l you, that every day
strengthens this conviction; yea, that hourly he sees fresh reason to
deplore his want of simplicity in intention, his infirmity of purpose,
his low views, his selfish unworthy desires, his backwardness to set
about his duty, his languor and coldness in performing it: that he
finds himself obliged continually to confess, that he feels within him
two opposite principles, and that "he cannot do the things that he
would." He cries out in the language of the excellent Hooker, "The
little fruit which we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and
unsound: we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the
world for it, we dare not call God to reckoning, as if we had him in our
debt books; our continual suit to him is, and must be, to bear with our
infirmities, and pardon our offences."

Such is the moral history, such the condition of man. The figures of the
piece may vary, and the colouring is sometimes of a darker, sometimes of
a lighter hue; but the principles of the composition, the grand
outlines, are every where the same. Wherever we direct our view, we
discover the melancholy proofs of our depravity; whether we look to
ancient or modern times, to barbarous or civilized nations, to the
conduct of the world around us, or to the monitor within the breast;
whether we read, or hear, or act, or think, or feel, the same
humiliating lesson is forced upon us,

Juppiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris.

Now when we look back to the picture which was formerly drawn of the
_natural powers_ of man, and compare this his _actual_ state with that
for which, from a consideration of those powers, he seems to have been
originally calculated, how are we to account for the astonishing
contrast! will frailty or infirmity, or occasional lapses, or sudden
surprisals, or any such qualifying terms, convey an adequate idea of the
nature, or point out the cause of the distemper? How, on any principles
of common reasoning, can we account for it, but by conceiving that man,
since he came out of the hands of his Creator, has contracted a taint,
and that the venom of this subtle poison has been communicated
throughout the race of Adam, every where exhibiting incontestible marks
of its fatal malignity? Hence it has arisen, that the appetites deriving
new strength, and the powers of reason and conscience being weakened,
the latter have feebly and impotently pleaded against those forbidden
indulgen