condition can justly expect nothing but a confluence of evil in this world, and at the close of their pilgrimage to perish with a ruin commensurate to their existence. For God in wisdom and righteousness, as the sovereign Lord of his creatures, having given them a law, good and equal, and having appointed the penalty of death and his everlasting displeasure to the transgression thereof; and withal having sufficiently promulgated both the law and the penalty; the transgression prohibited actually ensuing, himself being judge, it remains, either that all this constitution of a law, and threatening of a penalty, was vain and ludicrous, as Satan in the serpent pretended, or that mankind is rendered absolutely miserable and cursed, and that for ever. Now which of these is to be concluded, Divine revelation, reason, and the event of things, will readily determine.

That God, without the least impeachment of his righteousness or goodness, might have left all mankind remediless in this condition, is manifest, both from what hath been discoursed concerning the means whereby they were brought into it, and his dealing with angels on the like occasion. The condition wherein man was created, was morally good and upright; the state wherein he was placed outwardly, happy and blessed; the law given him just and equal; the reward proposed to him glorious and sure; and his defection from this condition voluntary. The execution of a righteous sentence upon the voluntary transgression of a just law hath no unrighteousness in it. And this was the sum of what God did in this matter, as to the misery that came on mankind; and who should judge him, if he left man for ever to "eat of the fruit of his own ways, "and to be filled with his own devices?"

Hence Adam, when "his eyes were opened" to see the nature of evil, in that actual sense which he had in his conscience of the guilt he had contracted, had not the least expectation of relief and mercy. And the folly of the course he took in hiding himself, argues sufficiently both his present amazement, and that he knew of nothing better to betake himself to; therefore doth he give that account of the result of his thoughts, and what alone he now looked for; "I heard thy voice, "and was afraid." Nor would any revelation that God then had made of himself, either by the works of his power and wisdom, or by any inbred impression on the souls of men concreated with them, give encouragement to them who had sinned against him to expect relief. Besides, he had dealt thus with angels. Upon their first sin he spared them not, but at once, without hope of recovery, cast them under the "chains of darkness, "to be kept to the final judgment of the great day." Now God dealt not unsuitably to any of the excellencies of his nature, when he left the apostatizing angels to perish without remedy. Had he dealt so also with apostatizing mankind, who were drawn into a conspiracy against him by the head of the defection, had not his ways been holy and righteous?

§7. Yet doth not this great instance of God's dealing with angels absolutely conclude his leaving of mankind in remediless misery. He might justly have done so; but thence it doth not follow that he necessarily must. And although the chief, and indeed only, reason of his extending grace and mercy to men, and not to angels, was his own sovereign will and pleasure, concerning which who can say unto him, "What doest "thou?" Yet there was such a difference between these two original transgressors, as may manifest a condecency or suitableness to his righteousness and goodness

in his various proceedings with them: for there are sundry things that put an aggravation on the rebellion of angels above that of men; and some that render their ruin less destructive to the glory of the universe, than that of mankind would have been. For,

1. The angels were created in a state and condition far superior to, and much more excellent than that of men. The place of their first habitation which they left, Jude vi, was the highest heavens, the most glorious receptacle of created beings; in opposition to which they are said to be cast to the lowest hell, 2 Pet. ii, 4; whereas man was placed on the earth, which, although then beautiful and excellently suited to his condition, yet was every way inferior to the glory and lustre of

the other.

2. Their several employments also did greatly differ; the work of angels was immediately to attend the throne of God, to minister before him, to give him glory, and to execute the commands of his providence in the government of the works of his hands, Psalm Ixviii, 17; Dan. vii, 10; Ezek. i, 5—7; Heb. i, 14; Rev. v, 11; the highest pitch of honor that a mere creature can be exalted to. Man, during his natural life, was to be employed in "tilling and dressing the ground," Gen. ii, 15; a labor that would have been easy, useful, and suitable to his condition; but yet in honor, advantage, and satisfaction, unspeakably beneath the duty of the others.

3. Their enjoyments also greatly differed. For the angels enjoyed the immediate glorious presence of God without any external created resemblances of it, when man was kept at a greater distance, and not admitted with such immediate communion with God, or enjoyment of his glorious presence. Now all these, and the like considerations, although on the one side they do

not in the least extenuate the sin of man in his apostasy, yet they greatly aggravate the wickedness, ingratitude, and pride of the fallen angels.

4. Moreover they differed in their intellectual perfections, whereby they were enabled to discover the excellencies, and to know the mind of God. For although man had all the light, knowledge, and wisdom concreated with him, and so natural to him, which were any way needful to enable him to perform aright the obedience required of him, in the observance whereof he should have been brought to the enjoyment of God; yet it came far short of that excellency of understanding, that piercing wisdom, which those spiritual beings were endowed with, to fit them for that near contemplation of the glory of God whereunto they were admitted, and that ready apprehension of his mind which they were to observe.

5. There was likewise a difference in the manner of their defection. Our first parents were seduced or deceived, 1 Tim. ii, 14; 2 Cor. xi, 3; and therefore calls Satan their murderer, John viii, 44; they were circumvented by his craft and policy; but the angels had nothing without them to excite them, or lay snares for them.

6. Although the condition of mankind, being to be propagated by natural generation from one common stock, made it necessary that our first parents should have a greater trust reposed in them, by reason of their representing their whole posterity in that covenant wherein they stood before God, than any of the angels could have, seeing the latter stood every one for himself, yet they were but two persons that actually sinned at first, and those one after another, one seduced by another; whereas the angels in multitudés inconceivable, by a joint conspiracy at the same instant, com

bined together against the authority and law of their creation, and, as it should seem, appointed one among themselves for the head of their apostasy. Now although, as was said, none of those things can in the least extenuate the sin of man, which was the product of inconceivable infidelity and ingratitude, yet they contain such aggravations of the sins of angels, as may evidence a condecency to Divine wisdom and goodness in passing them by in their sin and misery, and yet giving relief to mankind.

7. We may add to what hath been said, the concernment of the glory of God in the universe. For if man had been left for ever without relief, the whole human race, or kind of creatures partakers of human nature, had been utterly lost; nothing of that kind could ever come to the enjoyment of God, nor could he ever have been glorified by them in a way of thankfulness and praise, which yet was the end why he made that sort of creatures; for the whole race of them, as to the event, would have been mere objects of wrath and displeasure; but in the fall of angels they were only a certain number of individuals that sinned, the whole kind was not lost as to the end of their creation; angelical nature was preserved as to its orderly dependence on God, in those millions that kept their obedience and primitive condition, which is continued to them with a superaddition of glory and honor. God, then, having made unto himself two families for his praise, amongst whom he would dwell, that above of angels, and this below of mankind, had sinning man been utterly cast off, one family had been lost for ever, though so great a remnant of the other was preserved; wherefore, it seemed good to his infinite wisdom, both to preserve that portion of his superior family which sinned not, and to recover a portion of that below, and