Watts - Houston-Packer Collection BX5207.W3 S4x 1805 v.3

SERM. V.] OF THE MORAL LAr1, AND THE EVIL, OF Sig. 77 Who sees not the dreadful evil of sin, in the wretched change that is introducedby it into the creation of God in the upper and lower worlds ? It has turned angels of light into devils and spirits of darkness : It has thrown millions of glorious and happy beings out of their hea- venly habitation : Itniade our first parents afraid of their Maker even in paradise, and turned them out of that happy garden. It brought many curses upon human na- ture, many sorrows and sufferings of every kind. It is sin that has run through every generation, and exposed us to all the evils that we feel, and to all that we fear, either from the hand Of God, or our fellow-creatures. While man stood innocent and obedient, nothing could hurt him ; but he broke the law of his God and re- nou aced his government, and the bonds of love between mankind are broken, and the brute creatures have broken their subjection to man in a great degree. Ile who was made to govern them is afraid of them, and 'has often been destroyed by them : Innocence had beena sure and everlastingdefence. All the desolations that have been made by famine and pestilence, and wars and earthquakes, and by the rage ofwild beasts from the beginning of the world, are owing to the sin of man. But these thoughts bring me down to the fourth general head of my discourse, which is to consider the proper demerit of sin, or what is the punishment it deserves: This I shall represent under these four plain Proposi- tións : Proposition I. When God made man at first, he designed to continue him in life and happiness so long as .man continued innocent and obedient to the law, and thereby maintained his allegiance to God his Maker." This is agreeable to the terms of the law represented in Rom. ii. 7. If he had patiently continued in well doing he should have enjoyed 'glory and honour, immortality and eternal life : And the blessed God seems to have promised it to man, at least by way of emblem and sa- crament, in giving hirn the tree. of life, and perhaps also by a more express promise of life, which through the designed brevity, of the history, Móses might not mention. Proposition. II. " By a wilful and presumptuous trans- gression of the law, man violated his allegiance to God his Maker, and forfeited all good things that his Creator

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