A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

SECT. IV.

IN the first place consider, That concupiscence or lust may be taken two ways, as was formerly hinted, habitually and radically, or actually, the mother and the daughter, the root and the fruit. Now original sin is lust, not actually, but radically; It is that from which all actual lusts and desires have their immediate rise; and in this sense it is commonly called the flesh, and lusts are the sinful issue of it. Thus Gal. 5. 16. You shall not fulfil [Greek or Hebrew], The lust of the flesh. And again, They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the lusts thereof. So Ephes. 2. 3. here flesh and its lusts, is original sin with the immediate motions and outgoings thereof. At other times, original sin is called sin in the general, to declare the emphatical sinfulness of it, and then there are ascribed several lusts likewise to it, Rom. 6. 12. Sin must not reign in us, that we should obey the lust thereof; And Rom. 7. 8. Sin wrought in me, [Greek or Hebrew] all manner of concupiscence. So that you see, there is lust the cause, and lust the effect, lust the root, and lust the branches; the former is original sin, called excellently by the Apostle Jam. 1. 15. [Greek or Hebrew], lust conceiving, implying, it is like the womb, wherein all wickedness is first conceived, and such a womb that like the grave never hath enough, we may call it the Sheol in a man. The Rabbis say well, That concupiscentia doth aedificare inferos; This lust in the several actings of it, is that which maketh hell; Though God never said▪ Increase and multiply to it, yet it filleth earth and hell, with the effects thereof.