VirginiaHuguenot
Puritanboard Librarian
David Clarkson, "Of Original Sin," in Works, Vol. 1, pp. 11-12:
7. Its monstrousness -- the monstrous deformity it has brought upon the soul. The mind of man was the candle of the Lord, but hereby it is become a stinking snuff. The soul, as it proceeded from God, was a clear, lightsome beam, brighter than any ray of the sun, but hereby it is become a noisome dunghill. It was one of the most excellent pieces of the creation, next unto the angelical nature, but hereby it is transformed into an ugly monster. Why do we judge anything a monster, but for want, defect, or uselessness; impotency, dislocation, or misplacing of integral parts? And, by virtue of this corruption, there is a concurrence of all this in the soul, answerable, and in some proportion to what we judge monstrous in a body.
A child born without eyes, mouth, hands, legs, we judge a monster. There is a defect of such powers in the soul as are analogical to these parts in the body: there is no eye to see God naturally, corruption has put it out, born blind; there is no arms to embrace Christ, though he offer him self to our embraces; there is no mouth to receive spiritual nourishment, no stomach to digest it; there is no feet to move towards God, he must renew these organs before any spiritual motion.
All those parts are impotent which are in the soul. Though there be something instead of eyes (an understanding), yet it sees not, perceives not the things of God ; though there be something in the room of hands (the will), yet it inclines not to, it acts not for God; something in place of feet (the affections), yet they walk not in God s ways; if they move, it is back ward, either like the idol, without motion, eyes and see not, &c., Ps. cxxxv. 16, or monstrous motion; if look, it is downward, grovelling; if walk, it is backward from God, &c. The soul, ever since the fall, is halt, maimed ; all its parts broken or unjoined. Cecidit e manu figuli. Man's soul, framed by God according to his likeness, fell out of the hands of the potter, and so is all broken and shattered. Man's soul, wherein the Lord had exquisitely engraven his own image, and writ his own will and law with his own hand in divine characters, did cast itself out of God s hands, and fell, as the tables of stone, God s own workmanship, fell out of the hands of Moses, and so is broken into shivers; nothing is left but some broken, scattered relics, some obscure sculptures covered with the mud of natural corruption, so as it is scarce visible. That which appears is woeful ruins, such as shew what a glorious creature man was, though he be now, to his spiritual constitution, a monster.
There is a dislocation. What remains in man's soul is monstrously misplaced. We count that birth monstrous where parts have not their due place, when the head is where the feet should be, or the legs in the place of the arms, &c. The soul's faculties are thus monstrously dislocated; that which should be highest is lowest; that which should rule is in subjection; that which should obey does tyrannise. Passion over-rules reason, and the will receives law from the fancy and appetite. The will was sovereign, reason its counsellor, the appetite subject, to both; but now it is got above them, and often hurries both to a compliance with the dictates of sense. A spot, a blemish in the face of a beautiful child, when it comes but accidentally, does grieve the parents. How much cause then have we to bewail that natural, universal, monstrous deformity which has seized upon our souls!
