324 THE POWERS AND CONTESTS OP FLESH AND SPIRIT. If the eye beholds food, ,though the man be assured there is hidden poison in ,it, yet the hungry stomach will have a nati.1 appetite toward it, and this is not sinful ; but if the soul comply, and the man eat it, or desire to eat it, he breaks the sixth command, which forbids all Murder. Our Saviour has sufficiently decided this part of the controversy in his sermon on the mount, that the soul's very desire and consent, to sin is sinful ? ]Wat. v. 97. And the fuller and stronger the consent of the will is, and the further it goes on to encourage or impel the body to the forbidden action, so much greater is the sin. When our blessed Saviour spake these words: " he that looketh upon a woman, to lust after her, bath com- mitted adultery already in his heart ;" flat. v. 28. it can-. not be supposed that lie intended to give a law that should make the inward motions or ferments of' mere animal nature sinful ; for these were not originally and naturally subject to the immediate command of the soul in the state of innocency, so as to be raised or prevented abso- lutely and immediately by the will, as the motion of the hand or foot.is. But his design is to shew, that the soul itself inwardly consenting to these animal ferments and motions, or encouraging or indulging them but one mo- ment, is really, sinful in the sight of God, even though the man did never proceed to the outward and actual commission of those sins in the flesh : And hereby he vindicated the l:zw of God from those narrow and cor- rupt expositions which' the scribes, and doctors, and interpreters of those days, put upon it, who would allow nothing to be sinful but the outward act. This will appear with fuller evidence, if we consider that there might be in the flesh of innocent Adam, some natural appetites toward objects that might be forbidden by the express and positive law of God ; for the flesh, merely considered in itself, has a natural propensity, to things that please and gratify it, without any regard to the unseen circumstances or moral relations of things ; without any respect to a law that permits or prohibits them. Thus Adam, or his partner, might feel an inno- cent inclination in their animal natures, towards any fruit in the garden that was pleasant to the eyes, and good for food, even to that. of the tree of knowledge : And this
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