unmortified sin, the great ringleading lust, and a temptation to covetousness assaults the soul: possibly, this being but an underling sin, and not having made so great a party for itself as the other, might be easily rejected, did it plead only for itself; but, when it pretends the interest of the master-lust, and pleads how serviceable great and rich possessions would be to the advancement of pride and ambition, this adds a double enforcement to the temptation, and thereby bears down the soul before it, as unable to make any available resistance. And thus, proportionably, it is in all other sins whatsoever: they have a dependance one upon another: the great sin sways principally; and cannot subsist, unless provision be laid in, and a way made for it by inferior sins, which it countenances and bears out by its own authority, and derives to them the same prevalency that itself hath gained over the soul. Let not men, therefore, think that their captivity to sin is more tolerable, because they find but one the most prevailing: alas! this doth but serve to unite and drive the rest to a head, which perhaps otherwise would be vagrant, and wandering, and uncertain in their tempting; and, by this one unmortified lust, the Devil hath gotten a fit handle to the soul, whereby he may turn and wind it to whatever other sin he pleaseth. It was therefore a wise command of the King of Syria to his captain, 1 Kings xxii. 31. to fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel: he well knew, that if the chief commander were once slain, the ungoverned army. might easily be routed and put to flight. We must, in the mortifying of the deeds of the body, take the same counsel, and follow the same course; fight, if not only, yet chiefly, against the commanding lust: if that be once mortified, the rest are as an army without a head, who quickly will find themselves without hands too: otherwise, while any one lust remains unmortified, the soul is almost in as dangerous a condition, as if every lust were violent and raging.

vi. An unmortified sin WILL MOST CERTAINLY BEREAVE THE SOUL OF PEACE AND COMFORT: and hinder it from ever enjoying that heaven upon earth, of assurance.

If you send to enquire of your souls, as Joram did of Jehu, "Soul, Is it peace?" Is not this sad answer returned, What hast thou to do with peace? Or, What peace, so long as thy pride, thy covetousness, thy intemperance, while such and such a lust remains unmortified?

An unmortified lust hinders peace and comfort these Two ways.

1. As it blots our evidences for heaven.

Let any man in the world tell me that his title to heaven is clear and past all uncomfortable doubtings, whose conscience doth not witness his sincerity to him, that he doth maintain an universal opposition against all sin, and exercise a constant mortification of it; and I shall presently conclude that man's assurance to be the false and glowing presumptions of a spirit of error and delusion. We know no better test of a man's condition than what my text affords: If ye mortify, ye shall live. Now when any lust is allowed and indulged, will not this blast a man's comfort, and raise in him fears and jealousies concerning his eternal welfare? "Such a corruption I do not strive nor struggle against, I do not labour to beat down and keep under; and how then shall I assure myself that I am free from the reigning power of it, or shall be free from its condemning power?" Let me tell you, though freedom from the dominion of sin may possibly consist with a much-neglected mortification; yet a comfortable evidence of that freedom cannot: and, therefore, no wonder if, through the carelessness of Christians in this great work, so few attain solid and constant comfort; the most being sadly perplexed with doubts and jealousies of their hypoerisy and unsoundness, even all their days. This all riseth from some unmortified lust or other, which either leaves a deep blur upon their evidences for heaven, or else raises a thick mist before their eyes that they cannot read them.

2. An unmortified lust hinders peace by fomenting a perpetual civil war in the soul.

Sometimes so it fares, where there is no higher a principle than merely natural conscience: this strives and combats, as it is able, against the sin, before it is committed: this cries out and rages against the sinner, after it is committed. But it is always so, where there is a principle of true grace implanted, to excite and assist conscience. Let corruption be never so great, its faction never so potent; yet grace, though but mean and weak, will still fight it: it will neither give nor take truce, till, at length, the great unmortified lust be subdued, and fall conquered and slain under it. What tumults, what uproars, what bandying of affections against affections, will against will, thoughts against thoughts, do woefully disquiet that soul, where corruption will not submit, and grace cannot! There is no de

liberate act, either of grace or corruption, exerted, but what must first break through a whole army of its enemies, set to oppose it. Gal. v. 17. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.....so that ye cannot do the things that ye would: that is, neither can ye act according to the bent of your corrupt will, nor yet of your sanctified will, without opposition and resistance from one of these two quarrelling principles within, the flesh and the Spirit. Such men are like those builders in Nehemiah, that wrought with one hand, and with the other held their weapons: so, truly, if a child of God, in whom corruption is yet too prevalent, work the works of God with one hand, he must hold the weapons of his spiritual warfare in the other. This is that unpeaceable and turbulent condition, into which an unmortified lust will certainly bring you. And though, indeed, in the most mortified Christian on earth, there will sometimes be combatings between these two contrary parties; yet it is not with so much distraction, anguish, and terrors, as where corruption is more violent and outrageous.

That is the last thing.

I might add that an utter neglect of mortification binds you over to eternal condemnation: If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die. Your election itself cannot save you; your vocation, regeneration, and whatever else you might build the certainty of your salvation upon, are all in vain if you do not mortify. There is no other way, by which you can possibly get to heaven, but by marching over the necks of all your lusts. But I shall insist no longer on this head.

And now, if to profess God with our mouths and to deny him with our hearts and lives, if to talk of religion and live without it, if to have a form of godliness and to deny the power of it, be indeed this necessary mortification, I need press this duty no farther: we have such mortified ones, more than enough. But, if wantonness, censoriousness, contempt of the means of grace, giddiness of opinions, libertinism, and strange large allowances that men take to themselves in their conversations, be signs of an unmortified heart; never certainly was there any professing age in the world, that had more need to have this doctrine often pressed upon them, than that in which we live. I am not now urging you to that churlish and rigorous way of mortif

cation, consisting only in a froward abstinence from the comforts and conveniences of this life, which some perhaps blind devotionists have too rigidly exercised themselves with: I know the maceration of the outward man is not the mortification of the Old Man; and yet were there among professors a greater moderation even in the use of the lawful comforts of this life, there would not possibly be so great an advantage given to deceivers as now there is, who, under the specious shew of selfdenial in these things, draw away numbers of proselytes after them, as being the only mortified men. It is the inward mortification, that we. labour to press upon you, which were it once industriously exercised, outward exhorbitancies would of themselves fall into a decency and sobriety.

But, alas! when men shall talk at such a rate of spiritualness, as if some angels sat upon their tongues; and yet live at such an excess of vanity, it may be of profaneness, as if legions possessed their hearts; what shall we judge of such men? If we judge the tree by the leaves, what other can we think of them, but that they are trees of righteousness, and plants of renown? but if we look to their fruits, unprofitableness in their relations, envy, strife, variance, emulation, wrath, excessive pride, worldliness, selfishness, what can we think of them, but that heaven and hell are now as near together, as these men's hearts and mouths? And, truly, to let go these gross professors, have we not cause to take up sad complaints even of true Christians themselves, in whom the reigning power of sin is in their regeneration mortified? may we not take up the same speech concerning them, as St. Paul doth concerning the Corinthians, 1 Cor. iii. 3. Ye are yet carnal and walk as men? If the Apostle could have laid in charge against these Corinthians, not only envy, strife, and divisions; but hatred, bitterness, implacableness of spirit, brain-sick opinions, and self-seeking practices, joined with a great measure of neglect and contempt of the glory of God; as justly as we can against the Christians of our times; certainly his reproof would not have been so mild, as to tell them that they walked as men; but, rather, that they walked as devils. Would to God their miscarriages were not so gene. rally known, as that every one could not supply the sense!

III. I have already set before you the great evils, that follow upon a neglected mortification. As to your own particulars, if that cannot affect you, there is but little ground to hope that

your charity to others should prevail: yet give me leave to mention TWO GRAND EVILS, THAT HEREBY BEFAL OTHERS.

i. Hereby THEY ARE INDUCED TO THINK ALL PROFEssors are PUT HYPOCRITES, AND RELIGION A MERE MOCKERY; and so come to have their hearts embittered against the ways of God, as being all but mere deceit and cozenage.

It is a sad accusation, Rom. ii. 24. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you: How so? because, as in the former verses, they rested in the Law, and had a form of godliness, and were confident that they were guides to the blind, and lights to them which were in darkness: eminent professors they were, like the men of our days: but mark, Thou, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?....Thou, that makest thy boast of the Law, through breaking the Law dishonourest thou God? Thou, who professest mortification, dost thou indulge thyself in thy lusts? Thou, who pretendest to near fellowship and communion with God, dost thou live as one without God in the world? Tremble at it, the name of the Great God is blasphemed among wicked wretches through you: those, who were profane, you make atheistical; scoffing and deriding godliness, as an idle whimsy: and, because they see so little in their lives, they presently conclude there is no other difference between saints and sinners at all, but that the one have their tongues a little better tipped and their fancies a little higher wound, than the other. What is the common raillery of these profane persons?"Oh! this, forsooth, is a saint, and yet how covetous, how griping and greedy! Well, of all men deliver me from falling into the hands of a saint." Beware, lest these their blasphemies, be not at last charged upon you; who, through a loose, wanton, and unmortified conversation, have made religion even to stink in their nostrils. It is mortification alone, that can convince the world, that religion is any thing real: but while men profess largely and live at large too, this keeps men off from religion; not because they think it a thing above them, but because they scorn it as a baseness below them, so to juggle and dissemble with the world,

ii. Hereby, also, WICKED MEN FLATTER THEMSELVES IN THEIR SINFUL ESTATE, supporting themselves upon the lives of unmor