that these lusts were unbeseeming even their former condition as Jews, but much more unsuitable to them now as Christians. Some of the grossest of these lusts he names, meaning all the rest, all the ways of sin, and so representing their vileness in the more lively manner. Not, as some take it when they hear of such heinous sins, as if it were to lessen the evil of sins of a more civil nature by the comparison, or as if freedom from these were a blameless condition, and a change of it needless: no, the Holy Ghost means it just contrary, that we may judge of all sin and of our sinful nature, by our estimate of those sins that are most discernible and abominable. All sin, though not equal in degree, yet is of one nature and originally springs from one root, arising from the same unholy nature of man, and contrary to the same holy nature and will of God.

So then those who walk in the highways of impiety, and yet will have the name of Christians, they are the shame of Christians, and the professed enemies of Jesus Christ, and of all others the most hateful to him. They seem to have taken his name, for no other end than to shame and disgrace it. But he will vindicate himself, and the blot shall rest upon these impudent persons, who dare hold up their faces in the church of God as parts of it, and are indeed nothing but the dishonor of it, spots and blots; who dare profess to worship God as his people, and remain unclean, riotous, and profane persons. How suits thy sitting here before the Lord, and thy sitting with vile ungodly company on the alebench? How agrees the word, sounds it well, There goes a drunken Christian, an unclean, a basely covetous, or earthly-minded Christian? And the naming of the latter is not besides the text, but agreeable to the very words of it; for the apostle warrants us to take it under the name of idolatry, and in that name he reckons it to be mortified by a Christian; Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

But yet men who are someway exempted from the blot of these foul impieties, may still remain slaves to sin, alive

to it, and dead to God, living to the lusts of men, and not to the will of God, pleasing others and themselves, and displeasing him. And the smoothest, best bred, and most moralized natural man, is in this base thraldom; and he is the more miserable in that he dreams of liberty in the midst of his chains, thinks himself clean by looking on those that wallow in gross profaueness; takes measure of himself by the most crooked lives of ungodly men about him, and so thinks himself very straight; but lays not the straight rule of the will of God to his ways and heart, which if he did, he would then discover much crookedness in his ways, and much more in his heart that now he sees not.

Therefore I advise and desire you to look more narrowly to yourselves, and see whether you be not still living to your own lusts and wills instead of to God, seeking, in all your ways, to advance and please yourselves, and not him. Is not the bent of your hearts set that way? Do not your whole desires and endeavours run in this channel, how you and yours may be somebody, and how you may have wherewithal to serve the flesh, and to be accounted of and respected amongst men? And if we trace it home, all a man's honoring and pleasing of others tends to and ends in pleasing of himself: it resolves into that. And is it not so meant by him? He pleases men, either that he may gain by them, or be respected by them, or that something that is still pleasing to himself, may be the return of it. So self is the grand idol, for which all other heart-idolatries are committed; and, indeed in the unrenewed heart there is no scarcity of them. O what multitudes, what heaps, if the wall were digged through, and the light of God going before us and leading us in to see them! The natural motion and way of the natural heart is no other than still seeking out new inventions, a forge of new gods, still either forming them to itself or worshipping those it hath already framed; committing spiritual fornication from God with the creature, and multiplying lovers every where, as the Lord complains of his people, upon every high hill and under every green tree. But when God comes into the soul, he lets it see itself, and all its idols and idolatries, and forces it to ab.

455 hor and loath itself for all its abominations; and having discovered its filthiness to itself, then he purges and cleanses it for himself from all its filthiness, and from all its idols according to his promise, and comes in and takes possession of it for himself, enthrones himself in the heart. And it is never right nor happy till that be done.

But to the will of God. We readily take any little slight change for true conversion, but we may see here that we mistake it. It doth not barely knock off some obvious apparent enormities, but casts all in a new mould, alters the whole frame of the heart and life, kills a man, and makes him alive again. And this new life is contrary to the old; for the change is made with that intent, that he live no longer to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. He is now, indeed a new creature, having a new judgment and new thoughts of things, and so accordingly new desires and affections, and, answerably to these, new actions; Old things are past away and all things are become new.

Now that it may be thus, that we may wholly live to the will of God, we must know his will, what it is. Persons grossly ignorant of God and of his will cannot live to him. We cannot have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness; for he is light. So then upon this knowledge of God's will, where it is spiritual and from himself, follows the suiting of the heart with it, the af fections taking the stamp of it and agreeing with it, receiving the truth in the love of it, so that the heart may be transformed into it; and now it is not driven to obedience violently, but sweetly moving to it by love within the heart, framed to the love of God, and so of his will. As divine knowledge begets this affection, so this affection will bring forth action, real obedience; for these three are inseparably linked, and each dependent on and the product of the others. The affection is not blind, but flowing from knowledge; nor the actual obedience constrained, but flowing from affection; and the affection is not idle, seeing it brings forth obedience; nor is the knowledge dead, seeing it begets affection.

Thus the renewed, the living Christian, is all for God, a sacrifice entirely offered up to God, and a living sacri

fice, which lives to God. He takes no more notice of his own carnal will; hath renounced that to embrace the holy will of God; and therefore, though there is a contrary law and will in him, yet he does not acknowledge it, but only the law of Christ as now established in him; that law of love, by which he is sweetly and willingly led. Real obedience consults not now with flesh and blood, what will please them, but only inquires what will please his God, and knowing his mind, thus resolves to demur no more, nor to ask consent of any other. My Lord, says he, wills it, therefore, in his strength, I will do it; for now I live to his will; it is my life to study and obey it.

Now we know what is the true character of the redeemed of Christ, that they are freed from the service of themselves and of the world, yea, dead to it, and have no life but for God, as altogether his. Let it then be our study and ambition to attain this, and to grow in it; to be daily further freed from all other ways and desires, and more wholly addicted to the will of our God; displeased when we find any thing else stir or move within us but that, making that the spring of our motion in every work.

Because we know that his sovereign will is the glory of his name, therefore we are not to rest till this be set up in our view, as our end in all things, and we are to account all our plausible doings as hateful, which are not aimed at this end; yea, endeavouring to have it as frequently and as expressly before us as we can, still keeping our eye on the mark; throwing away, yea, undoing our own interest, not seeking ourselves in any thing, but him in all. As living to his will is in all things to be our end, so in all the way to that end, it is to be the rule of every step; for we cannot attain his end but in his way; nor can we attain it without a resignation of the way to his prescription, taking all our directions from him, how we shall honor him in all. The soul that lives to him, hath enough to make any thing not only warrantable but amiable in seeking his will; and he not only does it, but delights to do it. This is to live to him, to find it our life; as we speak of a work wherein men do most and with most delight employ themselves. That such a lust be

crucified, is it thy will, O Lord? Then no more advising, no more delay. How dear soever that was when I lived to it, it is now as hateful, seeing I live to thee who hatest it. Wilt thou have me forget an injury, though a great one, and love the person that hath wronged me? While I lived to myself and my passions, this had been hard. But now, how sweet is it! seeing I live to thee, and am glad to be put upon things most opposite to my corrupt heart; glad to trample upon my own will, to follow thine! And this I daily aspire to and aim at, to have no will of my own, but that thine be in me, that I may live to thee, as one with thee, and thou my rule and delight; yea, not to use the very natural comforts of my life, but for thee; to eat, and drink, and sleep for thee; and not to please myself, but to be enabled to serve and please thee; to make one offering of myself and all my actions to thee, my Lord.

O it is the only sweet life, to be living thus, and daily learning to live more fully thus! It is heaven this, a little scantling of it here and a pledge of all heaven hereafter. This is indeed the life of Christ, not only like his, but one with his; it is his spirit, his life derived into the soul, and therefore both the most excellent, and certainly the most permanent life, he dieth no more, and therefore this his life cannot be extinguished. Hence is the perseverance of the saints, because they have one life with Christ, and so are alive unto God, once for all, for

ever.

It is true, the former custom of sin would plead with grace old possession; and this the apostle implies here, that because formerly we lived to our lusts, they will urge that; but he teaches us to beat it directly back on them, and turn the edge of it as a most strong reason against them: True, you had so long time of us, the more is our sorrow and shame, and the more reason that it be no longer so.

The rest of his time in the flesh, that is, in this body, is not to be spent as the foregoing, in living to the flesh, that is, the corrupt lusts of it and the common ways of the world; but as often as the Christian looks back on that, he is to find it as a spur in his side, to be the more Div. No. VII.

2 Q