4. Observe that the grace, neiu creature, principle, or spiritual life, that is given to, bestowed on, and wrought in, all and only believers, be it in the lowest and most remiss degree that can be imagined, is yet no less universally spread over the whole soul than the contrary habit and principle of lust and sin whereof we have spoken. In the understanding it is light in the Lord ; in the will, life; in the affections, love, delight, etc., those being reconciled who were alienated by wicked works. Wherever there is any thing the least of grace, there something of it is in every thing of the soul that is a capable seat for good or evil habits or dispositions. He that is "in Christ is a new creature," 2 Cor. v. 17; not renewed in one or other particular, — " he is a new creature."
5. That wherever true grace is, in what degree soever, there it bears rule, though sin be in the same subject with it. As sin reigns before gi'ace comes, so grace reigns when it doth once come. And the reason is, because sin having the first rule and dominion in the heart, abiding there, there is neither room nor place for grace but what is made by conquest; now, whoever enters into a possession by right of conquest, what resistance soever be made, if he prevail to a conquest, he reigns. In every regenerate man, though grace be never so weak, and corruption never so strong, yet properly the sovereignty belongs to grace. Having entered upon the soul and all the powers of it by conquest, so long as it abides there it doth
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reign. So that to say a regenerate man may fall into reigning sin, as it is commonly expressed (though, as we have manifested, no sin reigns but the sin of nature, as no good act reigneth but the Spirit and habit of grace), and yet continue regenerate, is all one as to say he may have and not have true grace at the same time.
Now, from these considerations some farther inferences may be made: — (1.) That in every regenerate person there are, in a spi- ritual sense, two principles of all his actings, — two wills. There is the will of the flesh, and there is the will of the Spirit. A regene- rate man is spiritually and in Scripture expression two men, — a "new man" and an "old," an "inward man" and a "body of death," — and hath two wills, having two natures, not as natural faculties, but as moral principles of operation ; and this keeps all his actions, as moral, from being perfect, absolute, or complete in any kind. He doth good with his whole heart upon the account of sincerity, but he doth not good with his whole heart upon the account of perfection ; and when he doth evil, there is still a non-submitting, an unconsenting prin- ciple. This the apostle complains of and declares, Rom. vii. 19-22, " The good that I would I do not : but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man." There is an "I" and an "I" at opposition, a willing and not willing, a doing and not doing, a de- lighting and not delighting, all in the same person. So that there is this difference at the entrance between what sin soever of regenerate persons and others: Though the principle of sinning be the same, for the kind and nature of it, in them and others, — all sin, every man's sins, be who he will, believer or unbeliever, being tempted by his own lust, — yet that lust possesseth the whole soul, and takes in the virtual consent of the whole man, notwithstanding the control and checks of conscience and the light of the judgment, in him that is unregenerate ; but in every regenerate person there is an unconsenting principle, which is as truly the man himself, that doth not concur in sin, that doth expressly dissent from it, as the other is from whence it flows.
(2.) That sin neither can, doth, nor ever shall, reign in regene- rate persons. The reason of this I acquainted you with before ; and the apostle thinks this a sufficient proof of this assertion, " Because they are under grace," Rom. vi. 14. Whilst the principle of grace abides in them, which reigns wherever it be, or the free acceptance of God in the gospel is towards them, it is impossible, upon the ac- count of any actual sin whatever whereinto they may fall, that sin should reign in them. Nothing gives sin a reign and dominion but a total defect of all true grace whatever, not only as to the exerting itself, but as to any habitual relics of it. It may be overwhelmed
616 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
sometimes with temptations and corruptions, but it is grace still, as the least spark of fire is fire, though it should be covered with never so great a heap of ashes; and it reigns then.