Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

Secondly, By reason of contracted hardness. Men are naturally backward to good, but much more when habituated to evil: for the more inclined they are to evil, the more averse they are to good; and the more accustomed they are to sin, the more inclined they are to it. The practice of sin hardens the Heart, and strengthens the sinning disposition; and still the longer Men continue in sin the stronger such dispositions grow. Hence the Apostles advice to the Hebrews, chap. 3.13. Exhort one another, while it is called to day, lest your Hearts be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, implying that that would follow upon their continuance in sin. We see even in natural things that Mens being accustomed to one sort of actions, unfits them for another. When Men have lived in the practice of sin all their days, and their natural disposition to sin is heightened into an habit, it is not strange if they be much more averse to the contrary good, Jer. 13.23. How can you that are accustomed to evil, learn to do well? If one gross sin in a believer may so debilitate and enfeeble those gracious dispositions that were before in him as to unfit him for, and deaden him to spiritual duties, to what a superlative hardness may a thousand and a thousand repeated acts of wilful sin bring the Heart of a carnal Man, and to what, not only averseness to any good, but confirmedness against all?

Secondly, By reason of contracted hardness. Men are naturally backward to good, but much more when habituated to evil: for the more inclined they are to evil, the more averse they are to good; and the more accustomed they are to sin, the more inclined they are to it. The practice of sin hardens the Heart, and strengthens the sinning disposition; and still the longer Men continue in sin the stronger such dispositions grow. Hence the Apostles advice to the Hebrews, chap. 3.13. Exhort one another, while it is called to day, lest your Hearts be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin, implying that that would follow upon their continuance in sin. We see even in natural things that Mens being accustomed to one sort of actions, unfits them for another. When Men have lived in the practice of sin all their days, and their natural disposition to sin is hightned into an habit, it is not strange if they be much more averse to the contrary good,