Lastly, The unrenewed will is wholly perverse in reference to man's chief and highest end. The natural man's chief end is not his God, but his self. Man is a mere relative, dependent, borrowed being: he has no being nor goodness originally from himself; but all he hath is from God, as the first cause and spring of all perfection, natural or moral: dependence is woven into his very nature; so that if God should totally withdraw from him, he would dwindle into a mere nothing. Seeing then whatever man is, he is of him: surely in whatever he is, he should be to him; as the waters which come from the sea, do of course, return thither again. And thus man was created, directly looking to God, as his chief end: but falling into sin, he fell off from God, and turned into himself; and like a traitor usurping the throne, he gathers in the rents of the crown to himself: Now, this infers a total apostasy, and universal corruption in man; for where the chief and last end is changed, there can be no goodness there. This is the case of all men in their natural state, Psal. xiv. 2, 3. The Lord looked down—to see if there were any that did—seek God. They are all gone aside: to wit, from God; they seek not God, but themselves. And tho' many fair shreds of morality are to be found amongst them, yet there is none that doth good, no not one; for tho' some of them run well, they are still off the way; they never aim at the right mark. They are lovers of their ownselves, (2 Tim. iii. 2.) more than God, verse 4. Wherefore, Jesus Christ having come into the world, to bring men back to God again, came to bring them out of themselves in the first place, Matth. xvi. 25. The godly groan under the remains of this woeful disposition of the heart: they acknowledge it, and set themselves against it, in its subtle and dangerous insinuations. The unregenerate, tho' most insensible of it, are under the power thereof; and whithersoever they turn themselves, they cannot move without the circle of self: they seek themselves, they act for themselves; their natural, civil and religious actions, from whatever spring they come, do all run into, and meet in, the dead sea of self.
Lastly, The unrenewed will is wholly perverse in reference to man's chief and highest end. The natural man's chief end is not his God, but his self. Man is a mere relative, dependent, borrowed being: he has no being nor goodness originally from himself; but all he hath is from God, as the first cause and spring of all perfection, natural or moral: dependence is woven into his very nature; so that if God should totally withdraw from him, he would dwindle into a mere nothing. Seeing then whatever man is, he is of him: surely in whatever he is, he should be to him; as the waters which come from the sea, do of course, return thither again. And thus man was created, directly looking to God, as his chi•f end: but falling into sin, he fell off from God, and turned into himself; and like a traitor usurping the throne, he gathers in the rents of the crown to himself: Now, this infers a total apostasy, and universal corruption in man; for where the chief and last end is changed, there can be no goodness there. This is the case of all men in their natural state, Psal. xiv. 2, 3. The Lord looked down—to see if there were any that did—seek God. They are all gone aside: to wit, from God; they seek not God, but themselves. And tho' many fair shreds of morality are to be found amongst them, yet there is none that doth good, no not one; for tho' some of them run well, they are still off the way; they never aim at the right mark. They are lovers of their ownselves, (2 Tim. iii. 2.) more than God, verse 4. Wherefore, Jesus Christ having come into the world, to bring men back to God again, came to bring them out of themselves in the first place, Matth. xvi. 25. The godly groan under the remains of this woful disposition of the heart: they acknowledge it, and set themselves against it, in its subtile and dangerous insinuations. The unregenerate, tho' most insensible of it, are under the power thereof; and whithersoever they turn themselves, they cannot move without the circle of self: they seek themselves, they act for themselves; their natural, civil and religious actions, from whatever spring they come, do all run into, and meet in, the dead sea of self.
