14? A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 



sovereignty : that he gave him a law and command 

 ment, which was in his power to keep, but he kept it 

 not : that man made a total defection from God* 

 presuming to imagine that the commandments and 

 prohibitions of God were not the rules of good and 

 evil, but that good and evil had their own principles 

 and beginnings, and lusted after the knowledge of 

 those imagined beginnings ; to the end, to depend 

 no more upon God s will revealed, but upon himself, 

 and his own light, as a God ; than the which there 

 could not be a sin more opposite to the whole law of 

 God : that yet, nevertheless, this great sin was not 

 originally moved by the malice of man, but was in 

 sinuated by the suggestion and instigation of the 

 devil, who was the first defected creature, and fell 

 of malice, and not by temptation. 



That upon the fall of man, death and vanity 

 entered by the justice of God ; and the image of God 

 in man was defaced ; and heaven and earth, which 

 were made for man s use, were subdued to corruption 

 by his fall ; but then, that instantly, and without in 

 termission of time, after the word of God s law be 

 came, through the fall of man, frustrate as to obedi 

 ence, there succeeded the greater word of the pro 

 mise, that the righteousness of God might be wrought 

 by faith. 



That as well the law of God as the word of his 

 promise endure the same for ever : but that they 

 have been revealed in several manners, according to 

 the dispensation of times. For the law was first im 

 printed in that remnant of light of nature, which 



