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evil of thy doings, for power from the Lord to guide thee forth of the evil which the light discovers, which would guide thee into the kingdom; but thou runnest into the wisdom of the first Adam, to seek the kingdom in outward forms and observations: though thou walkest never so strictly in these outward forms, thou art alive in the first Adam, sewing fig leaves together to hide thy nakedness; thou art building a tower to get up to God in thy Babylonish wisdom, and confusion will come upon thee; in the day when the Lord cometh to look for fruit, thou wilt be found a fruitless fig tree that cumbereth the ground.*

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"My friends, except you be regenerated and born again, you cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' This is the word of the Lord God unto all peoplethis lies not in airy profession and in vain imagination ; and whatsoever else it is that you deck yourselves withal, you must, every particular man and woman, be born again, else you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. There is no other way, no other gate to enter into life, but by this great work of regeneration; there is no returning to that blessed life, but by the loss of that life that did grieve the Spirit of God, and which did cause man to be driven out of Paradise.

"Now all of you that come to be regenerated you must come to the light of Christ: there is no other * Bromley. "We too often talk of dispensations beyond our attainment, and so negleet holy stillness, leading to the perfect death, and daily mortification of the ill habits and customs of the old nature and the world, and pressing into the humility, poverty, innocency, and simplicity, that should be in us, and would more beautify us in the sight of God, than all other gifts and knowledge whatever."

way to it; he will search your hearts, and try your reins, and set your sins in order before you, and trace out your iniquities that compass you about; therefore you must see yourselves a lost people, a sinful people, and so come to feel the weight of your sins upon your consciences; there is no other way to come to life; you will never complain of sin till you are burthened with it, till you have a trumpet sounded in your ears to awaken you, that you may arise from the dead, that Christ may give you light.*

FROM C. MARSHALL.

BUT what was that which in Adam died? and what was the death, seeing that the Lord said, "in the day that thou eatest of the tree, thou shalt surely die," and

* Bromley's Sabbath of Rest. "And truly this subject is of great concernment to all, because all are capable of the New Birth, and none without it can ever be happy to mistake this work is very dangerous, because it is the passage to eternal rest.

"The spirit of Man is totally to be inhabited by Christ, there is not one weed to be left there. We are to be stripped of all the riches of corrupt nature, before we can pass through the last gate into the City. A naked spirit quickly enters. Hence that of Christ, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their's is the kingdom God,' An empty spirit God will fill.' For God is love, and delights (through his Son) to communicate of his own fulness, to all that can receive it: the soul cannot be emptied, but through regeneration; nor filled if not first emptied. If we part with darkness, vanity, and lust, we receive light, substance, and love. A complete exchange brings complete happiness. How few are willing to sell all for Christ! How many distinctions are created by reason to avoid the Cross and death of Christ!

"But it is very dangerous to take up such principles, as may indulge any part of that which must be destroyed. It may make us fall short of heaven when we expect to enter into it. It is far more safe to be too strict than too remiss, but the mean is best."

It is said, this good Man when near his end, was observed to be much introverted and exercised in mental prayer, or prayer in silence; and when he heard much talk in his chamber he would say, "be silent, be silent, for silence and stillness is best."

yet, though he did eat thereof, he lived outwardly, and had children?

It was the inward man that died, which was so made by the living breath of the Almighty; for man, going out of the counsel of the Lord, by his disobedience came to be alienated from the life of God, and so became insensible of that primary life, in which he was wholly a right seed, and a noble plant. In this degeneration he became inwardly dead, and the inward senses of the inward man were lost, and thus he came to be without God in the world; and here in this state, man was altogether out of a capacity of abiding in the garden, or partaking of the tree of life, that was in the midst thereof; and in this state are all the unconverted sons and daughters of Adam.

Man being thus fallen from God into this miserable deplorable state, the Divine Being, in his endless, boundless, fathomless loving kindness, hath opened a way by which mankind might be restored up to himself again, which way is the promised seed. So here was the tender mercy of the everlasting God extended to mankind, in giving the seed, to wit, Christ Jesus; else all would have been as Sodom, and like unto Gomorrah, which God destroyed with fire, in his wrath.

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This is generally confessed, that in the first Adam all die, and in the second, (Christ the Lord,) all come to be made alive again; but how mankind comes out of this state of death in the first man Adam, is that which the wisdom of this world never knew, never saw, never understood, nor comprehended truly or rightly.*

Cudworth. The secret mysteries of a divine life, of a new

FROM W. GRIMSHAW.

THUS it is with man, until Christ, the redeeming power of God, burns up the stubble, the briars, brambles, and noxious weeds of our wild nature, so that the goodly plant may grow, and bring forth fruit in due season, to the glory of the great and good husbandman. We could no more raise ourselves from this fallen and degenerate state, than nature could raise itself into a paradise or garden: for it is God who must break up our flinty and stubborn nature, implant the seed of his divine nature in us, and weed out every thing which would impede its growth; that which is required of the creature is, to be passive to the divine working, even as the clay to the stroke of the tiller. Man having departed in his own will from the will and command of his Creator, he rebelled against the light and fell; he died to the heavenly and spiritual life, the day he disobeyed the divine will; and awaked to all the vanities of a sensual one; and he can only obtain that divine life by returning; and there is no other way to return, nature, of Christ formed in our heart, they cannot be written or spoken: language and expression cannot reach them, neither can they be ever truly understood, except the soul itself be kindled from within, and awakened into the life of them. There is a soul and spirit of divine truths that could never yet be congealed into Ink .; that could never be blotted upon paper; which by a secret traduction and conveyance, passeth from one soul into another, being able to dwell or lodge no where but in a spiritual being, in a living thing, because itself is nothing but life and spirit.

The Gospel requireth a new creature, a divine mate

formed in us, but yet withal it bestowet an enlivening power. The great myster only in Christ without us; but the very sists in Christ inwardly formed in our hea but what lives in our spirits. God himse if he be only without me; and unless he of himself and his own likeness into my so A 2

but by denying self, taking up the cross, and following Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. Man first departed from God by self-will, and thereby entrance was given to sin, to fleshly vanities, and worldly lusts; and these still rivet us to earth and earthly things; hence the necessity of being quickened and born again by the Spirit of Christ, in which renewed state, heavenly aspirations are raised in us after the enjoyment of pure bliss, from which Adam fell.

FROM H. TUKE.

MAN having by disobedience to the divine command lost that state of innocence and purity in which he was originally created, and having thereby subjected himself and his offspring to sin and misery, it pleased his gracious and merciful Creator, in the riches of his love, early to point out and to promise a Redeemer. This was done at the very time when sentence was pronounced on our first parents for their transgression. It appears evident, that the love of God, in sending his Son into the world, was not limited to any part of it, but that the benefits were designed to extend as far as the effects of Adam's transgression.

The Christian religion, then, teaches, (as has been observed,) that our first parents having sinned, and lost the divine image, the fallen nature was by them transferred to their offspring; but in order that man 'might

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be restored to favour and a state of purity, it pleased

the Almighty to promise and send a Redeemer, whose

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