ill, and so do we: and all men say, that this liberty of choosing ill, is still left to us. But because it is left here, it appears that it was there before, and therefore is not the consequent of original sin. But it is said, that as Adam chose ill, so do we; but he was free to good as well as to evil, but so are not we; we are free to evil, not to good; and that we are so, is the consequent of original sin. I reply, that we can choose good, and as naturally love good as evil, and in some instances more. A man cannot naturally hate God, if he knows any thing of him. A man naturally loves his parents. He naturally hates some sort of uncleanness. He naturally loves and preserves himself: and all those sins which are unnatural, are such which nature hates: and the law of nature commands all the great instances of virtue, and marks out all the great lines of justice. Τοιοῦτος μὲν οὖν ὁ τοῖς λογικοῖς γένεσι ἐνουσιωμένος ὅρκος, μὴ παραβαίνειν ὑπ ̓ αὐτοῦ (Θεού) διορισθέντας νόμους. “ It is a law imprinted in the very substance of our natures, and incorporated in all generations of reasonable creatures, not to break or transgress the laws which are appointed by God." Here only our nature is defective; we do not naturally know, nor yet naturally love, those supernatural excellences, which are appointed and commanded by God as the means of bringing us to a supernatural condition. That is, without God's grace, and the renovation of the Spirit of God, we cannot be saved. Neither was Adam's case better than ours in this particular. For that his nature could not carry him to heaven, or indeed to please God in order to it, seems to be confessed by them who have therefore affirmed him to have had a supernatural righteousness which is affirmed by all the Roman party. But although in supernatural instances it must needs be that our nature is defective; so it must needs have been in Adam and therefore the Lutherans (who, in this particular, dream not so probably as the other), affirming that justice was natural in Adam, do yet but differ in the manner of speaking, and have not at all spoken against this; neither can they, unless they also affirm that to arrive at heaven was the natural end of man. For if it be not, then neither we nor Adam could by nature do things above nature; and if God did concreate grace with Adam, that grace was nevertheless grace, for being given him as soon as he was made: for even the Holy Spirit may be given to a chrisom-child; and Christ, and St. John Baptist, and the prophet Jeremy, are, in their several measures and proportions, instances of it. The result of which is this; that the necessity of grace does not suppose that our nature is originally corrupted; for beyond Adam's mere nature, something else was necessary, and so it is to us. 68. I. But to the main objection; I answer, that it is certain there is not only one, but many common principles from which sin derives itself into the manners of all men. 1. The first great cause of a universal impiety is, that at first, God had made no promises of heaven, he had not propounded any glorious rewards, to be as an argument to support the superior faculty against the inferior, that is, to make the will choose the best and leave the worst, and to be as a reward for suffering contradiction. For if the inferior faculty be pleased with its object, and that chance to be forbidden, as it was in most instances, there had need be something to make recompense for the suffering the displeasure of crossing that appetite. I use the common manner of speaking, and the distinction of superior and inferior faculties: though indeed in nature there is no such thing; and it is but the same faculty, divided between differing objects; of which I shall give an account in the chapter 9, section 3. But here I take notice of it, that it may not with prejudice be taken to the disadvantage of this whole article. For if there be no such difference of faculties founded in nature, then the rebellion of the inferior against the superior, is no effect of Adam's sin. But the inclination to sensual objects being chastised by laws and prohibitions, hath made that which we call the rebellion of the inferior, that is, the adherence to sensual objects; which was the more certain to remain, because they were not at first enabled by great promises of good things to contest against sensual temptations. And because there was no such thing in that period of the world, therefore almost all flesh corrupted themselves: excepting Abel, Seth, Enos, and Enoch, we find not one good man from Adam to Noah'; and therefore the Apostle calls that world, kooμòv åσɛßŵv, 'the world of the ungodly.' It was not so much wonder that when Adam had no promises, made to enable him to contest his natural concupiscence, he e 2 Pet. ii. 5. should strive to make his condition better by the devil's promises. If God had been pleased to have promised to him the glories he hath promised to us, it is not to be supposed he had fallen so easily. But he did not, and so he fell, and all the world followed his example, and most upon this account; till it pleased God, after he had tried the world with temporal promises, and found them also insufficient,―to finish the work of his graciousness, and to cause us to be born anew, by the revelations and promises of Jesus Christ. 69. II. A second cause of the universal iniquity of the world, is because our nature is so hard put to it in many instances; notbecause nature is originally corrupted, but because God's laws command such things, which are a restraint to the indifferent, and otherwise lawful inclinations of nature. I instance in the matters of temperance, abstinence, patience, humility, self-denial, and mortification. But more particularly thus: a man is naturally inclined to desire the company of a woman whom he fancies. This is naturally no sin for the natural desire was put into us by God, and therefore could not be evil. But then God, as an instance and trial of our obedience, put fetters upon the indefinite desire, and determined us to one woman; which provision was enough to satisfy our need, but not all our possibility. This therefore he left as a reserve, that by obeying God in the so reasonable restraint of our natural desire, we might give him something of our own. But then it is to be considered, that our unwillingness to obey in this instance, or in any of the other, cannot be attributed to original sin, or natural disability derived as a punishment from Adam, because the particular instances were postnate a long time to the fall of man; and it was for a long time lawful to do some things which now are unlawful. But our unwillingness and averseness came by occasion of the law coming cross upon our nature; not because our nature is contrary to God, but because God was pleased to superinduce some commandments contrary to our nature. For if God had commanded us to eat the best meats, and drink the richest wines as long as they could please us, and were to be had, I suppose it will not be thought, that original sin would hinder us from obedience. But because we are forbidden to do some things which naturally we desire to do and love, therefore our nature is hard put to it; and this is the true state of the difficulty. "Citò nequitia subrepit: virtus difficilis inventa est:" "Wickedness came in speedily; but virtue was hard and difficult." 70. III. But then, besides these, there are many concur rent causes of evil which have influence upon communities of men, such as are, evil examples, the similitude of Adam's transgression, vices of princes, wars, impunity, ignorance, error, false principles, flattery, interest, fear, partiality, authority, evil laws, heresy, schism, spite, and ambition, natural inclination, and other principiant causes, which, proceeding from the natural weakness of human constitution, are the fountain and proper causes of many consequent evils. "Quis dabit mundum ab immundo," saith Job; "How can a clean thing come from an unclean ?" We all naturally have great weaknesses, and an imperfect constitution, apt to be weary, loving variety, ignorantly making false measures of good and evil, made up with two appetites, that is, with inclination to several objects serving to contrary interests, a thing between angel and beast, and the later in this life is the bigger ingredient. "Hominem à naturâ noverca in lucem edi corpore nudo, fragili atque infirmo animo, anxio ad molestias, humili ad timores, debili ad labores, proclivi ad libidines, in quo divinus ignis sit obrutus, et ingenium, et mores:" so Cicero, as St. Austin " quotes him: "Nature hath like a stepmother sent man into the world with a naked boy, a frail and infirm mind, vexed with troubles, dejected with fears, weak for labours, prone to lusts, in whom the divine fire, and his wit, and his manners, are covered and overturned."-And when Plato had fiercely reproved the baseness of men's manners, by saying, that they are even naturally evil; he reckons two causes of it, which are the diseases of the soul, but contracted he knew not how, ignorance and improbity; which he supposes to have been the remains of that baseness they had before they entered into bodies, whither they were sent as to a prison.-This is our natural uncleanness and imperfection, and from such a principle we are to expect proper and proportioned effects; and therefore Job, xiv. 14. Sen. lib. 3. Quæst. Natur. c. 3. b Lib. 4. contra Julianum. i In Sophistica. Homines naturâ sunt mali: et non possunt induci, ut justitiam colant. lib. 2. de Rep. we may well say with Job, "What is man that he should be clean, and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?" That is, our imperfections are many, and we are with unequal strengths called to labour for a supernatural purchase; and when our spirit is very willing, even then our flesh is very weak:' and yet it is worse if we compare ourselves, as Job does, to the purities and perfections of God; in respect of which, as he says of us men in our imperfect state, so he says also of the angels, or the holy ones of God, and of the heaven itself, that it is also unclean and impure:' for the cause and verification of which, we must look out for something besides original' sin. Add to this, that vice is pregnant and teeming, and brings forth new instances, numerous as the spawn of fishes; such as are inadvertency, carelessness, tediousness of spirit, and these also are causes of very much evil. SECTION V. Of Liberty of Election remaining after Adam's Fall. UPON this account, besides that the causes of a universal impiety are apparent without any need of laying Adam in blame for all our follies and miseries, or rather without charging them upon God, who so ordered all things as we see and feel; the universal wickedness of man is no argument to prove our will servile, and the powers of election to be quite lost in us, excepting only that we can choose evil. For admitting this proposition, that there can be no liberty where there is no variety; yet that all men choose sin, is not any testimony that there is no variety in our choice. If there were but one sin in the world, and all men did choose that, it were a shrewd suspicion that they were naturally determined or strongly precipitated. But every man does not choose the same sin, nor for the same cause; neither does he choose it always, but frequently declines it, hates it, and repents of it many men, even among the heathens, did so. So that the objection hinders not, but that choice and election still remain to man, and that he is not naturally sin : k Job, xv. 14. |