notice of them. This is the continual vexation of the best Christians, that, even in duties, a vain and impertinent thought runs away with their hearts; that the heat and warmth of their affections, the life, vigour, and spiritualness of their souls in communion with God, are lost oftentimes ere they perceive it: they, at last, perhaps, find out this thieving, deceitful thought, and mourn over it; but yet know not when or how it entered; no, nor can track it so much as by any footsteps. This lurking, deceitful abode of an unperceived thought is, or may be, the sad and just complaint of every soul among us. The Apostle cries out of it, Rom. vii. 21. When I would do good, evil is present with me: it is present: here I find it but how or when it rose, that I know not. And, then,

(3) It is very difficult thoroughly to convince men of the great guilt and evil, which there is in sinful thoughts.

And this also makes it so difficult to mortify them because they are but things of a small and minute being, therefore men think they carry in them but small guilt and little danger. Every man, that hath but a remnant of conscience left in him, will beware of gross, black, and grisly sins, which carry the brand of hell and damnation visibly stamped upon their foreheads; such, as he, who can without reluctancy commit, must needs own himself for the apparent offspring of the Devil: but for an invisible thought, a notion, an airy idea, a thing next nothing, this certainly can hurt no one: " By a malicious thought, I injure no man: by a covetous thought, I neither grind nor extort from any man: and what so great evil then can there be in this?" It is true, indeed, wert thou only to deal with men, whom thy thoughts touch not, there were no such great evil in them: but, when thou hast to do with an immaterial and spiritual God, before whom thy thoughts appear as substantial and considerable as thy outward acts; then know, that a thought, as slight and thin a being as it is, is yet a heinous provocation of his majesty, a wretched violation of his law, and will be (if not mortified) a fearful damnation and destruction to thine own soul. This doth lie at the bottom of all that neglect, of which men are generally guilty in opposing sinful thoughts: they think them (which indeed is as bad a thought as any other) harmless and indifferent things. As we use to call little infants, Innocent Babes, though indeed they are born into the world with a hell of sin in their natures; some men are apt to think the sinful thoughts, which they conceive

and with which they travail, to be innocent infant things, though indeed every one of them be no other than a firebrand of hell. Some thoughts we are wont to accuse and condemn, as being impertinent the truth is, it is a name too slight and favourable: there is no such thing as an impertinent thought; no, there is not any thing in your whole lives of greater concernment, and weight, and moment than your thoughts: whatever they be, their influence reacheth no shorter than unto what an eternity of life or death extends to. Now if this persuasion did indeed take hold of men, were it possible, that they should thus indulge themselves in vain, frothy, idle, nay let me call them sinful and pernicious thoughts; thoughts, so effectually destructive? were it possible, that they should so closely brood on these cockatrice eggs, which bring forth nothing but serpents to sting them to eternal death? were it possible, that they should roll and toss a sin to and fro in the fancy; and, thereby, recompense the Devil and their own corruptions, for the squeamishness of conscience in hindering the commission of it? Certainly, herein men bewray great unacquaintedness with mortification, when as those sins that they dare not act, yet they dare with complacency and delight contemplate and feed upon in their own thoughts. Turn, therefore, your eyes inward : when the swarm of lusts is up, and much noise and buzzing is made by corruptions, by temptations, which yet some external principles will not suffer to break forth; where then do they flutter? do they settle in the heart? dost thou fire them there? do thy thoughts, like so many intellectual bees, fly abroad and suck sweetness out of every sinful object, to lay and hoard it up in the fancy? canst thou, for the satisfying of conscience, restrain the outward actings of sin; and yet, for the satisfying of corruption, tolerate and allow the inward workings of it? certain it is, thou never yet knewest what belongs to true and saving mortification; and it were happy for thee, if such an imaginary sinner might suffer only an imaginary death.

But a truly mortified Christian, as he is watchful to keep sin from breaking forth into outward act, so is he especially careful to resist and quell the sins of the inward man, the sins of the heart. And that,

[1] Because he knows that these are the sins, which are most of all contrary to grace, and do most of all weaken and waste it. Heart sins lie, as so many worms, beating and gnawing the very root of grace; when as outward sins, any otherwise than

as they proceed from the heart, are but as caterpillars, that devour only the verdure and flourishing of grace. How can grace breathe or stir, in such a crowd of sinful thoughts and sinful affections, that oppress it? How can it grow and thrive, among such multitudes of weeds, that choke and starve it? There is no room for grace to live, at least not to act, till mortification pulls up and throws out of the heart all that trash which before filled it. And, then,

[2] He knows, likewise, that when the heart is brimful of corruption, the least jog of a temptation will make it run over. And, therefore,

[3] He looks upon it as the most easy and compendious way of mortification, to begin at the heart.

Thence it is, that all the outward sins of a man's life and conversation receive their supply. What saith Christ, Matt. xv. 19? Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Whence are the streams supplied, but from the fountain? and, if this be dried up, those must of necessity fail. Those corrupt streams, that flow forth too apparently in men's actions, proceed all from that bitter fountain, which continually bubbles up in the heart; and, as the exercise of mortification dries up this fountain, so the floods of ungodliness must needs run low, by consequence. This, therefore, is very rationally the great and main care of a mortified man, to keep his heart clean from sinful thoughts, sinful desires, and sinful motions and affections. And therefore God calls upon Jerusalem, Jer. iv. 14. O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved: that is, mortify the sins of thy heart, that thou mayest live. But what sins are these? it is intimated in the following words, How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? How long? truly they are likely to lodge for ever within; and they are never like to lodge only within, where all endeavours of mortification are only external and outward. It is in vain to strive to keep sinful thoughts within, unless we endeavour also to destroy them within: they will else break forth, notwithstanding all the care that is used in restraint; and overrun the soul with the guilt of some scandalous, conscience-wounding sin, or other. In your strugglings, therefore, against sin, and in your endeavours for the mortifying of it, look what it is that you chiefly resist: do you not content yourselves that you have beaten corruption from the out-works

into the very fort; that, whereas before it sallied forth at pleasure, wasted and havocked your consciences, gashed and wounded your souls even to the very death, triumphed over you as conquered slaves and vassals, now it is pent up in a narrower room and compass? do you not think it enough that you lay a close siege unto it by conviction, conscience, legal terrors; and, by these, so shut it up, that though it may stir and tumultuate within, yet it cannot easily break forth to your disturbance? is not this restraint sufficient? but must you still pursue it even into the very heart; and, when it hath hid itself in a sinful thought, there stifle and kill it? This, indeed, is a sign for good, that this great work of mortification is not only begun by you, but also brought to some perfection. If I may be allowed so to express it, the very heart of sin lies in the sins of the heart and, if we would indeed mortify it, it is there that we must both aim and strike.

That is the First part of this particular trial. He, who exerciseth mortification aright, doth principally set himself against inward and heart sins, which an unmortified man takes least notice of, and least resists.

2. A truly mortified man is very careful and laborious in opposing and subduing Spiritual Sins and Wickednesses.

"Spiritual sins!" you will say: "why, are there any such? Graces may well be termed spiritual, being the immediate effects of the Holy Spirit of God; but are sins become spiritual too?"

By Spiritual Sins, therefore, I mean, such as principally reside in the more refined and exalted part of man, in the very flower and top of his being; called, therefore, by the Apostle, Eph. iv. 23., the spirit of the mind; the mind itself is a spiritual part, but here the Apostle makes this mind double refined, and extracts a spirit out of a spirit. So that those sins, which are chiefly conversant about the mind, the spirit of a man, and have but little commerce and fellowship with that dull dreggy part the body, these are spiritual sins: such are pride, envy, hypocrisy, unbelief, hardness of heart, a slighting of the tenders of salvation made by Christ, a froward quenching of the good motions of the Holy Spirit.

These are spiritual sins; and these are the sins, which a child of God bends his strongest endeavours against in the work of mortification: and that, upon a Threefold account.

(1) Because these spiritual sins, though they are not of that gross scandal and infamy among men, yet they are sins of the deepest and blackest guilt and defilement in themselves and in the sight of God.

And, therefore, when Christ would rake up the very bottom of hell, who lies there? not the swearer, not the drunkard, not the unclean person, not the worldling, nor any such gross and brutish sinners; but the hypocrite, that spiritual, that refined and exalted sinner: Matt. xxiv. 51. Could we see impenitency, unbelief, hardness of heart, with the same eyes that God sees them, they would appear more ugly and deformed, than those foul and notorious wickednesses, which cause an indelible shame and reproach upon the places where such live as are guilty of them and that, because they deface the choicest part of the image of God; that, wherein the soul doth nearest resemble and transcribe its original. This, a gracious heart, in part, discovers: it sees somewhat of the loathsome nature of these spiritual sins, which before it did not; and, therefore, now so earnestly opposeth them. And,

(2) Because these spiritual sins are the most dangerous and destructive of all others.

I do not say that the gross outward acts of sin do not deserve hell: they do; yea, and a scorching portion of it too. Yet, I say, if any, who hath been a sinner, though to a very high degree of scandal, doth eternally perish, it is not because of those outward sins merely, but because of impenitency, of unbelief, of hardness of heart, of slighting and undervaluing Jesus Christ, and refusing the gracious terms of the Gospel. They are only these spiritual sins, that do shut men out of heaven, and shut them up in hell, and seal them unto everlasting condemnation. Gross sins do this meritoriously; but these alone do it eventually: these do certainly effect it, as being sins against the only remedy appointed. And, then,

(3) Because they are sins, which, of all other, are most like unto the sins of the Devil.

What are the sins of the Devil? not intemperance and luxury; those swinish and brutish lusts, wherein sensualists wallow these are not suited to the immaterial nature of the Devil; and are so far below him, that he can neither act nor relish them. But intellectual sins, that are strained and clarified from such feculency, as pride, malice, hatred of God and goodness,