4. But in the mean-time, what must we do with our bibles; for they will never agree with this. These accounts, however pleasing to flesh and blood, are utterly irreconcileable with the scriptural. The scripture avers, that _by one man’s disobedience, all men were constituted sinners_: that _in_ Adam _all died_, spiritually died, lost the life and the image of God: that fallen, sinful _Adam_ then _begat a son in his own likeness_: nor was it possible he should beget him in any other: for _who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean_? That consequently _we_ as well as other men _were by nature, dead in trespasses and sins, without hope, without_ God _in the world_, and therefore _children of wrath_: that every man may say, _I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me_: that _there is no difference, in that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of_ God: of that glorious image of God, wherein man was originally created. And hence, when _the_ Lord _looked down from heaven upon the children of men, he saw they were all gone out of the way_, they were _all together become abominable, there was none righteous, no not one_, none that truly _sought after_ God: just agreeable this, to what is declared by the Holy Ghost, in the words above recited, God _saw_ when he looked down from heaven before, _that the wickedness of man was great in the earth_: so great, that _every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually_. This is God’s account of man: from which I shall take occasion, _first_, To shew what men were before the flood; _secondly_, To enquire, Whether they are not the same now? And, _thirdly_, To add some inferences. I. 1. I am, _first_, By opening the words of the text, to shew, what men were before the flood. And we may fully depend on the account here given. For God saw it, and he cannot be deceived. He _saw that the wickedness of man was great_. Not of this or that man; not of a few men only: not barely of the greater part, but of _man in general_, of men universally. The word includes the whole human race, every partaker of human nature. And it is not easy for us to compute their numbers, to tell how many thousands and millions they were. The earth then retained much of its primeval beauty and original fruitfulness. The face of the globe was not rent and torn, as it is now: and spring and summer went hand in hand. ’Tis therefore probable, it afforded sustenance for far more inhabitants, than it is now capable of sustaining; and these must be immensely multiplied, while men begat sons and daughters for seven or eight hundred years together. Yet among all this inconceivable number, _only_ Noah _found favour with_ God. He alone (perhaps including part of his houshold) was an exception from the universal wickedness, which by the just judgment of God, in a short time after brought on universal destruction. All the rest were partakers in the same guilt, as they were in the same punishment.