welleth no good thing." The seeds
of all wickedness are in every one of us; and it is the goodness of God
for preserving of human society, that they are restrained and kept down in
any from the grossest outbreakings. They know not themselves, who know any
good of themselves; and they know not themselves, who either are in
admiration at, or in bitterness or contempt against, other sinners, whose
sins are manifest to all. This were the only way to profit by looking on
their evils, if we could straightway retire within and behold the root of
that in ourselves, the fountain of it within us, and so grow in loathing,
not of those persons, but of human nature, and in suitable thoughts of
ourselves and others, and might wonder at the goodness and undeserved
bounty of the Lord, that passes an act of restraint upon our corruption,
and dams it up. O that we could learn to loathe ourselves in other men's
evils! Thus we might reap good out of the evil, and prevent more in
ourselves. But the looking upon gross provocations as singularities, makes
them more general, because every man does not charge himself with the
corruption that is in all these, but prefers himself to another. Therefore
are reins loosed to corruption, and a sluice opened that it may come
out--that he who would not see his own image in another's face, may behold
it in the glass of his own abominations. There is no point less believed
than this though generally confessed, that man is dead in sins and
trespasses, and impotent to help himself. You will hardly take with
wickedness when you confess weakness, as if nature were only sick, but not
dead,--hurt, but not killed. Therefore it is that so many do abide in
themselves, and trusting to their own good purposes and resolutions and
endeavours, do think to pacify God and help themselves out of their
misery. But O look again, and look in upon yourselves in the glass of the
word, and there is no doubt but you will straightway be filled with
confusion of face, and be altogether spoiled of good confidence and hope,
as you call it! You will find yourself plunged in a pit of misery, and all
strength gone, and none on the right hand, or the left to help you; and
then, and not till then, will the second Adam's hand, stretched out for
help, be seasonable.

That which next follows is that which is the companion of sin
inseparably,--"Death hath passed upon all," and that by sin. Adam's one
disobedience opened a port for all sin to