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to public shame, and more often others to noisome diseases that will not be concealed. While also there are kinds and degrees of this sin which can only be known to God and a man's own conscience, so closely are they kept from observation. But God knows all their practices; and all such persons also know in their consciences that he holds them guilty, and that they are the servants of lust. But other sins are not so hid. Let me then inquire further, Are none of us living in intemperance? Intemperance especially relates to gluttony and drunkenness. Are we not living in gluttony? Certainly there is such a sin as intemperance in meat. And if we are grown nice and delicate, if the plain food of our fathers disgusts us, if we are for elegant dishes beyond what we can afford, or, though we can afford them, if we indulge our thoughts in expecting them, and our palates in using them immoderately; more especially if any of us are so careful to feed our bellies that we let our backs go without a covering, and, if we like a thing, are resolved to have it without caring what it costs us, it is very evident we cannot clear ourselves of the sin of gluttony. And then, as to drunkenness, how are so many alehouses maintained, how are so many families ruined and brought to live on the public by frequenting them, how are there so many nightly clubs, how is so much precious time spent in places prepared for the purpose, and how are so many grown old before they have attained half their days, if there be no such thing as drunkenness among us? But do we know that sloth and idleness, ease and pleasure (for, that I may not be tedious, I put them together), are also sensual lusts? and that to live in the practice of them is as much a life of indulgence as if we were to give ourselves up to the grosser sins of lewdness or intemperance? Surely we know it not, else many would not be content to live in them as they do. For what is the life of many but a mere continuation of doing nothing, because they seem to themselves to have nothing to do, and there is not precisely anything much amiss in what they do, therefore all were well? But, brethren, to sleep away days and weeks, and months and years, in sauntering, chatting, and visiting, in parties of pleasure abroad, and insignificance at home, however it may appear harmless in the eye of the world, will pass for no better than sensuality in the eyes of God. But

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to go on from sensual indulgences in the outward conduct to spiritual. Are we none of us in the outward indulgence of spiritual lusts? What I mean by the outward indulgence of them is their habitual direction of our behaviour in the world. Wherefore, if you are carried along by conceit and self-opinion in your conversations and conduct, if you are self-willed, rash, and overbearing, if your behaviour be planned upon the calculation of exalting and maintaining your name in the world; if in your demeanour you endeavour to make every one think you a person of merit and importance; if you will bear no contradiction, but treat all with anger and resentment who do not conform to your ways; if, finally, you live for yourself, and none are the better for you any further than they serve to gratify your humours, or to promote your interests; if any of this be your outward conduct, all who know you are witnessing against you that you are under the influence of unmortified pride. They see it in your whole conduct, though you perhaps suspect it not. And if you will not see, if you will not consider what you do, nor examine into the principles upon which you act, it cannot be wondered if, while all about you know you to be a slave, you alone suspect nothing of the matter. You can see and complain of the pride that reigns in the conduct of others; their self-seeking, self-will, impatience, conceit, and setting themselves off as they do, render them intolerable to you. You wonder no one tells them of it, you admire they do not see it themselves, while, in the mean time, you are looking upon your own picture, not in the least imagining it to be yours, or that it is anything like you. Yet methinks there are some circumstances in a proud character and carriage, that you must be wilfully blind if you do not see them in yourself, while every day you are acting them over. What can you think if in all companies you are industriously and artfully setting yourself, your abilities, gifts, or possessions, out to view? or what, if you can bear no contradiction, but all must be and do as you would have them in every trifle? What, if everything and nothing puts you in a passion, and if you break every tie of duty to gratify resentment? What, if everywhere and at all seasons you become all things to all men, that you may gain their praise and esteem? Surely a conduct like this speaks plainly enough; and if you

do not understand that you are serving your spiritual, or, in another word, your devilish lusts, it is even because you will

not.

But from the outward practice of any of these lusts let us pass to the inward. For I would not have you deceived. And I know there were of old, and that there are still Pharisees in the world, who contrive to keep the outside tolerably clean, at least in their judgment of the matter, while all is defilement within. Now therefore, my dear friends, however it appear without, how is it in truth within? Are we there renouncing all the sinful lusts of the flesh? It is an easy matter to say I do; and for the most part they will be most forward to say they do, who are the greatest strangers to the doing so. Wherefore I will propose to you certain questions, whereby you may certainly know whether you be or not renouncing all the sinful lusts of the flesh by a true opposition made to them in your heart. First, Have you found out that there are such sensual and devilish lusts in you? If you have not, it is plain you cannot be rejecting and resisting them; and if you will still say I renounce all the sinful lusts of the flesh, when you know not you have any sinful lusts within you, you make it evident that you can mean even nothing by what you say. And accordingly, when you are told that such lusts dwell in you, that you are every one of you sensual, prone to every kind and degree of uncleanness, intemperance, and carnality, so that you are naturally ready for the very grossest impurities; when you are told that you are also full of every spiritual lust, that your natural heart is a sink of pride, conceit, envy, malice, revenge, cruelty, and every devilish lust; I say, when you are told of this, are you not ready to cry out in indignation, "What! I? I defy the world; and I will have you to know I am not such a beast and such a devil as you make me." Well, then, you profess and openly avow you have not such sensual and devilish lusts in you; so it is past dispute you cannot be renouncing them. O what a lamentable ignorance is there in this Christian country of the fall of man! Every child owns by rote that we are born in sin; but, for any real knowledge of the sinfulness of the heart, not one of a thousand has the least suspicion of any such thing. And yet it is most certain that the knowledge

of this is the only groundwork of being in the practice of Christianity. But you say you do know this, you are fully sensible that all these sensual and spiritual lusts which I have been describing dwell in you, for you find them always at work, and can by experience testify this Scripture to be true, "that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually."- In this case, I ask, Secondly, Do you really hate and long to be delivered from them all, whatever they be? This St. Paul certainly did, for he cries, in the sense of his hidden lusts, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" Look at your sensual lusts, and look at your spiritual lusts; look especially at that lust, the indulgence of which is most convenient for you, which you cannot deny without peculiar suffering, which is the very idol of your natural heart, and try if you can say, calling God to witness, "This I hate, even this I long to be delivered from, with this I would not make the least compliance for his name's sake." If you can truly say this, concerning every kind of pride, and every kind of sensuality, not cherishing or approving iniquity in your heart, it is manifest that you have the love of God in you, and in the choice of your heart are rejecting all evil ways. But if you only know that you have many lusts of the flesh in you; if, notwithstanding this knowledge, they be not your burden and your grief; if pride or passion, if resentment or vanity, carry you away, and you take little thought of the matter, are speedily reconciled to yourself, and soon forget it as if nothing had been amiss, it is not conceivable how you can hate the lusts of your flesh. Now if you judge you have a comfortable answer in this respect also, I go on (for preventing mistakes in some, and confirming in others the confidence of God's grace working effectually in them) to ask, Thirdly, Whether your views of the lusts of the flesh are so humbling, that while they bring you to the blood of Christ for remission of the guilt of them, they also bring you to sue with importunity for the Spirit to deliver you from the power of them, and to mortify them in you continually? You do not see your lusts in such a hateful light as shall dispose you to renounce them, unless they bring you thus to the blood and grace of Christ, and that with a suitable importunity. It is the sight of the holiness of

God that can alone make any one hate sin within him, and when it does this he sees himself so defiled by it that he cannot think of standing before God but in the righteousness of Christ, while also he will be earnestly calling upon God to deliver him from the detestable power of it. Wherefore, however much you may seem to hate your lusts (and without hating them you cannot renounce them), yet still you are deceived, if they do not bring you on your knees, and cause you to cry frequently and earnestly for forgiveness of them, and for grace against them. Surely you cannot think you are humbled for that which you do not ask the pardon of, or that you hate that you do not pray to be set free from. So that if the deep sense of the sinful lusts of your flesh do not lie at the bottom of your prayers, as the very foundationstone of all your entreaties for pardon, and all your cries for grace, you only pray in formality, and are neither hating nor renouncing them. But if you say you do thus pray against them, I ask yet, Fourthly, Whether you are actually in the strength prayed for fighting against them? It is this which proves the truth of the whole. Are you actually at war with your hidden lusts? I do not ask, take notice, whether the victory is always on your side: but I ask, whether you be really at war with them? Doubtless you ought to watch and strive that at no time they gain advantage of you. But when they have, do you suffer them to keep it? There lies the point. If they have thrust themselves in unawares, watching an opportunity, and by-and-by you thrust them again as those you will not entertain in your house, it is plain they came in like thieves, and have no right as masters. But now if you give them entertainment, and suffer them to dwell quietly with you, you will never be able to persuade yourself, and much less God, that you hold them as enemies. The main question therefore is, are we at actual war with our lusts? If not, in the very nature of the thing, they have necessarily the dominion over us, for they are by nature in possession: and, consequently, let us seem to hate them and seem to pray against them never so much, in truth we do not the one nor the other, but love and entertain them at the bottom, although in the apprehensions of God's wrath against us we may in a selfish way wish to be rid of them.

By this time I would hope we are all come to some conclusion,

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