A practical exposition of the Lord's-Prayer

1. If there were no Devil to tempt us, yet the Heart of Man is fruitful enough of all that is evil. Mat. 15. 19. Out of the Heart proceed evil Thoughts, Murders, Adulteries, Fornications, Thefts, false Witnesses, Blasphemies. There's a black Catalogue, and all comes out of the Heart of Man. And among the rest, observe, there's Murder which strikes at the Life of Man; and Blasphemy, which strikes at the Honour and Being of God. Though the Devil should stand by, and say nothing to us, we have enough within us to put us upon all kind of evil. Jerem. 17. 9. The Heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? As to Actual Sins, there is a difference; but as to Original Sin, it is the same in all. All the Sins that ever have been, or ⟨p. 427⟩shall be committed in the World, they are virtually in our Natures, they are but Original Sin acted and drawn out this way, and that way, as all numbers are but one multiplied: Cain's Murder, Judas's Treason, Julian's Apostasy and Enmity to Christ, the Seed and Root of all is in our Nature; and if we were but left to our selves, and had the same Temptations and Occasions, we should be as bad as others; such as we would not imagine that ever we should commit, is in our heart; 2 King. 8. 13. Is thy Servant a Dog, that he should do this great thing? when he had been told of those horrid Cruelties he should act upon the Women and Children of Israel. No Man knows the depth of his own Wickedness, if loosened of his Chain, and the Restraints are taken off. At first Nature abhors them in the conceit of them; but when God permits us to lie under the Temptation, and fair Occasion, Man is not to be trusted. We see, in this respect, what need there is to pray that God would not leave us under the Power of Temptation, because the Heart of Man is prone, naturally inclinable to all evil. There are new Actual Sins; but there is no new Original Sin, that is but one and the same in all Persons, and at all Times; the Root of all the Mischief which hath been in the World, is within us.

1. If there were no Devil to tempt us, yet the Heart of Man is fruitful enough of all that is evil.