THE UNCONVERTED. 61 / and instead of it he contracted an inclination and love to the pleasing of his flesh, or carnal self, by earthly things; growing strange to God and acquainted with the creature. And the course of this life was suited to the berit and inclination of his heart; he lived to his carnal self, and not to God; he sought the creature, for the pleasing of his flesh, instead of seeking to please the Lord. With this nature or corrupt inclination we are all now born into the world; "for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" Job xvi. 4. As a lion bath a fierce and cruel nature before he .doth devour; and an adder bath a venomous nature before she sting, so in our infancy we have those sinful natures or inclinations, before we think, or speak, or do amiss. And hence springeth all the sin of our lives; and not only so, but when God bath ofhis mercy, provided us a remedy, even the Lord Jesus Christ, to be the Saviour of our souls, and hring us back to God again, we naturally love our present state, and are loth to be brought out of it, and therefore are set against the means of our recovery: and though custom bath taught us to thank Christ for his good-will, yet carnal self persuades us to refuse his remedies, and to desire to be excused, when we are commanued to take the medicines which he offers, and are called to forsake all and follow him to God and glory. I pray you read over this leaf again, and mark it, ' for in these few words you have a true description ofour natural state, and consequently of wicked man; for every man that is in the state of corrupted nature is a wicked man, and in a state of death. By this also you are prepared to understand what it is to be converted: to which end you must further know, that the mercy of God, not willing that man :>hould perish in his sin, provided a remedy, by causmg his Son to take our nature, and being·, in one person, God and man, to become a Mediator between God and man, and by dying for our sins on the cross, to ransom us from the curse of God and the power
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