There is no enA^y in goodness, in strength and ability. They would have all to be so ; but baseness is joined with much envy. When it sees another overshadow it, it labours to eclipse him with slanders and base reports. This is a principle of carnal wisdom. And hence comes all that working and undermining, secret conveyances, and laying nets for others, as the prophet speaks.
All carnal wisdom hath carnal ends, and carnal rules, and carnal courses answerable. It consults upon the attaining of its end. It deliberates and consults, and shrewdly too ; for it is whetted by Satan. And then it goes with the stream of the world, and therefore it is carried very strongly towards its end. And then it resolves strongly ; because fleshly wisdom usually is with the times. And then it executes. God sufiers it oft-times to come to execution, and to enjoy its plots and projects. And therefore in regard that it hath the same passages, though in a contrary kind, with other wisdom, it is called wisdom, though indeed it be not wisdom. And thereupon it hath a diminishing term here, it is ' fleshly wisdom.'
Now this wisdom is called ' fleshly,' because it is led with reasons from the flesh, and it tends to the maintenance of the flesh. It comes from it, and it tends to it.
I take not 'flesh' hei'e, for one part of a man, his body ; but for the unregenerate part, which is carried to changeable things, to the creature, and sets up some creature to be an idol, instead of the Creator, ' blessed for evermore.'
And that from this reason, because the creature, the things below are near to us, and pleasant to us ; and because we are brought up in these delights of the creature that are sensible ; and therefore the flesh, the baser part, is ready to draw away the soul to the delights of it ; because the delights of
2 COKINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 12. 2G3
it are pleasant, and we are trainer] up in them from the heginning of our Hfe to the end of it. Now these things below, the ])rofits, and pleasures, and honours, they work first upon the senses, upon the outward man ; and from the senses they ascend to the fancy, and imagination, and that being carnal by nature esteems more highly of them than there is cause, and esteems of the contrary to these as the greatest ills. Oh ! poverty is worse than hell to a carnal man ! and he had rather be dead than be disgraced. He had rather damn his soul, than to be denied of his pleasure. Imagina- tion makes them such great things, and the devil helps imagination. He hath much affinity with that part, with the imagination ; and imagination, when men have strong conceits of these things, that labours to draw the mil and aflections to itself, to sway that part. So that the will, the com- manding part of the soul, for the most part it yields to these imaginations of base things. It conceives of them highly, and the contrary to be vile and base. And hereupon the will comes to approve of these things, and to choose these things ; yea, and the understanding part itself, that blessed spark of wisdom that is left in us, capable of better things, and fit for the image of God. Yet that, by our corruption, being stripped of the grace it had in the creation, and now being under original corruption, being vmder the law of sin, it is led by a carnal will and imagination, and by sense, and is ruled by them. So that that which should rule all, is ruled by base, earthly things.
The soul of man, while we live here, is between things better than itself, and worse than itself, meaner than itself. Now by corruption it cleaves to things meaner than itself. It is witty to devise them. It is willing to choose them. It delights in them. It bathes itself in them. So that whereas it should rule the body, the body and the lower parts rule the soul. "When it yields to that which is better than itself, to the sanctifvuig Spirit of God, and to the word of God, and is clothed with the image of God, when it yields to better things, then they raise it to a degree of excellency even above itself when it was at the best. For a man that is in Christ, that hath the image of Christ upon him, in some sort, is better than Adam was in innocency. His estate is more sure ; and the dignity he is advanced to by Christ is greater than he should have had if he had stood still in Adam. This is the condi- tion of the soul. An excellent creature, it is capable of the image and like- ness of Christ, and of God, capable of all grace.
Again, if it submit itself to base creatures, it becomes even as them ; and therefore men are called ' the world.' They are called ' flesh.' They are called after that which leads them. The very soul itself, as it were, is flesh, For, as the very body of a holy man in some sort is spirit ; and everything in him is spirit ; as it shall be at the day of judgment, as St Paul saith, ' it shall be raised a spiritual body,' 1 Cor. xv. 44 ; because it shall be sub- ject to the motions of the Spirit of God in aU things ; and it shall not be bupported by bodily means. Now the very soul is bodily and carnal. Such a degeneration is wrought in man since the fall. He makes his soul that was given to guide him in this world, and which is made apprehensive of better things, of the things of another world. This soul he makes it the bawd to serve his base lusts and pleasures.