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

SECT. VII.

4. When we say, That original sin is habitual lust, we must not take lust strictly, but most largely, as it comprehends any part of the soul in its motions to their respective objects. Our English word lust is by custom almost limited to unclean desires, as if those corporal burnings were only lust: Even as the Latin word libido, though originally signifying quicquid libet, any thing that pleased a man is for the most part also restrained to fleshly lusting, but we told you that the word lust [Greek or Hebrew], is in the Scripture used only largely in a good sense, in a bad sense, and a neutral indifferent one. Therefore in the affections there is this lust, in the will there is this lust, yea in the understanding and fancy, which are apprehensive faculties only, there is this lust: For although Aquinas saith, That we cannot properly in the understanding say, there is motus ad objectum, because a passive faculty, yet in a large sense, all faculties of the soul have their inclination and motion to their objects, and so this original lust diffuseth it self through them all, and therefore they also limit this concupiscence too much, which confiae it only to the sensitive part, the inferior region of the soul; For the more acute Papists do ingeniously confess, That Heresies, Idolatries are sins of the mind, and yet flow from this concupiscence, so that this habitual lust is diffused and extended, as far as the soul hath any power or motion: Oh but how few are there that do regard lust any further than bodily or sensible? The spiritual, the intellectual lustings of the soul are not apprehended as an heavy load or burden: So that original sin hath its upper-springs, and its nether-springs, the corporal channel, and the spiritual, in which its filth runneth down; In the gross profane man, there is original sin acting carnally and bodily; in the heretic, in the proud Scholar, there is original sin acting mentally and intellectually: So that as man doth consist of two parts, one visible, and the other ⟨p. 160⟩invisible, so also doth original sin, as it were, consist of two ingredients, the bodily part, and the soul part, and from the soul doth this poison fall to all the inferior parts;