the human race into existence. He gave them faculties to conduct them here through various scenes of happiness to the realms of immortality and immutable felicity. It was a Godlike design.
But it was not very long before this human race became corrupt, and not only did evil in the sight of the Lord, but ceased to apprehend the first cause as one most perfect mind. The natural notions of moral perfection which reason and the light of nature supply, they no longer minded, nor thought of what is fit and reasonable to be done in every case. The passions began to influence and direct their lives: just and pure ideas of the Deity were lost, false ones took place, and the mischief and its fatal consequences became very great. It was a melancholy

scene! The exalted notions of one glorious God, and of that true religion which subsists in the expectation of a future state, were no longer known, nor did the race ever think of approving themselves in the eye of an all perfect and holy being. Superstition and iniquity prevailed, and the spread of evil was wide.
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth—the thoughts of his heart, evil continually, &c. as you have before quoted from the book of Genesis; and because the wickedness of the tenth generation was so great, and men no longer endeavoured after those perfections, which are natural and proper to rational minds;—no longer thought of conforming themselves to the divine nature, or strove to imitate the excellencies of it, tho' constituted to give glory to their Maker, and endued with a reason and understanding sufficient to teach them the rule of duty, and guide their steps in the ways of true religion; but against the light of their own minds, acted the most impious and unsociable part; therefore God repented that he had made them, that is, he did what is the product of repentance in men, when they undo, as far as it is in their power, what they repent of, and destroyed his own work by that desolating judgment, the flood. This seems to be the truth of the case. The words of Moses do not mean the state of human

nature on account of the fall. They express only the wickedness of the tenth generation as a reason for the deluge at that time. There is not the least ground for asserting from this passage in the sacred historian, that man was unable to do good by his natural powers, and that his crimes were a resisting the actings of God upon his mind. The impiety of this generation was a mere abuse