after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does
not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would
not, that I do."

"The better seeing and approving,
Towards the worse I still am moving:"

Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of
sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason,
prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do,
"in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel
accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving
effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty--
"that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the spirit."

Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John
says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old
history, and yet not an old but a new one. _Old_, in the sense, that,
from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin,
every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the
dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by
the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find
an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the
responsible _I_ that did wrong: this _I_ being controlled by sin, which
is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and
controlling the man in spite of him. And, escaped from this and the
like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species