-- CHAPTER VI: The privation of righteousness is enough to infect the soul with all that is evil
2. Our lusts must needs have much power and force in us to carry us on to him, because they are the laws of this lord-paramount, selflove, which reigns as our utmost end, and gives all our desires their commission, and they all there fawn upon it, who having such power therefore, puts forth all the power the soul hath in all its desires, so as quicquid vult, valde vult.
3. The unsatisfiedness ariseth from the emptiness of those objects which lusts carry us out unto (such are the pleasures of sin and the creatures) as their chiefest good; and withal the vast wideness of the soul, being made at first of such a size, as God only, not the creature, should be able to fill it, and widened also by Adam gaping to swallow a godship at once; so all these pleasures satisfy you no more than a drop can fill a cistern.
4. This greediness ariseth from the unsatisfiedness, for appetitus finis est infinitus; for the soul having so large a stomach, because it hath a large life of comfort to maintain, and these pleasures affording so little at once, the soul is as a man ready to perish with thirst, and hath only a sucking-bottle given him, whence he can suck but drops at once, which can scarce keep soul and body together; and therefore it is so greedy and impatient, and would have all at once.
CHAPTER VI:
The privation of righteousness is enough to infect the soul with all that is evil
That there is no necessity of asserting original sin to be a positive quality in our souls, since the privation of righteousness is enough to infect the soul with all that is evil
These being declared to be the true adequate grounds of all the sinfulness that is boiled up to its greatest height in man's nature,
then there is no necessity to suppose, as some have done, original sin to be in its own essence, and, as considered by the understanding, as apart from the soul which it is in, to be a positive quality come in the room of original righteousness, as heat into water when cold is expelled, to inflame and provoke it unto evil; for if the bare deprivement of original righteousness from the soul, still supposed to continue active and desirous of happiness, and having still a principle of self-love left unextinguished in it, if this may be a full and adequate cause of all the sinfulness that is in man's desires, what need we feign and excogitate any positive quality superadded over and above, and besides all these, to whet and inflame the soul to evil?
There is no necessity of doing so, because, frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora, it is frivolous to do that by many things which may be done by one; et entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate, beings are not unnecessarily to be multiplied. And this deprivation of righteousness, you see, is sufficient, but especially because that supposition draws on this inevitable and unanswerable absurdity, that it must have in itself a true, real being and entity; and if so, then it should have some goodness in it, for, ens et bonum convertuntur, every being is good, and must either be from God, and so he be made the author of it, who doth not so much as tempt to sin, and so sin should not be sin, for every creature is good, 1 Tim. 4:4; or else, in the second place, there might be some entity which held not of God in capite, whose name is I AM, and who is the fountain of all beings, John 1:3. Neither doth the affirmation of the contrary, as thus explained, put us upon the like absurdity, or enforce us from dissenting from any received truth among our divines.
For, first, whereas it may be objected, that this is to deny what formerly I have assumed and proved, namely, that there is a positive as well as a privative part of man's sinfulness by nature, and therefore if sin be in its own nature but a privation, this is a contradiction, to make two such parts of it.
I answer, That though sin in itself be but a bare privation or want of righteousness, yet as it is in our natures full of inclinations, which
inclinations wanting righteousness become sinful, so it may be said to have two parts; for in the same sense that sin in our actions is said to have two parts, in the same sense it may be said to have in our natures. Now, in our actions it hath two parts, whereof the first is purely and merely privative, because it is negatio actus debiti, the denial of an act which ought to have been done; and, secondly, of commission also, which supposeth a positive act done, but implies and connotates withal a want of righteousness, which ought to have been in it, so that the sinfulness of both them is but a bare privation or want of righteousness; yet because it is in positivo, therefore the latter is called a sin committed or done, and so distinguished from the former.
Now, to give the reasons to prove that sin in our natures hath two parts, though in itself it be but a want of righteousness.
1. By reason of the want of righteousness, it may be said there are inclinations in man, but not to good, which good because it ought to be in them, therefore those inclinations are sin.
2. It may further be said, that those inclinations that are there are not good, for that they want that righteousness which should be in them, and therefore are called lusts τῆς ἀπατῆς, which is a further thing than the former, and which, because it notes out a positive subject, is called the positive part.
I will illustrate this answer by a similitude grounded on a Scripture expression, which calls our lusts, thus wanting righteousness, and making up this positive part, the body of sin: Rom. 6:6, 'That the body of sin might be destroyed,' &c. And it is called members of it:
Col. 3:5, 'Mortify therefore your members,' &c. This alludes to a natural body; that as a body is a part of a living man, so these lusts are a part of original sin, and so called flesh. Now, to speak properly, all life is formally and originally in the soul only, as the fountain and source of it; yet this soul being in a body, and informing it, the body is truly called a living part, which yet in itself alone considered is but
a dead thing. So in like manner and originally the whole essence or nature of sin is expressed in a want of what is good; but this privation being seated in positive inclinations, these inclinations, as thus wanting righteousness, make a distinct part of that sinfulness, and so answerably is called a body of sin, which inclinations also, as simply considered in themselves, are good, and so far as positive; but wanting righteousness, are called sins; and the like is said of habits superadded to them. And hence these positive inclinations, as thus wanting true righteousness, having all their power and force turned to sin, and against what is good, they may truly be called a law of the members fighting against the law of the mind, and so not to be privatively only contrary to grace, but positively also: Gal. 5:17, 'For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.' And so they are called flesh, and the acts lusts of flesh; and hence also, because self-love exalteth all the power and force that is in us against what is good, and carries it on to evil, therefore the dethroning and deposing of self-love, and reducing it to its first order to make it subject to grace, is called mortification, and denying a man's self, as that new principle of grace put in, that is made king, is called vivification; neither doth this make man in puris naturalibus, for that is a notion that, in descending from the state of grace into a state of sin, cannot be imagined, seeing God created man upright, but he fell from that righteous state.
And as for the increase of the same sinful habits, there is the like reason; for so far as the act is good, there is increased an aptness to fall the same way again; but that it should be more sinfully than ever is from a further elongation from God, and so from a further privation in that inclination, and from a consideration of the former pleasures of sin, which the man reflects on, and is more strongly allured therefore to do the same again. Neither have the papists any advantage by this, seeing their end and meaning in denying a positive part is but to affirm lusts to be no sin; and our divines' meaning, when they contend for a positive part, is but to shew that lusts are sins, which is as well established by this doctrine as by any