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

FIRST, As to the righteousness of this state, consider, that as uncreated righteousness, the righteousness of God is the supreme rule; so all created righteousness, whether of men or angels, hath respect to a law as its rule, and is a conformity thereunto A creature can no more be morally independent on God▪ in it's actions and powers, than it can be naturally independent on him. A creature, as a creature, must acknowledge the Creator's will as it's supreme law for as it cannot be without him, so it must not be but for him, and according to his will: yet no law obliges, until it be revealed And hence it follows, that there was a law which man, as a rational creature, was subjected to in his creation; and that this law was revealed to him. God made man upright, says the text This presupposeth a law to which he was conformed in his creation; as when any thing is made regular, or according to rule, of necessity the rule itself is presupposed. Whence we may gather, that this law was no other than the eternal, indispensable law of righteousness, observed in all points by the second Adam, opposed by the carnal mind, some notions of which remain yet among the Pagans, who, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, Rom. ii. 15. In a word, this law is the very same which was afterwards summed up in the Ten Commandments, and promulgate on Mount Sinai to the Israelites, called by us the Moral Law: and man's righteousness consisted in conformity to this law or rule. More particularly, there is a two fold conformity required of a man; a conformity of the powers of his soul to the law, which you may call habitual righteousness; and a conformity of all his actions to it, which is actual righteousness. Now, God made man habitually righteous; man was to make himself actually righteous: the former was the stock God put into his hand; the latter, the improvement he should have made of it. The sum of what I have said, is, that the righteousness wherein man was created, was the conformity of all the faculties and powers of his soul to the moral law. This is what we call original righteousness, which man was originally endued with. We may take it up in these three things.