Brought death into the world and all our wo.

Nay, it were well if the charge rested here:  but it is certain it does not.  It can not be denied that it frequently glances from Adam to his Creator.  Have not thousands, even of those that are called Christians, taken the liberty to call His mercy, if not His justice also, into question, on this very account?  Some indeed have done this a little more modestly, in an oblique and indirect manner:  but others have thrown aside the mask, and asked, “Did not God foresee that Adam would abuse his liberty?  And did He not know the baneful consequences which this must naturally have on all his posterity?  And why then did He permit that disobedience?  Was it not easy for the Almighty to have prevented it?” He certainly did foresee the whole.  This can not be denied.  “For known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.”  And it was undoubtedly in His Power to prevent it; for He hath all power both in heaven and earth.  But it was known to Him at the same time, that it was best upon the whole not to prevent it.  He knew that, “not as the transgression, so is the free gift”; that the evil resulting from the former was not as the good resulting from the latter, not worthy to be compared with it.  He saw that to permit the fall of the first man was far best for mankind in general; that abundantly more good than evil would accrue to the posterity of Adam by his fall; that if “sin abounded” thereby over all the earth, yet grace “would much more abound”; yea, and that to every individual of the human race, unless it was his own choice.

It is exceedingly strange that hardly anything has been written, or at least published, on this subject:  nay, that it has been so little weighed or understood by the generality of Christians:  especially considering that it is not a matter of mere curiosity, but a truth of the deepest importance; it being impossible, on any other principle,

  To assert a gracious Providence,
  And justify the ways of God with men: 

and considering withal, how plain this important truth is, to all sensible and candid inquirers.  May the Lover of men open the eyes of our understanding, to perceive clearly that by the fall of Adam mankind in general have gained a capacity,

First, of being more holy and happy on earth, and,

Secondly, of being more happy in heaven than otherwise they could have been.

And, first, mankind in general have gained by the fall of Adam a capacity of attaining more holiness and happiness on earth than it would have been possible for them to attain if Adam had not fallen.  For if Adam had not fallen, Christ had not died.  Nothing can be more clear than this:  nothing more undeniable:  the more thoroughly we consider the point, the more deeply shall we be convinced of it.  Unless all the partakers of human nature had received that deadly wound in Adam it would not have been needful for the