the presumptions of Heaven; to be weary of one sabbath here, and yet presume upon the expectation of an eternity } which shall be nothing else but sabbath. In the civil law, 'testes domestici,' household witnesses, (who might in reason be presumed parties) are invalid. Surely, in matters of salvation, if a man have no witness but his own spirit, misinformed by wrong rules, seduced by the subtilties of Satan, and the deceit of his own wicked heart, carried away with the course of the world, and the common prejudices and presumptions of foolish men; they will all fail him when it shall be too late. God will measure men by his own "line, and righteousness by his own plummet ;" and then the hail sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters overflow the hiding-place of those men that made a covenant with death'." Secondly, beware of proud resolutions, self-love, reservations, wit, distinctions, evasions to escape the Word: these are but the weapons of lust, but the exaltations of a fleshly mind"; but submit to the Word, receive it with meekness; be willing to count that sense of Scripture truest, which most restraineth thy corrupt humours, and crosseth the imaginations of thy fleshly reason. Our own weapons must be rendered up, before the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, will be on our side. Love of lusts and pride of heart can never consist with obedience to the Word". Thirdly, Converting and saving knowledge is not of our own fetching in, or gathering; but it is evro éxbouσa, a doctrine that comes' unto us, and is brought by that sacred blast of the Spirit, which bloweth where he listeth. We do not first come, and are then taught; but first we are taught, and then we come 2. We must take heed of attributing to ourselves, boasting of our own sufficiencies, congruities, preparations, concurrencies, contributions unto the Word in the saving of us. Grace must prevent, follow, assist us, pre-operate and co-operate: Christ must be "all in all, the author and finisher of our faith :" of ourselves we can do nothing but disable ourselves, resist the Spirit, and pull

Clem. Alex. oi oikobev

q Judicia domestica. Ter. Apol. folкolev кpíois. Aoyiapoi. Greg. Nazian. Orat. 1. r Isa. xxviii. 15. 17. * Luke xi. 22. Brisson. de formul. lib. 4.

2 Cor. x. 4, 5. bant, arma tradiderunt. xiii. 17. xliii. 2.

u Jam. i. 21.

a Joh. vi. 45. Isa. lv. 5. lxv. 1.

• Deut. xxix. 19, 20. y Qui se dedeNehem. ix. 16. Jer.

down whatever the Word doth build up within us. Ever therefore in humility wait at the Pool where the Spirit stirs. Give that honour to God's ordinances, as, when he bids thee do no great thing, but only wash and be clean, hear and believe, believe and be saved,—not stoutly to cast his law behind thy back, but to humble thyself to walk with thy God, and to see his name and power in the voice which cries unto thee.

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Fourthly, Though sin seem dead to secure, civil, moral, superstitiously zealous men, in regard of any present sense or sting; yet all that while it is alive in them; and will, certainly, when the book shall be opened, either in the ministry of the Word to conversion, or in the last judgment to condemnation, revive again. All these points are very natural to the text; but I should be too long a stranger to the course I intend, if I should insist on them. I return therefore to the main purpose. Here is the state of sin, "sin revived;" the guilt of sin, "I died;" the conviction of it by the Spirit bringing the spiritual sense of the commandment, and writing it in the heart of a man, and so pulling him away from his own conclusion.

The doctrines, then, which I shall insist on, are these two: first, The Spirit by the commandment convinceth a man to be in the state of sin. Secondly, The Spirit by the commandment convinceth a man to be in the state of death, because of sin. To convince a man that he is in the state of sin,' is, to make a man so to set his own seal and serious acknowledgment to this truth-that he is a sinner,-as that withal he shall feel within himself the quality of that estate; and, in humility and self-abhorrency, conclude against himself all the naughtiness and loathsome influences, which are proper to kindle and catch in his nature and person, by reason of that estate and so not in expression only, but in experience; not in word, but in truth; not out of fear, but out of loathing; not out of constraint, but most willingly; not out of formality, but out of humility; not according to the general voice, but out of a serious scrutiny and self-examination, load and charge himself with all the noisomeness and venom, with all the dirt and garbage, with all the malignity and frowardness that his nature and person do abound

:

b Micah vi. 8, 9.

withal, even as the waves of the sea with mire and dirt; and thereupon justify Almighty God, when he doth charge him, with all this, yea, if he should condemn him for it.

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Now we are to shew two things. First, that a mere natural light will never thus far convince man. Secondly, that the Spirit by the commandment doth. Some things Nature is sufficient to teach: God may be felt and found out, in some sense, by those that ignorantly worship him. Nature doth convince men that they are not so good as they should be: the law is written in the hearts of those that know nothing of the letter of it. Idleness, bestiality, lying, luxury, the Cretian poet could condemn in his own countrymen; drinking of healths, ad plenos calices,' by measure and constraint, was condemned by the law of a heathen, prince, and that in his luxury. Long hair was condemned by the dictate of nature and right reason: and the reason why so many men and whole nations notwithstanding useit, is given by St. Jerome ", " quia à natura deciderunt, sicut multis aliis rebus comprobatur." And indeed, as Tertulliani saith of women's long hair, that it is "humilitatis suæ sarcina," the burden, as it were, of their humility; so by the warrant of that proportion which St. Paul allows, 1 Cor. xi. 14, 15. we may call men's long hair "superbiæ suæ sarcinam," nothing but a clog of pride. Saint Austin k hath written three whole chapters together, against this sinful custom of nourishing hair, which, he saith, is 'expressly · against the precept of the apostle, whom to understand otherwise than the very letter sounds, is to wrest the manifest words" of the apostle unto a perverse construction.— But to return, these remnants of Nature in the hearts of men,¦ are but like the blazes and glimmerings of a candle in the socket; there is much darkness mingled with them. Nature cannot thoroughly convince ;

1. Because it doth not carry a man to the root, Adam's sin", concupiscence, and corrupted seeds of a fleshly mind, reason, conscience, will, &c. Mere Nature will never teach a man to feel the weight and curse of a sin, committed above d Rom. ii. 15. e Titus i. 12, 13. f Esther i. 8. 81 Cor. xi. 14. h Hieronym. in 1 Cor. xi. 14. i De Coron. mil. cap. 14. De opere mon. cap. ultimis. 1 Aperte contra Apostoli præceptum. m Manifesta verba Apostoli in perversam detorquere sententiam. n Rom. v. 12.

c Acts xvii. 23. 27.

five thousand years before himself was born; to feel the spirits of sin running in his blood, and sprouting out of his nature into his life, one unclean thing out of another; to mourn ¶ for that filthiness which he contracted in his conception. Saint Paul confesseth that this could not be learned without the law.

"Evil

2. Because it doth not carry a man to the rule, which is the written law, in that mighty wideness, which the prophet David' found in it. Nature cannot look upon so bright a thing, but through veils and glasses of its own. hateth the light, neither cometh to the light";" cannot endure a thorough scrutiny and ransacking, lest it should be reproved. When a man looks on the law through the mist of his own lusts, he cannot but wrest and torture it to his own way. Saint Peter gives two reasons of it, because such are åμateïs nai dotýρixtoi. Unlearned men, namely, in the mystery of godliness,-have not been taught of God what the truth is in Jesus: till that time, a man will never put off his lusts, but defend them; and rather make crooked the rule, coin distinctions and evasions upon the law itself, than judge himself, and give glory to God. 2. Fickle, unstable men, men apt to be tossed up and down like empty clouds with every blast; never rooted nor grounded in the love of the truth; unsteadfast in the covenant of God; that a lay not hold on it, and are therefore altogether indisposed to continue in, or hold fast the truth. A man in his lusts is like a man in a disease, not long well in one way, but is ever given to changes and experiments; and as he changeth, so doth he ever new-shape the Scripture, and drag it down to the patronage of his own ways. So that the law, in a wicked man's heart, is like a candle in a foul lantern; or as a straight oar in troubled water; or the shining of light through a coloured glass, wried and changed into the corrupted mind wherein it lies. The law in itself is perfect", right, pure, sure and faithful, holy, just, and spiritual,

b

lively and operative: and men by nature are unlike all this, i degenerate, and crooked, wavering and unfaithful," deceiving, and being deceived, unholy, carnal and impure, fleshly-minded, P dead, and reprobate to every good work. Such a great disproportion is there between nature and the law.

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3. Because it doth not drive us out of ourselves for a remedy. The sublimest philosophy that ever was, did never teach a man to deny himself, but to build up his house with the old ruins, to fetch stones and materials out of the wonted quarry. Humiliation, 'confusion, 'shame, self-abhorrency, " to be vile in our own eyes, to be nothing within ourselves, to be willing to own the vengeance of Almighty God, and to judge ourselves, to justify him that may condemn us, and be witnesses against ourselves; are virtues known only in the book of God, and which the learned philosophers would have esteemed both irrational and pusillanimous things.

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4. Because natural judgment is so thoroughly distorted and infatuated, as to a count evil good, and good evil, light darkness, and darkness light: to persuade a man that he is in a right way, when the end thereof will be the ways of death; that he is rich, and in need of nothing, when in the mean time he is miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Plato's community, Aristotle's urbanity and magnanimity, 'Cicero's blinding the eyes of the judges, and his officious & dissimulation and compliancy, the Stoicks' apathy and officious lies, that so much admired stoutness, or rather sullenness of those rigid heathen, that pulled out their own eyes that they may be chaste, and killed themselves to be rid of evil times;

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