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

First, The Apostle speaks not this, as a man merely convinced, but yet carried away with strong corruptions; This is not to patrocinate those who live in sins against their conscience, but have some check and bitter reluctancy sometimes, so that they can say sometimes, I do the things I allow not, yea I hate; When the Apostle, Rom. Chap. 1. and Chap. 2. speaketh of some Heathens, that had their consciences accusing of them, and that they detained the truth in unrighteousness, he supposeth, That those who yet never tasted of the power of the Gospel, may have such truth and light in their consciences, that it shall suggest what is to be done, yet love to their lusts will hurry them the contrary way, but as in time is to be showed, the combat between reason, and the sensitive appetite, is a far different thing from the conflict between the flesh and the spirit in the godly.

First, The Apostle speaks not this, as a man meerly convinced, but yet carried away with strong corruptions; This is not to patrocinate those who live in sinnes against their conscience, but have some check and bitter reluctancy sometimes, so that they can say sometimes, I do the things I allow not, yea I hate; When the Apostle, Rom. Chap. 1. and Chap. 2. speaketh of some Heathens, that had their consciences accusing of them, and that they detained the truth in unrighteousnesse, he supposeth, That those who yet never tasted of the power of the Gospel, may have such truth and light in their consciences, that it shall suggest what is to be done, yet love to their lusts will hurry them the contrary way, but as in time is to be shewed, the combate between reason, and the sensitive appetite, is a farre different thing from the conflict between the flesh and the spirit in the godly.

Neither secondly must you understand Paul speaking of gross and foul sins, as if when he said, The evil he would not, that he doth, were to be understood of scandalous and wicked enormities; No, but it is to be interpreted of those motions ⟨p. 88⟩to sin, and constant infirmities, which cleave to the most holy. Let not therefore any profane person, that customarily walloweth in his impieties, excuse himself with this, It is true, I am such a beast, I do such soul things sometimes, but I may say with Paul, The things that I allow not, yea that I hate, those I do. This is to turn honey into poison; This is to make the Scripture an incentive to thy impiety; No, Paul, and such as thou art, differ as much as the Sun and a dunghill; Paul did not mean, the drunkenness, the uncleanness that he would not do, that he did, but he meaneth such corruptions and infirmities that immediately flow from the polluted nature within us, from which we are never throughly cleansed in this life.