Such a person hath cast off, as to the particular spoken of, the con- duct of renewing grace, and is kept from ruin only by restraining grace; and so far is he fallen from grace, and returned under the power of the law. And can it be thought that this is not a great pro- vocation to Christ, that men should cast off his easy, gentle yoke and rule, and cast themselves under the iron yoke of the law, merely out of indulgence unto their lusts?
Try thyself by this also : When thou art by sin driven to make a stand, so that thou must either serve it and rush at the command of it into folly, like the horse into the battle, or make head against it to suppress it, what dost thou say to thy soul? what dost thou ex- postulate with thyself? Is this all, — " Hell will be the end of this course ; vengeance will meet with me and find me out?" It is time for thee to look about thee ; evil lies at the door, Paul's main argument to evince that sin shall not have dominion over believers is, that they " are not under the law, but under grace," Rom. vi. 14. If thy con- tendings against sin be all on legal accounts, from legal principles and motives, what assurance canst thou attain unto that sin shall not have dominion over thee, which will be thy ruin?
1 Gen xxxix. 9. 2 2 Cor. v. 14.
48 MORTIFICATION OF SIN IN BELIEVERS.
Yea, know tliat tliis reserve "will not long hold out. If thy Inst hath driven thee from stronger gospel forts, it will speedily prevail against this also. Do not suppose that such considerations will deliver thee, when thou hast voluntarily given up to thine enemy those helps and means of preservation which have a thousand times their strength. Rest assuredly in this, that unless thou recover thyself with speed from this condition, the thing that thou fearest will come upon thee. What gospel 2'>^^inciples do not, legal motives cannot do.
5. When it is probable that there is, or may be, somewhat of judiciary hardness, or at least of chastening punishment, in thy lust as disquietmg. This is another dangerous symptom. That God doth sometimes leave even those of his own under the perplexing power at least of some lust or sin, to correct them for former sins, negli- gence, and folly, I no way doubt. Hence was that complaint of the church, " Why hast thou hardened us from the fear of thy name?" Isa. Ixiii. 1 7. That this is his way of dealing with unregenerate men no man questions. But how shall a man know whether there be any thing of God's chastening hand in his being left to the disquiet- ment of his distemper? Ans. Examine thy heart and ways. What was the state and condition of thy soul before thou fellest into the entanglements of that sin which now thou so complainest of? Hadst thou been negligent in duties? Hadst thou lived inordinately to thy- self? Is there the guilt of any great sin lying upon thee unrepented of? A neiu sin may he permitted, as well as a neiu afliction sent, to bring an old sin to remembrance.
Hast thou received any eminent mercy, protection, deliverance, which thou didst not improve in a due manner, nor wast thankful for? or hast thou been exercised with any affliction Avithout labour- ing for the appointed end of it? or hast thou been wanting to the opportunities of glorifying God in thy generation, which, in his good providence, he had graciously afforded unto thee? or hast thou con- formed thyself unto the Avorld and the men of it, through the abounding of temptations in the days wherein thou livest? If thou findest this to have been thy state, awake, call upon God; thou art fast asleep in a storm of anger round about thee.
G. When thy lust hath already withstood particular dealings from God against it. This condition is described, Isa. Ivii. 1 7, " For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on fro\vardly in the way of his heart." God had dealt with them about theu- prevailing lust, and that several ways, — by affliction and desertion; but they held out against all. This is a sad condition, which nothing but viere sove- reign grace (as God expresses it in the next verse) can relieve a man iu, and which no man ought to promise himself or bear himself
SYMPTOMS OF A PARTICULAR LUST. 49
upon. God oftentimes, in his providential dispensations, meets with a man, and speaks particularly to the evil of his heart, as he did to Joseph's brethren in their selling of him into Egypt. This makes the man reflect on his sin, and judge himself in particular for it. God makes it to be the voice of the danger, affliction, trouble, sick- ness that he is in or under. Sometimes in reading of the word God makes a man stay on something that cuts him to the heart, and shakes him as to his present condition. More frequently in the hearing of the word preached, his great ordinance for conviction, conversion, and edification, doth he meet with men. God often hews men by the sword of his word in that ordinance, strikes directly on their bosom-beloved lust, startles the sinner, makes him engage unto the mortification and relinquishment of the evil of his heart. Now, if his lust have taken such hold on him as to enforce him to break these bands of the Lord, and to cast these cords from him, — if it overcomes these convictions, and gets again into its old posture, — if it can cure the wounds it so receives, — that soul is in a sad con- dition.