[2.] Within the church, or in the bosom of Christianity. So men are turned from profaneness to holiness, from formality to serious godliness. The one is spoken of Isa. i. 16, 17, ' Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil, learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow/ And in many other places : ' Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways ; why will ye die, 0 house of Israel ? ' Ezek. xxxiii. 11 ; and Hosea vi. 1, ' Come, let us return unto the Lord.' And we are warned of the other : 2 Tim. iii. 5, ' Having a form of godliness, but denying the power.' They had a map and model of truth, yet deny the power thereof ; suffer not this religion to prevail to subdue their hearts unto God. Briefly, then, these latter may either take pleasure in unrighteousness, or repose too much con- fidence in their supposed righteousness.
(1.) For the first, the words are applicable to them, that when the Spirit of God changeth their hearts, those things which were accounted gain will prove an apparent loss. Sin was formerly to them their delight, or the support of their credit and estate ; they thought they could not live without it ; but after grace received, they are convinced this was their bane, and shame, and trouble : Kom. vi. 21, ' What fruit had you then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed ? for the end of those things is death.5 Now grace teacheth us to abandon the delights of the flesh, and to renounce the most pleasing and profitable sins, as judging them indeed to be loss to us.
6 SERMONS UPON PHILIPPIANS III. [SER. I.
(2.) When we trust in a supposed righteousness, and for outward things neglect inward grace. As when, because of baptism or profes- sion, or having Jiigh notions of an empty though a strict form, or mere civility and blameless conversation, we neglect faith, hope, and love, and that internal change which is necessary for those which are in Christ : 2 Cor. v. 17, ' If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' Those things which men thought gain are nothing to the soul in regard of the new creature : Gal. vi. 15, ' For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature ; ' Gal. v. 16, ' Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh;' 1 Cor. vii. 19, ' Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.' We may undergo the wrath of God notwithstanding all these things. But before the soul was touched with the sense of sin and deserved wrath, and a change wrought in the soul, God, and Christ, and heaven, and holiness were contemned and little set by ; but when we have a sensible and awakening knowledge of our great necessity, then we see that there is no full and solid satisfaction in order to righteousness and salvation but only in and by Christ ; so that all things are as dung" and dross, as trouble and loss, in comparison of the knowledge of him and the gain by him.
The reasons of the point.
1. From the state of those who are to be converted. There is in all some false and imaginary happiness, and some counterfeit righteous- ness, wherein they please themselves. The false happiness is as their god, and the counterfeit is as their Christ and mediator, and so they are secure and senseless; and till God open their eyes, they neither seek after another happiness, nor trouble themselves about the way whereby they may attain it. That men set up a false happiness in their natural estate needs not much proof ; for ever since man fell from God he ran to the creature : Jer. ii. 13, ' My people have committed two evils ; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water/ We left the fountain, and betook ourselves to the cistern ; and if we can make a shift to patch up a sorry happiness here in the world apart from God, we care not for him, will not come at him : Jer. ii. 31, * Wherefore say my people, We are lords ; we will come no more unto thee ? ' Our pleasure, profit, and honour, that is our god ; and while we enjoy these things without control, we look no further, but count ourselves well paid. Certainly we cannot seek our happiness in an invisible God, nor cannot wait for it to be enjoyed in an invisible world. The flesh must be pleased, and the more it is pleased we think it gain to us, and that so far we have profited. But for the second, that there is something which is instead of Christ to us, to keep the conscience quiet when our affections take up with present things. Our happiness is to satisfy our desires ; our righteousness to allay our fears. Now here we run to a superficial religion, as if it would make us per- fect as appertaining to the conscience. Here we fly to something external, which is diversified according to men's education. If pagans, to the epyov vo/xov, the work of the law : Bom. ii. 15, law of nature ; if Jews, to the observances of the law ; if christians, to their baptism,