A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

First,¹ Men that frequently commit presumptuous sins they despair of ever subduing them: Let your own hearts make answer, when you have sinned presumptuously against your own Consciences and God's known Law, have you not been ready to conclude, that it were as good for you to abandon your selves over to the swing of such a lust as still to strive thus in vain against it? when ⟨p. 196⟩resolutions against sin prove unsuccessful, they commonly end in desperate resolutions to sin; and yet truly this is no other, than as if a Man should therefore burn his House down about him, because it wants repairing. Is there none among us now, that when we have sinned against light, and against convictions sit down under this despairing temptation, That it is in vain for us ever to make head against such a lust more, it will prevail, and why should we not therefore give up our selves to it? truly, what you have been tempted unto, others have practised, and because the stream of their corruptions is violent, they therefore spread out their arms to it, and suffer themselves to be carried down by it into the gulf of Perdition, resolving to run after the stream and current of their own corruptions, because they find it so strong, despairing of ever subduing them, having been so often overcome by them.

First,¹ Men that frequently commit presumptuous sins they despair of ever subduing them: Let your own hearts make •nswer, when you have sinned presumptuously against your own Consciences and God's known Law, have you not been ready to conclude, that it were as good for you to abandon your selves over to the swing of such a lust as still to strive thus in vain against it? when ⟨p. 196⟩resolutions against sin prove unsuccessful, they commonly end in desperate resolutions to sin; and yet truly this is no other, than as if a Man should therefore burn his House down about him, because it wants repairing. Is there none among us now, that when we have sinned against light, and against convictions sit down under this despairing temptation, That it is in vain for us ever to make head against such a lust more, it will prevail, and why should we not therefore give up our selves to it? truly, what you have been tempted unto, others have practised, and because the stream of their corruptions is violent, they therefore spread out their arms to it, and suffer themselves to be carried down by it into the gulph of Perdition, resolving to run after the stream and current of their own corruptions, because they find it so strong, despairing of ever subduing them, having been so often overcome by them.