The new birthThe nevv birth

I confess there is a miserable stir, & a troublesome discord, in the soul of an unsanctified man, betwixt ⟨p. 45⟩the light of the conscience, and the corruption of the will; this haling him forward to divers wickednesses, and that drawing back: but the difference betwixt the natural combat, and the spiritual, is so manifest, that no good man, which hath felt them both, can choose but see how to distinguish them one from the other.¹ Indeed they are evidently distinguished in five things: 1. In the faculties that oppose each other. 2. In the things about which they quarrel. 3. In the motives of the opposition. 4. In the means of resistance. And fifthly, in the issue thereof. First, in the unregenerate the will is wholly carried after sin, alone the conscience makes a clamorous gainsaying, and suffers not the will to go on in its evil courses uncontrolled. He would with all his heart commit wickedness, but he dares not: not so the regenerate. In him not the conscience alone stands out against sin, but the will it self is divided, in part hanging one way, in part another. He would not do evil, not alone he dares not; and the act of the will setting against its own corruption, by its own holiness, is far different from the act of the conscience, opposing the will that remaineth wholly corrupted. See it in a comparison: An hungry dog hath a strong appetite to be devouring some meat that stands before him: but at the same time he sees a man standing by with a cudgel to strike him if he touch it. Now his appetite is altogether to the meat, but he is feared and over-awed by the sight of the man that is ready to strike him. So is it with the unsanctified man, sin is his food, his will is wholly carried to it; but the conscience holds as it were a cudgel over him, threatening to strike, if he taste. Wherefore, what with a full desire he would do, he forbeareth ⟨p. 46⟩in act to perform, affrighted by those clamours. But now a man diseased, sees some food to which his appetite inclineth: but he knows it hurtful for his body, and therefore, though his will, drawn by his senses, sometimes move him to be tasting; yet the same will, informed by reason, doth prevail in him to be unwilling, and out of such unwillingness to forbear. So is it with the godly man: His will stands to sin, for the pleasure or profits sake in some part: