The peril of the times displayed. Or The danger of mens taking up with…

2. Whence is it that a people in general come to do so?

A. This will be discovered by the following conclusions.

1. Man is naturally a stranger to the power of Godliness. He is so far from the vigorous activity of it in him, that he hath not so much as the principle of it. The state of nature since the Apostasy, is a state of alienation from God. Grace, which is the root of true Piety, is not radicated in the nature of fallen man, but it is a supernatural gift of the Spirit of God, bestowed on us in our Regeneration, till ⟨p. 36⟩which we are full of all the principles of Impiety; we have a full description of a natural man given us, in Rom. 3.10, to 20. and there is nothing in all of it, but what is directly contrary to Godliness; and yet thus it is with every Child of Adam by reason of that woeful fall of his; and the Children of Godly men have it in them as well as others: Jew and Gentile share alike in this, Rom. 3.9. they are all under sin. The difference between the one and the other is only in this, that the one have the means, and advantages to seek and obtain a deliverance from it, which the other have not.

1. Man is naturally a stranger to the power of Godliness. He is so far from the vigorous activity of it in him, that he hath not so much as the principle of it. The state of nature since the Apostasy, is a state of alienation from God. Grace, which is the root of true Piety, is not radicated in the nature of fallen man, but it is a supernatural gift of the Spiit of God, bestowed on us in our Regeneration, till