Now, for this inward soul of man, which is so excellent a thing, fitted by God to cleave to better things, for communion with himself and ever- lasting happiness, for this to be a drudge to base pleasures and profits, to the windy empty things of this world, to vain titles and such like empty things, and to place its happiness in these things, it is a pitiful degenera- tion that so excellent a thing as the immortal soul of man, that shall never die, should join with those things that shall make him miserable, that it shall be better for a man that he had never been ; as it is said of Judas, ' It had been better for that man that he had never been born,' Mat. xxvi. 24.
4. In the next place, consider that that follows this thraldom and baseness to our lusts. There is a double fruit of it. (1.) The one is uncertain. I mean, for our yielding to our base affections, what get we ? ' The plea- sures of sin for a season,' Heb. xi. 25 ; a little pleasure or profit, perhaps not that neither ; but if we have it, it is a fading commodity, that goes
* That is, ' choose,' 'love.'— G. t Qu- 1 Cor. vi. 17? — Ed.
THE SPIRITUAL JUBILEE. 231
away quickly. When tlicy aro gotten, what arc tliey ? Vanity. Tiiey promise more before wo get them than they perform when wo have them. But then (2.) There is another wages, that God injustice hath appointed for it, that is, damnation: ' The wages of sin is death,' Rom. vi. 28. It cries for wages. When we are under sin we can look for nothing but death, and therefore he joins them together here : ' the law of sin and of death,' an expectation of eternal misery. This a man hath that is wedded to him- self, that hath not learned the first lesson in the gospel, to deny himself. He is a wretched slave to the devil in his best part and power ; his lusts imprison his will and affections ; his wit, that should devise how he should be happy for eternity, it is only a drudge to his base lusts. There are a company of men that arc the shame and blemish of the gospel, that set their wits a-work only how to devise to satisfy their base lusts ; and then the issue and conclusion of all this is eternal misery ; and in the mean- time, the expectation of misery in terrors of conscience. This is the estate of every man till he be translated by the Spirit of God to a better condition in Christ, that he spends out his time in a base and miserable thraldom, worse than the thraldom of the Israelites in Egypt or in Babylon. 5. And it is so much the more fearful, because men are insensible of it, like bedlams, that make nothing of their chains, that laugh in their chains. A frantic man, when he is bound in chains, he laughs, when they that are about him weep at his misery. So you have men frolicking in sin. They will swear at liberty, and besot themselves at liberty, and corrupt their consciences, even for base trifles. They think they are in no bondage, and they do all wondrous cheerfully and well ; whenas indeed the more cheer- fully and readily any man performs the base service of sin, the more he is in bondage. Freedom is opposite to bondage. Notwithstanding, such is the nature of sin, that the more freely we do it the more we are bound ; because the more freedom we have, the more we are entangled. We run into guilt upon guilt, till after guilt comes execution, an eternal separation from the presence of God, and an adjudging to eternal torments for ever.
So that it is a false judgment that the world hath. They think great men happy men. Why ? They do as they list. Ay, they may do so, and ofttimes they take the liberty to do so. They will be under no laws. They are so far from obeying the law of God, that they are loath to be hampered with the laws of the state, or with any laws, but they will be above all. A miserable condition ! Why ? The more will a man hath in evil, the more miserable ; for the more freely and with less opposition he tangleth himself. Let his place be never so great, the deeper he sinks in rebellion, and the deeper he sinks into guilt upon guilt ; which will all come to a reckoning at the hour of death and day of judgment. So the men that we admire and envy most — out of simpleness and want of judg- ment— they are the most miserable creatures in the world, if they be out of Christ and have not grace. For they have nature let loose in them with- out restraint ; and nature being under the captivity of sin, becomes out of measure sinful in such. The less a man is curbed either from laws above him or the law within him to check him, the more wretched man he is. For the deeper he goes in rebellion and sin, the deeper his torment shall be afterward.