(12.) As Adam was a public person, the federal head of all his posterity, intrusted with the important affair of their happiness, though he knew that his fall would ruin them, together with himself, there was not only in it a breach of trust, but a rendering himself, by this means, the common destroyer of all mankind; which was a greater reproach to him, than his being their common father was an honour. We shall conclude with a few inferences from what has been said, concerning the fall of our first parents. _1st_, If barely the mutability of man’s will, without any propensity or inclination to sin in his nature, may endanger, though not necessitate, his fall, especially when left to himself, as the result of God’s sovereign will; then how deplorable is the state of fallen man, when left to himself by God in a judicial way, being, at the same time, indisposed for any thing that is good. _2dly_, From the action of the devil, in attempting to ruin man, without the least provocation, merely out of malice against God, we may infer the vile and heinous nature of sin, its irreconcilable opposition to God; and also how much they resemble the devil, who endeavour to persuade others to join with them as confederates in iniquity, and thereby to bring them under the same condemnation with themselves: this is contrary to the dictates of human nature, unless considered as vile, degenerate, and depraved by sin. _3dly_, How dangerous a thing is it to go in the way of temptation, or to parley with it, and not to resist the first motion that is made to turn us aside from our duty? And what need have we daily to pray, as instructed by our Saviour, that God would not, by any occurrence of providence, lead us into temptation! _4thly_, We learn, from hence, the progress and great increase of sin: it is like a spreading leprosy, and arises to a great height from small beginnings; so that persons proceed from one degree of wickedness to another, without considering what will be the sad effect and consequence thereof. Footnote 52: _This is beautifully described by Milton, (in his paradise lost, Book IX.) and many others have asserted the same thing for substance, as thinking it below the wisdom of the man to be imposed on; thereby insinuating, though without sufficient ground, that he had a greater degree of wisdom allotted to him than his wife._ Footnote 53: _Josephus indeed, (See Antiq. Lib. I. cap. 2.) intimates, that the serpent was, at first, endowed with speech, and that his loss of it was inflicted for his tempting man; but it is a groundless conjecture arising from a supposition, that those things spoken of in Gen._ iii. _which are attributed to the devil, were done without him, which is not only his opinion, but of many other Jewish writers, and several modern ones._ Footnote 54: