An exposition with practical observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…An exposition with practicall observations continued upon the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters of…

From which sense Job seems thus to move the Lord, Suppose I have sinned (he had said, vers. 7. Thou knowest I am not wicked, but suppose I have sinned) and have had my failings, yet, Lord, Remember thou hast made me as the clay, I am not a pure spirit, as Angels are, I have a body of earth about me, which clogs and hinders me in every duty, which many ways endangers me unto every sin. God himself takes up this as an argument to spare sinful man (Psal. 78.39.) when the people of Israel rebelled against him, He many a time turned his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. What staid him? The next words give a reason; for he remembered that they were but flesh; that is, weak and very subject unto sin. This argument prevails again (Psal. 103.14.) Like as a father spareth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him; Why? For he knoweth their frame, he remembereth that they are dust. As if the very matter out of which man was first made, though without sin, were some disadvantage to him in the resisting of sin. It was a disadvantage before man had any sin in him, how much more is it now, when most men have nothing at all in them, but sin, and the best have very much. That which is born of the flesh (saith Christ, Joh. 3.6.) is flesh. His meaning is, corrupt nature can produce none but corrupt acts. It is a truth also, that our pure nature, because it was constituted (as of other parts, so) ⟨p. 506⟩of flesh (the soul like a sparkling diamond, being set in clay) was thereby rendered more prone to fleshly or sinful acts. Natural flesh (in its best state) is more apt to bring forth spiritual flesh (namely sin) then a spirit is. ¹And that's a reason among others, which some give, why God was so irreconcilably angry with the Angels which fell, why he did never so much as mention them in a way of mercy, or discovered a thought of them for good since their fall (I say) one reason given is this, Because God could not remember that Angels were made as the clay, or formed out of the dust; They were created spirits, pure spirits, they had no clogs of flesh and blood about them, no fogs, no mists vapouring up from a sensitive part to cloud their intellectual. They had the more power to continue pure, because they were free from any earthly and elementary mixtures. Their sin was a compound of more evils, because their nature was so simple.