Secondly, From the mischievous influence and heinous nature of reigning sin.
1. When sin reigneth, it plucketh the sceptre out of Grod's hands, and giveth it to some vile and base thing which is set up in God's stead ; as the setting up of a usurper is the rejection of the lawful king. The throne belonging to God must be kept for him alone ; therefore every degree of service done to sin includeth a like degree of treason and infidelity to Christ. Our Lord telleth us. Mat. vi. 24, ' No man can serve two masters ; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other : ye cannot serve God and mammon.' As no man can serve two masters, God and mammon, so every one serveth one of these, God or mammon, for the throne is never empty ; but between both of them you cannot divide your heart. Neither dominion nor wedlock can endure partners ; so that by cleaving to the one, you refuse and renounce the other. To serve God is to give up a man's mind, and heart, and whole man, to know and do what God requireth, whatever be the consequences. Now this doth necessarily imply a renunciation of all those things which cross and contradict the will of God, be it devil, world, or flesh. So to serve mammon is to give up a man's mind, heart, endeavour to find out and follow after the riches, honours, and pleasures of the world,
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whatever may come of it. He that would serve God must do nothing but what God alloweth him in the matter of pleasure, profit, or preferment, or any other thing ; for God is not well served unless he be served as a master commanding and governing all our actions. On the other side, he that serveth the world giveth God only what the world and flesh can spare, so much religion, strictness, and good conscience as will stand with his carnal ends and affections ; for then the world is served as a master when men dispose of themselves and all their concernments, and rule themselves and please themselves, according to that fleshly and worldly appetite and fancy that governeth them ; and God is no further loved, obeyed, pleased, than that love of honour, profit, or pleasure will give leave. Well, then, by this you may plainly see that the setting up of any lust to reign is a laying aside and a deposing of God ; for if a man be bound absolutely to resign up himself to the will and disposal of God, and to obey him, and love and serve him with all his powers, and this man on the contrary giveth up himself into the hands of some carnal affection of his, be it pride, sensuality, or love of worldly things, and this ruleth him, and this governeth him, and this he studieth to please and gratify, certainly these pleasures, or profits, or honours are set up in God's stead ; it is a plain refusing one, and a cleaving to the other, a despising God and Christ, and a preferring the world and Satan. And it will not help the matter, though we profess Christ to be the Lord : all formal titles are a mockage : Mat. vii. 21, ' Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven ; ' Luke vi. 46, ' And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?' Many who profess Christ to be their Lord, are as true bondmen to Satan as the heathen who offered sacrifice to him ; and a drunken and unclean christian is as true a servant to the devil as the votaries and worshippers of Priapus, or Bacchus, or Venus ; for he doth as absolutely command your affections as he did theirs ; and though you are Christ's by profession, yet you are Satan's by possession and occupation, and the bond of your servitude is altogether as firm and as strong, though it be more inward and secret, than their rites of worship. Neither will it help the matter, that as you do not profess, so you do not intend so ; though we do not formally intend this, yet virtually we do, and so God will account it ; it is finis operis, though not operantis. If a wife be false to her husband's bed, will it be excuse enough to say she did not intend to wrong him ? or will such a saying excuse a subject that is disloyal to his prince, and sets up a usurper ? Well, then, what horror should this beget in our minds! and what care should we take that sin may not reign !
2. The reign of sin is mischievous to us. Sin, when it once gets the throne, it groweth outrageous, and involveth us in so many incon- veniences, that we cannot easily disentangle ourselves, and get out again.
[1,] This is one, that it turneth the man upside down, and degradeth and depresseth him to the rank of beasts, A brutish worlding, that once gratifieth his carnal afiections, is but a nobler kind of beast ; he employethhis reason to gratify his appetite, and puts conscience under the dominion of sense, and so inverteth the whole nature of a man :