y man shall find his
count past counting; one day's faults would weary you, but what will your
whole life do? Known sins are innumerable, what must unknown be? Every
man's heart is like the troubled sea, that casteth up mire and dirt daily,
and cannot be at rest. The heart is daily flowing and ebbing in this
corruption, it cometh out daily to the borders of all the members; and
there are some high spring-tides, when sin aboundeth more. When in one
member of the tongue a world of evil is, what can be in all the members?
And what in the soul, that is more capable than all the world? Well, then,
every man hath sinned in Adam, and hath sinned also in his own person, and
sealed Adam's first rebellion by so many thousand actions like it. Every
man hath approven the sin that first ruined man, and made himself much
more loathsome nor Adam was; therefore all mankind may say, "We all are as
an unclean thing." Now from all this, we would gladly discover unto you
what your condition is by sin; if the Lord would shine, how vile would you
be! Always we must declare this unto you in the Lord's name, you are all
unclean, not only born in sin and iniquity, not only have you a body of
death within you, that hath all the members; but all these members have
one time or other acted and brought forth fruit unto death. How vile,
then, must you be in God's sight! It is a strange love that you have to
yourselves, that you cannot apprehend how God can hate you! But if he find
sin in you, wonder rather how he can look upon you; we would then have you
to know this, that there can be no fellowship between God and you in your
natural estate. As men cannot inhabit a vile person's house, no more can
God enter into your souls. There is an absolute necessity of washing,
before you can be his house and temple. Hath that one sin of Adam made
that glorious person so deformed, that he could not look on himself, but
cover himself? And hath it been of so defiling a nature, that it hath
redounded in all the posterity; and, as unclean things under the law
defiled all they touched, so hath that sin subjected all the creatures to
corruption? O then imagine what an unspeakable defilement must be on us
all, who are not only guilty of Adam's sin, but of many thousands beside!
If one sin have so much loathsomeness in it, what must so many out of
number, united in one person, even as in us all? No unclean thing can
enter into heaven above: know this for a truth, you cann