AN UNREGENERATE MAN'S GUILTINESS

BEFORE GOD,

IN RESPECT OF SIN AND PUNISHMENT.

BOOK I.

Of an unregenerate man's guiltiness before God, from the imputation of Adam's first transgression to every person of his posterity.

CHAPTER I.

The general design and division of the discourse.

We have seen the state of pure nature, as to the holiness and happiness thereof, by the law of God.* I come now unto man's fallen and lost condition in a state of sin and wrath, which is the condition of all by nature, and whilst in the state of nature.

My method shall be this:

I. To handle the sinfulness of all men by nature in respect of their birthsin (which from Augustine we have used to call original sin), both in the guilt and corruption thereof.

II. To treat of it as it is a state, or an abiding condition, and therein to discover the several sorts of men remaining unregenerate in the church, and of a common profession of Christ: viz. 1, of ignorant persons; 2, profane; 3, civil and formal Christians; and to detect the deceits and false pleas which each of these have, why they think themselves happy if they should die therein. That which I intend therein is a conviction of all these sorts of persons (that are the generality of the church) that they are still in the state of nature, and, without true regeneration, will eternally perish.

III. The third is the sinfulness of sin, and the aggravations of it, as in sinning against mercies, against knowledge, &c.; together with the fearfulness of that punishment which is due unto men for the least sin in that estate.

In the Discourse of the Creatures, and the Condition of their State by Creation, in Vol. II. of his Works. [Vol. VII. of this edition.—ED.]

L. As to the first, my method is,

First, To shew the first entrance of sin upon all men by Adam's first sin, that is, the first imputation of that act to all men; and how far the guilt of that act is charged on us, and how far it was personal and proper only to him.

Secondly, To lay open that corruption of nature which hath defiled all our natures. Concerning which, 1, how it flows from the guilt of that first act; 2, that it is truly and properly a sin; then, 3, the great abounding sinfulness thereof; and, 4, the parts thereof in general, as that it is,

First, A total privation and emptiness of all that is truly good.

Secondly, Positive inclinations to all evils, which consist in two things: 1. In lusts, and therein of the nature of lusts, their inordinacy, their sinfulness and deceitfulness.

2. In an inbred enmity and opposition unto God, and whatever is holy and good (which I make the third particular branch of original corruption). This in general.

II. More particularly, I lay open this corruption, as it is in the whole man, and in every faculty.

First, The understanding in blindness, unbelief, practical false reasonings and deceits, &c.

Secondly, The thinking power, the vanity of thoughts.

Thirdly, The defilement in the conscience.

Fourthly, The subjection and bondage of the will and affections unto lusts; then the varieties of these lusts, and of those master-lusts which are in the hearts of several men.

CHAPTER II.

The text explained.—That all men are in a state of sin.-That it is worth our inquiry to know how sin, which thus involves all men in it, came into the world. That sin had its entrance by Adam's first transgression.-How Adam, being created holy, was capable of sinning.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned: for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was [to] come.-Roм. V. 12-14.

You read the story of Adam's fall in the third of Genesis, and here you have how it concerned his whole posterity, and that illustrated by the antitype of Adam, Jesus Christ, and his conveying righteousness unto his, of which Christ God intended Adam to be the type. And in this these two are parallel (as in other respects), that look as the story of Christ's birth, circumcision, obedience, and sufferings, are but barely and nakedly related in the three first evangelists, whereas the intent, efficacy, and benefit from thence accruing to us, was reserved to be set forth by the apostles in their epistles; so it falls out in this. Moses tells the history of Adam's fall, and Paul explains the mystery and consequence thereof.

That sin hath not only entered in upon the world of mankind, but hath universally overflown it for sin,* not a man excepted, is evident in that speech, all have sinned,' upon which, he says, 'death followed;' yea, this

* Qu. ever since'?-ED.

is that which the apostle hath been proving at large all this while in the former part of the epistle, chaps. i.-iii. So then (as concluding he says) we have proved that both Jew and Gentile (which two then shared the world between them) are under sin, all and every one of them: Not one righteous, no, not one,' chap. iii. 10. And what need we say any more of it (says he), it being such an irrefragable truth, as every mouth must be stopped, and 'become' (in his own acknowledgment) guilty before God,' ver. 19. And it might be proved by induction of all men of all ages, and will be at the latter day, when the story of all the world shall be ripped up. There is no man in whom shineth but the light of nature, that either casts his eye into his own bosom, or looks out upon the sons of men, but must acknowledge as much. Neither is it any new thing lately befallen the world, but it is the ancient brine it hath lain soaked in, steeped in, these six thousand years almost. 'The whole world lay in wickedness,' in John's time, 1 John v. 19. There was not by nature any man righteous, no, not one,' in David's time, when God looked down from heaven: Ps. xiv. 2, 3, The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doth good, no, not one.' Solomon says, Eccles. vii. 27-29, Behold, this have I found (saith the preacher), counting one by one, to find out the account; which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.' That he viewed men

and women one by one: And, lo, this I found,' says he, that they are all corrupted.' And therefore at verse 20 he says, 'For there is not a just man upon earth, that doth good, and sinneth not.' So also his speech in his prayer, 2 Chron. vi. 36, 'If they sin against thee (for there is no man which sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near.' If you think the infant times (called the golden, innocent age of the world) was free, see what an account the text gives you: ver. 13, 'Sin was in the world from Adam,' the first man, 'to Moses;' take the account shorter, from Adam to the flood. God, whose all-seeing eye runs through the whole earth, views every man, yea, every thought in man, brings in this bill and account, having viewed them one by one: Gen. vi. 5, 12, All flesh have corrupted their way upon earth.' Yea, and that so as from the first imagination or act the mind puts forth, to the last, 'all and every figment of the heart is corrupt.'

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To give you one evidence, which the text suggests, of this universal guilt and sinfulness of all men, death reigned from Adam to Moses' (or else that which is equivalent to death, a change, as in Enoch). It speaks of a mighty monarch here, death, the most universal and most lasting monarchy that ever

It reigns, says the text; its sceptre hath subdued, and brought under, all the sons of men: Death hath passed upon all men.' Other monarchs never subdued all; some outlaws and nations were not overcome; here not a man but falls under it. Other monarchies cease and determine; this hath lasted in all ages, 'from Adam to Moses;' so the text says, and experience shews, ever since. Take the experience of the present age, not a man alive was seven score or eight score years ago; nay, it comes into your houses, tears your children from your dugs, and kills them before your faces, and you cannot resist it. Millions come into the world, and but salute their friends, and then go weeping out again, so says the text; that children who actually never sinned as Adam did (for that is the meaning of 'not sinning after the

Now, if you

similitude of Adam's transgression'), do die as well as others. ask death, as they asked Christ, Mat. xxi. 23, 'By what authority he doth these things-by what title he reigns over all, even over children-the text shews his commission, and gives this as the ground of it (which we are now a-demonstrating therefore by this effect), that all have sinned;' and tells us that 'death entered into the world by sin,' being the wages' of it, Rom. vi. 23, and the 'child' of it: James i. 15, Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' And to the elect it is ordained, through the grace of God, to be his messenger to fetch sin out of the world, as sin was a means to bring it in.

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2. Doubtless it is a matter worth the knowing, and our most diligent inquiry, how this deluge of sin and death entered in upon all the world, what was the first gap, the first breach made, that let it in; this universal flood that covers the face of the earth, which could never yet be drained and cast out; yea, and what should be the spring that should feed it all this while continually in all the thoughts that is from every man's heart, so as it should never be dry?

The greatest scholars of the world have spent their wits often in the search of the original of trifles; whole volumes are written of the original of other things; but Solomon, the wisest man that ever was, thought this very point (namely, how all men came thus universally corrupt) a point of deepest wisdom, use, and profitableness: Eccles. vii. 25, I applied my heart,' says he, to know, and to search, to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things;' and above all else, as appears in the next words, 'to know wickedness and folly, and to find the cause of it,' for that, the former words shew, is his meaning. For he says in the next verses that he took a survey of all the world of mankind-women first, with whom he was too much acquainted, and then men also-and observed their dispositions: ver. 27, ‘And this I found,' says he, 'God made man (originally) righteous; but now they are all corrupt, and have found out many inventions.'

And indeed it is our privilege and advantage, who enjoy God's word, to know the original of this universal confusion in man's nature, and of the misery all are exposed unto; which the wisest men among the heathen, who, though they filled the world with complaints about it, as Plato in the second book of his Commonwealth complains that men by their natures are evil, and cannot be brought to good; and Tully,* as he is cited by Augustine in his fourth book against Julian, that man is brought forth into the world, in body and soul, exposed to all miseries, prone to evil, and in whom that divine spark of goodness, of wit and morality, is oppressed and extinguished:' yet they could never dive into the bottom of this universal disease and mischief. They found that all men were poisoned; but how it came there they none of them did know or could imagine, or would ever have found out, but run to false counsel, attributing it to destiny and fate, or some evil planet, its having a malign influence into man's nature, or to an evil angel that attended upon every man. All which, how short is it of the truth!

And together with this secret now made common to us, the knowledge of it is most profitable, yea, and necessary, for us, and is one of the main principles, yea, the first, which is committed to the church to be known and

Cicero, lib. iii., de Republicâ, cited by Augustine, lib. iv., contra Julianum, cap. xii. p. 226, in tom. vii. oper. ed. Paris, 1571: In libro tertio de Republicâ, idem Tullius hominem dicit non ut à matre, sed ut à novercâ naturâ editum in vitam, corpore et nudo, et fragili, et infirmo; animo autem anxio ad molestias, humili ad timores, molli ad labores, prono ad libidines; in quo tamen inesset tanquam obrutus quidam divinus ignis ingenii, et mentis. Quid ad hæc dicis? Non hoc author iste male viventium moribus dixit affectum, sed naturam potius accusavit.'

believed; and therefore was the first thing which, next to the creation of the world and man, God manifested in the first book that ever he wrote.

The first query will be, How all men come generally, and universally, and continually thus unrighteous, and thereupon exposed to death?

The text resolves us, saying, that by one man sin did enter into the world, and so death passed upon all.' If we had never heard of this same one man before, we would all be inquisitive who he should be. The fourteenth verse tells us it was Adam. You have all heard of him who in 1 Cor. xv. 45 is called the first man, Adam,' the first man that ever was in the world; for how could sin by him enter upon all if he had not been before all? Some men otherwise would have been free, if any had been before him. And the rest of the verses, from the 14th to the 20th, do generally inform us that he committed a transgression,' ver. 14; 'an offence,' ver. 15, 17, 18; that he sinned,' ver. 16; that he disobeyed,' ver. 19; and by that transgression, offence, sin, disobedience (call it what you will), it comes to pass that all other men are made sinners,' ver. 19; and that the guilt' of that sin came upon all men to condemnation.'

If you ask, how it came to pass that this man should sin, God having created him righteous? As Solomon, Eccles. vii. 29, Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions;' and as you read of him in the first and second of Genesis, that he was created in the image of God!

First, I confess I had rather, upon the experience of mine own frailty, fall down before the great God, and acknowledge mine own slipperiness and changeableness, as I am a creature, if left to mine own will, and that when so left, I am obnoxious to sin, over and above and beyond what corruption hath yet swayed me to, than dispute this point out with God or men; for though I came not into the world holy, and endowed with created inclinations and dispositions contrary unto sin, as Adam did, yet in the course of my life I have full often found mine own will hath of and from itself cast the balance, and given forth a command for many a sinful act, not merely out of that sinful bias and inclination it hath to commit sin, but over and above out of that mere mutability and fickleness which is in my will to cast itself to evil. And when inclinations and assistances unto the contrary have been sufficient to preserve me from so sinning, yet mine own will hath determined itself to an outward act of evil, so as I could and might resolve the act done into that uncertainty and aptness to change and fall, even (as I am a creature) to fall into that, which is a step into that nothing we were first created out of, namely sin; so that beyond what the bias or poise which corruption sways man unto, it appears that in many passages of a man's life a vertibility of will hath been the cause of sin, which is then seen, when strong motions and impressions have been to the contrary, as well as impulses of sin and wickedness (so as the man could not but say he had power not to have done it), from whence a man may discern what he himself was like to have done, if he had been in Adam's state and case.

Secondly, That also of James, that it is God's prerogative alone (and no person's else but he who is God withal, or one person with God), not to be capable of being tempted to evil, so as to be prevailed with by it: James i. 13, Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.' To be without variableness, or shadow of turning,' ver 17, proves my assertion. It is further evidenced by this, that the greatest and holiest creature that could be made by God, if but a mere creature, and having no other but that providential assistance due by the law of the creation, was not only capable to