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

Thus have I shown you the holiness and happiness of man in this state. If any shall say, What's all this to us, who never tasted of that holy and happy state? They must know it nearly concerns us, in so far as Adam was the root of all mankind, our common head and representative; who received from God our inheritance and stock to keep it for himself and his children, and to convey it to them. The Lord put all mankind's stock (as it were) in one ship: and, as we ourselves should have done, he made our common father the pilot. He put a blessing in the root, to have been, if rightly managed, diffused into all the branches. According to our text, making Adam upright, he made man upright; and all mankind had that uprightness in him; for, if the •oot be holy, so are the branches. But more of this afterwards. Had Adam stood, none would have quarrelled the representation.

USE I. For Information. This shows us, (1) That not God, but man himself was the cause of his ruin. God made him upright: his Creator set him up, but he threw himself down. Was the Lord's directing and inclining him to good the reason of his woeful choice? Or did heaven deal so sparingly with him, that his pressing wants sent him to hell to seek supply? Nay, man was, and is, the cause of ⟨p. 29⟩his own ruin. (2.) God may most justly require of men perfect obedience to his law, and condemn them for their not obeying it perfectly, tho' now they have no ability to keep it. In so doing, he gathers but where he has strawed. He gave man ability to keep the whole law; man has lost it by his own fault: but his sin could never take away that right which God hath to exact perfect obedience of his creature, and to punish in case of disobedience. (3.) Behold here the infinite obligation we lie under▪ to Jesus Christ the second Adam; who with his own precious blood has bought our escheat. and freely makes offer of it again to us, Hos xiii. 9. and that with the advantage of everlasting security, that it can never be altogether lost any more, John x. 28, 29