I came across this the other day in my reading of John Owen's work on Indwelling Sin. This is from the Taylor & Kapic edition.
"There is nothing that is more deeply inlaid in the principles of the natures
of all living creatures, and so of man himself, than a love unto and a care for
the preservation and nourishing of their young. Many brute creatures will die
for them; some feed them with their own flesh and blood; all deprive themselves
of that food which nature directs them to as their best, to impart it to
them, and act in their behalf to the utmost of their power. Now, such is the
efficacy, power, and force of indwelling sin in man—an infection that the
nature of other creatures knows nothing of—that in many it prevails to stop
this fountain, to beat back the stream of natural affections, to root up the
principles of the law of nature, and to drive them unto a neglect, a destruction
of the fruit of their own loins. Paul tells us of the old Gentiles that they
were astorgoi, “without natural affection” (Rom. 1:31).That which he aims
at is that barbarous custom among the Romans, who oftentimes, to spare
the trouble in the education of their children, and to be at liberty to satisfy
their lusts, destroyed their own children from the womb; so far did the
strength of sin prevail to obliterate the law of nature, and to repel the force
and power of it. Examples of this nature are common in all nations; among
ourselves, of women murdering their own children, through the deceitful reasoning
of sin. And herein sin turns the strong current of nature, darkens all
the light of God in the soul, controls all natural principles, influenced with
the power of the command and will of God. But yet this evil has, through the
efficacy of sin, received a fearful aggravation. Men have not only slain but
cruelly sacrificed their children to satisfy their lusts. The apostle reckons idolatry,
and so, consequently, all superstition, among the works of the flesh (Gal.
5:20); that is, the fruit and product of indwelling sin. Now, from hence it is
that men have offered that horrid and unspeakable violence to the law of
nature mentioned. (So the psalmist tells us in Psalm 106:37-38. The same is
again mentioned in Ezekiel 16:20-21, and in sundry other places.) The whole
manner of that abomination I have elsewhere declared.26 For the present it
may suffice to intimate that they took their children and burnt them to ashes
in a soft fire; the wicked priests that assisted in the sacrifice affording them
this relief, that they made a noise and clamor that the vile wretches might not
hear the woeful moans and cries of the poor, dying, tormented infants. I suppose
in this case we need no further evidence. Naturalists can give no rational
account, they can only admire the secret force of that little fish which, they
say, will stop a ship in full sail in the midst of the sea; and we must acknowledge
that it is beyond our power to give an account of that secret force and
unsearchable deceit that is in that inbred traitor, sin, that can not only stop
the course of nature, when all the sails of it, that carry it forward, are so filled
as they are in that of affections to children, but also drive it backward with
such a violence and force as to cause men so to deal with their own children
as a good man would not be hired with any reward to deal with his dog. And
it may not be to the disadvantage of the best to know and consider that they
carry that about them and in them which in others has produced these effects" (p. 390-391)
