Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

Fourthly, Cast your eye upon these terrible convulsions the world is thrown into by the lust of men: Lions make not a prey of lions, nor wolves of wolves: but men are turned wolves to one another, biting and devouring one another. Upon how slight occasions will men sheath their swords in one another's bowels! The world is a wilderness, where the clearest fire men can carry about with them, will not fright away the wild beasts that inhabit it, (and that because they are men, and not brutes) but one way or other they will be wounded. Since Cain shed the blood of Abel, the earth has been turned into a slaughter-house; and the chase has been continued since Nimrod began his hunting; on the earth, as in the sea, the greater still devouring the lesser. When we see the world in such a ferment, every one stabbing another with words or swords, we may conclude there is an evil spirit among them. These violent heats among Adam's sons, speak the whole body to be distempered, the whole head to be sick, and the whole heart faint. They surely proceed from an inward cause, James vi. 1. Lusts that war in our members.

Fourthly, Cast your eye upon these terrible convulsions the world is thrown into by the lust of men: Lions make not a prey of lions, nor wolves of wolves: but men are turned wolves to one another, biting and devouring one another. Upon how slight occasions will men sheath their swords in one another's bowels! The world is a wilderness, where the clearest fire men can carry about with them, will not fright away the wild beasts that inhabit it, (and that because they are men, and not brutes) but one way or other they will be wounded. Since Cain shed the blood of Abel, the earth has been turned into a slaughter-house; and the chace has been continued since Nimrod began his hunting; on the earth, as in the sea, the greater still devouring the lesser. When we see the world in such a ferment, every one stabbing another with words or swords, we may conclude there is an evil spirit among them. These violent heats among Adam's sons, speak the whole body to be distempered, the whole head to be sick, and the whole heart faint. They surely proceed from an inward cause, James vi. 1. Lusts that war in our members.

Fifthly, Consider the necessity of human laws, fenced with terrors and severities; to which we may apply what the apostle says,