THE RUIN AND RECOVERY OF MANKIND, &o. INTEOnacTtore. --God made man upright. JUAN is a creature made up of two distinct ingredients, an anin a1 body and a rational mind, so united as to act in a mutual correspondence according to certain laws and conditions appointed by his Creator. Now suppose the great and blessed God, who is perfect in wisdom and power, in justice and goodness, were to form such a new creature as man is, and any of us should sit down and consider according to the best exercise of our reason, what qualifications would Le clue to this new-made creature, proceeding from -a being of such wisdom, justice and goodness, we should probably trace out these several particulars: I. We reasonably suppose he musthave a perfection ofnatural powers, both of body and spirit, considered as in a state of union, and suited to his present circumstances. Not that we have any reason to suppose man should be made so perfect a being as God could make hum ; for the wisdom of God plainly designed to display its unbounded varieties of contrivance in different ranks and orders of his creation : And besides, we cannot rea- sonably imagine this creature man should be made with such sub- lime perfections at first, as he himself might afterwards arrive at by a wise improvement of his powers : For God would not preclude either the diligence or the pleasure of his intelligent creature, from advancing itself to superior excellencies. But still that creature which was designed to bear hisMaker's nearest likeness and authority in this lower world, must have powers perfectly sufficient for his present well being and acting in that station wherein God his Creator placed him. It has been indeed the vain.fancyof some writers, that the eye of man in his first creation was so acute and penetrating, that it could discover those distant stars and planets of heaven, or those minuteAtoms in the contexture of earthly bodies round about us, which are now only to be seen by the help of optic glasses : And they have been so weak as to imaginé that his ear could take in themost distant and feeblest sounds, and was equal in its own original powers, to the advantages which we now receive from speaking and hearing trumpets: And that his feel- ing and . his smelling had such proportionable superiorities in his state of innocence beyond all that we now experience. But it,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=