III. Both angels and men were subject to the change of

their own free-will, as experience proved, (God having re- served to himself the incommunicable property of being naturally unchangeable :) for many angels of their own accord fell by sin from their first estate, and became devils. Our first parents, being enticed by Satan, one of these devils speaking in a serpent, did break the covenant of works, in eating the forbidden fruit ; whereby they, and their posterity, being in their loins, as branches in the root^ and comprehended in the same covenant with them, be- came not only liable to eternal death, but also lost all abi- lity to please God ; yea, did become by nature enemies to God, and to all •spiritual good, and inclined only to evil continually. This is our original sin, the bitter root of all
jour actual transgressions, in thought, word, and deed.
HEAP 11.
The remedy provided in Jesus Christ for the elect hy the cove- nant of grace. Hos. xiii. 9. O Israel, thou hast destroyeti thyself; but in me is thine help.
1^ A LBEIT man, having brought himself into this woe- -^ -^ ful condition, be neither able to lielp^himsej^jaor wiUuig .toJjeJieJp^dJjy-Gxid out of jt, buTlSherinclined to lie still, insensible of it, tilThe perish ; yet God, for the glory of his rich grace, hath revealed in his word a way to save sinners; viz, by faith ni Jesiu Christ, the aUnml Son of
God>
God, by
The Sum of Saving Knowledge. 447
_ id, by virtue of, and according to the tenor of the cove- nant of redemption, made and agreed upon between God the Father and God the Son, in the council of the Tri- nity, before the world began.