thing that highly
reproaches the essential equity and goodness of the divine nature.

Wherefore, doubtless the will of man in the state of innocence had an
entire freedom, a perfect equipendency and indifference to either part
of the contradiction, to stand, or not to stand; to accept, or not to
accept the temptation. I will grant the will of man now to be as much
a slave as any one who will have it, and be only free to sin; that is,
instead of a liberty, to have only a licentiousness; yet certainly
this is not nature, but chance. We were not born crooked; we learned
these windings and turnings of the serpent: and therefore it can not
but be a blasphemous piece of ingratitude to ascribe them to God, and
to make the plague of our nature the condition of our creation.

The will was then ductile and pliant to all the motions of right
reason; it met the dictates of a clarified understanding half way.
And the active informations of the intellect, filling the passive
reception of the will, like form closing with matter, grew actuate
into a third and distinct perfection of practise; the understanding
and will never disagreed; for the proposals of the one never thwarted
the inclinations of the other. Yet neither did the will servilely
attend upon the understanding, but as a favorite does upon his prince,
where the service is privilege and preferment; or as Solomon's
servants waited upon him: it admired its wisdom, and heard its prudent
dictates and counsels--both the direction and the reward of its
obedience. It is indeed the nature of this faculty to follow a
superior guide--to be drawn by the intellect; but then it was drawn
as a triumphant chariot, which at the same time both follows and
triumphs: while it obeyed this, it commanded the other faculties. It
was subordinate, not enslaved to the understanding: not as a servant
to a master, but as a queen to her king, who both acknowledges a
subjection and yet retains a majesty.

III. Pass we now downward from man's intellect and will to the
passions, which have their residence and situation chiefly in the
sensitive appetite. For we must know that inasmuch as man is a
compound, and mixture of flesh as well as spirit, the soul, during its
abode in the body, does all things by the mediation of these passions
and inferior affections. And here the opinion of the Stoics was
famous and singular, who looked upon all these as sinful defects
and irregularities, as so many deviations fr