. It
is not bred since, but seen since.

Now so it is with us, we have corrupted ourselves, and so we corrupt
ourselves still more. Backsliding cometh on as gray hairs, here and there
and is not perceived by beholders. _Nemo repente fit turpissimus_.(266) No
man becometh worst at first. There are many steps between that and good.
Corruption comes on men's ways as in fruits, some one part beginneth to
alter, and then it groweth worse, and putrifieth and corrupteth the rest
of the parts. An apple rots not all at once, so it is with us. Men begin
at leisure, but they run post before all be done. In some one step of our
way we take liberty and think to keep the rest clean, but when that part
is corrupted, "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," and all
followeth: and then he that corrupted himself, is ready to corrupt others.
"Children that are corrupters," Isa. i. 4. Every one by his example
corrupts another, and by corrupting others they again corrupt themselves
more. Oh! how infectious an evil is sin, of a pestilentious nature, and
truly our hearts are more ready to receive such impressions, than either a
world or a devil is to make them.

"Their spot is not." Why doth the Lord take pleasure to reckon their sins,
to describe so abominable a people? Is not this Jacob in whom he saw no
iniquity?(267) Is not this Israel, whose transgressions are not
known?(268) Certainly if this people would have charged themselves so, he
would not have done it. He loves to forget, when we remember our sins, but
he must remember them when we forget them. What is the Lord's great
controversy with men? Here it is,--How can ye say or think that ye are not
polluted? Or if ye take with such a general, yet, why is not the
conviction of your sin and misery so deeply engraven, as to pursue you out
of all hope of remedy in yourselves, (Jer. ii. 22, 23)? "And therefore is
thine iniquity marked before me, saith the Lord." God hath determined not
to wrong his justice. If men should go away unpunished and unjudged both,
where were his righteousness? If there were no record of men's
transgressions, were he a righteous judge? Therefore, those who do not
judge themselves must leave judgment to him, for once the mouth of all
flesh must be stopped, and all become guilty before God. Why pleads the
Lord with man? Because man says, "I am innocent, I have not sinned, his
anger will turn away," Jer. ii. 35. Will any speak so in terms? No indeed,
but the Lord