BOOK X: That this state of guilt and natural corruption is the condition of all men unregenerate, th
And all this heavy charge I have laid unto this sin, the mother of sins, is not to be understood as spoken of a matter or thing distinct from yourselves, which is the case of all actual sins; yourselves are one thing, and your actions another. Yea, but this sin I have aggravated all this while, is no other than your very selves; and so all that hath been said of it is all one as to say that yourselves are thus sinful, and are in verity this very sin. Indeed, the substance of you differs from this sin inherent as subject and adjunct; and thus logically you may
(if you please) distinguish yourself from this sin; but know that theologically, or (which is more) in God's holy sight and esteem, this sin is thyself, as I said at the first entrance. It is in Scripture language
(which is God's) the very definition of a man's nature: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh.' It is a regenerate man only is able to say, 'It is not I, but sin that dwells in me,' and so distinguish himself from it, for he hath a divine nature which is himself. An unregenerate man must take it wholly upon him, that it is, he himself, and say of it, It is
I, as the seventh of the Romans hath distinguished them.
BOOK X:
That this state of guilt and natural corruption is the condition of all men unregenerate, though they make an external profession of Christianity.—A discovery of the several sorts of such men, both the ignorant, the profane, and the civil and the formal Christian.—And an answer to all those pleas by which they excuse, justify, or flatter themselves