1. Man's subjection under sin. He is 'sold under sin,' Rom. 7:14, and
much less the fruit of actions. They cannot change their nature any more than a viper can remove its poison. Although what I have said is true, there is nothing that people desire more than self-sufficiency and independence from any other power but their own. This temperament is as deeply rooted in human nature as any other false principle. People derive it from their first parents, as the prime legacy bequeathed to their nature. At his fall, the first thing that was discovered in humans was the desire to be like God, independent of him. To counter this principle, God allows his elect, like Lazarus, to lie in the grave until they stink, so that there can be no excuse to attribute their resurrection to their own power. If a putrefied, rotten carcass were brought back to life, it could never be thought that it inspired itself with that active principle. God allows people to go so far into sin that they unman themselves, so that he may proclaim to the world that we are unable to do anything on our own at first towards our recovery without a superior principle. The evidence of this will become clear if we consider, 1. Man's subjection under sin. He is 'sold under sin,' Rom. 7:14, and brought into captivity to 'the law of sin,' ver. 23; the law of sin, meaning that sin seems to have a legal authority over him. And man is not only a slave to one sin, but many: Titus 1:3, 'serving various desires.' Now, when a person is sold under the power of a thousand desires, each of which has absolute control over them and rules them as a sovereign by a law; when a person is bound by a thousand laws, cords and fetters, and carried where their lords please, against the dictates of their conscience and the force of natural light, can anyone imagine that their own power can rescue them from the strength of these masters that claim such a right to them, and keep such a force upon them, and have so often defeated their own strength when they offered to turn against them?
2. Man's affection to them. They not only serve them, but they serve them, and each of them, with delight and pleasure, Titus 3:3. They were all pleasures as well as desires, friends as well as lords. Will anyone leave their indulgences and such sins that please and flatter