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

By uncleanness is meant sin, as appeareth by comparing this with Chap. 15. 14. Chap. 25. 4. where you have this expression used, and it is opposed to righteousness, and to be justified before God. It is therefore an uncleanness not natural or bodily (as the Pelagians of old would have wrested it) but spiritually opposite to Righteousness, and such as depriveth a man of Justification: Yea, the word unclean, is applied to signify heinous pollution: Hence the Devils are so often called unclean spirits, so that the Devils and mankind are in this alike.

By uncleanness is meant sinne, as appeareth by comparing this with Chap. 15. 14. Chap. 25. 4. where you have this expression used, and it is opposed to righteousness, and to be justified before God. It is therefore an uncleanness not natural or bodily (as the Pelagians of old would have wrested it) but spiritually opposite to Righteousness, and such as depriveth a man of Justification: Yea, the word unclean, is applied to signifie hainous pollution: Hence the Devils are so often called unclean spirits, so that the Devils and mankind are in this alike.

The Hebrew Preposition Min, is by some understood of mutation, by others of origination, but one is necessarily connected with the other; of mutation in this sense, Who shall give (for so it is in the Hebrew) that is, Who can make pure, him that is impure? Who can change that which is naturally filthy? No man by his free-will, or power can; or else it is for the originals, and that doth seem the most genuine, for Job is speaking what belongs to every man naturally, and thus the sense is, From that which is unclean, none can bring that which is clean: Even as our Saviour saith in another case, None can gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles, Mat 6. 16. or as the Apostle James, A sweet fountain cannot send forth bitter streams, so neither can a bitter fountain sweet streams, Jam. 3. Now when it is said, Of an unclean thing cannot come a clean: Hereby Adam in his first Creation is excluded, for he was made holy, and came not out of that which was unclean; and also Christ is hereby excluded, for although he is said to be born of a woman, yet that was in a miraculous and extraordinary manner: As for the Dispute about the Virgin Mary, whose freedom from original sin, some have with great vehemency maintained, that seemeth not any ways probable, as is to be showed. It is also good to observe the emphatical expression in the word, Out of unclean thing, which implieth, That man by nature is all over sinful, in mind, will, affections; and the whole man, it is the unclean thing; even as Christ was called the [Greek or Hebrew], the holy thing, because he was in every particular altogether holy.