common effect of the tongue's life in sin, the very natural heat of sin that exerts and vents itself most that way; the eye becomes dead to that intemperate look that Solomon speaks of, when he cautions us against eyeing the wine when it is red, and well coloured in the cup. It is not taken with looking on the glittering skin of that serpent, till it bite and sting, as there he adds. It becomes also dead to that unchaste look that kindles fire in the heart, to which Job blindfolded and deadened his eyes, by an express compact and agreement with them; I have made a covenant with mine eyes3.

The eye of a godly man is not fixed on the false sparkling of the world's pomp, honour and wealth. It is dead to them: being quite dazzled with a greater beauty. The grass looks fine in the morning, when it is set with those liquid pearls, the drops of dew that shine upon it; but if you can look but a little while on the body of the sun, and then look down again, the eye is as it were dead; it sees not that faint shining on the earth that it thought so gay before and as the eye is blinded, and dies. to it, so within a few hours that gaiety quite vanishes and dies itself.

Men think it strange that the godly are not fond of their diet, that their appetite is not stirred with desire of their delights and dainties; they know not that such as be christians indeed, are dead to those things, and the best dishes that are set before a dead man give him not a stomach. The godly man's throat is cut to those meats, as Solomon advises, in another subject. But why may not you be a little more sociable to follow the fashion of the world, and take a share with your neighbours, may some say, without so precisely and narrowly examining every thing? It is true, says the christian, that the time was when I advised as little with conscience as others, but sought myself, and pleaded myself as they do, and looked no further; but that was when I was alive to those ways; but now truly t Prov. xxiii. 2.

Prov. xxiii. 31. $ Job xxxi. 1.

I am dead to them; and can you look for activity and conversation from a dead man; the pleasures of sin wherein I lived, are still the same, but I am not the same. Are you such a sneak and a fool, says the natural man, as to bear affronts, and swallow them, and say nothing? Can you suffer to be abused so by such and such a wrong? Indeed, says the christian again, I could once have resented an injury as you, or another, and had somewhat of that you call high-heartedness, when I was alive after your fashion; but now that humour is not only something cooled, but it is killed in me. It is cold dead, as ye say, and a greater spirit, I think, than my own, hath taught me another lesson, hath made me both deaf and dumb that way, and hath given me a new vent, and another language, and another party to speak to on such occasions", They that seek my hurt, speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long: What doth he in this case? But I as a deaf man heard not, and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth, and why? for in thee, O Lord, do I hope. And for this deadness that you despise, I have learnt it of him that died for me, who when he was reviled, reviled not again.

This is the true character of a christian; he is dead to sin: but alas! where is this christian to be found? And And yet thus is every one, that truly partakes of Christ; he is dead to sin really Hypocrites have an historical kind of death, like this, as players in tragedies. Those players have loose bags of blood that receive the wound: so the hypocrite, in some externals, and it may be, in that which is as near him as any outward thing, his purse, he may suffer some bloodshed of that for Christ; but this death to sin is not a swooning fit, that one may recover out of again; the apostle, adds, that he is buried.

But this is an unpleasant subject to talk thus of death and burial; the very name of death, in the " Psal. xxxviii. 12, 13, 14, 15. VOL. I.

Сс

* Rom. vi. 4.

softest sense it can have, makes a sour melancholy discourse. It is so indeed, if you take it alone, if there were not, instead of the life that is lost, a far better one immediately following; but so it is here, living unto righteousness succeeds dying to sin.

That which makes natural death so affrightful, the king of terrors, as Job calls it, is mainly this faint belief and assurance of the resurrection and glory to come; and without some lively apprehension of this, all mens moral resolutions and discourses are too weak cordials against this fear, They may set a good face on it, and speak big, and so cover the fear they cannot cure; but certainly they are a little ridiculous, that would persuade men to be content to die, by reasoning from the necessity and unavoidableness of it, which, taken alone, rather may beget a desperate discontent, than a quiet compliance. The very weakness of that argument is, that it is too strong, durum telum. That of company is fantastic; it may please the imagination, but satisfies not the judgment: nor are the miseries of life, though somewhat more proper, a full persuasive to meet death without reluctance; the oldest, the most decripit, and most diseased persons, yet naturally fall not out with life, but could have a mind to it still; and the very truth is this, the worst cottage any dwells in, they are loth to go out of, till they know of a better. And the reason why that which is so hideous to others, was so sweet to martyrs, and other godly men that have heartily embraced death, and welcomed it, though in very terrible shapes, was, because they had firm assurance of immortality beyond it. The ugly death's head, when the light of glory shines through the holes of it, is comely and lovely. To look upon death as eternity's birth-day, is that which makes it not only tolerable, but amiable. Hic dies, postremus æterni natalis est, is the word I admire more than any other that ever dropt from a heathen...

Thus here, the strongest inducement to this death,
Chap. xviii. 14.

Heb. xi. 35.

is the true notion and contemplation of this life, unto which it sets us over; it is most necessary to represent this, for a natural man hath as great an aversion every whit from this figurative death, this dying to sin, as from natural death; and there is the more necessity of persuading him to this, because his consent is necessary to it. No man dies this death to sin unwillingly, although no man is naturally willing to it; much of this death consists in a man's consenting thus to die: and this is not only a lawful, but a laudable, yea a necessary self-murder. Mortify therefore, your members which are upon the earth, says the Apostle. Now no sinner will be content to die to sin, if that were all; but if it be passing to a more excellent life, then he gaineth; and it were a folly not to seek this death. It was a strange power of Plato's discourse of the soul's immortality that moved a young man upon reading it, to throw himself into the sea, that he might leap through it to that immortality: but truly, were this life of God, this life to righteousness, and the excellency and delight of it known, it would gain many minds to this death whereby we step into it.

1. There is a necessity of a new being to be the principle of new acting and motion, as the apostle says, while ye served sin, ye were free from righteousness. So it is equally true, while ye were alive to sin ye were dead to righteousness; but there is a new breath of life from Heaven, breathed on the soul. Then lives the soul indeed, when it is one with God, and sees light in his light, it hath a spiritual knowledge of him, and therefore sovereignly loves him, and delights in his will; and that is indeed, to live unto righteousness, which in a comprehensive sense takes in all the frame of a christian life, and all the duties of it towards God and towards

men.

By this new nature the very natural motion of the soul so taken, is obedience to God, and walking in the paths of righteousness, it can no more live z Col. iii, 5. a Rom. vi. 20.

Peal, xxxii. 9.

in the habit and ways of sin than a man can live under water. Sin is not the christian's element, it is too gross for his renewed soul, as the water is for his body. He may fall into it, but he cannot breathe in it; cannot take delight, and continue to live in it; but his delight is in the law of the Lord. That is the walk that his soul refreshes itself in; he loves it entirely, and loves it most, where it most crosses the remainders of corruption that are in him; he bends the strength of his soul to please God; and aims wholly at that. It takes up his thoughts early, and late, he hath no other purpose in his being, and living: but only to honour his Lord, that is to live to righteousness. He doth not make a bye-work of it, a study for his spare hours; no, it is his main business, his all. In this law doth he meditate day and night. This life, like the natural one, is seated in the heart, and from thence diffuses itself to the whole man; he loves righteousness, and receiveth the truth (as the apostle speaks) in the love of it. A natural man may do many things, that for their shell and outside are righteous: but he lives not to righteousness, because his heart is not possessed and ruled with the love of it. Whereas this life makes the godly man delight to walk uprightly and to speak of righteousness, his language and ways carry the resemblance of his heart. I know it is easiest to act that part of religion that is in the tongue; but the christian ought not for that to be spiritually dumb. Because some birds are taught to speak, men do not for that give it over, and leave off to speak. The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment, and his feet strive to keep pace with his tongue, which gives evidence of its unfeignedness. None of his steps shall slide, or he shall not stagger in his steps, but that which is betwixt these, is the common spring of both. The law of God is in his heart, and from thence, as c Psal. i. 2. d Psal. xxxvii. 30, 31. e Psal. xxxvii. 30, 31.

b Psal. i. 2.