If you have

lusts; yea to disdain and loath them. If the least experience of the sweetness of his love, if you have but tasted of the crystal river of his pleasures, the muddy puddle of the pleasures of sin will be hateful and loathsome to you; yea the very best earthly delights will be disrelished, and will seem unsavoury to your taste. The imbittering the breasts of the world to the godly by afflictions, doth something indeed to wean them from them; but the breasts of consolation that are given them in their stead, wean much more effectually.

The true reason why we remain servants to these lusts, some to one, some to another, is, because we are still strangers to the love of God, and those pure pleasures that are in him. Though the pleasures of this earth be poor and low, and most unworthy our pursuit, yet so long as men know no better, they will stick by those they have, such as they are. The philosopher gives this as the reason, why men are so much set upon sensual delights, because they know not the higher pleasures that are proper to the soul; and they must have it some way. It is too often in vain to speak to men in this strain, to follow them with the Apostle's intreaty, I beseech you abstain from fleshly lusts, unless they that are spoke to, be such as he speaks of in the former words, such as have obtained mercy, and have tasted of the graciousness and love of Christ, whose loves are better than wine. Oh that we would seek the knowledge of this love, for seeking it we should find it, and finding it, no force would need to pull the delights of sin out of our hands, we should throw them away of our own accord.

Thus a carnal mind prejudices itself against religion, when it hears that it requires an abstinence from fleshly lusts, bereaves men of their mirth and delight in sin: But they know not that it is to make way for more refined and precious delights. There is nothing of this kind taken from us, but by a very advantageous exchange it is made up. In the world

ye shall have affliction, but in me ye shall have peace. Is not want of the world's peace abundantly paid with peace in Christ? Thus fleshly lusts are cast out of the hearts of believers as rubbish and trash, to make room for spiritual comforts. We are barred fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, to the end we may have fellowship with God and his Son Jesus Christ'. This is to make men eat Angels food indeed, as was said of the manna. The serving of the flesh sets man below himself, down amongst the beasts, and the consolations of the Spirit and communion with God raise him above himself, and associate him with the Angels. But let us speak to the Apostle's own dissuasives from these lusts; 1. From the condition of christians; 2. From the condition of those lusts.

1. From the condition of christians, as strangers. These dispersed Jews were strangers scattered in divers countries, but here that is not intended; they are called strangers in that spiritual sense that agrees in common to all the saints. Possibly in calling them thus, he alludes to their outward dispersion, but means their spiritual alienation from the world, and interest in the New Jerusalem.

And this he uses as a very pertinent enforcement of his exhortation. Whatsoever others do, the serving of the flesh, and love of the world, is most incongruous and unseemly in you. Consider what you are; if you were citizens of this world, then you might drive the same trade with them, and follow the same lusts; but seeing you are chosen and called out of this world, and invested into a new society, made free of another city, and are therefore here but travellers passing through to your own country, it is very reasonable that there be this difference betwixt you and the world, that while they live as at home, your carriage be such as fits strangers, not glutting yourselves with their pleasures, not surfeiting upon their delicious fruits, as * Chap. i. v. 1.

1 John i. 3. 7.

s Psal. lxxviii. 25.
S

some unwary travellers do abroad; but as wise strangers living warily and soberly, and still minding most of all your journey homewards, suspecting dangers and snares in your way, and so walking with holy fear, as the Hebrew word for a stranger imports.

There is indeed a miserable party even within a christian, the remainder of corruption, that is no stranger here; and therefore keeps friendship and correspondence with the world, and will readily betray him if he watch not the more: so that he is not only to fly the pollutions of the world that are round about him, and to chuse his steps that he be not ensnared from without; but he is to be upon a continual guard against the lust and corruption that is yet within himself, to curb and controul them, and give them resolute and flat refusals when they solicit him, and to stop up their essays and opportunities of intercourse with the world, and such things as nourish them, and so to do what he can to starve them out of the holds they keep within him, and to strengthen that new nature which is in him; to live and act according to it, though so he shall be sure to live as a stranger here, and a despised, mocked. and hated stranger.

And it is not, on the whole, the worse that it be So. If men in foreign countries be subject to forget their own at any time, it is sure then, when they are most kindly used abroad, and are most at their ease; and thus a christian may be in some danger when he is best accommodated, and hath most of the smiles and caresses of the world; so that though he can never wholly forget his home that is above, yet his thoughts of it will be less frequent, and his desires of it less earnest, and it may be he may insensibly slide into its customs and habits, as men will do that are well seated in some other country: but by the troubles and unfriendliness of the world he gains this, that when they abound most upon him, he then feels himself a stranger, and remembers to behave as such, and thinks often with

much delight and strong desires on his own country, and the rich and sure inheritance that lies there, and the ease and rest he shall have when he comes thi ther.

And this will persuade him strongly to fly all polluted ways and lusts, as fast as the world follows them. It will make him abhor the pleasures of sin, and use the allowable enjoyments of this earth warily and moderately, never engaging his heart to them as worldlings do, but always keeping that free, free from that earnest desire in the pursuit of worldly things, and that deep delight in the enjoyment of them, which the men of the earth bestow upon them. There is a diligence in his calling and prudent regard of his affairs, not only permitted to a christian, but required of him. But yet in comparison of his great and high calling (as the apostle terms it) he follows all his other business with a kind of coldness and indifferency, as not caring very much which way they go, his heart is elsewhere. The traveller provides himself as he can of entertainment and lodging where he comes; if it be commodious, it is well; but if not, it is no great matter, if he find but necessaries, he can abate delicacies very well. For where he finds them in his way, he neither can, nor if he could, would chuse to stay there, though his inn were dressed with the richest hangings and furniture; yet it is not his home; he must and would leave it. That is the character of ungodly men, they mind earthly things", they are drowned in them over head and ears, as we say.

If christians would consider how little, and for how little a while they are concerned in any thing here, they would go through any state, and any changes of state, either to the better or the worse, with very composed equal minds, always moderate in their necessary cares, and never taking any care at all for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts of it*.

Let them that have no better home than this world to lay claim to, live here as at home, and Phil. iii. 19. x Rom. xiii. 14.

serve their lusts, they that have all their portion in this life, no more good to look for than what they can catch here; let them take their time of the poor profits and pleasures that are here: but you that have your whole estate, all your riches and pleasures laid up in Heaven, and reserved there for you; let your hearts be there, and your conversation there. This is not the place of your rest, nor your delights, unless you would be willing to change, and to have your good things here, as some foolish travellers, that spend the estate they should live on at home, in a little while's braving it abroad amongst strangers. Will you with prophane Esau, sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, sell eternity for a moment, and such pleasures, as a moment of them is more worth than an eternity of the other?

2. The Apostle argues from the condition of their lusts. It were quarrel enough against fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, that they are so far below the soul, that they cannot content, no, nor at all reach the soul; they are not a suitable, much less a satisfying good to it. Although sin hath unspeakably abused the soul of man, yet its excellent nature and original does still cause a vast disproportion betwixt it, and all those gross base things of the earth that concern the flesh, and go no further. But this is not all, these fleshly lusts are not only no benefit to the soul, but they are its pernicious enemies; they war against it; and their war against it is all made up of stratagem and slight, for they cannot hurt the soul, but by itself. They promise it some contentment, and so gain its consent to serve them, and undo itself; they embrace the soul that they may strangle it. The soul is too much diverted from its own proper business, by the inevitable and incessant necessities of the body: and therefore it is the height of injustice and cruelty to make it likewise serve the extravagant and sinful desires of the flesh; so much time for sleep, and so much for eating and drinking and dressing, and undressing,

y Heb. xii. 16,