hough we were not powerful enough, or cunning enough, to
demolish or undermine ourselves, when we ourselves have no pleasure in
the sin, we sin for others' sakes. When Adam sinned for Eve's sake,[323]
and Solomon to gratify his wives,[324] it was an uxorious sin; when the
judges sinned for Jezebel's sake,[325] and Joab to obey David,[326] it
was an ambitious sin; when Pilate sinned to humour the people,[327] and
Herod to give farther contentment to the Jews,[328] it was a popular
sin. Any thing serves to occasion sin, at home in my bosom, or abroad in
my mark and aim; that which I am, and that which I am not, that which I
would be, proves coals, and embers, and fuel, and bellows to sin; and
dost thou put me, O my God, to discharge myself of myself, before I can
be well? When thou bidst me _to put off the old man_,[329] dost thou
mean not only my old habits of actual sin, but the oldest of all,
original sin? When thou bidst me _purge out the leaven_,[330] dost thou
mean not only the sourness of mine own ill contracted customs, but the
innate tincture of sin imprinted by nature? How shall I do that which
thou requirest, and not falsify that which thou hast said, that sin is
gone over all? But, O my God, I press thee not with thine own text,
without thine own comment; I know that in the state of my body, which is
more discernible than that of my soul, thou dost effigiate my soul to
me. And though no anatomist can say, in dissecting a body, "Here lay the
coal, the fuel, the occasion of all bodily diseases," but yet a man may
have such a knowledge of his own constitution and bodily inclination to
diseases, as that he may prevent his danger in a great part; so, though
we cannot assign the place of original sin, nor the nature of it, so
exactly as of actual, or by any diligence divest it, yet, having washed
it in the water of thy baptism, we have not only so cleansed it, that we
may the better look upon it and discern it, but so weakened it, that
howsoever it may retain the former nature, it doth not retain the former
force, and though it may have the same name, it hath not the same venom.

XXII. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, the God of security, and the enemy of
security too, who wouldst have us always sure of thy love, and yet
wouldst have us always doing something for it, let me always so
apprehend thee as present with me, and yet so follow after thee, as
though I had not apprehended thee. Thou enlargedst Heze