310 RUIN AND RECOVERY, &C. and Eve liad no garments in their state of innocency, yet they werenot entirely naked, but were covered with a bright shining light or glory, as a token of their own innocence, and the divine favour andpresence ; such glory as angels sometimes appeared in, and such as Christ wore on the holy mount, such as arrayed him like a bright cloud at his ascent to heaven, and such as saints shall put on at the resurrection, when they shall be raised in power and glory. But God may be justly supposed to take away his clothing of glory from them, upon their sin, as a token of his withdrawing his favour and presence : For without this supposition how could they be said to be more naked after their sin than they were before ? And how 'Could our first parents be painfully sensibleof any nakedness, if they liad not 1pst something which clothed them ? God also further mani- fested his displeasure, by cursing the ground for their sakes, and pronouncing upon Adam and Eve many sorrows, pains and labours in this life, and their returning to dust in death; verses 10-19. VII. Adam after his sin propagated his kind, or produced his offspring according to the law of nature ; not in the moral likeness or image of God, not in righteousness and true holiness, hut in his own sinful likeness, as one fallen from Gòd, with irregular passions, appetites to evil, corrupt inclinations, and sinful nature. See Gen. y. 1 -3. cited under proposition III. Those expressions in Job seemalso to refer to the same dege- neracy : What is man that he should be clean, or the son of man that he should be righteous? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one ; Job xv. 14. and chapter xiv. 4. David also says the same thing ; Ps. li. 5. .ßehold I was slaapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Some persons wouldpersuade us, that these words are only an hyperbolical aggravation of David's early sins, and propensity to evil from his childhood :' But the text is strong and plain in asserting sin some way to belong to his very conception, and to be conveyed from his natural parents, which is a different idea from his actual sins, or even from his early propensity to sin in his infancy : It asserts and chews the cause or spring both of this evil propensity and of his actual sinning which operated before he was born : So that these expressions cannot be an hyperbole, or figurative exaggeration of what is, but it seem; to be a downright fiction of what is not, if original pravity be not thus conveyed and derived. If we look into the beginning of the bible, we shall find Moses describing the universal cot., ruption of mankind. Gen. vi. 5. Every imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man was only evil continually. And verse 12. Allflesh had corrupted its way on the earth. And Fhápter viii. 22. The imagination of man's heart is evil front
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