MORTIFICATION THE WORK OF BELIEVERS. 37
(2.) This duty being a thing good in itself, in its jaroper place, a duty evidencing sincerity, bringing home peace to the conscience; a man finding himself really engaged in it, his mind and heart set against this or that sin, with purpose and resolution to have no more to do with it, — he is ready to conclude that his state and condition is good, and so to delude his own soul. For, —
[1.] When his conscience hath been made sick with sin, and he could find no rest, when he should go to the great Physician of souls, and get healing in his blood, the man by this engagement against sin pacifies and quiets his conscience, and sits down without going to Christ at all. Ah! how many poor souls are thus deluded to eternity! "When Ephraim saw his sickness, he sent to king Jareb," Hos. V. 13; which kept him off from God. The whole bundle of the popish religion is made up of designs and contrivances to pacify con- science without Christ; all described by the apostle, Rom. x. 8.
[2.] By this means men satisfy themselves that their state and condition is good, seeing they do that which is a work good in itself, and they do not do it to be seen. They know they would have the work done in sincerity, and so are hardened in a kind of self-righte- ousness.
(3.) When a man hath thus for a season been deluded, and hath deceived his own soul, and finds in a long course of life that indeed his sin is not mortified, or if he hath changed one he hath gotten another, he begins at length to think that all contending is in vain, — he shall never be able to prevail ; he is making a dam against water that increaseth on him. Hereupon he gives over, as one despairing of any success, and yields up himself to the power of sin and that habit of formality that he hath gotten.
And this is the usual issue with persons attemjoting the mortifica- tion of sin without an interest in Christ first obtained. It deludes them, hardens them, — destroys them. And therefore we see that there are not usually more vile and desperate sinners in the world than such as, having by conviction been put on this course, have found it fruitless, and deserted it without a discovery of Christ. And this is the substance of the religion and godliness of the choicest for- malists in the world, and of all those who in the Roman synagogue are drawn to mortification, as they drive Indians to baptism or cattle to water. I say, then, that mortification is the work of believers, and believers only. To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live.
2. It is the work of faith, the peculiar work of faith. Now, if there be a work to be done that will be effected by one only instru- ment, it is the greatest madness for any to attempt the doing of it
G8 MORTIFICATION OF SIN IN BELIEVERS.
that liatli not that instrument. Now, it is faith that purifies the heart, Acts xv. 9 ; or, as Peter speaks, we " purify our souls in obey- ing the truth through the Spirit," 1 Pet. i. 22 ; and without it, it will not be done.
What hath been spoken I suppose is sufficient to make good my first rjeneral rule: — Be sure to get an interest in Christ; if you in- tend to mortify any sin without it, it will never be clone.
Obj. You will say, "What, then, would you have unregenerate men that are convinced of the evil of sin do? Shall they cease striving against sin, live dissolutely, give their lusts their swing, and be as bad as the worst of men? This were a way to set the whole world into confusion, to bring all things into darkness, to set open the flood-gates of lust, and la}'' the reins upon the necks of men to rush into all sin with delight and greediness, like the horse into the battle."
Ans. 1. God forbid! It is to be looked on as a great issue of the wisdom, goodness, and love of God, that by manifold ways and means he is pleased to restrain the sons of men from running forth into that compass of excess and riot which the depravedness of then nature would carry them out unto with violence. By what way soever this is done, it is an issue of the care, kindness, and goodness of God, with- out which the whole earth would be a hell of sin and confusion.
2. There is a peculiar convincing power in the word, which God is oftentimes pleased to put forth, to the wounding, amazing, and, in some sort, humbling of smners, though they are never converted. And the word is to be preached though it hath this end, yet not with this end. Let, then, the word be preached, and the sins of men [will be] rebuked, lust will be restrained, and some oppositions will bo made against sin ; though that be not the effect aimed at.