VeR. 17.] SERMONS UPON ROMANS VI. 319
thanksgiving, it must be thus : Since the condition of the servants of sin is so miserable, God be thanked that you have escaped it.
[2.] From whom he expects this thankfulness. I answer —
(1.) It doth excite their thanksgiving ; he exciteth them to give thanks for this blessed change wrought in them : he moveth them not to give thanks for riches and secular honours, nor so much as consider whether they had or wanted these things ; but for the good estate of their souls, that they were partakers of so great a benefit, as from servants of sin to become servants of Christ.
(2.) It expresseth his own thanksgiving on their behalf, as congra- tulating and rejoicing with them in this mercy. The angels rejoice at the conversion of a sinner, Luke xv, 10. So should we rejoice in the good of others, especially the pastors of the church : 3 John 4, ' I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.' Nothing that I more delight in in the world than to hear that those that are converted by ine live after a christian manner.
Doct. That to be turned from the service of sin to the sincere obedience of the gospel is a benefit that we cannot sulGficiently be thankful for.
Let me represent it in the circumstances of the text —
First, Here is a reflection upon their past state, ' Ye were servants of sin.' This is necessary and useful —
1. To heighten the sense of our privileges by grace. Alas ! what were we when God first sought after us ? Slaves to sin and Satan, and children of wrath even as others. Look, as Jacob, by remembering his poor condition, doth raise his heart the more to admire God's bounty to him : Gen. xxxii. 10, ' I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant ; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.' It would cure the pride of many if they would remember their mean originals, and how, like the hop-stalk, they mount up and grow out of the very dunghill. God solemnly enjoined his people, when they enjoyed the plenty of the land, to remember the obscure beginnings of their being a nation ; and therefore, when they offered the first-fruits, they used this confession, Deut. xxvi. 5, ' A Syrian ready to perish was my father when he went down to Egypt, and sojourned there with a few men, and became a nation great and mighty and populous.' Thus God taught them to acknowledge that their first estate and original was most wretched and miserable ; and 80 must we. It holdeth more in moral things : Eph. ii. 1-5, * And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins ; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience : among whom also we all had our conver- sation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind ; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ ;' 1 Tim. i. 13, ' Who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious; but I obtained mercy,' rjkeridriv, all to
320 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VI. [SeR. XYIII.
be mercied. That God should take us with all our faults, and bring us into a better condition, how doth this heighten the mercy !
2. To quicken us to more diligence in our present estate. He that hath been a diligent servant to a hard and cruel master, from whom he could not expect any recompense worth his toil, surely should be diligent and faithful in the service of a loving, gentle, and bountiful master. This is urged, Eom. vi. 19, ' As you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your mem- bers servants to righteousness unto holiness.' And it is illustrated by several scriptures : 1 Cor. xv. 9, 10, ' I am the least of the apostles, and am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am ; and his grace that was bestowed upon me was not in vain ; but I laboured more abundantly than they all ; ' and Acts xxvi. 11, ' I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being ex- ceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even to strange cities,'
3. To make the reality of the change more evident. There is a great change wrought in those who are brought home to God ; it doth much hurt to believers, in judging of their own case, to forget what they once were ; whereas, comparing these two, what they are and what they were, would sooner bring it to an issue, and make the change more sensible and evident. The scriptures often direct us to this method: Col. i. 21, 'And you that were sometimes alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled ; ' Eph. ii. 13, ' But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ ;' and Eph. v. 8, ' Ye were some- times darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' Our gradual pro- gress in holiness is more insensible, and therefore we may overlook the mercy, because we see not such eminent effects as we found at first. But all that belong to God may see a change, and say, as the blind man, John ix. 25, ' This one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, I now see ; ' they may see plainly they are not the same men they were before. But when men forget the estate they were once in, and the great change the Spirit wrought in them, and feel not such altera- tions continually, they live in doubtfulness and darkness. As our forgetting our poverty and affliction maketli us undervalue a more plentiful condition, and those comforts which we would account a won- derful mercy before ; or as when recovered and in health we forget the tediousness of sickness, and are not thankful for the comfortable days and nights we enjoy, when we go about our business and sleep without pain. So we undervalue the present state of grace by f orget- tiag the unfruitful works of darkness, or the evil dispositions and practices of our unregeneracy, and have not such comfortable appre- hensions of the mercy which the Spirit of God showed in our cure. Cannot you remember when it was once much otherwise with you ? that you are not now the persons you were then ?