126 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. forgiveness. The world is made, sin enters by the most glorious part of the creation, whose recovery by pardon might seem to be most desirable ; but not the least ap- pearance of it is discovered. Thus it was hid in God from the foundation of the world. Eph. 3 :9. God gave to man a law of obedience immediately upon his creation. This law it was supposed that man might transgress. The very nature of a law prescribed to free agents, attended with threatenings and promises of re- ward, requires that supposition. Now there was not an- nexed to this law, or revealed with it, the least intima- tion of pardon to be obtained, if transgression should ensue. "In the day thou eatest, thou shalt surely die :" dying, thou shalt die ; or bring upon thyself assuredly the guilt of death, temporal and eternal. There God leaves the sinner. Of forgiveness, or pardoning mercy, there is not the least intimation. To this very day that law, which was then the whole rule of life and accept- ance with God, knows no such thing. Dying, thou shalt die, O sinner, is its precise and final voice. From these preliminary considerations, in connection with what was before said, some things preparatory to the ensuing discourse may be inferred. 1. It is a great and rare thing to have forgiveness in God discovered to a sinful soul. Conscience and law, with the inbred notions in the heart of man about God's holiness andvindictive justice, lie against it. It is a mat- ter of which there is no common notion in the mind of man; a thing which no consideration of the works of God, either of creation or providence, will reveal ; and which the great instance of God's dealing with sinning angels renders deep, admirable and mysterious. Men who have common and slight thoughts of God, of them- selves, of sin, of obedience, of the judgment to come, of eternity, that feed upon the ashes of rumors, reports, hearsays, traditions, without looking into the reality of
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