Here God himself, not long after the fall, expressly intimates, that Cain had a power to choose either good or evil, and that his happiness depended on the choice he should make. In conformity to this passage, St. John says that Cain's works were evil, and those of his brother righteous. But if the fall had so far vitiated the nature of man, as to have ingenerated a permanent disposition to evil, and indisposition to good, the works of Abel must have been as unrighteous as those of his brother. In Gen. iv. 5, it is testified of Noah, that he was a just man, and perfect, and walked with God; a character totally incompatible with the supposition that the fall rendered human nature vicious and unsound to the very core. Of Job it is said, that he was perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil. And in another passage God himself is represented as calling Job a perfect and an upright man, one that feared God and escherved evil. Now had Adam's guilt been so deeply infused into his posterity as to produce a continual aversion to all good, and an unceasing conversion to all evil, then there could not, after the first transgression, have been a single perfect and upright man upon the whole face

of the earth. But the contrary examples prove, that men were under no natural or innate bias to unrighteousness; and that there were so many sinners in the world, not because sin was a mechanical necessity, but because men grossly abused the moral capacity which God had given them. In Acts 10, we read of Cornelius, a centurion, a devout man, and one who feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always. Indeed, in all ages and amongst all nations, there have been righteous as well as wicked, there have been some who have obeyed, though there have been more who have transgressed the law written on their hearts, the law, whose practice their reason approves, and whose obligations their conscience feels.

3. Our original ancestors were no sooner seated in paradise, than they found themselves in a state of trial. And the trial on which they were put at that time was not the trial of their obedience to the moral law, but to a positive precept. Thou shalt not eat of

the tree of knowledge of good and of evil.

4. Our first parents when in paradise, where the earth spontaneously brought forth every thing to sup

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ply their wants, and where they were the only inhabitants, were not tried by their obedience to the law of moral obligation, because they could in that state be under no possible temptation to falsehood, to adultery, to injustice, or to any immorality. God, therefore, instead of making their enjoyment of his favour depend on their obedience to the statutes of the moral law, which they had no temptation to violate, made it depend on their obedience to a single injunction, not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and of evil, which did operate as a charm on their senses, which was grateful to the eye, and pleasing to the smell, and which consequently exercised their self denial, and formed a satisfactory test of their obedience. Their moral agency therefore consisted in combating the charm of external agency, and repelling the influence of that temptation. The forbidden fruit, acting on their senses, inflamed their appetites, and inclined them to disobedience; whilst the love of him who had provided for them such abundance of delights, and gave them full power to enjoy all the varied luxuries of paradise with this single exception, combined with the fear of incurring the penalty which God had

threatened, seemed more forcibly to impel them to obedience. But, much like their descendants, they seem to have been vanquished by the desire of present gratification. Beguiled by immediate pleasure, they disregarded the more distant consequences. They practised upon themselves the delusions of a self imposture, similar to that which we too often practise upon ourselves, in those cases in which our appetites are inflamed by the nearness of some present, but criminal indulgence. They, perhaps, imagined that if they transgressed, the transgression might be concealed, or the consequences might not be so bad as were threatened. Conscious of the goodness of God, they might fondly hope, that one single offence would not so provoke his wrath, as to cause him to deprive them of all the happiness his bounty had provided, to drive them from his presence, and doom them to destruction. Thus listening to the vain imaginations of their own hearts, they suffered the flame of sensual desire to make its inroads into the soul, till it became too violent to be extinguished. They ate of the forbidden fruit; they violated the injunction of God, and brought death into the world.

5. Hence we see that our first parents were no sooner created, than they were tempted, like as we are, though they had, as we have, reason, and conscience, and freedom of will to vanquish temptation, by the right use and aid of which they might have subdued it.

6. Whence then does it appear that the moral powers of resisting temptation, and of conforming to the law of a rational nature, or to the will of God, were stronger in our first parents, than in many of their descendants; or that they possessed an original righteousness, which has been entirely lost in their descendants? Such suggestions are not to be found in the account of the fall, nor in any other parts of the scriptures. The contrary is rather proved by the history; for Eve seems, as far as can be gathered from the relation of Moses, to have yielded to the first temptation, and to have been vanquished by the first impulse of unlicensed desire. Many of her frail and fair daughters, who derive from her sorrow and travail in the conception of children, seem successfully to have resisted temptations, stronger than these, by which their female progenitor was overcome. And