Natural man's inability to escape the enslavement of sin

"He is 'sold under sin,' Rom. 7:14, and brought 'into captivity to the law of sin,' ver. 23. 'Law of sin:' that sin seems to have a legal authority over him; and man is not only a slave to one sin, but many, Tit. 3:3, 'serving divers lusts.' Now when a man is sold under the power of a thousand lusts, every one of which has an absolute tyranny over him, and rules him as a sovereign by a law; when a man is thus bound by a thousand laws, a thousand cords and fetters, and carried whither his lords please, against the dictates of his own conscience and force of natural light; can any man imagine that his own power can rescue him from the strength of these masters that claim such a right to him, and keep such a force upon him, and have so often baffled his own strength, when he attempted to turn against them?"

From The Chief of Sinners Objects of the Choicest Mercy, by Stephen Charnock.