MANS natural and extinguishable cravings are after Happiness. God at first put him in a fair way for the securing and obtaining of it; having, besides the resentments of it imprinted in his nature, which still remain, given him a Rule to direct him the way to it, and a concreated power to conform to that Rule, and brought him under strongest obligations to that Conformity. But, by his unhappy fall, he hath reduced himself to a state of misery, in which the whole Race of sinful men is involved, and under which he must have abode for ever, had not God, in his rich mercy, opened a new and living way for his recovery. This is revealed in the Gospel, in which life and immortality are brought to light; but for which undone man must have groped in the dark, and it is certain, that those to whom this Revelation is not made, do but grasp after shadows instead of substances, and lay out their money for that which is not bread. Their insatiable desires push them forward in quest of felicity, and their crazed and deluded understandings, which ⟨p. 4⟩call good evil, and evil good, point them to Objects that are empty, and courses that will undo them; the natural man knows not the root of his misery, nor the depth and strength of it much less the only way of his recovery. The generality of men are immerged in sense, & if they can but gratify their carnal lusts with sensible objects, it is enough: whence they seek no farther than the things of the World, and if they can obtain by all their industry, the Profits, Pleasures and Honours here below, they can bless themselves. There are some indeed, who have improved the light of nature, and the broken fragments of the Law of it, remaining in them, by the exercise of Reason, to a more plausible profession and practice; they acknowledge man to be placed in an higher orb than brutes, and to stand in need of some b•tter object than those that are merely sensual, to give them satisfaction: but therein also they have become vain in their imaginations; hence, the farthest they have reached, hath been to place mans felicity in moral virtue, of which they have but rude guesses, and being ignorant of the state of nature by sin, have h•p•d by their own power and goodness to oblige God and procure their own happiness; not knowing either the state of damnation which they were born in, or the effe•acy of Original Sin in them:
MANS natural and extinguishable cravings are after Happiness. God at first put him in a fair way for the securing and obtaining of it; having, besides the resentments of it imprinted in his nature, which still remain, given him a Rule to direct him the way to it, and a concreated power to conform to that Rule, and brought him under strongest obligations to that Conformity. But, by his unhappy fall, he hath reduced himself to a state of misery, in which the whole Race of sinful men is involved, and under which he must have abode for ever, had not God, in his rich mercy, opened a new and living way for his recovery. This is revealed in the Gospel, in which life and immortality are brought to light; but for which undone man must have groped in the dark, and it is certain, that those to whom this Revelation is not made, do but grasp after shadows instead of substances, and lay out their money for that which is not bread. Their insatiable desires push them forward in quest of felecity, and their crazed and deluded understandings, which ⟨p. 4⟩call good evil, and evil good, point them to Objects that are empty, and courses that will undo them; the natural man knows not the root of his misery, nor the depth and strength of it much less the only way of his recovery. The generality of men are immerged in sens•, & if they can but gratifie their carnal lusts with sensible objects, it is enough: whence they seek no farther than the things of the World, and if they can obtain by all their industry, the Profits, Pleasures and Honours here below, they can bless themselves. There are some indeed, who have improved the light of nature, and the broken fragments of the Law of it, remaining in them, by the exercise of Reason, to a more plausible profession and practice; they acknowledge man to be placed in an higher orb than bruits, and to stand in need of some b•tter object than those that are meerly sensual, to give them satisfaction: but therein also they have become vain in their imaginations; hence, the farthest they have reached, hath been to place mans felicity in moral vertue, of which they have but rude guesses, and being ignorant of the state of nature by sin, have h•p•d by their own power and goodness to oblige God and pr•cure their own happiness; not knowing either the state of damnation which they were born in, or the effe•acy of Original Sin in them:
