4. It being our duty, we must use the means which tend to morti- fication. For to dream of a mortification which shall be wrought in us without our consent or endeavours, as well whilst we are sleeping, as whilst we are waking, is to delude ourselves with a vain fancy. No, we must set a careful watch over our thoughts, affections, and works. The Spirit's operation doth license no man to' be idle ; we must join with him, and obey him in his strivings against the flesh; for the Spirit worketh not on a man as a dead thing, which hath no principle of activity in himself. Therefore those that, upon the Spirit's doing all, will lie idle, abuse the Spirit, who both urgeth us to the duty, and quickeneth us to the use of means, or stirreth us up to use our endeavours, that the end may be obtained. Otlierwise we neither obey the Spirit, nor desire the benefit. We do not obey the Spirit ; for he doth first sanctify us, then quicken us to use the means, and blesseth the means so used ; and we do not desire the benefit ; it is but a wish, not a desire ; a velleity, not a volition : as Prov. xiii. 4, ' The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing, because his hands refuse to labour.' Many a man hath wishes that he could leave his sins, especially when he thinketh of the shame and punishment ; as many an incontinent person, adulterer, glutton, or drunkard, hath a
74 SERMONS UPON ROMANS VIII. [SeR. XIX.
Avish to part with his sia, hut not a will ; for he doth not seriously strive as'aiust it, his love to it remaineth unconquered and unbroken. Well tlien, let us see how far we have gained the point in hand: First, every christian must determine that the flesh must he mortified ; secondly, mortified it must he by us, every man must lUDrtify his own flesh ; thirdly, that mortified it cannot he by us without the Spirit ; the Spirit will not without us, and we cannot without the Spirit, neither when we are first to begin this work, nor can we carry it oa without his assistance.
5. The Spirit mortifieth sin in us, as a Spirit of light, life, and love.
[1.] As a Spirit of light, affecting the soul with a sight and sense of sin, so as we groan under the burden of it. Nothing cometh to the heart hut by the understanding ; conviction maketh way for compunc- tion, and compunction for a detestation and hatred of sin ; and detes- tation and hatred, for the destruction and expulsion of it. Sin is always loathsome, but we have not always eyes to see it. When we look upon it through Satan's spectacles, or the cloud of our own passions and corrupt afi'ection.s, we make nothing of it ; it .seemeth lovely, rather than loathsome to us. But when the Spirit anointeth our eyes with his eye-salve, it is the most hateful thing to the soul, that can be imagined. Jer. xxxi 18, ' After I was instructed, I smote upon the thigh, yea, I wa.s ashamed, and confounded.' We see sin to be another manner of thing tlian ever we thought it before. Ps. cxix. 108, ' Through thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hs.te every false wa}'.' When the heart is thoroughly possessed of the evil of sin, we dare not dandle and indulge, or pass it over as a thing of nought. Fear of punishment may suspend the act of sin, but the sight of the evil of it doth help to mortify the root.
[2.] As a Spirit of life ; for Jesus Christ to all his seed is a quicken- ing Spirit, 1 Cor. xv. 45. We have life natural from Adam, but life spiiitual and eternal from Christ, and that by the Spirit ; for we are said to be born again of the Spirit, John iii. 5. The Spiiit reneweth us, and maketh us partakers of the life and likeness of God, Titus, iii. 5. Now when this life is infused, there is an oppo.^ite principle set up in us to subdue the lusts of the flesh, and also to prevent the power of the objects of sense, which serve and teed them ; for the flesh doth obstruct the operations of this new life, and cross the tendency of it. The operations of this new life are obstructed by the flesh ; ' for (Gal. V. 17.) the flesh lusteth against the Spirit ; ' and life is sensible of what annoyeth it. The operations of it are the serving and pleasing of God : Gal. v. 25, ' If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.' And we see a weight hanging upon us, and sin doth easily beset us, that we cannot serve God with that liberty, purity, and delight, that we desire. And therefore this is an heavy grievance and burden to the new nature, that we desire to get rid of it by all means, and labour, and strive in it, and that with good effect. A new life also hath a tendency ; a.s soon as it is infused it discovereth itself by its tendency to its end and rest, which is God and heaven ; so the objects of sense have the less force and power upon us. Well then, the flesh is an enemy to this new life, and this new life an enemy