is opened in our text: The mind is defiled; the thoughts of the heart are evil; the will and affections are defiled: the imagination of the thoughts of the heart, (i. e. whatsoever the heart frameth within itself by thinking, such as judgment, choice, purposes, devices, desires, every inward motion;) or rather, the frame of thoughts of the heart (namely, the frame, make, or mould, of these, 1 Chron. xxix. 18.) is evil: Yea, and every imagination, every frame, of his thoughts, is so: The heart is ever framing something, but never one right thing: the frame of thoughts, in the heart of man, is exceeding various: yet are they never cast into a right frame: But is there not, at least, a mixture of good in them? No, they are only evil, there is nothing in them truly good and acceptable to God: nor can any thing be so, that comes out of that forge; where not the Spirit of God, but "the prince of the power of the air worketh," Eph. ii. 2. Whatever changes may be found in them, are only from evil to evil; for the imagination of the heart, or frame of thoughts in natural men, is evil continually, or every day: From the first day, to the last day in this state, they are in midnight darkness; there is not a glimmering of the light of holiness in them; not one holy thought can ever be produced by the unholy heart! O what a vile heart is this! O what a corrupt nature is this! the tree that always brings forth fruit, but never good fruit, whatever soil it be set in, whatever pains be taken on it, must naturally be an evil tree: and what can that heart be, whereof every imagination, every set of thoughts is only evil, and that continually? Surely that corruption is ingrained in our hearts, interwoven with our very nature, has sunk into the marrow of our souls and will never be cured, but by a miracle of grace. Now such is man's heart, such is his nature, till regenerating grace change it; God that searcheth the heart, saw man's heart was so, he took special notice of it: and the faithful and true witness cannot mistake our case, though we are most apt to mistake ourselves in this point and generally do overlook it.

Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart saying, What is that to us? Let that generation of whom the text speaks, see to that; For the Lord has left the case of that generation on record, to be a looking-glass to all after-generations, wherein they may see their own corruption of heart, and what their lives would be too, if he restrained them not; for, "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man," Prov. xxvii. 19. Adam's fall has framed all men's hearts alike in this matter: Hence the Apostle, Rom. iii. 10. proves the corruption of the nature, hearts, and lives of all

men, from what the Psalmist says of the wicked in his day, Psal. xiv. 1,2,3. Psal. v. 9. Psal. cxl. 3. Psal. x. 7. Psal. xxxvi. 1. and from what Jeremiah saith of the wicked in his day, Jer. ix. 3. and from what Isaiah says of those that lived in his time, Isa. lvii 7, 8. and concludes with that, ver. 19. "Now we know, that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Had the history of the deluge been transmitted unto us without the reason thereof in the text, we might thence have gathered the corruption and total depravation of man's nature, for what other quarrel could a holy and just God have with the infants that were destroyed by the flood, seeing they had no actual sin? If we saw a wise man, who having made a curious piece of work, and heartily approved of it when he gave it out of his hand, as fit for the use it was designed for, rise up in wrath and break it all in pieces, when he looked on it afterwards; would we not thence conclude the frame of it had been quite marred, since it went out of his hand, and that it did not serve for that use it was at first designed for? How much more when we see the holy and wise God destroying the work of his own hands, once solemnly pronounced by him very good, may we conclude that the original frame thereof is utterly marred, that it cannot be mended, but it must needs be new made, or lost altogether? Gen. vi. 6, 7. "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart: And the Lord said, I will destroy man;" or blot him out as a man doth a sentence out of a book, that cannot be corrected by cutting off some letters, syllables, or words, and interlining others here and there, but must needs be wholly new framed. But did the deluge carry off this corruption of man's nature? Did it mend the matter? No, it did not: God, in his holy providence, "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the new world may become guilty before God," as well as the old, permits that corruption of nature to break out in Noah, the father of the new world, after the deluge was over. Behold him as another Adam, sinning in the fruit of a tree, Gen. ix. 20, 21. "He planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent." More than that, God gives the same reason against the new deluge, which he gives in our text for bringing that on the old world: "I will not (saith he) again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth;" Gen. vii. 21. whereby it is intimated, that there is no mending of the matter by this means;

and that if he would always take the same course with men that he had done, he would be always sending deluges on the earth, seeing the curruption of man's nature remains still: But though the flood could not carry off the corruption of nature, yet it pointed at the way how it is to be done; to wit, That men must be born of water and of the Spirit, raised from spiritual death in sin, by the grace of Jesus Christ, who came by water and blood; out of which a new world of saints arise in regeneration, even as the new world of sinners out of the waters, where they had long lain buried, as it were, in the ark: This we learn from 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21. where the Apostle, speaking of Noah's ark, saith, "Wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water: The like figure whereunto, even baptism doth also now save us. 99 Now the waters of the deluge being like a figure to baptism, it plainly follows, that they signified (as baptism doth) "the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." To conclude, then, these waters, though now dried up, may serve us for a lookingglass, in which we may see the total corruption of our nature, and the necessity of regeneration. From the text thus explained, ariseth this weighty point of DOCTRINE, which he that runs may read in it, viz. "Man's nature is now wholly corrupted." Now is there a sad alteration, a wonderful overturn, in the nature of man: where, at first, there was nothing evil, now there is nothing good. In prosecuting of this DocTRINE, I shall

FIRST, Confirm it.

SECONDLY, Represent this Corruption of Nature in its several parts.

THIRDLY, Show you how Man's Nature comes to be thus corrupted.

LASTLY, Make application.

THAT MAN'S NATURE IS CORRUPTED.

FIRST, I am to confirm the Doctrine of the Corruption of Man's Nature; to hold the glass to your eyes, wherein you may see your sinful nature; which, though God takes particular notice of it, many do quite overlook. And here we shall consult, 1. God's Word. 2. Man's Experience and Observation. I. For Scripture-proof let us consider,

FIRST, How the Scripture takes particular notice of fallen Adam's communicating his image to his posterity, Gen. v. 3. "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth." Compare with this, ver. 1. of that

chapter: "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him." Behold here how the image after which man was made, and the image after which he is begotten, are opposed! Man was made in the likeness of God; that is, a holy and righteous creature: but fallen Adam begat a son, not in the likeness of God, but in his own likeness; that is, corrupt sinful Adam begat a corrupt sinful son. For, as the image of God bore righteousness and immortality in it, as was cleared before, so this image of fallen Adam bore corruption and death in it, 1 Cor. xv. 49, 50; compare ver. 22. Moses, in that fifth chapter of Genesis, being to give us the first bill of mortality that ever was in the world, ushers it in with this, that dying Adam begat mortals: Having sinned, he became mortal according to the threatening; and so he begat a son in his own likeness, sinful, and therefore mortal: thus sin and death passed on all. Doubtless he begat both Cain and Abel in his own likeness, as well as Seth: But it is not recorded of Abel, because he left no issue behind him, and his falling the first sacrifice to death in the world, was a sufficient document of it: nor of Cain to whom it might have been thought peculiar, because of his monstrous wickedness; and, besides, all his posterity was drowned in the flood: but it is recorded of Seth, because he was the father of the holy seed; and from him all mankind, since the flood, has descended, and fallen Adam's own likeness with them.

SECONDLY, It appears from that Scripture-text, Job xiv. 4. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one," our first parents were unclean, how then can we be clean? How could our immediate parents be clean? or, how shall our children be so? The uncleanness here aimed at, is a sinful uncleanness; for it is such as makes man's days full of trouble; and it is natural, being derived from unclean parents: "Man "is born of a woman, ver. 1. And how can he be clean that "is born of a woman ?" Job xxxv. 4. An omnipotent God, whose power is not here challenged, could bring a clean thing out of an unclean; and did so, in the case of the Man Christ; but no other can. Every person that is born according to the course of nature, is born unclean: if the root be corrupt, so must the branches be: Neither is the matter mended, though the parents be sanctified ones; for they are but holy in part, and that by grace, not by nature; and they beget their children as men, not as holy men: Wherefore, as the circumcised parent begets an uncircumcised child, and after the purest grain is sown, we reap corn with the chaff; so the holiest parents beget unholy children, and cannot communicate their

grace to them as they do their nature; which many godly parents find true, by their sad experience.

THIRDLY, Consider the confession of the Psalmist David, Psal. li. 6. "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Here he ascends from his actual sin, to the fountain of it, namely, corrupt nature: He was a man according to God's own heart; but from the beginning it was not so with him: He was begotten in lawful marriage, but when the lump was shapen in the womb, it was a sinful lump. Hence the corruption of nature is called "The Old Man;" being as old as ourselves, older than grace, even in those that are sanctified from the womb.

FOURTHLY, Hear our Lord's determination of the point, John iii. 5. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh;" Behold the universal corruption of mankind, all are flesh: Not that all are frail, though that is a sad truth too; yea, and our natural frailty is an evidence of our natural corruption: but that is not the sense of this text: but here is the meaning of it, all are corrupt and sinful, and that naturally: hence our Lord argues here, that because they are flesh, therefore they must be born again, or else they "cannot enter into the kingdom of God," ver. 3, 5. And as the corruption of our nature evidenceth the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the absolute necessity of regeneration plainly proves the corruption of our nature; for why should a man need a second birth, if his nature were not quite marred in the first birth? Infants must be born again, for that is an except, (John iii. 3.) which admits of no exception. And therefore, they were circumcised under the Old Testament, as having "the body of the sins of the flesh, (which is conveyed to them by natural generation) to put off,' Col. ii. 11. And now, by the appointment of Jesus Christ, they are to be baptized; which says they are unclean, and that there is no salvation for them, but by the "washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost," Tit. iii. 5.

FIFTHLY, Man certainly is sunk very low now, in comparison of what he once was; God made him but a "little lower than the angels;" but now we find him likened to the beasts that perish: He harkened to a brute; and is now become like one of them; like Nebuchadnezzar, his portion (in his natural state) is with the beasts: "minding only earthly things," Philip. iii. 19. Nay, brutes, in some sort, have the advantage of the natural man, who is sunk a degree below them: he is more witless, in what concerns him most, than the stork or the turtle, or the crane, or the swallow, in what is for their interest, Jer. viii. 7. He is more stupid than the ox or ass, Isa. i.2.