If this be so, I beseech you let us learn to Jcnoiv what ice are Inj nature, not to make ourselves in our own conceits better than indeed we are. We judge of ourselves as we are to civil things. A man that hath natural parts, that can discourse and understand the mysteries of law and of the state, we value men by these. Alas ! poor soul, thou mayest be dead for all this. What are all these abilities for ? Are they not for the spiritual life ? What is this to the life of grace ? They only blow thee up with pride, and set thee further off, and make thee incapable of grace. If thou talk of learning, the devil is a better scholar than any man. He knows matters of state and other things better than thou dost, and yet he is a devil for all that. Therefore never stand upon these things. But there is a com- pany that are more to blame than these. One would think that these have something to be proud of, that they might set themselves against God and goodness ; but there is a generation that have little in them, that jei think themselves the only men in loose licentious life, despising all, caring for none, and think it the only life to live as they list, to go where they Hst, in what companies they list, to have bounds of their own. These think themselves the only men, when indeed they are nobody ; they are dead, loathsome creatures. It is the mercy of God that the ground doth
404 THE DEAD MAN.
not sink under them ; and yet they carry themselves as if they only were alive.
A^ain, if we be all dead by nature, and there ought to be a separation of the living from the dead, let us take heed in our amitij and society, that we converse not uith natural men too much, that have 7wt spiritual goodness in them ; that we converse not with them with delight and complacency. It is a tyrannical thing to knit dead and living bodies together, and he was accounted a tyrant that did so. Surely, in choosing our society, conjugal or friendly, any intimate society, to join living and dead'souls together, we are tyrants to our own souls. We wrong our souls to join with dead per- sons'; who would converse with dead corses and corpses?* The very crea- tures startle at the sight of a dead body ; nature startles at that that is dead. If we had the life of grace, further than the necessity of civil conversation, and the hope of bettering them forceth it upon us, we would have no society with those that we see are in the state of nature. What issues from them but stench ? eyes full of adultery ; nothing that is pleasing can come from them ; nothing can come from all their senses but rottenness and stench. What comfort can a man that loves his own soul, and hath any desire to be saved, have by intimate converse with such persons? Let them have never so good parts, they hurt more one way than they do good another. You see we are all dead by nature, and what this death is.
Ohj. But you will say there is a difference between natural death and spiritual death ; for in natural bodily death there is no moving, but in this spiritual death of the soul men have senses and motion, &c.
Ans. It is true thus far they difler ; though a man be spiritually dead, yet notwithstanding he hath feet to carry him to the house of God; he hath ears to hear the word of God ; he hath abilities of nature upon which grace is founded. God works grace upon nature. Now a man living in the church of God, that is a grace when a man hath grace to live within the compass of the means. He can, by common grace, without any inward change of nature, come and hear the word of God ; and when he is there, he may yield an ear to listen, and he hath common discourse and under- standing to know what is said, and upon what ground. He can offer him- self to the work of the Spirit ; he can come to the pool, though he be not thrust in this day or that day, when God stirs the waters. This, by com- mon grace, any man living in the church may do.
Therefore, though we be all dead, even the best of us, by nature, yet let us use the parts of nature that we have, that God hath given us, to offer ourselves to the gracious and blessed means wherein the Spirit of God may work. Let us come to hear the word of God : John v. 25, ' The time is come, and now is, that the dead shall hear the voice of God,' where the voice of God is in the ministry, ' and so they shall live.' As in the latter day the noise of the trumpet shall raise the dead bodies, so the trumpet of the word of God, sounding in the ears of men, together with the Spirit, shall raise the dead souls out of the grave of sin. Therefore I beseech you, as you would be raised up out of this death, hear the noise of God's trum- pet. Come within the compass of the means. As God is the God of life, and Christ calls himself the life, and the Spirit the Spirit of life, so the word 'is the word of life,' because, together with the word, God conveys spiritual life. The word of God in the ordinance is an operative, working word. As it was in the creation, God said, ' Let there be light, and there was light,' so in the ministry it exhorts and stirs up to duty ; and there is * Spelled 'courses' and ' corps,' an apparent pleonasm. — Q.