'Tis true, by Creation he was a beautiful Creature, mo•lded after the Image of the first Beauty, bearing the superscription of God. He was then as a bright Morning Star, when he first appeared in the World. But he forthwith fell from his primitive station, the Orb of Innocency: He fell from thence into the Puddle of sin, into thick mire and clay, as the Psalmist. Psal. 40. 2. And being drenched in sin, he became more deformed and abominable in the eye of God, than that which is most loathsome to us. The veil of Light and Holiness, wherewith he was Beautified, being torn off the Soul, Sin besmeared it with ugly filthiness and pollution. The divine Light and Holiness, which shined in his Soul, is vanished; and Darkness and ⟨p. 9⟩Deformity has seized on him, and overspread him. Holiness was the moral Form of the Soul; but now sin gives it morally both its being and denomination. So that, what may be said of sin in the abstract, as that it is Deformity, Pollution, Filthiness, may be said of man in the concrete, he is deformed, filthy, polluted. We have cause to complain of this woeful change, in the words, of the Prophet, with a little variation, Isa. 3. 24. Instead of a sweet smell, there is a stink, instead of well-set hair baldness, and Deformity instead of Beauty.
'Tis true, by Creation he was a beautiful Creature, mo•lded after the Image of the first Beauty, bearing the superscription of God. He was then as a bright Morning Star, when he first appeared in the World. But he forthwith fell from his primitive station, the Orb of Innocency: He fell from thence into the Puddle of sin, into thick mire and clay, as the Psalmist. Psal. 40. 2. And being drenched in sin, he became more deformed and abominable in the eye of God, than that which is most loathsom to us. The vail of Light and Holiness, wherewith he was Beautified, being torn off the Soul, Sin besmeared it with ugly filthiness and pollution. The divine Light and Holiness, which shined in his Soul, is vanished; and Darkness and ⟨p. 9⟩Deformity has seized on him, and overspread him. Holiness was the moral Form of the Soul; but now sin gives it morally both its being and denomination. So that, what may be said of sin in the abstract, as that it is Deformity, Pollution, Filthiness, may be said of man in the concrete, he is deformed, filthy, polluted. We have cause to complain of this woful change, in the words, of the Prophet, with a little variation, Isa. 3. 24. Instead of a sweet smell, there is a stink, instead of well-set hair baldness, and Deformity instead of Beauty.
