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

I begin with the first of them, namely, The state of Innocence: that beholding man polished after the similitude of a palace▪ the ruins […] the more affect us; we may the more prize that matchless Person, whom the Father has appointed the repairer of the breach; and that we may, with fixed resolves, betake ourselves to that way which leadeth to the city that hath unmoveable foundations. In the text we have three things.

I begin with the first of them, namely, The state of Innocence: that beholding man polished after the similitude of a palace▪ the ruins 〈…〉 the more affect us; we may the more prize that matchless Person, whom the Father has appointed the repairer of the breach; and that we may, with fixed resolves, betake ourselves to that way which leadeth to the city that hath unmoveable foundations. In the text we have three things.

1. The state of Innocence wherein man was created, God hath made man upright. By Man here, we are to understand our first Parents; the archetypal pair, the root of mankind, the compendized world, and the fountain from whence all generations have streamed; as may appear by comparing Gen. v. 1, 2. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him, male and female created he them, and blessed them, (as the root of mankind,) and called their name Adam. The original words is the same in our text, in this sense, man was made right, (agreeable to the nature of God, whose work is perfect) without any imperfection, corruption, or principle of corruption in his body or soul. He was made upright; that is, straight with the will and law of God, without any irregularity in his soul. By the set it ⟨p. 18⟩got in its creation, it directly pointed towards God, as his chief end; which straight inclination was represented as in an emblem, by the erect figure of his body a figure that no other living creature partakes of. What David was in a gospel sense, that was he in a legal sense, one according to God's own heart altogether righteous, pure and holy. God made him thus: he did not first make him, and then make him righteous; but in the very making of him, he made him righteous. Original righteousness was concreated with him; so that in the same moment he was a man, he was a righteous man, morally good; with the same breath that God breathed in him a living soul, he breathed in him a righteous soul