A30247:1496
A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is
A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is, by pregnant texts of Scripture vindicated from false glosses / by Anthony Burgess.
London : s.n., 1658
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. IV.
Of the Pollution of the VVill of man by Original Sin.
Of the Pollution of the VVill of man by Original Sinne.
SECT. I.
JOHN 1. 13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The original pollution of the Understanding, Conscience and Memory, hath been largely and fully discovered; We now proceed to the other part or power of the rational soul, which is the will; That is in the soul like the primum mobile in the Heavens, that doth carry all the inferior orbs away in its own motion, or like the fire among the elements that doth assimilate every thing else to it self. This is the whole of a man; A man is not what he knoweth, or what he remembereth, but what he willeth; The understanding is but as a Counsellor; The will is as the Queen sitting upon its Throne, exercising its dominion over the other parts of the soul; The will is the proper subject and seat of all our sin, and if there could be a Summum malum, as there is a Summum bonum, this would be in the will. Seeing therefore that our will is the master power of the soul, and is to that, what the heart is to the body, the principle of all motion and action, the more we find this will, thoroughly infected with sin, the greater will our misery appear: Neither mayest thou fear that the doctrinal discovery of that poisoned fountain in thee, and the representation of thy foulness and loath somness upon thee may discourage thee, but hereby thou wilt be brought to loath thy self, and admire the riches of grace in Christ, which shall pardon and glorify such a noisome wretch as thou art by nature. Indeed Lorinus (Comment. in 17. chap. Act.) relateth of Ptolemy King of Egypt, that he banished one Hegesius a Philosopher and eloquent Orator, because he did so pathetically and sensibly Declaim upon the miseries of mans life, that many were thereby cast into such grief, that they made away themselves; but our end in discovering of this universal leprosy of sin upon us by nature, is to bring us into an holy despair of our selves, a renouncing of our righteousness, that so Christ may be all in all.