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226 THE FIFTU SERMON. [MaRK IX. 49.
that that is the Lord's : your thoughts, your affections, your time, your strength, do all belong to him.
(2.) Because God will one day call us to an account : Luke xix. 23, ' He will demand his own with usury.' We shall be called to a reckoning, what we have done for God, what part and portion he hath liad in our time, our strength, our parts, our interest ; therefore every in-udent and wise Christian should himself keep a faithful and con- stant reckoning how he lays out himself for God, for he must have a share in all things that we have or do.
(3.) We must be very sincere in this, because we are under the eye and inspection of God, who considers whose business we do, his or our own : liuke i. 75, ' That we should serve him in holiness and right- eousness before him all the days of our life.' We are ever before him, and though he doth not presently call us to an account, yet many times now he punisheth us for our neglect and mindlessness of his interest : Ezek. xvi. 8, ' Ye entered into a covenant w'ith me, and became mine.' That was the reason of his judgments against them. When those that are his do not carry themselves as his, when that that is sacred is profaned by a common use, then a judgment is coming upon a nation, if dedicated to God, and it warps from him, or upon a person, if his ways be not upright with him.
IL The next thing I am to do is to prove that the grace of morti- fication is the true salt wherewith this offering and sacrifice should be seasoned. There is some dispute what is meant by the salt which Christ recommends to his disciples, and what was figured by the salt in the sacrifice, whether wisdom or zeal. In general, it is the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which sin is subdued and prevented ; and the mean- ing suits exactly with the emblem and representation : for —
1. Salt preserves flesh from putrefaction by consuming that super- fluous and excrementitious moisture, which otherwise would soon cor- rupt ; and so the salt of the covenant doth prevent and subdue those lusts wdiich would cause us to deal unfaithfully with God. Alas ! meat is not so apt to be tainted as we are to be corrupted and weakened in our resolutions to God, without the mortifying grace of the Spirit. ' That which is lame is soon turned out of the way, unless it be healed,' Heb. xii. 13. And nothing is so unstable and mutable as an unmortified soul ; therefore we can never behave ourselves as a sacrifice and an offer- ing to God, unless we ' mortify our members which are upon earth, inor- dinate affections, covetousness, and the like,' Col. iii. 5. In short, the flesh is that which is apt to be corrupted, and therefore the grace that doth preserve us must be sometliing that doth wean us from the in- terests of the flesh, and what is that but the mortifying grace of the Holy Spirit ? The apostle saith, Eph. vi. 24, ' Grace be with all them tliat love the Lord Jesus in sincerity,' or ' in incorruption.' There are many crooked lusts which arc apt to corrupt us and withdraw^ our love to other things, but when these are mortified and subdued, that we may have a greater amplitude of affection towards God and Christ, then we are said to love him in sincerity and in incorruption.
2. Salt hath an acrimony, and doth macerate things and pierce into them ; and so the grace of mortification is j^ainful and troublesome to the carnal nature. How healthful and useful soever it be to the soul,
Mark IX. 49.] the fifth sermon. 227
no question it is distasteful to curb our affections, and govern our hearts in the fear of Grod, and to row against the stream of flesh and blood ; but yet it is wholesome, it is a crucifying of the flesh, to handle it as Christ suffered on the cross, to give it vinegar and gall ; but yet this is necessary ; this is the tiling which our Lord intends here in the context, that the sacrifice must be consumed or macerated ; we either must suffer the pains of hell or the pains of mortification ; we must be salted with fire or salted with salt. It is better to pass to heaven with difiiculty and austerity, than to avoid these difliculties and run into sin, and so be in danger of eternal fire. The strictness of Christianity is nothing so grievous as the punishment of sin. The philosophers, when they speak of the nature of man, observe that in the concupiscible part, to vypop, something like moisture inclines to pleasure, in the irascible, to -xlrv-xpov, something like cold inclines to fear. This salt is to fetch out both, by checking our sensual inclination and also our worldly fears. We must crucify the flesh with the passions and lusts thereof ; they that are Christ's have done so, G-al. v. 24. We should rather displease ourselves and displease all the world than displease God, or be unfaith- ful in our duty to Christ. No profit, no pleasure, or secular concern- ment is so necessary, so comfortable, so useful to us as salvation.