But consider for a moment what will necessarily follow from the doctrine of making original righteousness, not to have been an essential part of created nature, but only a certain superfluous and superadded gift or ornament. If you lay it down as a fact, that original righteousness was not an essential quality of the nature of man, it must inevitably follow that the sin, which followed original righteousness, was also not an essential quality of the nature of man. And if so, was it not an utterly vain thing that Christ should be sent into the world as the Redeemer of man, if it was man's original righteousness only, which was merely a foreign and separate addition to his nature, that was lost; and if that loss still left the faculties and qualities of his original nature sound and perfect? But what doctrine can be worse than this? What doctrine more unworthy a divine to utter? Flee therefore from such mad dreams as from a real pestilence and from corruption of the Holy Scriptures; and let us instead follow actual experience which teaches us that we are born of corrupt seed and that we derive from the very nature of that seed, ignorance of God, self-security, unbelief, hatred of God, disobedience, impatience and numberless other kindred evils; all which are so engendered and implanted in our very nature, and are a poison so wholly diffused throughout our flesh, body, soul, nerves and blood, yea, through all our bones and their very marrow; and so wholly poisoning our will, our understanding and our reason, that the poison not only can never be extracted, but that we cannot even acknowledge, or feel, or see that this is our state of sin! It is a well known sentiment of the old Greek comedian, Aristophanes, "that to visit harlots is no disgrace to a youth." Pardon however may be extended to such a sentiment in a heathen poet. But it is most awful in such as call themselves Christian men, and men professing a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, to incline toward such a sentiment that whoredom is not positive sin. And yet, whole colleges of our canonicals actually approve the sentiment, with one consent by their lives and manners. When this is the case therefore with respect to actual outward sins, what must we conclude to be the state of men's minds, with respect to the uncleanness of the heart and the motions of sin in our very nature? These motions of nature, wicked men cannot of course understand to be sins.