A humbling word from v.3, p.199 of Thomas Adams' Works:
In every man are all sins because original sin is the material of all. This is not in some men more in some less, but in all equally as all are equally the children of Adam. There is in every man a want not of some but of all inclination to goodness: a proneness not to some but to all evil. The seeds of all sins are within us -- I do not say the practice, but the seeds.
Objection
But some are kind; others cruel; some mild; others furious; some civil; others licentious.
Answer
This difference ariseth not from more or less corruption but from more or less limitation. God restraineth nature, but that is no thanks to nature. Something we ascribe to corporeal constitution, something to civil education, something to legal subjection, something to secular vocation, something to national custom, something to rational direction: all to the limiting grace of God that corrects nature from running into divers sins. Without which any man would commit any sin, even the most horrid that over the world brought forth.
That some are not so angry, so wanton, so drunken, so covetous, as others it is not from their own natural goodness but the supernatural goodness of God. There is not the same eruption in all; there is in all the same corruption. Some be not [sic] kites, others hawks, and the rest eagles from one and the same eyrie.
But that God is pleased for his church's sake, for order's sake, for the world's sake, for man's sake, for his own glory's sake to repress and stint nature there would be no society among men.
Nor be these seeds in the worst only, but in the best natured men. So that make choice of the best man and the worst sin, and the worst sin is to be found in that best man: the seminale principium is in him. This every man that knows himself knows to be true. I appeal to the conscience especially of a good man, whether he find not in his nature an inclination to the foulest sin in the world. He that doth not feel this suggestion of concupiscence is stark dead in disobedience. Cain committed an unnatural murder in killing his brother and went to hell for his labour: we hate such a villainy, yet is the seed of this sin within us.
