The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance

Now from these considerations,¹ some farther inferences may be made; First, That in every regenerate person, there are in a spiritual sense, two Principles of all his actings: Two Wills; There is the Will of the Flesh, and there is the Will of the Spirit; a Regenerate man is spiritually, and in Scripture expression two men, a new man, and an old: an inward man and a body of Death; and hath two Wills, having two Natures, not as Natural faculties, but as Moral principles of operation; and this keeps all his actions as Moral, from being perfect, absolute, or complete in any kind. He doth good with his whole heart upon the account of sincerity, but he doth not good with his whole heart upon the account of perfection; and when he doth evil, there is still a non-submitting, an unconsenting principle; this the Apostle complains of, and declares, Rom. 7. 19. 20. The good that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that do I; now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me; I find then a Law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me; For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man: There is an [I] and an [I] at opposition, a will and not willing; a doing and not doing; a delighting and not delighting, all in the same person; so that there is this difference at the entrance, between what sin soever of Regenerate persons, and others, though the principle of sinning be the same for the kind and nature of it, in them and others; all sin, every mans sins, be who he will be, believer or unbeliever, being tempted by his own Lust: yet that Lust possesseth the whole soul, and takes in the virtual consent of the whole man, notwithstanding the control and checks of conscience, the light of the judgement, in him that is unregenerate; but in every Regenerate person, there is an unconsenting principle, which is as truly the man himself, that doth not concur in sin, that doth expressly dissent from it, as the other is, from whence it flows.

Now from these considerations,¹ some farther inferences may be made; First, That in every regenerate person, there are in a spirituall sence, two Principles of all his actings: Two Wills; There is the Will of the Flesh, and there is the Will of the Spirit; a Regenerate man is spiritually, and in Scripture expression two men, a new man, and an old: an inward man and a body of Death; and hath two Wills, having two Natures, not as Naturall faculties, but as Morall principles of operation; and this keepes all his actions as Morall, from being perfect, absolute, or compleate in any kind. He doth good with his whole heart upon the account of sincerity, but he doth not good with his whole heart upon the account of perfection; and when he doth evill, there is still a non-submitting, an unconsenting principle; this the Apostle complains of, and declares,