N03999:230
Captives bound in chains, made free by Christ their surety
Captives bound in chains, made free by Christ their surety: or, The misery of graceless sinners, and their recovery by Christ their Saviour. By T. Doolittel [sic]. ; [Three lines from Isaiah]
Boston: printed by Rogers & Fowle for J. Edwards, 1742
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
1. Man was free from sin; not the least spot or stain by creation in this pure nature of man; he was then free from pride, and free from the inordinate love of the world, and from every thing offensive & displeasing to God. Eccles. 7.29. — God made man upright. The uprightness of a man renewed by sanctifying grace denotes the sincerity of his heart, though there be sin inherent in him. So Job was an upright man, Job 1.1. But the uprightness of man at first created by God denoteth the perfect Image of God in the presence of that which was good, and absence of all sin. Gen. 1.26, 27.
2. Man had a freedom or liberty of will, to will and to do what God did require from him.
3. A freedom from all misery, calamity and punishments. Man had then a freedom from sickness, from sorrow and from affliction and death; for all these are the fruits of sin: Man had never been in bondage to these; if he had not become a bondslave to ⟨p. 175⟩Satan and to sin. And in this state man had no need of a Redeemer, because he was not then a captive.