Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

now, I think, fufficiently stated the notion of true liberty; and, I hope, fufficiently guarded it: and have nothing to do but to proceed to the fruits of it; which will serve for fo many motives or inducements to its

attainment.

§. 2. Of the fruits of liberty.

These may

beads.

be reduced under four

1. Sin being a great evil, deliverance from it is great happiness.

2. A fecond fruit of this liberty is good works.

3. It gives us a near relation to God. 4. The great and laft fruit of it is eternal life.

Thefe are all comprised by the apostle in Rom. vi. 21, 22, 23. What fruit had ye then in those things, whereof ye are now afhamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from fin, and become fervants to God, ye have your fruit unto holinefs, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of fin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jefus Christ our Lord. And these are the great ends which the gospel, that perfect law of liberty, aims at, and for which it was preached to the

world;

1

world; as appears from those words of our Lord to St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 17, 18. Unto whom now I fend thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; that they may receive forgiveness of fins, and inheritance among them which are fanctified by faith that is in me. I will bere infift on thefe bleffed effects of Chriftian liberty; not only becaufe the defign of the chapter demands it, but alfo to prevent the being obliged to any tedious repetition of them hereafter, under every diftin&t branch of Chriftian liberty.

§. 1. Sin is a great evil; and therefore deliverance from the dominion of it is a great good. To make this evident, we need but reflect a little on the nature and effects of fin. If we inquire into the nature of fin, we fhall find that it is founded in the fubverfion of the dignity, and defacing the beauty of human nature: and that it confifts in the darkness of our underftanding, the depravity of our affections, and the feebleness and impotence of the will. The understanding of a finner is incapable of difcerning the certainty and force of divine truths, the lovelinefs of virtue, the unfpeakable pleafure which now flows from the great and precious promifes of the gofpel, and the incompara

bly

bly greater which will one day flow from the accomplishment and fruition of them. His affections, which is fixed and bent on virtue, had been incentives, as they were defigned by God, to noble and worthy actions, being byaffed and perverted, do now hurry him on to lewd and wicked ones. And by thefe the mind, if at any time it chance to be awakened and rendered fenfible of its happiness and duty, is overpowered and oppreffed. If this were not the true ftate of a finner; if the strength of fin did not thus confift in the diforder and impotence of all the faculties of the foul, whence is it that the finner acts as he does? Is it not evident that his understanding is infatuated, when he lives as if he were merely, wholly, body? As if he had no foul, or none but one refulting from, and diffolved with, its temperament and contextüre? One defigned to no higher purpose, than to contrive, minifter to, and partake in its fenfualities? Is it not evident that he has little expectation of another world, who lays up his treasures only in this; and lives as if he were born only to make provifion for the flesh to fulfil the lufts thereof? 'Tis true, all finners are not equally ftupid or obdurate: but even in those in whom fome parks of understanding and confcience remain unextinguished, how are the weak defires of virtue baffled and

over

over-powered by the much stronger paffions which they have for the body and the world? Do they not find themselves reduced to that wretched ftate of bondage, wherein the good that they would do, that they do not; but the evil that they would not do, that is prefent with them? 'Tis plain then that fin is a difeafe in our nature: that it not only extinguishes the grace of the Spirit, and obliterates the image of God ftamped on the foul in its creation; but also scatters and diffuses I know not what venom and infection thorough it, that makes it eagerly pursue its own mifery. 'Tis a difeafe that produces more intolerable effects in the foul, than any whatever can in the body. The predominancy of any noxious humour can breed no pain, no difturbance, equal to that of a predominant pasion: no fears or ruins which the worlt difeafe leaves behind it, are half fo deformed and loathfome as thofe of vice: nay, that laft change, which death it felf produces, when it converts a beautiful body into dust and rottenness, is not half fo contemptible or hateful as that of fin; when it transforms man into a beast or devil. If we do not yet fufficiently comprehend the nature of fin, by viewing it as it exists in our minds and hearts, we may contemplate it in our actions. And bere, 'tis blindness and folly, rafhness and

madness,

:

[ocr errors]

madness, incogitance, levity, falfhood, and cowardife; 'tis every thing that is mean and bafe and all this aggravated by the most accurfed ingratitude that human nature is capable of. These and the like reflections on the nature of fin, cannot chufe but render it hateful. And

if,

Secondly, We make any serious ones on the effects of it, they cannot fail of rendering it frightful and dreadful to us. These effects may be efpecially reduced to three: 1. The ill influence fin has upon our temporal concerns. 2. Guilt. And, 3. Fear. As to the first of thefe, I fhall only fay, that we fuffer very few evils but what are owing to our own fins that it is very rarely any calamity befals us, but we may put our finger on the fountain, the fin, I mean, from whence the mischief flows. Whence comes wars and fightings amongst you, faith St. James, come they not from your lufts, which war in your members? This is every jot as applicable to private as publick contentions: and where envy, ftrife, and contention is, no evil work, no difafter will be long abfent. I might run through all the different kinds of evils that infeft the body, or embroil the fortune; that blast our hopes, or ftain our defires: and eafily fhew, that they all generally fpring from

Our

« AnteriorContinuar »