Our personal wanderings are in our general' confession, traced up to their proper source, the corruption of our nature: We have followed too • much the devices and desires of our own hearts.' Are our hearts full of evil devices and desires? Who will deny it? The evil is not adventitious, but natural to us. The fountain is corrupt, therefore the streams are filthy. The tree is bad, therefore the fruit is sour. On this subject the scripture is very plain; and volumes might be filled with evidence drawn from thence, and from matter of fact. Adam begat a son in his ' and grammatical sense.' Of late it hath been said, that they who subscribe to the articles, are permitted to put on them a liberal construction. But from whom do they derive this permission? Or, who has authority to sanction so flagrant an act of duplicity? Besides this, a liberal construction, being once permitted, will subject the articles to as many thousand different senses, as there are persons, both ecclesiastical and civil, who by oath subscribe to them; and will also annihilate the solemnity and moral obtigation of every oath, which is administered in our courts of Judicature. Nor will this refinement prove a safe refuge to those, who have recourse to it; for it will not, in many instances, set aside the literal and grammatical sense. Let its patrons, for instance, try their critical powers, and employ all the arts of sophistry, in endeavouring to reconcile unitarianism or arianism with the first of the articles; or to make justification by faith only, as maintained in the eleventh, to signify either justification by works, or justification by works and faith together.'---The Rev. Mr. Hart's Church of England's test of religious sincerity. p. 5. Should the pious reader wish for farther information on the doctrine of original sin, he will peruse with pleasure Bishop Beveridge's Exposition on the 39 articles; Archbishop Usher's body of Divinity; and particularly Dr. John Edward's Veritas redux. • own likeness, after his image.'* And this was not the image of God in which Adam had been created, because that was lost; but the image and likeness of the fallen spirit, to whose temptation he had yielded. What is man that he should be clean? And he, which is born of a woman that he should be righteous ? That, which is born of the flesh, is flesh.' Therefore ye must be born again. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me!' Before the flood every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.'§ After the floood things remained in the same state, the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.' The wicked ' are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.tt All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. In me, (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.'§§ In perfect harmony with these declarations of scripture our church expresses herself in her articles, liturgy, and homilies. In the introduction to the baptismal service the congregation is put in mind that all men are • conceived and born in sin :' and this is made the ground of the baptismal institution. In the 9th article, already referred to, she speaks still * Gen. v. 3. + Job. xv. 14. + John iii. 6, 7. Gen. vi. 5. ‡‡ Gen. viii. 21. ++ Ps. lviii. 3. Rom. vii. 18. Ps. li. 5. Rom. iii. 23. more fully; Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk,) but it is the fault and corruption of the • nature of every man, that naturally is ingender•ed of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone* from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into the world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation.' I shall only add two quotations from the homilies, which will fully shew what the doctrine of our church is, and may serve as a comment on that part of the confession, which we are considering. As before he (Adam) was most beautiful and precious; so now he was most vile and wretch⚫ed in the sight of his Lord and Master. Instead of the image of God, he was now become the image of the devil; instead of the citizen of heaven, he was now become the bond-slave of hell; having in himself no one part of his form• er purity and cleanness, but being altogether • spotted and defiled, insomuch that he now seem ed to be nothing else but a lump of sin, and ◄ therefore by the just judgment of God was condemned to everlasting death. This so great • and miserable a plague, if it had only rested on Adam, who first offended, it had been so much the easier, and might the better have been * In the Latin copy it is, 'quam longissime.” 1 'borne. But it fell not only on him, but also on his posterity, so that the whole brood of Adam's • flesh should sustain the self-same fall and punishment, which their forefather by his offence most justly had sustained.' In the first part of the homily for Whitsunday our reformers say, • Man, of his own nature, is fleshly and carnal, ' corrupt, naught, sinful, and disobedient to God; without any spark of goodness in him, without any virtuous or Godly motion, only given to evil thoughts and wicked deeds. As for the marks of the Spirit, the fruits of faith, charitable and Godly motions, if he have any at all in him, they proceed only of the Holy Ghost, who is the only worker of our sanctification, and maketh us new men in Christ Jesus.' It would be easy to multiply quotations on this subject but the state of the case is so evident, that it seems unnecessary. Our natural condition is that of ignorance in the understanding, and rebellion in the heart. The universal corruption of manners, both in countries that enjoy the blessings of civilization and those that are destitute of it, proves the cause that produces it to be universal also. It requires a large measure of credulity to believe that effects, so general, can spring from temptation or example. Were not the whole mass corrupted, assuredly some part of it would be found, in some age or country, free from the effects of the general contagion. The necessity of education and restraint from human laws, affords no mean argument in proof of our position. Were man an innocent creature, much of the labor of legislators might have been spared, and the buildings, allotted to the reception of criminals, be converted to purposes more honorable to human nature. While heathen philosophers of modern times, who are favored with the light of revelation, unreasonably argue against matters of fact, principally perhaps, because those matters of fact confirm the doctrines of the Bible, their elder brethren, who had no such advantages plainly perceived the melancholy state of man ; and justly concluding that man, in his present condition, could not proceed from the hands of a wise and good God: and endeavouring to explain what was evident to their senses as to the fact, though inexplicable by reason as to its cause; invented the strange but ingenious fable of the metempsychosis; which shews that they considered man as a degraded spirit, shut up in the body, as in a prison, for some crime committed in a former state of existence, from the guilt and pollution of which purification was to be effected by its transmigration through several successive states of penance in the bodies of inferior animals. It is strange to conceive how any reasoning being can cast his eye over a list of the diseases, to which the body of man is subject; read a page of history; or look into an hospital, without |