which is his voluntary subduction of himself from under the govern- ment of his Maker; and free from trouble, which is the effect of his displeasure on that subduction or deviation ;—in which two the whole nature of evil consisteth: so that it must have some other original.
3. Furthermore; in this first effort of immense power did God glorify himself, as in the wisdom and goodness wherewith it was accompanied, so also in that righteousness whereby, as the supreme rector and governor of all, he allotted unto his rational creatures the law of their obedience, annexing a reward thereunto in a mixture of justice and bounty; for, that obedience should be rewarded is of jus- tice, but that such a reward should be proposed unto the temporary obedience of a creature as is the eternal enjoyment-of God, was of mere grace and bounty. And that things should have continued in the state and condition wherein they were created, ] mean as unto mankind, supposing an accomplishment of the obedience prescribed unto them, is manifest from the very first notions we have of the nature of God: for we do no sooner conceive that he is, but withal we assent that “he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,” Heb. xi. 6; which is essential unto him, and inseparable from his nature as the sovereign ruler of the works of his hands. And thus was the continuance of this blessed state of the creation of all things provided for, and laid in a tendency unto further glory, being absolutely exclusive of any distance between God and man, besides that which is natural, necessary, and infinite, from their beings. There was no sin on the one side, nor disfavour on the other. And this secured the order of the universe; for what should cause any confusion there whilst the law of its creation was observed, which could not be transgressed by brute and inanimate creatures?
4, That this éstate of things hath been altered from time imme- morial; that there is a corrupt spring of sin and disorder in the nature of man; that the whole world lieth in ignorance, darkness, evil, and confusion ; that there is an alienation and displeasure be- tween God and mankind, God revealing his wrath and judgments from heaven, whence at first nothing might be expected but fruits of goodness and pledges of love, and man naturally dreading the pre- sence of God and trembling at the effects of it, which at first was his life, joy, and refreshment,—reason itself, with prudent observation, will discover; it hath done so unto many contemplative men of old. “The whole creation groaneth” out this complaint, as the apostle witnesseth, Rom. vill. 20, 22; and God makes it manifest in his judg- ments every day, chap. 1.18. That things were not made at first in that state and condition wherein now they are, that they came not thus immediately from the hand of infinite wisdom and goodness, is easily discernible. God made not man to be at a perpetual quar- rel with him, nor to fill the world with tokens of his displeasure
SECT. 3-5.] . PROMISED OF OLD. 145
because of sin. This men saw of old by the light of nature; but what it should be that opened the flood-gates unto all that evil and sin which they saw and observed in the world, they could not tell. The springs of it, indeed, they searched after; but with more vanity and disappointment than those who sought for the heads of the Nile. The evils they saw were catholic and unlimited, and therefore not to be assigned unto particular causes; and of any general one propor- _ tioned unto their production they were utterly ignorant. And this ignorance filled all their wisdom and science with fatal mistakes, and rendered the best of their discoveries but mere, uncertain, conjec- tures. Yea, the poets, who followed the confused rumours of old traditions about things whose original was occasional and accidental, give us a better shadow of truth than the philosophers, who would reduce them unto general rules of reason, which they would no way answer. “ Post ignem eetheria domo Subductum, Macies et nova Febrium Terris incubuit cohors ; Semotique prius tarda necessitas : Leti corripuit gradum,” Hor. Car. lib. i. Od. iii. 29,— is a better allusion to the original of sin and punishment than all the disputations of the philosophers will afford us.
5. But that which they could not attain unto, and which because they could not attain unto, they wandered in all their apprehensions about God and themselves, without certainty or consistency, we are clearly acquainted withal by divine revelation. The sum of it is briefly proposed by the apostle: Rom. y. 12, “ By one man sin en- tered into the world, and death by sin.” Sim and death are com- prehensive of all that is evzd in any kind in the world. All that is morally so is sin; all that is penally so is death. The entrance of both into the world was by the sin of one man, that is, Adam, the common father of us all. This the philosophers knew not, and therefore knew nothing clearly of the condition of mankind in re- lation unto God. But two things doth the Scripture teach us con- cerning this entrance of evil into the world :—