for the wickedness he had committed : his intention is, to humble himself before God and man as a crea- ture altogether corrupt, and to represent his wicked- ness as no other than a sample of that iniquity of which his heart was full, a stream issuing from an overflowing fountain. This, we doubt not, is the genuine import of the words which we have now proposed to consider ; " Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me."
In prosecuting this important subject, we shall endeavour to establish,
I. The truth asserted —
The doctrine of Original Sin is here distinctly affirmed. It is indeed by many denied, under the idea that it would be inconsistent with the goodness and mercy of God to send into the world immortal beings in any other state than one of perfect purity. But it is in vain for us to teach God what he ought to do : the question for us to consider is. What hath God done? and what account has he himself given us of our state ? And here, if the Scriptures be true, there is no room for doubt : we are the corrupt off- spring of degenerate parents ; from whom we derive a polluted nature, which alone, since their fall, they could possibly transmit. This we shall proceed to prove,
1. From concurring testimonies — \_Moses, in his account of the first man that was horn into the world, expressly notices, that Adam begat him not in the likeness of God, in which he himself had been originally created, but "in his ow?i likeness," as a fallen and corrupt creature^: and how different the one from the other, may be conjectured from the conduct of this first-born, who imbrued his hands in his brother's blood. In his account too, as well of the post- diluvian, as of the ante-diluvian world, he tells us, that " every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil con- tinually*^." Job, not only affirms the same awful truth, but shews us that it is impossible in the nature of things to be otherwise : since from a thing that is radically and essentially unclean, nothing but what is unclean can proceed ''. The
* Gen. V. 3. ^ Gen. vi. 5. and viii. 21.
•= Job xiv. 4. and xv. 1 1— IG. and xxv. 4.