This being the progress of sin from the first rise, which is " lust," to the last end, which is " death," the way and path that the best and most refined unregenerate men in the world do never thoroughly forsake, though they may sometimes step out of it or be stopped in it, a way wherein whoever walks to the end may be sure to find the end, I shall consider the several particulars laid down, and show in them all, at least in the most material, the difference that is between believers and unbelievers whilst they do walk, or may walk, in this path, and then manifest where and when all saints break out of it for ever, so that they come not to the close thereof; and therein I shall give a full answer unto the whole strength and design of the argu- ment in hand, which consisteth, as was said, in a comparison insti- tuted between the sins and demerits of believers and unbelievers.
First, The fountain, principle, and cause, of all sin whatever, in all persons whatever, is " lust." Every one's own lust is the cause of his oiun sin. This is the mother, womb, and fomes of sin, which Paul says he had not been acquainted withal but by the law : Rom. vii. 7, " Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law : for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." That which in the entrance he calls " sin" indefinitely, in the close he particularly terms " lust," as being the hidden, secret cause of all sin, and which, once discovered, swallows up the thoughts of all other sins, it being al- together in vain to deal with them, or to set a man's self in opposition to them, whilst this sinful womb of them is alive and prevalent. This is that which we call original sin, as to that part of it which consists in the universal alienation of our hearts from God, and unconquer- able, habitual, natural inclination of them to every thing that is evil; for this sin works in us " all manner of concupiscence," Rom. vii. 8. This, I say, is the womb, cause, and principle of sin, both in believers and unbelievers, the root on which the bitter fruit of it doth srow, wherever it is. No man ever sins but it is from his own lust. And in this there is an agreement between the sins of believers and others, they are all from the same fountain ; yet not such an agreement but that there is a difference herein also. For the clearing whereof ob- serve,—
1. That by nature this lust, which is the principle of sin, is seated in all the faculties of the soul, receiving divers appellations
512 DOCTRINE OF THE saints' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
according to the variety of the subjects wherein it is, and is some- times expressed in terms of privation, want, and deficiency, some- times by positive inclination to evil. In the understanding, it is blindness, darkness, giddiness, folly, madness; in the will, obsti- nacy and rebellion; in the heart and affections, pride, stubbornness, hardness, sensuality; in all, negatively and privatively, death; posi- tively, lust, corruption, fiesh, concupiscence, sin, the old man, and the like. There is nothing in the soul of a man that hath the least influence into any action as moral but is wholly possessed with this depraved, vicious habit, and exerts itself always and only in a suit- ableness thereunto.
2. That this lust hath so taken possession of men by nature, that, in reference to any spiritual act or duty, they are nothing else but lust and flesh; " That which is born of the flesh is flesh," John iii. 6. It is all so, it is all spiritual flesh ; that is, it is wholly and habitually corrupt, as to the doing any thing that is good. If any thing in a man might seem to be exempted, it should be his mind, the seat of all those things which are commonly called the " relics of the image of God;" but that also is flesh, as the apostle at large asserts it, Rom. viii., and " enmity against God." Neither is it of any weight which is objected, " That there is in unregenerate men the know- ledge of the truth, which they retain in unrighteousness, Rom. i. 1 8 ; conscience accusing and excusing, chap. ii. 15; the knowledge of sin which is by the law, with sundry other endowments; which," they say, *' doubtless are not flesh." I answer. They are all flesh, in the sense that the Scripture useth that word. The Holy Ghost speaks of nothing in man, in reference unto any duty of obedience unto God, but it is either flesh or Spirit. These two comprehend every man in the world : Every man is either in the flesh or in the Spirit, Rom. viii. The utmost improvement of all natural faculties whatever, the most com- plete subjection whereunto they are brought by convictions, yet leaves the same impotency in them to spiritual good as they were born withal, the same habitual inclination to sin, however entangled and hampered from going out to the actual perpetrating of it; neither are they themselves any thing the better, nor hath God any thing of that glory by them which ariseth from the willing obedience of his creatures.