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(For "CRANMER'S CATECHISM" on Providence, See the preceding Chapter.)

NOWELL'S CATECHISM.

Mast. Did God think it enough to have once created all things, and then to cast away all further care of things from thenceforth?

Scho. I have already briefly touched this point. Whereas it is much more excellent to maintain and preserve things created, than to have once created them; we must certainly believe, that when he had so framed the world and all creatures, he from thenceforth hath preserved and yet preserveth them. For all things would run to ruin, and fall to nothing, unless by his virtue, and, as it were, by his hand they were upholden. We also assuredly believe, that the whole order of nature and changes of things, which are falsely reputed the alterations of fortune, do hang all upon God that God guideth the course of the heaven, upholdeth the earth, tempereth the seas, and ruleth this whole world, and that all things obey his divine power, and by his divine power all things are governed; that he is the author of fair weather and of tempest, of rain and of drought, of fruitfulness and of barrenness, of health and of sickness: that of all things that belong to the sustentation and preserving of our life, and which are desired either for necessary use or honest pleasure; finally, of all things that nature

needeth, he hath ever given, and yet most largely giveth abundance and plenty with most liberal hand; to this end verily, that we should so use them as becometh mindful and kind children.

Mast. To what end dost thou think that Almighty God hath created all these things?

Scho. The world itself was made for man, and all things that are therein were provided for the use and profit of men. And as God made all other things for man, so made he man himself for his own glory.

CHAPTER VII.

Of the Fall of Man and Original Sin.

SECTION 1.

WHEN the great Creator had formed our first Parents, Adam and Eve, and endowed them with excellent faculties, he abundantly provided for their sup port and happiness, by placing them in Paradise, the garden of Eden. There, animals of all classes were collected, in order that they might be named by Adam, and put under his dominion; and all the beautiful, fragrant, and nutritious productions of the vegetable world, were introduced, in order that the cultivation of them might furnish a fit employment for pure and harmless man, and lead him, for whom all these wonders had been called forth, to study and admire the works, and to glorify the name of their benevolent and Almighty Author.

§ 2. Man having been made in the image of God, was, in his first estate, supremely honoured by intercourse with Heaven; gifted with free-will and knowledge, with holiness and righteousness, with immortality and blessedness.

§ 3. It pleased Jehovah to enter into covenant with his creature; to promise him a continuance of all the

great and inestimable blessings which had been bestowed upon him when he proceeded from the hand of his Creator, and graciously to bind Himself by this engagement, requiring only the fulfilment on the part of man of certain prescribed conditions, which, by nature and disposition, he was inclined and able to perform.

§ 4. The terms on which blessedness and immortality, all temporal and eternal good, were insured to our first Parents, and in them to their Posterity, were entire submission and unsinning obedience to the natural and moral Law engraven on their hearts, and to a certain specific command, which, for wise purposes, the Almighty saw tit to impose upon them. The penalty attached to the breach of this Covenant was the loss of happiness and life; the infliction of temporal, spiritual, and eternal death. To this most advantageous contract, Adam, and in him all his posterity, became a party: and he thus obliged himself and them, either to fulfil the terms, or to undergo the penalty.

§5. The specific condition of the primeval compact between God and Man, denominated from its character, the Covenant of Works,'-the particular injunction by which trial of Adam's submission and obedience was to be made, was this,-that he should not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the only one of all the trees in the garden thus prohibited. The inducements to infringe this positive law, seem to have been, a natural thirst for knowledge and independence, a desire to gratify the senses, and the excitements of curiosity. The probable reason of its selection,-moral prohibitions not being

applicable to a state of innocence,—was its being indifferent in its nature, devoid of intrinsic good or evil; and thus calculated more fully to illustrate the sovereign will of God and the implicit obedience of

man.

§ 6. But a short time after the establishment of this Covenant, an evil and envious Spirit, the Devil, or Satan, assuming the bright and fascinating form of a subtle Serpent, in order to disguise his treacherous intent, tempted the first woman Eve, by false representations of the divine purpose in prohibiting the use of a certain tree, and of the advantages to be obtained by breaking through this restraint, to defy the threats of the Omnipotent; and induced her to eat of the forbidden fruit. Eve prevailed upon her husband to become her companion in transgression: and the Covenant was broken! Man, by his own free-will, in opposition to his natural rectitude and divine illumination, fell from his state of innocence and peace, and incurred the displeasure of God with all the sad predicted consequences. God was by no means the author of sin, because he did not by his Almighty power prevent the first transgression. He only permitted it, because he could not, consistently with the declaration of his will, put a coercive restriction upon that free liberty of chusing either good or evil, with which he had endued Adam when he created him just and upright.

§ 7. The immediate effects of the first heinous and aggravated sin, contempt of the command of God, and deep ingratitude towards him, were,-that the transgressors perceived at once the degradation into which they had fallen; that innocence and peace were

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