CHAPTER X – Consectaries:
CHAPTER X.
Some Weighty Consectaries.
Consect. 1. So common and potent is selfishness in the world, that it is enough to convince a rational, considerate man of the truth of the doctrine of the fall of man, and of original corruption, against all the objections that all the Socinians or Pelagians in the world can make against it. He that thinks that God made man in this distempered, distracted state that selfishness holds the world in, has unreasonable thoughts of the workmanship of God. He that sees even children, before they can speak or go, so selfish as they are, and all mankind without exception to be naturally as so many idol-gods in the world, and can believe that this is the Image of God in which they were created, does make the image of Satan to be the image of God. No wiser, no better is the doctrine that denies original sin, when Self has such a tyrannical, universal reign in all the world.
Consect. 2. So deep-rooted, and powerful, and universal is this abominable vice, that it must teach us what to expect in all places we live in, and may help us to make the truest prognostics, or the most probable conjectures, of any mutations where the will of man is like to be the determiner. Know but once where self-interest lies, and you may know what almost all men will endeavor, and might write a probable prognostication of the changes that are like to be in states and kingdoms, and anywhere in the world—were it not for the interposition of two greater powers that have gotten the victory over Self: that is, Grace, and Divine over-ruling Providence. I say, were it