and the evil consequences which might thereupon ensue (of all which, himself was the principal, if not sole author), this was but a poor courtesy; for it was not out of love to the prophet, but only to be rid of his preaching. To seek God, to return, to enquire early after him, to remember him. as a rock and a redeemer, are in themselves choice and excellent services: but not to do all this out of a straight and steadfast heart, but out of fear only of God's sword,—not to do it because God commands them, but because he slays them; this end makes all but lying and flattery, like the promises of a boy under the rod. To fear God is the conclusion of the matter, and the whole duty of the man ;-but not to fear the Lord and his goodness, but to fear the Lord and his lions (as the Samaritans did), this is indeed not to fear the Lord at all.

C

Lastly, The very antipathy of sins must necessarily keep a man from many. For there are some sins so dissident and various, that they cannot consist together in the practice of them. Though the same root of original corruption will -serve for both, yet the exercises of them are incompatible: as the same root will convey sap to several boughs, which shall bear fruits so different, as could not grow out of the same branch. The apostle gives a distinction of spiritual and fleshly filthiness, between many of which there is as great an opposition, as between flesh and spirit. Ambition, pride, hypocrisy, formality, are spiritual sins; drunkenness, uncleanness, public, sordid, notorious intemperance, are fleshly sins:—and these two sorts cannot ordinarily stand together; for the latter will speedily blast the projects, disappoint the expectations, wash off the daub and varnish which a man, with much cunning and pains, had put on. Pilate and Herod did hate one another; and this, one would have thought, should have advantaged Christ against the particular malice of either of them against him (as in a case something parallel, it did St. Paul, when the Pharisees and Sadducees were divided); but their malice' against

x Psal. lxxviii. 34, 37. cxxx. 4. vii. 1.

z Psal.

c 2 Cor.

y Eccles. xii. 13. Hos. iii. 5. a 2 Kings xvii. 33, 34. b Scelera dissident. Senec. d Cum faciunt hæc homines sine fide, non peccata coercentur, sed aliis peccata vincuntur. Aug. de Nupt. et Conc. lib. 1. cap. 3. e Acts xxiii. 6, 7. Acts iv. 27.

f Luke xxiii. 12.

g

Christ being not so well able to wreak itself on him during their own distances, was a means to procure a reconciliation more mischievous than their malice. Ephraim against Manasseh, and Manasseh against Ephraim, but both against Judah ";" one sin was put out to make the more room for another. Many men have some master-sin, which checks and abates the rest. The ancient Romans were restrained from intemperance, injustice, violence, by an extreme affectation of glory, and an universal sovereignty. As, many times, men cure heats with heats, and one flux of blood with another; so some sins, though not cured, yet are forborne upon the predominancy of others. The Pharisees hated Christ, and feared the people; and many times this fear restrained the manifestation and execution of the other.

The third and last exception is this: Unregenerate men of a more calm and civil temper, may conceive themselves delivered from the reign of sin, because they have many conflicts with it, and reluctancies against it, and so afford not such a plenary and resolved obedience to it, as so absolute a power requireth. To this I answer, that this is no more sufficient to conclude an overthrow of the reign of sin, than the sudden mutiny of Cæsar's soldiers, which he easily quelled with one brave word, Quirites, could conclude the nullifying of his government. For when we mention uncontrolledness as an argument of sin's reign, we mean not, that a bare natural conviction (which the apostle' calls an accusation') which imports a former yielding to the lust, and no more; but that a spiritual expostulation with a man's own heart, joined with true repentance", and a sound and serious lusting" against the desires and commands of the flesh, are the things which subdue the reign of sin. The whole state then of this point, touching the royalty of sin, will be fully opened, when we shall have distinctly unfolded the differences betwixt these two conflicts with sin; the con

g Isa. ix. 21. h Cæteras cupiditates hujus un ius ingenti cupiditate presserunt. Aug. de Civit. 1. 5. cap. 12. Vid.-Plu. i Calores caloribus onerando deprimimus, et sanguinis fluxum defusâ insuper venulâ revocamus. Ter, et Aug. de nat. et grat. c. 28. k Mat. xxvii. 46. John vii. 3.. 1 Rom. ii. 15.

m Jer. viii. 6.

n Gal. v. 17.

flict of a natural accusing conscience, and the conflict of a spiritual mourning and repenting conscience.

First, They differ in the principles whence they proceed : -the one proceeds from a spirit of fear and bondage; the other, from a spirit of love and delight. An unregenerate man considers the state of sin as a kingdom, and so he loves the services of it; and yet he considers it as regnum sub graviore regno,' as a kingdom subject to the scrutinies and inquiries of a higher kingdom; and so he fears it, because the guilt thereof, and day of accounts, affrights him. So that this natural conflict riseth out of the compulsion of his judgment, not out of the propension of his will; not from a desire to be holy, but only to be safe and quiet. He abhorreth the thoughts of God and his justice: whereas the faithful hate sin, with relation to the purity and righteousness of God,--desire to walk in all well-pleasing towards him,-hunger after his grace,—are affected with indignation, self-displacency, and revenge against themselves for sin,mourn under their corruptions,-bewail the frowardness of their slippery and revolting hearts,-set a watch and spiritual judicature over them,-cry out for strength to resist their lusts, and praise God for any grace, power, discipline, severity, which he shews against them. word, a natural conscience doth only shew the danger of sin, and so makes a man fear it; but a spiritual conscience shews the pollution of sin, the extreme contrariety which it bears to the love of our heart, the rule of our life, the law of God; and so makes a man hate it, as a thing contrary, not only to his happiness, but to his nature, of which he hath newly been made partaker. A dog will be brought by discipline to forbear those things which his nature most delights in, not because his ravine is changed into a better temper, but the following pains make him abstain from the present bait: so the conflict of the faithful is with the unholiness of sin; but the conflict of other men is only with the guilt and other sensual incommodities of sin. And though that may make a man forbear and return, yet not unto the Lord: "They have not cried unto me," saith the Lord, "with their heart, when they howled upon their beds P." Their

In one

prayers were not cries, but howlings, brutish, and mere sensual complaints, because they proceeded not from their hearts, from any inward and sincere affection, but only from fear of that hand which was able to cast them upon their beds. As a sick man eats meat, not for love of it, which he takes with much reluctancy and disrelish, but for fear of death, which makes him force himself (as Saul said to Samuel) against his will;-whereas a healthy man eats the same meat with hunger and delight; so a natural conscience constrains a man to do some things which his heart never goes along with, only to avoid the pain which the contrary guilt infers. In a tempest, the mariners will cast out all their wares, not out of any hatred to the things (for they throw over their very hearts into the sea with them); but because the safety of their lives, and preservation of their goods will not stand together; 'non sub intuitu mali, sed minoris boni,' not under the apprehension of any evil in the things, but only as a lesser good which will not consist with the greater: and therefore they never throw them over but in a tempest; whereas, at all other times, they labour at the pump to exonerate the ship of the water, which settles at the bottom, not only for the danger, but stench and noisomeness of it too. Thus a natural conscience throws away sin as wares; and therefore never forbears it, but in a tempest of wrath and sense of the curse, and quickly returns to it again: but a spiritual conscience throws out sin as corrupt and stinking water; and therefore is uniformly disaffected to it, and always laboureth to be delivered from it. A scullion or collier will not dare to handle a coal when it is full of fire, which yet, at other times, is their common use; whereas a man of more cleanly education, as he will not then, because of the fire,— so not at any time, because of the foulness: so here a natural conscience forbears sin sometimes, when the guilt and curse of it doth more appear, which yet, at other times, it makes no scruple of: but a spiritual conscience abstains always, because of the baseness and pollution of it. The one fears sin, because it hath fire in it to burn; the other hates sin, because it hath filth in it to pollute, the soul. Secondly, These conflicts differ in their seats and stations.

q 2 Sam. xiii. 12.

The natural conflict is in several faculties, as between the understanding and the will, or the will and the affections; and so doth not argue any universal renovation, but rather a rupture and a schism, a confusion and disorder in the soul. But a spiritual conflict is in the same faculty; will against will, affection against affection, heart against heart, because sin dwells still in our mortal body. Neither do the spirit and the flesh enter into covenant to share and divide the man, and so to reside asunder in several faculties, and not molest one another's government. There can be no agreement between the strong man and him that is stronger. Christ will hold no treaty with Belial; he is able to save to the uttermost, and therefore is never put to make compositions with his enemy; he will not disparage the power of his own grace, so much as to entertain a parley with the flesh. So then they fight, not from several sorts only, but are ever struggling, like Esau and Jacob, in the same womb. They are "contrary to one another," saith the apostle; and contraries meet in the same subject, before they exercise hostility against one another. Flesh and spirit are in a man, as light and darkness in the dawning of the day, as heat and cold in warm water,-not severed in distinct parts, but universally interweaved and coexistent in all. There is the same proportion in the natural and spiritual conflict with sin, as in the change of motion in a bowl. A bowl may be two ways altered from that motion, which the impressed violence from the arm did direct it to; sometimes by an external cause, a bank meeting and turning the course; ever by an internal, the sway and corrective of the bias, which accompanies and slackens the impressed violence throughout all the motion: So is it in the turning of a man from sin; a natural man goes on with a full consent of heart, by bias in the will or affections, to moderate or abate the violence; only sometimes by chance he meets with a convicted judgment, or with a natural conscience, which, like a bank, turns the motion, or disappoints the heart in the whole pleasure of that sin; but in another, where haply he meets with no such obstacle, he runs his full and direct course. But now a spiritual man hath a bias and corrective of grace in the same faculty where sin is, which doth much remit the violence, and at length turn the course of it. And this