A Christian Directory

§. 6. 1. That the will never desireth evil as evil, but as a carnal or a seeming good. 2. Nor doth it hate good as good, but as a seeming evil, because God and grace do seem to be his enemies and to hurt him, by hindering him of the good of carnal pleasure which he now preferreth. 3. Nay, at the same time that he loveth evil as it pleaseth the flesh, he hath naturally as a man some averseness to it, so far as he apprehendeth it to be Evil: And when he hateth God and holiness as evil, for hindering him of his carnal pleasure, he naturally loveth them so far as he apprehendeth them to be good. So that there is some love to God and good, and some hatred to evil in the ungodly: For while Man is Man, he will have Naturally an Inclination to good as good, and against evil as evil. 4. But the apprehension of sensitive good is the strongest in him, and the apprehension of spiritual good is weakest; and therefore the will receiving a greater impress from the Carnal Appetite and Mind, than from the weak apprehensions of spiritual good, is more inclined to that which indeed is worst; and so things carnal have got the dominion or chief commanding interest in the soul. 5. Note also, that sin receiveth its formality or moral evil first in the will, and not in the Intellect or sensitive appetite: (For it is not sin, till it be positively or privatively, immediately or mediately voluntary.) But the first motions to sin are not in the will, but in the sensitive appetite; Though there as first it be not formally sin. 6. Note, that neither Intellect, Object, Appetite, or Sense, necessitate naturally the will to sin, but it remaineth the first in the sin and guilt.

§. 7. It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entered into the innocent soul: And it is of great importance, because an error here is of dangerous consequence. Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adams first sin (and so of all sin) as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborne it according to their doctrine, as to have conquered God. 1. Those that assert the Dominican immediate Physical pre-determining pre-motion: (which no created power can resist.) 2. And those that say the Will acts as Necessitated by the Intellect in all its Acts (and so is necessitated in all its Omissions); and that the Intellect is necessitated by Objects (as, no doubt, it is, unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis); and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God. But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin; and therefore this certainty over-ruleth the case against these Tenets.