tations may prevail, we yield to them rather as a captive that is dragged against his will, than as persons following the bent and inclination of their own hearts. Now too we can no longer wipe our mouth, like the adulteress, and say, What evil have I doneg? Remorse and shame are now the followers of trans- gression : and an evil thought now occasions more pain in the soul, than formerly the perpetration of the act. Thus the corrupt principle, though not extirpated, is obstructed, and ceases to maintain an undisputed sway.]
2. Nor do we serve God as we would —
[The renewed soul pants after universal holiness : it would be pure as God is pure, and perfect as God is perfect. It would believe every word of God without the smallest hesitation or doubt: but unbelief creeps in, and weakens the energy of our faith. We would love God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength ; but the contracted soul cannot expand itself to the occasion. We would draw nigh to him in prayer and praise, and hold most intimate fellow- ship with the Father and the Son; but the heart " starts aside as a deceitful bow," and, like a bird entangled in a snare, is incapable of executing its most ardent desires. In a word, the renewed soul would be satisfied with no exertions, however great; no services, however eminent; no enjoyment of God, however intimate : it aspires after absolute perfection, and a total transformation into the Divine image. But, alas ! its attainments fall infinitely short of its desires, and it is con- strained to cry, " O that I had wings like a dove ! then would I flee away and be at rest! "
That this is no false representation of the Christian's state, may be seen from the account which St. Paul himself gives of his own experience. Of the united existence of these two principles, and of their contrary operations within him, and of their combined effects, he speaks at large in the seventh chapter to the Romans : " He had a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin, which was in his members:" " When he would do good, evil was present with him ;" so that " the good which he would, he did not, and the evil which he would not, that he did." " To will indeed was present with him ; but how to perform that which was good, he found not." Hence, feeling himself like a poor captive chained to a putrid corpse, which he was compelled to drag about with him to the latest period of his existence, he brake forth into this mournful complaint, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death h?"]
s Prov. xxx. 20. >> Rom. vii. 14 — 24.