which requireth not only pure streames but a pure fountain also therefore they are truly culpable and so damnable Let then a man observe whether Egypt was once fuller of flyes then thy heart is of inordinate motions for as the pulse in the body is alwayes beating so the will is alwayes in action it 's alwayes moving to some object or other and being naturally corrupted it doth alwayes tend either to an object unlawfull or if lawfull in an unlawfull and immoderate way But in the second place Besides these indeliberate motions there are those which are deliberate to which the will doth give free and full consent and these are greater sinnes then the former because the more voluntary and certainly the will of a man is as full of sinfull consents as the Sea is of water Whensoever any lust any sinne cometh to tempt thee How easily and quickly is thy consent obtained Indeed outwardly to commit the sinne that is many times hardly accomplisht there may want the opportunity fear or shame may restrain men but to consent to sinne yea that which is most abominable may be a thousand times over committed by the will in a little space Now that the wils consent to a sinne is a sinne if it be kept within onely and not expressed in the outward act is difficulty believed even as they think their thoughts so also the desires of their will are free in this particular Yea it seemeth to be the constant Doctrine of the Pharisees That if a man did externally obey the Law of God though in his heart he did will the contrary yet the Law did not condemn him Hence it is that Matth. 5. our Saviour doth expound the Law so exactly and spiritually and that it seemed a great Paradox to the received Traditions at that time for our Lord doth there shew That if a man doth lust after a woman in his heart it is adultery and so of all other grosse sinnes If then thou doest will in thy heart desire and consent in thy heart to any sinne though thou canst not or darest not commit it Here God looketh upon thee as such a sinner for as in holy things God accepteth the will for the deed so in evil things the will to do it the consent to do it is as if thou hadst done it Tantum fecimus quantum volumus even Seneca could say What thunder and lightning is in this truth if rightly understood Goe and search thy will make strict examination about it and thou wilt find sparks doe not flie faster from the forge then sinfull consentings doe issue from thee all the day long No sooner doth any voluptuous ambitious or profitable object appear in thy soul but thy will hath secretly consented to it and imbraced even before thou canst tell what thou hast done Now this sinfull temper of the will is the more pernicious and dangerous because these consentings inwardly to sinne are so sudden and imperceivable that thousands of them came from the soul almost in a twinkling of an eye and the heart feeleth them not Doe not then thinke to justifie thy selfe because thou canst with the Pharisee thank God that thou art no adulterer no drunkard no Publican for if thou hast at any time a secret consent to these things if thy heart imbrace them though thou darest not externally commit them The holy and spiritual Law of God will find out these sins in thee and condemn thee for them In the next place Consider also that there is a two-fold consent to a sinne Expresse and Formal or Interpretative and Virtual an expresse consent is when the will doth actually yeeld it self up to any lust that doth tempt it Thus Cain expresly consented to the murder of Abel Judas to the betraying of Christ But a virtual consent is when we yeeld to that from which such a sinne will either necessarily or probably follow although we do not expresly think of the sinne Thus a man that is voluntarily drunk if in his drunken fits he kill any or commit any other grosse impiety he may be said interpretatively to will all that wickednesse though for the present he knoweth not what he doth Thus the best Casuists doe determine and the reason is because such a man doth voluntarily expose himself to the cause of all such evils and he who willeth the cause of a sinne may be justly said to will the sinne that is the effect Know then thy consent to sinne may extend further then ever thou thoughtest of Such sinnes may lie at thy door ready to arraign thee because though thou didst not expresly will them yet by consequence thou didst Therefore Matth. 25. 44. when those workers of iniquity plead They never saw Christ hungry or in prison and did not minister to him Our Saviour replieth That because they did not such things to his Disciples they did them not to him Lastly This consent of the will is not onely to the evil that we doe in our own persons commit but also to that which others are guilty of And here now might be a large field wherein the sinfulnesse of our corrupt will may be discovered and this consent of the will to other mens sinnes may be as Divines shew many wayes but I must not enlarge therein It is enough for the present to know the will is so corrupt that as if it were too little to consent to its own sinne it 's frequently yeelding to the sinnes of others whereby the sinnes of other men are made ours and so at the day of Judgement shall stand arraigned both for our own and other mens sinnes also The last act of the will is That which they call usus the application of the other parts of the soul and body to bring about the evil desired In this also the will because of the universal dominion it hath doth demonstrate the vast extent of its sinfull kingdome This sinfull will commands the body in a despicable manner to be instrumental to sinne It bids the eye look upon wanton objects and it doth it it commands the tongue to speak obscenely wantonly to lie or curse or swear and it doth it all thy bodily sinfulnesse is committed because the will commandeth it to be done And although the affections are not under such an absolute command by the will but rather they sometimes subjugate and keep that under them yet at other times the will causeth them to arise men love and hate because they will Melâ—cthon is said to write thus to Calvin Judicas prout amas aut odio habes amas vero aut odio habes prout vis The will of a man is that which sometimes stirreth up all the passions of the soul Hence is that usual expression I will have my will whatsoever it cost me Yea the understanding though it be a light yet the will many times putteth it under a bushel yea it will command the minde to divert its thoughts Hence men will not understand will
the cup of gold in Benjamin's sack and therefore this must greatly debase us Thirdly We are not able of our selves to have the least desire or longing after grace and a state of holinesse Not only Pelagianism but Semi-pelagianism is a dangerous rock to be avoided The later made our desires to begin and then Gods grace to succeed and accomplish But there is not so much as the least groan the least desire can arise in thy heart Oh that God would change me Oh that I were in the state of those that do truly fear God! And the reason is because the Scripture describeth us by nature to be dead in sinne and compareth the work of grace to a spiritual resurrection Oh how great is thy bondage which doth so farre oppress thee that thou canst not so much as long for any freedom Oh hopeless and wretched man if left to himself Fourthly From this followeth the next demonstration of our vassalage and spiritual impotency That we cannot pray to God that he would deliver us out of this misery No natural man can pray it is the grace of God that doth inable thereunto he may utter the words of prayer he may repeat the expressions but alas he doth not he cannot pray as God requireth and so as he will accept of it The Apostle is clear for this Rom. 8. 26. The Spirit helpeth our infirmities for we know not what to pray for as we ought Is not this unspeakable misery who needeth to pray more then thou and yet thou canst not pray Thou art sinning thou art dying thou are damning and yet canst not pray Is not thy heart like an adamant if this break thee not Fifthly Such is our impotency and bondage That we are not able to affect our selves with the fear and terrour of the Law thereby to be convinced and humbled in our selves If we cannot do the preparatories for grace much lesse grace it self if we cannot do the lesse How shall we do the greater Now one great preparatory work is To have a divine and powerfull fear in our souls by reason of the Law whereby we are afraid of hell of the day of Judgement and cannot have any rest in our spirits because of this Now this is wrought by the Spirit of God in a preparatory way Rom. 8. 15. It is called The Spirit of bondage And Joh. 14. The Spirit doth convince the world of sinne So that in and through the preaching of the Law and discovery of sinne the Spirit of God doth awaken and terrifie the conscience of a man maketh him afraid that he cannot eat or drink or take the delight he used to do It is true the slavish sinfulness of this fear the Spirit of God doth not work but the heart being like a mudded pool when it is moved such slavish fears will arise likewise But how farre is every natural man from this he is secure and jolly blessing and applauding himself crying peace peace all is at quiet within him because the strong man doth keep the house It is the voice of the Lord only that can make these mountains to quake and melt Sixthly Such is our weakness That we cannot barden or soften our hearts in the least manner but they remain obdurate and like brasse and iron Thy heart is like a stone within thee and thou art no wayes able to mollifie it Therefore God maketh it his work and he graciously promiseth I will take away the heart of stone Ezek. 11. 19. and give an heart of flesh As if God had said I know this work is above you you are not able to do it And certainly if the godly themselves because of the remainders of original corruption doe complain of the hardnesse of their hearts cannot mollifie or soften them as they desire Is it any wonder if the wicked man be not able to remove the stone from him Seventhly A man cannot by the power of nature believe no not so much as with an historical faith till grace prepare the heart therein Now faith is the first foundation-stone Heb. 11. He that cometh to God must believe he is and so he must believe the truth about Christ But we see by the Pharisees who heard Christ preach saw the wonderfull miracles he did yet in stead of believing in him did deride and oppose him so that all the acts of faith whether dogmatical or saving we are enabled unto only by the grace of God Matth. 13. 11. To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven but not to them Thus Act. 18. 27. the Disciples are said to believe through grace faith then is the gift of God not the work of mans free-will And if he cannot do this it is plain he cannot move one foot of himself towards Heaven Lastly Such is our impotency That when grace is offered and tendered to us the will of it self hath no power to consent to it or make improvement of it It can and oft doth resist and refuse grace but of it self it cannot imbrace it It is true Papists and Arminians plead hard for this power of the will but this is to give more to mans will then to Gods grace this is to make man to differ himself from others It might be thought that the will indeed cannot chuse Christ or receive him as a Lord because there is no revelation or manifestation of a Christ They are a people happily who sit in darkness and have no light and therefore though they may have an inward power to see yet for want of light to actuate the medium they cannot so that the defect ariseth not from the power within but the manifestation of the object without And this indeed is gratly to be considered whether an Infidel or Pagan for example doth not believe because there is no proposition of the object in the Ministry otherwise if he enjoyed that then he had power over his own to assent to it Now even the Pelagians themselves and their followers yea even all that give not grace its full due yet thus farre they do acknowledge there must be a doctrinal revelation by the Spirit of God of the truths to be acknowledged and when this light is set as it were upon the Candlestick then a man of his own self is able to see but such is the corruption of man that not only grace must bring in the light but it must also give the eye to see So that the work of Gods grace is both objective and subjective objective in revealing the object and subjective in preparing and fitting the subject It being the Lord who doth give the seeing eye and the hearing ear Prov. 20. 12. Yea the Arminians go further acknowledging that grace doth irresistibly work upon the understanding of a man for it being a passive faculty it cannot withstand its illumination but the will that retaineth its indifferency when grace hath done all it will do This therfore is granted That without the
Fourth Part. TReating of the Effects of Original Sinne. CHAP. I. Of that Propensity that is in every one by Nature to sinne Job 15. 16. How much more abominable and filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water SECT I. The Text explained and vindicated from Socinian Exceptions SECT II. How much is implied in this Metaphor Man drinketh iniquity like water SECT III. Some Demonstrations to prove that there is such an impetuous Inclination in man to sinne SECT IV. The true Causes of this Proneness and the false ones assigned by the Adversaries examined CHAP. II. The second immediate Effect of Original Sinne is the Causality which it hath in respect of all other sins Jam. 1. 14. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed SECT I. The Text explained setting forth the generation of Sinne. SECT II. That Original Sinne is the Cause of all Actual Evil cleared by several Propositions which may serve for Antidotes against many Errours ¶ 2. Of the Motions of the heart to sinne not consented unto as an immediate Effect of Original Sinne. ¶ 3. How many wayes the Soul may become guilty of sinne in respect of the Thoughts and motions of the heart CHAP. III. Of the Combate between the Flesh and the Spirit as the Effect of Original Sinne so that the Godliest man cannot do any holy Duty perfectly in this life Gal. 5. 17. For the Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that ye cannot do the things that ye would SECT I. The Text explained and vindicated from corrupt Interpretations SECT II. Several Propositions clearing the truth about the Combate between the Flesh and Spirit in a Godly man SECT III. A Consideration of that part of the seventh Chapter to the Romans which treats of the Conflict within a man Shewing against Amyraldus and others that it must be a regenerate person only of whom those things are spoken ¶ 4. The several wayes whereby Original Sinne doth hinder the Godly in their Religious Progress whereby they are sinfull and imperfect ¶ 5. Objections against the Reliques of Sin in a regenerate man answered ¶ 8. The several Conflicts that may be in a man ¶ 10. How the Combate in a Godly man between the Flesh and Spirit may be discerned from other Conflicts ¶ 10. Of the Regenerates freedome from the Dominion of sinne and whether it be by the Suppression of it or by the Abolishing part of it CHAP. IV. Of Death coming upon all men as another Effect of Original Sinne. 1 Cor. 15. 22. For as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive SECT II. Death an Effect of Original Sinne explained in divers Propositions ¶ 2. How many wayes a thing may be said to be Immortal and in which of them man is so ¶ 4. Distinctions about Mortality and that in several respects Adam may be said to be created Mortal and Immortal ¶ 7. The several Grounds assigned by Schoolmen of Adam's Immortality rejected and some Causes held forth by the Orthodox SECT III. Arguments to prove That through Adam's sinne we are made sinners and so Mortal SECT IV. Arguments brought to prove That Adam was made Mortal answered SECT V. Whether Adam's sinne was onely an occasion of Gods punishing all mankind resolved against D. J. Taylor SECT VI. Whether Death may be attributed to mans constitution considered in his meer Naturals against D. J. Taylor and the Socinians CHAP. V. Eternal Damnation another Effect of Original Sinne. Ephes 2. 3. And were by nature the children of wrath as well as others SECT I. What is meant by Wrath in this Text. SECT II. What is meant by Nature SECT III. That by nature through the original sinne we are born in all are heirs of Gods wrath all are obnoxious to eternal damnation SECT IV. What is comprehended in this Expression Children of wrath SECT V. Some Propositions in order to the proving That the wrath of God is due to all mankind because of Original Sinne. SECT VI. Arguments to prove it SECT VII Some Conclusions deduceable from the Doctrine of the damnableness of Original Sinne. SECT VIII A Consideration of their Opinion that hold an Universal Removal of the Guilt of Original Sinne from all mankind by Christs Death Answering their Arguments among which that from the Antithesis or Opposition which the Apostle maketh Rom. 5. between the first Adam and the second Adam SECT IX Of the state of Infants that die in their Infancy before they are capable of any Actual Transgressions and that die before Baptisme A TREATISE OF Original Sinne. PART I. CHAP. I. The first Text to prove Original Sinne improved and vindicated SECT I. EPHES. 2. 3. And were by nature the children of wrath as well as others THE true Doctrine of Original Corruption is of so great concernment that Austin thought De Peccato Orig. contra Pelag. Celest 2. cap. 24. the Summe of Religion to consist in knowing of this as the effect of the first Adam and also of Christ the second Adam with all his glorious benefits Though therefore Coelestius of old thought it to be but Recquaestionis not fides Ibidem cap. 4. And others of late have wholly rejected it as Austin's figment yet certainly the true way of Humiliation for sinne or Justification by Christ cannot be firmly established unless the true Doctrine of this be laid as a Foundation-stone in the building Now because original sinne is used ambiguously by Divines sometimes for Adam's first sinne imputed unto us for Omnes homines fuerunt ille unus homo he was the common Person representing all mankind as is in time to be shewed And this for distinction sake is called Originale originans or Originale imputatum And sometimes it 's taken passively for the effect of that first sinne of Adam viz. The total and universal pollution of all mankind inherently through sinne which is called Originale originatum or inherens I shall treat of it in this later acception as being of great practical improvement many wayes SECT II. ANd because in Theological Debates two Questions are necessary The An sit and the Quid sit Whether there be such a thing and What it is and in both these the truth of God meeteth with many adversaries I shall first insist on the Quod sit That there is such a natural and cursed pollution upon every one that is born in an ordinary way The first Text I shall fasten this Truth upon is this I have mentioned which deservedly both by Ancient and Modern Writers is thought to have a pregnant and evident demonstration That there is such a natural contagion upon all To understand this the better take notice of the Coherence briefly The Apostles scope is to incite the Ephesians to Thankfulness by the consideration of that great love and infinit mercy vouchsafed to them by God and because the Sunne is most
is the cause that most people are still such sots and sensless men about regeneration Yea learned and knowing men are as blind and bruitish in this as the simple and poor people are doth not all arise from this That they feel not neither do perceive that original sin like a leprosie hath run over the whole man both soul and body especially there would not be these three mistakes about the work of grace which are very common As 1. A Philosophical Reformation by the Dictates and Principles of Moralists such as Plutarch and Seneca give would not be taken for Regeneration For although their sayings and directions are admired and there may be some good use of them yet they do not go to the root of the matter they are not an antidote against original sinne that defileth the nature and therefore cannot promote Regeneration which doth properly cure that in some degree Aristotles way to make a man a virtuous man viz. by frequent and constant actions at lest to acquire an habit is absurd and repugnant to Scripture for by that the tree must be made good and a man must be born again ere he can do any thing holily Hence God promiseth to give a new heart to take away the heart of stone and then to cause us to walk in all holiness Ezek. 11. 19. These divine principles must be infused before there can be holy actions So 2. Civility and an ingenuous temperate disposition will be but a glistering dunghill a painted sepulchre when original sinne is known He will presently see for all his civil and inoffensive life his heart is full of all noisomness Therefore civil men of all men do most need this light to shine into their brests we are ready to think of our selves because so harmless and innocent as was said of Bonaventure In hoc homine non peccavit Adam such were born without sinne and brought better natures into the world than others but if you search into the Scriptures it will appear that all are born children of wrath and are equally destitute of that image of God and then as when the pillars of an house are removed the house it self must fall into its own rubbidge Thus when that primitive righteousness was lost man is prone to runne into all evil and every man would be like a Judas or a Cain even the most civil man that is did not God restrain original sin 3. Gifts and abilities which many have in religious exercises will presently be seen not to be Regeneration Though we should preach with the tongue of Angels though admirable in prayer and other holy duties yet these and original sin in the power of it may stand together and so many looking to the flowers but not the dead corpse they are upon conclude themselves to be alive when indeed they are dead SECT IV. I Shall mention some few more spiritual Advantages that come by the full and undoubted perswasion of this original corruption for so of old we are advised Firmissimè texe nullatenus dubita c. Believe most firmly and doubt not in the least manner but that by Adam's sinne all his posterity becomes sinfull and obnoxious to Gods wrath And First upon the Knowledg of originall sinne we evidently see our impossibility to keep the Law of God That when the Law requireth a love of God with all our heart mind and strength and also doth prohibit all kind of lust and sinfull concupiscence even in the very first motions and stirrings of it The Law I say requiring such universal perfection and we being wholly dead in sinne upon the comparing of the Law with our condition we cannot but conclude That we fail in all things That the Law is spiritual but we are carnal And if he be cursed that doth not continue in all things the Law requireth how accursed must he be that is not able to perform any one thing All those opinions that diminish original sinne do also plead for a possibility of keeping Gods Commandments Now this self-flattery is imbred in all Do not most of our common people think they keep the Commandments of God Do they believe that the curses of the Law do belong to them every hour Oh if such convictions were upon them how greatly would it humble them and make them debased before God but they trust in this they readily and confidently say with that young man All these have I kept from my youth up Mat. 9 20. Oh then inform thy self more about this natural defilement and loathsomness that is upon thee and then thou wilt find the Law to accuse and condemn thee in all things Secondly The right knowledge of this will make even the godly and regenerate though in some measure delivered from the power and dominion of it yet to see that because of its stirrings and actings in them there is imperfection in every thing they do And truly this is one of the most profitable effects of true knowledge herein for hereby a godly man is made to go out of all his graces and his duties hereby he is afraid of the iniquity of his holy things and cals his very righteousness a menstruous ragge This is clear in Paul Rom. 7. How sadly doth he complain of the vigorous actings of this original sinne in him For the present I take it as granted that that part of the Chapter must be understood of a regenerate person though vehemently denied by some as is in time to be shewed That Law of sinne was alwayes moving when he set himself to any thing that was holy he desired to obey the Law perfectly to love God compleatly but this Law of sinne would not let him So that because of this natural defilement evil is mixed with all the good we do insomuch that there would be a woe and a curse to all our gracious acts if strictly examined Thus it is with a godly man in this life as those Hetruscan-robbers reported of by Aristotle and mentioned by Austin who would take some live men and bind them to the dead men which was a miserable way of perishing Even thus it is here original corruption is constantly adhering and inseparably to him who is alive in holiness and by this means there is unbelief in his faith coldness in his zeal dulness in his fervency Insomuch that the Apostle crieth out of himself Oh wretched man that I am And that because of this very thing the Papists though they hold original sinne yet maintaining That after Baptism it 's quite taken away and that though there be some languor and difficulty in a man in respect of what is good yet if we do not consent to these motions of lusts within us they are not truly and properly sins do consequentially conclude that there is not necessarily dross and sinne in every holy duty we do but the evidence of Rom. 7. is too great to be contradicted So that preaching of original sinne is not only necessary
Ecclesiastical word only to call it a natural evil they did not presume for fear of the Marcionites who held That there was an evil Nature as well as the good And the Pelagians accused the Orthodox for Manicheism in this point because they held the propagation of this corruption by Nature Therefore they avoided the term of a Natural evil yet Austin at last did use it and indeed it is a very proper and fit name for it hereby differencing it from all actual voluntary and personal sinnes as also from sinne by imitation and custom for Aristotle makes a distinction of things that are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib Ethic. 2. cap. 1. where he sheweth what is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by nature as the stone to descend and the fire to ascend is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so according to him who knew nothing of original sinne we are neither good or evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by nature And withall this Text doth fully warrant the expression If we are by Nature sinnefull then there is a natural evil Not that God put it at first into our Natures or that it is our substantial Nature but we have it by Natural Propagation Let us therefore consider How much is implied in this expression SECT II. ANd first It may well be called Natural because it doth infect the whole Nature of Mankind It 's a defilement that followeth our specifical not individual being Even as we call death natural because it followeth all mankind Rich men die and poor men die learned men die and foolish None are exempted from it Thus also it is with this sinne All that are born in a natural way of mankind have this contagion The sonnes of Noblemen and Princes though they glory in their blood and their descent yet they are as full of sin and the children of wrath as well as the children of the basest so that though in civil respects they boast of their birth and are above others yet in a theological and divine respect all are alike yea the children of godly parents though they have a promise to their seed and in that respect their children are said to be holy 1 Cor. 7. yet they come into the world with inherent corruption in them They do not generate their children as godly men but corrupt men as Austin of old expressed it A circumcised man begat a child uncircumcised and the Husbandman though he soweth his seed out of the chaff and husk yet that brings up others with chaff and husk upon it Well therefore may we call it a natural sinne because it doth extend to the whole humane Nature as it is in every one that partaketh of it in a natural way So that as Divines do distinguish of infirmities and evils There are some that are specifical which follow the Species as death and some are accidental which follow the individual nature Thus there are some sinnes which follow the particular nature of a man and these are actual sinnes Every man is not a drunkard an adulterer but some are defiled one way some another but then there is a sinne which followeth the whole and universal nature of man and this is original sinne though every man be not guilty of such or such a particular sinne yet all are of original sinne And therefore the Schoolmen say Actual sinne doth corrumpere personam but original Naturam actual sins corrupt the person original the nature SECT III. WE are declaring the Naturality of this Original sinne not as if it were ingredient into or constitutive of our nature but an universal and inseparable pollution adhering to it as they say of death as though it be praeter Naturam or contra yet if we do regard the principles of mortality which are in every man so death is natural Come we therefore to a second demonstration of the Naturality of this evil and that is seen In that it is the inward principle of all the sinfull motions of the soul and that perâ—se not per accidens This is a great part of that definition which Aristotle giveth of Nature now we may in a moral sense apply it to our purpose First I say It 's the inward principle of all the sinfull motions and workings of the Soul For as the nature of the stone is the cause of its motion downward as the nature of the fire is the cause of the fires motions and operations Thus is original sinne the intrinsecal cause and root of all the actual evil we are guilty of It is farre from me to justifie Flacius his discourse or opinion of original sin making it the natural substance of a man and not an accident though he so expresseth himself that some think its his Logical and Metaphysical errour rather than Theological Only that which I aim at is to shew That this birth-sinne is naturally ours because from it doth flow all the sinnefull and evil operations of the whole man So that we may say as it is natural to the stone to descend to the sparks to flie upwards so it is natural to man to think evil to speak evil and to do evil Aristotle observeth Lib. 2. Ethic. cap. 1. this as one property of things by nature that there the principles are before the actions A man hath the power to see or hear before he can actually do either but in moral things the actions are before the habits As it is natural to the Toad to vent poison and not honey so when a man sinneth it 's from his own it 's natural to him but when inabled to do any thing that is good this is wholly of grace Now I say It 's an inward principle of all sinne within us to distinguish it from external cause viz. the devil or wicked men who sometimes may tempt and cause to sinne Therefore the devil is called The tempter Mat. 4. 3. Insomuch that it is made a Question Whether there be any sinne a man commits that the Devil hath not tempted unto but that I attend not to at this time This is enough that the Devil is but an outward cause of sinne and therefore were there not that original filth in us his sparks could never kindle a fire he cannot compell or force to sinne In somuch that whatsoever sinne we do commit we are not to lay the fault principally upon the Devil but our own corrupt hearts Though Ananias lied against the holy Ghost because the Devil had filled his heart And Judas betrayed Christ because Satan had entred into his heart yet the devil could not have come into their hearts had they not been of uncleane and corrupt Constitutions before it was an evil heart and therefore the devil took possession of it The Apostle James cap. 1. 14. doth notably discover the true cause and natural fountain of all the evil committed by us and that is The lust and concupiscence that is within
not the effect of it Because we are thus sinful and polluted by nature therefore all our actions are likewise so polluted Now then if the Scripture make it such an impossible thing for a man accustomed only to evil to become a changed man that impossibility lieth upon a man who is naturally so For though custom be called a second Nature yet certainly the first Nature is more implanted and so more active in a man This particular therefore may greatly humble a man in that sinne is so deeply rooted in him it 's worse than an habit or custom of sinning It goeth as neer to thy very essence and substance as it can do and yet not be thy substance Therefore the Scripture cals it Flesh and blood The members of a man The Law of sinne in his flesh If a man hath a thorn in his flesh how restless and pained is he Paul compared that heavy temptation he grapled with to a Thorn in the flesh but although by nature we have this thorn not only in our sides but even all over the whole man yet we can lie down in ease and live in pleasure as if nothing ailed us but this is one deadly effect of original sinne that it takes away all sense and feeling whether there be any such thing or no. Oh then let the thoughts of this sinne go as deep into thee as the sinne it self Sinne is got into thy heart let sorrow get thither Sinne hath entred into thy bowels and filled the whole man brimme full as we say Oh let shame and holy confusion be as deep and as complete in thee SECT VIII SEventhly This naturality will appear If we consider that original righteousness which God created man in For our original sinne comes in the place thereof and such a perfection as that was to the soul such a defect is this to us Now the Orthodox do maintain against Papists That that original righteousness was not a supernatural perfection superadded to mans nature but a due and natural perfection concreated with him For as Adam being made to glorifie God was thereby to have a rational soul so also such perfection in that soul which might make him capable of his end otherwise man would have been created in a more imperfect and ignoble condition than any creature It is true indeed That Righteousness and Holiness Adam had which the Scripture cals Gods Image did not flow from the principles of nature neither was it a natural consequent thereof but yet it was a moral condition or perfection due to Adam supposing God created him to such an end and therefore we are not to conceive of that Image of God as an infused habit or habits which were to rectifie and guide the natural faculties and affections of the soul which otherwise would move in repugnancy and contrariety to one another but as a natural rectitude and innate ability of those powers and affections of the soul to move regularly and subordinately to Gods will Though therefore in respect of God that Righteousness Adam had might be called supernatural because it was his gift yet in respect of man the subject so it was connatural and a suitable perfection to his nature This being taken for a sure Truth then it will exceedingly help us to the true understanding of the naturality of this evil for original sinne succeeding in the stead thereof is not as some Papists affirm like the taking of cloaths from a man and so leaving him naked or like the taking away of a bridle from an horse all which are superadded and external helps as it were but it 's like death that takes away the life of a man in respect of what is holy and godly and like an heavy disease that doth much hinder and debilitate even the natural operations This original sinne then is like the spoiling of an instrument of Musick or the deordination of a Clock or Watch when not able to perform their proper service they were made for So that original sinne is partly the want of this original Righteousness that was so connatural and partly thereby a propensity and inclination to all evil For as when the harmony of the humours is dissolved presently diseases arise in the body Thus when that admirable rectitude which was at first in the whole man was broken then all inordinacy all perversness and crookedness presently began to possess the whole man As then original Righteousness was not as an infused habit but the faculties of the soul duly constituted whereby they did regularly move in their several wayes so original sin is not to be conceived like some acquired habit polluting the powers of the soul but as the internal defect and imperfection that is cleaving to them Even as the paralitical hand whensoever it moveth doth it with feebleness and trembling wanting some strength within If therefore we would truly judge of the horrible nature of this sinne we must throughly understand the excellency and wonderful nature of that original Righteousness which is now lost then all things in the soul were in an admirable subordination to that which is holy and although the sensitive appetite was then carried out to some sensible object yet it was with a subordination to the understanding so that in that state of integrity there did not need as the Papists say Righteousness as a bridle to curb in the passions and affections which otherwise would be inordinate for this were to attribute a proneness to sinne in us to God himself for he is the author of every thing which is natural in us but all the affections and sensitive motions were then subjected to the command of reason so that Adam had power to love when and as long and in what measure he pleased All the affections of his soul were both quoad originem gradum and progressum under his dominion Even as the Artificer can make his Clock strike when and as many times as he pleaseth But wo be unto us all this excellent harmony and subordination is now lost and our affections they captivate and rule over our judgments and all this is because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there wants something within as he said of his Image that he could not make stand because it wanted life within SECT IX EIghthly That this original sinne is a natural evil appeareth From the work of grace sanctifying which is the proper remedy to cure this imbred defilement For the grace of Regeneration is chiefly and principally intended to subdue sinne as it did corrupt the nature and so by consequence as we were personally corrupted Therefore the tree must first be made good ere the fruit can be good as the tree is in its nature evil and then it brings forth evil fruit So that God in vouchsafing of this grace of Regeneration doth not principally intend to make thee leave thy actual sinnes for that is by consequence only but to make thy nature better to repair his Image in thee
declared the loathsom and abominable objects we are to God as soon as ever we have a being We are unclean that is filthy loathsom abominable such as the pure eyes of God cannot behold with the least approbation Hence Job 15. 16. man is called abominable and filthy so that no Toad or noisom creature can be more irksom and loathsom to our eyes than we are to God while abiding in this natural pollution God indeed when he made man at first saw that all was exceeding good If Adam had continued in his integrity then there had the clean been brought out of the clean then man would have been glorious and comely thirsting after and drinking down righteousness like water then the imaginations of the throughts of his heart would have been holy and good and that continually but now we are become sinfull and thus polluted of our own making It is from us that of once clean we are made unclean For although none but God can make the unclean clean yet Adam by the liberty and mutability of his will did quickly make the clean unclean Oh then how deeply should this thought pierce us that we came into the world abominable and loathsom in Gods eyes The object of his wrath and displeasure finding nothing of that holy Image in us which was at first put into us Oh consider how great and glorious and powerfull that God is to whom thou art thus loathsom If all men and Angels should abhorre thee it is nothing to this that God abominates thee Secondly This also implieth That we should be loathsom and abominable in our own eyes that when we are grown up and shall be truly informed upon what terms we come into the world we should be as so many spiritual monsters in our own eyes Job you see here though so godly a man and who had such a glorious character given him by God himself yet because of this doth loath himself The ulcers and sores upon his body for which he sate abhorring of himself upon the dung-hill seem not more to affect him then this spiritual vileness and loathsomness that is upon him It 's observed That though Herod and others have kept a festival Commemoration of their birth-day yet we never read that ever any godly man did so though Calvin saith it 's mos vetustus and so not vituperabilis because of the good use may be made of it in the Scripture Indeed the day of their death hath been celebrated and called their birth-day because then and never till then did they begin indeed to live And if Solomon meerly because of the miseries and vexations that do accompany this humane life Eccles 4. 2. praised the dead above the living and he that never had been that was not born better than both How much rather will this bold true if we consider how man is born in a sinfull estate and cannot but sinne all the day long Certainly we may say it had been farre better thou hadst never been born if not new born if not delivered from this native filthiness as if thou must have a being better have been any bruitish creature than a man better be a Toad a Tyger a Serpent than a man if not washed by the bloud of Christ from this uncleanness For although we have cause to bless God that he made us men rather than bruit beasts in respect of natural considerations yet in a theological sense because they are not subject to hell and damnation as man is therefore their estate is not so miserable For In the third place In that men is born unclean thereby is proclaimed That he cometh into the world upon farre more dangerous and wretched terms than other creatures do The bruit creatures they are not unclean God doth not loath and abhorre their young ones They are not by nature the objects of his wrath neither are they exposed to eternal torments but thus is the sinfull off-spring of all mankind Thou canst not see a worm crawling on the ground thou canst not hear a snake hissing in the hedge but thou mayest think these are not as bad as I am these have no sinne in their natures God is not angry with these as he is with mankind For though History report of a devout man who seeing a Toad fell a weeping because of the goodness of God who had made him a man and not that Toad yet upon the consideration of original sinne he might as deeply have mourned because he was worse than that Toad Thou canst not see the fatted beasts driven to the slaughter but thou mayest say They are happier than I am for they are killed and there is an end of them but I am a miserable and wretched man born in sinne and if not cleansed from it must necessarily perish to all eternity Luther while in the deeps troubles and sorrows of heart because of his sinne had this passage Oh quoties optavi me uunquam fuisse hominem He went from place to place his heart aking and throbbing crying out Oh that I had never been a man So that by sinne a man is not onely made like the beast that perisheth but worse for the beast perisheth totally but so shall not he Fourthly In our natural uncleanness is declared our manifest similitude and agreement with the Devils themselves that we and they are now under the same consideration for man is naturally unclean and the Devils have this appropriated attribute all along the New Testament for the most part that they are the unclean spirits The Devil is an unclean spirit and man is unclean in body and spirit Hence because of this natural pollution we are all by nature the seed of the Serpent The Devils is said to rule in us and we are therefore under his Kingdom for being not born in a state of grace but of sinne we are therefore under his dominion and upon this supposition even in Austin's time there were exorcisms used at the Baptism of Infants which was not a Scripture institution no more than giving honey and milk to the baptized child which was very ancient and yet now laid aside even by the Roman Church it self that amongst other Rites in Baptism they had this of exorcismes and insufflation by which they signified not that the child was possessed bodily with the Devil but that it was under the power of him This Austin instanceth in to Julian the Pelagian where he tels him Ipse à toto orbe exufflandus esset si huic exufflationi qua princeps mundi ejicitur for as contradicere voluist is I mention not this to allow or commend that Ceremony for it was an absurd one though brought into the Church â—etimes for it had been happy if the Church alwayes had contented her self with the pure plain and sole institutions of Christ but to inform you what even the ancient Church thought about Infants new born that they were wholly under the power of the Devils Yea the Heathens had
of it or like one Intellectus agens as some Philosophers dreamed but it is in every man that cometh in the world every one that is born hath his birth-corruption Therefore David doth not speak of that iniquity as it is in all mankind but as it was his case and as he was born in it So that it is not enough for you to say It is true it cannot be denied but that all are sinfull by nature but you must come home to your own heart you must take notice of the dung-hill and hell that is in your own hearts Thus the Apostle Paul as you heard Ephes 2. 3. to humble them and to lay them low that they might see all the unworthiness and guilt that was upon them before the grace of God was effectual in them he informeth them not onely of those grosse actual impieties they had walked in but that they were by nature the children of wrath But you may see this duty of bitter and deep humiliation because of original sinne notably expressed in Paul Rom. 7. most of that Chapter is spent in sad groans and complaints because of its still working and acting in him It was the sense of this made him cry out Oh miserable man that I am Dost thou therefore flatter thy self as if there were no such law of sinne prevailing upon thee when thou shalt see Paul thus sadly afflicted because of it Therefore it is that I added in the Doctrine We are to bewail and acknowledge it all our lives For Paul speaks here whatsoever Papists and Arminians say to the contrary in the person of a regenerate man Who did delight in the Law of God in the inward man and yet these thorns were in his side Original sinne in the lusts thereof was too active whereby he could not do the good he would and when he did he did it not so purely and perfectly as he ought So that you see the work you are to do as long as you live Though regenerated though sanctified you are to bewail this sinne yea none but the truly godly do lay it seriously to heart Natural men they either do not believe such a thing or they have not the sense of it which would wound them at the very heart Therefore we read only of regenerate men as David Job and Paul who because of this birth-pollution do humble themselves so low under Gods hand But let us search into this truth SECT V. Which needed not to have been if Adam had stood FIrst Take notice That had Adam stood in the integrity God made him in had he preserved the Image of God for himself and for his posterity then there had been no occasion no just cause for such self-abhorrency as doth now necessarily lie upon us Adam did not hide himself and runne from God neither was he ashamed of himself till sinne had made this dreadfull breach In that happy time of mans innocency there was no place for tears or repentance There was no complaining or grieving because of a Law of sinne hurrying them whither they would not then Adam's heart was in his own power he could joy and delight in God as he pleased but since that first transgression there hath become that grievous ataxy and sad disorder and confusion under which we are to mourn and groan as long as we live for as we necessarily have corruptible bodies which will be pained and diseased as long as we are on the earth so we have also defiled and depraved soules which will alwaies be matter of grief and sorrow to every gracious heart so that they must necessarily cry out Oh Lord I would fain be better I desire to be better but this corrupted heart and nature of mine will not let me The Socinians who affirm That Adam even in the first Creation had such a repugnancy planted in him and a contrariety between the mind and the sensible part that this prevailing made him thereby to commit that transgression do reproach God the maker of man and make him the Author of sinne So then this necessity of confession and acknowledgment of our native pollution was not from the beginning but upon Adam's transgression SECT VI. We must be humbled for a two-fold Original sinne and seek from Christ a two-fold Righteousness SEcondly When we say That original sinne is to be matter of our humiliation and sorrow we must understand that two-fold Original sinne heretofore mentioned viz. Adam 's actual sin imputed to us and that inherent or in-dwelling sin we are born in For seeing the guilt of both doth redound upon our persons accordingly ought our humiliation and debasement to be Yea Piscator thinketh David confesseth both these in this verse In the first place In iniquity was I shapen or born as he interprets it viz. in Adam's iniquity And in the second place in or with for so some render it sinne did my mother conceive me which is to be understood of that imbred pollution howsoever it be here it is plain Rom. 5. that the Apostle debaseth and humbleth us under this two-fold consideration first That we all sinned in him there is the imputed sinne And secondly That by his disobedience we are made sinners there is our birth-sin So that those who would hunger and thirst after Christ finding a need of him must seek for a two-fold benefit by Christ answering this two-fold evil First the grace of Justification to take away the guilt of all sinne and then of Sanctification in some measure to overcome the power of it that as we have by the first Adam imputed and inherent sinne so by the second Adam imputed and inherent righteousness SECT VII The Different Opinions of Men about Humiliation for Original Sinne. THirdly There are those who make such an humiliation and debasement as David here professeth altogether needless and superfluous but they go upon different grounds For First All such who do absolutely deny any such thing they must needs acknowledge all such confessions to be lies and falshoods that it is but taking of Gods name in vain when we confess such a thing by our selves if it be not indeed in us For if Adam should have said Behold God created me in iniquity and formed me in sinne would not this have been horrible lying to God and blaspheming of his Name No less is it If their Position be true That we are born in the same condition and estate that Adam was created in derogatory to God and a bold presumptuous lie for men in their prayers to acknowledge such a sinne dwelling in them when indeed it doth not So then if this be true That we are not born in original sinne then David doth in this penitential Psalm fearfully abuse the Name of God speaking that which is a lie and a most abominable untruth But whose fore-head is so hardned as to affirm this Yet all such who deny there is any birth-sinne they must also say there is no confession to be made
in some persons hath a notable expression Psal 5. 9. Their inward part is very wickednesse or wickednesses as in the Hebrew Their inward part is nothing but wickednesse Now although therefore habitual sinnes may truly be called sinnes dwelling in us yet the Apostle doth not speak here of such habitual sinnes for he speaks all along of one sinne as the mother as the fountain and root of all And besides Paul speaking in the person of a regenerate man could not complain of the acquired habits of sinne within him for in Regeneration there is an expulsion of all habitual sinne and in this sense Those that are born of God are said not to sinne viz. habitually and customarily as wicked men do although some actual sins and those of a very hainous nature may consist with the work of grace yet habites of sinne and habits of grace can no more consist together than light and darkness It is evident then that the Apostle not meaning habitual sinne must understand original in the immediate actings and workings of it for this will alwayes be a troublesome and molesting inmate This is not conquered but with the last enemy death it self SECT III. Why Original Corruption is called The Inherent or In-dwelling Sinne. THis premised Let us consider why original corruption is called the Inherent and In-dwelling Sinne and that even in a godly man And first The Apostle cals it the sinne 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Because of the propriety and proper right it hath to us As a man is said to dwell in his house because he hath a right to it and it is his own This original sinne is in every man as in its proper place as the stone doth rest in its center and will not move further So that as hell is said to be the proper place of Judas He went saith the Text to his own place Thus is the heart and soul of a man the proper and fit subject for all the natural impiety that cleaveth to us and therefore though the Devil be also said To rule in the hearts of wicked men he dwels also in them as well as sinne for which he is compared to an armed man keeping the house yet this is more extrinsecal and from without The Devil could not find a room ready swept and garnished for him but because of this native pollution Hence the Apostle doth not in this Chapter complain of the Devil but sin dwelling in him He doth not say I would do good but the Devil hinders me though that be sometimes true but sin dwelling in him Secondly This expression of sinne dwelling in a man denoteth The quiet and peaceable possession it hath in man by nature it dwels there as in its own house nothing to disturb or molest it Hence it is That all things are so quiet in a natural man there is nothing troubles him he is not disquieted in his conscience he feeleth no such burden or weight within him as Paul here complaineth of so that you would think many civil and natural men in a more holy condition than Paul They will thank God They have a good heart and all is quiet within them but this is not because original sinne doth not dwell and live and work in them but because they are sensless and stupid sinne is in its proper place and so there is no trouble and restlesness in their conscience Therefore it s thy want of experimental discoveries that makes thee question original sinne otherwise thy own heart would be in stead of all books to thee in this particular Indeed in godly men though sinne dwelleth in them yet it hath not peaceable possession it is as a tyrant in them Therefore the regenerate part maketh many oppositions and great resistances There is praying watching and fasting against it They are as sollicitous to have it quite expelled as some were to have Christ cast out the Devils from their possessed friends otherwise in the natural man original sin prevaileth all over and there is no noise no opposition yea great delight and content there is in subjection thereunto so that they resist Grace and the Spirit of God by the Word which would subdue sinne in them So that there is a great difference between the Inâ—dwelling of original sinne in a natural man and a regenerate In the former it dwelleth indeed but as the Jebusites in Canaan upon hard terms as the Gibeonites were in subjection to the Israelites It is true Arminius In Cap. 7. ad Rom. pag. 696. from this expression of sinne dwelling in Paul doth think a firm argument may be drawn to prove that he discourseth of an unregenerate person Because saith he the word to dwell doth in its proper signification and in the use of the Scripture signifie a full and powerfull dominion and therefore rejecteth that distinction of Peccatum dominans or regnans which is said to be in wicked men and inhabitans which is in the godly he would have it called inexistens not inhabitans But we have shewed That sinne is said to dwell in a man not because of its dominion in a godly man but because of its fixed inseparability and from this word a servant who hath no rule in an house is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. Pet. 2. 18. Thirdly The word doth denote permanency and a fixed abode in us it is not for a night or year but our whole life dwelling in us So that sinne is not in a mans heart as a pilgrim as a stranger that is presently to remove but it hath taken up a fixed abode in us here it dwels and here it will dwell you see our holy Apostle sadly complaining of this inseparability of it from him as long as he lâ—veth Actual sinnes they are committed and so passe away yea when pardoned it is as if they had never been but original sinne is like Samson's hair though cut it will grow again and be as strong as ever till it be plucked up by the roots Fourthly In this expression is denoted the latency also and security of it it dwels in us and it 's called The Law in our members The chief actings and stirrings of it are in the inward man Therefore it is that the natural man the Pharisaical and hypocritical man know nothing of it Paul while a Pharisee and so zealous against grosse sinne abounding in external obedience yet knew not lust to be a sinne neither was he so sensible of such a load and burden within him Vse 1. Of Instruction not to think imputed original sinne or Adam's actual transgression made ours to be all the original sin we have No you may see there is an in-dwelling sinne an inherent corruption from whence floweth all that actual filth which is in our lives And why is it that we hear no more groaning and labouring under it Is it not because the spiritual life of grace is not within them Oh why are all things so still and peaceable within thee
to send them to hell they think but what can be spoken more terribly against man in regard of original sinne then God himself here speaks where every word is like so much thunder and lightning as is to be shewed Only for the present purpose observe that he saith Every imagination of the thought of a mans heart is evil Imagination or framing and fashioning the heart of a man is compared to a shop of wickedness and every thing framed or fashioned there is only evil Sinne then is present in a powerfull manner when there cannot so much as rise a motion in thee a stirring of thy soul though never so involuntary and indeliberate but it is only evil Oh it was not thus in the state of integrity then every imagination every motion was good and only good but now our gold is become dross and wine water Let a natural man observe his heart and he shall see what riseth first in his soul is all filth like the muddy fountain it comes from Yea even in a godly man How many thoughts and motions rise up in his heart that he abhorreth and trembleth at It is true sometimes the devil injecteth vile and blasphemous thoughts so that his heart is not at all active in them and therefore are not sinnes but compared to the Cup in Benjamin's sack they knew not how it came there and it is a great dexterity in casuistical Divinity so to direct a Christin that he may know when such motions arise from the devil alone so that they are my afflictions but not sinnes or when they come from my heart and so are truly imputable to me of which in its due time it may be but for the present we may sigh and groan under this consideration That evil is so present with us that nothing riseth up in the heart sooner than sinne Secondly In that evil is said to be present to Paul there is denoted the universal and diffusca presene of it Paul doth not say it 's present in one part in one faculty but to me that is in every part susceptible of sinne Therefore it is called The Law in his members because it putteth forth its efficacy every where sinne is present in the mind by atheism unbelief c. in the will by obstinacy and obdurateness in the affections by inordinacy and confusion yea sinne is present in the eye in the tongue So that the Apostle meaneth this original sinne is of such an universal extent that it is present in every part in him For you must not think as some Papists do That original sinne is only in the inferiour sensitive part of a man but it is principally and chiefly in the intellectual and most noble part the mind and the understanding and indeed because it 's so predominant therefore is conversion so difficult for the Ministry bringing arguments and convictions out of Gods word The sinne that is present in the understanding putteth a man upon atheistical cavils and carnal disputes whereby he shuts himself up voluntarily in his darkness rather than he will receive light Thirdly In that evil is said to be present with us here is denoted the continual assaulting and vigorous acting of it at all times Though original sinne be not an actual sinne yet it is an active sinne Hence Paul attributeth such actions to it as if it were some mighty imperious and conquering tyrant he saith it doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It warreth against him it leadeth him into captivity Do not then think this sinne hath a meer bare sluggish presence is if it lay asleep in thee No it is daily assaulting thee it 's continually pulling thee down As the heart and pulse are in continual motion thus is original sin within thee Therefore our imaginations are not only said to be only evil Gen. 6. 5. but also continually Thy soul never acteth but it acteth sinfully and corruptly It is true while men are in their natural estate They are dead in sinne and so they find not feel not these stirrings neither do they groan under them but there are innumerable Myriads of sinfull motions in thee to sinne though thou doest not apprehend them As a man shut up in a dark dungeon full of Toads and noisom vermin he seeth nothing till light come into the place and then he trembleth being afraid to stay there any longer such a loathsom dungeon is every mans heart naturally Oh the atheism vanity wickedness that is bound up therein but thou dost not know or believe any such thing because dead in sin Fourthly There is implied the facility and easiness in sinning The way to sinne is no narrow or strait way There needeth not much striving to enter therein for it 's ready at hand May not all find if they will search this readiness of sin at all time Why is thy heart so quickly moved and drawn out to any earthly or sinfull pleasure but it 's a long while ere thou canst make any fire or kindle a flame in thy soul to that which is good Thy soul is a dry Tree to the former but a green Tree to the later as the Scripture speaks concerning the righteousness of faith It 's night thee Thou needest not say Who shall go into the deep for it Rom. 10 c. Thus it is true of sin in thee thou needest no instruction no masters thou needest not fetch devils from hell to commit sinne for that is alwayes present with thee Hence Eliphaz compareth it Job 15. to drinking of water when a man is scorched with thirst If you see there are many who by a natural conscience are so convinced that they are difficulty brought to commit some sinnes especially gross ones It is no contradiction for a man to be all over polluted and prone to sinne notwithstanding such dictates of conscience implanted in all men This is plain That sin ss so present that without any difficulty or pain we are carried out to sinne so that the kingdom of hell doth not like the kingdom of Heaven need any violence to take it Fifthly When evil is said to be present there is denoted the subtile and daily insinuation of it into all that we do It 's in a man like leaven that sends forth its fourness into all the meal it leaveth not the least part unleavened This sinne is like a Dalilah in Samson's heart it is alwayes enticing and tempting of thee and therefore it 's called by the name of lust or concupiscence and Jam. 1. 17. there it 's said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to intice by setting baits for us Hence in Jer. 17. the wickedness of the heart is expressed by this That it is deceitfull above all things who can think that the wise holy God made us with such hearts at first No but upon the first transgression came this desolation upon us Because then evil is thus present with us hence every holy duty is contaminated hence there
have a contrariety to it and why is it that a man should thus naturally be an enemy to his own peace Is it not because of this imbred sin working in us 2. If the Spirit of God go further and doth not outwardly teach onely but inwardly and spiritually also changing even the whole man making it a new creature yet because this corruption is not quite rooted out it doth continually gain say and withstand that Law of the mind within us Whence then is it that such rebellion and opposition is within thee to every good thing Is it not because original sinne hath put thee into this disorder Thirdly It is an impediment alliciendo and inescando It doth ensnare and allure the heart so that while the soul should pursue the race that throweth in the way some alluring objects or others and thereby it is stopt in its course As the Heathens speak of golden Apples cast in the way to hinder one that was swiftly running in the race He that runneth in a race must not step out of the way to gather every flower that groweth by the way-side nor is he to stand still and refresh his eyes with pleasant objects Thus neither ought we in our way to Heaven but this original corruption bewitches and enticeth the heart with many deceitfull and alluring lusts So that by this means we are for the most part in golden sweet dreams promising this and that comfort to our selves till at last with Dives we awaken in hell and see our selves bereaved of all happiness The Apostle James doth fully confirm this secret bewitching way of original sinne within us which he calleth lust Jam. 1. 14. So that marvel not to see thy self drowned in all the pleasures of sinne to be sucking down the comforts of earthly things with all delight for this lust within thee this bewitching Dalilah in thy breast puts thee into a sweet sleep and so heavenly things have no relish no taste to thy appetite but the things of the world are sweeter than the honey-comb Oh why is it that sinne which is indeed full of stings and bitterness should be so sweet Why should it be such a pleasing thing to go in the wayes that lead to hell and damnation that when thou art sinning it is as thou wouldst have it Is not all this because sin hath insnared and inticed thee Lastly Sinne is a burden to the soul in our race debilitando By weakning and debilitating the principles of grace within us So that although we are regenerated and sanctified yet because original sinne doth intimately adhere even to the very habits of grace within us so that they are not perfect and pure Hence it is that their actings are more remisse and languid we cannot love God perfectly we cannot have pure and sinnelesse actions because we have not pure and sinnelesse principles So that whereas some have thought that there is not such a spiritual conflict in a godly man as we speak of because that would make the will to will and nill at the same time two contrary things they do not rightly understand this Assertion for it 's not from contrariety of volitions but because the will being not perfectly healed willeth good things remisly and faintly not with that perfection or freedom and alacrity as it ought to do Vse Of Instruction Every day to bewail this depraved estate of thine more and more We take thee as Ezekiel was in another case and cause thee to see every day more and more abomination Thou hast not heard all the worst nor have we discovered all the worst that is in us yea we are never able to goe to the bottome of it This original sinne is an unsearchable Mystery It is a long while ere we come to know any thing of it and longer ere we come to know the breadth and length of it Know this sufficiently and then be in love with thy self or trust in thy good heart and thy own righteousness if thou canst CHAP. VI. Of the Name Evil Treasure of the Heart given to Original Sinne. SECT I. MAT. 12. 35. And an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things THese words are part of an Apologetical Answer that our Saviour made against the Pharisees who were guilty of blaspheming the holy Ghost because they did maliciously oppose the known truth and what was done by the Spirit of God attributing it to the power of the devil And in this Apology the fervency and zeal of our Saviour doth appear in the compellation he giveth them Generation of vipers Here you see That it is not alwayes railing and indiscreet zeal to call wicked men by such names that their sinnes do deserve In the next place he giveth the reason of this their blasphemy it is no wonder if they speak ill who have ill and naughty hearts which he expresseth emphatically 1. By an interrogation How can ye 2. By the impossibility How can ye 3. From the matter mentioned he doth not say How can ye being evil de good things but speak We might think wicked men might easily forbear evil words though not evil actions but their heart is first set on fire with hell and then the tongue The Physician discovers how the heart is by the tongue and so doth Religion also Now that good words cannot proceed from a bad heart viz. naturally for on purpose and artificially many evil-minded men may speak religiously and men may have butter words whose hearts are like swords our Saviour proveth from the common and even proverbial rule A good man hath a good heart and a good treasure and so of this sweet fountain cannot come bitter streams But a bad man hath an evil treasure in his heart and so from these thorns men cannot gather grapes nor from these thistles figs we see here then a good man and a bad diversified by that which is wholly hidden and secret not known to any but God till he discover it by words or actions Now this evil treasure in every mans heart is two-fold 1. That which is Natural that which he cometh into the world with thus every man hath an inexhausted treasure of wickedness which he spends upon all his life time and yet never cometh to the bottom of it And in this sense our Divines do well prove That no natural or unregenerate man is able to do any thing though never so little that is good because he is a bad Tree and being also of the seed of Serpents there cannot come any honey or sweet thing from him 2. There is an acquired and increased treasure of sinne which a man storeth up by daily custom in sinne so that he becometh to have two treasures of evil in his soul as if one were not enough natural and voluntary innate and voluntarily contracted For you must know That original sinne though it be a full fountain of poison ready of it self to overflow yet custom in sin doth
that we are no wayes sensible of I shall not at large in this place treat De Imagine Dei of the Image of God in man I shall say onely so much as will make us the better discover the Nature of original sinne And First We are to know That howsoever there be hot and fervent Disputes about this Image of God what it is wherein it doth consist and according as they take it more largely or strictly so they conclude the Image of God is lost or not lost yet we may by Scripture-light make it to consist in these things CHAP. IX Wherein the making Man after Gods Image did consist SECT I. FIrst In the soul as it is endowed with reason and understanding For herein man did transcend all other visible creatures that God made him with a rational soul investing him with reason and free-will and in this respect the Image of God is not totally lost For though by it we have lost all our power and understanding in holy things yet we have not lost our souls and the natural faculties thereof we are not made bruit beasts we are men still Hence it is that still the reason holds Why a man should not kill another Gen. 9. 6. For in the image of God made he man If there were not yet the Image of God in some respect the reason would not be so forcible For what weight would it carry to say Thou shalt not kill a man because once he had the Image of God but now he hath lost it God speaketh of what he will require of every man that hath slain another and that because in the Image of God he made him Thus Jame 3. 9. aggravateth the sinne of cursing any man because man is made after the similitude of God To this we may appropriate that of the Poet confirmed Act. 17. by the Apostle himself We are his off spring We will grant then That the Image of God so farre as it consists in the soul and the natural faculties is not lost though in regard of the actings thereof even about natural things they are made infirm and weak Secondly The Image of God did consist in that holinesse and righteousness which God did adorn the soul with And this indeed is the most noble and principal part of Gods Image to be made like God in righteousnesse and holinesse Therefore Col. 3. 10. Ephes 4 24. we read the Image of God is said to be in righteousnesse and true holinesse Insomuch that many learned Divines do make this the onely Image of God though not so probably This indeed is the principal and chief the other is but remote and secundary for the later abideth even in the Devils and the damned in hell They have reason and understanding yet they cannot do the least good action no not for a moment although they have so much light in them This holinesse and righteousnesse then in the whole man was the chiefest resemblance of God he being holy as God was holy not by equality but similitude But alas who is able to apprehend aright of this Who can now tell being plunged into all evil and sinne what it is to be altogether holy what it is to be without any blemish or spot Yet in such a glorious and admirable manner we were created Thirdly The Image of God did not only comprehend this holinesse actually dwelling in us but a power and strength also to persevere in this holinesse for if God had been never so bountifull in one yet if he had denied the other he would have made us happy that thereby we might become more miserable But this is not to be thought of that God who shewed so much love and bounty in our first Creation Adam therefore had the Law of God written in his heart having strength and ability from within to withstand all temptations and to perform any holy auty so that we cannot instance in any holy action which he had not power to perform Indeed to believe in Christ as a Saviour to repent of sinne he could not actually do them because they do necessarily imply the subject sinfull and in a miserable estate and condition but eminently and transcendently these things were in his power yea this power of his did extend to keep all the Commandments of God and that without any imperfection Insomuch that being under the Covenant of works he might have obtained justification by them though not meritoriousty This glory did God at first put upon us who now have nothing but a cursed slavery unto sinne and an utter impotency to any thing that is holy As for resisting any temptation he had strength and ability enough to gainsay it though it had been in many degrees more violent than that which 〈◊〉 him It is true he was overcome by a temptation and in that which might have easily been repulsed as we would judge but this was to shew That although he was created holy yet he was also mutable Though he had power to persevere yet he had not that grace which did make him actually to persevere as the confirmed Angels have So that what Historians say of the Marsi in Italy and the 〈◊〉 in Africa That they had such a temper of body that no Serpents could hurt them or poison them Such an admitable temperament was Adams soul in that the Serpent would not have deceived them had not they given consent For if while we are in this corrupted estate yet the Devil cannot force us to sinne be cannot make us sinne whether we will or no but it is lust within us that betrayeth all to him No wonder then if in that state of integrity there was no 〈…〉 to sinne either from within or without Fourthly This Image of God in the holinesse of it was not only in the mind and the will with a clear knowledge of God and love of him but it did extend also to the affections so that they were made with a regular subordination to the rule of holinesse within a man These wild horses for our possions are no better were then all tamed and as much subject to mans will as the winds and tempells were to Christs Anger grief love and desire these did not rise or continue in our soul any longer or otherwise but as they were conducted by the light of God shining in the mind This must necessarily be comprehended in that expression Eccles 7. when God is said to make man right rectitude is an universal harmony and congruity of all the parts of the soul unto the rule Austin did once wonder at that disobedience which now man finds in himself Superat animu corperi c. Confes lib. 8. cap. 9. The soul commands the body and presently it obeyeth but saith he Imperat sibi ipsi it commands it self and then there is rebellion but it was not thus from the beginning Therefore the Papists and Socinians they do blaspheme in some sense God our holy Maker whale they affirm That
whereas the reason they give why by flesh cannot be meant wholly sinfull Because say they then in the opposition by Spirit would be meant wholly spirituall whereas the Orthodox do acknowledge a conflict with the Spirit and the flesh abiding in every regenerate man But to this the Answer is That the abstract is put for the concrete spirit for spiritual so that the Subject in the Proposition Born of the Spirit Spirit is the holy Spirit of God and the Predicate is made spirit Spirit is to be understood of that spiritual and heavenly nature wrought in us by him And although he who is made thus spiritual is not purely and absolutely so yet the Spirit will in time subdue and wholly conquer the flesh in which sense Gal. 5. They that are Christs are said to have crucified the flesh with the lusts thereof Although there be the reliques and remainders of it still in the most holy The Text then being thus vindicated the Observation is That all men born in a natural way are not only without the Image of God but thereby also are positively polluted and made all over flesh and sinfull SECT II. Of the use of the word Flesh in Scripture And why Original Corruption is called by that name TO discover this in the first place It is good to take notice of the use of the word Flesh in Scripture for the mis-understanding or mis-applying of it hath brought in a world of mischief The Papists by Flesh I mean some of them understanding only the bruitish and sensitive part as if sinne were onely resident there and the rational part were free and pure but this is a very great errour For besides the general use of the word Flesh in the Scripture there is two more pertinent to our purpose 1. Flesh is sometimes taken for that which is weak and frail Isa 31. Their horses are flesh and not spirit Psal 78. He remembred they were but flesh And 2. It is often taken for sinfulness and corruption Thus Gal. 5. The works of the flesh are opposite to the works of the Spirit and men who are in the Flesh Rom. 8. cannot please God Gal. 3. Who having begun in the Spirit will ye end in the flesh To be in the flesh and in the Spirit are made two opposite beings by the Apostle Insomuch that we may make it a sure Rule That wheresoever flesh is opposed to the Spirit of God or its spiritual operations that then flesh is used for that which is evil and sinfull and thus it is in the Text. The true notion therefore of the word Flesh being retained Let us consider Why original sinne is thus called Flesh And First It is called so Because of its opposition to what is spiritual Whatsoever the Spirit of God revealeth to be believed or commands to be obeyed it is wholly contradicted by man while abiding in the flesh Thus the Apostle Rom. 8. The wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God You see here is not only a meer privation of what is spiritual but a positive enmity and frowardness against God and therefore we do not speak enough to describe the fulness of our natural evil when we say that we came naked into the world without the Image of God and his Spirit for original sinne hath a contrariety in it against God it puts a man upon hatred of whatsoever is holy therefore the Apostle addeth Rom. 8. 5. It is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be Oh then that God would make our hearts more of flesh in the Prophet Ezekiels sense viz. tender and melting under considerations of how much flesh is in both mind and heart in the Apostles sense Would thy self-righteousness thy self-love thy self-fulness continue any longer if thou didst thus judge and believe concerning thy self Oh what a noisom carkass what a loathsom monster wouldst thou be in thy own eyes if thou didst consider the positive frowardness and opposition which is in thee to what is holy And therefore even in the regenerate Gal. 5. 17. The Flesh is said to lust against the spirit Search then into thy heart and say From whence doth arise these gainsayings and oppositions which are in me to what is holy Why should not heavenly and spiritual things be as welcome pleasing and delightfull to me as sinfull and wordly objects Is not all this because thou art Flesh Certainly there is a thousand times more reason for thee to imbrace spiritual objects than earthly They have more real excellent and enduring good in them then all the pleasures of sinne if put together but it is because thou art flesh that thy heart is naturally so full of enmity against whatsoever is spiritual And although this natural enmity be encreased in thee by voluntary wickedness yet that which cleaveth to thee as soon as thou hast a being is enough to make thee refuse the word of God the Ministry inviting of thee and to slight every Sermon thou hearest or every affliction God layeth upon thee for thy sinne mourn then under this enmity this Law of sinne that rebelleth against the Spirit of God This may sensibly and evidently teach thee that thy natural corruption is more than a meer want of the Image of God Secondly In that original corruption is called flesh is manifested That even the whole intellectual and sublimer parts of a man are become sinfull We see our Saviour saith That which is born of flesh is flesh nothing is excepted so that whereas some would have it the rational part The mind and understanding not to be comprehended under this flesh we say the contrary according to Scripture That in the soul and faculties thereof there is originally sinne chiefly seated There is the spring and fountain from whence issue all the streams of sinne into the lower parts of the soul Thus when the Apostle reckons up the works of the flesh Gal. 5. 19 20. There are Idolatry and Heresies numbered with the rest which must needs be sins of the mind How often doth the Scripture speak of darkness ignorance folly and blindness in the minds of all men by nature Col. 2. 18. There it 's called a fleshly mind and certainly if the mind must be renewed as the Scripture speaks Rom. 12. 2. Col. 3. Eph. 4. 23. it necessarily followeth that it is fleshly and sinfull Behold then what a fountain of evil and misery springs out from us in this respect which may overwhelm us For though the inferior parts of the soul had been throughly infected with this Leprosie yet if the superiour and chief parts had not been contaminated there would have been hopes that those Sun-beams would have dispelled such misty clouds but seeing that the eye is become dark How great is our darkness and salt it self having lost its seasoning all must become loathsom and unprofitable Not only thy eyes thy ears not only thy affections and passions of love fear anger c. which are the
there is no love and also no hatred So that if we do not know how loathsom and vile this sinne is we are never able to bewail it and to humble our selves under it There are many Descriptions of it given by several Authors but that we may in a large and popular way comprehend all things in one Description that is necessary to understand the full nature of it we may take this delineation of it SECT II. ORiginal sinne is an horrid depravation and defilement of the whole man caused by the Devils temptation and our first Parents obedience thereunto and from them descending by propagation to all his Posterity being stript of Gods glorious Image whereby they are prone to all evil and so are under the bondage of the Devil and obnoxious to eternal wrath It is not my purpose in making this draught of it to attend unto the exact rules of Logick but so to compose it that every thing considerable to give the true knowledge of it may be comprized therein And First We say It 's a depravation and defilement which implieth the sinfulness of it that it is truly and properly a sinne And therefore sinne is truly and univocally divided into original and actual so that they who make it onely to be guilt without any inward contagion they do wholly erre from the Scripture they say not enough It is true Adam's sinne in the guilt of it is imputed unto us which made Ambrose of old say as Austin alledgeth him against the â—elagians Morinus sum in Adamo ejectus sum in Paradiso in Adamo c. I am dead in Adam I am cast out of Paradise in Adam But we are not disputing of original imputed sinne but original inhering Therefore original inherent sinne is truly and properly a defilement upon us against the Law of God and this sinfull estate of all by nature should be farre more terrible unto us then our miserable and mortal estate Again When we call it a defilement we oppose their opinion who make it only morbus and not truly a sinne As also those who say It is the substance of a man for if so then Christ could not have taken our nature without sinne neither could there be glorified bodies in Heaven without sinne for all these have the humane nature of a man Further we say It 's an horrid depravation This Epithete is necessary to be added to awaken pharisaical and self-righteous persons it being so dreadfull an evil that we are never able to go to the depth of it Never therefore think of speak of original sinne but let thy heart tremble and let horrour and amazement take hold of thee because of it and this is put in the Description to obviate those opinions that make it the least of all sinnes Some complain That we are too severe and tragical in the aggravation of it but enough hath been already spoken out of Scripture to shew that neither heart can conceive or tongue express the foulness of it This is the general part of the Description Secondly You have the Subject of it and because the Subject thereof is twofold of Inhesion and of Predication In this part we have the Subject wherein it is and that is totus homo and totum hominis the whole man and the whole of man there being no part free from this contagion so that it 's repletively and diffusively in all the parts of soul and body though eminently and principally in the mind and will and the whole heart It 's true sinne is not properly seated in the body the eyes or hand or in the sensitive part yet participatively and subordinately as they are instruments to the soul in its actings so they are said to be sinfull Thus there are lustfull eyes cursing tongues unclean bodies There are sinfull imaginations and fancies because these are the organs by which the soul putteth forth its wickedness So that the body is like a broken spoiled instrument of musick and the soul like an unskilfull Artificer playing on it which causeth horrid and harsh sounds for pleasant melody But as God is every where yet in Heaven after a more glorious and signal manifestation of himself So on the contrary though original sinne be a Leprosie infecting the whole man yet it 's most principally in the intellectual and immaterial parts of the soul It 's horrible darknesse in the mind aversnesse in the will to all that is good and contumacy in the heart to whatsoever is holy And this part doth directly oppose all those who grant indeed original sinne but yet grant it wholly in the inferiour and sensitive part as if our reason and mind were like the Heavens of a quintessential frame in respect of any unholy contagion whereas indeed because these eyes of the soul are dark therefore is the whole body dark Because the Sunne and Moon and Starres as it were of this little world of man are turned into bloud therefore every part else is also become blood defiled and loathsom and this is the reason why so few do either believe or know this natural corruption because it benummeth us yea it taketh away all spiritual life so that we cannot discern of it The declaration of the cause of it followeth in this description where we have the external efficient cause and the internal The external was the Devil after his all and apostasie he endeavoured being a murderer from the beginning to destroy man also and accordingly he did prevail and thus by the Devil sinne came into the world yet he is the external cause onely he could not force or compel our first parents to sinne he did onely perswade and entice them Therefore the internal cause was the freedom of their will God created them in whereby they might either imbrace good or chuse evil which mutability was the cause of their apostasie It is true the dispute is very curious How Adam being created perfect could yeeld to sinne Whether did the defect arise in his will or understanding first But seeing it 's clear by Scripture that he did sinne and we feel the wofull effect of it Let us not busie our heads in metaphysical curiosities although I see the soundest Authors make the beginning of his sinne to be in inadvertency for his soul being finite while he earnestly intended to one thing he did not attend to another and so sinne was inchoatively first in his understanding not by errour or ignorance for Adam's understanding was free from that but by not attendency to all considerations and arguments as he ought to do Although it must be confest that the root and foundation of his sin was the vertibility of his will for as he might not sin so also he might sin he had then a posse peccare in him and so a defectibility from the Rule Thus although efficient causes use not to be put into exact definitions neither hath sin so properly efficient as deficient causes yet in large descriptions it is
know lust to be sinne that is not so clearly so fully so experimentally as now he did since the grace of God had both enlightned and sanctified him How many have with great orthodoxy maintained this Truth against Pelagians and all the enemies of Gods grace shrouding themselves under the praise of nature but it is rare to see those that do not onely theoretically believe it but practically walk with broken and contrite hearts under it Examine then thy self Doest thou believe this is Gods Truth that thou camest into the world all over polluted Doest thou think that thou as well as any other though never so civil and unblameable in respect of actual sinnes art by nature a child of the Devil prepared fuel for the eternal flames of Hell And doest thou not onely believe this to be thy particular case but withall thou art so affected with an holy fear and trembling thou hast no quietnesse or rest in thy soul because of it then thou art come to a true and right knowledge of it For the end of our preaching on this Subject is not onely to establish your minds in this Truth against all errours therein but also to mollifie and soften your hearts that you may all your life time loath your self and advance the fulnesse of Christ And seeing that natural light is dimme and confused in this matter keep close to the Word and not only so but implore the Spirit of God that in and through the Word this Truth may enter like a two-edged sword into thy bowels knowing that without this foundation laid there cannot be any esteem of Christ CHAP. XXI That Reason when once enlightned by the Scripture may be very powerfull to convince us of this Natural Pollution SECT I. A Clear and full knowledge of original sinne can be obtained onely by Scripture light Although as you heard some Heathens have had a confused apprehension about it My work at this time shall be to shew That even Reason where once enlightned by the Scripture may be very powerfull to convince us of this natural pollution So that when Scripture Reason and Experience shall come in to confirm this Truth we may then say there needeth no further disquisition in this point And First This may abundantly convince us That the hearts of men are naturally evil Because of the overflowing of all wickednesse in all ages over the whole world How could such weeds such bryers and thorns grow up every where were not the soil bad It 's true in some ages some kind of sinnes have abounded more than others and so in some places But there was never any generation wherein impiety did not cover the earth as the waters do the Sea Insomuch that if we should with zeal undertake to reprove them according to their desert Non tam irascendum quà m insaniendum est as Seneca of the vices of his time Erasmus in his Epistle to Othusius complaineth That since Christ's time there was not a more wicked age then that he lived in Christ saith he crieth I have overcome the world but the world seemeth as if it would say shortly I have overcome Christ because of the wickedness abounding and that among those who profess themselves the salt and light of the world Now how were it possible that the whole world should thus lie in wickedness 1 Joh. 5. 19 as the Apostle affirmeth but that all mankind by nature is like so many Serpents and Toads of which there is none without poison If this wickedness did abound only in some places we might blame the Clymate the Countrey or their Education but it is in all places under the Equator as well as the Tropick in all ages former times as well as later have been all groaning under ungodliness and whereas you might say The world is in its old age now and the continual habituated customary wayes of wickedness have made us drink the dregs of impiety yet the Scripture telleth us That not long after the Creation of the world when we might judge greater innocency and freedom from sinne to have been every where yet then all flesh had corrupted their wayes Gen. 6. 12. which provoked God to bring that wonderfull and extraordinary judgement of drowning it with water as if it were become like a noisom dunghill that was to be cleansed And lest you should think this was only because of their actual impieties we see God himself charging it upon this because the imaginations of a mans heart were only evil and that from his youth up So that there is no man who considers the wayes and manners of all the inhabitants of the world but must conclude had there not been poisonous fountains within there had never been such poisoned streams The warres the rapines the uncleannesses and all the horrid transgressions that have filled the earth as the vermine did Aegypt do plainly declare That all men have hearts full of evil And lest you might think this deluge of impiety is only in the Heathenish Paganish and bruitish part of the world The Psalmist complaineth of that people who were the Church of God and enjoyed the light of the Word That there was none righteous that there was none that did good no not one Psal 14. 3. So that as graves and dead mens bones the Sepulchres and monuments every where do fully manifest men are mortal no lesse do the actual impieries that fill all Cities Towns and Villages discover that all are by nature prone to that which is sinfull SECT II. SEcondly This original sinne may be proved by reason yea and experience thus If you consider all the miseries troubles and vexations man is subject unto and at last death it self and that not only men grown up who have actual sinnes but even new born Infants will not this plainly inform us That all mankind hath sinned and is cast out of the favour of God How can it enter into any mans heart to think that God the wise Creator so full of goodness to man that he made him little lower than Angels should yet make him more miserable than all creatures It was Theophrastus his complaint when he lay a dying That man had such a short time of life prefixed him who yet could have been serviceable and by long age and experience found out many observable usefull things when Crows and Harts and other creatures of no consideration have a long life vouchsafed to them Yea all the Heathens even the most learned of them complained much concerning this Theme of mans misery being never able to satisfie themselves in the cause of it But now by the Scripture we see it 's no wonder the race of mankind is thus adjudged to all misery seeing it 's all guilty of sinne before God so that if there had been no actual sinnes committed by the sonnes of men yet the ground would have been cursed to bring forth bryers and thorns man would have been miserable and mortal So that this doth
was on the earth but the top reached to heaven Thus though Adam's inferior part the body was exercised in these earthly things yet his soul the more sublime part that was fixed in heaven But now all our suâ—eableness and communion with heavenly objects is wholly perished we have hearts inlarged with joy we are ravished with delights about wordly things and when brought to any thing that is heavenly there we are weary and neither flesh or spirit is willing to such things yet nature might reach us that man of all creatures only hath hands and those not to embrace the earth but he hath feet to walk and trample upon it We read of Paul and David with other godly ones when recovered in part from the power of this originall corruption what longings and breakings of soul they had after God and his Ordinances These things were accounted for sweetness above the hony and for presciousness above gold now why should not every man be able to say so as well as they but because our tasts are wholly distempered and we are carnall not spirituall Certainly spirituall objects have in themselves infinite more matter of joy and delight then any earthly thing can have who can think there is more sweetness in a drop then in the ocean more light in the starre then in the sun The creature is less then these in comparison of God May not than even blind men see that we are all over-plunged into sinne else why should not God and heavenly objects which do so farre surpass in matter of true delight be more sweet and welcome to us then all the creatures of the world though put together Psal 4 6. Many say who will shew us any good The naturall man finds no delight but in these earthly things oppositely to God There is a Sheâ—ll in his soul that is alwaies craving and asking never satisfied now why can they not with David as well put forth the following petition Lord lift up the light of thy countenance upon us But because the carnall man finds no more pleasure in spirituall things then the swine doth in pearles or pleasant flowres A man that is spirituall having drunk of this water desireth no other As the Philosophers say The matter of the heavens is so fully actuated by the heavenly formes that it desireth no other whereas the matter of these subâ—unary things is never satisfied but though under one forme yet it still desireth another Thus the soul possessed of God and Christ hath so much delight and pleasure that it hath enough it desireth no change but the naturall man is carried out from one thing to another from one object to another first delighting in this and then in that it being impossible that Zacheus his shoe should sit Goliah's foot Thus you see that though a man be restless in his delights yet he can take pleasure in earthly things whereas he finds no sweetness no delight in heavenly things that are infinitely more precious So this may demonstrate the loss of Gods Image and our service to originall sinne in the lusts thereof Thirdly That we are thus originally corrupted appeareth in that utter impotency and inability to do any spirituall good we are not able so much as to think a thought or send forth an hearty groan as to our eternall welfare whereas at first God made Adam right and thereby endowed him with power to do any thing that was holy called therefore the Image of God so happy and blessed was his condition that he could with delight and joy fullfill the Law of God feeling no difficulty nor impediment but now being dead in sinne we are no more able then dead men to move or walk in holy things The Scripture is wonderfully clear in this though Papists Arminians and others have endeavoured to raise a mist and obscure the sun beames Joh. 15. Without me ye can do nothing Rom. 8. The flesh is eumity against God 1 Cor. 2. The naturall man perceiveth not the things of God neither can he where both the act of doing good and the power also is denied to every man by nature If therefore every man by nature be dead in sinne like a stone as in respect of any holy impression from God if he have blind eies deaf eares a foolish heart as to any heavenly thing doth not this plainly tell us that we are all over polluted It 's good for our humiliation to consider how the Scripture describeth a naturall man as wanting all his senses he hath no eies to see no eares to hear no heart to understand but is wholly dead and all this is to shew what a wonderfull impotency is in man to help himself spiritually Now this declareth the necessity of preserving this doctrine of originall corruption clean and sound for if we be orthodox here then also we shall hold the truth of God against foe will and the power of nature in divine things for these two particulars are like Castor and 〈◊〉 they alwaies appear together and what is the design or Secinians Papists and Arminians either in whole or in part to deny or extenuate originall sinne but thereby to make a way to advance their magnificent Diana their free will to holy things for they evidently see if originall sinne be such an universall deep and inward pollution of the whole soul even the will as well as other parts then their doctrine of the power of nature is pulled up by the very root Therefore the more fully assure your souls of this truth by how much the whole body of Divinity depends upon this foundation Indeed the Scripture is so clear in debasing man as to supernaturalls and giving all to the grace of God that we may wonder how this pride should settle it self in mans heart and that he doth not tremble to speak or write any thing whereby the grace of God may be diminished and man exalted he that cannot make a white hair black he that cannot adde one cubit to his stature will yet think to make a polluted soul holy and adde many cubits of grace to his spirituall stature Fourthly Our original corruption will yet further appear If you take notice of that universall ignorance and dullnesse that is upon a mans understanding knowing no saving thing about God or Christ if it be not revealed Insomuch that the necessity of Scripture-light of revealed-light to conduct us to heaven doth without contradiction prove that by nature we are as Paul said Ephes 4 darkeness even darkness it self Look over the generation of mankind that are the wisest and most learned where the light of Gods word hath not shore upon them Rom. 1. 1. The Apostle there informeth us that the doctrine of the Gospel was foolishness to them that professing themselves to be wise they became foolish in their imaginations what Aristotle or Pleto could ever by naturall reason understand any thing of Christ If then we lay this for a sure foundation though
deluded in all things and takest counterfeit for that which is true and genuine Under this head we may comprehend all that craft and subtilty in men as in the Jesuites to maintain Idolatry or Heresie For the Devil as at first so still he delights to use Serpents because they are more crafty then others The craft also in man naturally to do mischief for which they are compared in Scripture to Foxes doth declare how original sinne hath all over infected the mind Eighthly The great pollution of original sinne upon our minds is seen In the pronenesse to vain idle sinfull and â—oving thoughts so that these do discover an unclean fountain of the heart more then any thing Whence do these sparks arise but from that furnace of sinne within thee The Air is not fuller of Flies Aegypt was not fuller of Frogs then every mans heart is naturally of idle vain foolish and impertinent thoughts Thoughts they are the immediate product and issue of original sinne The first born they are streams that come immediately from the fountain Now certainly if a man had by nature an holy sanctified mind he would also have holy and sanctified thoughts Think you that Adam in integrity or the good Angels are troubled with thoughts as we are For all the while a man is natural he never had a good thought in him he might have a thought of good but not a good thought For as every Cogitatio mali is not Cogitatio malâ We may think of evil to abhorre and detest and this thought of evil is good So in a natural man though he may have a thought about good yet it is not in a good manner and therefore evil though the object matter be good What then will prostrate thee and make thee lie grovelling upon the ground loathing thy self if this do not Amongst the millions and millions of thoughts which thou hast there is not one but it is either vain proud idle or impertinent yea our thoughts are not in our own power no more then the birds that flie in the air but they arise antecedently to our own will and deliberation And certainly if vain thoughts be such a burden to a regenerate man if they do captivate and inthrall him which made one cry out Libenter Domine bonus esse vellem sed cogitationes meae non patiuntur I would gladly be good but my thoughts will not suffer me No wonder if to the natural man who is under the power of original sinne that sinfull thoughts hurry him away without any resistance Ninthly Original pollution doth greatly defile the mind of a man in the mutability and instability of it Insomuch that the judgement of every natural man destitute of true light and faith which doth onely consolidate the soul is like a reed shaken with every wind he is mutable and various ready every day or every year to have a new Faith and a new Religion This maketh the Apostle inform us That one end of the Ministry Ephes 4. 14. is That we be not carried away with every wind of Doctrine Such empty straws and feathers are we that any new opinion doth presently seduce us and therefore the Scripture doth press a sound mind and an heart established with grace which is the special preservative against such instability Aquinas maketh this the reason of the good Angels confirmation in grace and that they cannot now sinne because such is the perfection and immutability of their natures that what their understanding doth once adhere unto they cannot change Indeed it is thus with God that his knowledge is unchangeable but there is no reason to attribute this to Angels and therefore their confirmation in good is not so much to be attributed to any intrinsecal cause in themselves as to the grace of God establishing them But how farre short was man newly created of such immutability How much more then man fallen From this pollution it is that we have so many apostates that there are Seekers that there are so many Neutrals that there are so many who think any in any Religion may be saved It is true there may be a just cause of changing our minds in Religion as when educated in Popery or when we have received any heretical opinions but I speak here of that instability which is naturally in the mind of a man that though he be in the truth yet there is a proneness to desert it and to discover much lenity in the matters of Religion The Remonstrants go too farre this way commending this sinfulnesse under the name of modesty and humility and therefore though in Fundamentals they will grant we may say This our faith is This we doe believe yet in other points which though not fundamentals yet the errors about them may greatly derogate from the glory of Christ and his grace as also much prejudice the consolations of those who truly fear God as their opinions do They commend those expressions Ita nobis videtur and Salvo meliorum judicio It is our sententia not our fides Now if this were said only in some points disputed amongst the Orthodox that are at a great distance from Fundamentals it might be received but they extend this further if not to the foundation-stones yet to those that immediately joyn to them and so do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 remove such things that will in time endanger the whole structure of Christianity and so from Remonstrantisme proceed to Socinianisme which is adificari and ruinam as Tertullian expresseth it De praesc Such an edification many unsetled spirits meet with Tenthly Original sinne doth pollute the mind of a man with pride and vain-glory so that he is easily puffed up with his own conceits and altogether ignorant of his ignorance The Apostle Col. 2. 18. saith of some Vainly puffed up with a fleshly mind This Tumor this Tympany in the mind hath been the cause of most heresies in the Church The Gnosticks boasted in their knowledge and had their name from it The Eunomians did vainly and blasphemously brag That they knew God as well as he knew himself And some in these later dayes have not been afraid to compare themselves above the Apostles for gifts and illuminations So that whereas every one should with wise Augur say humbly I have not the understanding of a man I am more bruitish then any man Or with Austin when one admiring his learning used this expression Nihil te latet he answered again Nihil tristius legi because he knew the falshood of it because of his ignorance even in innumerable places of Scripture They equalize themselves to Angels yea to God himself This pride this self-conceit is a worm bred in the rose and the more parts men have the more doth this disease increase Matthew Paris relateth of a great Scholar much admired for his learning who in his Lectures once in the Schools proving the Divine Nature and also Incarnation of Christ with mighty applause did
Some say therefore it 's an habit others as Aquinas and Dr Ames answering Mr Perkins his Objection Why it cannot be an act that it is an act But certainly as scientia is sometimes taken for that which is by way of a principle or habit in man and sometimes for that which is by way of act So also it is with conscience it taketh into its nature both that practical habit called by Aristotle Intellectus or the habit of first principles and also the actual application of them for if conscience were not habitual as well as in act There were no conscience in men when they are asleep which yet cannot be denied unto regenerate persons So that as in Scripture saith and love are taken sometimes for the habit of those graces sometimes for the acts of them so also conscience is taken both for the principle and the act it self For to the acting of conscience there is required as all observe a practical Syllogisme Thus Whosoever is a fornicator a drunkard a curser cannot inherit the kingdom of God But I am such a sinner Therefore I cannot inherit the kingdom of God Or on the contrary To him that believeth and is of a broken contrite heart pardon of sinne is promised But I believe and am of a broken heart Therefore to me pardon of sinne is promised Thus conscience is well called the practical understanding for whereas the speculative hath for its object that which is meerly true this looketh upon it as ordinable to action as such a truth is to be brought into particular application To every acting then of conscience compleatly there is required a Syllogisme either interpretative or formal And as Dr. Ames saith well Conscience in the major Proposition is Lex in the Assumption it is Testis in the Conclusion it is Judex In the first Proposition there it is by way of a Law dictating such a thing to be true In the Minor it is a Witnesse bearing witness either against or for our selves And lastly it is a Judge passing sentence according to the premisses And in that it is called conscience it doth relate to another a knowledge with another that is either our selves so that conscience in its actings is conceived as a person as it were distinct from us and so that witnesseth with our hearts what we are and what we have done Hence if a mans conscience lay a sinne to his charge though all the world free him yet he beareth guilt and terrour about with him Quid proderit tibi non habere conscium habenti conscientiam or else which is more probable it is called conscience or knowledge with in respect of God So that in the actings of conscience there is a sense and apprehension of the knowledge of God and his presence Therefore conscience doth alwayes bear some aspect to God this God will see this God will punish this God hath forbidden and therefore let me betime take heed how I do it So that while conscience hath any stirrings and vigorous actings there is some hope in a man Although it be thus generally received by all that conscience belongs to the understanding yet Durand makes it something probable Lib. 2. Distinct 39. Quast 4. That if it be not the will yet the will is necessarily included in the workings of conscience so that conscience doth denote understanding and will also For that act of conscience which is called remordere to bite and sting a man to make him grieve and be sad upon the committing of sinne must flow from the will Secondly Although man hath lost the Image of God and be thus all over polluted Yet he hath not lest neither his soul or the faculties thereof with some imbred principles both speculative and practical which can no more be separated from the soul then the beams from the Sunne Hence that habit of practical principles such as that there is a God that he is to be worshipped that Parents are to be honoured is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 à conservando because these are kept and preserved still or rather as Martinius in his Lexicon out of Hierom because these do instigate and incline to keep us from sinne in our actions The Scholmen commonly call it Synderisis and say It is as much as con-electio but this is because of their ignorance of the Greek tongue These Reliques of Gods Image are lest in us still even as after some great fire of a stately Pallace there remain some sparks long after or in the demolishing of glorious Towns there will some rudera some remnants appear of such a building It is true This is questioned by some Illyricus out of his vehement desire to aggravate sinne denieth there is any sense or knowledge of a God left in a man more then in a bruit and endeavoureth to answer those places of Scripture which are brought to prove those common principles or implanted knowledge in a man by nature The Socinians also though plowing with another heifer do deny any implanted knowledge by a God but that it comes by same and tradition On the other side Pelagians Arminians and some Papists fall into another extream for they hold such principles about God and what is good that they may be light enough to guide us to salvation It is not my work now to examine either of these for the truth is between these two There are some implanted practical notions in us about God and what is good agaist those that erre in the defect and yet they are no wayes able to conduct to eternal happiness against those that erre in the excesse To prove this will be to anticipate my self in the protract of this Discourse about original sinne Therefore here only we take it for granted That there are such principles as also a conscience to discern between good and evil which though it be greatly polluted Yet this candle of the Lord as it is called Prov 20. 27. searching the inward things of a man is not quite extinct Whether these common principles are naturally propagated as the body is as the Lutherans say who hold the Traduction of souls from parents or whether they are De Novo created in the creation of the soul as the dissentient party from that opinion must hold is not here to be debated we may conclude That the soul hath a natural testimony in it self about God and therefore in sudden calamities doth immediately cry out to him which made Tortullian say O anima naturaliter Christiana Thirdly Because conscience doth thus witnes with God and as it were in Gods stead Hence it is That is hath such a command and power over a man that we must not go against conscience We may go against our wils against our affection but we must not go against our consciences no not when they are erroneous and though they dictate sinne as Rom. 14. ult Whatsoever is not of faith is sinne and be that doubteth is condemned conscience is but an
if nothing aâ—led them many yeares after when they were in anguish of mind by Joseph's severe carriage towards them Gen. 42. 21. Then they said one to another We are very guilty concerning our brother in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear therefore is this distress come upon us so that some unexpected calamity may be to us as the hand-writing on the will to Belshazzar making conscience to tremble within us 3. God as a just Judge can command these Hornets and Bees to arise in thy conscience It is plain Cain when he set himselfe to build Townes thought to remove that trembling which was upon him but he could not do it how many have set themselves with all the might they could to be delivered from this anguish of conscience and could not because God is greater then our conscience if he command terror and trembling none can expell it This troubled conscience is threatned as a curse to such who did break the Law of God Deut. 29. 65 67. The Lord shall give thee a trembling heart and sorrow of mind In the morning thou shalt say would God it were day for the fear of thy heart Here we may observe that God can when he pleaseth strike the heart of the most jolly and prophane sinner with such a trembling conscience that he shall not have rest day or night and when God after much patience abused doth smite the soul with such horror and astonishment many times This never tendeth to a gracious and Evangelical humiliation but as in Cain and Judas is the beginning even of hell it self in this life So fearfull a thing is it to fall into the hands of the living God when provoked Heb. 10. 31. For in such as ver 27. there is a certain fearfull looking for the indignation and wrath of God which will devour the adversaries 4. This troubled conscience may and doth often come by the Spirit of God convincing and reprooving by the Word especially the law discovered in the exactness and condemning power of it Joh. 16. 8. The Spirit of God doth reproove or convince the world of sinne Now conviction belongs to the conscience principally and indeed this is the ordinary way for the conversion of any Gods Spirit doth by the Law convince and awaken conscience making it unquiet and restless finding no bottome to stand upon it hath nothing but sinne no righteousness to be justified by the law condemneth justice arraigneth and he is overwhelmed not knowing what to doe This is the worke of Gods Spirit and of this some do expound that place Rom. 8. 15. Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but of adoption It is the same spirit which is called the spirit of bondage and of Adoption onely it 's called so from different operations It 's the spirit of bondage while by the Law it humbleth us filleth the conscience with fear and trembling not that the sinfulnesse or slavishnesse of these fears opposing the way of faith are of the Spirit but the tremblings themselves and it is the Spirit of Adoption when it rebuketh all tormenting fears giving Evangelical principles of Faith Love and Assurance Now these fears thus wrought by the Spirit of God in the Ministry of the Word though they be not alwaies necessary antecedents of conversion yet are sometimes ordained by God to be as it were a John Baptist to make way for Christ Lastly These troubles of conscience may arise through Gods permission from the Devil For when God leaveth thee to Satan's kingdome as it was the case of the incestuous person to be buffeted by him tempted by him you see he did so farre prevail with him that he was almost swallowed up with too much grief Therefore when God will evangelically compose the conscience by faith in Christs bloud he taketh off Satan again and suffereth him not to cast his fiery darts into us any longer The false wayes that the wounded Conscience is prone to take THese things explained Let us return to consider the pollution of natural conscience in the two particulars mentioned whereof The first is That the wounded conscience for sinne is very ready to use false remedies for its cure These stings he seeleth are intollerable he cannot live and be thus he taketh no pleasure in any thing he hath but he cometh not to true peace for either they go to carnal and sinfull wayes of pleasure so to remove their troubles or to superstitions and uncommanded wayes of devotion thinking thereby to be healed The former too many take who when troubled for sinne their hearts frequently smite them they call this Melancholly and Pusillanimity Tush they will not give way to such checks of conscience but they will go to their merry company they will drink it away they will rant it away or else they will goe to their merry pastimes and sports Thus as Herod sought to kill Jesus as soon as he was borne so do these strive to suffocate and stifle the very beginnings and risings of conscience within them Oh wretched men prepared for hell torments Though now thou stoppest the mouth of conscience yet hereafter it will be the gnawing worme It 's this troubled conscience that makes hell to be chiefly hell It 's not the flaming fire it 's not the torments of the body that are the chiefest of hels misery but the griping and torturing of conscience to all eternity This is the hell of hels Others when none of these means will rebuke the stormes and waves of their soul but they think they must perish then they set themselves upon some superstitious austere waies as in Popery to go on Pilgrimage to enter into some Monastery to undertake some bodily affliction and penalty and by these means they think to get peace of conscience but Luther found by experience the insufficiency of all these courses That all their Casuists were unwise Physicians and that they gave gall to drinke in stead of honey In the next place therefore This pollution of a troubled conscience is seen In it's opposition to Christ to an Evangelical Righteousnesse and the sway of believing Conscience is farre more polluted about Christ and receiving of him then about the commands and obedience thereunto for naturally there is something in conscience to do the things of the Law but the Gospel and the Doctrine about Christ is wholly supernatural and by revelation Hence although it is clear That the conscience truly humbled for sinne ought to believe in Christ for expiation thereof Yet how long doth the broken heart continue ignorant of this duty Their conscience troubleth them accuseth them for other sins but not for this of not particularly applying Christ to thy self for comfort whereas thou art bound in conscience to believe in Christ as well as repent of sinne I say thou art bound in conscience and if thou doest not by particular acts of faith receive Christ in
God implying That the Sunne and the night can no more stand together then the remembring of God and carnal confidence can the ambitious man the voluptuous man remembring God would find it to be like thunder and lightning upon the soul This would immediately stop him in his waies of iniquities Thus 2 Sam. 14 11. that suborned woman of Tekoah in her disguised Parable to David complaining of some that would rise up against her to destroy her sonne she desireth the King to stop the revengers wrath by this Argument Let the King remember the Lord thy God Thus when thou art sollicited inticed to any evil way Remember thou God the infinite God the just God the omniscient God the dreadfull and terrible God in all his wayes of anger Nehemiah also maketh use of this Argument to quicken up the Jews against sinfull fear and cowardise in Gods work Nehem. 4. 14. 1 said to the Nobles and Rulers of the people be ye not afraid of them but remember the Lord which is great and terrible This God complaineth of Isa 57. 11. Thou hast not remembred me nor laid it to thy heart and therefore were they so propense to all their abominations These Texts may suffice to inform that our memories ought constantly to be fixed upon God and no sooner do we let him out of our mind but immediately some sinne or other is committed But how unspeakably is the memory of every man naturally polluted herein When is God in their thoughts Amongst those millions and millions of objects which thou dost remember when is the great God the just God the holy God thought on May you not see it by the bold impiety and undaunted wickednesse of all unregenerate men that they remember not God Yea the godly themselves finde in part this pollution upon their memory Whence arise those carnal feares those dejected thoughts Is it not because you forget the greatnesse and goodnesse of God Bewail thy memory-sinfulnesse as well as other sins 2. As the Scripture prescribes the object of our memory viz God himself so it doth instance in one time more then at another Though at all times God is to be remembred yet in one time of our age though there be greatest cause yet our lusts and desire after other things do greatly hebetate our memory We have the injunction from Solomon himself Eccl 12. 1. Remember now thy Creator in the dayes of thy youth Here you see who is to be remembred when he is to be remembred God is to be remembred and that in the time of our youth But do not the strong effects of original sin heightned also by actual sins discover herein most palpable impiety in young persons they remember their lusts their pleasures in the dayes of their youth and God is never in all their thoughts Oh where may we find a young Timothy that was acquainted with the Scripturee from his infancy Where an Obadiah That feared God from the youth Do not most young persons live so negligently about holy things as if they were allowed to be dissolute as if the things of Heaven and eternity did not belong to them as if Solomon had said the contrary Do not remember God in the dayes of thy youth be not so strict and precise but follow thy pastimes and pleasures Thus the very memory of God and holy things is a burden to young persons They think Solimon spake farre better Chap. 11. 9. when he saith Rejoyce O young man in thy youth let thy heart cheer thee and walk in the wayes of thy heart remove sorrow and evil away They like this well This is good but there is a sting in that which followeth Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee to judgement This will quickly damp all thy youthfull jollities Let then young persons especially bewail the sinfulnesse and forgetfulnesse of their memory herein This is the best and most flourishing time for your memory now it is put upon to learn either Mechanical Trades or the Liberal Arts your memories are most drawn out in inferiour things but take the advantage to imploy it more about holy things You hear old persons complain they have lost their memory they grow forgetfull therefore fix your memories upon good things while you may 3. The Scripture commends the Word of God likewise as the object of our memory Timothy had learnt the Scripture from his Infancy The word of God was for this end amongst others as you heard committed to writing that so we might the more readily have it in our memories Mal. 4. 4. the Prophet commands them to remember the Law of Moses with the statutes and judgments yea they were to have such a ready and familiar knowledge of the Word of God that when they were rising or walking they were to be speaking of them Deut. 6. 7 8 9. we may there see what care is taken that the Law of God should be alwayes in their mind but do we not evidently behold the cursed and wretched pollution of mans memory in this particular Why is it that little children will remember any Songs sooner then the principles of Religion Why is it that many persons who are not able to remember any thing of the Scripture or the Sermons they have heard yet can remember Ballads and Songs they can remember their youthfull pranks and talk of them with delight but they cannot give any account of the good truths that in their younger years were preached to them When do ye hear such say Such a Sermon wounded me at heart it sticketh still upon me I shall never forget it Now is not the sinfulnesse of the memory greatly to be bewailed in this particular If it were holy and sanctified it would take more delight and joy to remember Scripture-truths then any thing else whereas now thy memory is like a sieve that lets the corn and weighty grain fall through but the light refuse stuff that it retaineth Thus what is solid and would do thy soul good that quickly passeth away Oh that we could not fay our Sermons passe away as a tale that is told for those you do remember and you will carry a long while in your mind empty frothy things those abide long with you Would you not judge it madnesse in the Husbandman if he should pluck up and hinder the growth of his corn and let cockle and tare with other weeds flourish Thus thou dost about thy memory throw away the flours and keep the weeds whereas thy memory should be like the holiest of holies nothing but what is select and sanctified should enter therein 4. That I may not be too long in these instances The works of God whether in his mercy or in his wrath they are to be the object of our memory Thus the Scripture speaketh often of remembring his marvellous works Matth. 16. 19. Christ reproveth his Disciples because they did not remember the miracle of the loaves All the great
Memory is polluted in respect of its inward vitiosity adhering to it SEcondly As the memory is thus defiled about its proper objects so there is much inward vitiosity adhering to it And this we may take notice of as a main one The dullness sluggishness and stupidity of it especially as to heavenly things who can give any other reason why good things holy things should not be remembered as well as evil and sinfull things but only the native pollution of the memory And from hence it is that there is such a lethargy as it were upon the memory for if Peter 2 Pet 3. 1 writing to those who were sanctified and that had pure minds yet he thought it meet to stirre them up a metaphor as you heard from men asleep who need to be awakened how much more doth the memory of a natural man need stirring and exciting There is then a wonderfull stupidity and sleepiness as it were upon the memory it is even rusty as it were and unfit for any use men do not exercise and put their memories upon practice little do they know what they could remember if they did mind it and exercise themselves to remember what is good Thou complainest of a bad memory of a slippery memory No it is thy laziness it 's thy bad heart it 's thy want of diligence Thy memory would be as good and as active for holy things as it is for earthly things if you did put it in practice more but the memory being naturally dull and stupid thou lettest it alone thou never improvest it never awakenest it and so through thy forgetfullness thou comest eternally to perish This lethargy upon thy memory though a sad disease yet might be cured if thou wert real and industrious about it much praying and much practising of it in holy things would make it as expedite and as ready about good things as ever it was in any evil things In the third place The memory is naturally unsanctified in this particular that wherein it can or doth remember there it produceth not suteable operations nor doth it obtain its end The end of remembring what is good is to love it to practise it and to imitate it The end of remembring evil is to loath it bitterly to repent of it and to fly from it Now herein our memory is grosly polluted that it never obtaineth this blessed and holy end whereas if our memories were never so admirable as that of Symonides or Appelonius Thyaneus when he was about an hundred yeares old yet if our memory be not effectual and operative to make us more holy and heavenly this is a sinfull and defiled memory And for this reason it is that wicked men are said to forget God because though they do remember him yet they do not performe those duties to which their memory should be subservient For as the end of knowledge is action so the end of memory also is to be doing and as it is said If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them so when ye remember these things it 's a blessed thing to put them in practise But how often do we see by experience that where the memory is naturally very good there morally it is very bad and sinfull Do you not meet with many that can remember the Scripture remember Sermons yet never remember the practice of them whereas God hath given us memory for the same end he hath given us a knowledge which is to direct and help us in our operations That as in beasts they have a sensitive memory in them to preserve their natural being The Oxe remembreth his Masters crib the bird remembreth her seasons and all this for natural preservation The Bee remembereth the place of her hive The Ant her nest though some Philosophers because of the great siceity of the constitution of those creatures attribute it to a natural instinct rather then memory so this should be much more true in men therefore doth God bestow on us an intellectual memory that thereby he might spiritually preserve himself making use of that which is advantagious to his soul and avoiding all that which is destructive As then we are not to know only that we may know or to know thereby making ostentation that others may take notice of it so neither are we to remember that we may remember only or to brag of our memory that others may wonder to see what a strong and retentive memory we have but that thereby we may be more promoted and advanced in heavenly things Let all such tremble under this consideration who have very quick and sure memories about the Scripture and the Sermons they hear yet are very ungodly in their lives and walk in a contrary way to all that they do remember This argueth thy memory is not a sanctified memory that it carrieth not on the work of grace in thee for which end only it ought to be imployed It is observed that two sorts of men need a good memory First The lyar Oportet mendacem esse memorem now every professing Christian living wickedly is a lyar for with words he acknowledgeth him butin workes he denieth him insomuch that thou who lyest thus to God shouldst remember thy professions and obligations the second sort is of greatest accomptants such who have great summes to cast up and to be accountable for these also had need of great memories and such is every man Oh the vast and numberless particulars of which he is one day to give an account to God! Oh what a proficient in holiness might thou have been if all the good things thou remembrest were in a practical manner improved if thou couldst give a good account to God of thy memory for that you are to do as well as of the improvement of other parts of the soul As God at the day of judgement will have an account of every talent he hath given thee of thy understanding of thy will how these have been employed so likewise of thy memory What is that good that holiness thy memory hath put thee upon and this also you who are young ones and servants living in godly Families are diligently to attend to for you think this is enough if you can remember a Sermon or Catechistical heads so as to give an account to your Governors if you can satisfie them you think this is enough but thou art greatly deceived for therefore art thou to remember that thou maist do accordingly Thou art never to forget this or that truth that so it may be ready at hand to direct thee in all thy wayes and this is indeed a divine act of memory There are those who teach the art of memory and give rules to perfect a man therein but divine and holy operation is the end of the Christian art of our memory Fourthly The pollution of our memory is seen In that it is made subservient to the corrupt frame and inclination of our hearts We
remember what our hearts are set upon what our affections are earnest for whereas our memory should precede and go before them for the intellective memory is the same with the mind and understanding of a man for although to remember be not properly an act of knowledge yet this intellective memory we make the same with the mind of a man as it extends to things that are past The memory then is to make way for the heart and the affections to be directive to them whereas now for the most part it is made a slave to the corrupt heart for if the understanding in it all 's hegemonical and primary actions hath lost its power how much more is this true in the memory For the most part therefore the badness of the heart makes a bad memory and a good heart a good memory men complain they cannot remember when indeed they will not remember their hearts are so possessed and inslaved to earthly things that they remember nothing but what tendeth thereunto This is the ground of that saying Omnia quae curant senes meminerunt Old men remember all things their hearts are let upon all things they do earnestly regard They can remember their bonds the place where their money lieth because their hearts are fixed upon these things but no holy or good things can lodge in their memories The rule is Frigus est mater obiivionis Coldness is the mother of oblivion as is partly seen in old men and thus it is even in old and young their hearts are cold earthly lumpish even like stones about holy things and therefore it is no wonder if they remember them no better so that we may generally conclude That the cause of all they blockishness and forgetfullness about divine things is thy sinfull and corrupt heart if that were better thy memory would be better We have a notable place Jer. 2. 32. Can a maid forget her ornaments or a bride her attire yet my people have forgotten me daies without number Can a bride forget her attire and ornament it is impossible because her delight and affections are upon it but saith God My people have forgotten me daies without number Why so because I am not that to them which ornaments are to a bride saith God if they delight in me rejoyce in me if they did account me their glory then they would never forget me By this you see that therefore we forget God and his wayes because our hearts are not in love with him Can he that is powerfully conquered by love of a friend forget his friend Doth he not alwaies remember him Is not a friend alter ego Is not the lovers soul more where it loveth then where it animateth Thus it would be also with us in reference unto God therefore we have bad memories because bad hearts It is true some natural causes may either deprive us wholly of or greatly enervate the memory Thus Messalla that famous Orator judged to be more elaborate then Tully two yeares before his death forgot all things even his own name Hermogenes also that famous Rhetorician who wrote those Rhetorical institutions which are read with admiration of all and this he did when he was but eighteen years old and some six yeares after grew meerly stupid and sensless without any evident cause of whom it was said that he was Inter pueros senex inter senes puer Thucidides as Vostius reporteth Orat. institut lib. 6. speaketh of such an horrible pestilence that those who did recover of it grew so forgetfull that they did not know their friends neither remembred what kind of life or profession they once followed So that natural causes may much weaken the memory but if we speak in a moral sense then nothing doth so much corrupt the memory about holy things as a sinfull and polluted heart Fifthly The pollution of the memory is seen In that it is not now subject in the exercise of it to our will and power We cannot remember when we would and when it doth most concern us whereas in the state of integrity Adam had such an universal Dominion over all the powers of his soul that they acted at what time and in what measure he pleased Thus his affections were subject to him in respect of their rise progress and degree and so for his memory he had all things in his mind as he would Some indeed question Whether Adam did then Intelligere per Phantasmata But that seemeth inseparable from the nature of man while upon the earth and living an animal life though without sinne No doubt his soul being the form of the whole man did act dependently upon the instrumentality of the body though such was the admirable constitution of his body that nothing could make the operations thereof irregular Adam then had nothing which could either Physically or Morally hinder the memory but all was under his voluntary command whereas such an impotency is upon us that if we would give a world we cannot remember the things we would Hence we are force to compel our selves by one thing after another to bring to our minds what is forgotten for in remembring there is some dependance of one thing upon another as rings if tied together are more easily taken hold of then when they lie singly and loosly And this Austin lib. 10. confes maketh to be the Etimology of the word Cogito Cogito à cogo as Agito ab ago Factito à facio as if to cogitate were to force and compell things into our minds Let us then mourn and humble our selves under this great pollution of nature that those things which are of such infinite consequence which are as much as our salvation and eternal happiness are worth yet we do not we cannot remember Hence in the sixth place The memory being not under our command it falleth out that things come into our minds When we would not have them yea when it is a sinne to receive them How often in holy duties in religious performances do we remember things which happily we could not do when the fit season and opportunity was for them Do not many worldly businesses come into our minds when we are in heavenly approaches to God that as Job 1. when the sonnes of God came and appeared before God then Satan came also and stood with them Thus when thou art busie to remember all those Scripture-arguments which should humble thee in Gods presence which should exalt and life up thy soul to God How many heterogeneous and distracting thoughts do croud in also so that this worldly business and that earthly imploiment cometh into thy remembrance Insomuch that the people of God though their memories are sanctified and so cleansed in much measure from original filth in the dominion of it yet do much groan under this importante and unseasonable remembring of things for hereby our duties have not that united force and power as they should have neither is God so
glorified in our addresses to him as he ought to be Psal 86. 11. David there prayeth That God would unite his heart to fear his Name And the Apostle 1 Cor. 7. doth therefore speak so warily and tenderly in the case of marriage That they might serve the Lord without distraction And no doubt dividing and diverting thoughts are as troublesome to the godly heart in holy duties as the croaking frogs were to Pharaoh when they came up into his chamber Say then with indignation to all those intruding and violent thoughts which make thee not hoc agere instant in the duty thou art about stand aloof off and be gone Bolt the door upon them as Ammon on Thamar What doth Saul among the Prophets How cometh these uclean things into the holiest of holies Let the fear of God be like the Porter or Watchman to keep out all things that would then come into thy memory Liberet me Deus said he ab homâ—pe unius tantum negotii when thy heart minds only one thing when it is God only thy soul is fixed upon and thou art not diverted otherwise such duties are effectual and prevail much Thus you have at large heard the many waies wherein this noble and usefull part of the soul is grosly polluted what a Sepulchre as it were it is wherein are contained nothing but loathsome and abominable things Come we then to make some Use of it And Vse 1. Is the memory thus defiled about holy and divine objects It is so forgetfull of what is good Then we see it is no matter of wonder if the most people who sit under the continual means of grace do abide and continue in their wicked waies as much as if never any Prophet had been amongst themâ— For they go away from all Sermons remembring no more then stones in the wall They are the Apostles forgetfull hearers Jam. 1. and so presently let all things slip out of their minds Thus forgetfulness of which you hear so much is the mother of all that disobedience and wickedness many live in The Apostle giveth a good exhortation Heb 2. 1. We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things Which we have heard lest at any time we should let them slip out of our mind We must give earnest heed All your thoughts and care and study should be how to keep the good truths of God in your mind and that alwayes lest that every thing thou hearest should fasten upon thee even till thou comest to the grave The Greek word also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is emphatical The Margin maketh it from vessels that leak Others from wet and bloached paper upon which we cannot write anything Let us then look to our memories more then we have done pray for the sanctification of them seeing by the evil thereof the Ministry is made ineffectual And because the memory is thus weak we see the necessity and usefulnesse of a two-fold custom of writing of Sermons and of repeating them afterwards in the Family of writing for whatsoever some pretend to the contrary yet it is a special means to make a thing be more fixed in our memory and this was the reason why God would have the King of Israel write the book of the Law and that with his own hand because hereby he would remember it more tenaciously And as for repeating of Sermons besides that it is part of the Sanctification of the Sabbath it doth greatly help to make the Word ingrassed into us So that those Families where there is no repeating of the Word preached do plainly discover that they regard not the retaining of it in their hearts and so are not afraid to be found in the number of forgetfull hearers Vse 2. If the memory be thus defiled then this also sheweth the necessity of parents duty in the constant instruction and teaching of their children in the principles of Religion children have not understanding to serve God with and therefore their memory which is easily quickned in them must be the more drawn out that so they may serve God as they are able It 's good seasoning these vessels betimes with wholsome liquor CHAP. IV. Of the Pollution of the VVill of man by Original Sinne. SECT I. JOHN 1. 13. Which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God THe original pollution of the Vnderstanding Conscience and Memory hath been largely and fully discovered We now proceed to the other part or power of the rational soul which is the will That is in the soul like the primum mobile in the Heavens that doth carry all the inferiour orbs away in its own motion or like the fire among the elements that doth assimulate every thing else to it self This is the whole of a man A man is not what he knoweth or what he remembreth but what he willeth The understanding is but as a Connsellour The will is as the Queen sitting upon its Throne exercising its dominion over the other parts of the soul The will is the proper subject and seat of all our sinne and if there could be a Summum malum as there is a Summum bonum this would be in the will Seeing therefore that our will is the master power of the soul and is to that what the heart is to the body the principle of all motion and action the more we find this will thorowly infected with sinne the greater will our misery appear Neither mayest thou fear that the doctrinal discovery of that poisoned fountain in thee and the representation of thy soulness and loath somness upon thee may discourage thee but hereby thou wilt be brought to loath thy self and admire the riches of grace in Christ which shall pardon and glorifie such a noisome wretch as thou art by nature Indeed Lorinus Comment in 17. chap. Act. relateth of Ptolomy King of Aegypt that he banished one Hegesius a Philosopher and eloquent Orator because he did so pathetically and sensibly Declaim upon the miseries of mans life that many were thereby cast into such grief that they made away themselves but our end in discovering of this universal leprosie of sinne upon us by nature is to bring us into an holy despair of our selves a renouncing of our righteousness that so Christ may be all in all Come we then to make inquiry into the original pollution of our will which is a subject of very large territories The Disputes about it are voluminous but I shall be as brief as the nature of this truth will permit and whereas concerning the will we may consider the nature of it absolutely in its proper works and operations or relatively in its state as free or enslaved I shall treat of both because herein original sinne hath put forth it self more then in any other parts of the soul And First I shall begin with the will absolutely considered as it is the great and mighty part of the soul
Will in its Absolute and Efficacious Willing of a thing COme we then to the next act of the Will which is an absolute and efficacious willing of a thing and here no tongue of men and Angels can expresse the depravation of it For if we do consider the true proper and adequate object of the will it is God only He is the supreme and universal good having in him after an eminent manner all good whatsoever So that no object can fill the capacity of the will but God only The good things of the creature can no more fill up the will then the air can the stomack of an hungry man but if we consider how it standeth with our will as it is now corrupted of all objects it is most averse to God Hence the Scripture describeth every wicked man by this That he hateth God not under the notion as he is good but as he is holy as he is a just Judge who will punish every wicked transgressor Know then and bewail this unspeakable defilement upon thy will that it is most averse to its proper object no stone doth more naturally descend to the center then thy will should tend to God Amor mens pondus meum illuc feror quocunque feror A mans love is his weight now if thy love be spiritual that weigheth thee to God but if thy will be carnal that presseth thee to carnal objects 2. Thy will is corrupted in respect of its object because all the creatures are to be willed by thee no otherwise then they tend to God or lead thee to him whereas naturally we will the creatures for the creatures sake and so make it instead of a God to us As the Sunne being the primum visibile all things are to be seen by the light thereof so God being the primum amabile the first and chiefest thing to be beloved all things are to be loved with a participation from it But who may not groan under our corruption herein Every creature we desire we are apt to terminate our selves upon that and to go no further Do we will health parts and the comforts of this life in reference to the glory of God So that herein we may see the depth of our corruption It was not thus with Adam in his integrity There is not a creature that thy will is pitcht upon but thy soul commits fornication with it Leave not the meditation of this point till thy heart in an holy manner break within thee ¶ 4. The Corruption of the Will in its Act of Fruition THe next Act is that which is called Fruition An operation you heard of the will when it doth possess a thing as its ultimate end end resting in it as a center and desiring no further For as the stone cannot of it self hang in the air but must descend to the earth and there it resteth So the will of man moveth up and down in a restless manner like Noah's Dove till it find out an object wherein it doth acquiesce with fulness of content Now there is no object that we may thus frui enjoy ultimately and for it self's sake but God onely That distinction of frui and uti to enjoy and use only which Austin first excogitated the Schoolmen are large upon To enjoy a thing is to have it for its self sake referring it to no further end for the Rule is Appetitus finis is infinitus The soul never hath enough of that which it ultimately desireth but yet desireth nothing else but that As in Philosophy it is said Materia semper appetit formam the Matter doth constantly desire new forms in sublunary things Hence is that frequent alteration transmutation and generation but in the heavenly bodies the matter they say is satiated desireth no other because of the great activity and perfection of that form Thus it is in moral things the heart of a man while carried out to any earthly thing cannot meet with its complement and fulness of blessedness and therefore like the Horsleech still cryeth Give give Sen caret optatis seu fruitur miser est It is a Sheol that is alwayes craving onely when terminated upon God because he is bonum quo nihil melius there cannot be any good desirable which is not transcendently in him therefore the sanctified will doth enjoy him onely Thus David Whom have I in heaven but thee and none in earth in comparison of thee In Heaven David had none but God not Angels nor Arch-angels Heaven would not be Heaven if God were not enjoyed Indeed Divines do commonly call the enjoyment of God in Heaven fruition and that is immediate compleat and perfect fruition but yet even in this life believers partake of God have communion with him and do enjoy him It is indeed by saith not yet by vision but the object of faith is as real and operative in the soul though not to such a full degree as the object seen Thus you see that according to the true order and constitution of things God onely is to be enjoyed he onely is to be loved and desired for his own sake and all things else in reference to him But on the breadth the depth and length of our natural defilement therein What spiritual Geometry can measure the dimensions hereof For doth not every natural man enjoy something or other which is as a God to him Why is Covetousness called Idolatry Why are some said to have their belly a God Is not all this because they love these things and enjoy these things for their own selfe 's sake Whereas we ought only to use them as instruments of Gods glory and advantages of grace not to abide or dwell in them They are to be taken as Physick which is not received for its selfe 's sake but because of health So that were it not for health a man would never use it Thus it ought to be with us in all the comforts we have in this world to use them no further then they are subservient to our spiritual condition we are ex officio discendere not cupiditate ruere such a crucified and circumcised heart the Apostle exhorteth to 1 Cor. 7. The time is short those that marry must be as if they married not those that rejoyce as if they rejoyced not If a man desire a garment he would not have all the cloath in the Countrey but as much as serveth for his garment So neither are we to desire wealth riches honours any comfort without end but as much as will conduce for Heaven The travailer will not burden himself no not with gold and silver who hath a long journey to go Oh then call off thy will again and again Say Why art thou fastned here Why stayest thou here Look further look higher This is not God As the Angel did on a suddain so ravish John that he was ready to worship him but the Angel forbad him saying I am thy fellow-servant worship thou God So these creatures
of Salvation but not as a place of Gods glory they desire Salvation as it freeth from Hell torments but not as it is a perfect sanctification of the whole man for the enjoyment of God Here thy intention is sinfull and incompleat when thou intendest Heaven and happiness thou art to desire all of it not some parts of it Again Our intenton is much more corrupted in making the meanes to be the end we make a perfect period and stop at a Comma or a Colon and truly this is the general and universal corruption of every mans natural intention he shooteth his arrow too short he intends no further then an happy pleasant and merry life in this world one intends honours another intends wealth another intends pleasures There is no natural man can intend any higher good then some creature or other That as the bruit beasts have a kind of improper intention as they have of reason whereby they are carried out to those things only that are obvious to sense Thus it is with man in his natural estate destitute of regeneration a worme can as soon fly like a Lark towards Heaven as this man intend any thing that is spiritually good for the natural man hath neither a mind or an heart for such holy things and so is like an Archer that hath neither eyes or hands and thereby can never reach the mark Secondly The intention of the will is corrupted in its error and mistake about its object it shooteth at a wrong mark It 's really and indeed evil which he intendeth though it be apparently good it is in truth poison though it be guilded It is true the rule is Nemo intendens malum operatur No man intendeth evil as evil but it is propounded under the notion of good and that even in those who sinne against the light and dictates of their own conscience But yet the Scripture speaketh constantly of wicked men as those that love evil and will evil and hate good because it is evil which their wills are carried out unto though it hath the outward bait and colour of what is good Herein then we have cause with bitterness of heart to bewail our sinfull intentions thou dost but cosen and delude thy own self Though thou hast many glosses many colours and pretences to deceive thy self with yet that which in deed and truth doth alure and bewitch thy soul is evil in the appearance as it were of some real good a strumpet in Matrones cloaths Thirdly The intention of the will is herein also greatly defiled that when it doth any holy and spiritual duties the true motive and proper reason of their intention is not regarded but false and carnal ones Finis operis and Finis operantis are not the same as they ought to be This is the wickedness of man so great that no heads though fountaines of waters can weep enough because of it The Pharisees they were very constant and busie in prayers in giving of almes but what was their intention all the while It was to be seen of man and therefore in the just judgement of God they had that reward This intention of the will is thought by some to be the eye our Saviour speaketh of If that be darke the whole body is darke Matth. 6. 22. Jebus did many things in a glorious manner as if none were so zealous as he but like the Kite though he soared high yet still his eye was to see what prey lay on the ground that he might devour it it was a kingdome not Gods glory he intended Thus Judas intended a bag and riches in all that seeming love and service he professed to Christ Oh take heed of the intention of thy will in every holy duty This maketh or marreth all To what hath been said may be further added First That we foolishly labour to justify our bad and sinfull actions by our good intentions as if they were able to turne evil unto good and black into white Is not this a continuall plea among natural people that though what they do be unlawfull yet they mean no hurt in it they have good hearts and good intentions Hence it is that when they have done evil in the eyes of God then they study to defend themselves by some intended good or other Thus Judas when he muttered about the ointment powred on our Saviour yet he pretends to good intentions That the ointment might have been sold and given to the poor Saul when he had rebelliously spared the best of the Cattel yet he carrieth it as if his intention had been to keep them for a Sacrifice to the Lord Yea the Pharisees in all their malicious and devilish designs against Christ would be thought that their high and pure intentions for the glory of God did carry them forward in all they did By such instances we see how prone every man is to put a good intention upon a bad action and thereby think to wash himself clean from all guilt but it is against the principles of Divinity that a good intention should justifie that which is a bad action It is true a bad intention will corrupt a good action so vain glory or to do any religious duty to be seen of men This is a worme which will devour the best rose This is a dead Flie in a box of ointment But it doth not hold true on the contrary That a good intention will change the nature of an evil action The reason whereof is that known Rule Malum est è quolibet defectu bonum non est nisi ex integris causis Even as in a Picture one defect is enough to make it uncomely but the beauty of it is not unless every thing be concurrent So in musick any one jarre is enough to spoil the harmony but to make sweet musick there must be the consent of all Do not therefore flie to thy good heart to thy good meanings thou intendest no hurt for if thy action cannot be warranted by the Word if it have not a good and lawfull superscription upon it this will never endure the fiery trial The Apostle maketh all such conclusions full of horrour and blasphemy as it were that argue Let us do evil that good may come of it Rom. 3. 8. Austin said It was not lawfull to lie though it were to save a world Consider then the sinfulnesse of thy will and be more affected with it then hitherto thou hast been When thou art overtaken with any sinne Doest thou not excuse thy selfe with a good intention Doest thou not plead some good or other though aimest at in all such unlawfull wayes But though man cannot judge thee yet the All-seeing eye of God doth pierce into all thy intentions and he knoweth thee better then thou knowest thy self Secondly The intention of the will is greatly corrupted in this particular also That it will adde to the worship of God and accumulate precepts and means of grace as they think in
hand out of his bosom he willeth and willeth but never doth effectually set himself upon working This man is like a reed that is tossed up and down with every wind Many more sinfull affections might be named for they are like the motes in the air or the sand upon the sea shore But let this suffice because more will then be discovered when we speak of the slavery of it to evil having no freedom to will what is good Only let this Truth be like a coal of fire fallen upon thy heart let it kindle a divine flame in thy breast consider this corrupt will is the root of all evil If thy will were changed if thy will were turned to God this would bring the whole man with it Oh pray to God to master thy will to conquer thy will Say O Lord though it be too hard for me yet it is not for thee Remember hell will be the breaking of thy corrupt will Thou that wouldst not do Gods will here shall not have thy will in any thing when in hell SECT V. Of the Natural Servitude and Bondage of the Will with a brief Discussion of the Point of Free-will ¶ 1. JOH 8. 35. If the Sonne therefore shall make you free ye shall be free indeed HItherto we have been discovering the vast and extensive pollution of the will in its Originals and Naturals both in the several operations and affections of it The next thing in order is To treat of the will in regard of its state as in freedome of servitude about which so many voluminous Controversies have been agitated And indeed a sound judgement in the point of Free will is of admirable consequence to advance Christ and the grace of the Gospel For whosoever do obscure the glory thereof they lay their foundation here They praise nature to the dispraise of grace and exalt God as a Creator to the prejudice of Christ as a Redeemer Although it is not my purpose to go with this Point as many miles as the Controversie would compel me yet because the Doctrine of Free-will is so plausible to flesh and bloud that in all Ages of the Church it hath had its professed Patrons And because the cause of Christ and the Gospel is herein interessed and further because it is of a great practical concernment to know what a slavery and bondage is upon the will of man to sin it will be necessary and profitable in some measure to inlarge upon it for there is scarce one in a thousand but is pussed up with his own power and strength so that he feeleth not the want of grace ¶ 2. This last mentioned Scripture opened THis Text I have pitched upon will be a good and a sure foundation for the superstruction of our future Discourse For Austin in his hot disputes with the Pelagians about the freedom of the will to what is good doth often flie to this Text as a sure Sanctuary And Calvin gravely upon this Discourse of our Saviour saith Eunt nunc Papistae we may adde Arminians and Socinians liberum arbitrium factuosè extollunt c. Let them presumptuously exalt free will but we being conscious of our own bondage do glory in Christ onely our Redeemer Though Maldonate is pleased to censure this expression of Calvin us Sententia digna verberibus vel igne Let us therefore take notice of the Coherence and we will go no higher then to the 30th verse where we have specified a blessed and fruitfull event upon Christs Discourse concerning his Person and Office For as he spake those words many believed on him not by their own natural ability and power but the Father did draw them by his omnipotent and efficacious grace Christ while he spake to the ear did also reach to the heart he did not onely preach but could inable the hearer also to believe herein exceeding all Pastors and Teachers that ever were in the Church of God Christ plants and watereth and giveth the increase likewise all of himself Yea Christ seemeth here to sow his seed upon the high way and among thorns and stones yet some seed cometh up and prospereth well Upon this we have the love and care of Christ mentioned to these new Converts he immediately watereth these plants and swadleth these new born Infants that they may not miscarry This is seen in the counsel suggested to them where you have The Duty supposed and the admirable Priviledge issuing from it The Duty supposed If ye continue in my Word It is not enough to begin unless there be perseverance It is not enough to receive Christ and his Word unless we abide therein and have our ears as it were boared never to depart from such a Master The neglect of this maketh all that dreadfull Apostasie and those sad scandals to Religion which in all Ages do terribly break forth Except ye abide in Christ as well as be in him we shall fall short in the wilderness and not be able to enter into Canaan It is also observable that Christ saith If ye abide in my Word it must be the true Doctrine of Christ it must be what he hath delivered which denoteth two things 1. That heresie and errour can no wayes make to our Christian-Discipleship they cannot set us at liberty from any lust or sinne and therefore no wonder if you see men of corrupt judgements at last fall into sinfull and corrupt practices For the word of God is only the instrument and instituted means of sanctification Sanctifie them by thy word Joh. 17. 2. Hereby we see the necessity of the Ministry of it by the preaching of Gods word they are first brought to believe and after that are continually to depend on it The Ministry is both for the begetting of grace and the increase of it Those that despise and neglect the Word preached do greatly demonstrate they never got any good by it The consequent Priviledge upon this continuance in the Word is to be Christs Disciples indeed From whence we have a distinction of a Disciple in appearance and shew or profession onely and a Disciple indeed There were many that became Christs Disciples in profession onely they followed him for a season but afterwards forsook him which caused our Saviour so much in his Parables and Sermons to press them upon a pure thorow and deep work of grace upon their souls The title without reality will be no advantage Musculus observeth That Christ useth the Present tense Then are ye my Disciples indeed From whence he gathers That Continuance or Perseverance in grace doth not make the truth of grace but the truth of grace maketh the perseverance they do continue and therfore are Disciples indeed but they are Disciples indeed therefore they continue in Christs Word But Beza maketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in other places and if so then it must be thus understood That our Perseverance in grace doth not make grace to be true but doth demonstrate and
they are carried out to those things that are absolutely prohibited that are no more to be imbraced then absolute poison is to be eaten such are the pleasures of sinne and the lusts of the flesh when the affections doth entertain these they imbrace present destruction here is no moderation or stint allowed in these but there is an absolute prohibition to give these any entertainment yet poor wretched and corrupt man is hurried to these things and drinketh down iniquity as a thirsty man water so that it can never enough be bewailed to see what a grievous change sinne hath made in the affections that they are now most propense and inclining to those things which are to be most abhorred by them even as the corrupt appetite in some persons delighteth to feed on trash and most offensive matter to a found stomack But In the second place there are other objects which the Scripture doth allow us to let our affections runne out about and these are not evil in themselves no more then to have affections is a sinne love in it self is not a sinne neither is love of husband health and such comforts but when we go beyond our bounds when these are loved more then God or the love to them doth hinder and dead the heart to holy things then doth love become sinfull and damnable Now such is the original depravation of all the affections That they cannot in a moderate and well-regulated way with subordination to God move to any lawful object but they do exceedingly transgress and that many wayes For 1. Whereas they should be carried out to these lawful things only with reference to God as the cheifest end to love them to desire them no otherwise then thereby to be brought nearer to the end we are apt to make them the end to stay there to make a full stop at a Colon or Comma Even as the children of Reuben who desired to take up their rest in a country on this side Cannan because it was a fruitfull place and fit for cattel Thus we who should let our affections stirre to these things only as a way to heaven or meanes to bring us nearer to God we center in them desiring them for their own sakes It is a rule That the desire of the end is a rule to the desire of meanes we desire drink to satisfie thirst we desire garments to cloath us and we desire no more then is commensurate to such an end and indeed thus it ought to be with us in our affections to all things upon the earth not to be affected with wealth health learning or any advantage any otherwise then to be more enabled to do God service and thereby to enjoy him but as the dark night cannot be dispelled till the Sunne doth arise so neither can the regulating and ordering of the affections with subordination to God in lawful things ever be accomplished till sanctifying grace doth interpose 2. We are apt in the affecting of these things to find more sweetness and delight in a sensible manner then when our heart is turned unto God The objects of sence do more affect us sensibly then Christ laid hold on by faith and the Apostle John supposeth such a proneness in us when he saith He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how shall he love God whom he hath not seen 1 Joh. 4. 20 Hence it is that the Schooles have a distinction about the love of God appretiative and intentive The former is when in our judgement we do more highly esteem of God then all the things of the world and therefore are ready to part with all even life it self to please him But the other they make to be a sensible passionate moving of the sensitive part which is they say very variable according to the complexion and constitution of the body and therefore such do advise That believers should not be discouraged if they cannot find such sensible affections of love to God as they do to their freinds or such sensible sorrow about sinne as they do about the loss of a dear freind and this distinction may be received in some sence yet there are learned men that do greatly dislike it and do positively affirm That appretiatively and intentively both intellectually and affectionately we are to love God and to delight in him Certainly we find David acknowledging That God had put more joy and gladness in his heart then they had whose wine and oil encreased Psal 4. And when God doth require us to love him with all our heart mind and strength there is both the intellectual and sensitive part of a man understood No doubt but Adam in the state of integrity would have found his very affectionate part carried out to God preemiently to all creatures seeing the affections were implanted only as Handmaids to wait on those noble parts of the soul yea David you heard profeffing that his flesh as well as his soul did long for the living God Besides seeing the soul is the forme of a man thereby becometh such a natural and essential union between the soul and body that what the spiritual part doth strongly and ardently close with the sensitive part by its essential subordination doth find a proportionable intensitiveness in the affections threof even the waters from the hils do overflow the valleys though therefore the sensible part of a man be not absolutely subject to his will hence those who have desired sensible sweetness or melting teares in a bodily manner could not enjoy them though they would give a world for them yet this we may conclude of That whensoever thy want of sensitive affections doth arise from the want of powerfull impressions upon thy spiritual part and therefore thou canst not find such joy or sorrow because the mind and will are not powerfully quickned by grace this is alwaies a sinne if thy mind were more enlightned thy will more sanctified thy affections would be more enflamed 3. Not to enlarge in this more The affections are sinful when carried out even to lawful things Because thereby is retarded or stopt the current of them after heavenly things We see the Apostle 1 Cor. 7 admirably prescribing a diet to our affections Those that marry must be as if they married not Those that weep as if they wept not and so those that rejoyce as if they rejoyced not Thus whatsoever affections we are allowed to have they must not in the least manner distract or dull the motions of our soules to heavenly things but such is our corruption that our affections though to lawful things put quite out or at least exceedingly hinder our affections to heavenly things SECT VIII Our Affections are corrupted in respect of the Contrariety and Opposition of them one to another AGain Our affections are greatly corrupted in respect of the contrariety and opposition of them one to another They hinder one another operation so that the irascible part was given us to make
Why is not our conversation in Heaven Why do we not pray without distraction hear without distraction Is it not because these affections hurry the soul otherwayes In Heaven when we shall enjoy God face to face and the affections be fully sanctified then the heart will not for one moment to all eternity be taken off from God but now because our affections are not spiritualized neither are we fully conquerours over them Hence they presse down continually the creature for where a mans affections are there is his heart there is his treasure The godly they do exceedingly groan under this exercise of distractions in holy duties Oh how it grieveth them that their hearts are not united they cannot hoc agere they cannot be with God alone but some thoughts or importunate suggestions do molest them like so many croaking frogs many flies fall upon their Sacrifice Now whence is all this Our unmortified affections are the cause of this if they were more spiritual and heavenly there would be more union and accord in holy duties SECT XI Their Deformity and Contrariety to the Rule and exemplary Patterne IN the next place Herein doth their depravation appear Because they are so full of deformity and contrariety to their rule and exemplary pattern which is in God himself for we are to love as God loveth to be angry as God is angry It is disputed by the learned Whether affections be properly in God Now it must be As affections do denote any passions or imperfections intermixed with them so they cannot be attributed to him who is the fountain of perfection yet because the Scripture doth generally attribute these affections unto God he is said to love to grieve to hope to be angry Hence it is that Divines do in their Theological Tractates besides the attributes of God handle also of those things which are as some expresse it analogical affections in him They treat of his love his mercy his anger which are not so properly Attributes in God as analogical affections As when the Scripture saith God hath eyes and hands these are expressions to our capacity and we must conceive of God by those words according to the supream excellency that is in him Thus it is also in affections There is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the former and an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the later It was of old disputed by Lactantius Whether anger was truly and properly in God Some denied it some affirmed it But certainly the difference did arise from the different use of the Word for take anger as it signifieth an humane imperfection so it cannot be said to be in God but as it is a Will to revenge an impenitent sinner so it is in God Hence these things are said to be in God per modum effectus rather than affectus And some learned men like this expression better than of analogal affections saying that metaphorical speech applied to God viz. about desire hope c. is rather equivocal then analogical concerning desire hope and fear in God Some Arminianizing or Vorstizing have spoken dangerously Yea some Socinians as Crellius Vide Horndeeck Socin Confut. lib. 2. doe positively maintain affections to be properly in God And although to mollifie their opinion they sometimes have fair explications of themselves yet they grant the things themselves to be in God which we call affections Hence they call them often The commotions of Gods will which are sometimes more sometimes lesse Yea they are so impudent as to say the denial of such affections in God is to overthrow all Religion But this opinion is contrary to the pure simplicity and immutability of Gods Nature as also to his perfect blessednesse and by the way observe the wickednesse of these Heretiques who take from the Divine Nature the persons thereof as also some glorious Attributes such as Omniscience c. and yet will give to the same such things as necessarily imply imperfection To return Affections are not in God as they imply any defect yet we are by Scripture to conceive of some transcendent perfection in God eminently containing them and this being laid for a foundation we may then bewail the great deformity that is upon our affections the unlovelinesse of them if compâ—â—ed to the Rule Do we love as God loveth He doth infinitely love himself and all things in subordination to his own glory But the love of our selves and all things in reference to our own selves is that which doth most formally exclude and oppose the love of God The poison and sinfulnesse of all the affections doth arise from the sinfulnesse of our love It is corrupt love that causeth corrupt anger corrupt hatred corrupt sorrow and therefore the way to crucifie all other affections is to begin with love But oh the irreconcilable and immediate opposition that is between our love and his love our love is to be copied out after his We are to imitate God in our love but we place our selves in Gods room and are carried out to love our selves not rationally but according to a bruitish appetite as it were hence whereas in the love of others we require some presupposed goodnesse in the love of our selves we look for none at all The vilest and most prophane sinner who ought to judge himself worthy of the hatred of God and all creatures yet he doth intensively love himself even to the hatred of God Had we infinite holinesse infinite purity and perfection as God hath then we might love our selves principally but because the goodnesse we have is a rivolet from that Ocean a beam-line from that Sun therefore we are to love our selves in reference to God Our love to God should make us love our selves but how impossible and paradoxal is this to our corrupt natures As our love is thus distantial from Gods love so our hatred and anger also is for the hatred of God is only against sinne It 's sinne he punisheth it is sinne that he hath decreed to be avenged of to all eternity Wicked men and Devils are damned because of sinne in them could that be taken out of their natures they would be the good and acceptable creatures of God But oh the vast difference between Gods hatred and ours for that is not against sinne but that which is truly godly and holy so desperately and incurablely are we corrupted herein SECT XII Their dulness and senslesness though the Understanding declare the good to be imbraced SEcondly The native defilement of the Affections is greatly demonstrated in that dulnesse and senslesnesse which is in them even though the understanding doth powerfully and evidently declare the good they ar to imbrace And this can never enough be lamented that when we have much light in our mind we find no heat in our affections Indeed the Question is put How the affectious though in regenerate persons can be affected with any thing that is spiritual for they being of a material and corporeal nature
have no more proportion or sutablenesse with spiritual and supernatural objects then the eye hath with immaterial substances so that as the eye cannot see a spirit neither can material affections terminate upon immaterial objects But the Answer is That the affections being implanted in us as hand maids to the rational parts and subjected to them by an essential subordination therefore it is when those superiour parts of the soul do strongly imbrace any spiritual good the affections also by way of concomitancy are stirred up therein onely as it is with the will though that be made to follow the understanding and as some say doth necessarily yeeld to the ultimate and practical Dictate thereof yet the will doth need a peculiar sanctification of its own nature neither is the illumination of the mind all the grace the will wanteth So it is with these affections although they be appointed to follow the directions and commands of the mind and will yet they must be sanctified and enlivened by the peculiar grace of God else they move no more than a stone Now this necessity of enlivening and quickning grace upon the affections the godly are experimentally convinced of How often doe they complain they know Christ is the chiefest good they know eternal glory is an infinite treasure Oh but how barren are their hearts no affections no cordial stirrings of their soul when they think of these things Doe the children of God complain of any thing more than their want of affections in holy things They have them as hot as fire for the things of the world but are clods of earth in spiritual duties This maketh them cry so often with the Church Draw us and we will runne after thee This maketh them pray Arise O Southwind and blow O North upon the garden of my soul that the flowers thereof may send forth a sweet fragrancy Thus that saying is true Citò prevolat intellectus tardus sequitur affectus If therefore there were no other pollution upon the affections then their dulnesse and senslesnesse as to holy things This may make the godly go bowed down all their life time Their affections are green wood much fire and frequent blowing will hardly inflame them and hence it is that the godly are so well satisfied and do so thankfully acknowledge the goodnesse of God to them when they find their affections stirring in any holy thing Insomuch that they judge that duty not worth the name of a duty which is not an affectionate duty That prayer not worthy the name of prayer which is not an affectionate prayer But how dull and heavy are these till sanctified as to any holy object Yea such is the perverse contrariety that is now come upon the superiour and inferiour parts of the soul that when the more noble parts are intensively carried out to any object the inferiour are thereby debilitated and wholly weakned so that many times the more light the lesse heat the more intellectual and rational the lesse affectionate Now this is contrary to our primitive creation for then the more knowledge of heavenly things the more affections also to them did immediately succeed But now experience doth confirme That those men whose understandings are most deeply ingaged in finding out of truths their affections are at the same time like a barren wildernesse Hence you may often find a poor inconsiderable believer more affectionately transported in love to Christ and holy things than many a great and learned Scholar That as natural fools have a greater stomack to meat and can digest better than wise men whose animal spirits are much tired and wearied out So it is here the lesse disputative the lesse head-work a godly man hath many times he hath the better heart-work Oh then bewail this in thy self as a most degenerating thing from primitive rectitude when thou findest thy knowledge thy controversal Disputes dry up thy affections So that truth is indeed earnestly sought after but the goodnesse of it doth not draw out thy affections When David commended the word of God above the honey and the honey-comb it was evident he found much experimental sweetnesse of the power of it upon his affections SECT XIII The Affections being drawn out to holy Duties from corrupt Motives shews the Pollution of them THirdly Herein also is apparent the original pollution of our affections That when they are moved and stirred up in any holy duties yet it is not a spiritual motive that draweth them out but some corrupt or unlawfull respect Thus there is a world of guile and hypocrisie in our affections we think it is the love of God that affecteth us when it is love to our selves to our own glory to accomplish our own ends Thus in our sorrow we think it is for sinne that we grieve when it is because of temporal evil or some outward calamity Insomuch that this very consideration of the hypocrisie and deceitfulnesse of our affections may be like an Abysse or deep to swallow us up when the heart is said to be so desperately wicked and that none can know it but God by that is meant in a great part our affections none knoweth the depths of his love of his fear of his sorrow How often doth he blesse himself when he finds these things moving in him especially in holy duties Whereas alas it is not any consideration from God any heavenly respect moveth him but some earthly consideration or other You may observe this in Jehu what ardent and burning affections did he shew in the cause of God destroying Idolatry and executing the judgements of God upon his enemies But what moved his affections all this while It was not the glory of God but self-respects self-advancement Oh this is the treacherous deceitfulnesse of our affections we may find them very strong in preaching in publick prayer with others and the fire to them be onely vain-glory Yea our affections may be blown up with our own expressions and delight in them so that as it is a long while ere thou canst get thy affections up to any holy duty so it is as difficult to search out What is the cause of them Why they rise up Those in Mat. 7. 21. that would cry Lord Lord did by the ingemination of the word demonstrate lively affections yet they were such whom God would bid depart as not knowing of them Here therefore is the misery of man that as all the speculative knowledge in the world unlesse it be also accompained with an affectionate frame doth not at all commend us to God so all hot and strong affections do not presently suppose the truth of grace within Experience doth sadly confirm this that many who have had great affections and workings of heart in the profession of godlinesse have yet desperately apostatized and become at last a senslesse and as stupid about heavenly things as any prophane ones are The Jews are said for a while to rejoyce in Johns light Joh. 5. 35.
yet because as you heard the mind acteth dependently upon the imagination therefore we conjoyn them together How polluted then must that fountain be which sends forth so many polluted streams Sinne as we told you may be a long while breeding here before it be compleatly formed and actuated yea and God beholdeth and taketh notice of thy sinnes thus prepared in thy imagination long before the commission of them We have a notable instance for this Deut. 31. 21. where Moses in the name of God testifying against the people of Israel that when they come into Canaan they do not fall off from God useth this expression For I know their imagination which they go about even now before I have brought them into the Land which I sware unto them God did before they come into Aegypt see what was working in their imaginations what they were making and fashioning in their hearts in which sense some expound that place of the Psalmist Thou knowest my thoughts afarre off Psal 139. 2. And this is good and profitable for us to consider we many times wonder to see how such gross and loathsom sinnes can come even from the godly themselves Alas marvel not at it these Serpents and Toads were a long while breeding in the imagination The pleasure or profit of such a sinne was often fancied before It was again and again committed in thy thoughts before it was expressed in thy life so that a man can never live unblameably in his life that doth not keep his imagination pure and clean Hence you have so often evil thoughts complained of as the root of all bitterness Jer. 4. 14. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge in thee Mark 15. 19. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts As exhalations and vapours ascending from the earth which are scarce perceptible yet at last are congealed into thick and dismal clouds so those sins which while in the thoughts and imagination were scarce taken notice of do at last grow into soul and enormous transgressions SECT X. That many times sinne is acted by the Imagination with delight and content without any relation at all to the external Actings of sinne THirdly The sinfulness of the Imagination is further to be amplified In that many times sinne is acted with delight and content there without any relation at all to the external actings of sinne So that a man while unblameable in his life may yet have his imagination like a cage of unclean birds and this is commonly done when there are external impediments or some hinderances of committing the sinne outwardly The fear of mens laws outward reproach and shame want of opportunity may keep men off from the outward committing of some lust when yet at the same time their imaginations have the strong impressions of sinne upon them and so in their souls they become guilty before God The Adulterous man Is not his imagination full of uncleanness The proud man Is not his fancy lifted with high and towring conceits As the Apostle Peter speaketh of some whose eyes were full of adultery and that cannot cease from sinne 2 Pet. 2. 14. or as some read it according to the original Adulteresse imagination made them have her in their eyes continually though absent for if their eyes were their imaginations also must necessarily be because of the immediate natural connexion between them so then when there are no outward sores or ulcers to be seen upon a mans life yet his imagination may be a noisom dunghill what uncleanness fancied what high honours imagined that whereas thou art restrained from the actings of sinne yet thy heart burneth like an oven with lusts inwardly It is the emphatical similitude that the holy Ghost useth Hos 7. 8. They have made ready their heart like an oven The meaning is that as the oven heated is ready to bake any thing put therein so was the heart of those evil men prepared for any kind of naughtiness Some understand it of the adultery of the body only as if that were the sinne intended by the Prophet Others of the spiritual adultery of the soul by which name Idolatry is often called in Scripture Others referre it to both we may take it to be a proverbial expression denoting the readiness of a mans heart to commit any sinne that it lieth in the heart and the imagination day and night men highly sinning against God inwardly when outwardly they are restrained Know then that when the grace of sanctification shall renew thy spirit soul and body thou wilt then be very carefull to look to thy very imagination that no tickling fancies or conceits of any lust do defile thee thou wilt keep thy imagination as a precious Cabinet wherein precious pearls shall be treasured up not dirt and filth As we fitly use an expression concerning delight in sinne that it is the rolling of honey under the tongue so there is a rolling of sinne in the imagination with great titillation and pleasure when sinne cannot be committed in action we do it in our imagination Hence it is that by the imagination old men become guilty of their youthfull lusts when they have not bodies to be as instrumental to filthiness as they have been yet in their imaginations they can revive their by-past sinnes many years ago committed Thus men became as it were perpetual sinners in their imaginations Consider of this more seriously and pray for an holy chaste and pure imagination knowing thou hast to do with an omniscient God that knoweth what is working therein though it be hid from the world besides think not sinfull imaginations will escape the vengeance of God though no sutable operations of impiety do accompany them SECT XI It s Propensity to all evil both towards God and towards man NInthly Our Imagination is naturally corrupted Because of its propensity to all evil both towards God and towards man And First Towards God Let us take up that which was but glanced at before and that is How prone we are to provoke God in his worship declining from the true Rule and meerly because of our Imaginations The pleasing of them hath been the cause of all that displeasure which God ever had in his Church concerning the worshipping of him No sinne doth more provoke God then the corrupting of his worship to adulterate this is to meddle with the apple of his eye God beareth other sinnes a long while till his worship become to be corrupted and then he will endure no longer Now the original of all sinfulness in this kind hath been our imagination we have not attended to what God hath commanded we regard not his institutions but our own fancies the pleasing of them Hence when God promiseth a restauration to the people of Israel and a reformation from their former Idolatries he saith Neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart Jer. 3. 17. It was this Imagination carried them out to Idolatry whence came those goodly
grace to sanctifie them and prepare them for any heavenly duty Prov. 20. 12. The hearing ear and seeing eye the Lord hath made even both of them Let the Use be even to amaze and astonish thee with the thoughts of this universal pollution upon thee the soul in all the parts thereof the body in all the members thereof Nothing clean and pure but all over leprous and ulcerous How canst thou any longer delight and put confidence in thy self Why doest thou not with Job sit abhorring of thy self and his indeed were ulcers of the body only and they were a disease but not sinne whereas thou art all over in soul and body thus defiled and that in a proper sinfull way Oh that the Spirit of God would convince all of this sinne The Prophet Isaiah was to cry All flesh is grasse and the floâ—rer thereof fadeth away to prepare for Christ but in that was chiefly comprehended All flesh is sinne and the fruit thereof damnation What though this be harsh and unpleasing to flesh and bloud What though many erroneous spirits deny it or extenuate it yet seeing the Scripture is so clear and evident with which every man that hath experience of his own heart doth also willingly concurre Believe it seriously and humble your selves deeply think not transient and superficial thoughts will prevail as the weighnness of the matter doth require If ever thy heart can be broken and softned let it be discovered here rise with the thoughts of it walk with the thoughts of it and leave it not till thou find the belief thereof drive thee out of thy self with fear and trembling finding no rest till thou art interessed in Christ CHAP. VIII Of the Subject of Predication Shewing that every one of Mankinde Christ onely excepted is involved in this common sinne and misery SECT I. The Text opened and vindicated LUKE 1. 35. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Sonne of God WE have at large though not according to the desert thereof described and amplified the subject of original sinne wherein it is seated By which it appeareth that man all over is become corrupted both the totus homo and the totum hominus the whole man and the whole of man The next thing to be considered is the omnis homo or the Subject of predication as Divines call it The former being called the Subject of Inhesion Our work then is to shew That Christ onely excepted every one of mankind is involved in this common sinne and misery there is none that can plead any exemption from it For seeing it is made the peculiar priviledge of Christ to be so born because conceived after a miraculous manner it therefore necessarily followeth that all others are comprehended under this guilt Though you may see some men from the youth up lesse vicious then others more ingenuous and civil then others yet even these are by nature all over sinfull so that there is no such thing as a natural probity and goodness of which the Socinians dispute as in time is to be shewed That it is the prerogative of Christ only to be freed not only from all actual sinne but also original and birth-sinne is evident by this Text which containeth an answer of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary who with some trouble and amazement had questioned how she should conceive a Sonne who knew not a man The Angels answer consisteth in the information of the manner how it shall be and the consequent issue and event thereof The Manner is expressed in the efficient cause and his efficacy The Efficient cause is said to be the holy Ghost and the power of the Highest A person not the vertue only of God as the Socinians blaspheme as appeareth â—n that we are baptized into the name of the holy Ghost who is reckoned one of the three with the Father and Sonne as also by the personal operations and characters attributed to him which cannot be cluded with the figure of a Proso 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as some endeavour It is true The works of God ad extra are common to all the three Persons yet there is a peculiar order and appropriation and therefore the preparing and forming of Christs body out of the Virgin Mary is peculiarly ascribed unto the holy Ghost The Efficacy is set down in two words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is to be understood of the operation of the holy Ghost not his essence for that is every where The like expression though to another purpose is Acts 1. 8. The second word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning which there is more difficulty The word in the New Testament is applied to a Cloud covering a man with a Dative Case though Favorinus and Stephanus make it to have usually an Accusative Matth. 17. 5. Mark 9. 7. and Acts 5. 15. such an overshadowing as they expected virtue and efficacy thereby So Heysichius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the Old Testament by the Septnagint it is often rendreed for defence and protection because in these hot Countreys the shadows of trees were a great preservation against the extream scorchings of heat And in this sense rather then in any other we take the word in the Text that the holy Ghost should protect and defend her not only in the inabling of her against nature to conceive without a man but also against all accusations and dangers she was to be exposed unto by this means Thus Virgil used the word Et magnum Reginae nomen obumbrat Others which may be additional to the former render it The holy Ghost shall fill her with glory therefore she is said to be highly favoured And thus also among Poets the word is said to be used Olympiacis umbratur tempora ramis Stat. Some make it to be as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if the meaning were the holy Ghost should as it were pourtray and draw the lineaments of the body Others make it an allusion to the hen which by covering her egg doth by the heat thereof produce a live young one to which also the Scripture is said to allude Genes 1. 2. when it is said The Spirit moved or was incumbent as the water Thus by the power of the holy Ghost in an unspeakable manner the body of Christ was formed of the mass and fleshly substance administred by the Virgin Mary But this we are to take heed of lest the mind of man should apprehend any indecent thing in this great mystery Therefore Smalcius the Socinian his assertion is to be rejected with great abomination that feared not to affirm That by this expression is secretly and modestly implied the work of the holy Ghost as supplying the place of a man his blasphemous and abominable expressions I shall not relate Smal. refut Smigl cap. 17 18 19. We shall then keep to the first interpretation understanding it of Help and Protection in this wonderfull work The
under his power though there were no actual sinnes committed by us then let us not matter the speculations of Philosophers nor the Political sentences of Civil Magistrates for by these nothing is accounted culpable but what is voluntary by our own personal will Hence Austin explained that assertion of his when dealing against the Manichees Vsque adeò peccatum est voluntarium c. Voluntariness is so necessary to the being of a sinne that it cannot be any sinne if this be wanting in this saith he all Laws all Nations all Governours c. do agree The Pelagians commended this of Austin and improved it against him but in his explication of himself he calleth it Politica sententia This is true according to the political Laws of Governours and withall agreeth to actual sins But the truth about original sinne meerly by revelation we need not then regard what Aristotle and other Philosophers say in this matter who as they knew nothing of the creation of Adam so neither of his fall and this caution is necessary to every one that would not be deceived in this point Secondly Although in one particular respect this sinne may not be so hainous as others yet in many other respects it doth farre exceed and they are abundantly compensative for that one consideration It is true This sin hath nothing of our own personal voluntariness yea if a man should now consent to this birth-defilement and even rejoyce because he was born thus estranged from God this subsequent will would not make original sin to be a voluntary sin unto him for this is an actual sinne committed a new by the personal will of a sinner But though this be granted yet there are many other respect which do exceedingly aggravate it even those we have mentioned before Hence a learned Schoolman Dela Rua contra Theolog. cont 2. speaking of the comparisons made by Aquinas and others of original sinne with venial ones excuseth them saying They must not be understood in that respect as original sinne is a mortal one for so it doth infinitely exceed any venial one but in that respect as original sinne is not contracted by our own proper action but by Adam in whose will our wils were contained What then though in one particular this sinne may not be so hainous as others yet look upon the many other respects wherein it doth exceed all other hainous sinnes and then you will be compelled to acknowledge the weightinesse thereof Thirdly The chiefest and highest aggravation of a sinne is from the contrariety of it to the Law of God for seeing the Apostle doth define sinne 1 John 3. 4. to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The transgression of the Law then the more irregularity there is in sinne the greater is that sinne Now this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is either habitual or actual and if habitual sins are greater then actual because of the greater dissonancy to Gods Law then must original be more then habitual and so greater then all sins if then we compare original sinne with the Law we shall find it contrary to it in the highest manner that can be For Gods Law doth not require only actual obedience but such obedience flowing from a pure and holy heart and holiness in the heart is more answerable to the Law then holiness in actions Thus on the contrary sinne in the habitual inclination of a man is more opposite to Gods holy Law then the expression of it in several actings If then the Apostle define a sinne by the contrariety of it to Gods Law not by knowledge or voluntariness then where there is the greatest obliquity and declension from this rule though there be not so much voluntariness there is the greater evil So that this respect may silence all those cavils and disputes which are usually brought in to diminish the guilt of this sinne still have recourse to the Law of God and there thou wilt find that whereas actual sins are respectively against respective commands this is against every Law It is against the whole Law and therefore hath as much evil in it in some sense as the Law hath good So that the Use is To exhort every one who would have his heart deeply affected in this point who would be humbled greatly because his sinne is great to take off his thoughts from all those Philosophical or humane arguments which are apt to lessen it Because a Magistrate will not put a man to death unless where he is guilty by some voluntary personal act of his own do not thou therefore think it cruel and unjust with God if he condemn for that sinne wherein though we have not own proper will ingredient yet by imputation it is voluntary But of this more when we are to justifie God in these proceedings against cavilling Sophisters SECT III. That every one by Nature hath his peculiar proper Original Sinne. THe second Doctrine offereth it self in the next place to be considered of which is That every one by nature hath his peculiar proper original sinne which doth betimes vent it self into actual evil For the Text speaketh universally there is not any to be exempted It is made a Question in the Schools Whether there be many or one original sinne onely Aquinas bringeth two Arguments for more original sinnes than one The one is from the Text according to the Vulgar Translation Psal 51. 5. where it is rendred In sinnes did my mother conceive me in the Plural number And then the second from Reason because there being many actual sinnes it cannot seem rational that one original sinne should incline to them all seeing many times these sinnes flow from contrary principle How may it be thought this one sinne should carry a man out concupiscentially to so many contrary lusts Therefore that this truth may be fully demonstrated let us consider these Propositions First That such who deny any original inherent corruption and make Adam 's actual sinne to be ours onely by imputation as Pighius and Catharinus they will say That there is but one original sinne which is by imputation made every mans Even as by the light of one Sunne every man seeth or as some Philosophers say there is one common Intelleotus agens by which all men are inabled to understand So that by this opinion every man hath not his peculiar inherent defilement but that one actual transgression by imputation is made the one common sinne of mankind Now although this is to be granted That Adam's actual sinne is made ours which Chamier and some French Protestants following him do dangerously deny yet the Texts heretofore brought in this point do evidently convince That every one hath his peculiar native defilement that he is born in So that original sinne though it may be called one in specie and proportione yet when we come to every particular man he hath his numerical and individual original sinne in him Although therefore there be as many original sinnes
in the world as there are men and women yet in one man or one woman there is but one original sinne Thus David Psal 51. 5. confessed his particular birth-sinne not that it was his case alone not that any other ought not say so as well as David but because this consideration doth most humble and affect a man for what is it to hear that in the general there is such a thing as original sinne unless a man make particular application to himself unless he bring it home to his own heart unless he cry out Ah wretched and undone sinner I even I am the man that am thus born in sinne even though there were no other men in the world yet I should be by nature the child of wrath And truly this is one reason of our large discoursing upon this point that you might at last bring this coal of fire as it were into your bosome to kindle there not only to think of the undone estate of mankind in the general but to think this is true of thee I am the man of whom all this evil is spoken Believe thy self to be such a Toad such a Devil Hearken to the Word more then to these flattering and soothing suggestions which thy own deluded heart or corrupt teachers may obtrude upon thee Secondly That although this original sinne be commonly called the sinne of the nature yet that is not to be so understood as if it were not also existent in the person and so a personal sinne Catharinus Opusc casu hominis confesseth he doth not understand how original sinne can be called the sinne of the nature for the nature is an abstract and it is a Chymerical sigment to say an universal nature is capable of sinne because Actiones sunt suppositorum and the late known Enemy to this truth doth as it were triumph in his Arguments against this expression when it is called The sinne of our Nature Further Explicat of the Doctrine of Orig. pag. 493. For while he is wresting and wrecking the miserable 9th Article of the Church of England adding and detracting Procrustus-like to make it commensurate to his prepossessed imagination although he should remember that according to the Civil Law no credit is to be given to confessions extorted upon the rack he positively dictates that sin is an affection of persons not of natures The humane nature cannot be said to be drunk or commit adultery Actiones sunt suppositorum and sin is a breach of the Law to which persons not natures are obliged This Argument I remember is urged also by some against Christs obedience that the Law did not bind his humane nature because it was not a person and therefore the command did not reach to him as he was man to do this or that But the answer is very obvious That although the Law doth immediately bind the persons yet mediately it doth also the nature Who can deny but that the Law to love God though immediately it be commanding the person Thou shalt love the Lord c yet thereby the soul of a man is also reached unto so that hatred of God in the soul as it is there inherent is forbidden mediately Otherwise there could be no habitual sins or graces because the command or threatning did no wayes reach to them In the next place to our purpose in hand concerning original sinne it is ignorantly objected That Actiones sunt suppositorum For we doe not say Original sinne is an action it is in the nature of habits So that this ariseth from a gross mistake That a child doth actually sinne in partaking of this nature-defilement We say it doth contrahere peccatum or receive this pollution with its nature not that it doth actually sinne in the reception of it But then 3. When it 's called the sinne of our nature it is not meant as if this nature did universally exist any where that indeed would be a meer Chimera or as if mans nature were any where but in a person But that wheresoever the nature of a man is any where subsistent in individuums there is also this corruption Even visibility and mortality are the universal properties of the nature of man There is no man but hath these affections So also is original sinne thus inseparably annexed to the nature of man wheresoever it doth particularly subsist To this purpose Julius Sirenius a Scholastical Writer Promptu Theolog. lib. 20. 22. When we say Original sinne is a siane of the humane nature Non ita velim intelligas quasi naturae per se considerata actio aliqua convenire possit c. do not understand it as if any action could agree to nature considered in it self for not the action which is of the suppositum but the modus agendi belongeth the nature existent in the suppositum for sin is not an action but the mode or rather the defect of the mode in an action The Sum is this A man is born thus in sin not because he is this or that person but because he is a man descending from lapsed Adam So that by this we see that it is the sin of our nature and yet so as it is the sin of every person new born but we are necessitated to call it the sin of our corrupt nature to distinguish it from all actual and habitual sinnes which are the sinnes of one person that they are not necessarily the sinnes of others Every man is not necessarily a proud man an unclean man but every one is thus a defiled man destite of the Image of God only this must alwayes be remembred That it is not our nature-sinne as we had it from Creation but as vitiated by Adam's voluntary transgression and if he would put it in the definition of man that he was animal rationale mortale we may adde ad peccata prenum prone and inclming to sinne for we must consider man otherwise in Divinity and by Scripture-light then we do in Philosphy Hence to be a man or to walk as a man in Scripture-phrase sometimes is to be sinfull and to do a thin sinfully You see then that upon good grounds original sinne is called the sinne of our natures and that as in actual sinnes the person doth defile the nature So on the contrary in original sinne the nature defileth the person for the humane species was in Adam as we say the whole species of the Sunne is in the Sunne though with some dissimilitude Hence it is that according to the Exposition of some learned men it is called The sinne of the world not my sinne or thy sinne but the sinne of the world John 1. 29. For this Rule is given that wheresoever 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used with the emphatical Article in the Singular number as in this place there we must alwayes understand original sinne but perhaps that is no more true then another Rule viz. where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath the Article 〈◊〉
be also the cause of the sins themselves But I see not why we may not call original sinne the remote cause only of some sins because that is the seed and spawn only of all evil there are many temptations and suggestions which do ripen and quicken this monster to bring forth So that although men have lust enough within them to make them so many Cains so many Judasses to be as abominable in wicked wayes as the vilest of men are yet Nemo repente fit turpissimus as the Poet said There is time required to grow up into such foul abominations This is like the Prophets little cloud which at first though no bigger than an hand yet did afterwards biggen till it covered the whole sky The Apostle you heard compareth the production of sinne to the child that is first conceived in the mothers womb and so through the warmth and nourishment thereof doth lust bring forth As it is with the Acorn that is at first but little in quantity yet being great in efficacy doth in time enlarge it self into a great Tree Conclude then all evil even the most enormious impieties which for the present it may be thy heart doth tremble at yet they are seminally and radically in thee there are the sparks of fire which if let alone will quickly set all on a flame Hence The third Proposition is That whosoever would by the grace of God be delivered from any actual sins the best remedy is to endeavour to quench the lust within He that would dry up the streams must look to the fountain to have that dried up He that would destroy the bad fruit of a Tree must lay the axe to the root of it And this is a very necessary Rule to be attended unto in practical Divinity Observe that the same way sinne comes to live the same way thou must take to kill it It beginneth at the heart first before it 's in the eyes or hands and therefore thou must look to crucifie it in the heart first Thus the Wiseman adviseth Prov 4. 23. Keep thy heart for out of it are the issues of life After this then he exhorteth to look to our mouth and lips to our eyes and feet but the foundation must be laid in the heart if the heart be good all is good And this sheweth the preposterous way of the Casuists and Confessionists in Popery from which the late Writer so often mentioned doth not much decline in his Treatise of Ecclesiastical Penance for with such Writers you have scarce one word to the penitent sinner about Regeneration whereas external duties of alms or restitution which in their way are necessary by Gods command must flow from a spiritual and supernatural life within as the foundation of all much lesse have you one icta or tittle about faith laying hold on Christ by whom alone our persons are justified and all our duties are accepted This I say is the great neglect and unskilfulness in such writers that they deal in externals but for faith by which the heart is purified and whereby we please God in Christ that they make no mention of at all But the Scripture is herein different from moral Philosophy and Aristotelical precepts which those Casuists are wholly captivated unto for that requireth yea and promiseth first a tender and holy heart a circumcised heart and then to walk in the wayes of God whereas moral Philosophers first begin with actions and then go to acquired habits Justè agendo sumus justs This then is a golden Rule and of perpetual use in Christianity for a Christian to be mortifying lust within to watch against the treacherous adversary in thy own breast and then when the foundation is destroyed the superstruction must needs fall to the ground Propos 4. Because man is thus tempted and enticed by lust within therefore it is that man fallen doth sinne farre otherwise then Adam did in the state of integrity We do not sinne now as Adam at first we have an internal cause and principle within us whereas Adam did sinne wholly from suggestion without neither was it lust within but his meer will that made him consent to such suggestions This Proposition is the more to be regarded because Pelagian and Socinian Writers they all agree in this That we at first sinne in the same manner as Adam did at first the sensitive part being enticed by sensible objects and so rebelling against the rational part But this is to be wholly ignorant of that holy estate and glorious Image wherein God created Adam at first Adam had all such external and internal helps so freed from all ignorance passion or lust that nothing could destroy him but the liberty and mutability of his will Whereas alas in man destitute of Gods Image there is a lusting principle within him carrying him out inordinately unto every object proposed It is therefore a false and an absurd Position which Molina the Jesuite one of the meer Naturalists affirmeth Quaest 14. Disput. 4. de Concord lib. Arb. where he saith Adam had Innatum appetitum excellentiae ac laudis quo ad intellectum voluntatem c. That he had this temptation within him viz. an innate appetite to his own excellency and praise For how could this consist with that holiness and righteousness God created him in Indeed he saith in another place of the same book Quaest 14. Disp 45. Ex contemplation rei amabilis c from the contemplation of any lovely object and which is of concernment to be obtained there doth naturally rise in the will a certain motion whereby the will is affected to it which motion is not a volition but an affection of the will to that object whose goodness it is allured with And this he maketh to be in men yea in the Angels before they fell But what is this but to say that in men and Angels even before their fall there was a concupiscential inclination to delightsome objects and so Adam and Angels must according to this Text be tempted away and enticed by their own lusts An horrible Position highly derogating from Gods honour who created them holy and righteous Therefore Adam and much more Christ when they were tempted by Satan it was not in the same way with us The temptation was only external not internal there was no inward lust within yea the very external temptation of Adam and Christ was different from ours in a further respect For the Devil had not power by his suggestions to move or disturb their phansie as he doth in us Though the Devil cannot force our wils yet he can make bodily commotions of the phantasie and so thereby man is the more easily carried away to evil But neither Christ or Adam had their imagination so disturbed For although they might understand by phantasmes yet all was at the command of deliberate judgement A mans imagination was then in his own power so that those inferiour faculties in their operation could not
nature worketh and when the Devil doth only assault and annoy us But that is not my business now It is enough to know That even from thy own unsanctified heart may arise vain thoughts blasphemous thoughts So that thy soul seemeth unto thee to be not only like a dunghill but an hell it self To these evil stirrings of sinne in the apprehensive part we may referre our sinful dreames even for them God might damn us Austin bewaileth and confesseth his dreames and yet our understanding and will do not so properly work at that time The other sort of workings of soul are such as are by way of love and desire when there arise in the heart some motions and affections to such an object Our hearts being now wholly destitute of the Image of God and sinne having full dominion over us no sooner doth any sinful object present it self but immediately the heart maketh towards it there is a propensity to embrace it Secondly These motions that do thus stirre in the heart are either such as they call motus primo primi or secundo primi the absolute meer first or first in a secondary order There may be difference in the explaining of these but the summe is this These motions are either such which do rise up in our hearts antecedently to any actings of the reason or will at all It was not in our power to repress them or to prevent them for original sin in a man doth not lie sluggish and bound up it is alwayes acting and moving and the immediate motions or first born of the soul are these first stirrings of heart preventing all deliberation and consultation Such a state indeed Adam was not created in nothing did rise up in him before his will and consent and so it was also with Christ But since we are plunged into this corrupt condition sinne hath got the whole mastery over us we are in a Babel and spiritual confusion Every sinful lust riseth in us before we have time to withstand it although if we had time such is our impotency and corruption now that we neither can or will gainsay the torrent of these motions It is true the Papists say they are no sinnes they are matter of exercise to us but they are not sinnes if not consented unto But the Apostle Rom. 7. doth often call them so and they are such as are contrary to the Law of God they are such as make a godly man groan under them and judge himself miserable thereby they are such as are to be crucified and mortified all which shew they have the true and proper nature of sinne So that it is a wonder those should deny these indeliberate motions to be sinne who hold original sinne to be properly and not equivocally a sinne For as it is enough to make original sinne voluntary because it is voluntarium voluntate ejus à quo not in quo est with the will of Adam from whence it descendeth though not with the will of him in which it inhereth Thus also it may be said of these involuntary motions they are of the same nature with original sinne For though they be actual yet flowing necessarily from the mother sinne and being withall a privation of that righteousness which ought to be in us they must be called sinnes as well as original And thus farre Henricus the Schooleman proceedeth as Vasquez alledgeth him Tom. 10. disput 106. to say That these first motions in persons not baptized are sinnes and that they want not such a voluntariness as is requisite to the nature of sinne partly because of the will of the first parents and partly because of the proper will of the man who hath them not because he doth not hinder these motions because he cannot alwayes do this but because he will not by baptisme be expiated from original sinne and consequently from the guilt of these sinnes This later reason we matter not the former hath good strength and is the same in effect with what we say Oh then that we were rightly considering of these things Those millions of thoughts and stirrings of heart which arise before reason and will are able to do any thing these are all sinnes these are contrary to the holy Law of God Adam had them not neither shall the glorified Saints in heaven be in the least manner molested with them How low and debased must thou be in thy own eyes For this it is that the godly go bowed down for this they mourn and pray these afflict them more then gross loathsome sinnes do prophane men the meer civil and formal man the self-righteous and confident man he knoweth none of these things he feeleth not this evil impure frame of his heart this maketh the way of godliness to be such a mystery such an unknown thing but to those that are believers indeed as they have other joyes other comforts then the world knoweth of so they have other motives of sorrow and humiliation then the natural man can understand But as for the first motions of the second sort they have some imperfect consent and complacency and therefore acknowledged by Gerson Compend Theol. to be sinnes yea the former kind of motions though so suddain are affirmed to be sinnes by several Schoolemn upon different reasons but venial as they call them For Henricus held they were mortal now to us all sinnes in their own nature are mortal Therefore all these motions which arise in the soul whether first or second being contrary to the holy Law of God which requireth pure streames and also a pure fountain and also being opposite to the Image of God we were created in must needs be truly sinnes for which we are to humble our selves and to pray continually for the mortification of them Thirdly These motions though they flow from original sinne as the universal cause yet there are particular causes that do excite and draw them forth And it is good to observe how many wayes original sinne being awakened doth produce these sinful motions thereof And 1. Sometimes they arise from the present sensible object that doth affect us Every object either of the eye or ear or touching doth presently work upon the soul not indeed efficiently as some have thought but only by way of alluring and enticing so that it is almost impossible for us either to hear or see any object and not have the first motions of the soul as suddain so sinful about them Oh the miserable depravation of mankind who hath sinne and hell entring into the soul by evey sense it hath there is not any sensible object but it is a snare to thee it stirreth up some sinful motion or other either love or anger joy or fear and all this before grace can work Hence the great work of Christianity is inward and spiritual it is soul-work to set a watch before eyes eares tongue and all the outward parts of the body that the soul be not sinfully disquieted For every
many do consent to sinne within their heart which yet do not consent to the outward acting of it sometimes because of the shame that it will bring sometimes because of the punishment that it doth deserve or for some unworthy respect or other not because they fear and love God not because they desire a pure holy heart as well as an unspotted life And truly this is a good discovery of uprightnesse of our hearts when we dare not own sin in our thoughts when the we dare not respect iniquity in our hearts when we labour to keep a pure soul as well as a pure body ¶ 3. More Propositions concerning evil Thoughts and Motions that arise continually from the heart as the Immediate Effect of Original Sinne Shewing how many wayes the Soul may become guilty of sinne about them WE are now to finish this Discourse about that Immediate Effect of original sinne in causing evil thoughts and motions to arise continually from the heart as vapours do constantly from the earth and as they in their first ascension are imperceptible till they come to be congealed into clouds which are plainly visible Thus all sinne while it is but in these motions and stirrings of the heart is difficulty discerned but when it cometh to be formed by express consent and accomplished in outward practice then it is grosse and palpable But to proceed in more Propositions First These motions and stirrings of heart they are either sudden and transitory 〈◊〉 abiding and mansory in the soul Sometimes these sinfull stirrings of the heart are like a sudden whirlwind in the soul that presently vanisheth though they be very troublesom for the time or they come like a flash of lightning and thunder which though terrible yet is but of short continuance now although they make no longer abode in our soul yet they pollute and defile it We are not to give place to them no not for an hour as Paul would not to the false brethren Gal. 2. 5. but we are with holy zeal and indignation to thrust them out and bolt the doors upon them as they did to Thamar Thus in the very twinkling of an eye if we do not watchfully attend thereunto we may destroy our own souls over and over again That is a prophane speech to say Thoughts are free no God hath laid an holy command upon our very thoughts and the first motions and stirrings of our hearts that nothing should arise there but what is agreeable to Gods holy Word When water is in a pure glass though it be moved and shaken often yet no noisom thing ariseth thereby but if in a soul one then the more it is stirred the more filthy are the bubbles thereof Thus in man while enjoying the Image of God whatsoever did move or stir his heart it was altogether holy and pure but since man is thus corrupted there cannot be any motions of his soul but they are wholly defiled and sinfull one way or other Secondly These mansory thoughts which the Schoolmen call morosae because they do morari abide some time in the soul they are likewise divided for they are so continning in us either morâ temporis or morâ consensus as they expresse it Gerson Compend Theol. The continuance of time is when they may for a long while infect sollicit and annoy us but yet we strive and gainsay We do by no means give our consent thereunto as Joseph's Mistress did often importune him yet all that while he kept up the fear of God and would not sinne in that way against him So that although the people of God may be followed from week to week with loathsom and perplexing thoughts yet because they cry unto God they go and pray to him as Hezekiah did upon Rabshakeh's railing and blaspheming of God they are not to be discouraged Thou hast not betrayed thy strength to these Dalilahs all the while Yea from these spiritual exercises and conflicts thou wilt increase thy glory Hereby thou hast an opportunity to discover thy faith thy self emptiness and to get heavenly skill and compassion whereby thou art able to succour those that are in the like manner tempted But then 2. There are thoughts that are continuing morâ consensus and these are farre more dangerous and damnable then the former for if sinfull thoughts and motions arise in thy soul though they are but for a very short time yet if thou hast yeelded to them then thy soul hath committed fornication Consensisti said Austin concubuisti in corde tuo so that the consent to them is farre more dangerous then the length of time they may afflict thee in Any sinfull motion consented unto though it be but for a moment is more destructive then such as follow thee from day to day yea it may be from year to year but thou givest no entertainment to them This is good for the practical Christian to observe it is the long time that troubleth them Oh say they ever since God hath first wrought upon my soul I have been exercised with these thoughts such dreadfull suggestions and to this day I am not yet delivered from them Be of good comfort though it be grievous to thee to feel such things in thy soul yet because withstood they shall not be imputed to thee Those that have the like temptations but for an hour and imbracing of them have more offended God and endangered their own souls Propos 3. It is good to take notice how many wayes the soul may become guilty of sinne about these thoughts and motions within us A truth â—â—â—deed it is that no natural man no civil or formal man doth understand or can be affected with Can a blind man that doth not behold the Sunne see the atoms in the Sun-beams They who are not affected or grieved about great and actual sins will they find these inward motions to be burden If they can swallow a Camel will they not a mote 1. Therefore we come to sinne by these motions and thoughts of soul by the very being of them there The very having of them there is contrary to the Image of God we were first created in As in Heaven there is no unclean thing that can enter so where the Image of God is full and compleat the least vain thought the least sinfull stirring can no more consist with it then darkness with light or as at the first creation we could not have found one weed or thistle on the ground but these came by the curse for sinne so at first in mans soul there would not have appeared the least irregular and inordinate motion of the heart not one thought would have been out of its place Adam was Gods book coming immediately from him wherein no errata could be found but now in stead of wheat come up cockles Now what ever we think we imagine we move to all doth become sinne unto us Oh then let the godly soul mourn and humble it self because such motions are
there as you see Paul doth Rom. 7. Let it not be thought that thou art freed from all sinne because thou doest withstand them thou doest not own them For although this will keep them from being imputed unto thee yet in themselves they are sinnes they are damnable God might throw thee into hell for the meer having of them God might justly say I sowed good seed in thy soul but how come these tares there These thoughts these motions are none of my planting I created them not Therefore the very having of them in thy soul is a sinne against God though never expressed in action and the reason hereof is from the exact spirituality of the Law of God There is this great difference between God and all political Law-giver these later forbid only the external action they do not prohibit the inward will or desire What Law-giver amongst men was ever so absurd as to say you shall not cover or desire such a thing But if men do outwardly offend then they are obnoxious to punishment But it is otherwise with God in his Laws who is the Father of Spirits and searcheth our hearts therefore his Law doth principally reach to the heart to make that a good treasure to have the tree first good and then to make the fruit answerable thereunto 2. We offend against God not only by having of these motions stirring in us but much more when they delight us when we find a complacency and sweetness in the thinking of them when they affect us so that we roll them like honey under the tongue And truly in this respect the godly soul is even amazed and astonished to see how vile it is and how abominable For what innumerable pleasing delightsome motions do arise in thy soul all the day long either about unlawfull objects or if lawfull in an inordinate and sinfull manner Are not these more then the hairs of thy head in number Now concerning these delightfull pleasing motions of the soul in a sinfull way observe these Rules 1. That a man may be carried out in these delightfull objects either by a meer affection of complacency and pleasure or by an efficacious act and purpose of the will to accomplish such a sinne as in uncleannesse The corrupt heart may delight it self in lascivious apprehensions and defile it self exceedingly in that way but yet have no efficacious will to commit the sinne yea as we told you would not for a world commit it either for shame or for punishment or some other respects For sinne hath then got strong power over us and we are left by God when we are boldly carried on to commit such leudness It is therefore necessary for the spiritual and heart-Christian to observe the former as well as the later Do there not arise contemplative delightsome thoughts about sinfull objects Are they not rolled up and down in thy heart though thou hast no purpose to effect them Oh be ashamed and blush to have such an impure soul Is this soul fit for communion with God Is this the temple of the holy Ghost Rule 2. The object of these delighting pleasing motions may either be the sinnes themselves desired and inclined after or They may be the meer thoughts and apprehensions of them For the soul being a spiritual substance hath power to reflect upon its own acts and operations to know it knoweth to think what it thinketh And therupon because as Aquinas saith Delectatio sequitur operationem Delight followeth operation we may take great pleasure in our thoughts and even be drunken with delight therein This is especially to be seen in heretical and erroneous persons Men who are proud of their opinions their notions their own conceptions and inventions What infinite pleasure and content do such men take in the thoughts about their own thoughts and apprehensions More sometimes then the greatest Monarchs can do in their earthly greatness It behoveth therefore men of parts and gifts men of learning and extraordinary activity of wit to take heed of lust within carrying them out to pride and delight in their own selves Rule 3. These motions of delight and pleasure in the soul are of a large extent We are not to limit them only to bodily lusts or ambitious desires for as large as the command of God is so large is this way of delightsome motions in the soul by contrariety thereunto As the Law of God is divided into two Tables and therein are required all the duties we own to God and man So likewise hereby are forbidden all the pleasing lusts and thoughts of the soul which oppose these duties And if a man be a searcher of his own heart he cannot but take notice how often these sinfull motions of his soul sometimes empty themselves in reference to God and sometimes towards our neighbour Towards God and thus we have delightfull motions in our own self-trusting and confidence in the creature we love and rejoyce in humane comforts to the excluding and shutting out of God himself especially in holy duties in the observance of his own day and Ordinances How many pleasing distracting and wandring motions do then seize upon us so that commonly we never find our selves more molested by them then when we are in a most heavenly and holy manner to approach unto him And for the duties towards our Neighbour there arise many pleasing evil motions of soul to envy at his good to be glad at the evil which befalleth him to have uncharitable and suspitious thoughts towards him Thus where ever any actual sin may be committed either against God or man there may and do pleasing and delightfull thoughts arise before and prepare the way for them Lastly Cajetan giveth a good Rule Summula Tit. Delectatio concerning these motions of delight within us that in them we are to consider the Occasion the Liberty and the Intention about them The occasion Thus if we do put our selves into such companies go to see such sights read such books hear such unsavoury discourse as may stirre up our hearts to these sinfull motions then our sinne is the greater and we shall be found the more guilty before God Such is our corrupt nature that we need not adde oil to that fire within us Even in lawfull and just duties yea in our most holy and heavenly performances these sinfull motions arise to disturb and distract our souls as if mens did come of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Moon as some affirm because of the divers shapes and vicissitude it is often put into We ought therefore to be farre from adding fuel to this fire by going to unlawfull sights to wicked companions thereby to provoke that corruption within us Again We are to consider what Liberty and power we have to subdue them and represse them some rise more suddenly then others and some again appear so that we have time to consider of the danger of them the damnable nature of them Now the more time we have to
as easie to understand Epicurus his Atoms Pythagoras his numbers Plato's Aristotle's Entelechias as Illirieus his Homo theologicus in the way he layeth it down denying all along that original sinne is an accident This opinion made a great rent among the Lutherans whereof some were called Substantiarii others Accidentarii as Coceius the Papist relateth Coccius Thes de peccato but this is to be refused with great indignation Original sinne is most intimately cleaving to us inseparably joyned to the nature of man yet it is not the nature of man for then Christ could not have taken our nature without sin Though therefore it be seated in the soul and that most tenaciously yet it is not the essence of a man But of this more in its time Secondly It is also a great Dispute among the Schoolmen Whether original sinne be immediately and proximely seated in the essence of the soul or in the powers of it Whether because it is first in the essence of the soul therefore the understanding and will are corrupted Or Whether these powers are first polluted and infected by it But this is founded upon a philosophical Dispute Whether the soul and the faculties thereof are distinguished And therefore I shall not trouble you with it Thirdly Some Papists have limited original sinne onely to the affections to the inferiour and sensitive part of a man as if sinne were not in the understanding and reason at all but in the affections and fleshly part onely But the more learned of the Papists gainsay this and do acknowledge that the mind as well as other parts is polluted with this leprosie SECT IV. Wherein Original Sinne hath infected the minds of all men THese things premised Let us consider Wherein original sinne hath infected the minds of all men so that in respect thereof that is to be renewed And First Horrible ignorance of God and the things of salvation doth cover the soul of every man by nature even as darknesse was upon the face of the deep Thus Rom. 3. you heard the Apostle pronounceth generally There is Rome that understandeth or seeketh after God No not one Hence also Ephes 5. 8. unconverted persons are said to be darknesse in the very abstract and that both because of their original and acquired blindness of mind upon them What could the wisest and most learned of the world do in respect of any knowledge of Christ if this were not revealed for this cause it is called the Ministery and the Gospel is constantly compared to light and all the world is said To sit in darkness till this doth arise so that our minds are by nature wholly ignorant about our selves about God and Christ which made our Saviour say to Peter upon his confession That flesh and blend had not revealed this to him whereas then in the state of integrity our minds were as gloriously filled with all perfections and abilities as the firmament with slarres there was sapience in respect of God science in respect of all natural things to be known and prudence in respect of all things to be done now our eie is put out and like Sampson the Philistims can do what they please with us for this respect it is that every creature is better then man they have a natural instinct whereby they know what is proper for them Opera natura sunt opera artis or intelligeniae They have as much knowledge sensitive I mean as they were made with at first even the least creatures and most despicable yea God is maximus in minimus most wonder full in the least things which made Austin preferre Fly before the Sunne and that he did more admire Opera Formicarum then Onera Camelorum the wise workes of the Ant before the heavy burdens of Camels Thus all creatures have a suteable knowledge for their end in their way only man is in horrible darkness and is absolutely ignorant about God or his own happiness Therefore those opinions of some who attribute a possibility of salvation to Heathens by the natural knowledge they have do in effect make void Christ and the Gospel Secondly Original sinne doth not only deprive us of all knowledge of God in a saving way but also filleth us with error and positive mistakes whereby we have not only unbelief but misbelief our condition were not so universally miserable if so be our mindes were only in a not knowing or meer privative ignorance about God but oh the gross soul and absurd perswasions men have naturally about God! The Atheisme naturally that is in us either denying or doubting about God but especially the false and absurd representations of God to us It is from the error in mans mind that Polytheisme hath so abounded perswading themselves of many gods yea the idolatry that hath filled the pagarish world and under subtile distractions hath invaded the Church also doth abundantly proclaim original ignorance and error in us about divine things yea the wiser men as the Apostle observeth Rom. 1. They became the more foolish in their imaginations turning the image of God into the likeness of the vilest creatures But before we proceed we must answer an Objection that may be made to the Doctrine delivered for it will easily be said That the corruption hitherto mentioned in the understanding is actual sinne rather then original Ignorance Atheisme I dolatrical thoughts of God these must necessarily be judged actual and if it be so Why do we ascribe this to original And indeed this Objection is commonly made by Papists against the Positions and Confessions which the Protestants have made about original sinne for when they discribe the nature of it they usually instance in particulars as horrible ignorance Atheism and dissidence in the mind c. To this the Papists reply saying We confound actual and original sinne yea when we bring that famous place Gen. 5. 6. The imaginations of the thoughts of the heart are onely evil and that continually to prove original sinne they reply the same thing to that Text also Therefore to clear this we are to know that it is true Atheisme ignorance these are actual sinnes as they are put in exercise but yet when we ascribe them to original sinne we do not so much mean the actual exercise of these evils as the Proneness and propensity of the heart to them So that our meaning is The heart of it self is prone to all these actual wickednesses Therefore though we name these as actual yet you must understand them habitually and seminally there being an inclination to all that impiety Only the reason why we describe original sinne thus as if it were actual pollution it is Because that it is a principle alwaies acting it never ceaseth the sparkes of this lust are like those of hell which never go out as the heart of a man naturally never ceaseth its motion so neither doth the evil heart of a man This difficulty being removed let us proceed to discover
further actings of original sinne in the mind and spirit of man And The second in order is That incapacity which is in every mans understanding about holy things Divine and supernatural things are no more received by him then a Beast doth apprehend the things of reason We have this fully affirmed 1 Cor. 2. 14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of God neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned you see there is no habitude or proportion between the understannding of a natural man and spiritual things no more then is between the bodily eie and a spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is one that doth excolere animam such as labour to adorne and perfect the soul with the most intellectual and moral indowments that are a Tully a Plato an Aristotle these if brought to Gospel-truth are not so much as noctuae ad solem Owles to the Sunne-beames To this purpose also Rom. 8. 7 we have not only this truth asserted but also aggravated where the carnal mind is said To be enmity against God and it is not subject to the Law of God neither can it be By which places of Scripture it is evident That the mind of man hath an utter incapacity as to any divine things Indeed there is a passive capacity as some express it and so the mind of man is susceptible of holy truth and such a capacity is not in a beast as that is not capable of sinne so neither of regeneration But then there is an active capacity when the soul by some ability and power of its own is able to move to these supernatural objects and thus the understanding of the most learned in the world cannot of it self receive it and therefore faith is said To be the gift of God so that we may justly abhorre the Arminians Probitas animi and Pia doxilitas which they make preparatory or main part to conversion Now there is a twofold receiving of divine Truths 1. Speculatively by a bare dogmatical assent and even thus none by nature can receive the Truths of God for the Pharisees though they heard Christ preached and saw the miracles he did yet they did not believe with so much as a dogmatical faith 2. There is a practical and experimental receiving of holy Truths in the power of them which is here called the knowing of Truths as they are in Jesus and this much less are we able to receive To the former is required the common grace of God To this a more special one Wonder not then if you see men even the most learned naturally so brutish so ignorant about divine things That they have no more understanding and apprehension about heavenly things Oh bewail original corruption which maketh thee so unteachable so untractable Why doth not every Scripture-truth every powerfull Sermon have its full and powerfull operation upon thee but because it doth not me et with a preparedand fitted subject Thirdly Adam's actual sinne which is our original imputed one was partly this They desired to be as gods to know good and evil which hath left its impression upon all Like the Bethshemite we desire to be looking into the Ark. The Apostle 1 Cor. 4. 6 as he would not have the Corinthians think of men above that which is written so much less of God contrary to that which is revealed This is a great evil upon the understandings of men by original sinne that now the mind is not contented with the rule God hath given it They think it a small and contemptible matter to know no more then what may be known by the Scripture but they affect extraordinary things This curiosity is that which filled the Church once with so many Schoolemen and their Questions as Aegypt was once with Caterpillars It is true School-divinity hath its use and so farre as they deal solidly and improve natural reason in any point they are very admirable but when once they fall into their useless unprofitable and sublime Questions where neither the Word of God or sure reason can conduct them then they vanish like smoak in the air how rash are they in their Disputes about Angels With what nice conceits have they obscured the Doctrine of the Trinity Insomuch that we may see much of original sinne in them inclining and hurrying of them to a bold and venturous determination of such things which God hath not manifested so that none of their seraphical sublime or angelical Doctors could begin their Disputations as John his Epistle That which we have seen we have heard and our hands have handled 1 Joh 1. 1. Though therefore the Schoolemen have in somethings their great use yet in their difficult niceties which are but as so many cob-webs there they are as much to be slighted as one king did a man who boasted he could stand at a distance and throw a grain of corn through the eie of a needle Again this original curiosity of the mind venteth it self in all those Magick Arts and Witchcrafts which have abounded in the world as also in judiciary Astrology and such deceitful impostures men affecting as Adam did to be like God to be able to declare the things that are to come Act. 19 19. They are called curious arts Furthermore this curiosity of the mind is seen in nauseating and disdaining known things and what are already discovered and ambitiously thirsting to find out some Veritas incognita as others have done Terra incognita To bring such new things to the world that were never knowen or heard before It 's from this sinful curiosity that men forsake the good Truths of God and runne after heresies errors and whatsoever hath novellisme in it so that he who would examine himself about his regeneration must look to the renovation of his mind in this particular as well as any other Fourthly Original sinne discovereth it self in our minds by the vanity that they are filled with 1 Cor. 3 20 The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain If the thoughts of wise men without the Scripture be vain how much more of men who have no more then natural ability And certainly this must needs be a very heavy censure upon man that he who hath the best parts the greatest understanding yet till grace sanctify he is but a vain man His mind is a vain mind his understanding is a vain understanding many waies the vanity of it might be discovered as thus The understanding of man is naturally more affected with pleasing things then with solid and sound Truths it is more affected with words language jests and merry tales then with that matter which tendeth to spiritual edification Is not this a great instance of the vanity upon our minds to regard leaves more then fruit chaff more then good seed pictures and shews more then substances whence ariseth that delight in embroydered language in playes and Comedies and in Romances and such bubles and empty vapours but from