5. If we observe a little child with attention, we shall see how this natural corruption displays itself from its very birth; and how self-will and disobedience especially discover themselves, and break forth into actions that effectually witness to the hidden root from which they spring. Let us consider the child further, as it grows up to maturer years. Observe the natural selfishness of the youth, his inbred ambition, his thirst after worldly glory, his love of applause, his pursuit of revenge, and his proneness to deceit and falsehood. And now these evils multiply. Soon may be discovered in him vanity, arrogance, pride, blasphemy, vain oaths, awful curses, frauds, skepticism, infidelity, contempt of God and his holy Word, and disobedience to parents and magistrates: wrath and contentiousness; hatred and envy; revenge and murder, and all kinds of cruelty; especially if outward occasions offer themselves, and call forth into action this latent and deadly seed, and the various evils of Adam’s depraved nature. In proportion as such occasions continue to present themselves, we shall observe the appearance of other vices; wantonness, adulterous thoughts, lewd imaginations, obscene discourses, lascivious gestures, and all “the works of the flesh:” we shall behold drunkenness, rioting, and every species of intemperance; fickleness, excessive wantonness, and all that can please the appetite, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. And besides these, there may soon be discovered, covetousness, extortion, chicanery, sophistry, imposture, and every description of sinister practice; together with knavery, overreaching in trade, and, in short, the whole troop, or rather army of sins, iniquities, and crimes, which are so various and so many, that it is impossible to recount or declare the number of them; according to the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Ch. 17:9. And if to those already enumerated there be added, in the last place, the seducing and false spirits; then may be observed schisms in the church, wicked and dangerous heresies, yea, the abjuring of God and Christ, idolatry, the denial of the faith, hatred and persecution of the truth, the sin against the Holy Ghost, with every kind of corruption in doctrine, perversion of the Scriptures, and strong delusion. Now, what are all these but the image of Satan, and the fruits of the serpent’s seed sown in man?