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taken a full possession of all the faculties. For this reason the apostle tells us, Rom. 8. 7, 8. “ They that are in the flesh, cannot please God. And the carnal will is enmity against God, it is not subject, neither can it be.” It is ensnared in the cords of concupiscence, and cannot recover itself from its foolish bondage.

But that doth not lessen the guilt; which will appear by considering there is a twofold impotence.

1. There is a natural impotence which protects from the severity of justice. No man is bound to stop the sun in its course, or to remove mountains : for the human nature was never endued with faculties to do those things. They are inculpably without our power. Now the law enjoins nothing but what man had in his creation an original power to perform.

2. There is a moral impotence, which arises from a perverse disposition of the will, and is joined with a delight in sin, and a strong aversion from the holy commands of God; and the more deep and inveterate this is, the more worthy it is of punishment. Aristotle asserts, Ethic 3. That those who contract invincible habits by custom, are inexcusable, though they cannot abstain from evil. For since liberty consists in doing what one wills, this impossibility doth not destroy liberty; the depravation of the faculties doth not hinder their voluntary operations. The under standing conceives, the will chooses, the appetite desires freely. A distracted person that kills, is not guilty of murder, and there. fore secure from the sentence of the law. For his understanding being distempered by the disorder of the images in his fancy, it doth not judge aright, so that the action is involuntary, and therefore not culpable. But there is a vast difference between

the causes of distraction, and those which induce a carnal man 1 to sin. The first are seated in the distemper of the brain, over

which the will hath no power : whereas there should be a regular subjection of the lower appetite to the will enlightened and directed by the mind. The will itself is corrupted and brought into captivity by things pleasing to the lower faculties: it cannot disentangle itself, but its impotence lies in its obstinacy. This is the meaning of St. Peter, speaking concerning unclean persons, that their eyes are full of adultery, and they cannot cease from sin It is from their fault alone that they are without power. Therefore the scripture represents man to be intern's and aceßr's, weak, but wicked. His disability to supernatural good arises from an inordinate affection to that which is sensual. So that it is so far from excusing, that it renders inexcusable, being voluntary and vicious. And in this the diseases of the body are different from those of the soul. In the first the desire of healing is ineffectual, through want of knowledge or power to apply the sovereign remedies : whereas in the second, the sincere desire of their cure is sufficient, for the diseases are corrupt desires.

The natural man is wholly led by sense, by fancy, and the passions, and he esteems it his infelicity to be otherwise ; as the degenerous slave, who was displeased with a jubilee, and refused liberty. Servitude is his sensuality. He is not only in love with the unworthy object, but with the vicious affection, and abhors the cure of it. As one in the poet that was so delighted in his pleasant madness, that he was offended at his recovery;

-Cui sic extorta voluptas
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.'

This is acknowledged by St. Austin in his confessions, where he describes the strife between conviction and corruption in his soul. He tells us in the conflict between reason and lust, that he had recourse to God, and his prayer was, Da mihi continentiam, sed noli modo, he desired chastity, but not too soon, he was afraid that God should hear his petition, it being more bitter than death to change his custom. This is the general sense, though not the general discourse of men.

As the sick person desired his physician to remove his fever, but not his thirst, which made his drink very pleasing to him: so man, in his sensual state, would fain be freed from the æstuations of conscience, but he cherishes those carnal desires which give a high taste to objects suitable to them. From hence it appears, that though in the corrupt nature there is no liberty of indifference to good and evil, yet there is a liberty of delight in evil; and though, the will in its natural capacity may choose good, yet it is morally determined by its love to evil. *

In short, there is so much power not to sin as is sufficient to sin; that is, that the forbidden action be free, and so become a

sin. Which strange combination of liberty and necessity is excellently expressed by St. Bernard; * “ That the soul which fell by its own choice, cannot recover itself, is from the

corruption of the will, which, overcome by the vicious love of the body, rejects the love of righteousness; so that, in a manner, as strange as evil, the will being corrupted with sin, makes a necessity to its self, yet so, the necessity being voluntary, doth not excuse the will, nor the will being pleasantly and powerfully allured, exclude necessity.” The law therefore remains in its full force, and God is righteous in the commanding and condemning sinners. From all that hath been discoursed, it is evident, how impossible it is for corrupt man to recover his lost holiness: for there are only two motives to induce the reasonable creature to seek after it.

1. Its beauty and loveliness.

9. The reward that attends it. And both these arguments are ineffectual to work upon him.

1. The beauty of holiness, which excels all other created per. fections, it being a conformity to the most glorious attribute of the Deity, doth not allure him: for, unusquisque ut affectus est ita judicat; man understands according to his affections. The renewed mind can only see the essential and intimate beauty of holiness. Now in fallen man the clearness of the discerning power is lost. As the natural eye, till it is purged from vicious qualities, cannot look on things that are bright and sublime, and if it hath been long in darkness, it suffers by the most pleasing object the light: so the internal eye of the mind, that it may see the lively lustre of holiness, it must be cleaused from the filthiness of carpal affections, and having been so long under thick darkness, it must be strengthened, before it can sustain the brightness of things spiritual. Till it be prepared, it can see nothing amiable and desirable in the image of God.

(1.) It is future, and therefore the conceptions of it] are very dark and imperfect: the soul is sunk down into the senses, and they are short-sighted and cannot look beyond what is present to the next life. And as the images of things are weakened and confused proportionably to their distance, and make a fainter impression upon the faculty; so the representation of heaven and blessedness as a happiness to come hereafter, and therefore remote, doth but coldly affect the will. A present vanity, in the judgment of the carnal soul, outweighs the most glorious futuri ty. Till there be taken from before its eyes (in Tertullian's language *) the thick curtain of the visible world, it cannot discern the difference between them, nor value the reward for its excellency and duration.

(2.) It is spiritual, and there must be a divine disposition of the soul before it is capable of it. "The pure in heart can only see the pure God." Mat. 5. 8. The felicity above is that which 66 eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." 1 Cor. 2. 9. Now the carnal man is only affected with gross and corporeal things. The certainty, immensity, and immortality of the heavenly reward doth not prevail with him to seek after it. He hath no palate for spiritual pleasures, it is viciated by luscious vanities, and cannot relish rational joys. Till the temper of the soul be altered, the bread of angels is distasteful to it. For the appetite is according to the disposition of the stomach, and when that is corrupted, it longs for things hurtful, and rejects wholesome food. If a carnal man were translated to heaven, where the love of God reigns, and where the brightest and sweetest discoveries of his glory appear, he would not find paradise in heaven itself. For delight arises not merely from the excellency of the object, but from the proportionableness to the faculty. Though God is an infinite good in himself, yet if he is not conceived as the supreme good to man, he cannot make him happy.

Suppose some slight convictions to be in the mind, that happiness consists in the enjoyment of God, yet this being offered upon the terms of quitting all sensual lusts, the carnal man esteems the condition impossible, and therefore is discouraged from using any endeavours to obtain it. For to excite hope, it

* Quæ illi dispositioni æternitatis, aulæi vice oppansa est. Apolog.

is not sufficient to propose a reward that is real and excellent, but that is attainable. For although hope hath its tendency to a difficult good, as its proper object, and the difficulty is so far from discouraging, that it quickens the soul, and draws forth all the active powers, by rendering it greater in our esteem; yet when the difficulty is excessive, and confines upon impossibility, it dejects the soul, and inclines it to despair. Thus when the condition of obtaining some good is necessary, but insufferable, it takes off from all endeavours in order to it.

To consider it in a temporal case, will make it more clear. As one that labours under a dropsy, and is vexed with an intolerable and insatiable thirst, if a physician should assure him of cure upon condition he would abstain from drinking, he could not conceive any real hope of being healed, judging it impossible to resist the importunity of his drought; he therefore neglects the means, he drinks and dies. Thus the corrupt heart of man, that is under a perpetual thirst of carnal pleasures, and is more inflamed by the satisfaction it receives, judges it an insuperable condition to part with them for the acquiring of spiritual happiness: and this sensual and sottish despair causes a total neglect of the means. It is thus expressed by the Israelites, when God commanded them to return from the evil of their ways in order to their happiness, and they said, "there is no hope, but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart." Abstinere nequeo. Grot. Jer. 18. 12. They were slaves to their domineering appetites, and resolved to make no trial about that they judged impossible. Briefly, in fallen man there is something predominant, which he values above the favour and fruition of God, and that is the world. As in the parable, where happiness is set forth under the familiar representation of a feast, those who were invited to it, excuse themselves by such reasons as clearly discover that some amiable lust charmed them so strongly, that in the competition it was preferred before heaven. "One saith, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go see it; and another, I have bought a yoke of oxen, and I must go to prove them; and a third, I have married a wife, and cannot come." Luke 14. 18. The objects of their passions are different, but they all produce the same effect, the rejection of happiness. The sum of all is this, that as man fell from his obedience, and