If you say, the will's first sinful adhesion in the sixth instance, could not be, unless the intellect first directed it so to do; I deny that, because the will is the first principle in men's actions _quoad exercitium_, though the intellect be the first as to specification. And therefore the will could suspend its exercise and its excitation of the mind. In all this I go upon common principles: but I leave it to further inquiry; 1. How far the sensitive appetite may move the locomotive faculty without the will's command, while the will doth not forbid? And whether reason be not given man, as the rider to the horse, not to enable him to move, but to rule his motion: so that as the horse can go if the rider hinder not, so the sensitive appetite can cause the actions of eating, drinking, thinking, speaking sensually, if reason do but drop asleep, or not hinder. 2. And so whether in the first sin (and ordinarily) the sensitive appetite, fantasy, and passion be not the active mover, and the rational powers first guilty only by omitting their restraining government, which they were able to have exercised? 3. And so, whether sin be not (ordinarily) a brutish motion, or a voluntary unmanning of ourselves, the rational powers in the beginning being guilty only of omission or privation of restraint; but afterwards brought over to subserve the sensitive appetite actively? 4. And so, whether the will, which is the _principium actus quoad exercitium_, were not the first in the omission? The intellect having before said, This must be further considered, the will commanded not that further consideration, when it could and should?
However, if it be too hard for us to trace our own souls in all their motions, it is certain that the will of man is the first subject of moral good and evil; and uncertainties must not make us deny that which is certain.
The reader who understandeth the importance and consequence of these points, I am sure, will pardon me for this interposition of these difficult controverted points (which I purposely avoid where I judge them not very needful in order to the defence or clearing of the plainer common truths): and as for others, I must bear their censure.
The degree of sinfulness in the will lieth in a stiffness and obstinacy, a tenaciousness of deceitful temporal good, and an eagerness after it; and stubborn averseness to spiritual good, as it is against that temporal fleshly good. This is the will's disease.[99]
(3.) The sinfulness of the memory is in its retentiveness of evil, or things hurtful and prohibited; and its looseness and neglect of better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the fantasy, and things unseen and absent have the disadvantage, it were then but a natural, innocent infirmity; or if in sickness, age, or weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain, that if the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and excellency, and concernment to us, yet our memories are like walls of stone to any thing that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which you may write any thing, of that which is secular or evil. Note here, also, that the faultiness of the memory is only so far sinful as it is voluntary: it is the will where the sin is as in its throne, or chiefest subject. Because men love carnal things, and love not spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as imperate, and participatively, that the memory is capable of sin.
(4.) The sinfulness of the imagination consisteth in its readiness to think of evil, and of common earthly things, and its unaptness to think of any thing that is holy and good; and when we do force ourselves to holy thoughts, they are disorderly, confused, unskilfully managed, with great averseness.--Here also voluntariness is the life of the sin.
(5.) The sin of the affections, or passions, consisteth in this:--That they are too easily and violently moved by the sensitive interest and appetite; and are habitually prone to such carnal, inordinate motions, running before the understanding and will, (some of them,) and soliciting and urging them to evil; and resisting and disobeying the commands of reason and the will: but dull and backward to things spiritually good, and to execute the right dictates of the mind and will.