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

SECT. IV.

Thirdly, This sin is Natural, because it doth always and constantly put it self forth: For this is one way of discovering the naturality of a thing, viz. if it be always and constantly so. The Poets saying, Naturam expellas, &c. Though you use all art, or violence, to bar out nature, yet that will recur, it will recur again; Though you violently smother, and keep down the flames, yet no sooner have they passage, but they will ascend, because what Nature doth, it's constant and invariable in, and this is too true in respect of this original sin, it doth constantly and certainly work in us, even as often as our soul doth put forth any vital actings at all. Those things that are by accident, they seldom fall out, but what is by nature is frequent, you may know the Sun will rise again, though it be night, till God put a period to the course of nature: And thus it is concerning man, as soon as ever he is born, you may conclude this child, as soon as ever he can think, he can understand, or will, as soon as he can love, or be angry, he will do them all sinfully; Even as when ye see a young Serpent, you may certainly conclude, this will poison as soon as ever it can sting, and the reason is, because it's a constant pollution of the soul, and therefore it is in every thing the unregenerate man doth, Gen. 6. 5. The imagination of the thoughts of a mans heart is only evil, and that continually; it's continually, because naturally so: May not this respect also make thee with Jeremiah wish, That thy head were a fountain of tears to weep day and night? For can any thing be more dreadful than to have this fountain of poison within, running out all the day long; To have this flux of blood, that no act or humane skill can stop? Aristotle saith, ⟨p. 17⟩That every time a man breaths, there comes out some kind of fire with it. Certainly, every time thou thinkest and movest thy soul any way, there comes out hell fire with those motions, by this means the sea-shore is not fuller of sand, or the air of atoms, than thou art of constant sinful emanations from thy soul.