N34404:180
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses
Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses. / By Mr. Thomas Boston, late Minister of the Gospel at Etterick.
United States : s.n. Printed for the booksellers., M,DCC,LXXXVII. 1787
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Evidence 1. Is not the way of evil the first way the children of men do go! Do not their inclinations plainly appear on the wrong side, while yet they have no cunning to hide them? In the first opening of our eyes in the world, we look a-squint, hell-ward, not heaven-ward. As soon as it appears we are reasonable creatures, it appears we are sinful creatures, Psal. lviii. 3. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born. Prov. xxii. 15. Foolishness is b•d in the heart of a child: but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. Folly is bound in the heart, it is woven into our very nature. The knot will not loose, they must be broken asunder by strokes. Words will not do it, the rod must be taken to drive it away: and if it be not driven far away, the heart and it will meet and knit again. Not that the rod of itself will do this: the sad experience of many parents testifies the contrary: and Solomon himself tells you, Prov. xxvii. 22. Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar, among wheat, with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him. It is so bound in his heart. But the rod is an ordinance of God, appointed for that end; which, like the word, is made effectual, by the Spirit's accompanying his own ordinance. And this, by the way, shows that parents, in administering correction to their children, have need, first of all to correct their own irregular passions and look upon it as a matter of awful solemnity, setting about it with much dependence on the Lord, and following it with prayer for the blessing, they would have it effectual.
Evidence 1. Is not the way of evil the first way the children of men do go! Do not their inclinations plainly appear on the wrong side, while yet they have no cunning to hide them? In the first opening of our eyes in the world, we look a-squint, hell-ward, not heaven-ward. As soon as it appears we are reasonable creatures, it appears we are sinful creatures, Psal. lviii. 3. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born. Prov. xxii. 15