wife, were to mutilate and maim religion, and to dishonour God, while we pretend to worship and obey him: for the breach of any fingle commandment is a manifest violation of the majefty and authority of God, whatever obfervance we may pay all the reft: For he that faid, Do not commit adultery; faid alfo, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a tranfgreffor of the law, Jam. ii. II. That the reftraints man is to lay upon himself, relate no less to the lufts of the foul than the actions of the body: Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharifees, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven, Matth. v. 10. That to begin well will avail us little, unless we finish well too. Univerfality, fincerity, and perseverance are generally acknowledged to be effential and indifpenfable properties of faving, juftifying faith. These things therefore being but just mentioned, I proceed to the point to be enquired into and refolved.

1. To be free from the dominion and power of mortal fin, is the first and loweft ftep; this is indifpenfable to fincerity, and abfolutely neceffary to falvation: Let not fin reign in your mortal bodies, to fulfil the lufts thereof, Rom. vi. 12. And the advancing thus far does, I acknowledge, constitute man in a ftate of grace

for

in

ia fcripture men are denominated righte ous or wicked, not from fingle acts of vice or virtue, but from the prevalence and dominion, from the habit or custom of the one or the other: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield your felves fervants to obey, bis fervants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of fin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Rom. vi. 16. But then I muft here add two remarks, by way of caution. 1. We must not prefume too foon of victory over an habitual fin. An evil habit is not foon broken off; nor is it an eafy matter to refolve, when we have fet our felves free from the power of it. Sometimes the temptation does not prefent itself as often as it was wont, or not with the fame advantage; fometimes one vice reftrains us from another; fometimes worldly confiderations, or fome little change in our temper, without any thorough change in our minds, puts us out of humour for a little while with a darling fin; and fometimes the force and clearnefs of conviction, produces fome pious fits, which, though they do not utterly vanquish a luft, do yet force it to give way, and retreat for a while, and interrupt that love which they do not extinguish all this may be, and the work not yet be done, nor our liberty yet gained. If therefore we fall, though but now and

then,

then, and though at some distance of time, into the fame fin, we have great reafon to be jealous of its power and our fafety: nay, though we reftrain our felves from the outward commiffion of it; if yet we feel a ftrong propenfion to it; if we difcern our felves ready to take fire on the appea rance of a temptation; if we are fond of approaching as near it as we can, and are pleased with thofe indulgences which are very near a-kin to it, we have reason to doubt that our conqueft is not yet entire. nay, the truth is, we cannot be on good grounds afsured that we are mafters of our felves, till we have a fettled averfion for the fin which before we doated on, and shun the occafions which before we courted, till we be poffeffed of a habit of that vir tue which is a direct contradiction to it ; and take as much pleasure in the obedience, as ever we did in the tranfgreffion of a divine command.

2dly, Thefe are fome fins of that provo→ king nature, fo criminal in their birth, and mifchievous in their confequences, that one fingle act or commiffion of one of thefe is equivalent to a babit of others; fuch is murther, idolatry, perjury, adultery; these cannot be commited without renouncing humanity as well as Christianity; without refifting the inftincts and impulfe of nature, as well as the light of the go

fpel,

fpel, and the grace of the Spirit. We muft break through a great many difficulties and terrors, ere we can come at these fins; we must commit many other, in order to commit one of thefe; we must deliberate long, refolve defperately, and in defiance of God and confcience; and what is the effect of habit in other inftances, is a neceffary preparative in thefe, that is, obduration. In this cafe, therefore, the unhappy man, that has been guilty of any one of thefe, muft not look upon himself as fet free, when he is come to a refolution of never repeating it again; but then when he loaths and abhors himself in duft and afhes; when he has made the utmost reparations of the wrong he is capable of; when, if the intereft of virtue require it, he is content to be oppreffed with fhame and fufferings: when, in one word, a long and conftant course of mortification, prayers, tears and good works have washed off the ftain and guilt.

2. We must be free, not only from a habit, but from fingle acts of deliberate prefumptuous fin. The reafon is plain; mortal fin cannot be committed without wounding the confcience, grieving the fpirit, and renouncing our hopes in God through Chrift, for the time at leaft. The wages of fin is death, is true, not only of habits, but fingle acts of deliberate fin.

Death

death is the penalty, the fanction of every commandment; and the commandment does not prohibit habits only, but fingle acts too. Nor is there indeed any room to doubt or difpute here, but in one cafe; which is, if a righteous man fhould be taken off in the very commiffion of a fin, which he has fallen into. Here, indeed, much may be faid, and with much uncertainty. But the refolution of this point does not, as far as I can fee, minister to any good or neceffary end; and therefore I will leave it to God. In all other cafes,. every thing is clear and plain; for if the fervant of God fall into a prefumptuous fin, 'tis univerfally acknowledged, that he cannot recover his ftation but by repentance. If he repent prefently, he is fafe; but if he continue in his fin, if he repeat it, he paffes into a state of wickednefs, widens the breach between God and his foul, declines infenfibly into a habit of fin, and renders his wound more and more incurable. 'Tis to little purpose, I think, here to confider the vaft difference there is in the commiffion, even of the fame fin, between a child of God, and a child of wrath; because a child of God muft not commit it at all if he do, tho' it be with reluctancy; tho' it be, as it were, with an imperfect confent, and with a divided foul; tho' the awe of religion and confcience feems Ꮓ

:

not