and Indian barbarity to bring down our haughty spirits, and cause us to own his government, and our dependence and subjection.'

Are not some of us guilty of this epidemical, fashionable infidelity? Have you not lived in this world until this moment, without being sensible of that all-ruling Power, by which it is governed? Then you are to be ranked among the destroyers of your country. Alas! such persons are its worst enemies. Prepare, ye infidels, prepare for his judgments to teach you a more creature-like temper. Or if you escape his judgments, in this life, prepare for those more dreadful punishments of the world to come, which will oblige the most rebellious spirit in hell to acknowledge that the Lord reigns.

Finally; amid all the tumults of this restless world-amid all the terrors of war, and, in short, amid all the events of life of every kind, let us labour to impress our spirits with this truth, that all things are under the management of a wise and good God, who will always do what is best, upon the whole. This will be a source of obedience; this will teach us to turn the greatest miseries into blessings, and to derive good from evil; and this will be a sweet support, and afford us an agreeable calm, amid all the pressures and tossings of this boisterous world, till we arrive at the harbour of eternal rest.

SERMON 73.

THE PRIMITIVE AND PRESENT STATE OF MAN COMPARED. ROMANS V. 17. For if by one man's offence, death reigned by one ; much more they which receive [the] abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.*

THE ruin of mankind by the fall of Adam, and the method of redemption by Jesus Christ, are subjects of the utmost importance in the christian religion; and it is necessary we should have some competent knowledge of them, and be suitably affected with them otherwise, we cannot be recovered from the ruins of the grand apostacy, nor enjoy the salvation of the gospel. I do not mean, that it is absolutely necessary for any man, much less for plain and illiterate understandings, to know all the nice

* Hanover, Dec. 10, 1758. Nassau-Hall, Dec. 14, 1760.

ties of controversy, and to be able to solve all the difficulties and objections, which the ignorance, arrogance, or curiosity of wrangling and presumptuous disputants, have started upon these heads : but the substance and importance of the truths themselves, their principal consequences as to us, and the duties resulting from them; these we ought to understand and feel. This knowledge and sense of these things, is as necessary to our salvation, as a sense of sickness, and a knowledge of the means of cure, is to the recovery of the sick. And, whatever obscurity and perplexity attend these subjects, we have sufficient light from our Bibles, from observation and experience, to obtain such a degree of knowledge and sense of them, as is sufficient for this purpose. These subjects, therefore, shall now employ an hour of your sacred time. And may the blessed Spirit of God enable me to discover, and you to receive, the knowledge of his own truths, without adulteration, without corrupt mixtures of human invention, and without partiality and self-flattery! and may He deeply impress our hearts with the knowledge we acquire, and make it a lively principle of practice !

The ruin and recovery of mankind, by the first and second Adam, is the subject of the apostle in the context. His immediate design is to shew, the parity, in some respects, and the disparity, in others, between these two public persons.

We have an instance of this parity and disparity in my text. The instance of parity, is this-That as the offence of Adam gave death an universal dominion over all his numerous posterity; so the grace and righteousness of Christ procure and bestow everlasting life to all those who receive these blessings." As, by one man's offence, death reigned by one, so they, who receive the abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."

The instance of disparity is this: The superior efficacy of the grace and righteousness of Christ to procure and bestow life, above that of the offence of Adam, to subject mankind to the dominion of death. "If, by one man's offence, death reigned, how much more shall they reign in life, who receive the abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness from Jesus Christ?" If the offence of Adam was sufficient for the condemnation of all his posterity, how much more sufficient is the grace and righteousness of the second Adam, to justify and save all that have an interest

in him? The expression is very strong and emphatical-" THE* ABUNDANCE of grace ;" an overflowing, a redundance of graće ; not only sufficient, but more than sufficient to repair all the ruinous consequences of Adam's fall; sufficient to procure more blessings, than he or his posterity would have enjoyed, even if he had never offended; and to render the reign, the dominion of life, more glorious and triumphant, than his sin rendered the reign or dominion of death dismal and irresistible. We may gain more by Jesus Christ, than we lost in Adam. He can not only raise human natúre out of its ruins, but repair it in a more glorious form, than that in which it came from the hands of its divine Author at first.

The two great truths which the Apostle has chiefly in view in my text, are these; that by the sin of Adam all mankind are subjected to the power of death; and, that all that accept of the blessings of redemption through Christ, are delivered from the death to which they are exposed by the sin of Adam, and also entitled to a more glorious and happy life, than that which they Iost by Adam's sin: or, in other words, that the blessings of redemption, by Christ, are even more than sufficient to recover us from all the ruinous consequences of the fall of Adam. These, I say, are the truths the Apostle has chiefly in view and these I intend chiefly to illustrate. But I would by the bye, make some transient remarks on one or two strong and beautiful expressions, which the Apostle uses in my text; and which are certainly worthy of notice.

"Death reigned"-how dreadfully striking is the representation! Death is represented as a mighty all-conquering king, that reigned undethroned, uncontrolled, through a long succession ofthousands of years, over all the sons of men, from generation to generation; keeping them in slavery and terror; arresting, imprisoning, stripping them of all their enjoyments, and depriving them even of their lives, at pleasure. Death, in this sense, reigns king of kings, as well as of their subjects; the sovereign lord of absolute monarchs, as well as of their slaves; the conqueror of conquerors, as well as of their helpless captives. The power of death is royal, the power of a king-he reigns. This wide world

A a

I prefix the particle the, to point out the emphasis, answering to the original T Tigioia. The word region is to be joined with Ts dagens ons dixcloσuvns. The abundance, the mighty redundance, of the gift of righteousness!

is his kingdom-the kingdom of death!-how shocking the idea! —and all mankind are his subjects, his slaves.

"By one man's offence, death reigned by one."—It was the one offence of one man, that gave death his royal dominion. Then death was proclaimed and crowned king of our world, and mankind pronounced his subjects. Oh! the unspeakable mischiefs of that one offence !

But what a glorious contrast strikes our view, in the antithesis, as to those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness! "They shall reign"-they shall be made kings, invested with royal power and dignity. They shall reign in life— Life shall be the wide-extended territory over which they shall have full dominion: life shall be the furniture of their court, the ornament of their crown, the regalia of their reign. They shall reign in life, in opposition to the reign of death; they shall have dominion over that gloomy lord of the sons of Adam. The offspring of the dust, the dying children of Adam the sinner, the feeble mortals that were once the subjects, the slaves of the tyrant death, shall reign in life,

"High in salvation and the climes of bliss !"*

What a glorious, surprising, miraculous advancement is this! and for this they are indebted, not to themselves, but to the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, who has conquered death for them, and dignified them with life and immortality. "They shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ." One Jesus Christ is sufficient to accomplish this illustrious revolution. Oh! what wonders has he wrought! and how worthy is he to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.t

The emphasis will appear still farther, if we take notice of the comparison implied in the text. If death reigned, much more shall they reign. If death reigned by one offence, much more shall they reign by the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness. If death reigned by one Adam, much more shall they reign by one, Jesus Christ. He is much more able to quicken, to save and glorify, than Adam was to kill and destroy. His spiritual children shall reign in life, much more absolutely, illustriously, and uncontrollably, than ever death reigned over the sons of Adam. What a glorious exaltation is this! To have

the same command over life, as death has had over the enjoyments and lives of mankind-to be as victorious over death, and all its host of sickness and sorrow, as death once was over life and all its pleasures; what a grand and noble representation!*

I now proceed to the illustration of the great truths the Apostle has chiefly in view in this verse; and I begin with the first. That, by the sin of Adam, all mankind are subjected to the power of death.

It is the more necessary to insist upon this, as the doctrine of original sin, as it is commonly called, is not only disputed in our age and country, but too generally denied, and represented as a Calvinistic fiction, supported neither by scripture nor reason, inferring blasphemous reflections upon the divine perfections, and degrading the dignity of human nature.

We now hear panegyrics upon the powers of man, the dignity of his nature, and I know not what as though these powers had never been shattered by the first fall. We often hear and read such harangues as these "Can we suppose that a righteous and good God would inflict punishment upon millions of millions of his own creatures, for an offence committed by another so long before they had a being; an offence in which they had no concurrence, and which they could not possibly have prevented? Is this consistent with the mercy or the justice of God? What horrid ideas must this raise in our minds of our common Father, as an arbitrary, cruel tyrant, that dooms us to bear his displeasure for a crime in which we had no hand? Has not this doctrine a tendency to cool our love, and excite our horror of him, as the enemy of the race of man? And does it not also tend to cherish a mean and sneaking spirit, from an apprehension that we are degraded, depraved creatures, instead of that conscious greatness of mind, which proceeds from a sense of the dignity of human nature ?"

We are also told, "That as this is not the doctrine of reason, so neither is it that of revelation; that there are but few passages of scripture that so much as seem to countenance it; and that these will easily admit of another sense that this, however, cannot be the sense of them, because it is contrary to reason, which a revelation from God can never contradict."

That St. Paul intended to lay an emphasis on the word reigning, appears from his frequent repetition of it in this chapter. Death reigned like a sovereign king, ßactλevoer, from Adam to Moses, (ver. 14.)

Sin

reigned, eßacineva, by death.-Grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life, (v. 21.)