Speculum theologiæ in Christo, or, A view of some divine truths which are either…

Those who see the horrible ataxy and pravity in our nature, see also the necessity and excellency of Grace in the repairing of it. On the other hand the Pelagians and Socinians, who deny Original sin, are ⟨p. 204⟩enemies to Grace; it is in the power and will of man; vel nitere flore virtutum, vel sentibus horrere vitiorum; ¹to make himself beautiful with the flowers of virtue, or horrid with the brambles of vice. So Pelagius. In nostra potestate situm est, ut Deo obtemperemus, ²it is in our power to obey God. So the Racovian Catechist. And what room is there for Grace,³ when the power and free-will of man may do the work? The Pelagians affirmed, that before the Law men were saved by Nature, afterwards by the Law,⁴ afterwards by Christ. The Socinians say, that under the Old Testament good men were saved without any respect to Christ or faith in him, and what need then was there of Christ, or his satisfactory sufferings for us? the great work might be done without him. Hence it appears that to deny Original sin is to cast off Christ and Grace. The Jewish Rabbins, who made the evil figment in mans heart to be but a light matter, small as a thread, weak as a woman, ruleable by the good figment of our own reason, were very ignorant of that great point of Regeneration. Hence Nicodemus a Master in Israel was startled and stood at a maze at our Saviours Doctrine about it, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be born? saith he, Joh. 3.4. Such carnal and gross expostulations could never have dropped from him if he had had a true sense of Original sin, but for want of that Regeneration was a strange and unintelligible mystery to him. The Pagan Philosophers had some glimmerings of Original sin; hence they complained that the soul had lost her wings, and crept upon these lower things; that it was in the body as a prison, and there looked out at the grates of ⟨p. 205⟩