nay, more, the Pharisees' strictness, the zeal and unblameableness of Paul, the devotion of obstinate Jews, all the strength of civil, moral, formal shows and expressions of goodness, though precious in the eyes of men,—yet, in the eyes of God, that seeth not as man seeth, they are all but sinful and filthy, loss and dung. Lastly, Because Nature in particular men never knew, nor had experience of a better estate, and therefore must needs be ignorant of that full image of God in which it was created, and unto which it ought still to be conformable. As a man, born in a dungeon, is unable to conceive the state of a palace; as the child of a nobleman, stolen away and brought up by some lewd beggar, cannot conceive or suspect the honour of his blood;-so utterly unable is corrupted Nature, that hath been born in a womb of ignorance, bred in a hell of uncleanness, enthralled from the beginning to the prince of darkness,-to conceive, or convince a man of that most holy and pure condition in which he was created ", the least deviation wherefrom is sin unto him. Now then, since Nature cannot thus convince, the Spirit in the commandment must. We have no inward principles but these two. We grant there is a difference to be made between the illumination " and renovation of the Spirit: men may be enlightened, and yet not sanctified; as a false star, or an' ignis fatuus,' may have light without influence or heat. Yet withal it is certain too, that it is impossible to know sin in that hatefulness which is in it, with such a knowledge as begets hatred and detestation of it, or to know divine things with such a knowledge as is commensurate to them, such as in their spiritual and immediate purity they are apt to beget, but that knowledge must work admiration, delight, love, endeavours of conformity unto so heavenly truths. No comprehension of things divine without love?: the reason why * Luke xviii. 11, 12. Acts xxvi. 5. Joseph, Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. 2. De Bello Judaico, lib. i. cap. 4. evσebéσtepov t☎v dλλwv. Vid. Epiphanium contra Heres. lib. i. tom. 1. Heres. 16. I Prov. x. 27. Hag. ii. 12. Psal. li. 5. Gen. vi. 5, Gen. viii. 21. m 1 Cor. vii. 14. Isai. i. 4. Prov. xxii. 15. " Heb. vi. 4. Aug. de Mor. • Sacros Scripturæ libros nullus inimicus cognoscere sinitur: Eccles. lib. i. cap. 25. Si voluntatem Dei nosse quisquam desiderat, fiat amicus Deo. Hoc si haberent, non essent Hæretici. Idem de Gen. contra Manicheos lib. 1. cap. 2. P Ephes. iii. 17, 18. God gives men over to "strong delusions, to believe lies," is, because they did not "receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved 9." This conviction then of sin, the Spirit worketh, First, by revealing the rule: Secondly, by opening the condition of the state of sin: Thirdly, by giving a heart experimentally and reflectively to understand all, or by shaping and framing the heart to the Word, and so mingling them both together. The apostle saith, that "by the commandment sin revived." By the life of sin,' I understand the strength of it; and that is twofold: a strength to condemn, and a strength to operate, or work in a man obedience to itself:a strength to hold a man fast, and carry him its own way. Sin is a body, and hath "earthly members "," which are very active and vigorous. The apostle speaketh of a holding" property which it hath; and this strength hath the sinews of all strength in it. It is a lord, and so it hath the strength of power to command; and it is a husband, and so it hath the strength of love, to persuade and prevail. First, It is a lord and master; in which respect it hath these ties upon us: First, a covenant; there is a virtual bargain between lust and a sinnert. We make promise of serving, and obeying sin "; and that returneth unto us the wages of iniquity, and the pleasures of sin. Secondly, love unto it, as unto a bountiful and beneficial lord. Sin exerciseth authority over us, and yet we account it our benefactor. Thirdly, an easy service; the work of sin is natural; the instruments all ready at hand; the helpers and fellow-servants many, to teach, to encourage, to hasten and lead on in the broad way. Fourthly, in sin itself there is a great strength to enforce men to its service: First, it is edged with malice against the soul, armed with weapons to fight against it, and enmity is a great whetstone to valour. Secondly, it is attended with fleshly wisdom, supported with stratagems and deceit, heartened and set on by the assistance Thes. l. 10, 11. a г r Col. iii. 4. 25. Rom. vii. 6. t Isai. xxviii. 15, y Luke xxii. of Satan and the world. Thirdly, it hath a judicature and regiment in the heart; it governs by a law; it sends forth lusts and temptations like so many edicts into the soul: and when we object the law of God against the service that is required, then as that Persian King ", who could not find out a law to warrant the particular which he would have done, found out another, "that he might do what he would;" so sin when it hath no reason to allege, yet it hath self-will, that is, all laws in one*. In one word, the strong man is furnished with a whole armoury. Secondly, Sin is a husband; and so it hath the power of love, which, the wise man saith, "is as strong as death," that will have no denial when it comes. St. Paul tells us, there is a constraining power in love. Who stronger than Sampson, and who weaker than a woman? yet by love she overcame him, whom all the Philistines were unable to deal with. Now as between a man and a strumpet, so between lust and the heart, there are first certain cursed dalliances and treaties; by alluring temptations, the heart is drawn away from the sight of God and his law, and enticed; and then follows the accomplishment of uncleanness b. This, in the general, is that life of strength of sin here spoken of. We are next to observe, that the ground of all this is the law: "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law :" from the law it is, that sin hath both strength to condemn, and to command us, or "have dominion over us d " C Now the law gives life or strength to sin three ways: First, by the curse and obligation of it, binding the soul with the guilt of sin unto the judgment of the great day. Every sinner hath the sentence passed upon him already, and in part executed: "he that believeth not, is condemned already, the wrath of God abideth on him"." All men come into the world with the wrath of God, like a talent of lead upon their soul; and it may all be poured out within one hour upon them there is but a span between them and judgment. In which interim, First, the law f stops the mouth of a sinner; Ephes. iv. 22. Heb. iii. 13. Rom. vii. 23. y Luke xi. 22. e 1 Cor. xv. 56. 1 Joh. iii. 4. u Herodotus. * Gen. xlix. 6. 2 Pet. ii. 10. b Jam. i. 14. f Rom. iii. 19. k shuts him ins, and holds him fast", under the guilt of his sin. Secondly, it passeth sentence upon his soul, sealing the assurance of condemnation and wrath to come. Thirdly, it beginneth even to put that sentence in execution, with the spirit of bondage', and of fear "; shaking the conscience; wounding the spirit, and scorching the heart with the preapprehensions of Hell; making the soul see some portion of that tempest which hangeth over it, rising out of that sea of sin which is in his life and nature (as the " prophet's servant did the cloud), and so terrifying the soul with a certain fearful expectation of judgment. Thus the law strengthens sin, by putting it into a condemning power. Secondly, by the irritation of the law. "Sin took occasion," saith the apostle P, " by the law, and so by the commandment became exceeding sinful." When lust finds itself universally restrained, meets with death and Hell at every turn, can have no subterfuge nor evasion from the rigour and inexorableness of the law; then, like a river that is stopped, it riseth and foams, and rebels againt the law of the mind, and fetcheth in all its force and opposition, to rescue itself from that sword, which heweth it in pieces. And thus the law is said to strengthen sin, not 'per se,' out of the intention of the law, but by accident and antiperistasis,' exciting and provoking that strength which was in sin before, though undiscerned, and less operative. For as the presence of an enemy doth actuate and call forth that malice, which lay habitually in the heart before; so the purity of the law, presenting itself to concupiscence in every one of those fundamental obloquies, wherein it lay before undisturbed, and waylaying the lust of the heart, that it may have no passage, doth provoke that ha bitual fierceness and rebellion which was in it before, to lay about on all sides for its own safety. Thirdly, by the conviction and manifestation of the law, laying open the wideness of sin to the conscience. Man naturally is full of pride and self-love, apt to think well of his spiritual estate upon presumptions and principles of his own; and though many profess to expect salvation from Christ only, Rom. xi. 32. Gal. iii. 23. Mark xvi. 16. 1 Cor. xiv. 25. a1 Kings xviii. 44. h Rom. vii. 6. i Gal. iii. 10. 13. 2 Cor. iii. 7. k Hos. vi. 5. 1 Rom. viii. 15. m 2 Tim. i. J. • Heb. x. 26. P Rom. vii. 8. yet inasmuch as they will be in Christ no way but their own, that shews that still they rest in themselves for salvation. This is that deceit, and guile of spirit, which the Scripture mentions, which makes the way of "a fool right in his own eyes "." The philosophers tells us of a sea, wherein by the hollowness of the earth under it, or some whirling and at-. tractive property that sucks the vessel into it, ships use to be cast away in the midst of a calm; even so many men's souls do gently perish in the midst of their own securities and presumptions. As the fish polypus changeth himself into the colour of the rock, and then devours those that come thither for shelter; so do men shape their mispersuasions into a form of Christ and faith in him, and destroy themselves. How many men rest in Pharisaical generalities, plod on in their own civilities, moralities, external justice, and unblamableness, account any thing indiscretion and unnecessary strictness that exceeds their own model; every man in Hell, that is worse than themselves ("I am not as this publican"), and others that are better, but in a fool's paradise! and all. this out of ignorance of the law. This here was the apostle's case; when "he lived after the strictest sect of the Pharisees,” 'sin was dead,' he esteemed himself blameless:' but when the commandment came,' discovered its own spiritualness, and the carnalness of all his performances; removed his curtailed glosses and presumptuous prejudices; opened the inordinateness of natural concupiscence; shewed how the least atom doth spot the soul, the smallest omission qualify for Hell; made the conscience see those infinite sparkles and swarms of lust that rise out of the heart; and that God is all eye to see, and all fire to consume every unclean thing; that the smallest sins that are, require the preciousest of Christ's blood to expiate and wash them out;-then he began to be convinced, that he was all this while under the hold of sin, that his conscience was yet under the paw of the lion. As the serpent that was dead in snow, was revived at the fire; so sin that seems dead, when it lies hid under the ignorances and mispersuasions of a secure heart, when either the word of God (which the prophet calls 'fire'), or the last judgment shall q Jer. xvii. r Psal. xxxii. • Arist. Problem. sect. 23. qu. 5. Tertul. de Anima, cap. 52. |