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

The Doctrine of the Corruption of Nature applied.

USE I. For Information. Is man's nature wholly corrupted? Then,

1. No wonder the grave open it's devouring mouth for us, as soon as the womb hath cast us forth; and that the cradle be turned into a coffin, to receive the corrupt lump: for we are all, in a spiritual sense, dead born; yea, and filthy, (Psal. xiv. 3.) noisome, rank, and stinking as a corrupt thing, as the word imports. Let us not complain of the miseries we are exposed to, at our entrance, nor of the continuance of them, while we are in the world. Here is the venom that has poisoned all the springs of earthly enjoyments we have to drink of. It is the corruption of man's nature, that brings forth all the miseries of human life in churches, states, families: in men's souls and bodies.

2. Behold here, as in a glass, the spring of all the wickedness, profanity, and formality in the world; the source of all the disorders in thy own heart and life. Every thing acts like itself, agreeable to its own nature; and so corrupt man acts corruptly. You need not wonder at the sinfulness of your own heart and life, nor at the sinfulness and perverseness of others: if a man be crooked, he cannot but halt; and if the clock be set wrong, how can it point the hour right.