trespassed too long on your patience: the subject shall, therefore, be resumed in my next. I am, &c. LETTER III. Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, MILTON. OUR first progenitors, when recent from the hand of Omipotence, were perfect models of human excellence, possessed a nature untainted by sin, and capacitated to abide in the perpetual enjoyment of paradise. But, alas! the trial of their filial obedience soon terminated in the most heinous act of rebellion. Their listening to the vile insinuations of Satan, opened a door for the entrance of sin, the existence of which was immediately evidenced by actual transgression. Thus were their understandings. darkened, their affections depraved, and the condition on which felicity was promised, completely violated. The loss of original recti tude rendered all their future services imperfect; and, of course, inadequate to secure the happiness formerly annexed to obedience. Perfect obedience and perfect happiness were inseparably connected. But this offence was not attended merely with a privation of present happiness: it was a forfeiture of all claim to future blessedness. Our first parents stood as condemned criminals at the bar of their beneficent Creator; and in consequence of their detestable ingratitude, became obnoxious to the punishment threatened in case of disobedience to the divine precept. But the evil did not terminate with them. Adam stood as the federal head of the numerous posterity that should spring from his loins they were considered as one with him, as interested in his happiness. The forfeiture, therefore, of God's favour, which was his proper life, extended itself to all his natural descendants. They were involved in his guilt, and subject to the same condemnation. 'The violation of that original covenant not only polluted and disarranged the constituent prin ciples of his nature, but impressed the same hereditary stains on all his descendants, and subjected the whole progeny to those penalties which had been incurred by its first propagator.' Thus, Adam, having by transgression, virtually renounced his allegiance to the best of sovereigns, became the vassal of that treacherous adversary who, by the power of temptation, had stripped him of all his pristine glory and happiness. He forsook the standard of his beneficent Creator, and enlisted under the banner of Satan. After his example all his posterity naturally copy. They cheerfully obey the crafty dictates of the same tyrannical sovereign. It is said, without exception, ‘They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no not one.’ They are led captive by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.' All the powers and faculties of the bers of the body, are devoted to his service. soul, and all the memunder his control, and "God is not in all their thoughts-nay, the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' It is allowed, indeed, that there is a vast disparity, as to moral turpitude, between the actions of individuals. Some men, in a comparative view, may be properly denominated virtuous, and others completely vicious: and the number of those is not small, who regulate their lives, not by the standard of religion, but by the measure of other men's virtue: who lull their own remorse with the remembrance of crimes more atrocious than their own, and seem to believe that they are not bad while another can be found worse.' Very different, however, were the conclusions of the learned and excellent Boerhaave, who relates, that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, 'Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than I?' But the concession I have made does not in the least militate against the doctrine of universal and equal depravity: because every perceptible gradation of excellence arises, I presume, not |
