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

JAM. 1. 14. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.

The next Immediate Effect of Original sin, which cometh under consideration, is, The Causality that it hath in respect of all other sins. This is the dunghill in which the whole serpentine brood of all actual sins is conceived, and brought forth: Insomuch that when you see all the abominable impieties that fill the whole world with irreligion to God and injustice to man: If you ask, whence ariseth this monster? How cometh all this wickedness to be committed? The Answer is easy: from that original concupiscence, that hot Aetna which is in a man, that never ceaseth from sending forth such continual flames of iniquity. Now this truth will excellently be discovered from the Text in hand; for it is the Apostles scope in this and the adjacent verses, to take off all men from that wicked way, they are so prone unto (viz.) to lay the blame of their iniquities, and to ascribe the cause of them to any, yea to God, rather than to themselves; They will rather make God then themselves the Author of all that evil they do commit. We have this from Adam, who at the beginning endeavoured to clear himself, and to charge his sin upon God, The woman thou gavest me. And happily some even in the primitive times, by mis-understanding some places of Scripture, wherein God is said to give men up to their lusts to harden and blind men in their sins, ⟨p. 456⟩might occasion such a detestable Position, And although the Papists do ordinarily charge this damnable Doctrine upon the Calvinists, yet there needeth no more to justify Calvin in this particular, then what he doth most excellently and solidly deliver upon this very Text. The truth is, our learned men show expressions from the Papists; yea, from Bellarmine himself, more harsh and incommodious, then I believe can be found in any Protestant Writer. But this by the way.

THe next Immediate Effect of Original sinne, which cometh under consideration, is, The Causality that it hath in respect of all other sins. This is the dunghill in which the whole serpentine brood of all actual sinnes is conveived, and brought forth: Insomuch that when you see all the abominable impieties that fill the whole world with irreligion to God and injustice to man: If you ask, whence ariseth this monster? How cometh all this wickedness to be committed? The Answer is easie: from that original concupiscence, that hot Aetna which is in a man, that never ceaseth from sending forth such continual flames of iniquity. Now this truth will excellently be discovered from the Text in hand; for it is the Apostles scope in this and the adjacent verses, to take off all men from that wicked way, they are so prone unto (viz.) to lay the blame of their iniquities, and to ascribe the cause of them to any, yea to God, rather than to themselves; They will rather make God then themselves the Author of all that evil they do commit. We have this from Adam, who at the beginning endeavoured to clear himself, and to charge his sinne upon God, The woman thou gavest me. And happily some even in the primitive times, by mis-understanding some places of Scripture, wherein God is said to give men up to their lusts to harden and blind men in their sinnes,