look upon our ruin, and compare it with that
stately edifice of innocent Adam! How are we fallen from the height of our
excellency, and made lower than the beasts, when we were once but a little
lower than the angels! But then if ye shall consider all that followed
upon this the innumerable abominations of men, so contrary to that holy
law and God's holiness, that hath flowed from this corrupt fountain, and
hath defiled so many generations of men, that they are all bruises and
putrified sores, and in nothing sound from the head to the foot,--the soul
within becomes the sink of all pollution, the members without the conduits
it runs through, and weapons of unrighteousness against our Maker. And
what a consideration is this alone, how vile and ugly doth that holy and
spiritual law make the most refined and polished civilian? He that hath
poorest naturals,(456) most extracted from the dregs of the multitude, oh
how abominable will he appear in this glass, in this perfect law of
liberty! So that men would despise themselves, and repent in dust and
ashes, if once they did see their own likeness. Ye would run from
yourselves as children that have been taken up with their own beauty, but
are spoiled with the small pox. Let them look unto a glass, and it will
almost make them mad. But if we shall stay, and hear out the trumpet which
sounds louder and louder, there will be yet more reason of trembling. For
it becomes a voice publishing judgment and wrath, for therein is the wrath
of God "revealed from heaven, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men," Rom. i. 18. It speaks much of all men's sins "that every mouth
may be stopped," but the voice waxed louder and louder, the spring grows
still sadder, that "all the world may become guilty before God," Rom. iii.
19. It publishes first the command, and then follows the sad and weighty
curse of God. "Cursed is every one that abides not in all things which are
written in the law," (Gal. iii. 10) as many curses as breaches of the law.
And what a dreadful song is this! Ye shall be punished with everlasting
destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power? If
he had said, ye shall be eternally banished from God, what an incomparable
loss had this been? Men would lead an unpleasant life, who had fallen from
the expectation of an earthly kingdom, but what shall it be to fall from
the expectation of a heavenly kingdom? But when withal there is an eternal
pain wit