“Notwithstanding, after the fall of man, remained with our first parents some rest and footsteppes of this lawe, knowledge, and vertues, in the which he was created, and of him descended in us; by the which of our free will and power, we may do the outward deeds of the lawe, as is before written. This knowledge deceaved and beguiled the philosophers; for they looke but to the reason and judgement of man, and could not perceave the inward corruption of nature, but ever supponed man to bee clean and pure of nature, and might, of his own free will and naturall reason, fulfill all perfection. And when they perceaved the wickednes of man from his birth, they judged that to be by reason of the planete under whom he was borne, or through evill nourishing, upbringing, or other accidents, and could never consider the corrupted nature of man, which is the cause of all our wickednes; and therefore they erred, and were deceaved in their opinions and judgements; but the perfite Christian man should looke first in his corruption of nature, and consider what the law requireth of him, in the which he findeth his imperfection and sinnes accused, (for that is the office of the lawe, to utter sinne to man, and giveth him no remedy,) then of necessitie is he compelled either to despaire or seek Christ, by whom he shall get the justice that is of value before God, which can not be gotten by any lawe or workes, because by the deedes of the lawe no fleshe shall be justified before God.” p. 81‒83. “This proposition of the holy spirite is so perfite, that it excludeth (if ye will understande the same right) all the vaine foolish arguments of sophistrie made by the justifiers of themselfes, which perverte the words of S. Paule (as they doo the other scriptures of God) to their perversed sence and mind; saying, that the apostle excludeth by these wordes the workes of the law ceremonial, and {393} not the deeds of the lawe of nature, and morall lawe of Moyses. The which shameless sayings are expressly evacuat by the wordes of the apostle, insomuch that no man of righteous judgement can deny, but shall feel the same as it were in their hands, by this probation. The lawe speaketh to all, that is, accuseth all men that are under the lawe. All men are under the lawe of nature, or the lawe of Moyses, therefore the apostle speaketh of the lawe of nature and Moyses, and of all men which he comprehendeth under Jewe and Gentill, as he proveth by his argumentes in the first and second chap. to the Romans, and concludeth in the third chap. all men are sinners. If all men bee sinners, none is just; if none bee just, none fulfill the lawe; if none fulfill the lawe, the lawe can pronounce none just; therefore concludeth he, that of the deedes of the lawe no fleshe shall be fonde just before God. The same is proved by David in the 130 Psalme. Here ye see by the words of the apostle, he intends to prove and declare all men sinners; that is, to stoppe all men’s mouths, and to dryve