An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

Every man,¹ who is acquainted with himself, may learn his own impotency to good, from the inward pressure of corruption which is in him: However the Apostle in that 2. to the Ephesians doth notably decipher it out to us; there he speaks not so much of a spiritual Death in actual customary sins, as of such a Death in Original corruption; for he opposes it to quickening Grace which by divine Principles infused heals the same; and a little after tells us, that we are by nature the children of wrath. Hoc uno verbo, quasi fulmine, totus homo, quantus quantus est, prosternitur, saith Beza on the place: this shows him dead indeed. It's true the Pelagians,² as St. Austin tells us, would have omitted the word, Nature, and in stead thereof have read, Prorsùs, altogether children of wrath, but the ⟨p. 125⟩Church would not suffer it. This spiritual Death in Sin is a total one, it runs over all the Soul; there are, saith the Apostle lusts or desires of the Flesh, the sensitive Faculties, and of the Mind, the rational Powers; nothing is left in Man but what is dead in sin, not a drop or a spark of Spiritual Life or true Grace: For then a man should be naturally regenerate and under a Promise of that Evangelical Mercy, which is indulged to the least measure of Grace, though it be but as a smoking flax or bruised reed. Man is wholly void of spiritual Life by Nature, and hence it evidently appears, that he is not able to reach so high as any spiritual Act, such as Conversion is, unless he be elevated above his own Line by supernatural Grace: This is fully the Doctrine of our Church, who tells us, Man of his own nature is fleshly, ³carnal, corrupt, naught, sinful, disobedient, without any spark of goodness in him: And in another place, The condition of Man, ⁴after the Fall of Adam, is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to Faith and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good Works pleasant and acceptable to God, without ⟨p. 126⟩