The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

God rejected the offering of Cain, and accepted the sacrifice of Abel: Whereupon Cain, in imitation of the Devil, envied his Brother, and in envy slew him, to foretell the world what the corrupted nature of man would prove, and how malignant it would be against the sanctified, and what the holy Seed that are accepted of God must look for in this world, for the hope of an everlasting blessedness with God. After this, God's patience waited on mankind, not executing the threatened death upon their bodies, till they had lived seven or eight or nine hundred years a piece: which mercy was abused to their greater sin,¹ (the length of their lives occasioning their excessive sensuality,² worldliness, and contempt of God, and life eternal) so that the number of the holy Seed was at last so small, and the wickedness of mankind so great, that God resolved to drown the world: Only righteous Noah and his family (eight persons) he saved in an Ark, which he directed him to make, for the preservation of himself, and the species of Aerial and Terrestrial Animals. After which Flood,³ the earth was peopled in time from Noah, to whom God gave Precepts of Piety and Justice, ⟨p. 211⟩which by tradition came down to his posterity through the world. But still the greater part did corrupt their ways, and followed Satan, and the holy Seed was the smaller part:⁴ of whom Abraham, being exemplary in holiness and righteousness, with his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, God did in special approbation of their righteousness renew his gracious covenant with them, and enlarge it with the addition of many temporal blessings, and special privileges to their posterity after them; promising that they should possess the Land of Canaan, and be to him a peculiar people above all the people of the earth: The children of Jacob being afterward by a famine removed into Egypt, there multiplied to a great people; The King of Egypt therefore oppressed them, and used them as slaves,⁵ to make his brick, by cruel impositions: Till at last God raised them up Moses for a deliverer, to whom God committed his message to the King, and to whom he gave power to work miracles for their deliverance, and whom he made their Captain to lead them out of Egypt towards the promised Land.