[1] The object, ' the deeds of the body,' that is, our sins. So called, (1.) Because siii is compared to a body: Rom. vii. 24, 'Who shall deliver me from this body of death?' and Col. ii. 11, 'In putting off the body of the sins of the flesh.' There is besides the natural body, a body of corruption, which doth wholly compass about the soul ; there is the head of wicked desires, the hands and feet of wicked executions, the eye of sinful lusts, the tongue of vain and evil words ; therefore it is said, (Col. iii. 5), 'Mortify your members which are upon earth;' not of the natural body, but of the mass of corruption ; particular sinful lusts are as members of this body. (2.) Sins are called the deeds of the body, because they are executed by the body : Eom. vi. 22, ' Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, that ye should fulfil the lusts thereof ; ' and Eom. vi. 19, ' As ye have yielded up your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity.' All the mem- bers of the body are employed as instruments to serve our sin ; now affections are manifested in action ; therefore by the deeds of the body.
56 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. [SeR. XVIIL
he meaneth not outward acts only, but lusts also. Well then, fight we must, but not with our own shadows; sin is gotten within us; by the soul it hath taken possession of the body ; the gates of the senses are always open to let in such objects and temptations as take part with the flesh ; and the flesh is ready to accomplish whatever the corrupt heart doth suggest and require.
Secondly, The life that is promised to them that mortify sin, — ' Ye shall live,' — a spiritual life of grace here, and an eternal life of glory hereafter. Heaven is worth the having, and theiefore the reward should sweeten the duty. From this clause the points are three :
1. Tiiat justified persons are bound to mortify sin.
2. That in the mortifying of sin, we and the Spirit concur. The- Spirit will not without us, and we cannot without the Spirit.
3. That eternal life is promised to them who seriously improve the assistance of the Holy Ghost for the mortifying of sin.
1. Doct. That justified persons should mortify sin. It is their duty so to do.
First. What is the mortification that lieth upon us ?
1. Negatively, What it is not ; we must distinguish between the mock mortification, — the counterfeit resemblances of this duty, and the duty itself.
[1.] There is a pagan mortification. I call it so, because such a thing was among the heathens, which is nothing else but a suppressing such sins as nature discovereth, upon such reasons and arguments as nature suggesteth : Kom. ii. 14, ' The Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law : ' namely, as they abstained from gross sins and performed outward acts of duty. This was a kind of resemblance of mortification, and but a resemblance. We read of this in history ; the answer of Socrates to the physiognomist, olnat -iraihepacnriv, when his scholars enraged at his character IlaiSepaaTr]';, eralpoi, elfj,i (pvcrei, dW eVe;;^a). So of Palaeraon, who coming in a drunken fit to scoff at the lecture of Xenocrates, with his head crowned with a garland of rosebuds, was by his grave and moral discourse, reduced from his riot and licentiousness, which was a kind of moral conversion ; but this we fault, because it is but a half turn from sins of the second table, or lower hemisphere of duty ; and because these sins were suppressed and hidden, rather than mortified and subdued ; Sapientia eorum abscondit vitia, non abscindit. Lact. As Haman refrained himself, when his heart boiled with rancour and malice, Esther v. 10, their wisdom tended to hide sin, rather than to mortify it. And besides this kind of conversion was not a recovery of the soul from the flesh and the world to God ; but only an acquiring a fitness to live more plausibly, and with less scandal among men.
[2.] There is a popish and superstitious mortification ; which standeth in a mere neglect of the body , and in some outward absti- nences and austerities, and such observances as are prescribed by men without any warrant from God ; as in abstaining from -marriage, and some sort of meats or apparel, a-s unlawful ; yea, from the necessary functions of human life ; the apostle telleth us that these things have Tiva Xoyuv cro<pid^, Col. ii. 23. ' A show of wisdom,' have a specious show, and are highly cried up by the carnal world ; but have no real
VeR. 13.] SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. 57
worth to commend us to God, as being not commanded by God, or warranted by the best example of the most holy and mortified men. Suppose abstinence from marriage : ' Enoch (Gen. v. 22.) walked with God, and begat sons and daughters.' And we have more instances of true piety in married folks, than in monkery and cloistral devotions. Jesus Christ sanctified a free life, using all sorts of diet and company, not abstaining from feasts themselves : Mat. xi. 19, ' The Son of man came eating and drinking.' So when the vow of voluntary poverty is recommended by the papists as an estate of perfection. Certainly beggary, which is threatened as a punishment, is not to be wished or desired ; much less to be chosen or wilfully incurred ; least of all to be made the matter of a vow. Surely it is greater self-denial entirely to devote and faithfully to use our riches for God, than to cast them away and rid our hands of them ; as he is a better steward that improveth his master's stock, than he that casts off the employment, and lazily refuseth to meddle with it. So for penance and self-discipline ; they look more like the rites of Baal's priests, who gashed and lanced them- selves to commend them to their idol, than the practices of Christ's votaries and believing penitents ; who hath indeed commanded us to mortify our lusts, but not to mangle our bodies ; to retrench the food and fuel of the flesh when need requireth ; but not to bind ourselves to a course of rigorous observances, which gratify the flesh in one way, as much as it seems to contradict it in another ; namely, as they breed in us pride and presumption of merit above other christians. In short, these external rigours, though they are greatly admired by the world, which is wholly governed by sensual desires, yet they are not acceptable to God, as having more in them of ridiculous pageantry and theatrical stage-holiness, rather than serious devotion.