LORD, you made man upright, but they have sought out many (continued)
How is the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed!
Jeremiah 2:21. Deuteronomy 32:32. Lamentations 4:1.
Behold we were shaped in iniquity, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
Not one. We are by nature children of wrath, because children of disobedience, even as others. Psalm 51:5. Job 14:4. Ephesians 2:3, 2.
All flesh hath corrupted their way, we are all gone aside, we are all together become filthy, there is none that doth good, no, no not one. Genesis 6:12. Psalm 14:3.
4. WE MUST LAMENT OUR PRESENT CORRUPT DISPOSITIONS TO THAT WHICH IS EVIL, AND OUR INDISPOSEDNESS TO AND IMPOTENCY, IN THAT WHICH IS GOOD. WE MUST LOOK INTO OUR OWN
HEARTS AND CONFESS WITH HOLY BLUSHING:
4.1. The blindness of our understandings, and their unaptness to admit the rays of the divine light.
By nature, our understandings are darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us, because of the blindness of our hearts. Ephesians 4:18.
The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness, to the natural man, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14.
We are wise to do evil, but to do good we have no knowledge. We know not, neither do we understand, we walk on in darkness.
Jeremiah 4:22. Psalm 82:5.
God speak once, yea twice, but we perceive it not; but hearing we hear, and do not understand, and we see men as trees walking. Job
33:14. Matthew 13:14. Mark 8:24.
4.2. The stubbornness of our wills, and their unaptness to submit to the rules of the divine law.
We have within us a carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and is not in subjection to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
You have written to us the great things of your law, but they have been accounted by us as a strange thing, and our corrupt hearts have been sometimes ready to say, what is the Almighty that we should serve him? And that we would certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth. For we have walked in the way of our own heart, and in the sight of our eyes, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Hosea 8:12. Job 21:15. Jeremiah 44:17.
Ecclesiastes 11:9. Ephesians 2:3.
Our neck hath been an iron sinew, and we have made our heart as an adamant; we have refused to hearken, have pulled away the shoulder, and stopped our ears, like the deaf adder, that will not hearken to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.
Isaiah 48:4. Zechariah 7:12, 11. Psalm 58-4, 5.
How have we hated instruction, and our heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of our teachers, nor inclined our ear to them that instructed us? Proverbs 5:12, 13.
4.3. The vanity of our thoughts, their neglect ofthose things which they ought to be conversant with anddwelling upon those things that are unworthy of them andtend to corrupt our minds.
Every imagination of the thought of our heart is evil, only evil, and that continually, and it has been so from our youth. Genesis 6:5.
O how long have those vain thoughts lodged within us! those thoughts offoolishness which are sin. From within out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, which devise mischief upon the bed, and carry the heart with the fool's eyes into the ends of the earth.
Jeremiah 4:14. Proverbs 24:9. Matthew 15:19. Micah 2:1. Proverbs 17:24.
But God is not in all our thoughts, it is well if he be in any: Of the Rock that begat us we have been unmindful and have forgotten the God that formed us: We have forgotten him days without number, and our hearts have walked after vanity, and become vain. Their inward thought having been that our houses should continue forever; this our way is our folly. Psalm 10:4. Deuteronomy 32:18. Jeremiah
2:32, 5. Psalm 49:11, 13.
4.4. The carnality of our affections, their beingplaced upon wrong objects andcarried beyond due bounds.
We have set those affections on things beneath, which should have been set on things above, where our treasure is, and where Christ sits on the right hand of God, the things which we should seek.
Colossians 3:2, 1. Matthew 6-21.
We have followed after lying vanities and forsaken our own mercies; have forsaken the fountain of living waters, for cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jonah 2:8. Jeremiah 2:13.
We have panted after the dust of the earth and have been full of care what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, the things after which the Gentiles seek, but have neglected the kingdom of God and the righteousness thereof.
Amos 2:7. Matthew 6:31, 32, 33.
We have lifted up our souls unto vanity, and set our eyes upon that which is not, have looked at the things that are seen which are temporal, but the things that are not seen that are eternal, have been forgotten and postponed. Psalm 24:4. Proverbs 23:5. 2
4.5. The corruption of the whole man: irregular appetites towards those things that arepleasing to sense, and inordinatepassions against those things that are displeasing, and an alienation of the mindfrom theprinciples, power andpleasures of the spiritual and divine life.
We are born of the flesh, and we are flesh: Dust we are: We have borne the image of the earthly; and in us, that is, in our flesh, there dwells no good thing: For if to will is present to us, yet how to