274 RUIN AND RECOVERY, &I. And methinks, when I take my justest survey of this lower world, with all the inhabitants of it, I can look upon it noother- wise than as a huge and magnificent structure in ruins, and turned into a prison and a lazar-house or hospital, wherein lie millions of criminals and rebels against their Creator, Under condemnation to misery and death; who are at the same time sick of a mortal distemper, and disordered in their minds, even to distraction : Hence proceed those infinite follies and vices which are continually practised here, and the righteous anger of an offended God is visible in ten thousand instances. Yet there are proclamations of divine grace, health, and life sounding amengst them, either with a louder voiceor in gentler whispers, though very few of them take any notice thereof. But out of this great prison, this infirmary, there is, here and there, one who is called powerfully by divine grace, and attends to the offers of reconciliation, and complies with the proposals ofpeace : His sins are pardoned, he is healed of his worst distemper; and though his body is appointed to go down to the dust for a season, yet his soul is taken upwards to a region of blessedness, while the bulk of these miserable and guilty inhabitants perish in their own wilful madness, and by the just executions of divine anger. Before I finish this general head I would ask leave to make one remark, and that is, What an unreasonable thing is it to deny this. doctrine of the universal depravity and corruption of mankind, and renounce it in every degree, when it appears so evident to our eyes, and to our ears, and to our daily and constant observation and experi- ence in so many thousand instances ? Is it not almost like wink- ing against the light, since the premises are so strong and glaring, and the inference so powerfully demands our assent ? I must profess, that with all the diligence and impartiality with which I am capable of reviewing what ,I have written on this universal degeneracy of mankind, I am net conscious that 1 have made a false representation of this matter, or aggravated it beyond truth. The innumerable miseries, follies and madness of mankind, which in various forms strikeoureyes, our ears, and our thoughtsfrom day today, confirm my sentiments of the doc- trine of some original anduniversalfall of manfront the purity andglory of his creation. And what is the chief temptation that leads some men to deny this doctrine ? Is it not becausethey cannot give a satisfac- tory account how to solve someof the difficulties that attend it ? Many of the heathen philosophers believed it from their own experience, and their daily survey of mankind, though they were utterly at a loss how to account for it : And what if we could never assign any sufficient and satisfactory reason and cause for it, or shew how this spreading degeneracy begun, or
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