ESSAY. 333 Quest. I. Whether the first start or motion of our nature towards unlawful objects, is properly sinful, and brings guilt upon the soul ? Allow. The mere ferments of the blood aid spirits, the appetites and motions, that belong purely and only to the flesh, and spring entirely from it, are not properly sins ; because the flesh, considered in itself, is but mere matter : Now mere matter, whether it were united to a rational mind or no, would be thus moved and acted by natural springs and im- pressions, and is under no moral law ; and where no law is, there is no transgression. The brutal or animal nature, ab- stracted from the soul, isnot capable of knowledge or will, con- tent or dissent; but the first moment that the soul indulges or consents to any of these irregular ferments, these springs of unruly passion in the blood, and yields to these inordinate appe- tites of the flesh, it commits sin ; as soon as it Complies with any of these desires, that are contrary to its duty, the soul becomes guilty in the sight of God ; for the proper notion of sin is the tendency of an intelligent being to thingsdisagreeable to the di- vine law; the practise of what is forbidden, or the neglect of what is commanded. If the eyebeholds food, though the man be assured there is hidden poison in it, yet the hungrystomach will have a natural appetite teward it, and this is not sinful; but if the soul comply, and theman eats it, or desires to eat it, he breaks the sixth com- mand, which forbids all murder. Our Saviour has sufficienly decided this part of the controversy in his sermon on the mount, that the soul'svery desire and consent to sin is sinful; Mat. v. 27. And the fuller and stronger the consent of the will is, and the further it goes on to encourageor impel the body to the forbidden action, somuch greater is thesin. When our blessed Saviour spake these words, he that look- eth upon a woman, to lust after her, bath committed adultery already in his heart Mat. v. 28. it cannot be supposed that he intended to give a law that shouldmake theinward motionsor fer- ments of mereanimal nature sinful; for these were not originally and naturallysubject 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 motionof the handor foot is. But his design is to show, that the soul itself inwardly consenting to these animal fermentsand motions, or encouraging or indulging them but one moment, is really sinful in the sight of God, even though the man did never proceed to theoutward and actual commission of those sins in the flesh: And Hereby he vindicated the law of Godfrom those narrow andcorrupt expo- sitions which the-scribes, and doctors, and interpreters ofthose days put upon it, who would allow nothing to be sinful but the outward act.
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