Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

First, Faith gives a man a just sense of Original Sin; Which, if the World be searched with Candles, can be found no-where but among the Believers: To search for it in the Pagan World, is to no purpose; indeed Plato saith, That the Soul hath broken her wings, and creeps basely upon these lower things. The Pythagoreans taught, That Souls having offended God, were turned into Bodies as into so many Prisons, there to look out of the grates of Sense. Trismegistus asserts, That man fell from Heavenly Contemplations into the sphere of Elements, and so became a bondslave to his Body. Hierocles ⟨p. 253⟩confesses, That man is carried downward, and fallen from the happy Region, of his own motion inclined to evil, and averse from good. In such passages as these there seem to be some glimmerings and dark resemblances of Original Sin: But alas, poor Souls, they were far from a just sense thereof; they did not understand the depth and venom of this wound, but thought there was Medicamentum in latere, enough in the [Greek or Hebrew], the self-power of the Soul, which Justin Martyr at his Conversion brought out of Plato's School into Christianity, to heal it self. Aristotle makes Mans Happiness to be the Operation of the Rational Soul according to Virtue; and that Virtue he ranks among the [Greek or Hebrew], the things in our own power. Seneca tells us, 'Tis a foolish thing to wish for a good Soul, which without lifting thy hands to Heaven, thou mayest have of thy self; whatsoever may make thee good, tecum est, intus est, it is with thee, and in thee. Hierocles saith, The Will is [Greek or Hebrew], mistress of it self, and can make it self better or worse: Or, as he speaks in another place, it can make the man a beast or a God. In a word, all the remedy they prescribe is but that which Epictetus saith, made Socrates to be so virtuous as he was, Obedience to Reason. They never so much as dreamed of any such thing as Regeneration, but thought they could do their own work themselves; neither did they understand the breadth and length of this natural wound, they thought it was only in the lower faculties of ⟨p. 254⟩the Soul, Reason and Will being free and pure; hence they generally cry out against the Body as a Prison, and the Senses as fetters and manacles to the Immortal Spirit.

First, Faith gives a man a just sense of Original Sin; Which, if the World be searched with Candles, can be found no-where but among the Believers: To search for it in the Pagan World, is to no purpose; indeed Plato saith, That the Soul hath broken her wings, and creeps basely upon these lower things. The Pythagoreans taught, That Souls having offended God, were turned into Bodies as into so many Prisons, there to look out of the grates of Sense. Trismegistus asserts, That man fell from Heavenly Contemplations into the sphear of Elements, and so became a bondslave to his Body. Hierocles