-- CHAPTER II: The text explained.—That all men are in a state of sin.
Secondly, To lay open that corruption of nature which hath defiled all our natures. Concerning which, 1, how it flows from the guilt of that first act; 2, that it is truly and properly a sin; then, 3, the great abounding sinfulness thereof; and, 4, the parts thereof in general, as that it is, First, A total privation and emptiness of all that is truly good.
Secondly, Positive inclinations to all evils, which consist in two things:
1. In lusts, and therein of the nature of lusts, their inordinacy, their sinfulness and deceitfulness.
2. In an inbred enmity and opposition unto God, and whatever is holy and good (which I make the third particular branch of original corruption).
This in general.
II. More particularly, I lay open this corruption, as it is in the whole man, and in every faculty.
First, The understanding in blindness, unbelief, practical false reasonings and deceits, &c.
Secondly, The thinking power, the vanity of thoughts.
Thirdly, The defilement in the conscience.
Fourthly, The subjection and bondage of the will and affections unto lusts; then the varieties of these lusts, and of those master-lusts which are in the hearts of several men.
CHAPTER II:
The text explained.—That all men are in a state of sin.
That it is worth our inquiry to know how sin, which thus involves all men in it, came into the world.—That sin had its entrance by Adam's first transgression.—How Adam, being created holy, was capable of sinning Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned: for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was [to] come.—ROM. 5:12–14 You read the story of Adam's fall in the third of Genesis, and here you have how it concerned his whole posterity, and that illustrated by the antitype of Adam, Jesus Christ, and his conveying righteousness unto his, of which Christ God intended Adam to be the type. And in this these two are parallel (as in other respects), that look as the story of Christ's birth, circumcision, obedience, and sufferings, are but barely and nakedly related in the three first evangelists, whereas the intent, efficacy, and benefit from thence accruing to us, was reserved to be set forth by the apostles in their epistles; so it falls out in this. Moses tells the history of Adam's fall, and Paul explains the mystery and consequence thereof.
That sin hath not only entered in upon the world of mankind, but hath universally overflown it for sin,* not a man excepted, is evident in that speech, 'all have sinned,' upon which, he says, 'death followed;' yea, this is that which the apostle hath been proving at large all this while in the former part of the epistle, chaps. 1–3. So then (as concluding he says) we have proved that both Jew and Gentile (which two then shared the world between them) are under
sin, all and every one of them: 'Not one righteous, no, not one,' chap.
3:10. And what need we say any more of it (says he), it being such an irrefragable truth, as every mouth must be stopped, and 'become' (in his own acknowledgment) 'guilty before God,' ver. 19. And it might be proved by induction of all men of all ages, and will be at the latter day, when the story of all the world shall be ripped up. There is no man in whom shineth but the light of nature, that either casts his eye into his own bosom, or looks out upon the sons of men, but must acknowledge as much.
Neither is it any new thing lately befallen the world, but it is the ancient brine it hath lain soaked in, steeped in, these six thousand years almost. 'The whole world lay in wickedness,' in John's time, 1
John 5:19. There was not by nature 'any man righteous, no, not one,' in David's time, when God looked down from heaven: Ps. 14:2, 3,
'The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doth good, no, not one.' Solomon says, Eccles. 7:27–29, 'Behold, this have I found (saith the preacher), counting one by one, to find out the account; which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.' That he viewed men and women one by one: 'And, lo, this I found,' says he, 'that they are all corrupted.' And therefore at verse 20 he says, 'For there is not a just man upon earth, that doth good, and sinneth not.' So also his speech in his prayer, 2 Chron. 6:36, 'If they sin against thee (for there is no man which sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near.' If you think the infant times
(called the golden, innocent age of the world) was free, see what an account the text gives you: ver. 13, 'Sin was in the world from Adam,' the first man, 'to Moses;' take the account shorter, from Adam to the flood. God, whose all-seeing eye runs through the whole earth, views every man, yea, every thought in man, brings in this bill and account,
having viewed them one by one: Gen. 6:5, 12, 'All flesh have corrupted their way upon earth.' Yea, and that so as from the first imagination or act the mind puts forth, to the last, 'all and every figment of the heart is corrupt.'
To give you one evidence, which the text suggests, of this universal guilt and sinfulness of all men, 'death reigned from Adam to Moses'
(or else that which is equivalent to death, a change, as in Enoch). It speaks of a mighty monarch here, death, the most universal and most lasting monarchy that ever was. It reigns, says the text; its sceptre hath subdued, and brought under, all the sons of men: 'Death hath passed upon all men.' Other monarchs never subdued all; some outlaws and nations were not overcome; here not a man but falls under it. Other monarchies cease and determine; this hath lasted in all ages, 'from Adam to Moses;' so the text says, and experience shews, ever since. Take the experience of the present age, not a man alive was seven score or eight score years ago; nay, it comes into your houses, tears your children from your dugs, and kills them before your faces, and you cannot resist it. Millions come into the world, and but salute their friends, and then go weeping out again, so says the text; that children who actually never sinned as Adam did (for that is the meaning of 'not sinning after the similitude of Adam's transgression'), do die as well as others. Now, if you ask death, as they asked Christ, Mat. 21:23, 'By what authority he doth these things'—by what title he reigns over all, even over children—the text shews his commission, and gives this as the ground of it (which we are now a-demonstrating therefore by this effect), that 'all have sinned;' and tells us that 'death entered into the world by sin,' being the 'wages' of it, Rom. 6:23, and the 'child' of it: James 1:15, 'Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' And to the elect it is ordained, through the grace of God, to be his messenger to fetch sin out of the world, as sin was a means to bring it in.
2. Doubtless it is a matter worth the knowing, and our most diligent inquiry, how this deluge of sin and death entered in upon all the
world, what was the first gap, the first breach made, that let it in; this universal flood that covers the face of the earth, which could never yet be drained and cast out; yea, and what should be the spring that should feed it all this while continually in all the thoughts that is from every man's heart, so as it should never be dry?
The greatest scholars of the world have spent their wits often in the search of the original of trifles; whole volumes are written of the original of other things; but Solomon, the wisest man that ever was, thought this very point (namely, how all men came thus universally corrupt) a point of deepest wisdom, use, and profitableness: Eccles.
7:25, 'I applied my heart,' says he, 'to know, and to search, to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things;' and above all else, as appears in the next words, 'to know wickedness and folly, and to find the cause of it,' for that, the former words shew, is his meaning. For he says in the next verses that he took a survey of all the world of mankind—women first, with whom he was too much acquainted, and then men also—and observed their dispositions: ver. 27, 'And this I found,' says he, 'God made man (originally) righteous; but now they are all corrupt, and have found out many inventions.'
And indeed it is our privilege and advantage, who enjoy God's word, to know the original of this universal confusion in man's nature, and of the misery all are exposed unto; which the wisest men among the heathen, who, though they filled the world with complaints about it, as Plato in the second book of his Commonwealth complains that men by their natures are evil, and cannot be brought to good; and Tully,* as he is cited by Augustine in his fourth book against Julian,
'that man is brought forth into the world, in body and soul, exposed to all miseries, prone to evil, and in whom that divine spark of goodness, of wit and morality, is oppressed and extinguished:' yet they could never dive into the bottom of this universal disease and mischief. They found that all men were poisoned; but how it came there they none of them did know or could imagine, or would ever have found out, but run to false counsel, attributing it to destiny and fate, or some evil planet, its having a malign influence into man's
nature, or to an evil angel that attended upon every man. All which, how short is it of the truth!
And together with this secret now made common to us, the knowledge of it is most profitable, yea, and necessary, for us, and is one of the main principles, yea, the first, which is committed to the church to be known and believed; and therefore was the first thing which, next to the creation of the world and man, God manifested in the first book that ever he wrote.
The first query will be, How all men come generally, and universally, and continually thus unrighteous, add thereupon exposed to death?
The text resolves us, saying, that 'by one man sin did enter into the world, and so death passed upon all.' If we had never heard of this same one man before, we would all be inquisitive who he should be.
The fourteenth verse tells us it was Adam. You have all heard of him who in 1 Cor. 15:45 is called 'they first man, Adam,' the first man that ever was in the world; for how could sin by him enter upon all if he had not been before all? Some men otherwise would have been free, if any had been before him. And the rest of the verses, from the 14th to the 20th, do generally inform us that he committed 'a transgression,' ver. 14; 'an offence,' ver. 15, 17, 18; that 'he sinned,' ver. 16; that 'he disobeyed,' ver. 19; and by that transgression, offence, sin, disobedience (call it what you will), it comes to pass that all other men are 'made sinners,' ver. 19; and that 'the guilt' of that sin 'come upon all men to condemnation.'
If you ask, how it came to pass that this man should sin, God having created him righteous? As Solomon, Eccles. 7:29, 'Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions;' and as you read of him in the first and second of Genesis, that he was created in the image of God!
First, I confess I had rather, upon the experience of mine own frailty, fall down before the great God, and acknowledge mine own
slipperiness and changeableness, as I am a creature, if left to mine own will, and that when so left, I am obnoxious to sin, over and above and beyond what corruption hath yet swayed me to, than dispute this point out with God or men; for though I came not into the world holy, and endowed with created inclinations and dispositions contrary unto sin, as Adam did, yet in the course of my life I have full often found mine own will hath of and from itself cast the balance, and given forth a command for many a sinful act, not merely out of that sinful bias and inclination it hath to commit sin, but over and above out of that mere mutability and fickleness which is in my will to cast itself to evil. And when inclinations and assistances unto the contrary have been sufficient to preserve me from so sinning, yet mine own will hath determined itself to an outward act of evil, so as I could and might resolve the act done into that uncertainty and aptness to change and fall, even (as I am a creature) to fall into that, which is a step into that nothing we were first created out of, namely sin; so that beyond what the bias or poise which corruption sways man unto, it appears that in many passages of a man's life a vertibility of will hath been the cause of sin, which is then seen, when strong motions and impressions have been to the contrary, as well as impulses of sin and wickedness (so as the man could not but say he had power not to have done it), from whence a man may discern what he himself was like to have done, if he had been in Adam's state and case.
Secondly, That also of James, that it is God's prerogative alone (and no person's else but he who is God withal, or one person with God), not to be capable of being tempted to evil, so as to be prevailed with by it: James 1:13, 'Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.' To be 'without variableness, or shadow of turning,' ver 17, proves my assertion. It is further evidenced by this, that the greatest and holiest creature that could be made by God, if but a mere creature, and having no other but that providential assistance due by the law of the creation, was not only capable to reel and fall, but was
slippery, and might easily totter and fall, and so break itself, as a glass without a bottom.
Neither could this be laid upon God, that he upheld him not; because to have been invincibly kept and preserved by God, was above the due that, as creator, God was any way obliged unto, and must have proceeded from a principle of an higher kind, namely, his free grace, and was inconsistent with his covenant of works; so as God, in letting him fall, did therein no more but only not assist him by such a supernatural aid as was above the law of creation, and unto which God therefore was no way bound; and it was but to leave the creature, to shew what as a creature it might will to do, and so that it was mutable. Which prerogative of God's so to do, who shall deny unto him, or put the contrary upon him, as meet to be expected from him, when it was a pure act of supernatural grace to have done otherwise? The wisest of men, Solomon, having sought into the nature and original of wickedness and madness, lays all at man's door: 'God made man righteous, but they found or sought out many inventions,' Eccles. 7:29.
Neither is it to be conceived that man's heart was exposed to Satan to infuse sin, as a piece of fair paper lies exposed to an external hand to cast a blot or stain of ink upon it at his pleasure; no, it must be an act of a man's own will, without the consent of which the devil cannot now in our corrupt estate force any man to sinning, much less then, when he had no matter in Adam to work upon.
The which mutability God (when Adam was at the best and prime of his condition), gave him an extraordinary monitory and warning of; yea, and that which was to be as a sacrament thereof unto him, God singled forth of the garden he was placed in, two trees: 'the tree of life,' which was ordained to seal his constant estate of life and happiness, if he would persist in obedience; 'the tree of knowledge of good and evil,' to signify that he was mutable from good to evil; and of this last tree God forbade him to eat, and that if he did, he died:
Gen. 2:17, 'But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt
not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;' and that therefore he must look to himself, for this was his covenant, and the essential terms of it, and therefore sealed up by these two sacraments. Now the word disobedience here in the text points us to his sin, as it is also charged upon him by God: Gen. 3:17, 'Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee not to eat,' which shews wherein lay the very sin. Adam had an express commandment from God, and the light of it, together with the principles of the law written in his heart, was in his understanding and judgment, ready to have guided him if he would use and ask counsel thereof, and attend thereto upon all temptations to the contrary. Neither was it possible that if he would have had recourse to those principles, and consulted with them, that he should have erred, or that his will should have inclined to such an act expressly contrary to God's law, if he had continued fully to consider what was at hand ready to his view, for neither could error befall his understanding, if he would use the light he had in that estate (for then his understanding must be said to have been created by God, not able to judge of what was good in every action), neither could man's will then but fixedly cleave to that which the understanding did think good; only he not being taken up into the seeing of God face to face, and so to have his understanding possessed with such a sight of God and his will, so filled and fixed with the possession of him thereby as he might not cast an eye to look and consider whether there might not be some further good as to himself, than he was yet possessed of in that condition; and then this being suggested to him by Satan that there was, he turned a sadden squint eye aside, as Lot's wife did hers backwards; and thus the Scripture expresseth his sin, by a not hearkening or attending to the light of the law, and the voice of it in his judgment, but an 'hearkening to the voice of his wife.' It was a not consulting with the command, or not suffering it to speak, or not cleaving fixedly to the advice thereof; but his will would have his understanding gad and wander with a glance, to see if there might not be something in what
Satan suggested. And this very rash incogitant squint was his first slip from God, so as after it, when God's law came upon him, and was