kind. Thence came the horrible blindness of our minds and perverseness of our hearts. Thence came that crookedness and corruptness of all our affections and desires. Thence came that seedplot, as it were, a sink of all sins, with the faults whereof mankind is infected and tormented. Of which evil, learned Christians that have sought the proper and true name, have called it original sin.

Mast. Doth mankind suffer the punishments of this sin in this life only?

Scho. No but man's nature hath been so corrupted and destroyed with this active mischief, that if the goodness and mercy of Almighty God had not, with applying a remedy, holpen and relieved us in affliction, like as we fell in our wealth into all calamities, and in our bodies into all miseries of diseases and of death, so should we of necessity fall headlong into darkness and everlasting night, and into fire unquenchable, there, with all kind of punishment, to be perpetually tormented. And no marvel it is, that other creatures also incurred that pain which man deserved, for whose use they were created. And the whole order of nature being troubled, both in heaven and in earth, harmful tempests, barrenness, diseases, and infinite other evils, brake into the world, into which miseries and woes, beside the said native mischief, we by our many and great sins are most deservedly fallen.

REFORMATIO LEGUM, &c.

Of Heresies.

Of Original Sin, Free- Will, and Justification. Chap. 7.

With regard to the stain of sin contracted from our birth, which we call Original Sin, in the first place the error of the Pelagians is to be avoided, and then that also of the Anabaptists, whose agreement in this respect is contrary to the truth of Holy Scripture, that original sin affected only Adam, and was not derived to his posterity, nor attaches to our nature any corruption, except on account of the noxious example of sin set by Adam, which incites men to imitate and to practise the same depravity. We are likewise to protest against those who suppose so much strength and power to exist in free-will, as to determine, that by it alone, without the special grace of Christ, men may live rightly.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

Of the Covenant of Grace.

SECTION 1.

WHEN Adam and Eve had broken the first Covenant, into which it had pleased their good and wise Creator to admit them, by Sin, which is the transgression of the law; had fallen from their state of innocence and blessedness; and had themselves incurred and entailed upon all mankind, who were to spring from them by natural propagation, the wrath of God, and the punishment due to their disobedience; when placed in this hopeless situation, unable to effect by any means in their power a reconciliation with their offended Maker, or to obtain a mitigation of the doom which they had wilfully and knowingly drawn down upon themselves;-when in the very act of adding to the enormity of their guilt by false excuses and insinuations :-then did the Almighty manifest his tender mercy and providential grace, even before he pronounced sentence on his

upon the instrument of their ruin, with a solemn promise of restoration to divine favour, and of acceptance through that seed of the woman,-to be born in the human nature but supernaturally,-who had been "pre-ordained before the foundation of the world" to bruise the serpent's head,-to destroy the dominion of that mortal enemy, the "murderer from the beginning," who had succeeded in defacing the bright image of original righteousness, and introducing sin and death into this lower world; and who should still be permitted to bruise the heel of man, to tempt and injure him in a less degree.

§ 2. In order to satisfy the justice of God, and to deliver mankind from that lost estate, whence the general terms of the first Covenant could not raise them by reason of the depravation of their nature, which now rendered an entire compliance with such terms utterly impossible; it was necessary that a new and better Covenant should be established. It was not in the power of the sinner to make satisfaction for his own sin, either by contrition for the past, or amendment for the future:-implicit obedience was required of Adam; repentance was not so much as named. No other creature was qualified to expiate the sin of man : "for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin," and God spared not the Angels that sinned. Man therefore must have endured the full execution of his sentence, had not his benevolent Creator provided an all-sufficient sacrifice for sin, even that of his only-begotten Son, who, in the union of the divine and human natures, should become the meritorious and accepted Mediator; by whom it was mercifully proposed, in