Sermon XVII.

Sermon XVII.Verse 5.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,”, &c.Though sin hath taken up the principal and inmost cabinet of the heart of man—though it hath fixed its imperial throne in the spirit of man, and makes use of all the powers and faculties in the soul to accomplish its accursed desires and fulfil its boundless lusts, yet it is not without good reason expressed in scripture, ordinarily under the name of“flesh,”and a“body of death,”and men dead in sins, are said to be yet in the flesh. The reason is, partly because this was the rise of man's first ruin, or the chiefest ingredient in his first sin,—his hearkening to the suggestions of his flesh against the clear light and knowledge of his spirit. The apple was beautiful to look on and sweet to the taste, and this engaged man. Thus the voluntary debasement and subjection of the spirit—which was breathed in of God—unto the service of that dust which God had appointed to serve it hath turned into a necessary slavery, so that the flesh being put in the throne cannot be cast out. And this is the righteous judgment of God upon man, that he that would not serve so good and so high a Lord, should be made a drudge and slave to the very dregs of the creation. Partly again, because the flesh hath in it the seeds of the most part of these evil fruits, which abound in the world. The most part of our corruptions have either their rise or their increase from the flesh, the most part of the evils of men are either conceived in the flesh or brought forth by it, by the ministry and help of our degenerate spirits. And truly this is it that makes our returning to God so hard and difficult a work, because we are in the flesh, which is like stubble, disposed to conceive flame upon any sparkle of a temptation, there are so many dispositions and inclinations in the body since our fall, that are as powerful to carry us to excess and inordinateness in affection or conversation, as the natural instincts of beasts do drive them on to their own proper operations. You know the flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh!“The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak,”saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from this weight that is carried about with them, that it must be some extraordinary impulse of a higher Spirit to drive us on without wearying. And because of this indisposition of the flesh, we are not able to bear much of God's presence in this life, (it would certainly confound mortality, if so much were let out of it as is in heaven) no more than a weak eye can endure to behold the sun in its brightness. And then the flesh, as it[pg 189]is the greatest retardment in good, it is the greatest incitement to evil, it is a bosom enemy, that betrays us to Satan, it is near us and connatural to us. And this is the great advantage Satan hath of a Christian, he hath a friend within every Christian, that betrays him often. You know the most part of temptations from without could have no such force or strength against us if there were not some predisposition in the flesh, some seeds of that evil within, if they were not presented to some suitableness to our senses, and they being once engaged on Satan's side, they easily draw the whole man with them, under a false colour and pretence of friendship, therefore they are said to“war against the soul,”1 Pet. ii. 11, and they are said“easily”to“beset us,”Heb. xii. 1. Truly it is no wonder that the enemy storm our city, when the outworks yea, the very ports of the city, are possessed by traitors. No wonder Satan approach near the walls with his temptations, when our senses, our fleshly part, are so apt to receive him, and ready to entertain all objects without difference, that are suitable to affect them.You see then how much power the flesh hath in man so that it is no wonder that every natural man hath this denomination, one“after the flesh,”one carnal from the predominating part, though the worst part. Every man by nature till a higher birth come may be called all flesh, all fashioned and composed of the flesh, and after the flesh, even his spirit and mind being fleshly and earthly, sunk into the flesh, and transformed into a brutish quality or nature. Now the great purpose of the gospel is, to bring along a deliverer unto your spirits, for the releasing and unfettering of them from the chains of fleshly lusts. This is the very work of Christianity, to give liberty to the captive souls of men“and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,”Isa. lxi. 1. The souls of men are chained with their own fleshly lusts, and if at any time they can break these grosser chains, as some finer spirits have escaped out of the vilest dungeon of the flesh, and cast off these heavier chains that bind the most part of men, yet wholly escape they cannot. There be higher and lower rooms of this prison, there are some more gross, some more subtile cords and bands of the flesh, and whatsoever it be that holds a man bound or in whatsoever house he be imprisoned, it is not much matter, since really he is bound, and his liberty restrained. If a chain of gold bind as fast as a chain of iron, there is no real difference, except that mockery is added unto it, when a man is detained in a golden prison with golden chains. Though some men, I say, escape the grosser pollutions of the flesh, yet they are fettered within some narrow, scant, and but imaginary good things, they cannot go without the compass of those. Every man is confined by nature within the circle of his own narrow bosom or if he expatiate into the field of the world, yet how narrow, how limited are all created objects, for the infinite desires of the soul, whether it tend to the enjoyment of other creatures, or to the possession of some imaginary excellency in a man's self. How straitened are they! How imprisoned in all that compass! There is no true liberty can be found there. Though some may be disengaged from baser lusts and the common vain employments of men, yet far they cannot go, they do but engage more with themselves the love and estimation of themselves. Without that compass they cannot possibly go, whether from another principle, or to another end. And, O how little bounds is within any created breast for the immortal spirit, that is so vast and expatiating in its desires to dwell in!But here is the perfect redemption that is in Jesus Christ. When he comes into the soul, he unfetters and releases it, not only of the grosser lusts of the flesh, but even of those subtile invisible bands of self love, self seeking, of all scant, narrow, and particular objects, and sets it at liberty to expatiate in that universal good, the infinite fulness of God, and grace which is in Christ Jesus, and hence a Christian is called one“after the Spirit”that is, whose spirit is rid and delivered from that natural bondage and slavery to the creatures, and is espoused, at least in affection and endeavour, to the all-sufficient and self sufficient God.We told you that this new nature of a Christian shows itself in affection and motion, in minding and walking, both are signs of life, and the proper actions of it. As the natural man is easily known by what he minds and savours, and what way he walks, so is the spiritual man. Minding or savouring comprehends, no doubt, all the inward acts of the soul, all the imaginations, cogitations, thoughts, affections, desires and purposes of the soul. To express it shortly, there is a concurrence of these[pg 190]two, cogitation and affection, the understanding and the will, in this business. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, so he cannot taste or relish them, since he doth not know them, 1 Cor. ii. 14. How can they believe on him whom they have not heard? But far more, how can men love and desire that which they do not know? Though it be hard to convince some that they know not God, nor the things of the Spirit, because they have some form of knowledge, and seem to understand, and can discourse on religion, yet I wonder that the most part of men, whose ignorance is written in their foreheads with such palpable characters, should have so much difficulty to take with this challenge. I am sure, many that persuade themselves of heaven, are yet shut up in that dungeon of natural blindness and darkness of mind, and that so gross and thick darkness that it is not possible to make them conceive any notion of spiritual things, the common twilight of nature is almost extinguished, and little or nothing increased by their education in the visible church. How can you prize and esteem Jesus Christ, of whom you know nothing but the bare name? How can you savour heaven, when you have never admitted one serious thought of the life to come? O that you could be persuaded, that the grace of God is inconsistent with such gross ignorance, as is in the generality light of you! Truly grace is a light shining in the soul, that opens the eyes to see that that surrounds us in the gospel. But will you consider, beloved, how ready you are to receive other things of no moment how your memories can retain them, and your understandings receive other purposes very perplexed and laborious, but for the knowledge of your sin and misery, or of that blessed remedy showed in the gospel we cannot make you capable of a few questions about them, and if you learn the words by heart, (as you use to speak,) yet, alas! the matter and thing itself is not in the heart or mind, you have nothing but words, as appears. If we ask about the same matter in other words and terms, it is as dark and new to you, as if you had never heard it. I beseech you consider, if you do not then mind the things of the flesh most when you are not only most capable to know these things that concern this life, but most ready to entertain such thoughts. You have no difficulty to mind the world whole weeks and years, but you can never find leisure or time to mind the life to come, and yet vainly you say, you mind it always. I beseech you, how do you mind God, and the things of God, when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the doors of your hearts upon other vain objects, that you might retire to secret meditation on God, or conference with him, and I am as sure, that many men have God oftener in their mouths, by oaths and blasphemies, and irreverent speaking, and taking his holy name in vain, than in their minds, prayers or praises, or any holy meditations of him. Are you not as unwilling to fix your minds upon any sad solemn thoughts of God's justice, of hell, of heaven, of sin or misery, of death, as boys, whose heads are full of play, are loath to go to their books? Doth not your practice in this speak with these wicked men, who say, (Job xxi. 14.)“Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?”How constrained are all your thoughts of religion! They are entertained as those whom you would not desire to come again. But how unconstrained, how free are all other thoughts! Our minds can rove whole days about vanity, about fancies, dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to the most of you, are you not those who are[pg 191]born of the flesh, since you mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for corruption, for death;“to be carnally minded is death,”ver. 6, of this chapter.But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require. I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at, and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them, and presenting them: but yet the endeavour of a Christian will be, not to let them lodge long within (Jer. iv. 14.). If they come in unawares, he will labour to make a diversion to a better purpose, and so still it holds good, that the current and course of a Christian's thoughts and cogitations are upon the“things of the Spirit,”—how to get his own heart washed and cleansed,—how to be more holy and conformed to Christ,—how to be at peace with God, and keep that peace unbroken,—how to walk in obedience to God, and in duty towards men,—how to forsake himself, and withal to deny himself in all these; I say, his most serious and solemn thoughts are about these things, his resolved and advised thoughts run most on this strain, though it be true that, whether he will or not, other vain and impertinent, or not so concerning thoughts, will pass more lightly, and too frequently through his heart.The other thing in which this spiritual life doth appear, is the current of the affections, or that relish and taste of the sweetness of the things of the Spirit, flowing from the apprehension of them in the mind. When the light is discovered indeed, (and O it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold it, as Solomon speaks,) then the Spirit hath found an object suitable to its nature, and so it relisheth and delighteth in it: therefore the word is not simple minding, or thinking, but savouring, thinking with affection upon them, tasting and feeding upon the knowledge of them, it is a minding of them with care and delight, with earnestness (φρονειν)“O taste and see how good the Lord is,”Psal. xxxiv. 8. Some things indeed cannot be known but by some sense. You cannot make a blind man apprehend what light is, till he see it. A deaf man cannot form a notion of sounds in his mind, except he once heard them; neither can a man understand the sweetness of honey, but by tasting it. Truly spiritual things are of that nature, there is some hidden virtue and excellency in them, which is not obvious to every man that hath the bare knowledge of the letter, there is a spirit and life in them, that cannot be transmitted into your ears with the sound of words, or infused into ink and paper; it is only the inspiration of the Almighty can inspire this sensible perception, and real taste of spiritual things. Some powders do not smell till they are beaten, truly till these truths be well powdered and beaten small by meditation, they cannot smell so fragrantly to the spirit. As meats do not nourish till they be chewed and digested, so spiritual things do not relish to a soul, nor can they truly feed the soul, till they be chewed and digested into the heart by serious and earnest consideration. This is that which makes these same truths to be someway not the same; these very principles of religion received and confessed by all, to be lively in one, and dead in another. It is the living consideration of living truth, the application of truth to the heart, that makes it lively in one, whereas others keep it only beside them in a corner of their minds, or in a book, in the corner of the house. The same meat is[pg 192]laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some are starved.Need we to enlarge much upon this subject? Is it not too palpable that many who fill up our churches are in the flesh, because they do mind and savour only the things of the flesh, and not of the Spirit? Will you seriously search your hearts, ask what relishes most with them? Can you say, that it is the kingdom of God or the righteousness thereof? Or is it not rather those other things of food and raiment, and such like, that have no extent beyond this narrow span of time? I am persuaded the hearts of many taste no sweetness in religion, else they would fix more upon it, and pursue it more earnestly. Are not the things of another world, the great things of the gospel, counted all strange things, (Hos. viii. 12,) as things that you have not much to do with? Do you not let the officers of Jesus Christ, all the sweet invitations of the gospel, pass by as strangers, and as if ye were unconcerned in them? What taste have they more than the white of an egg? How unsavoury a discourse or thought to a carnal heart is it, to speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh, of dying to the world, of the world to come? Who find their hearts inwardly stirred upon the proposal of Jesus Christ? But if any matter of petty gain were proffered, O how would men listen with both their ears! How beautiful in the eyes of the covetous mind is any gain and advantage! The sound of money is sweeter to him than this blessed sound of peace and salvation. How sweet is pleasure to the voluptuous! What suitableness and conveniency is apprehended in these perishing things! But how little moment or weight is conceived and believed to be in things eternal? O how substantial do things visible seem to men, and how trifling do other things invisible appear! But for you whose eyes are opened, to you Christ is precious; to you the things of the Spirit are beautiful, and all your grief is, that you cannot affect them according to their worth, or love them according to their beauty. I say, some there are who do see a substance and subsistence only in things not seen (Heb. xi. 1), and for things that are seen and visible in this world, they do account them shadows only in comparison of things invisible. The world apprehends no realities, but in what they see, but a Christian apprehends no solid reality in that he sees, but only in that he sees not, and therefore, as in his judgment he looks upon the one as a shadow, the other as a substance, so he labours to proportion and conform his affection to a suitable entertainment of them, to give a shadow of show of affection to the things of this life, but the marrow and substance of his heart to the things invisible of another life. Thus the apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 29:“Rejoicing, as if we rejoiced not, enjoying, as if we possessed not, using, as if we used not,”half acts for half objects. If we give our whole spirits, the strength of our souls and minds to them, we are as foolish as he that strikes with all his strength at the air, or a feather. There is no solidity or reality in these things, able to bottom much estimation or affection, only mind them and use them as in the by, as in passing through towards your country.Sermon XVIII.Verses 5, 6.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind,”&c.“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”There are many differences among men in this world, that, as to outward appearance, are great and wide, and indeed they are so eagerly pursued, and seriously minded by men, as if they were great and momentous. You see what a strife and contention there is among men, how to be extracted out of the dregs of the multitude, and set a little higher in dignity and degree than they. How do men affect to be honourable above the base! How do they seek to be rich, and hate poverty! These differences of poor and rich, high and low, noble and ignoble, learned and[pg 193]unlearned, the thoughts of men are wholly taken up with, but there is one great difference, that is most in God's eye, and is both substantial and eternal, and so infinitely surpasseth all these differences that the minds of men most run out upon; and it is here, the great difference between flesh and spirit, and them that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit. This is of all other most considerable, because widest and durablest. I say, it is the widest of all, for all others put no great difference between men as men, they do reach the peculiar excellency of a man, that is, the true, and proper, good of his spiritual and immortal part, they are such as befall alike to good and bad, and so cannot have either much good or much evil in them. I have seen folly set in great dignity, and princes walking on foot, Eccles. x. 6, 7. Then certainly such titles of honour and dignity, such places of eminency erected above the multitude, have little or nothing worth the spirit of a man in them, seeing a fool, a wicked man, is as capable of them, as a wise man, or a man of a princely spirit, and so of all others, they do not elevate a man, as a man, above others. A poor, unlearned, mean man may have more real excellency in him, than a rich, learned, and great person. But this draws a substantial and vast difference indeed, such as is between flesh and spirit, such as is between men and beasts. You know what pre-eminency a man hath over a beast. There is no such wide distance among the sons of men as between the lowest and meanest man and the chiefest beast.“There is a spirit in man,”saith Elihu, Job xxxii. 8,—an immortal, eternal substance, of a far higher nature and comprehension. You know what excellency is in the spirit beyond the flesh, such as is in heaven beyond the earth, for the one is breathed from heaven, and the other is taken out of the dust of the earth; the one is corruptible, yea, corruption itself, the other incorruptible. How swift and nimble are the motions of the spirit, from the one end of heaven to the other! How can it compass the earth in a moment! Do but look and see what a huge difference is between a beautiful living body, and the same when it is a dead carcase, rotten and corrupted. It is the spirit dwelling within that makes the odds, that makes it active, beautiful, and comely, but in the removal of the spirit, it becometh a piece of the most defiled and loathsome dust in the world.Now, I say, such a vast and wide difference there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost,“Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish,”Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8,“Understand, ye brutish among the people,”&c., and Psal xcii. 6,“The brutish man understands not this,”and Eccles. iii. 18,“that they themselves may know that they are but beasts.”Therefore you find the Lord often turning to beasts, to insensible creatures, thereby to reprove the folly and madness of men, Isa. i. 2, and Jer. viii. 7. Man hath two parts in him, by which he hath affinity to the two most distant natures, he stands in the middle between angels and beasts. In his spirit he riseth up to an angelic dignity, and in his body he falls down to a brutish condition. Now, which of these hath the pre-eminency,thathe is. If the spirit be indeed elevated above all sensual and earthly things, to the life of angels, that is, to communion with God, then a man is one after the spirit, an angel incarnate, an angel dwelling in flesh, but if his spirit throw itself down to the service of the flesh, minding and savouring only things sensual and visible, then indeed a man puts off humanity, and hath associated himself to beasts, to be as one of them. And indeed, a man made thus like a beast, is worse than a beast, because he ought to be far better. It is no disparagement to a beast to mind only the flesh, but it is the greatest abasement of a man, that which draws him down from that higher station God hath set him into, to the lowest station, that of beasts; and truly a Nebuchadnezzar among beasts is the greatest beast of all, far more brutish than any beast. Now such is every man by nature,—“that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”Every man as he comes out of the womb, is degenerated and fallen down into this brutish estate, to mind, to savour, to relish nothing but what relates to this fleshly or temporal being. The utmost sphere and comprehension of man, is now of no larger extent than this visible world and this present life,—“he is blind and seeth not afar off,”2 Pet. i. 9. Truly, such is every man by nature, whereas the proper native sphere of the spirit's motion[pg 194]and comprehension, is as large as its endurance, that is, as long as eternity, and as broad as to reach the infiniteness of God, the God of all spirits. Now, through the slavery and bondage of men's spirits to their flesh, it is contracted into as narrow bounds as this poor life in the flesh. He that ought to look beyond time as far as eternity, and hath an immortal spirit given for that end, is now half blind, the eye of the mind is so overclouded with lusts and passions that it cannot see far off, not so far as to the morrow after death, not so far as to the entry of eternity. And truly, if you compare the context, you will find, that whosoever doth not give all diligence to add to faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, temperance, to temperance, patience and to patience godliness, &c., he that is not exercised and employed about this study, how to adorn his spirit with these graces, how to have a victory over himself and the world, and in respect of these, accounts all things beside indifferent,—such a man is blind, and seeth not far off, he hath not gotten a sight of eternity, he hath not taken up that everlasting endurance, else he could not spend his time upon provision for the lusts of the flesh, but be behoved to lay such a good foundation for the time to come as is here mentioned. If he saw afar off, he could not but make acquaintance with those courtiers of heaven, which will minister an entrance into that everlasting kingdom. But truly, while this is not your study, you have no purpose for heaven, you see nothing but what is just before your eye, and almost toucheth it, and so you savour and mind only what you see.Is not this then a wide difference between the children of this world, and the children of God? Is it not very substantial? All others are circumstantial in respect of this, this only puts a real difference in that which is best in men, viz. their spirits. The excellency of nature is known by their affections and motions, so are these here, the spiritual man savours spiritual things, the carnal man carnal things, everything sympathizes with that which is like itself, and is ready to incorporate into it, things are nourished and preserved by things like themselves. You see the swine embraces the dunghill, that stink is only a savoury smell to them, because it is suitable to their nature. But a man hath a more excellent taste and smell, and he savours finer and sweeter things. Truly it cannot choose but that it must be a nature more swinish or brutish than a swine, that can relish and savour such filthy abominable works of the flesh as abound amongst some of you.“The works of the flesh are manifest,”Gal. v. 19. And indeed they are manifest upon you, acted in the very day time, out facing the very light of the gospel. You may read them, and see if they be not too manifest in you. Now, what a base nature, what abominable and brutish spirits must possess men, that they apprehend a sweetness and fragrancy in these corrupt and stinking works of the old man! O how base a scent is it, to smell and savour nothing but this present world, and satisfaction to your senses! Truly your scent and smell, your relish and taste, argues your base, and degenerate, and brutish natures, that you are on the worse side of this division,—“after the flesh.”But alas! it is not possible to persuade you that there is no sweetness, no fragrancy, nothing but corruption and rottenness, such as comes out of sepulchres opened, in all these works of the flesh, till once a new spirit be put in you, and your natures changed, no more than you can by eloquence persuade a sick man, whose palate is possessed with a vitiated bitter humour, that such things as are suitable to his vitiated taste, are indeed bitter, or make a swine to believe that the dunghill is stinking and unpleasant. Truly it is as impossible to make the multitude of men to apprehend, to relish or savour any bitterness or loathsomeness in the ways and courses they follow, or any sweetness and fragrancy in the ways of godliness, till once your tastes be rectified, your spirits be transformed and renewed.And indeed, when once the spirit is renewed, and dispossessed of that malignant humour of corruption, and fleshly affection, that did present all things, contrary to what they are, then it is like a healthful and wholesome palate, that tastes all things as they are, and finds bitter, bitter, and sweet, sweet, or like a sound eye, that beholds things just as they are, both in colour, quantity, and distance, then the soul savours the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit, ver 22:“Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, meekness, temperance,”&c. These are fragrant and sweet to the soul, and as a sweet perfume, both to the person that hath them, and to others round about him, and to God also. These cast a savour that allures a soul to seek them, and being[pg 195]possessed of them, they cast a sweet smell abroad to all that are round about, and even as high as heaven. A soul that hath these planted in it, and growing out of it, is as a garden enclosed to God. These fruits are both pleasant and sweet to the soul that eats them, and as the pleasantness of the apple allured man to taste it and sin, so the beauty and sweetness of these fruits of the Spirit draw the spirit of a man after them. He hath found the savour, and seen the beauty, and this allures him to taste them, and then he invites the well beloved to come and taste also, to eat of these fruits with him. We might instance this in many things. A Christian relishes more sweetness in temperance, in beating down his body, and bringing it into subjection, in abstaining from fleshly lusts, than a carnal man tastes in the most exquisite pleasures that the world can afford. A Christian savours a sweetness in meekness and long suffering, he hath more delight in forgiving, and forbearing, and praying for them that wrong him, than a natural man hath in the accomplishing of the most greedy desires of revenge. O what beauty hath gentleness, goodness, and patience, in his eye! What sweetness is in the love of God to his taste! How ravishing is the joy of the Holy Ghost! How contenting that peace that passeth understanding! These are things of the Spirit that he minds and savours. Know, Christians, that it is to this ye are called, to mind these things most, and to seek them most. Beware lest the deceitfulness of sin entice you, through the treacherous and deceitful lusts that are yet living in your members. If you indeed mind these things, and, out of the apprehension of the beauty and savour of the sweetness and smell of the fragrancy of them, would be content to quit all your corrupt lusts, for to be possessed of them, then you are on that blessed and happy side of this great and fundamental division of men, you have indeed the privilege178of all others who are not renewed. Whatever be your condition in the world, you are of the Spirit, and this is better than to be rich, wise, great, and honourable. God hath not given you such things as the world go mad after, but envy them not, he hath given you better things, more real and substantial things, that make you far better and more excellent.But then, this difference, as it is the widest, so it is the durablest, as it is substantial here, so it is perpetual hereafter. When all the other differences between men shall be abolished, this alone shall remain, and therefore you have it in the next verse,“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”This division that is begun here, shall grow wider for all eternity. There shall be a greater difference after this life, and a more sensible separation. Death and life, eternal death and eternal life, are the two sides of this difference, as it shall shortly be stated. When all other degrees and distances of men shall be blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion, there shall no vestige or mark remain, of either wisdom, or riches, or honour, or such like, but all mankind shall be, as to these outward things, levelled and equalized, this one unseen and neglected difference in the world shall appear and shine in that day when the Lord maketh up his jewels,“then he will discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not,”Mal. iii. 18. The carnal and spiritual man have opposite affections and motions. The spirit of the one is on a journey or walk upward,“after the Spirit,”and the spirit of the other is on a walk downward, towards the flesh, and the further they go, the further distant they are. The one shall be taken up to the company of the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the fellowship of angels, the other shall be thrown down into the fellowship and society of devils. And truly it is no wonder it fall so low, for all its motions in the body were downward, to the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. Thus you see the difference will grow wider and more sensible than it is yet between the godly and ungodly, in this world it doth not so evidently appear as it will do afterward. As two men, that leave one another, and have their faces on contrary arts,179at the beginning the distance and difference is not so great and so sensible, but wait a little, and the further they go, the farther they are distant, and the wider their separation is. Even so, when a Christian begins to break off his way from the common course of the world it doth not appear to be so different from it as to convince himself and[pg 196]others; but if his face be towards Jerusalem above, and his heart thitherward, certainly he will be daily moving further from the world, till the distance be sensible both to himself and others; he will be more and more transformed and renewed, till at length all be changed. No wonder then, that these two cannot meet together in the end of their course, whose course was so opposite. Though wicked men will desire to“die the death of the righteous,”yet it is no more possible they can meet in the end, than hell and heaven can reconcile together, because they walk to two contrary points.Sermon XIX.Verse 6.—“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”It is true, this time is short, and so short that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable, yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; and there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak. Seeing then we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end. Seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to“give all diligence;”as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do; seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come, the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power to call and bring forward, therefore the present moment that God hath given us, should be catched, held on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. v. 16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, (1 Cor. vii. 29-31), shows. Seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest; and that same should make the passenger give an overly180and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word; for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary[pg 197]ends; the ways are, walking“after the flesh,”and walking“after the Spirit;”the ends to which they lead, are death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them, what excellency is in the one beyond the other; but truly it is hard to persuade to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them. Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses; and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour, fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally; and, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour, even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal; they have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected; and therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, (Isa. v. 20,)—you must call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit; and so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits lie purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground that our Saviour puts such characters on the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. vii. 13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion, to speak properly, as the thing is; the way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way, none so pleasant and plain;—how sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight,—the way of his commandments; it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,—how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii.[pg 198]22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain, but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things, therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But, alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly bound.What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them, therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way of life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthly and lumpish flesh. Our spirits by communion with and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward, but if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the spirit of God and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth, and till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you will willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit; your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up, but as that impression is not from an inward principle so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him, the root of the matter in him; this carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome if once you begin well, the beginning (as you used to say) is the half of the whole. Truly to be well entered is half progress; afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly; this walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy, and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, that because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down[pg 199]to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.181If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest till we be out of the reach of that infection, till we be fully escaped the pollutions of the world.But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. ii. 2), then, I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead, do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously whither this will take you, where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful, the end of it is death, a never ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears,“Oh! why will you die?”“Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell,”“to be carnally-minded”in the issue“is death,”whatsoever you may promise to yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin; we might wonder how they consist together if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it, and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O! how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness, of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom, deceives him that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self murderer and a self destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell, a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked into as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this[pg 200]bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians, therefore, this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received.“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?”1 Cor. vi. 9. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man soweth, that shall he reap, he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption &c., Gal. vi. 7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end! Know you not that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented182as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing, to sow darkness and reap light, to sow corruption and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature to sow nettle seed and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself; it is ordained for corruption. You see what it turns to after the life is out, that is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring, and sowing was about it, the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things for the satisfaction of your flesh, so you shall reap of the flesh corruption, death, and destruction that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable, it shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowship of devils. And O, that corruption of the incorruptible spirit is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,corruptio optimi pessima!Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly, there may be hope of recovery when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, he leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but he follows with a voice behind you, saying,“Here is the way, walk in it,”turn not out of it to the right hand or left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel,—that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come to Jesus Christ,“the way, truth, and life,”the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives have no truth in them, it is but a cloud, a fancy that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life. If you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a Tutor, a Guider, and Director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments. So that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit to make you walk toward that eternal life, and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should“eternal life,”and such a life as the best life here is but death to it! How should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification? How should it fortify our[pg 201]spirits to much endurance and patience? A battle we must have, for these lusts that we disengage from the devil, and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way, but, when for such small and inconsiderable advantages men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war, O how should the expectation of this peace, which encloses and comprehends all felicity, all well being, animate and strengthen us to fight in into the city of life and peace eternal!

Sermon XVII.Verse 5.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,”, &c.Though sin hath taken up the principal and inmost cabinet of the heart of man—though it hath fixed its imperial throne in the spirit of man, and makes use of all the powers and faculties in the soul to accomplish its accursed desires and fulfil its boundless lusts, yet it is not without good reason expressed in scripture, ordinarily under the name of“flesh,”and a“body of death,”and men dead in sins, are said to be yet in the flesh. The reason is, partly because this was the rise of man's first ruin, or the chiefest ingredient in his first sin,—his hearkening to the suggestions of his flesh against the clear light and knowledge of his spirit. The apple was beautiful to look on and sweet to the taste, and this engaged man. Thus the voluntary debasement and subjection of the spirit—which was breathed in of God—unto the service of that dust which God had appointed to serve it hath turned into a necessary slavery, so that the flesh being put in the throne cannot be cast out. And this is the righteous judgment of God upon man, that he that would not serve so good and so high a Lord, should be made a drudge and slave to the very dregs of the creation. Partly again, because the flesh hath in it the seeds of the most part of these evil fruits, which abound in the world. The most part of our corruptions have either their rise or their increase from the flesh, the most part of the evils of men are either conceived in the flesh or brought forth by it, by the ministry and help of our degenerate spirits. And truly this is it that makes our returning to God so hard and difficult a work, because we are in the flesh, which is like stubble, disposed to conceive flame upon any sparkle of a temptation, there are so many dispositions and inclinations in the body since our fall, that are as powerful to carry us to excess and inordinateness in affection or conversation, as the natural instincts of beasts do drive them on to their own proper operations. You know the flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh!“The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak,”saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from this weight that is carried about with them, that it must be some extraordinary impulse of a higher Spirit to drive us on without wearying. And because of this indisposition of the flesh, we are not able to bear much of God's presence in this life, (it would certainly confound mortality, if so much were let out of it as is in heaven) no more than a weak eye can endure to behold the sun in its brightness. And then the flesh, as it[pg 189]is the greatest retardment in good, it is the greatest incitement to evil, it is a bosom enemy, that betrays us to Satan, it is near us and connatural to us. And this is the great advantage Satan hath of a Christian, he hath a friend within every Christian, that betrays him often. You know the most part of temptations from without could have no such force or strength against us if there were not some predisposition in the flesh, some seeds of that evil within, if they were not presented to some suitableness to our senses, and they being once engaged on Satan's side, they easily draw the whole man with them, under a false colour and pretence of friendship, therefore they are said to“war against the soul,”1 Pet. ii. 11, and they are said“easily”to“beset us,”Heb. xii. 1. Truly it is no wonder that the enemy storm our city, when the outworks yea, the very ports of the city, are possessed by traitors. No wonder Satan approach near the walls with his temptations, when our senses, our fleshly part, are so apt to receive him, and ready to entertain all objects without difference, that are suitable to affect them.You see then how much power the flesh hath in man so that it is no wonder that every natural man hath this denomination, one“after the flesh,”one carnal from the predominating part, though the worst part. Every man by nature till a higher birth come may be called all flesh, all fashioned and composed of the flesh, and after the flesh, even his spirit and mind being fleshly and earthly, sunk into the flesh, and transformed into a brutish quality or nature. Now the great purpose of the gospel is, to bring along a deliverer unto your spirits, for the releasing and unfettering of them from the chains of fleshly lusts. This is the very work of Christianity, to give liberty to the captive souls of men“and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,”Isa. lxi. 1. The souls of men are chained with their own fleshly lusts, and if at any time they can break these grosser chains, as some finer spirits have escaped out of the vilest dungeon of the flesh, and cast off these heavier chains that bind the most part of men, yet wholly escape they cannot. There be higher and lower rooms of this prison, there are some more gross, some more subtile cords and bands of the flesh, and whatsoever it be that holds a man bound or in whatsoever house he be imprisoned, it is not much matter, since really he is bound, and his liberty restrained. If a chain of gold bind as fast as a chain of iron, there is no real difference, except that mockery is added unto it, when a man is detained in a golden prison with golden chains. Though some men, I say, escape the grosser pollutions of the flesh, yet they are fettered within some narrow, scant, and but imaginary good things, they cannot go without the compass of those. Every man is confined by nature within the circle of his own narrow bosom or if he expatiate into the field of the world, yet how narrow, how limited are all created objects, for the infinite desires of the soul, whether it tend to the enjoyment of other creatures, or to the possession of some imaginary excellency in a man's self. How straitened are they! How imprisoned in all that compass! There is no true liberty can be found there. Though some may be disengaged from baser lusts and the common vain employments of men, yet far they cannot go, they do but engage more with themselves the love and estimation of themselves. Without that compass they cannot possibly go, whether from another principle, or to another end. And, O how little bounds is within any created breast for the immortal spirit, that is so vast and expatiating in its desires to dwell in!But here is the perfect redemption that is in Jesus Christ. When he comes into the soul, he unfetters and releases it, not only of the grosser lusts of the flesh, but even of those subtile invisible bands of self love, self seeking, of all scant, narrow, and particular objects, and sets it at liberty to expatiate in that universal good, the infinite fulness of God, and grace which is in Christ Jesus, and hence a Christian is called one“after the Spirit”that is, whose spirit is rid and delivered from that natural bondage and slavery to the creatures, and is espoused, at least in affection and endeavour, to the all-sufficient and self sufficient God.We told you that this new nature of a Christian shows itself in affection and motion, in minding and walking, both are signs of life, and the proper actions of it. As the natural man is easily known by what he minds and savours, and what way he walks, so is the spiritual man. Minding or savouring comprehends, no doubt, all the inward acts of the soul, all the imaginations, cogitations, thoughts, affections, desires and purposes of the soul. To express it shortly, there is a concurrence of these[pg 190]two, cogitation and affection, the understanding and the will, in this business. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, so he cannot taste or relish them, since he doth not know them, 1 Cor. ii. 14. How can they believe on him whom they have not heard? But far more, how can men love and desire that which they do not know? Though it be hard to convince some that they know not God, nor the things of the Spirit, because they have some form of knowledge, and seem to understand, and can discourse on religion, yet I wonder that the most part of men, whose ignorance is written in their foreheads with such palpable characters, should have so much difficulty to take with this challenge. I am sure, many that persuade themselves of heaven, are yet shut up in that dungeon of natural blindness and darkness of mind, and that so gross and thick darkness that it is not possible to make them conceive any notion of spiritual things, the common twilight of nature is almost extinguished, and little or nothing increased by their education in the visible church. How can you prize and esteem Jesus Christ, of whom you know nothing but the bare name? How can you savour heaven, when you have never admitted one serious thought of the life to come? O that you could be persuaded, that the grace of God is inconsistent with such gross ignorance, as is in the generality light of you! Truly grace is a light shining in the soul, that opens the eyes to see that that surrounds us in the gospel. But will you consider, beloved, how ready you are to receive other things of no moment how your memories can retain them, and your understandings receive other purposes very perplexed and laborious, but for the knowledge of your sin and misery, or of that blessed remedy showed in the gospel we cannot make you capable of a few questions about them, and if you learn the words by heart, (as you use to speak,) yet, alas! the matter and thing itself is not in the heart or mind, you have nothing but words, as appears. If we ask about the same matter in other words and terms, it is as dark and new to you, as if you had never heard it. I beseech you consider, if you do not then mind the things of the flesh most when you are not only most capable to know these things that concern this life, but most ready to entertain such thoughts. You have no difficulty to mind the world whole weeks and years, but you can never find leisure or time to mind the life to come, and yet vainly you say, you mind it always. I beseech you, how do you mind God, and the things of God, when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the doors of your hearts upon other vain objects, that you might retire to secret meditation on God, or conference with him, and I am as sure, that many men have God oftener in their mouths, by oaths and blasphemies, and irreverent speaking, and taking his holy name in vain, than in their minds, prayers or praises, or any holy meditations of him. Are you not as unwilling to fix your minds upon any sad solemn thoughts of God's justice, of hell, of heaven, of sin or misery, of death, as boys, whose heads are full of play, are loath to go to their books? Doth not your practice in this speak with these wicked men, who say, (Job xxi. 14.)“Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?”How constrained are all your thoughts of religion! They are entertained as those whom you would not desire to come again. But how unconstrained, how free are all other thoughts! Our minds can rove whole days about vanity, about fancies, dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to the most of you, are you not those who are[pg 191]born of the flesh, since you mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for corruption, for death;“to be carnally minded is death,”ver. 6, of this chapter.But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require. I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at, and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them, and presenting them: but yet the endeavour of a Christian will be, not to let them lodge long within (Jer. iv. 14.). If they come in unawares, he will labour to make a diversion to a better purpose, and so still it holds good, that the current and course of a Christian's thoughts and cogitations are upon the“things of the Spirit,”—how to get his own heart washed and cleansed,—how to be more holy and conformed to Christ,—how to be at peace with God, and keep that peace unbroken,—how to walk in obedience to God, and in duty towards men,—how to forsake himself, and withal to deny himself in all these; I say, his most serious and solemn thoughts are about these things, his resolved and advised thoughts run most on this strain, though it be true that, whether he will or not, other vain and impertinent, or not so concerning thoughts, will pass more lightly, and too frequently through his heart.The other thing in which this spiritual life doth appear, is the current of the affections, or that relish and taste of the sweetness of the things of the Spirit, flowing from the apprehension of them in the mind. When the light is discovered indeed, (and O it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold it, as Solomon speaks,) then the Spirit hath found an object suitable to its nature, and so it relisheth and delighteth in it: therefore the word is not simple minding, or thinking, but savouring, thinking with affection upon them, tasting and feeding upon the knowledge of them, it is a minding of them with care and delight, with earnestness (φρονειν)“O taste and see how good the Lord is,”Psal. xxxiv. 8. Some things indeed cannot be known but by some sense. You cannot make a blind man apprehend what light is, till he see it. A deaf man cannot form a notion of sounds in his mind, except he once heard them; neither can a man understand the sweetness of honey, but by tasting it. Truly spiritual things are of that nature, there is some hidden virtue and excellency in them, which is not obvious to every man that hath the bare knowledge of the letter, there is a spirit and life in them, that cannot be transmitted into your ears with the sound of words, or infused into ink and paper; it is only the inspiration of the Almighty can inspire this sensible perception, and real taste of spiritual things. Some powders do not smell till they are beaten, truly till these truths be well powdered and beaten small by meditation, they cannot smell so fragrantly to the spirit. As meats do not nourish till they be chewed and digested, so spiritual things do not relish to a soul, nor can they truly feed the soul, till they be chewed and digested into the heart by serious and earnest consideration. This is that which makes these same truths to be someway not the same; these very principles of religion received and confessed by all, to be lively in one, and dead in another. It is the living consideration of living truth, the application of truth to the heart, that makes it lively in one, whereas others keep it only beside them in a corner of their minds, or in a book, in the corner of the house. The same meat is[pg 192]laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some are starved.Need we to enlarge much upon this subject? Is it not too palpable that many who fill up our churches are in the flesh, because they do mind and savour only the things of the flesh, and not of the Spirit? Will you seriously search your hearts, ask what relishes most with them? Can you say, that it is the kingdom of God or the righteousness thereof? Or is it not rather those other things of food and raiment, and such like, that have no extent beyond this narrow span of time? I am persuaded the hearts of many taste no sweetness in religion, else they would fix more upon it, and pursue it more earnestly. Are not the things of another world, the great things of the gospel, counted all strange things, (Hos. viii. 12,) as things that you have not much to do with? Do you not let the officers of Jesus Christ, all the sweet invitations of the gospel, pass by as strangers, and as if ye were unconcerned in them? What taste have they more than the white of an egg? How unsavoury a discourse or thought to a carnal heart is it, to speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh, of dying to the world, of the world to come? Who find their hearts inwardly stirred upon the proposal of Jesus Christ? But if any matter of petty gain were proffered, O how would men listen with both their ears! How beautiful in the eyes of the covetous mind is any gain and advantage! The sound of money is sweeter to him than this blessed sound of peace and salvation. How sweet is pleasure to the voluptuous! What suitableness and conveniency is apprehended in these perishing things! But how little moment or weight is conceived and believed to be in things eternal? O how substantial do things visible seem to men, and how trifling do other things invisible appear! But for you whose eyes are opened, to you Christ is precious; to you the things of the Spirit are beautiful, and all your grief is, that you cannot affect them according to their worth, or love them according to their beauty. I say, some there are who do see a substance and subsistence only in things not seen (Heb. xi. 1), and for things that are seen and visible in this world, they do account them shadows only in comparison of things invisible. The world apprehends no realities, but in what they see, but a Christian apprehends no solid reality in that he sees, but only in that he sees not, and therefore, as in his judgment he looks upon the one as a shadow, the other as a substance, so he labours to proportion and conform his affection to a suitable entertainment of them, to give a shadow of show of affection to the things of this life, but the marrow and substance of his heart to the things invisible of another life. Thus the apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 29:“Rejoicing, as if we rejoiced not, enjoying, as if we possessed not, using, as if we used not,”half acts for half objects. If we give our whole spirits, the strength of our souls and minds to them, we are as foolish as he that strikes with all his strength at the air, or a feather. There is no solidity or reality in these things, able to bottom much estimation or affection, only mind them and use them as in the by, as in passing through towards your country.Sermon XVIII.Verses 5, 6.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind,”&c.“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”There are many differences among men in this world, that, as to outward appearance, are great and wide, and indeed they are so eagerly pursued, and seriously minded by men, as if they were great and momentous. You see what a strife and contention there is among men, how to be extracted out of the dregs of the multitude, and set a little higher in dignity and degree than they. How do men affect to be honourable above the base! How do they seek to be rich, and hate poverty! These differences of poor and rich, high and low, noble and ignoble, learned and[pg 193]unlearned, the thoughts of men are wholly taken up with, but there is one great difference, that is most in God's eye, and is both substantial and eternal, and so infinitely surpasseth all these differences that the minds of men most run out upon; and it is here, the great difference between flesh and spirit, and them that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit. This is of all other most considerable, because widest and durablest. I say, it is the widest of all, for all others put no great difference between men as men, they do reach the peculiar excellency of a man, that is, the true, and proper, good of his spiritual and immortal part, they are such as befall alike to good and bad, and so cannot have either much good or much evil in them. I have seen folly set in great dignity, and princes walking on foot, Eccles. x. 6, 7. Then certainly such titles of honour and dignity, such places of eminency erected above the multitude, have little or nothing worth the spirit of a man in them, seeing a fool, a wicked man, is as capable of them, as a wise man, or a man of a princely spirit, and so of all others, they do not elevate a man, as a man, above others. A poor, unlearned, mean man may have more real excellency in him, than a rich, learned, and great person. But this draws a substantial and vast difference indeed, such as is between flesh and spirit, such as is between men and beasts. You know what pre-eminency a man hath over a beast. There is no such wide distance among the sons of men as between the lowest and meanest man and the chiefest beast.“There is a spirit in man,”saith Elihu, Job xxxii. 8,—an immortal, eternal substance, of a far higher nature and comprehension. You know what excellency is in the spirit beyond the flesh, such as is in heaven beyond the earth, for the one is breathed from heaven, and the other is taken out of the dust of the earth; the one is corruptible, yea, corruption itself, the other incorruptible. How swift and nimble are the motions of the spirit, from the one end of heaven to the other! How can it compass the earth in a moment! Do but look and see what a huge difference is between a beautiful living body, and the same when it is a dead carcase, rotten and corrupted. It is the spirit dwelling within that makes the odds, that makes it active, beautiful, and comely, but in the removal of the spirit, it becometh a piece of the most defiled and loathsome dust in the world.Now, I say, such a vast and wide difference there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost,“Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish,”Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8,“Understand, ye brutish among the people,”&c., and Psal xcii. 6,“The brutish man understands not this,”and Eccles. iii. 18,“that they themselves may know that they are but beasts.”Therefore you find the Lord often turning to beasts, to insensible creatures, thereby to reprove the folly and madness of men, Isa. i. 2, and Jer. viii. 7. Man hath two parts in him, by which he hath affinity to the two most distant natures, he stands in the middle between angels and beasts. In his spirit he riseth up to an angelic dignity, and in his body he falls down to a brutish condition. Now, which of these hath the pre-eminency,thathe is. If the spirit be indeed elevated above all sensual and earthly things, to the life of angels, that is, to communion with God, then a man is one after the spirit, an angel incarnate, an angel dwelling in flesh, but if his spirit throw itself down to the service of the flesh, minding and savouring only things sensual and visible, then indeed a man puts off humanity, and hath associated himself to beasts, to be as one of them. And indeed, a man made thus like a beast, is worse than a beast, because he ought to be far better. It is no disparagement to a beast to mind only the flesh, but it is the greatest abasement of a man, that which draws him down from that higher station God hath set him into, to the lowest station, that of beasts; and truly a Nebuchadnezzar among beasts is the greatest beast of all, far more brutish than any beast. Now such is every man by nature,—“that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”Every man as he comes out of the womb, is degenerated and fallen down into this brutish estate, to mind, to savour, to relish nothing but what relates to this fleshly or temporal being. The utmost sphere and comprehension of man, is now of no larger extent than this visible world and this present life,—“he is blind and seeth not afar off,”2 Pet. i. 9. Truly, such is every man by nature, whereas the proper native sphere of the spirit's motion[pg 194]and comprehension, is as large as its endurance, that is, as long as eternity, and as broad as to reach the infiniteness of God, the God of all spirits. Now, through the slavery and bondage of men's spirits to their flesh, it is contracted into as narrow bounds as this poor life in the flesh. He that ought to look beyond time as far as eternity, and hath an immortal spirit given for that end, is now half blind, the eye of the mind is so overclouded with lusts and passions that it cannot see far off, not so far as to the morrow after death, not so far as to the entry of eternity. And truly, if you compare the context, you will find, that whosoever doth not give all diligence to add to faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, temperance, to temperance, patience and to patience godliness, &c., he that is not exercised and employed about this study, how to adorn his spirit with these graces, how to have a victory over himself and the world, and in respect of these, accounts all things beside indifferent,—such a man is blind, and seeth not far off, he hath not gotten a sight of eternity, he hath not taken up that everlasting endurance, else he could not spend his time upon provision for the lusts of the flesh, but be behoved to lay such a good foundation for the time to come as is here mentioned. If he saw afar off, he could not but make acquaintance with those courtiers of heaven, which will minister an entrance into that everlasting kingdom. But truly, while this is not your study, you have no purpose for heaven, you see nothing but what is just before your eye, and almost toucheth it, and so you savour and mind only what you see.Is not this then a wide difference between the children of this world, and the children of God? Is it not very substantial? All others are circumstantial in respect of this, this only puts a real difference in that which is best in men, viz. their spirits. The excellency of nature is known by their affections and motions, so are these here, the spiritual man savours spiritual things, the carnal man carnal things, everything sympathizes with that which is like itself, and is ready to incorporate into it, things are nourished and preserved by things like themselves. You see the swine embraces the dunghill, that stink is only a savoury smell to them, because it is suitable to their nature. But a man hath a more excellent taste and smell, and he savours finer and sweeter things. Truly it cannot choose but that it must be a nature more swinish or brutish than a swine, that can relish and savour such filthy abominable works of the flesh as abound amongst some of you.“The works of the flesh are manifest,”Gal. v. 19. And indeed they are manifest upon you, acted in the very day time, out facing the very light of the gospel. You may read them, and see if they be not too manifest in you. Now, what a base nature, what abominable and brutish spirits must possess men, that they apprehend a sweetness and fragrancy in these corrupt and stinking works of the old man! O how base a scent is it, to smell and savour nothing but this present world, and satisfaction to your senses! Truly your scent and smell, your relish and taste, argues your base, and degenerate, and brutish natures, that you are on the worse side of this division,—“after the flesh.”But alas! it is not possible to persuade you that there is no sweetness, no fragrancy, nothing but corruption and rottenness, such as comes out of sepulchres opened, in all these works of the flesh, till once a new spirit be put in you, and your natures changed, no more than you can by eloquence persuade a sick man, whose palate is possessed with a vitiated bitter humour, that such things as are suitable to his vitiated taste, are indeed bitter, or make a swine to believe that the dunghill is stinking and unpleasant. Truly it is as impossible to make the multitude of men to apprehend, to relish or savour any bitterness or loathsomeness in the ways and courses they follow, or any sweetness and fragrancy in the ways of godliness, till once your tastes be rectified, your spirits be transformed and renewed.And indeed, when once the spirit is renewed, and dispossessed of that malignant humour of corruption, and fleshly affection, that did present all things, contrary to what they are, then it is like a healthful and wholesome palate, that tastes all things as they are, and finds bitter, bitter, and sweet, sweet, or like a sound eye, that beholds things just as they are, both in colour, quantity, and distance, then the soul savours the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit, ver 22:“Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, meekness, temperance,”&c. These are fragrant and sweet to the soul, and as a sweet perfume, both to the person that hath them, and to others round about him, and to God also. These cast a savour that allures a soul to seek them, and being[pg 195]possessed of them, they cast a sweet smell abroad to all that are round about, and even as high as heaven. A soul that hath these planted in it, and growing out of it, is as a garden enclosed to God. These fruits are both pleasant and sweet to the soul that eats them, and as the pleasantness of the apple allured man to taste it and sin, so the beauty and sweetness of these fruits of the Spirit draw the spirit of a man after them. He hath found the savour, and seen the beauty, and this allures him to taste them, and then he invites the well beloved to come and taste also, to eat of these fruits with him. We might instance this in many things. A Christian relishes more sweetness in temperance, in beating down his body, and bringing it into subjection, in abstaining from fleshly lusts, than a carnal man tastes in the most exquisite pleasures that the world can afford. A Christian savours a sweetness in meekness and long suffering, he hath more delight in forgiving, and forbearing, and praying for them that wrong him, than a natural man hath in the accomplishing of the most greedy desires of revenge. O what beauty hath gentleness, goodness, and patience, in his eye! What sweetness is in the love of God to his taste! How ravishing is the joy of the Holy Ghost! How contenting that peace that passeth understanding! These are things of the Spirit that he minds and savours. Know, Christians, that it is to this ye are called, to mind these things most, and to seek them most. Beware lest the deceitfulness of sin entice you, through the treacherous and deceitful lusts that are yet living in your members. If you indeed mind these things, and, out of the apprehension of the beauty and savour of the sweetness and smell of the fragrancy of them, would be content to quit all your corrupt lusts, for to be possessed of them, then you are on that blessed and happy side of this great and fundamental division of men, you have indeed the privilege178of all others who are not renewed. Whatever be your condition in the world, you are of the Spirit, and this is better than to be rich, wise, great, and honourable. God hath not given you such things as the world go mad after, but envy them not, he hath given you better things, more real and substantial things, that make you far better and more excellent.But then, this difference, as it is the widest, so it is the durablest, as it is substantial here, so it is perpetual hereafter. When all the other differences between men shall be abolished, this alone shall remain, and therefore you have it in the next verse,“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”This division that is begun here, shall grow wider for all eternity. There shall be a greater difference after this life, and a more sensible separation. Death and life, eternal death and eternal life, are the two sides of this difference, as it shall shortly be stated. When all other degrees and distances of men shall be blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion, there shall no vestige or mark remain, of either wisdom, or riches, or honour, or such like, but all mankind shall be, as to these outward things, levelled and equalized, this one unseen and neglected difference in the world shall appear and shine in that day when the Lord maketh up his jewels,“then he will discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not,”Mal. iii. 18. The carnal and spiritual man have opposite affections and motions. The spirit of the one is on a journey or walk upward,“after the Spirit,”and the spirit of the other is on a walk downward, towards the flesh, and the further they go, the further distant they are. The one shall be taken up to the company of the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the fellowship of angels, the other shall be thrown down into the fellowship and society of devils. And truly it is no wonder it fall so low, for all its motions in the body were downward, to the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. Thus you see the difference will grow wider and more sensible than it is yet between the godly and ungodly, in this world it doth not so evidently appear as it will do afterward. As two men, that leave one another, and have their faces on contrary arts,179at the beginning the distance and difference is not so great and so sensible, but wait a little, and the further they go, the farther they are distant, and the wider their separation is. Even so, when a Christian begins to break off his way from the common course of the world it doth not appear to be so different from it as to convince himself and[pg 196]others; but if his face be towards Jerusalem above, and his heart thitherward, certainly he will be daily moving further from the world, till the distance be sensible both to himself and others; he will be more and more transformed and renewed, till at length all be changed. No wonder then, that these two cannot meet together in the end of their course, whose course was so opposite. Though wicked men will desire to“die the death of the righteous,”yet it is no more possible they can meet in the end, than hell and heaven can reconcile together, because they walk to two contrary points.Sermon XIX.Verse 6.—“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”It is true, this time is short, and so short that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable, yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; and there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak. Seeing then we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end. Seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to“give all diligence;”as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do; seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come, the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power to call and bring forward, therefore the present moment that God hath given us, should be catched, held on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. v. 16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, (1 Cor. vii. 29-31), shows. Seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest; and that same should make the passenger give an overly180and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word; for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary[pg 197]ends; the ways are, walking“after the flesh,”and walking“after the Spirit;”the ends to which they lead, are death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them, what excellency is in the one beyond the other; but truly it is hard to persuade to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them. Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses; and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour, fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally; and, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour, even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal; they have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected; and therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, (Isa. v. 20,)—you must call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit; and so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits lie purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground that our Saviour puts such characters on the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. vii. 13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion, to speak properly, as the thing is; the way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way, none so pleasant and plain;—how sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight,—the way of his commandments; it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,—how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii.[pg 198]22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain, but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things, therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But, alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly bound.What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them, therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way of life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthly and lumpish flesh. Our spirits by communion with and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward, but if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the spirit of God and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth, and till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you will willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit; your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up, but as that impression is not from an inward principle so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him, the root of the matter in him; this carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome if once you begin well, the beginning (as you used to say) is the half of the whole. Truly to be well entered is half progress; afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly; this walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy, and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, that because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down[pg 199]to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.181If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest till we be out of the reach of that infection, till we be fully escaped the pollutions of the world.But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. ii. 2), then, I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead, do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously whither this will take you, where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful, the end of it is death, a never ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears,“Oh! why will you die?”“Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell,”“to be carnally-minded”in the issue“is death,”whatsoever you may promise to yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin; we might wonder how they consist together if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it, and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O! how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness, of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom, deceives him that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self murderer and a self destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell, a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked into as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this[pg 200]bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians, therefore, this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received.“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?”1 Cor. vi. 9. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man soweth, that shall he reap, he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption &c., Gal. vi. 7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end! Know you not that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented182as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing, to sow darkness and reap light, to sow corruption and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature to sow nettle seed and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself; it is ordained for corruption. You see what it turns to after the life is out, that is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring, and sowing was about it, the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things for the satisfaction of your flesh, so you shall reap of the flesh corruption, death, and destruction that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable, it shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowship of devils. And O, that corruption of the incorruptible spirit is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,corruptio optimi pessima!Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly, there may be hope of recovery when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, he leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but he follows with a voice behind you, saying,“Here is the way, walk in it,”turn not out of it to the right hand or left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel,—that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come to Jesus Christ,“the way, truth, and life,”the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives have no truth in them, it is but a cloud, a fancy that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life. If you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a Tutor, a Guider, and Director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments. So that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit to make you walk toward that eternal life, and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should“eternal life,”and such a life as the best life here is but death to it! How should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification? How should it fortify our[pg 201]spirits to much endurance and patience? A battle we must have, for these lusts that we disengage from the devil, and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way, but, when for such small and inconsiderable advantages men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war, O how should the expectation of this peace, which encloses and comprehends all felicity, all well being, animate and strengthen us to fight in into the city of life and peace eternal!

Sermon XVII.Verse 5.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,”, &c.Though sin hath taken up the principal and inmost cabinet of the heart of man—though it hath fixed its imperial throne in the spirit of man, and makes use of all the powers and faculties in the soul to accomplish its accursed desires and fulfil its boundless lusts, yet it is not without good reason expressed in scripture, ordinarily under the name of“flesh,”and a“body of death,”and men dead in sins, are said to be yet in the flesh. The reason is, partly because this was the rise of man's first ruin, or the chiefest ingredient in his first sin,—his hearkening to the suggestions of his flesh against the clear light and knowledge of his spirit. The apple was beautiful to look on and sweet to the taste, and this engaged man. Thus the voluntary debasement and subjection of the spirit—which was breathed in of God—unto the service of that dust which God had appointed to serve it hath turned into a necessary slavery, so that the flesh being put in the throne cannot be cast out. And this is the righteous judgment of God upon man, that he that would not serve so good and so high a Lord, should be made a drudge and slave to the very dregs of the creation. Partly again, because the flesh hath in it the seeds of the most part of these evil fruits, which abound in the world. The most part of our corruptions have either their rise or their increase from the flesh, the most part of the evils of men are either conceived in the flesh or brought forth by it, by the ministry and help of our degenerate spirits. And truly this is it that makes our returning to God so hard and difficult a work, because we are in the flesh, which is like stubble, disposed to conceive flame upon any sparkle of a temptation, there are so many dispositions and inclinations in the body since our fall, that are as powerful to carry us to excess and inordinateness in affection or conversation, as the natural instincts of beasts do drive them on to their own proper operations. You know the flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh!“The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak,”saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from this weight that is carried about with them, that it must be some extraordinary impulse of a higher Spirit to drive us on without wearying. And because of this indisposition of the flesh, we are not able to bear much of God's presence in this life, (it would certainly confound mortality, if so much were let out of it as is in heaven) no more than a weak eye can endure to behold the sun in its brightness. And then the flesh, as it[pg 189]is the greatest retardment in good, it is the greatest incitement to evil, it is a bosom enemy, that betrays us to Satan, it is near us and connatural to us. And this is the great advantage Satan hath of a Christian, he hath a friend within every Christian, that betrays him often. You know the most part of temptations from without could have no such force or strength against us if there were not some predisposition in the flesh, some seeds of that evil within, if they were not presented to some suitableness to our senses, and they being once engaged on Satan's side, they easily draw the whole man with them, under a false colour and pretence of friendship, therefore they are said to“war against the soul,”1 Pet. ii. 11, and they are said“easily”to“beset us,”Heb. xii. 1. Truly it is no wonder that the enemy storm our city, when the outworks yea, the very ports of the city, are possessed by traitors. No wonder Satan approach near the walls with his temptations, when our senses, our fleshly part, are so apt to receive him, and ready to entertain all objects without difference, that are suitable to affect them.You see then how much power the flesh hath in man so that it is no wonder that every natural man hath this denomination, one“after the flesh,”one carnal from the predominating part, though the worst part. Every man by nature till a higher birth come may be called all flesh, all fashioned and composed of the flesh, and after the flesh, even his spirit and mind being fleshly and earthly, sunk into the flesh, and transformed into a brutish quality or nature. Now the great purpose of the gospel is, to bring along a deliverer unto your spirits, for the releasing and unfettering of them from the chains of fleshly lusts. This is the very work of Christianity, to give liberty to the captive souls of men“and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,”Isa. lxi. 1. The souls of men are chained with their own fleshly lusts, and if at any time they can break these grosser chains, as some finer spirits have escaped out of the vilest dungeon of the flesh, and cast off these heavier chains that bind the most part of men, yet wholly escape they cannot. There be higher and lower rooms of this prison, there are some more gross, some more subtile cords and bands of the flesh, and whatsoever it be that holds a man bound or in whatsoever house he be imprisoned, it is not much matter, since really he is bound, and his liberty restrained. If a chain of gold bind as fast as a chain of iron, there is no real difference, except that mockery is added unto it, when a man is detained in a golden prison with golden chains. Though some men, I say, escape the grosser pollutions of the flesh, yet they are fettered within some narrow, scant, and but imaginary good things, they cannot go without the compass of those. Every man is confined by nature within the circle of his own narrow bosom or if he expatiate into the field of the world, yet how narrow, how limited are all created objects, for the infinite desires of the soul, whether it tend to the enjoyment of other creatures, or to the possession of some imaginary excellency in a man's self. How straitened are they! How imprisoned in all that compass! There is no true liberty can be found there. Though some may be disengaged from baser lusts and the common vain employments of men, yet far they cannot go, they do but engage more with themselves the love and estimation of themselves. Without that compass they cannot possibly go, whether from another principle, or to another end. And, O how little bounds is within any created breast for the immortal spirit, that is so vast and expatiating in its desires to dwell in!But here is the perfect redemption that is in Jesus Christ. When he comes into the soul, he unfetters and releases it, not only of the grosser lusts of the flesh, but even of those subtile invisible bands of self love, self seeking, of all scant, narrow, and particular objects, and sets it at liberty to expatiate in that universal good, the infinite fulness of God, and grace which is in Christ Jesus, and hence a Christian is called one“after the Spirit”that is, whose spirit is rid and delivered from that natural bondage and slavery to the creatures, and is espoused, at least in affection and endeavour, to the all-sufficient and self sufficient God.We told you that this new nature of a Christian shows itself in affection and motion, in minding and walking, both are signs of life, and the proper actions of it. As the natural man is easily known by what he minds and savours, and what way he walks, so is the spiritual man. Minding or savouring comprehends, no doubt, all the inward acts of the soul, all the imaginations, cogitations, thoughts, affections, desires and purposes of the soul. To express it shortly, there is a concurrence of these[pg 190]two, cogitation and affection, the understanding and the will, in this business. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, so he cannot taste or relish them, since he doth not know them, 1 Cor. ii. 14. How can they believe on him whom they have not heard? But far more, how can men love and desire that which they do not know? Though it be hard to convince some that they know not God, nor the things of the Spirit, because they have some form of knowledge, and seem to understand, and can discourse on religion, yet I wonder that the most part of men, whose ignorance is written in their foreheads with such palpable characters, should have so much difficulty to take with this challenge. I am sure, many that persuade themselves of heaven, are yet shut up in that dungeon of natural blindness and darkness of mind, and that so gross and thick darkness that it is not possible to make them conceive any notion of spiritual things, the common twilight of nature is almost extinguished, and little or nothing increased by their education in the visible church. How can you prize and esteem Jesus Christ, of whom you know nothing but the bare name? How can you savour heaven, when you have never admitted one serious thought of the life to come? O that you could be persuaded, that the grace of God is inconsistent with such gross ignorance, as is in the generality light of you! Truly grace is a light shining in the soul, that opens the eyes to see that that surrounds us in the gospel. But will you consider, beloved, how ready you are to receive other things of no moment how your memories can retain them, and your understandings receive other purposes very perplexed and laborious, but for the knowledge of your sin and misery, or of that blessed remedy showed in the gospel we cannot make you capable of a few questions about them, and if you learn the words by heart, (as you use to speak,) yet, alas! the matter and thing itself is not in the heart or mind, you have nothing but words, as appears. If we ask about the same matter in other words and terms, it is as dark and new to you, as if you had never heard it. I beseech you consider, if you do not then mind the things of the flesh most when you are not only most capable to know these things that concern this life, but most ready to entertain such thoughts. You have no difficulty to mind the world whole weeks and years, but you can never find leisure or time to mind the life to come, and yet vainly you say, you mind it always. I beseech you, how do you mind God, and the things of God, when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the doors of your hearts upon other vain objects, that you might retire to secret meditation on God, or conference with him, and I am as sure, that many men have God oftener in their mouths, by oaths and blasphemies, and irreverent speaking, and taking his holy name in vain, than in their minds, prayers or praises, or any holy meditations of him. Are you not as unwilling to fix your minds upon any sad solemn thoughts of God's justice, of hell, of heaven, of sin or misery, of death, as boys, whose heads are full of play, are loath to go to their books? Doth not your practice in this speak with these wicked men, who say, (Job xxi. 14.)“Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?”How constrained are all your thoughts of religion! They are entertained as those whom you would not desire to come again. But how unconstrained, how free are all other thoughts! Our minds can rove whole days about vanity, about fancies, dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to the most of you, are you not those who are[pg 191]born of the flesh, since you mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for corruption, for death;“to be carnally minded is death,”ver. 6, of this chapter.But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require. I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at, and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them, and presenting them: but yet the endeavour of a Christian will be, not to let them lodge long within (Jer. iv. 14.). If they come in unawares, he will labour to make a diversion to a better purpose, and so still it holds good, that the current and course of a Christian's thoughts and cogitations are upon the“things of the Spirit,”—how to get his own heart washed and cleansed,—how to be more holy and conformed to Christ,—how to be at peace with God, and keep that peace unbroken,—how to walk in obedience to God, and in duty towards men,—how to forsake himself, and withal to deny himself in all these; I say, his most serious and solemn thoughts are about these things, his resolved and advised thoughts run most on this strain, though it be true that, whether he will or not, other vain and impertinent, or not so concerning thoughts, will pass more lightly, and too frequently through his heart.The other thing in which this spiritual life doth appear, is the current of the affections, or that relish and taste of the sweetness of the things of the Spirit, flowing from the apprehension of them in the mind. When the light is discovered indeed, (and O it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold it, as Solomon speaks,) then the Spirit hath found an object suitable to its nature, and so it relisheth and delighteth in it: therefore the word is not simple minding, or thinking, but savouring, thinking with affection upon them, tasting and feeding upon the knowledge of them, it is a minding of them with care and delight, with earnestness (φρονειν)“O taste and see how good the Lord is,”Psal. xxxiv. 8. Some things indeed cannot be known but by some sense. You cannot make a blind man apprehend what light is, till he see it. A deaf man cannot form a notion of sounds in his mind, except he once heard them; neither can a man understand the sweetness of honey, but by tasting it. Truly spiritual things are of that nature, there is some hidden virtue and excellency in them, which is not obvious to every man that hath the bare knowledge of the letter, there is a spirit and life in them, that cannot be transmitted into your ears with the sound of words, or infused into ink and paper; it is only the inspiration of the Almighty can inspire this sensible perception, and real taste of spiritual things. Some powders do not smell till they are beaten, truly till these truths be well powdered and beaten small by meditation, they cannot smell so fragrantly to the spirit. As meats do not nourish till they be chewed and digested, so spiritual things do not relish to a soul, nor can they truly feed the soul, till they be chewed and digested into the heart by serious and earnest consideration. This is that which makes these same truths to be someway not the same; these very principles of religion received and confessed by all, to be lively in one, and dead in another. It is the living consideration of living truth, the application of truth to the heart, that makes it lively in one, whereas others keep it only beside them in a corner of their minds, or in a book, in the corner of the house. The same meat is[pg 192]laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some are starved.Need we to enlarge much upon this subject? Is it not too palpable that many who fill up our churches are in the flesh, because they do mind and savour only the things of the flesh, and not of the Spirit? Will you seriously search your hearts, ask what relishes most with them? Can you say, that it is the kingdom of God or the righteousness thereof? Or is it not rather those other things of food and raiment, and such like, that have no extent beyond this narrow span of time? I am persuaded the hearts of many taste no sweetness in religion, else they would fix more upon it, and pursue it more earnestly. Are not the things of another world, the great things of the gospel, counted all strange things, (Hos. viii. 12,) as things that you have not much to do with? Do you not let the officers of Jesus Christ, all the sweet invitations of the gospel, pass by as strangers, and as if ye were unconcerned in them? What taste have they more than the white of an egg? How unsavoury a discourse or thought to a carnal heart is it, to speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh, of dying to the world, of the world to come? Who find their hearts inwardly stirred upon the proposal of Jesus Christ? But if any matter of petty gain were proffered, O how would men listen with both their ears! How beautiful in the eyes of the covetous mind is any gain and advantage! The sound of money is sweeter to him than this blessed sound of peace and salvation. How sweet is pleasure to the voluptuous! What suitableness and conveniency is apprehended in these perishing things! But how little moment or weight is conceived and believed to be in things eternal? O how substantial do things visible seem to men, and how trifling do other things invisible appear! But for you whose eyes are opened, to you Christ is precious; to you the things of the Spirit are beautiful, and all your grief is, that you cannot affect them according to their worth, or love them according to their beauty. I say, some there are who do see a substance and subsistence only in things not seen (Heb. xi. 1), and for things that are seen and visible in this world, they do account them shadows only in comparison of things invisible. The world apprehends no realities, but in what they see, but a Christian apprehends no solid reality in that he sees, but only in that he sees not, and therefore, as in his judgment he looks upon the one as a shadow, the other as a substance, so he labours to proportion and conform his affection to a suitable entertainment of them, to give a shadow of show of affection to the things of this life, but the marrow and substance of his heart to the things invisible of another life. Thus the apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 29:“Rejoicing, as if we rejoiced not, enjoying, as if we possessed not, using, as if we used not,”half acts for half objects. If we give our whole spirits, the strength of our souls and minds to them, we are as foolish as he that strikes with all his strength at the air, or a feather. There is no solidity or reality in these things, able to bottom much estimation or affection, only mind them and use them as in the by, as in passing through towards your country.Sermon XVIII.Verses 5, 6.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind,”&c.“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”There are many differences among men in this world, that, as to outward appearance, are great and wide, and indeed they are so eagerly pursued, and seriously minded by men, as if they were great and momentous. You see what a strife and contention there is among men, how to be extracted out of the dregs of the multitude, and set a little higher in dignity and degree than they. How do men affect to be honourable above the base! How do they seek to be rich, and hate poverty! These differences of poor and rich, high and low, noble and ignoble, learned and[pg 193]unlearned, the thoughts of men are wholly taken up with, but there is one great difference, that is most in God's eye, and is both substantial and eternal, and so infinitely surpasseth all these differences that the minds of men most run out upon; and it is here, the great difference between flesh and spirit, and them that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit. This is of all other most considerable, because widest and durablest. I say, it is the widest of all, for all others put no great difference between men as men, they do reach the peculiar excellency of a man, that is, the true, and proper, good of his spiritual and immortal part, they are such as befall alike to good and bad, and so cannot have either much good or much evil in them. I have seen folly set in great dignity, and princes walking on foot, Eccles. x. 6, 7. Then certainly such titles of honour and dignity, such places of eminency erected above the multitude, have little or nothing worth the spirit of a man in them, seeing a fool, a wicked man, is as capable of them, as a wise man, or a man of a princely spirit, and so of all others, they do not elevate a man, as a man, above others. A poor, unlearned, mean man may have more real excellency in him, than a rich, learned, and great person. But this draws a substantial and vast difference indeed, such as is between flesh and spirit, such as is between men and beasts. You know what pre-eminency a man hath over a beast. There is no such wide distance among the sons of men as between the lowest and meanest man and the chiefest beast.“There is a spirit in man,”saith Elihu, Job xxxii. 8,—an immortal, eternal substance, of a far higher nature and comprehension. You know what excellency is in the spirit beyond the flesh, such as is in heaven beyond the earth, for the one is breathed from heaven, and the other is taken out of the dust of the earth; the one is corruptible, yea, corruption itself, the other incorruptible. How swift and nimble are the motions of the spirit, from the one end of heaven to the other! How can it compass the earth in a moment! Do but look and see what a huge difference is between a beautiful living body, and the same when it is a dead carcase, rotten and corrupted. It is the spirit dwelling within that makes the odds, that makes it active, beautiful, and comely, but in the removal of the spirit, it becometh a piece of the most defiled and loathsome dust in the world.Now, I say, such a vast and wide difference there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost,“Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish,”Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8,“Understand, ye brutish among the people,”&c., and Psal xcii. 6,“The brutish man understands not this,”and Eccles. iii. 18,“that they themselves may know that they are but beasts.”Therefore you find the Lord often turning to beasts, to insensible creatures, thereby to reprove the folly and madness of men, Isa. i. 2, and Jer. viii. 7. Man hath two parts in him, by which he hath affinity to the two most distant natures, he stands in the middle between angels and beasts. In his spirit he riseth up to an angelic dignity, and in his body he falls down to a brutish condition. Now, which of these hath the pre-eminency,thathe is. If the spirit be indeed elevated above all sensual and earthly things, to the life of angels, that is, to communion with God, then a man is one after the spirit, an angel incarnate, an angel dwelling in flesh, but if his spirit throw itself down to the service of the flesh, minding and savouring only things sensual and visible, then indeed a man puts off humanity, and hath associated himself to beasts, to be as one of them. And indeed, a man made thus like a beast, is worse than a beast, because he ought to be far better. It is no disparagement to a beast to mind only the flesh, but it is the greatest abasement of a man, that which draws him down from that higher station God hath set him into, to the lowest station, that of beasts; and truly a Nebuchadnezzar among beasts is the greatest beast of all, far more brutish than any beast. Now such is every man by nature,—“that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”Every man as he comes out of the womb, is degenerated and fallen down into this brutish estate, to mind, to savour, to relish nothing but what relates to this fleshly or temporal being. The utmost sphere and comprehension of man, is now of no larger extent than this visible world and this present life,—“he is blind and seeth not afar off,”2 Pet. i. 9. Truly, such is every man by nature, whereas the proper native sphere of the spirit's motion[pg 194]and comprehension, is as large as its endurance, that is, as long as eternity, and as broad as to reach the infiniteness of God, the God of all spirits. Now, through the slavery and bondage of men's spirits to their flesh, it is contracted into as narrow bounds as this poor life in the flesh. He that ought to look beyond time as far as eternity, and hath an immortal spirit given for that end, is now half blind, the eye of the mind is so overclouded with lusts and passions that it cannot see far off, not so far as to the morrow after death, not so far as to the entry of eternity. And truly, if you compare the context, you will find, that whosoever doth not give all diligence to add to faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, temperance, to temperance, patience and to patience godliness, &c., he that is not exercised and employed about this study, how to adorn his spirit with these graces, how to have a victory over himself and the world, and in respect of these, accounts all things beside indifferent,—such a man is blind, and seeth not far off, he hath not gotten a sight of eternity, he hath not taken up that everlasting endurance, else he could not spend his time upon provision for the lusts of the flesh, but be behoved to lay such a good foundation for the time to come as is here mentioned. If he saw afar off, he could not but make acquaintance with those courtiers of heaven, which will minister an entrance into that everlasting kingdom. But truly, while this is not your study, you have no purpose for heaven, you see nothing but what is just before your eye, and almost toucheth it, and so you savour and mind only what you see.Is not this then a wide difference between the children of this world, and the children of God? Is it not very substantial? All others are circumstantial in respect of this, this only puts a real difference in that which is best in men, viz. their spirits. The excellency of nature is known by their affections and motions, so are these here, the spiritual man savours spiritual things, the carnal man carnal things, everything sympathizes with that which is like itself, and is ready to incorporate into it, things are nourished and preserved by things like themselves. You see the swine embraces the dunghill, that stink is only a savoury smell to them, because it is suitable to their nature. But a man hath a more excellent taste and smell, and he savours finer and sweeter things. Truly it cannot choose but that it must be a nature more swinish or brutish than a swine, that can relish and savour such filthy abominable works of the flesh as abound amongst some of you.“The works of the flesh are manifest,”Gal. v. 19. And indeed they are manifest upon you, acted in the very day time, out facing the very light of the gospel. You may read them, and see if they be not too manifest in you. Now, what a base nature, what abominable and brutish spirits must possess men, that they apprehend a sweetness and fragrancy in these corrupt and stinking works of the old man! O how base a scent is it, to smell and savour nothing but this present world, and satisfaction to your senses! Truly your scent and smell, your relish and taste, argues your base, and degenerate, and brutish natures, that you are on the worse side of this division,—“after the flesh.”But alas! it is not possible to persuade you that there is no sweetness, no fragrancy, nothing but corruption and rottenness, such as comes out of sepulchres opened, in all these works of the flesh, till once a new spirit be put in you, and your natures changed, no more than you can by eloquence persuade a sick man, whose palate is possessed with a vitiated bitter humour, that such things as are suitable to his vitiated taste, are indeed bitter, or make a swine to believe that the dunghill is stinking and unpleasant. Truly it is as impossible to make the multitude of men to apprehend, to relish or savour any bitterness or loathsomeness in the ways and courses they follow, or any sweetness and fragrancy in the ways of godliness, till once your tastes be rectified, your spirits be transformed and renewed.And indeed, when once the spirit is renewed, and dispossessed of that malignant humour of corruption, and fleshly affection, that did present all things, contrary to what they are, then it is like a healthful and wholesome palate, that tastes all things as they are, and finds bitter, bitter, and sweet, sweet, or like a sound eye, that beholds things just as they are, both in colour, quantity, and distance, then the soul savours the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit, ver 22:“Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, meekness, temperance,”&c. These are fragrant and sweet to the soul, and as a sweet perfume, both to the person that hath them, and to others round about him, and to God also. These cast a savour that allures a soul to seek them, and being[pg 195]possessed of them, they cast a sweet smell abroad to all that are round about, and even as high as heaven. A soul that hath these planted in it, and growing out of it, is as a garden enclosed to God. These fruits are both pleasant and sweet to the soul that eats them, and as the pleasantness of the apple allured man to taste it and sin, so the beauty and sweetness of these fruits of the Spirit draw the spirit of a man after them. He hath found the savour, and seen the beauty, and this allures him to taste them, and then he invites the well beloved to come and taste also, to eat of these fruits with him. We might instance this in many things. A Christian relishes more sweetness in temperance, in beating down his body, and bringing it into subjection, in abstaining from fleshly lusts, than a carnal man tastes in the most exquisite pleasures that the world can afford. A Christian savours a sweetness in meekness and long suffering, he hath more delight in forgiving, and forbearing, and praying for them that wrong him, than a natural man hath in the accomplishing of the most greedy desires of revenge. O what beauty hath gentleness, goodness, and patience, in his eye! What sweetness is in the love of God to his taste! How ravishing is the joy of the Holy Ghost! How contenting that peace that passeth understanding! These are things of the Spirit that he minds and savours. Know, Christians, that it is to this ye are called, to mind these things most, and to seek them most. Beware lest the deceitfulness of sin entice you, through the treacherous and deceitful lusts that are yet living in your members. If you indeed mind these things, and, out of the apprehension of the beauty and savour of the sweetness and smell of the fragrancy of them, would be content to quit all your corrupt lusts, for to be possessed of them, then you are on that blessed and happy side of this great and fundamental division of men, you have indeed the privilege178of all others who are not renewed. Whatever be your condition in the world, you are of the Spirit, and this is better than to be rich, wise, great, and honourable. God hath not given you such things as the world go mad after, but envy them not, he hath given you better things, more real and substantial things, that make you far better and more excellent.But then, this difference, as it is the widest, so it is the durablest, as it is substantial here, so it is perpetual hereafter. When all the other differences between men shall be abolished, this alone shall remain, and therefore you have it in the next verse,“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”This division that is begun here, shall grow wider for all eternity. There shall be a greater difference after this life, and a more sensible separation. Death and life, eternal death and eternal life, are the two sides of this difference, as it shall shortly be stated. When all other degrees and distances of men shall be blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion, there shall no vestige or mark remain, of either wisdom, or riches, or honour, or such like, but all mankind shall be, as to these outward things, levelled and equalized, this one unseen and neglected difference in the world shall appear and shine in that day when the Lord maketh up his jewels,“then he will discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not,”Mal. iii. 18. The carnal and spiritual man have opposite affections and motions. The spirit of the one is on a journey or walk upward,“after the Spirit,”and the spirit of the other is on a walk downward, towards the flesh, and the further they go, the further distant they are. The one shall be taken up to the company of the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the fellowship of angels, the other shall be thrown down into the fellowship and society of devils. And truly it is no wonder it fall so low, for all its motions in the body were downward, to the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. Thus you see the difference will grow wider and more sensible than it is yet between the godly and ungodly, in this world it doth not so evidently appear as it will do afterward. As two men, that leave one another, and have their faces on contrary arts,179at the beginning the distance and difference is not so great and so sensible, but wait a little, and the further they go, the farther they are distant, and the wider their separation is. Even so, when a Christian begins to break off his way from the common course of the world it doth not appear to be so different from it as to convince himself and[pg 196]others; but if his face be towards Jerusalem above, and his heart thitherward, certainly he will be daily moving further from the world, till the distance be sensible both to himself and others; he will be more and more transformed and renewed, till at length all be changed. No wonder then, that these two cannot meet together in the end of their course, whose course was so opposite. Though wicked men will desire to“die the death of the righteous,”yet it is no more possible they can meet in the end, than hell and heaven can reconcile together, because they walk to two contrary points.Sermon XIX.Verse 6.—“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”It is true, this time is short, and so short that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable, yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; and there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak. Seeing then we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end. Seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to“give all diligence;”as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do; seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come, the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power to call and bring forward, therefore the present moment that God hath given us, should be catched, held on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. v. 16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, (1 Cor. vii. 29-31), shows. Seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest; and that same should make the passenger give an overly180and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word; for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary[pg 197]ends; the ways are, walking“after the flesh,”and walking“after the Spirit;”the ends to which they lead, are death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them, what excellency is in the one beyond the other; but truly it is hard to persuade to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them. Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses; and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour, fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally; and, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour, even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal; they have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected; and therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, (Isa. v. 20,)—you must call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit; and so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits lie purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground that our Saviour puts such characters on the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. vii. 13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion, to speak properly, as the thing is; the way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way, none so pleasant and plain;—how sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight,—the way of his commandments; it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,—how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii.[pg 198]22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain, but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things, therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But, alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly bound.What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them, therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way of life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthly and lumpish flesh. Our spirits by communion with and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward, but if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the spirit of God and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth, and till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you will willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit; your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up, but as that impression is not from an inward principle so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him, the root of the matter in him; this carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome if once you begin well, the beginning (as you used to say) is the half of the whole. Truly to be well entered is half progress; afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly; this walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy, and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, that because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down[pg 199]to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.181If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest till we be out of the reach of that infection, till we be fully escaped the pollutions of the world.But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. ii. 2), then, I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead, do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously whither this will take you, where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful, the end of it is death, a never ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears,“Oh! why will you die?”“Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell,”“to be carnally-minded”in the issue“is death,”whatsoever you may promise to yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin; we might wonder how they consist together if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it, and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O! how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness, of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom, deceives him that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self murderer and a self destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell, a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked into as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this[pg 200]bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians, therefore, this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received.“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?”1 Cor. vi. 9. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man soweth, that shall he reap, he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption &c., Gal. vi. 7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end! Know you not that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented182as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing, to sow darkness and reap light, to sow corruption and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature to sow nettle seed and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself; it is ordained for corruption. You see what it turns to after the life is out, that is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring, and sowing was about it, the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things for the satisfaction of your flesh, so you shall reap of the flesh corruption, death, and destruction that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable, it shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowship of devils. And O, that corruption of the incorruptible spirit is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,corruptio optimi pessima!Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly, there may be hope of recovery when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, he leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but he follows with a voice behind you, saying,“Here is the way, walk in it,”turn not out of it to the right hand or left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel,—that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come to Jesus Christ,“the way, truth, and life,”the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives have no truth in them, it is but a cloud, a fancy that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life. If you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a Tutor, a Guider, and Director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments. So that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit to make you walk toward that eternal life, and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should“eternal life,”and such a life as the best life here is but death to it! How should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification? How should it fortify our[pg 201]spirits to much endurance and patience? A battle we must have, for these lusts that we disengage from the devil, and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way, but, when for such small and inconsiderable advantages men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war, O how should the expectation of this peace, which encloses and comprehends all felicity, all well being, animate and strengthen us to fight in into the city of life and peace eternal!

Sermon XVII.Verse 5.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,”, &c.Though sin hath taken up the principal and inmost cabinet of the heart of man—though it hath fixed its imperial throne in the spirit of man, and makes use of all the powers and faculties in the soul to accomplish its accursed desires and fulfil its boundless lusts, yet it is not without good reason expressed in scripture, ordinarily under the name of“flesh,”and a“body of death,”and men dead in sins, are said to be yet in the flesh. The reason is, partly because this was the rise of man's first ruin, or the chiefest ingredient in his first sin,—his hearkening to the suggestions of his flesh against the clear light and knowledge of his spirit. The apple was beautiful to look on and sweet to the taste, and this engaged man. Thus the voluntary debasement and subjection of the spirit—which was breathed in of God—unto the service of that dust which God had appointed to serve it hath turned into a necessary slavery, so that the flesh being put in the throne cannot be cast out. And this is the righteous judgment of God upon man, that he that would not serve so good and so high a Lord, should be made a drudge and slave to the very dregs of the creation. Partly again, because the flesh hath in it the seeds of the most part of these evil fruits, which abound in the world. The most part of our corruptions have either their rise or their increase from the flesh, the most part of the evils of men are either conceived in the flesh or brought forth by it, by the ministry and help of our degenerate spirits. And truly this is it that makes our returning to God so hard and difficult a work, because we are in the flesh, which is like stubble, disposed to conceive flame upon any sparkle of a temptation, there are so many dispositions and inclinations in the body since our fall, that are as powerful to carry us to excess and inordinateness in affection or conversation, as the natural instincts of beasts do drive them on to their own proper operations. You know the flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh!“The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak,”saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from this weight that is carried about with them, that it must be some extraordinary impulse of a higher Spirit to drive us on without wearying. And because of this indisposition of the flesh, we are not able to bear much of God's presence in this life, (it would certainly confound mortality, if so much were let out of it as is in heaven) no more than a weak eye can endure to behold the sun in its brightness. And then the flesh, as it[pg 189]is the greatest retardment in good, it is the greatest incitement to evil, it is a bosom enemy, that betrays us to Satan, it is near us and connatural to us. And this is the great advantage Satan hath of a Christian, he hath a friend within every Christian, that betrays him often. You know the most part of temptations from without could have no such force or strength against us if there were not some predisposition in the flesh, some seeds of that evil within, if they were not presented to some suitableness to our senses, and they being once engaged on Satan's side, they easily draw the whole man with them, under a false colour and pretence of friendship, therefore they are said to“war against the soul,”1 Pet. ii. 11, and they are said“easily”to“beset us,”Heb. xii. 1. Truly it is no wonder that the enemy storm our city, when the outworks yea, the very ports of the city, are possessed by traitors. No wonder Satan approach near the walls with his temptations, when our senses, our fleshly part, are so apt to receive him, and ready to entertain all objects without difference, that are suitable to affect them.You see then how much power the flesh hath in man so that it is no wonder that every natural man hath this denomination, one“after the flesh,”one carnal from the predominating part, though the worst part. Every man by nature till a higher birth come may be called all flesh, all fashioned and composed of the flesh, and after the flesh, even his spirit and mind being fleshly and earthly, sunk into the flesh, and transformed into a brutish quality or nature. Now the great purpose of the gospel is, to bring along a deliverer unto your spirits, for the releasing and unfettering of them from the chains of fleshly lusts. This is the very work of Christianity, to give liberty to the captive souls of men“and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,”Isa. lxi. 1. The souls of men are chained with their own fleshly lusts, and if at any time they can break these grosser chains, as some finer spirits have escaped out of the vilest dungeon of the flesh, and cast off these heavier chains that bind the most part of men, yet wholly escape they cannot. There be higher and lower rooms of this prison, there are some more gross, some more subtile cords and bands of the flesh, and whatsoever it be that holds a man bound or in whatsoever house he be imprisoned, it is not much matter, since really he is bound, and his liberty restrained. If a chain of gold bind as fast as a chain of iron, there is no real difference, except that mockery is added unto it, when a man is detained in a golden prison with golden chains. Though some men, I say, escape the grosser pollutions of the flesh, yet they are fettered within some narrow, scant, and but imaginary good things, they cannot go without the compass of those. Every man is confined by nature within the circle of his own narrow bosom or if he expatiate into the field of the world, yet how narrow, how limited are all created objects, for the infinite desires of the soul, whether it tend to the enjoyment of other creatures, or to the possession of some imaginary excellency in a man's self. How straitened are they! How imprisoned in all that compass! There is no true liberty can be found there. Though some may be disengaged from baser lusts and the common vain employments of men, yet far they cannot go, they do but engage more with themselves the love and estimation of themselves. Without that compass they cannot possibly go, whether from another principle, or to another end. And, O how little bounds is within any created breast for the immortal spirit, that is so vast and expatiating in its desires to dwell in!But here is the perfect redemption that is in Jesus Christ. When he comes into the soul, he unfetters and releases it, not only of the grosser lusts of the flesh, but even of those subtile invisible bands of self love, self seeking, of all scant, narrow, and particular objects, and sets it at liberty to expatiate in that universal good, the infinite fulness of God, and grace which is in Christ Jesus, and hence a Christian is called one“after the Spirit”that is, whose spirit is rid and delivered from that natural bondage and slavery to the creatures, and is espoused, at least in affection and endeavour, to the all-sufficient and self sufficient God.We told you that this new nature of a Christian shows itself in affection and motion, in minding and walking, both are signs of life, and the proper actions of it. As the natural man is easily known by what he minds and savours, and what way he walks, so is the spiritual man. Minding or savouring comprehends, no doubt, all the inward acts of the soul, all the imaginations, cogitations, thoughts, affections, desires and purposes of the soul. To express it shortly, there is a concurrence of these[pg 190]two, cogitation and affection, the understanding and the will, in this business. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, so he cannot taste or relish them, since he doth not know them, 1 Cor. ii. 14. How can they believe on him whom they have not heard? But far more, how can men love and desire that which they do not know? Though it be hard to convince some that they know not God, nor the things of the Spirit, because they have some form of knowledge, and seem to understand, and can discourse on religion, yet I wonder that the most part of men, whose ignorance is written in their foreheads with such palpable characters, should have so much difficulty to take with this challenge. I am sure, many that persuade themselves of heaven, are yet shut up in that dungeon of natural blindness and darkness of mind, and that so gross and thick darkness that it is not possible to make them conceive any notion of spiritual things, the common twilight of nature is almost extinguished, and little or nothing increased by their education in the visible church. How can you prize and esteem Jesus Christ, of whom you know nothing but the bare name? How can you savour heaven, when you have never admitted one serious thought of the life to come? O that you could be persuaded, that the grace of God is inconsistent with such gross ignorance, as is in the generality light of you! Truly grace is a light shining in the soul, that opens the eyes to see that that surrounds us in the gospel. But will you consider, beloved, how ready you are to receive other things of no moment how your memories can retain them, and your understandings receive other purposes very perplexed and laborious, but for the knowledge of your sin and misery, or of that blessed remedy showed in the gospel we cannot make you capable of a few questions about them, and if you learn the words by heart, (as you use to speak,) yet, alas! the matter and thing itself is not in the heart or mind, you have nothing but words, as appears. If we ask about the same matter in other words and terms, it is as dark and new to you, as if you had never heard it. I beseech you consider, if you do not then mind the things of the flesh most when you are not only most capable to know these things that concern this life, but most ready to entertain such thoughts. You have no difficulty to mind the world whole weeks and years, but you can never find leisure or time to mind the life to come, and yet vainly you say, you mind it always. I beseech you, how do you mind God, and the things of God, when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the doors of your hearts upon other vain objects, that you might retire to secret meditation on God, or conference with him, and I am as sure, that many men have God oftener in their mouths, by oaths and blasphemies, and irreverent speaking, and taking his holy name in vain, than in their minds, prayers or praises, or any holy meditations of him. Are you not as unwilling to fix your minds upon any sad solemn thoughts of God's justice, of hell, of heaven, of sin or misery, of death, as boys, whose heads are full of play, are loath to go to their books? Doth not your practice in this speak with these wicked men, who say, (Job xxi. 14.)“Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?”How constrained are all your thoughts of religion! They are entertained as those whom you would not desire to come again. But how unconstrained, how free are all other thoughts! Our minds can rove whole days about vanity, about fancies, dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to the most of you, are you not those who are[pg 191]born of the flesh, since you mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for corruption, for death;“to be carnally minded is death,”ver. 6, of this chapter.But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require. I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at, and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them, and presenting them: but yet the endeavour of a Christian will be, not to let them lodge long within (Jer. iv. 14.). If they come in unawares, he will labour to make a diversion to a better purpose, and so still it holds good, that the current and course of a Christian's thoughts and cogitations are upon the“things of the Spirit,”—how to get his own heart washed and cleansed,—how to be more holy and conformed to Christ,—how to be at peace with God, and keep that peace unbroken,—how to walk in obedience to God, and in duty towards men,—how to forsake himself, and withal to deny himself in all these; I say, his most serious and solemn thoughts are about these things, his resolved and advised thoughts run most on this strain, though it be true that, whether he will or not, other vain and impertinent, or not so concerning thoughts, will pass more lightly, and too frequently through his heart.The other thing in which this spiritual life doth appear, is the current of the affections, or that relish and taste of the sweetness of the things of the Spirit, flowing from the apprehension of them in the mind. When the light is discovered indeed, (and O it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold it, as Solomon speaks,) then the Spirit hath found an object suitable to its nature, and so it relisheth and delighteth in it: therefore the word is not simple minding, or thinking, but savouring, thinking with affection upon them, tasting and feeding upon the knowledge of them, it is a minding of them with care and delight, with earnestness (φρονειν)“O taste and see how good the Lord is,”Psal. xxxiv. 8. Some things indeed cannot be known but by some sense. You cannot make a blind man apprehend what light is, till he see it. A deaf man cannot form a notion of sounds in his mind, except he once heard them; neither can a man understand the sweetness of honey, but by tasting it. Truly spiritual things are of that nature, there is some hidden virtue and excellency in them, which is not obvious to every man that hath the bare knowledge of the letter, there is a spirit and life in them, that cannot be transmitted into your ears with the sound of words, or infused into ink and paper; it is only the inspiration of the Almighty can inspire this sensible perception, and real taste of spiritual things. Some powders do not smell till they are beaten, truly till these truths be well powdered and beaten small by meditation, they cannot smell so fragrantly to the spirit. As meats do not nourish till they be chewed and digested, so spiritual things do not relish to a soul, nor can they truly feed the soul, till they be chewed and digested into the heart by serious and earnest consideration. This is that which makes these same truths to be someway not the same; these very principles of religion received and confessed by all, to be lively in one, and dead in another. It is the living consideration of living truth, the application of truth to the heart, that makes it lively in one, whereas others keep it only beside them in a corner of their minds, or in a book, in the corner of the house. The same meat is[pg 192]laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some are starved.Need we to enlarge much upon this subject? Is it not too palpable that many who fill up our churches are in the flesh, because they do mind and savour only the things of the flesh, and not of the Spirit? Will you seriously search your hearts, ask what relishes most with them? Can you say, that it is the kingdom of God or the righteousness thereof? Or is it not rather those other things of food and raiment, and such like, that have no extent beyond this narrow span of time? I am persuaded the hearts of many taste no sweetness in religion, else they would fix more upon it, and pursue it more earnestly. Are not the things of another world, the great things of the gospel, counted all strange things, (Hos. viii. 12,) as things that you have not much to do with? Do you not let the officers of Jesus Christ, all the sweet invitations of the gospel, pass by as strangers, and as if ye were unconcerned in them? What taste have they more than the white of an egg? How unsavoury a discourse or thought to a carnal heart is it, to speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh, of dying to the world, of the world to come? Who find their hearts inwardly stirred upon the proposal of Jesus Christ? But if any matter of petty gain were proffered, O how would men listen with both their ears! How beautiful in the eyes of the covetous mind is any gain and advantage! The sound of money is sweeter to him than this blessed sound of peace and salvation. How sweet is pleasure to the voluptuous! What suitableness and conveniency is apprehended in these perishing things! But how little moment or weight is conceived and believed to be in things eternal? O how substantial do things visible seem to men, and how trifling do other things invisible appear! But for you whose eyes are opened, to you Christ is precious; to you the things of the Spirit are beautiful, and all your grief is, that you cannot affect them according to their worth, or love them according to their beauty. I say, some there are who do see a substance and subsistence only in things not seen (Heb. xi. 1), and for things that are seen and visible in this world, they do account them shadows only in comparison of things invisible. The world apprehends no realities, but in what they see, but a Christian apprehends no solid reality in that he sees, but only in that he sees not, and therefore, as in his judgment he looks upon the one as a shadow, the other as a substance, so he labours to proportion and conform his affection to a suitable entertainment of them, to give a shadow of show of affection to the things of this life, but the marrow and substance of his heart to the things invisible of another life. Thus the apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 29:“Rejoicing, as if we rejoiced not, enjoying, as if we possessed not, using, as if we used not,”half acts for half objects. If we give our whole spirits, the strength of our souls and minds to them, we are as foolish as he that strikes with all his strength at the air, or a feather. There is no solidity or reality in these things, able to bottom much estimation or affection, only mind them and use them as in the by, as in passing through towards your country.

Verse 5.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh,”, &c.

Though sin hath taken up the principal and inmost cabinet of the heart of man—though it hath fixed its imperial throne in the spirit of man, and makes use of all the powers and faculties in the soul to accomplish its accursed desires and fulfil its boundless lusts, yet it is not without good reason expressed in scripture, ordinarily under the name of“flesh,”and a“body of death,”and men dead in sins, are said to be yet in the flesh. The reason is, partly because this was the rise of man's first ruin, or the chiefest ingredient in his first sin,—his hearkening to the suggestions of his flesh against the clear light and knowledge of his spirit. The apple was beautiful to look on and sweet to the taste, and this engaged man. Thus the voluntary debasement and subjection of the spirit—which was breathed in of God—unto the service of that dust which God had appointed to serve it hath turned into a necessary slavery, so that the flesh being put in the throne cannot be cast out. And this is the righteous judgment of God upon man, that he that would not serve so good and so high a Lord, should be made a drudge and slave to the very dregs of the creation. Partly again, because the flesh hath in it the seeds of the most part of these evil fruits, which abound in the world. The most part of our corruptions have either their rise or their increase from the flesh, the most part of the evils of men are either conceived in the flesh or brought forth by it, by the ministry and help of our degenerate spirits. And truly this is it that makes our returning to God so hard and difficult a work, because we are in the flesh, which is like stubble, disposed to conceive flame upon any sparkle of a temptation, there are so many dispositions and inclinations in the body since our fall, that are as powerful to carry us to excess and inordinateness in affection or conversation, as the natural instincts of beasts do drive them on to their own proper operations. You know the flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh!“The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak,”saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from this weight that is carried about with them, that it must be some extraordinary impulse of a higher Spirit to drive us on without wearying. And because of this indisposition of the flesh, we are not able to bear much of God's presence in this life, (it would certainly confound mortality, if so much were let out of it as is in heaven) no more than a weak eye can endure to behold the sun in its brightness. And then the flesh, as it[pg 189]is the greatest retardment in good, it is the greatest incitement to evil, it is a bosom enemy, that betrays us to Satan, it is near us and connatural to us. And this is the great advantage Satan hath of a Christian, he hath a friend within every Christian, that betrays him often. You know the most part of temptations from without could have no such force or strength against us if there were not some predisposition in the flesh, some seeds of that evil within, if they were not presented to some suitableness to our senses, and they being once engaged on Satan's side, they easily draw the whole man with them, under a false colour and pretence of friendship, therefore they are said to“war against the soul,”1 Pet. ii. 11, and they are said“easily”to“beset us,”Heb. xii. 1. Truly it is no wonder that the enemy storm our city, when the outworks yea, the very ports of the city, are possessed by traitors. No wonder Satan approach near the walls with his temptations, when our senses, our fleshly part, are so apt to receive him, and ready to entertain all objects without difference, that are suitable to affect them.

You see then how much power the flesh hath in man so that it is no wonder that every natural man hath this denomination, one“after the flesh,”one carnal from the predominating part, though the worst part. Every man by nature till a higher birth come may be called all flesh, all fashioned and composed of the flesh, and after the flesh, even his spirit and mind being fleshly and earthly, sunk into the flesh, and transformed into a brutish quality or nature. Now the great purpose of the gospel is, to bring along a deliverer unto your spirits, for the releasing and unfettering of them from the chains of fleshly lusts. This is the very work of Christianity, to give liberty to the captive souls of men“and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,”Isa. lxi. 1. The souls of men are chained with their own fleshly lusts, and if at any time they can break these grosser chains, as some finer spirits have escaped out of the vilest dungeon of the flesh, and cast off these heavier chains that bind the most part of men, yet wholly escape they cannot. There be higher and lower rooms of this prison, there are some more gross, some more subtile cords and bands of the flesh, and whatsoever it be that holds a man bound or in whatsoever house he be imprisoned, it is not much matter, since really he is bound, and his liberty restrained. If a chain of gold bind as fast as a chain of iron, there is no real difference, except that mockery is added unto it, when a man is detained in a golden prison with golden chains. Though some men, I say, escape the grosser pollutions of the flesh, yet they are fettered within some narrow, scant, and but imaginary good things, they cannot go without the compass of those. Every man is confined by nature within the circle of his own narrow bosom or if he expatiate into the field of the world, yet how narrow, how limited are all created objects, for the infinite desires of the soul, whether it tend to the enjoyment of other creatures, or to the possession of some imaginary excellency in a man's self. How straitened are they! How imprisoned in all that compass! There is no true liberty can be found there. Though some may be disengaged from baser lusts and the common vain employments of men, yet far they cannot go, they do but engage more with themselves the love and estimation of themselves. Without that compass they cannot possibly go, whether from another principle, or to another end. And, O how little bounds is within any created breast for the immortal spirit, that is so vast and expatiating in its desires to dwell in!

But here is the perfect redemption that is in Jesus Christ. When he comes into the soul, he unfetters and releases it, not only of the grosser lusts of the flesh, but even of those subtile invisible bands of self love, self seeking, of all scant, narrow, and particular objects, and sets it at liberty to expatiate in that universal good, the infinite fulness of God, and grace which is in Christ Jesus, and hence a Christian is called one“after the Spirit”that is, whose spirit is rid and delivered from that natural bondage and slavery to the creatures, and is espoused, at least in affection and endeavour, to the all-sufficient and self sufficient God.

We told you that this new nature of a Christian shows itself in affection and motion, in minding and walking, both are signs of life, and the proper actions of it. As the natural man is easily known by what he minds and savours, and what way he walks, so is the spiritual man. Minding or savouring comprehends, no doubt, all the inward acts of the soul, all the imaginations, cogitations, thoughts, affections, desires and purposes of the soul. To express it shortly, there is a concurrence of these[pg 190]two, cogitation and affection, the understanding and the will, in this business. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit, so he cannot taste or relish them, since he doth not know them, 1 Cor. ii. 14. How can they believe on him whom they have not heard? But far more, how can men love and desire that which they do not know? Though it be hard to convince some that they know not God, nor the things of the Spirit, because they have some form of knowledge, and seem to understand, and can discourse on religion, yet I wonder that the most part of men, whose ignorance is written in their foreheads with such palpable characters, should have so much difficulty to take with this challenge. I am sure, many that persuade themselves of heaven, are yet shut up in that dungeon of natural blindness and darkness of mind, and that so gross and thick darkness that it is not possible to make them conceive any notion of spiritual things, the common twilight of nature is almost extinguished, and little or nothing increased by their education in the visible church. How can you prize and esteem Jesus Christ, of whom you know nothing but the bare name? How can you savour heaven, when you have never admitted one serious thought of the life to come? O that you could be persuaded, that the grace of God is inconsistent with such gross ignorance, as is in the generality light of you! Truly grace is a light shining in the soul, that opens the eyes to see that that surrounds us in the gospel. But will you consider, beloved, how ready you are to receive other things of no moment how your memories can retain them, and your understandings receive other purposes very perplexed and laborious, but for the knowledge of your sin and misery, or of that blessed remedy showed in the gospel we cannot make you capable of a few questions about them, and if you learn the words by heart, (as you use to speak,) yet, alas! the matter and thing itself is not in the heart or mind, you have nothing but words, as appears. If we ask about the same matter in other words and terms, it is as dark and new to you, as if you had never heard it. I beseech you consider, if you do not then mind the things of the flesh most when you are not only most capable to know these things that concern this life, but most ready to entertain such thoughts. You have no difficulty to mind the world whole weeks and years, but you can never find leisure or time to mind the life to come, and yet vainly you say, you mind it always. I beseech you, how do you mind God, and the things of God, when, if you will but recollect your thoughts, and gather the sum of them, you will not find one serious advised thought of him or his matters in a whole week! I profess I wonder how so many can enforce upon themselves a persuasion that God is always in their heart. I think it is the height of delusion! I am sure he is not in one of ten thousand thoughts, that travel, walk, lodge, and dwell in the souls of men, and yet they will needs bear upon themselves that they always mind him. I am sure most of you cannot say, that ever you shut the doors of your hearts upon other vain objects, that you might retire to secret meditation on God, or conference with him, and I am as sure, that many men have God oftener in their mouths, by oaths and blasphemies, and irreverent speaking, and taking his holy name in vain, than in their minds, prayers or praises, or any holy meditations of him. Are you not as unwilling to fix your minds upon any sad solemn thoughts of God's justice, of hell, of heaven, of sin or misery, of death, as boys, whose heads are full of play, are loath to go to their books? Doth not your practice in this speak with these wicked men, who say, (Job xxi. 14.)“Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways?”How constrained are all your thoughts of religion! They are entertained as those whom you would not desire to come again. But how unconstrained, how free are all other thoughts! Our minds can rove whole days about vanity, about fancies, dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to the most of you, are you not those who are[pg 191]born of the flesh, since you mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for corruption, for death;“to be carnally minded is death,”ver. 6, of this chapter.

But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require. I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at, and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them, and presenting them: but yet the endeavour of a Christian will be, not to let them lodge long within (Jer. iv. 14.). If they come in unawares, he will labour to make a diversion to a better purpose, and so still it holds good, that the current and course of a Christian's thoughts and cogitations are upon the“things of the Spirit,”—how to get his own heart washed and cleansed,—how to be more holy and conformed to Christ,—how to be at peace with God, and keep that peace unbroken,—how to walk in obedience to God, and in duty towards men,—how to forsake himself, and withal to deny himself in all these; I say, his most serious and solemn thoughts are about these things, his resolved and advised thoughts run most on this strain, though it be true that, whether he will or not, other vain and impertinent, or not so concerning thoughts, will pass more lightly, and too frequently through his heart.

The other thing in which this spiritual life doth appear, is the current of the affections, or that relish and taste of the sweetness of the things of the Spirit, flowing from the apprehension of them in the mind. When the light is discovered indeed, (and O it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold it, as Solomon speaks,) then the Spirit hath found an object suitable to its nature, and so it relisheth and delighteth in it: therefore the word is not simple minding, or thinking, but savouring, thinking with affection upon them, tasting and feeding upon the knowledge of them, it is a minding of them with care and delight, with earnestness (φρονειν)“O taste and see how good the Lord is,”Psal. xxxiv. 8. Some things indeed cannot be known but by some sense. You cannot make a blind man apprehend what light is, till he see it. A deaf man cannot form a notion of sounds in his mind, except he once heard them; neither can a man understand the sweetness of honey, but by tasting it. Truly spiritual things are of that nature, there is some hidden virtue and excellency in them, which is not obvious to every man that hath the bare knowledge of the letter, there is a spirit and life in them, that cannot be transmitted into your ears with the sound of words, or infused into ink and paper; it is only the inspiration of the Almighty can inspire this sensible perception, and real taste of spiritual things. Some powders do not smell till they are beaten, truly till these truths be well powdered and beaten small by meditation, they cannot smell so fragrantly to the spirit. As meats do not nourish till they be chewed and digested, so spiritual things do not relish to a soul, nor can they truly feed the soul, till they be chewed and digested into the heart by serious and earnest consideration. This is that which makes these same truths to be someway not the same; these very principles of religion received and confessed by all, to be lively in one, and dead in another. It is the living consideration of living truth, the application of truth to the heart, that makes it lively in one, whereas others keep it only beside them in a corner of their minds, or in a book, in the corner of the house. The same meat is[pg 192]laid to you all, the most part look on it, others contemplate it, and exercise only their understandings about it, but there are some who taste it, and find sweetness in it, who digest it by meditation and solemn avocation of their hearts from the things of the world, and therefore some are fed, some are starved.

Need we to enlarge much upon this subject? Is it not too palpable that many who fill up our churches are in the flesh, because they do mind and savour only the things of the flesh, and not of the Spirit? Will you seriously search your hearts, ask what relishes most with them? Can you say, that it is the kingdom of God or the righteousness thereof? Or is it not rather those other things of food and raiment, and such like, that have no extent beyond this narrow span of time? I am persuaded the hearts of many taste no sweetness in religion, else they would fix more upon it, and pursue it more earnestly. Are not the things of another world, the great things of the gospel, counted all strange things, (Hos. viii. 12,) as things that you have not much to do with? Do you not let the officers of Jesus Christ, all the sweet invitations of the gospel, pass by as strangers, and as if ye were unconcerned in them? What taste have they more than the white of an egg? How unsavoury a discourse or thought to a carnal heart is it, to speak of subduing the lusts of the flesh, of dying to the world, of the world to come? Who find their hearts inwardly stirred upon the proposal of Jesus Christ? But if any matter of petty gain were proffered, O how would men listen with both their ears! How beautiful in the eyes of the covetous mind is any gain and advantage! The sound of money is sweeter to him than this blessed sound of peace and salvation. How sweet is pleasure to the voluptuous! What suitableness and conveniency is apprehended in these perishing things! But how little moment or weight is conceived and believed to be in things eternal? O how substantial do things visible seem to men, and how trifling do other things invisible appear! But for you whose eyes are opened, to you Christ is precious; to you the things of the Spirit are beautiful, and all your grief is, that you cannot affect them according to their worth, or love them according to their beauty. I say, some there are who do see a substance and subsistence only in things not seen (Heb. xi. 1), and for things that are seen and visible in this world, they do account them shadows only in comparison of things invisible. The world apprehends no realities, but in what they see, but a Christian apprehends no solid reality in that he sees, but only in that he sees not, and therefore, as in his judgment he looks upon the one as a shadow, the other as a substance, so he labours to proportion and conform his affection to a suitable entertainment of them, to give a shadow of show of affection to the things of this life, but the marrow and substance of his heart to the things invisible of another life. Thus the apostle, 1 Cor. vii. 29:“Rejoicing, as if we rejoiced not, enjoying, as if we possessed not, using, as if we used not,”half acts for half objects. If we give our whole spirits, the strength of our souls and minds to them, we are as foolish as he that strikes with all his strength at the air, or a feather. There is no solidity or reality in these things, able to bottom much estimation or affection, only mind them and use them as in the by, as in passing through towards your country.

Sermon XVIII.Verses 5, 6.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind,”&c.“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”There are many differences among men in this world, that, as to outward appearance, are great and wide, and indeed they are so eagerly pursued, and seriously minded by men, as if they were great and momentous. You see what a strife and contention there is among men, how to be extracted out of the dregs of the multitude, and set a little higher in dignity and degree than they. How do men affect to be honourable above the base! How do they seek to be rich, and hate poverty! These differences of poor and rich, high and low, noble and ignoble, learned and[pg 193]unlearned, the thoughts of men are wholly taken up with, but there is one great difference, that is most in God's eye, and is both substantial and eternal, and so infinitely surpasseth all these differences that the minds of men most run out upon; and it is here, the great difference between flesh and spirit, and them that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit. This is of all other most considerable, because widest and durablest. I say, it is the widest of all, for all others put no great difference between men as men, they do reach the peculiar excellency of a man, that is, the true, and proper, good of his spiritual and immortal part, they are such as befall alike to good and bad, and so cannot have either much good or much evil in them. I have seen folly set in great dignity, and princes walking on foot, Eccles. x. 6, 7. Then certainly such titles of honour and dignity, such places of eminency erected above the multitude, have little or nothing worth the spirit of a man in them, seeing a fool, a wicked man, is as capable of them, as a wise man, or a man of a princely spirit, and so of all others, they do not elevate a man, as a man, above others. A poor, unlearned, mean man may have more real excellency in him, than a rich, learned, and great person. But this draws a substantial and vast difference indeed, such as is between flesh and spirit, such as is between men and beasts. You know what pre-eminency a man hath over a beast. There is no such wide distance among the sons of men as between the lowest and meanest man and the chiefest beast.“There is a spirit in man,”saith Elihu, Job xxxii. 8,—an immortal, eternal substance, of a far higher nature and comprehension. You know what excellency is in the spirit beyond the flesh, such as is in heaven beyond the earth, for the one is breathed from heaven, and the other is taken out of the dust of the earth; the one is corruptible, yea, corruption itself, the other incorruptible. How swift and nimble are the motions of the spirit, from the one end of heaven to the other! How can it compass the earth in a moment! Do but look and see what a huge difference is between a beautiful living body, and the same when it is a dead carcase, rotten and corrupted. It is the spirit dwelling within that makes the odds, that makes it active, beautiful, and comely, but in the removal of the spirit, it becometh a piece of the most defiled and loathsome dust in the world.Now, I say, such a vast and wide difference there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost,“Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish,”Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8,“Understand, ye brutish among the people,”&c., and Psal xcii. 6,“The brutish man understands not this,”and Eccles. iii. 18,“that they themselves may know that they are but beasts.”Therefore you find the Lord often turning to beasts, to insensible creatures, thereby to reprove the folly and madness of men, Isa. i. 2, and Jer. viii. 7. Man hath two parts in him, by which he hath affinity to the two most distant natures, he stands in the middle between angels and beasts. In his spirit he riseth up to an angelic dignity, and in his body he falls down to a brutish condition. Now, which of these hath the pre-eminency,thathe is. If the spirit be indeed elevated above all sensual and earthly things, to the life of angels, that is, to communion with God, then a man is one after the spirit, an angel incarnate, an angel dwelling in flesh, but if his spirit throw itself down to the service of the flesh, minding and savouring only things sensual and visible, then indeed a man puts off humanity, and hath associated himself to beasts, to be as one of them. And indeed, a man made thus like a beast, is worse than a beast, because he ought to be far better. It is no disparagement to a beast to mind only the flesh, but it is the greatest abasement of a man, that which draws him down from that higher station God hath set him into, to the lowest station, that of beasts; and truly a Nebuchadnezzar among beasts is the greatest beast of all, far more brutish than any beast. Now such is every man by nature,—“that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”Every man as he comes out of the womb, is degenerated and fallen down into this brutish estate, to mind, to savour, to relish nothing but what relates to this fleshly or temporal being. The utmost sphere and comprehension of man, is now of no larger extent than this visible world and this present life,—“he is blind and seeth not afar off,”2 Pet. i. 9. Truly, such is every man by nature, whereas the proper native sphere of the spirit's motion[pg 194]and comprehension, is as large as its endurance, that is, as long as eternity, and as broad as to reach the infiniteness of God, the God of all spirits. Now, through the slavery and bondage of men's spirits to their flesh, it is contracted into as narrow bounds as this poor life in the flesh. He that ought to look beyond time as far as eternity, and hath an immortal spirit given for that end, is now half blind, the eye of the mind is so overclouded with lusts and passions that it cannot see far off, not so far as to the morrow after death, not so far as to the entry of eternity. And truly, if you compare the context, you will find, that whosoever doth not give all diligence to add to faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, temperance, to temperance, patience and to patience godliness, &c., he that is not exercised and employed about this study, how to adorn his spirit with these graces, how to have a victory over himself and the world, and in respect of these, accounts all things beside indifferent,—such a man is blind, and seeth not far off, he hath not gotten a sight of eternity, he hath not taken up that everlasting endurance, else he could not spend his time upon provision for the lusts of the flesh, but be behoved to lay such a good foundation for the time to come as is here mentioned. If he saw afar off, he could not but make acquaintance with those courtiers of heaven, which will minister an entrance into that everlasting kingdom. But truly, while this is not your study, you have no purpose for heaven, you see nothing but what is just before your eye, and almost toucheth it, and so you savour and mind only what you see.Is not this then a wide difference between the children of this world, and the children of God? Is it not very substantial? All others are circumstantial in respect of this, this only puts a real difference in that which is best in men, viz. their spirits. The excellency of nature is known by their affections and motions, so are these here, the spiritual man savours spiritual things, the carnal man carnal things, everything sympathizes with that which is like itself, and is ready to incorporate into it, things are nourished and preserved by things like themselves. You see the swine embraces the dunghill, that stink is only a savoury smell to them, because it is suitable to their nature. But a man hath a more excellent taste and smell, and he savours finer and sweeter things. Truly it cannot choose but that it must be a nature more swinish or brutish than a swine, that can relish and savour such filthy abominable works of the flesh as abound amongst some of you.“The works of the flesh are manifest,”Gal. v. 19. And indeed they are manifest upon you, acted in the very day time, out facing the very light of the gospel. You may read them, and see if they be not too manifest in you. Now, what a base nature, what abominable and brutish spirits must possess men, that they apprehend a sweetness and fragrancy in these corrupt and stinking works of the old man! O how base a scent is it, to smell and savour nothing but this present world, and satisfaction to your senses! Truly your scent and smell, your relish and taste, argues your base, and degenerate, and brutish natures, that you are on the worse side of this division,—“after the flesh.”But alas! it is not possible to persuade you that there is no sweetness, no fragrancy, nothing but corruption and rottenness, such as comes out of sepulchres opened, in all these works of the flesh, till once a new spirit be put in you, and your natures changed, no more than you can by eloquence persuade a sick man, whose palate is possessed with a vitiated bitter humour, that such things as are suitable to his vitiated taste, are indeed bitter, or make a swine to believe that the dunghill is stinking and unpleasant. Truly it is as impossible to make the multitude of men to apprehend, to relish or savour any bitterness or loathsomeness in the ways and courses they follow, or any sweetness and fragrancy in the ways of godliness, till once your tastes be rectified, your spirits be transformed and renewed.And indeed, when once the spirit is renewed, and dispossessed of that malignant humour of corruption, and fleshly affection, that did present all things, contrary to what they are, then it is like a healthful and wholesome palate, that tastes all things as they are, and finds bitter, bitter, and sweet, sweet, or like a sound eye, that beholds things just as they are, both in colour, quantity, and distance, then the soul savours the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit, ver 22:“Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, meekness, temperance,”&c. These are fragrant and sweet to the soul, and as a sweet perfume, both to the person that hath them, and to others round about him, and to God also. These cast a savour that allures a soul to seek them, and being[pg 195]possessed of them, they cast a sweet smell abroad to all that are round about, and even as high as heaven. A soul that hath these planted in it, and growing out of it, is as a garden enclosed to God. These fruits are both pleasant and sweet to the soul that eats them, and as the pleasantness of the apple allured man to taste it and sin, so the beauty and sweetness of these fruits of the Spirit draw the spirit of a man after them. He hath found the savour, and seen the beauty, and this allures him to taste them, and then he invites the well beloved to come and taste also, to eat of these fruits with him. We might instance this in many things. A Christian relishes more sweetness in temperance, in beating down his body, and bringing it into subjection, in abstaining from fleshly lusts, than a carnal man tastes in the most exquisite pleasures that the world can afford. A Christian savours a sweetness in meekness and long suffering, he hath more delight in forgiving, and forbearing, and praying for them that wrong him, than a natural man hath in the accomplishing of the most greedy desires of revenge. O what beauty hath gentleness, goodness, and patience, in his eye! What sweetness is in the love of God to his taste! How ravishing is the joy of the Holy Ghost! How contenting that peace that passeth understanding! These are things of the Spirit that he minds and savours. Know, Christians, that it is to this ye are called, to mind these things most, and to seek them most. Beware lest the deceitfulness of sin entice you, through the treacherous and deceitful lusts that are yet living in your members. If you indeed mind these things, and, out of the apprehension of the beauty and savour of the sweetness and smell of the fragrancy of them, would be content to quit all your corrupt lusts, for to be possessed of them, then you are on that blessed and happy side of this great and fundamental division of men, you have indeed the privilege178of all others who are not renewed. Whatever be your condition in the world, you are of the Spirit, and this is better than to be rich, wise, great, and honourable. God hath not given you such things as the world go mad after, but envy them not, he hath given you better things, more real and substantial things, that make you far better and more excellent.But then, this difference, as it is the widest, so it is the durablest, as it is substantial here, so it is perpetual hereafter. When all the other differences between men shall be abolished, this alone shall remain, and therefore you have it in the next verse,“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”This division that is begun here, shall grow wider for all eternity. There shall be a greater difference after this life, and a more sensible separation. Death and life, eternal death and eternal life, are the two sides of this difference, as it shall shortly be stated. When all other degrees and distances of men shall be blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion, there shall no vestige or mark remain, of either wisdom, or riches, or honour, or such like, but all mankind shall be, as to these outward things, levelled and equalized, this one unseen and neglected difference in the world shall appear and shine in that day when the Lord maketh up his jewels,“then he will discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not,”Mal. iii. 18. The carnal and spiritual man have opposite affections and motions. The spirit of the one is on a journey or walk upward,“after the Spirit,”and the spirit of the other is on a walk downward, towards the flesh, and the further they go, the further distant they are. The one shall be taken up to the company of the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the fellowship of angels, the other shall be thrown down into the fellowship and society of devils. And truly it is no wonder it fall so low, for all its motions in the body were downward, to the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. Thus you see the difference will grow wider and more sensible than it is yet between the godly and ungodly, in this world it doth not so evidently appear as it will do afterward. As two men, that leave one another, and have their faces on contrary arts,179at the beginning the distance and difference is not so great and so sensible, but wait a little, and the further they go, the farther they are distant, and the wider their separation is. Even so, when a Christian begins to break off his way from the common course of the world it doth not appear to be so different from it as to convince himself and[pg 196]others; but if his face be towards Jerusalem above, and his heart thitherward, certainly he will be daily moving further from the world, till the distance be sensible both to himself and others; he will be more and more transformed and renewed, till at length all be changed. No wonder then, that these two cannot meet together in the end of their course, whose course was so opposite. Though wicked men will desire to“die the death of the righteous,”yet it is no more possible they can meet in the end, than hell and heaven can reconcile together, because they walk to two contrary points.

Verses 5, 6.—“For they that are after the flesh do mind,”&c.“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

There are many differences among men in this world, that, as to outward appearance, are great and wide, and indeed they are so eagerly pursued, and seriously minded by men, as if they were great and momentous. You see what a strife and contention there is among men, how to be extracted out of the dregs of the multitude, and set a little higher in dignity and degree than they. How do men affect to be honourable above the base! How do they seek to be rich, and hate poverty! These differences of poor and rich, high and low, noble and ignoble, learned and[pg 193]unlearned, the thoughts of men are wholly taken up with, but there is one great difference, that is most in God's eye, and is both substantial and eternal, and so infinitely surpasseth all these differences that the minds of men most run out upon; and it is here, the great difference between flesh and spirit, and them that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit. This is of all other most considerable, because widest and durablest. I say, it is the widest of all, for all others put no great difference between men as men, they do reach the peculiar excellency of a man, that is, the true, and proper, good of his spiritual and immortal part, they are such as befall alike to good and bad, and so cannot have either much good or much evil in them. I have seen folly set in great dignity, and princes walking on foot, Eccles. x. 6, 7. Then certainly such titles of honour and dignity, such places of eminency erected above the multitude, have little or nothing worth the spirit of a man in them, seeing a fool, a wicked man, is as capable of them, as a wise man, or a man of a princely spirit, and so of all others, they do not elevate a man, as a man, above others. A poor, unlearned, mean man may have more real excellency in him, than a rich, learned, and great person. But this draws a substantial and vast difference indeed, such as is between flesh and spirit, such as is between men and beasts. You know what pre-eminency a man hath over a beast. There is no such wide distance among the sons of men as between the lowest and meanest man and the chiefest beast.“There is a spirit in man,”saith Elihu, Job xxxii. 8,—an immortal, eternal substance, of a far higher nature and comprehension. You know what excellency is in the spirit beyond the flesh, such as is in heaven beyond the earth, for the one is breathed from heaven, and the other is taken out of the dust of the earth; the one is corruptible, yea, corruption itself, the other incorruptible. How swift and nimble are the motions of the spirit, from the one end of heaven to the other! How can it compass the earth in a moment! Do but look and see what a huge difference is between a beautiful living body, and the same when it is a dead carcase, rotten and corrupted. It is the spirit dwelling within that makes the odds, that makes it active, beautiful, and comely, but in the removal of the spirit, it becometh a piece of the most defiled and loathsome dust in the world.

Now, I say, such a vast and wide difference there is between a true Christian and a natural man, even taking him in with all his common endowments and excellencies, the one is a man, the other a beast, the one is after the flesh, the other is after the Spirit. It is the ordinary compellation of the Holy Ghost,“Man being in honour, and understanding not, is like the beasts that perish,”Psal. xlix. 20, and xciv. 8,“Understand, ye brutish among the people,”&c., and Psal xcii. 6,“The brutish man understands not this,”and Eccles. iii. 18,“that they themselves may know that they are but beasts.”Therefore you find the Lord often turning to beasts, to insensible creatures, thereby to reprove the folly and madness of men, Isa. i. 2, and Jer. viii. 7. Man hath two parts in him, by which he hath affinity to the two most distant natures, he stands in the middle between angels and beasts. In his spirit he riseth up to an angelic dignity, and in his body he falls down to a brutish condition. Now, which of these hath the pre-eminency,thathe is. If the spirit be indeed elevated above all sensual and earthly things, to the life of angels, that is, to communion with God, then a man is one after the spirit, an angel incarnate, an angel dwelling in flesh, but if his spirit throw itself down to the service of the flesh, minding and savouring only things sensual and visible, then indeed a man puts off humanity, and hath associated himself to beasts, to be as one of them. And indeed, a man made thus like a beast, is worse than a beast, because he ought to be far better. It is no disparagement to a beast to mind only the flesh, but it is the greatest abasement of a man, that which draws him down from that higher station God hath set him into, to the lowest station, that of beasts; and truly a Nebuchadnezzar among beasts is the greatest beast of all, far more brutish than any beast. Now such is every man by nature,—“that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”Every man as he comes out of the womb, is degenerated and fallen down into this brutish estate, to mind, to savour, to relish nothing but what relates to this fleshly or temporal being. The utmost sphere and comprehension of man, is now of no larger extent than this visible world and this present life,—“he is blind and seeth not afar off,”2 Pet. i. 9. Truly, such is every man by nature, whereas the proper native sphere of the spirit's motion[pg 194]and comprehension, is as large as its endurance, that is, as long as eternity, and as broad as to reach the infiniteness of God, the God of all spirits. Now, through the slavery and bondage of men's spirits to their flesh, it is contracted into as narrow bounds as this poor life in the flesh. He that ought to look beyond time as far as eternity, and hath an immortal spirit given for that end, is now half blind, the eye of the mind is so overclouded with lusts and passions that it cannot see far off, not so far as to the morrow after death, not so far as to the entry of eternity. And truly, if you compare the context, you will find, that whosoever doth not give all diligence to add to faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, temperance, to temperance, patience and to patience godliness, &c., he that is not exercised and employed about this study, how to adorn his spirit with these graces, how to have a victory over himself and the world, and in respect of these, accounts all things beside indifferent,—such a man is blind, and seeth not far off, he hath not gotten a sight of eternity, he hath not taken up that everlasting endurance, else he could not spend his time upon provision for the lusts of the flesh, but be behoved to lay such a good foundation for the time to come as is here mentioned. If he saw afar off, he could not but make acquaintance with those courtiers of heaven, which will minister an entrance into that everlasting kingdom. But truly, while this is not your study, you have no purpose for heaven, you see nothing but what is just before your eye, and almost toucheth it, and so you savour and mind only what you see.

Is not this then a wide difference between the children of this world, and the children of God? Is it not very substantial? All others are circumstantial in respect of this, this only puts a real difference in that which is best in men, viz. their spirits. The excellency of nature is known by their affections and motions, so are these here, the spiritual man savours spiritual things, the carnal man carnal things, everything sympathizes with that which is like itself, and is ready to incorporate into it, things are nourished and preserved by things like themselves. You see the swine embraces the dunghill, that stink is only a savoury smell to them, because it is suitable to their nature. But a man hath a more excellent taste and smell, and he savours finer and sweeter things. Truly it cannot choose but that it must be a nature more swinish or brutish than a swine, that can relish and savour such filthy abominable works of the flesh as abound amongst some of you.“The works of the flesh are manifest,”Gal. v. 19. And indeed they are manifest upon you, acted in the very day time, out facing the very light of the gospel. You may read them, and see if they be not too manifest in you. Now, what a base nature, what abominable and brutish spirits must possess men, that they apprehend a sweetness and fragrancy in these corrupt and stinking works of the old man! O how base a scent is it, to smell and savour nothing but this present world, and satisfaction to your senses! Truly your scent and smell, your relish and taste, argues your base, and degenerate, and brutish natures, that you are on the worse side of this division,—“after the flesh.”But alas! it is not possible to persuade you that there is no sweetness, no fragrancy, nothing but corruption and rottenness, such as comes out of sepulchres opened, in all these works of the flesh, till once a new spirit be put in you, and your natures changed, no more than you can by eloquence persuade a sick man, whose palate is possessed with a vitiated bitter humour, that such things as are suitable to his vitiated taste, are indeed bitter, or make a swine to believe that the dunghill is stinking and unpleasant. Truly it is as impossible to make the multitude of men to apprehend, to relish or savour any bitterness or loathsomeness in the ways and courses they follow, or any sweetness and fragrancy in the ways of godliness, till once your tastes be rectified, your spirits be transformed and renewed.

And indeed, when once the spirit is renewed, and dispossessed of that malignant humour of corruption, and fleshly affection, that did present all things, contrary to what they are, then it is like a healthful and wholesome palate, that tastes all things as they are, and finds bitter, bitter, and sweet, sweet, or like a sound eye, that beholds things just as they are, both in colour, quantity, and distance, then the soul savours the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit, ver 22:“Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, meekness, temperance,”&c. These are fragrant and sweet to the soul, and as a sweet perfume, both to the person that hath them, and to others round about him, and to God also. These cast a savour that allures a soul to seek them, and being[pg 195]possessed of them, they cast a sweet smell abroad to all that are round about, and even as high as heaven. A soul that hath these planted in it, and growing out of it, is as a garden enclosed to God. These fruits are both pleasant and sweet to the soul that eats them, and as the pleasantness of the apple allured man to taste it and sin, so the beauty and sweetness of these fruits of the Spirit draw the spirit of a man after them. He hath found the savour, and seen the beauty, and this allures him to taste them, and then he invites the well beloved to come and taste also, to eat of these fruits with him. We might instance this in many things. A Christian relishes more sweetness in temperance, in beating down his body, and bringing it into subjection, in abstaining from fleshly lusts, than a carnal man tastes in the most exquisite pleasures that the world can afford. A Christian savours a sweetness in meekness and long suffering, he hath more delight in forgiving, and forbearing, and praying for them that wrong him, than a natural man hath in the accomplishing of the most greedy desires of revenge. O what beauty hath gentleness, goodness, and patience, in his eye! What sweetness is in the love of God to his taste! How ravishing is the joy of the Holy Ghost! How contenting that peace that passeth understanding! These are things of the Spirit that he minds and savours. Know, Christians, that it is to this ye are called, to mind these things most, and to seek them most. Beware lest the deceitfulness of sin entice you, through the treacherous and deceitful lusts that are yet living in your members. If you indeed mind these things, and, out of the apprehension of the beauty and savour of the sweetness and smell of the fragrancy of them, would be content to quit all your corrupt lusts, for to be possessed of them, then you are on that blessed and happy side of this great and fundamental division of men, you have indeed the privilege178of all others who are not renewed. Whatever be your condition in the world, you are of the Spirit, and this is better than to be rich, wise, great, and honourable. God hath not given you such things as the world go mad after, but envy them not, he hath given you better things, more real and substantial things, that make you far better and more excellent.

But then, this difference, as it is the widest, so it is the durablest, as it is substantial here, so it is perpetual hereafter. When all the other differences between men shall be abolished, this alone shall remain, and therefore you have it in the next verse,“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”This division that is begun here, shall grow wider for all eternity. There shall be a greater difference after this life, and a more sensible separation. Death and life, eternal death and eternal life, are the two sides of this difference, as it shall shortly be stated. When all other degrees and distances of men shall be blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion, there shall no vestige or mark remain, of either wisdom, or riches, or honour, or such like, but all mankind shall be, as to these outward things, levelled and equalized, this one unseen and neglected difference in the world shall appear and shine in that day when the Lord maketh up his jewels,“then he will discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that feareth God, and him that feareth him not,”Mal. iii. 18. The carnal and spiritual man have opposite affections and motions. The spirit of the one is on a journey or walk upward,“after the Spirit,”and the spirit of the other is on a walk downward, towards the flesh, and the further they go, the further distant they are. The one shall be taken up to the company of the spirits of just men made perfect, and to the fellowship of angels, the other shall be thrown down into the fellowship and society of devils. And truly it is no wonder it fall so low, for all its motions in the body were downward, to the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. Thus you see the difference will grow wider and more sensible than it is yet between the godly and ungodly, in this world it doth not so evidently appear as it will do afterward. As two men, that leave one another, and have their faces on contrary arts,179at the beginning the distance and difference is not so great and so sensible, but wait a little, and the further they go, the farther they are distant, and the wider their separation is. Even so, when a Christian begins to break off his way from the common course of the world it doth not appear to be so different from it as to convince himself and[pg 196]others; but if his face be towards Jerusalem above, and his heart thitherward, certainly he will be daily moving further from the world, till the distance be sensible both to himself and others; he will be more and more transformed and renewed, till at length all be changed. No wonder then, that these two cannot meet together in the end of their course, whose course was so opposite. Though wicked men will desire to“die the death of the righteous,”yet it is no more possible they can meet in the end, than hell and heaven can reconcile together, because they walk to two contrary points.

Sermon XIX.Verse 6.—“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”It is true, this time is short, and so short that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable, yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; and there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak. Seeing then we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end. Seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to“give all diligence;”as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do; seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come, the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power to call and bring forward, therefore the present moment that God hath given us, should be catched, held on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. v. 16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, (1 Cor. vii. 29-31), shows. Seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest; and that same should make the passenger give an overly180and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word; for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary[pg 197]ends; the ways are, walking“after the flesh,”and walking“after the Spirit;”the ends to which they lead, are death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them, what excellency is in the one beyond the other; but truly it is hard to persuade to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them. Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses; and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour, fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally; and, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour, even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal; they have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected; and therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, (Isa. v. 20,)—you must call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit; and so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits lie purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground that our Saviour puts such characters on the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. vii. 13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion, to speak properly, as the thing is; the way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way, none so pleasant and plain;—how sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight,—the way of his commandments; it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,—how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii.[pg 198]22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain, but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things, therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But, alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly bound.What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them, therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way of life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthly and lumpish flesh. Our spirits by communion with and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward, but if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the spirit of God and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth, and till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you will willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit; your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up, but as that impression is not from an inward principle so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him, the root of the matter in him; this carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome if once you begin well, the beginning (as you used to say) is the half of the whole. Truly to be well entered is half progress; afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly; this walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy, and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, that because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down[pg 199]to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.181If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest till we be out of the reach of that infection, till we be fully escaped the pollutions of the world.But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. ii. 2), then, I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead, do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously whither this will take you, where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful, the end of it is death, a never ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears,“Oh! why will you die?”“Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell,”“to be carnally-minded”in the issue“is death,”whatsoever you may promise to yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin; we might wonder how they consist together if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it, and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O! how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness, of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom, deceives him that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self murderer and a self destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell, a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked into as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this[pg 200]bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians, therefore, this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received.“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?”1 Cor. vi. 9. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man soweth, that shall he reap, he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption &c., Gal. vi. 7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end! Know you not that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented182as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing, to sow darkness and reap light, to sow corruption and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature to sow nettle seed and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself; it is ordained for corruption. You see what it turns to after the life is out, that is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring, and sowing was about it, the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things for the satisfaction of your flesh, so you shall reap of the flesh corruption, death, and destruction that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable, it shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowship of devils. And O, that corruption of the incorruptible spirit is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,corruptio optimi pessima!Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly, there may be hope of recovery when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, he leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but he follows with a voice behind you, saying,“Here is the way, walk in it,”turn not out of it to the right hand or left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel,—that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come to Jesus Christ,“the way, truth, and life,”the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives have no truth in them, it is but a cloud, a fancy that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life. If you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a Tutor, a Guider, and Director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments. So that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit to make you walk toward that eternal life, and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should“eternal life,”and such a life as the best life here is but death to it! How should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification? How should it fortify our[pg 201]spirits to much endurance and patience? A battle we must have, for these lusts that we disengage from the devil, and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way, but, when for such small and inconsiderable advantages men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war, O how should the expectation of this peace, which encloses and comprehends all felicity, all well being, animate and strengthen us to fight in into the city of life and peace eternal!

Verse 6.—“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

It is true, this time is short, and so short that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable, yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; and there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak. Seeing then we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end. Seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to“give all diligence;”as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do; seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come, the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power to call and bring forward, therefore the present moment that God hath given us, should be catched, held on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. v. 16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, (1 Cor. vii. 29-31), shows. Seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it, eternity, never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no connection with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and push on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest; and that same should make the passenger give an overly180and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word; for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary[pg 197]ends; the ways are, walking“after the flesh,”and walking“after the Spirit;”the ends to which they lead, are death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them, what excellency is in the one beyond the other; but truly it is hard to persuade to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense and the inclination of your hearts are wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties: the locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them. Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses; and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour, fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally; and, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour, even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal; they have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected; and therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, (Isa. v. 20,)—you must call evil good, and good evil; bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit; and so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits lie purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground that our Saviour puts such characters on the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. vii. 13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion, to speak properly, as the thing is; the way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way, none so pleasant and plain;—how sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight,—the way of his commandments; it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,—how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii.[pg 198]22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.

But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain, but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good, it expatiates towards the All fulness of God, yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of these inordinate lusts, that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all enclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects, but because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things, therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But, alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly bound.

What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them, therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way of life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthly and lumpish flesh. Our spirits by communion with and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward, but if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the spirit of God and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth, and till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you will willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit; your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up, but as that impression is not from an inward principle so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him, the root of the matter in him; this carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome if once you begin well, the beginning (as you used to say) is the half of the whole. Truly to be well entered is half progress; afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly; this walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy, and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, that because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down[pg 199]to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax, we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that fly over it, and makes them fall down into it.181If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this we should take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest till we be out of the reach of that infection, till we be fully escaped the pollutions of the world.

But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. ii. 2), then, I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead, do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously whither this will take you, where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful, the end of it is death, a never ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice as to halt and consider what to do, but now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinite more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once, and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears,“Oh! why will you die?”“Such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell,”“to be carnally-minded”in the issue“is death,”whatsoever you may promise to yourselves, I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings, this is not the way that leads to life, why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration as once to stop and sist your progress till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? Oh! unbelief is that which will condemn the world, the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly. Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed, the deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth, makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on, to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, and would you be so cruel to yourselves as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you and besot you so far as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange, indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can you be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men; one is, a dream and fancy of escaping death though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin; we might wonder how they consist together if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it, and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O! how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness, of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom, deceives him that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self murderer and a self destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell, a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked into as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this[pg 200]bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians, therefore, this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received.“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?”1 Cor. vi. 9. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what a man soweth, that shall he reap, he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption &c., Gal. vi. 7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end! Know you not that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented182as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing, to sow darkness and reap light, to sow corruption and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature to sow nettle seed and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself; it is ordained for corruption. You see what it turns to after the life is out, that is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring, and sowing was about it, the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things for the satisfaction of your flesh, so you shall reap of the flesh corruption, death, and destruction that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable, it shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowship of devils. And O, that corruption of the incorruptible spirit is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,corruptio optimi pessima!

Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly, there may be hope of recovery when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, he leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but he follows with a voice behind you, saying,“Here is the way, walk in it,”turn not out of it to the right hand or left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel,—that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come to Jesus Christ,“the way, truth, and life,”the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives have no truth in them, it is but a cloud, a fancy that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life. If you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a Tutor, a Guider, and Director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments. So that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit to make you walk toward that eternal life, and thus grace and truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should“eternal life,”and such a life as the best life here is but death to it! How should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification? How should it fortify our[pg 201]spirits to much endurance and patience? A battle we must have, for these lusts that we disengage from the devil, and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way, but, when for such small and inconsiderable advantages men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war, O how should the expectation of this peace, which encloses and comprehends all felicity, all well being, animate and strengthen us to fight in into the city of life and peace eternal!

Back to IndexNext