A Declaration of the Fall and Re∣stauration, with their Cau∣ses.

O! How is the right wayes of pure Nature perverted by the Malignant Education of these generation, so that it's clouded and hid in the thickest of mens good man∣ners, by which Natures Manners is corrupted, or rather in mens fantastick Conceits; thus good and evil, as in di∣stinction, are but conceits, epilogued in time in the first Adam; and when conceits have an end put to it, then will Adam know no good nor evil at all; for as long as men know good, they will and must necessarily know evil also; for evil proceeds, and hath its Epilogue from the cognosci∣ty of good, not evil and good but good and evil; so then the knowledge of good was the superial and primary ef∣fect of the fall, as well as evil; nay, evil was but an effect in se undo graduo, in the se•ond degree: For although A∣dam had received the Law of pure Nature or Innocency, of God, yet he knew no good nor evil in any thing he did before he fell into the Serpentine-humour of conceits in respect of action; yet for all this it was but action, for the fall consisted not in any thing that he or she spake, viz. words, though now the devil is got up as God, and de∣stroyes men for words: And though he knew the life of God in him, yet he knew no good, no not in the command that God gave him, nor in hi• life, (though it was Gods) for then consequently he must have known evil too, when there was naught that he could call evil, unless he had con∣ceited some of Gods works to be so, which he could not in nature of conceit; providencially transmitted into the E∣lementary part do, till he began to conceive them to be so by a humour, and then something in his conceit was Page  22good in oppositon to the evil; for without the one the o∣ther cannot be no more then hatred without love, or love without hatred, or cold without heat; for if men had ne∣ver known hatred, they would never had known love; nor Christ without the Devil; nor God without evil; so they are but educative distinctions, having conceited something besides God, or else there had been no place found for the Devil, and consequently then no place for Christ and his redemption▪ Nature is as a tender plant growing up, lo∣ved in its self.