unspeakable love! Let him never go forth from my heart who for my sake refused to go down from the cross.

That we being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness.] The Lord doth nothing in vain, hath not made the least of his works to no purpose; In wisdom hath he made them all, says the Psalmist", and that is not only in regard of their excellent frame and order, but of their end, which is a chief point of wisdom; so then to the right knowledge of this great work put into the hands of Jesus Christ, it is of special concern to understand what is its end.

This is the thing that his wisdom and love aimed at in that great undertaking, and therefore it will be our truest wisdom, and the truest evidence of our reflex love to intend the same thing; that in this the same mind may be in us that was in Christ Jesus in his suffering for us, and for this very end is it expressed, That we being dead to sin, should live to righteousness.

In this there are three things to be considered, 1. What this death and life is; 2. The intendment of it in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ; 3. The effecting of it by them.

1st, What this death and life is. Now whatsoever it is, sure it is no small change that bears the name of the great and last natural change that we are subject to; a death, and then another kind of life succeeding to it; and in this the greatest part are mistaken, that they take any light alteration in themselves for true conversion.

A world of people are deluded with superficial moral changes in their life, some rectifying of their outward actions and course of life, and somewhat too in the temper and habit of their mind, far from reaching the bottom of nature's wickedness, and laying the axe to the root of the tree, it is such a work as men can make a shift with by themselves; but the renovation that the Spirit of God worketh h Psal. civ. 24.

is like himself, it is so deep and total a work, that it is justly called by the name of the most substantial works and productions, a new birth, and more than that, a new creation, and here a death and a kind of life following it.

This death to sin supposes a former living in it and to it; and while a man does so, he is said indeed to be dead in sin; and yet withal this is true, that he lives in sin, as the apostle joins the expressions, She that lives in pleasure is dead while she liveth*; dead in trespasses and sins, and he adds, wherein ye walked, which imports a life, such an one as it is, and more expressly, v. 3, We had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh. Now thus to live in sin, is called to be dead in it, because in that condition man is indeed dead, in respect of that divine life of the soul, that happy being which it should have in union with God, for which it was made, and with out which it had better not be at all. For that life, as it is different from its natural being, and a kind of life above it, so it is contrary to that corrupt being and life it hath in sin; and therefore to live in sin is to be dead in it, being a deprivement of that divine being, that life of the soul in God, in comparison whereof, not only the base life it hath in sin, but the very natural life it hath in the body, and that the body hath by it, is not worthy of the name of life. You see the body, when the thread of its union with the soul is cut, becomes not only straightway a motionless lump, but within a little time a putrified noisome carcase; and thus the sout by sin is cut off from God, who is its life, as is the soul of the body, it hath not only no moving faculty in good, but becomes full of rottenness and vileness, as the word is', They are gone aside and become filthy. The soul, by turning away from God, turns filthy; yet, as a man thus spiritually dead lives naturally so, because he acts and spends that natural life in the ways of sin, he is said, to live in sin, Yea, there is somewhat more in that expression than * Eph. ii. 1.

i 1 Tim. v. 6.

1 Psal, xiv 2.

the mere passing of his life in that way; for instead of that happy life his soul should have in God, he pleases himself in the miserable life of sin, that which is his death, as if it were the proper life of his soul: living in it imports that natural propension he hath to sin, and the continual delight he takes in it, as in his element, and living to it, as if that were the very end of his being. In that estate neither his body nor his mind stirreth without sin. Setting aside his manifest breaches of the law, those actions that are evidently and totally sinful; his natural actions, his eating and drinking; his religious actions, his praying, and hearing, and preaching, are sin at the bot, tom. And generally his heart is no other but a forge of sin; every imagination, every fiction of things framed there, is only evil continually", or every day, and all the day long, it is his very trade and life.

Now in opposition to this life of sin, living in it, and to it, a christian is said to die to sin, to be cut off or separated from it. In our miserable natural state there is as close an union betwixt us and sin, as betwixt our souls and bodies. It lives in us, and we in it, and the longer we live in that condition the more the union grows, and the harder it is to dissolve it; and it is as old as the union of soul and body; nor can any thing but the death that is here spoke of part them; and this death, in this relative sense, is mutual, in the work of conversion: `sin dies, and the soul dies to sin, and these two are really one and the same. The Spirit of God kills both at one blow, sin in the soul, and the soul to sin; as the apostle says of himself and the world", each is crucified to the other.

And there are in it chiefly these two things that make the difference, 1. The solidity; and, 2. The universality of this change under this notion of death.

Many things may lie in a man's way betwixt him and the acting of divers sins, which possibly he af

m Gen. vi. 5.

n Gal. vi. 14.

fects most. Some restraints outward or inward may be upon him, the authority of others, or the fear of shame or punishment, or the check of an enlightened conscience; and though by reason of these, he commit not the sin he would, yet he lives in it, because he loves it, because he would commit it; as we say, the soul lives not so much where it animates, as where it loves and generally that kind of metaphorical life, by which a man is said to live in any thing, hath its principal seat in the affection. That is the immediate link of the union in such a life; and the untying and death consists chiefly in the disengagement of the heart, breaking off the affection from it; ye that love the Lord, hate evil°. An unrenewed mind may have some temporary dislikes even of its beloved sins in cold blood, but it returns to like them within a while. A man may not only have times of cessation from his wonted way of sinning, but, by reason of the society wherein he is, and withdrawing of occasions to sin, and divers other causes, his very desire after it may seem to him to be abated, and yet he may be not dead to sin, but only asleep to it: and therefore, when a temptation backed with opportunity, and other inducing circumstances comes, and joggs him, he awakes, and arises and follows it.

A man may for a while distaste some meat he loves (possibly upon a surfeit) but he regains quickly his liking of it: every quarrel with sin, every fit of dislike to it, is not this hatred. Upon the lively representing the deformity of his sin to his mind, certainly a natural man may fall out with it; but these are but as the little jars of husband and wife, that are far from dissolving the marriage; it is not a fixed hatred, such as amongst the Jews inferred a divorce, if thou hate her put her away; and that is to die to it. As by a legal divorce the husband and wife are civilly dead one to another, in regard of the tie and use of marriage.

Again, some men's education and custom, and mo

• Psal. xcvii. 10.

ral principles, may free them from the grossest kind of sins; yea, a man's temper may be averse from them, but they are alive to their own kind of sins, such as possibly are not so deformed in the common account, covetousness or pride, or hardness of heart, and either a hatred or disdain of the ways of holiness that are too strict for them, and exceed their size. Besides for the good of human society, and for the interest of his own church and people, God restrains many natural men from the height of wickedness, and gives them moral virtues. There be very many, and very common sins that more refined natures, it may be, are scarce tempted to; but as in their diet and apparel, and other things in their natural life, they have the same kind of being with other persons, though they are more neat and elegant; so in this living to sin, they live the same life with other ungodly men, though with a little more delicacy.

They consider not, that the devils are not in themselves subject to, nor capable of many of those sins that are accounted grossest amongst men, and yet are greater rebels and enemies to God than men

are.

But to be dead to sin goes deeper, and extends further than all these, namely, a most inward alienation of heart from sin, and most universal from all sin, and an antipathy to the most beloved sin. Not only doth a man in this case forbear sin, but he hates it, I hate rain thoughts, and not only doth he hate some sins, but all, I hate every false way. A stroke at the heart, a wound given there, occasions the most certain and speedy death: for in this dying to sin, all the whole man of necessity dies to it; the mind dies to the device and study of sin, that vein and invention becomes dead; the hand dies to the acting of it; the ear to the delightful hearing of things profane and sinful; the tongue to the world's dialect of oaths and rotten speaking, and calumny and evil-speaking. This is the most

Psal cxix. 113.

9 ver. 128.