Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

Evidence 1. The darkness that was upon the face of the world before, and at the time when Christ came, arising as the sun of righteousness upon the earth. When Adam by his sin had lost that primitive light wherewith he was endued in his creation, it pleased God to make a gracious revelation of his mind and will to him, touching the way of salvation, Gen iii. 15. This was handed down by him, and other godly fathers, before the flood: yet the natural darkness of the mind of man prevailed so far against that revelation, as to carry off all sense of true religion from the old world, except what remained in Noah's family, which was preserved in the ark. After the flood, as men multiplied on the earth, the natural darkness of mind prevails again, and the light decays, till it died out among the generality of mankind, and is preserved only among the posterity of Shem. And even with them it was well near its setting, when God called Abraham from serving other gods, Josh. xxiv. 15. God gives Abraham a more clear and full revelation, and he communicates the same to his family, Gen. xvii. 19. yet the natural darkness wears it out at length, s••e that it was preserved among the posterity of Jacob. They being carried down into Egypt, that darkness prevailed so, as to leave them very little sense of true religion: and a new revelation behoved to be made them in the wilderness. And many a cloud of darkness got above that, now and then, during the time from Moses to CHRIST. When CHRIST came, the world was divided into Jews and Gentiles. The Jews, and the true light with them, were within an enclosure, Psal. cxliii. 19, 20. Betwixt them and the Gentile world, there was a partition wall of GOD's making, namely, the ceremonial law; and ⟨p. 48⟩upon that there was reared up another of man's own making, namely, a rooted enmity betwixt the parties, Eph ii. 14, 15. If we look abroad without the enclosure, (and except those proselytes of the Gentiles, who, by means of some rays of light breaking forth unto them from within the enclosure, having renounced idolatry, worshipped the true God, but did not conform to the Mosaical rites) we see nothing but dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty, Psal. lxxiv. 20