A44439:267
A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures
A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures by Ezekiel Hopkins ...
London: printed by E.H. for Nathanael Ranew, 1693
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Sermon 4: The Nature, Danger, Aggravations, and Cure of Presumptuous Sinning, &c. ON
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Before the Fall, Adam stood in no need at all of any such thing as Special Grace, as we now stand in need of, but the same assistance of God, for the kind of it, that enabled him to Move, or to Speak, or to Think, was sufficient also to enable him to perform the most Spiritual Obedience, because then the most Spiritual Obedience was no more to him, than those Actions which we call Natural, as Eating, and Drinking, Speaking, Walking, and Thinking, are to us now, and therefore he required no more assistance from God for the performance of Spiritual Obedience, than we now require from God for our Natural Actions. ⟨p. 220⟩Now as he had this perfection of power to perform what was good, so he had a proneness of will also to it; but yet in that proneness there was not perseverance: He might, as afterwards he did, turn aside from God unto Satan, and notwithstanding his inclination to Obedience, and proneness to that which was Good, yet having not a perseverance in that proneness, but being Lord over his own Will, as he was over the rest of the visible Creation, he voluntarily and wilfully consented to the Commission of Sin.
Why now, Secondly, This voluntary inclination of Adam to Sin, hath ever since by a dreadful, yet righteous Judgment of God, brought upon all his Posterity a natural and necessary inclination unto Sin; so that now, either whatever they do is Sin, or there is Sin in whatever they do. Now that we may clearly apprehend how Adam's first Sin and Provocation committed so many Thousand Years ago, causes such strong propensions to Sin in all his Posterity, you must observe these following particulars.
Why now, Secondly, This voluntary inclination of Adam to Sin, hath ever since by a dreadful, yet righteous Judgmen of God, brought upon all his Posterity a natural and necessary inclination unto Sin; so that now, either whatever they do is Sin, or there is Sin in whatever they do. Now that we may clearly apprehend how Adam's first Sin and Provocation committed so many Thousand Years ago, causes such strong propensions to Sin in all his Posterity, you must observe these following particulars.