Íd !i I!I ?,. bISCOURSE XIII. 289 conveyance and communication of the original effects of the sin of Adam through every generation of man, it is granted there are some difficulties attending it: but these are generally answered by the writers on that subject ; and for me to divert from my pre- sent discourse, in order to debate this point here, would be too tedious. The equity of this wise and awful constitution of God has been lately vindicated in a large treatise on the " Ruin and Re- covery of Mankind," especially in the second edition of that book. But it is enough for my present argument to say, that God himself will make the equity of this constitution to appear with much more evidence and conviction in the last great day, when millions of actual criminals shall stand before the judgment - seat, who owe the first spring of their sin and ruin to our common parent, and yet will fall under the righteous condemnation of the judge. II. When God decreed to give thee a being, O sinner, and designed thee in his eternal ideas to be a man, placed among a thousand blessings of nature and providence, it was then a fa- vour of thy Creator ; for thou wert designed also in this original divine idea to have full sufficiency of power to become wise and happy. It was also a favour front thy Creator that he took all these thy sufficiencies of power, and put them into the hand of one man, even the Father of thy race, because he was as wise, and holy, and as well able as any man of his posterity could be, to preserve his station in the favour of God, and to secure thy happiness together with his own ; and he had much stronger ob- ligations to obey his Maker, and more powerful motives to secure thy happiness than thou thyself, or any single man could possibly have, because he was intrusted with the felicity of so many mil- lions of his own dear offspring as well as his own. Now though Adam, thy first father, being thus furnished with sufficiencies of power and with the strongest obligations to preserve himself and thee, has actually sinned and ruined himself and his offspring ; this is indeed an unhappy truth ; but the great God is not to blame, who has not only acted wisely but kindly towards his creatures in this constitution, because, so far as we can judge, it was much more probable that Adam would have maintained his innocence and his happiness, together with that of his offspring. Again, When the race of man was ruined, and God saw that every man would come into the world under unhappy circumstances of guilt and corruption of nature, Ile provided a covenant of grace, and brought thee into some knowledge of it : And this had been effectual to have recovered and saved thee from the ruins of the fall if thou hadst exerted all thy force, employed all thy natural powers of understanding and will for this purpose, and used all vii. T
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