Words to Ponder
No sin, all things considered, was ever like this sin. If all the posterity of Adam in their several generations should do nothing else but bewail and lament this sin of his while this world continues, yet would it not be enough lamentation - that a man so newly created out of nothing, and admitted the first moment into the highest order, crowned a king over the works of God's hands, Psalm 8:5; a man perfect and upright, without the least inordinate motion or sinful inclination; a man whose mind was most clear, bright, and apprehensive of the will of God; whose will was free, and able to have easily put by the strongest temptation; a man in a paradise of delights, where nothing was left to desire for advancing the happiness of soul or body; a man on whom depended not only his own, but the happiness of the whole world, so soon, upon so slight a temptation, to violate the law of his God, and involve himself and all his posterity with him in such a gulf of guilt and misery; all which he might so easily have prevented. - John Flavel (1627-91)