12.
The reasonable creature, it is true, hath more liberty in its actions, freely choosing one thing and rejecting another; yet it cannot be denied, that in acting of that liberty, their choice and refusal [A] follow the sway of their nature and condition.
[A] I would fain substitute for 'follow,' the words, 'are most often determined, and always affected, by.' I do not deny that the will follows the nature; but then the nature itself is a will.
Ib.
As the angels and glorified souls, (their nature being perfectly holy and unalterably such,) they cannot sin; they can delight in nothing but obeying and praising that God, in the enjoyment of whom their happiness consisteth.
If angels be other than spirits made perfect, or, as Leighton writes, "glorified souls,"-- the "unalterable by nature" seems to me rashly asserted.
Ib.
The mind, [Greek: phronaema].

Some render it the prudence or wisdom of the flesh.

Here you have it, the carnal mind; but the word signifies, indeed, an act of the mind, rather than either the faculty itself, or the habit of prudence in it, so as it discovers what is the frame of both those.
I doubt.

[Greek: Phronaema] signifies an act: and so far I agree with Leighton.

But [Greek: phronaema sarkos] is 'the flesh' (that is, the natural man,) in the act or habitude of minding--but those acts, taken collectively, are the faculty--the understanding.
How often have I found reason to regret, that Leighton had not clearly made out to himself the diversity of reason and the understanding! Ib.Serm.XV.p.