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

SECT. II.

What is implied in that Expression, So easily beset us.

First, There is implied our utmost impotency and inability to shake off the power of it. For although the Apostle exhorteth us to lay it aside, yet that must be understood as a duty always in doing, that we are never able to compleatfully and perfectly; You see, though they are godly to whom he writeth, and they are already in the race, yet it is their work daily to be unburdening of themselves: When therefore it's called, The sin so easily besetting us, hereby is taught us our inability and insufficiency to withstand it; Insomuch that all those Doctrines, which teach Free-will, and a power to do what is good, are justly to be abandoned, John 15. when separated from Christ, we cannot do any thing, and therefore are said to be not asleep, but even dead in sin; so that no Infant new born is more unable to help it self, than we are to promote the good of our own souls. This therefore must be laid as a foundation, without this our humiliation doth not go deep enough; We are to lie bemoaning our selves, as that poor Cripple, which had no power to put himself into the water; And indeed till we be sensible of this impotency, we cannot expect that Christ will help us; When that Cripple said, He had no man, than our Saviour relieved him: Oh then, bewail the strait and misery thou art in If it were a temporal calamity thou wert in, and such as neither thou thy self, or any man in the world could help thee, How greatly would it afflict thee? But now though neither men or Angels can deliver thee out of this spiritual evil, yet thou doest not lay it to heart.