how it came to take place so universally amongst men? What if we are perplexed and still at a loss to satisfy our own enquiries, how all this guilt and mischief came upon us; must we therefore deny what we see, and hear, and feel daily?

Can we account for all the secret things in the creation of God, in the world of meteors and minerals, the vegetables of the field, or the brutes of the earth, or the animal body of man? Does any man refuse to believe that the infinite variety of plants and flowers in all their beauteous colours and forms grow up out of the same dark and dirty soil, because he doth not know all the secret springs of their vegetation? Do men doubt of the truth of a loadstone's drawing iron to itself, and making a needle point to the north, because they cannot find out the way of its operation? Are we not sure that our food nourishes our bodies, and medicines relieve our pains, though we are utterly at a loss to tell all the ferments and motions of those atoms by which our nourishment is performed, or our diseases healed? Can we account for all the darknesses, and appearing difficulties and confusions among the events of providence ? Can we discover all the reasons of the wise conduct of God among his creatures? No surely, we cannot pretend to it: And yet since these matters of fact, and these events are obvious to all our senses, do we deny and refuse to believe these things which are evident in creation and providence, and which are communicated to us by so many springs and mediums of knowledge, merely because we cannot account for the original and secret causes or reasons of them? Or because we cannot reconcile some crossing appearances, and jarring apprehensions that attend them? Why then should this universal degeneracy and ruin of human nature be denied, though we cannot remove every objection that attends it? And yet if we will search faithfully into the causes and springs of this matter, so far as our natural reason, assisted by the light of revelation, will enable us, we may hope to find some solution of those hard questions, which may give a degree of satisfaction to humble and modest minds, though perhaps not sufficient to silence every curious and unreasonable cavil.

QUEST. II-How came this general Degeneracy, Vice, and Misery, to overspread Mankind in all Nations and in all Ages?

To find a complete and satisfactory answer to this enquiry is not a very easy thing. It was a vexing question among the ancient schools of the heathen philosophers, whence evil came

first among mankind? And though they had many guesses and loose conjectures, yet none of them could give an account of this matter, to satisfy the minds of studious men. And if we should not hit upon such a solution of this difficulty now, as may on every side make all things lie quite straight and easy, yet if we can but propose a way to solve it, which may maintain the honour of God, and justify his conduct in a good degree, we may expect the reader should be candid in his censures, where the matter of fact is so evident, and yet the manner of accounting for it is so difficult that it has employed the wisdom of great and learned men in all ages with so doubtful a success. To find an answer to this question, we shall not immediately run into revelation and scripture; though doubtless, we have the most certain and satisfactory account of it given us there; yet since what the scripture says of this matter is so short, and is to be derived chiefly from the third chapter of the book of Genesis, and the fifth chapter to the Romans, and from some few other general hints that are scattered up and down in the bible, let us try whether we cannot by a train of reasonings, with a little help from scripture, find out some clue that will lead us into the spring and eriginal of this sinful and miserable state; and afterward we will enquire whether or no this very clue of reasoning, this track of guilt and misery, be not the same which scripture more directly points out to us, and strongly confirms by all its sacred and divine discoveries on this subject. In order to trace out this matter by reasoning, let us begiu according to the following propositions:

I. This general degeneracy of mankind, so far as I can judge, can come upon them but by one of these three ways: either, 1. That the souls of all men existed in a former state, and sinned against their Baker there, and are sent to dwell in bodies in this world, attended with such unhappy circumstances of sin and misery, either as a natural consequent of, or as a punishment for their former sins in some other world. Or, 2. That one original parent of them all sinned against his Maker, and sustained the miseries consequent upon it in his own person first, and when he became a father, he spread a sinful and miserable nature through all his race and offspring by mere propagation. Or, 3. Some original person stood before God, as a common federal head and representative of mankind, upon condition of bringing happiness or misery on all the race according as he behaved, well or ill; and through his disobedience, sin and misery came upon all whose head he was, or whom he represented. If the two first will not solve the difficulty, we shall be constrained to take in the last. Let us see how far each will go.

II. This present wretched state of things, could not arise from

the particular personal sin of all single souls in a former state before they came into this world: This present universal misery and wretchedness, could never be appointed as a punishment to us for our former personal offences against our Maker, for we know nothing of any such former state or former offences; we have not the least idea or remembrance of it: Now personal guilt cannot be properly punished by the all-knowing and just God, where the sinner has no consciousness nor remembrance of the crime. There must be the same mind, the same spirit, the same intelligent self or person, conscious both of the past personal sin, and of the present punishment, to make it appear to be a proper instance of the anger of God for their sin; otherwise the ends of personal punishment cannot be answered, sinning creatures will not be made to see the justice of their punisher, nor can they condemn themselves as justly deserv ing such misery. Without this consciousness and remembrance, all our miseries would be nothing but afflictive evils brought on us by our Creator, not as personal criminals, but as mere creatures, and consequently not agreeable to the goodness and equity of a God.

III. If this sinful and miserable condition of men cannot be supposed to arise from their own personal sins in a pre-existent. state, we may enquire then in the next place, whether it may not be derived from some original parent of our race, who sinning against God, lost his own innocence, and therewith lost his habit or principles of virtue and goodness; he was exposed to the displeasure of his Maker, and fell under just and grievous miseries.

Such a primitive sinner, if he proceeded to propagate his offspring according to the common rules or laws of nature, must communicate to them such a sinful nature as he had himself, and they will stand exposed to the natural effects of his sin, as well as to all following penal miseries for their own sins. The same irregular ferments of flesh and blood, and such corrupt appetites and vicicus passions, will be found in them also; which still grew stronger before the young creatures grew up, so far as to exercise their reason. And when by degrees they came to know good and evil, and to be capable of actual sin, these vicious propensities did generally, if not always, overcome their rational faculties, did prevail upon their wills to a frequent actual compliance, and led them away effectually to sin against their Maker, and so to expose themselves more and more to his displeasure, and to confirm their own habits of sin. And thus every one of the race of man, in their successive seasons of life, might become personally vicious, or deprived of the holy image of God, by their descending from vicious parents, and were deprived of the favour of God by their own actual compliances with these vicious pro

pensities of nature, that is, by actual iniquities. I think it may be granted, that this supposition will solve the difficulty in some measure, and will go a great way toward an answer to the present enquiry.

IV. But still this in my opinion seems hardly sufficient to account for the miseries which come upon children from their very birth, for the pains and agonies, and dying groans, and death itself in their infant state, before they are capable of knowing or doing good and evil, or of committing actual sins: And the reason I give for my opinion is this; these tendencies or propensities towards evil in the infant state, even though the soul or will complies with them, while there is no possible knowledge of a law or duty, can hardly be called actual sins: Nor can children, while incapable of proper virtue or vice, merit such pains and agonies of themselves as they often suffer. And I can scarce suppose they would be thus punished or tormented by a righteous or wise Governor in their infant age, when they cannot possibly commit actual sin, nor have any knowledge of good or evil, merely upon the account of the necessary propagation of a sinful nature to them from their parents, since they come into this state by that original law of creation and propagation, which a kind and wise Creator appointed to his innocent creatures. I cannot account for their being treated as sinners, unless they were some way involved in guilt or sin, as soon as they are born: And I do not see how this can be, unless they have sin some way imputed to them by their interest in, and communion with some common federal head, surety or representative, who hath actually sinned.

V. I might add also, that this natural propagation of sinful inclinations from a common parent by a law of creation, seems difficult to be reconciled with the justice and goodness of God, unless we suppose that some such legal or federal guilt and condemnation came upon the race of man by the misbehaviour of a common surety or head. It seems exceeding hard to suppose that such a righteous and holy God the Creator, who is also a

By "sin or guilt imputed," I do not mean that any thing or action really faulty, is charged by way of accusation on the persons of infants, as though they hereby become personally faulty or blameable, or that the very acts of sin are transferred so as to make them proper sinners or criminals; but I mean that the children of some first man may be by a righteous covenant, so far esteemed one with their parent when be sinned, as to be in some sense, involved with him in his state of condemnation, and liable to the miseries that proceed from it. This I have made to appear et large in the plainest light, in a short appendix or d ssertation on "Imputed Sin and Righteousness ;" and I desire all my expres sions in this book may be construed in a consistency with this remark, and with that dissertation at the end of the book. The arguments therefore which are brought against this doctrine, from the impossibility or the injustice of imputing the very actions of one man to another, have no force, since I have so often declared in that essay, that actions are not properly transferred by imputation, but the legal result of those actions.

being of such infinite goodness, should by a powerful law and order of creation, which is now called nature, appoint young intelligent creatures to come into being in such unhappy and degenerate circumstances, liable to such intense pains and miseries, and under such powerful tendencies and propensities to evil by the mere law of propagation, as should almost unavoidably expose them to ten thousand actual sins as they grow up, if they were not born under some judicial sentence of God as a governor on the account of moral evil or sin; which moral evil must be before committed, either by themselves or by some representative. It is hard to suppose, that the creating power and decree of God, or his law of nature for propagation, should place mankind in such a situation as to render them unavoidably sinful and miserable in a degree, before they have any personal sin or guilt to deserve it, unless you suppose them to be some way interested or involved in something of guilt or sin, which was derived from a common head, surety or represen tative, who might be appointed by some wise and righteous constitution to act for them*.

VI. Upon the whole view of things therefore, I know not how to resolve this difficulty, but by supposing this universal sinfulness and misery of our whole species, to arise from the sin and guilt of some person, who was both a primitive parent or natural fountain of our race, and who was also set up as a common head or legal representative of all mankind: And that he by sinning against his Maker, lost his own principles of virtue and goodness, exposed himself and his posterity, whom he naturally produced, and whom he legally represented, to the displeasure of his Maker, and so brought sin and misery into the very nature of man, and spread or conveyed this sin or misery through all his offspring.

I must confess I am not fond of such a scheme or hypothesis, of deriving some sort of guilt from a surety or representative, though I know it has been embraced by a considerable party of christians ancient and modern. No; I would gladly renounce it, because of some great difficulties attending it, if I could find any other way to relieve the much greater difficulties and harder imputations upon the conduct of divine providence, which will attend this enquiry, if we follow any other track of sentiments.

If it could be well made out, that the whole race of mankind are par. takers of sinful inclinations and evil passions and biasses to vice, and also are exposed to many sharp actual sufferings, and to death, merely and only by the original divine law of their propagation from their parents who had sinned; and if the justice and goodness of God could be vindicated in making and maintaining such a dreadful law or order of propagation through six thousand years; we have no need of further enquiries, but might here be at rest. But if such a scheme be 80 injurious to the goodness and equity of God, as it seems to be, then we are constrained to seek a little further for a satisfactory account of this universal degeneracy and misery of mankind.