348 DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING he will or no. And if there be no contradicting object, yet cannot the will excite these passions to what height it shall command ; for their motion depends as much (and moro) on the lively manner of representing the object, and the working nature and weight of the object represented, and upon the heat and mobility of the spirits, and temperature of the body, as upon the command of the will. 4. Much less can the will command out all vicious habits, and sen- sual or corrupt inclinations ; and therefore a true Christian may well say in respect of these, that he would be more holy, heavenly, and disposed to good, and less to evil, but he cannot. 5. As for complacency and displacency, liking or disliking, love and hatred, so far as they are passions, I have spoke of them before: but SO' far as they are the immediate acts of the will (willing and pilling) they are not properly said to be commanded by it, but elicited, or acted by it ; (wherein, how far it hath power is a most noble ques- tion, but unfit for this place or your capacity.) And thus you see that there are many acts ofthe soul, beside habits, which the will cannot nowperfectly command; and so a Christian cannot be what he would be, nor do the things that he would. And these are the first sort of sins of infirmity. Ifyou say, 'Sure these can be no sins, because we are not will- ing of them, and there is no more sin than there is will in it; I answer, 1. We were in Adam willing of that sin which caused them. 2. We are in some degree inclining in our wills to sin, though God have that prevalent part and determination, which in comparative cases doth denominate them. 3. The understanding and will may be most heinously guilty where they do not consent, in that they do not more strongly dissent, and more potently and rulingly command all the subject faculties ; and so a negation of the will's act, or of such a degree of it as is necessary to the regi- ment of the sensual part, is a deep guilt and great offence ; and it may be said, that there is will in this sin. It is morally or reputa- tively voluntary, though not naturally; because the will doth not its office when it should ; as a man is guilty of voluntary murder of his own child, that stands by and seeth his servant kill him, and loth not do his best to hinder him: I would this were better un- derstood by some divines ; for I think that the commonest guilt of the reason and will in our actual sins, is by omission ofthe exercise of their authority to hinder it ; and that most sins are more brutish, as to the, true efficient cause, than many imagine; and yet they are human or moral acts too, and the soul nevertheless guilty ; because the commanding faculties performed not their office, and so are the moral or imputative causes, and so the great culpable causes of the fact. But I am drawn nearerto philosophy and points beyond your reach than I intended; a fault that I must be
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