For instance, it is common to man with other creatures to take care for the nourishing of his children, of the young, helpless ones that receive their being by him. There is implanted in him, in the principles of his nature, concreated with them, a love and care for them; so is it with other living creatures. Now, let other creatures answer this instinct and inclination, and be not hardened against them like the foolish ostricli, into whom God hath not implanted
POWER OF SIN IN UNREGENERATE PERSONS. 805
this natural wisdom, Job xxxix. 16, 17, they fully answer the law of their creation. With man it is not so. It is not enough for him to answer the instinct and secret impulse and inclination of his nature and kind, as in the nourishing of his children; but he must do it also in subjection to God, and obey him therein, and do it unto his glory, — the law of moral obedience passing over all his whole l)eing and all his operations. But in these things lie, as it were, the whole of a man, namely, in the things which are implanted in his nature as a creature, common to him with all other living creatures, seconded by the command or will of God, as he is a creature capable of yield- ing moral obedience and doing all things for his glory.
That, then, which shall drive and compel a man to transgress this law of his nature, — which is not only as to throw millstones upward, to drive beasts from taking care of their young, to take from cattle of the same kind the herding of themselves in quietness, but, more- over, to cast off, what lies in him, his fundamental dependence on God as a creature made to yield him obedience, — must needs be es- teemed of great force and efficacy.
Now, this is frequently done by indwelling sin in persons unrege- nerate. Let us take some few instances: —
(1.) There is nothing that is more deeply inlaid in the principles of the natures of all living creatures, and so of man himself, than a love unto and a care for the preservation and nourishing of their young. Many brute creatures will die for them; some feed them with their own flesh and blood ; all deprive themselves of that food which nature directs them to as their best, to impart it to them, and act in their behalf to the utmost of their power.
Now, such is the efficacy, power, and force of indwelling sin in man, — an infection that the nature of other creatures knows nothing of, — that in many it prevails to stop this fountain, to beat back the stream of natural affections, to root up the principles of the law of nature, and to drive them unto a neglect, a destruction of the fruit of their own loins. Paul tells us of the old Gentiles that they were ds-opyoi, Rom. i. 31, " without natural affection." That which he aims at is that barbarous custom among the Romans, who ofttimes, to spare the trouble in the education of their children, and to be at liberty to satisfy their lusts, destroyed their oivn children from the womb; so far did the strength of sin prevail to obliterate the law of nature, and to repel the force and power of it.
Examples of this nature are common in all nations; amongst our- selves, of luomen murdering their own children, through the deceit- ful reasoning of sin. And herein sin turns the strong current of nature, darkens all the light of God in the soul, controls all natural principles, influenced with the power of the command and will of God.
VOL. VI. 20
306 THE NATURE AND POWER OF INDWELLING SIN.
But yet this evil hath, through the efficacy of sin, received a fearful aggravation. Men have not only slain but cruelly sacrificed their chil- dren to satisfy their lusts. The apostle reckons idolatry, and so, conse- quently, all superstition, among the works of the flesh, Gal. v. 20 ; that is, the fruit and product of indwelling sin. Now, from hence it is that men have offered that horrid and unspeakable violence to the law of nature mentioned. So the psalmist tells us, Ps. cvi. 37, 38. The samie is again mentioned, Ezek. xvi. 20, 21, and in sundry other places. The whole manner of that abomination I have elsewhere declared. For the present it may suffice to intimate that they took their children and burnt them to ashes in a soft fire; the wicked priests that assisted in the sacrifice affording them this relief, that they made a noise and clamour that the vile wretches might not hear the woful moans and cries of the poor, dying, tormented infants. I sup- pose in this case we need no farther evidence. Naturalists can give no rational account, they can only admire the secret force of that little fish which, they say, will stop a ship in full sail in the midst of the sea ; and we must acknowledge that it is beyond our power to give an account of that secret force and unsearchable deceit that is in that inbred traitor, sin, that can not only stop the course of nature, when all the sails of it, that carry it forward, are so filled as they are in that of affections to children, but also drive it backward with such a violence and force as to cause men so to deal with their oiuii chil- dren as a good man would not be hired with any reward to deal with his dog. And it may not be to the disadvantage of the best to know and consider that they carry that about them and in them which in others hath produced these effects.