our continued
vileness, and the impossibility of our being saved in a legal
way, induce us to prize the blood, obedience, and intercession of
Jesus, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. This is the
inference drawn by the apostle himself from the doctrine I have
been asserting. Therefore, says he, as by the offence of one,
judgment came upon all men [even upon all the elect themselves]
unto condemnation; so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift
came upon all men [upon all the elect, believing world] unto
justification of life: for as by one man's disobedience many were
made sinners; so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous. Rom. v. 18, 19. --And elsewhere St. Paul reasons in
the same manner: All [i.e. all God's elect, no less than others]
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What is the
consequence? It is immediately added, being justified freely by
his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. Rom.
iii. 23, 24.
8.
Hence likewise appear the necessity and value of effectual
calling. Why does our Lord say, that except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God? Because we are totally sinful
and corrupt by nature: as unfit for, and as incapable of,
enjoying the glories of the celestial world, as a beetle is of
being elevated to the dignity and office of a first minister of
state.
9.
Since such is the natural condition of man with regard to
spiritual things; take heed that you do not look upon election,
justification, redemption, and regeneration, as mere technical
terms, belonging to divinity as a system, or science. They are
infinitely more. These and such- like terms are expressive of the
greatest and most important realities: without the experience of
which, we are condemned, ruined, lost.
10.
The doctrine of original sin is the basis of the millennium. The
earth, which is disordered and put out of course through the
offence of man, will be restored to its primitive beauty, purity,
and regularity, when Jesus shall descend to reign in person with
his saints. 2 Pet. iii. 13.
11.
Original sin accounts for the remaining imperfections, too
visible in them that are born of God. The brightest saints below
ever had, and ever will have, their darksides. Abraham, Noah,
Job, David, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Paul, Peter, John, were
sanctified but in part. On earth, God's converted people are each
a compound of light and shades. In glory we shall be all light,
without any mixture of shade whatever.
12.
Since the earth and its inhabiters are degenerated from their
original state, let not believers be afraid to die.
"Death
has no pang, but what frail life imparts;
Nor life true joy, but what kind death improves."
By
quitting its mortal cage, the heaven-born soul is delivered from
all its sins and cares and pains; and kindles into perfection of
holiness and majesty and joy. At the appointed time the body too
will partake of complete redemption; and be delivered, totally
and eternally delivered into the glorious liberty and dignity of
the children of God. --Accomplish, Lord, the number of thine
elect, and hasten thy kingdom!