μéve, said Philo ". For as a runner of races, at his first setting forth, rides his way briskly, and in a breath measures out many spaces; but by and by his spirit is faint, and his body is breathless, and he stumbles at every thing that lies in his way: so is the course of a Christian; fierce in the beginnings of repentance, and active in his purposes; but in his progress, remiss and hindered, and starts at every accident, and stumbles at every scandal and stone of offence, andis sometimes listless, and without observation at other times; and a bird out of a bush that was not looked for, makes him to start aside, and decline from the path and method of his journey. But then if he that stumbles mends his pace, and runs more warily, and goes on vigorously, his error, or misfortune, shall not be imputed; for here God's justice is equity, it is the justice of the chancery; we are not judged by the covenant of works, that is, of exact measures, but by the covenant of faith and remission, or repentance. But if he that falls, lies down despairingly or wilfully, or if he rises, goes back, or goes aside ;--not only his declination from his way, but every error or fall, every stumbling and startling in that way, shall be accounted for. For here God's justice is akρißns, exact' and severe; it is the justice of the Law, because he refused the method and conditions of the Gospel.

54. V. Every sinful action that can pretend to pardon by being a sin of infirmity, must be in a small matter. The imperfect way of operating alone, is not sufficient for excuse and pardon, unless the matter also be little and contemptible; because if the matter be great, it cannot ordinarily be, but it must be considered and chosen. He that in a sudden anger strikes his friend to the heart, whom he had loved as passionately as now he smote him, is guilty of murder, and cannot pretend infirmity for his excuse; because, in an action of so great consequence and effect, it is supposed, he had time to deliberate all the foregoing parts of his life, whether such an action ought to be done or not; or the very horror of the action was enough to arrest his spirit, as a great danger, or falling into a river, will make a drunken man sober; and by all the laws of God and man, he was immured from the probability of all transports into such violences; and the man must needs be a slave of passion, who could by it 8 De Agricultura.

be brought to go so far from reason, and to do so great evil. If a man in the careless time of the day, when his spirit is loose with a less severe employment, or his heart made more open with an innocent refreshment, spies a sudden beauty that unluckily strikes his fancy; it is possible that he may be too ready to entertain a wanton thought, and to suffer it to stand at the doors of his first consent; but if the sin passes no further, the man enters not into the regions of death; because the devil entered on a sudden, and is as suddenly cast forth. But if from the first arrest of concupiscence, he pass on to an imperfect consent,-from an imperfect consent, to a perfect and deliberate,-and from thence to an act, and so to a habit,-he ends in death; because, long before it is come thus far, the salt water is taken in.' The first concupiscence is but like rain-water; it discolours the pure springs, but makes them not deadly. But when in the progression the will mingles with it, it is like the Bópßopoç, or waters of brimstone;' and the current for ever after is unwholesome, and carries you forth into the Dead Sea, the lake of Sodom, "which is to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire:" but then the matter may be supposed little, till the will comes. For though a man may be surprised with a wanton eye, yet he cannot fight a duel against his knowledge, or commit adultery against his will. A man cannot, against his will, contrive the death of a man; but he may speak a rash word, or be suddenly angry, or triflingly peevish; and yet all this notwithstanding, be a good man still. These may be sins of infirmity, because they are imperfect actions in the whole; and such, in which as the man is for the present surprised, so they are such against which no watchfulness was a sufficient guard, as it ought to have been in any great matter, and might have been in sudden murders. A wise and a good man may easily be mistaken in a nice question, but can never suspect an article of his creed to be false: a good man may have many fears and doubtings in matters of smaller moment, but he never doubts of God's goodness, of his truth, of his mercy, or of any of his communicated perfections: he may fall into melancholy, and may suffer indefinite fears, of he knows not what himself; yet he can never explicitly doubt of any thing which God hath clearly revealed, and in which he is sufficiently instructed. A weak

eye may, at a distance, mistake a man for a tree; but he who, sailing in a storm, takes the sea for dry land, or a mushroom for an oak, is stark blind. And so is he who can think adultery to be excusable; or that treason can be duty; or that, by persecuting God's prophets, he does God good service; or that he propagates religion by making the ministers of the altar poor, and robbing the churches. A good man so remaining cannot suffer infirmity in the plain and legible lines of duty, where he can see, and reason, and con

sider.

I have now told which are sins of infirmity; and I have told all their measures. For as for those other false opinions by which men flatter themselves into hell, by a pretence of sins of infirmity, they are as unreasonable as they are dangerous; and they are easily reproved upon the stock of the former truths. Therefore,

55. VI. Although our mere natural inclination to things forbidden, be of itself a natural and unavoidable infirmity, and such which cannot be cured by all the precepts and endeavours of perfection; yet this very inclination, if it be heightened by carelessness or evil customs, is not a sin of infirmity. Tiberius, the emperor, being troubled with a fellow that wittily and boldly pretended himself to be a prince,—at last, when he could not by questions, he discovered him to be a mean person by the rusticity and hardness of his body: not by a callousness of his feet, or a wart upon a finger, but ὅλον τὸ σῶμα σκληρότερόν τε καὶ δουλοφανὲς καταμαθὼν, ἐνόησε Taν Tò σúvтayμa, "his whole body was hard and servile, and so he was discovered."-The natural superfluities, and excrescences, that inevitably adhere to our natures, are not sufficient indications of a servile person, or a slave to sin; but when our natures are abused by choice and custom, when the callousness is spread by evil and hard usages,-when the arms are brawny by the services of Egypt, then it is no longer infirmity, but a superinduced viciousness, and a direct hostility. When nature rules, grace does not. When the flesh is in power, the Spirit is not. Therefore it matters not from what corner the blasting wind does come,-from whence soever it is, it is deadly. Most of our sins are from natural inclinations; and the negative precepts of God, are, for the

most part, restraints upon them. Therefore, to pretend nature, when ourselves have spoiled it, is no excuse, but that state of evil, from whence the Spirit of God is to rescue and redeem us.

56. VII. Yea, but although it be thus in nature, yet it is hoped by too many, that it shall be allowed to be infirmity, when the violence of our passions or desires overcomes our resolutions. Against this, I oppose this proposition :—when violence of desire or passion engages us in a sin, whither we see and observe ourselves entering, that violence or transportation is not our excuse, but our disease :—and that resolution is not accepted for innocence or repentance: but the not performing what we did resolve is our sin, and the violence of passion was the accursed principle.

57. For to resolve is a relative and imperfect duty, in order to something else. It had not been necessary to resolve, if it had not been necessary to do it: and if it be necessary to do it, it is not sufficient to resolve it. And for the understanding of this the better, we must observe, that to resolve, and to endeavour, are several things. Tò resolve, is to purpose to do what we may if we will; some way or other the thing is in our power; either we are able of ourselves, or we are helped. No man resolves to carry an elephant, or to be as wise as Solomon, or to destroy a vast army with his own hands. He may endeavour this; for, to endeavour sometimes supposes a state of excellency, beyond our power, but not beyond our aims. Thus we must endeavour to avoid all sin, and to master all our infirmities; because to do so is the nobleness of a Christian courage, and that design which is the proper effect of charity, which is the best of Christian graces. But we cannot resolve to do it, because it is beyond all our powers; but may endeavour it, and resolve to endeavour it, but that is all we can do. But if to resolve be a duty, then to perform it is a greater; and if a man cannot be the child of God without resolving against all the habits of sin, then neither can he be his child, unless he actually quit them all.

58. But then if from acting our resolution we be hindered by passion and violent desires, we are plainly in the state ofimmortification. Passion is the ruler: and as the first step

of victory is to keep those passions and appetites from doing any criminal action abroad: so the worst they can do, is to engage and force the man to sin, and that against his will, even whether he list or no. But concerning this article, we are entirely determined by the words of St. Paul; "He that is in Christ, hath crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts P;" that is, the passions and desires of the flesh are mortified in all the regenerate: and therefore a state of passion is a state of death. But whatever the principle be, yet we must be infinitely careful we do not mistake a broken resolution for an entire piety. He that perpetually resolves, and yet perpetually breaks his resolution, does, all the way, sin against his conscience, and against his reason, against his experience, and against his observation; and it will be a strange offer at an excuse, for a man to hope for, or to pretend to, pardon, because he sinned against his conscience.

59. There is in this article some little difference in the case of young persons, the violence of whose passions, as it transports them infallibly to evil, so it helps to excuse some of it; but this is upon a double account: 1. Because part of it is natural, 'naturale vitium ætatis,'' the defect and inherent inclination of their age.' 2. And because their passions being ever strongest when their reason is weakest, the actions of young men are imperfect and incomplete. For deliberation being nothing else but an alternate succession of appetites, it is an unequal intercourse that a possessing, natural, promoted passion should contest against a weak, overborn, beginning, inexperienced, uninstructed reason: this alteration of appetites is like the dust of a balance weighing against a rock; the deliberation itself must needs be imperfect, because there is no equality. And therefore the Roman lawyers did not easily, upon a man under twenty-five years of age, inflict punishment, at least not extreme. They are the words of Tryphonius; "In delictis autem minor annis non xxv. meretur in integrum restitutionem, utique atrocioribus; nisi quatenus interdum miseratio ætatis ad mediocrem pœnam judicem produxerit," This, I say, is only a lessening of their fault, not imputing it. God is ready to pity every thing that is pitiable; and, therefore, is apt to instruct them more, and to forbear them longer, and to ex

P Gal. v. 24.

9: L, Auxil, sect, in delictis ff. de minoribus,