SECONDLY, I now come to handle the second general. There is a necessity incumbent upon them -
1. From their own proneness and proclivity to fall into sin.
2. From the mischiefs arising from reigning sin.
3. From the unsuitableness of it to their renewed state.
4. They cannot otherwise maintain their hopes of glory.
First, Because of their own proneness and proclivity to this evil That appeareth -
1. Because there is sin still in us, a bosom enemy which is born and bred with us, and therefore will soon get the advantage of grace, if it be not well watched and resisted, as nettles and weeds, which are kindly to the soil, and grow of their own accord, will soon choke flowers and better herbs, which are planted by care and industry, when they are neglected and not continually rooted out. We cannot get rid of this cursed inmate till this outward tabernacle be dissolved, and this house of clay be crumbled into dust, like ivy gotten into a wall, that will not be destroyed till the wall be pulled down; the Israelites could not wholly expel the Canaanites; and therefore we are the more obliged to keep them under. Our nature is so inclinable to this slavery, that if God subtract his grace, and we be altogether negligent, we shall soon rue the sad effects of it.
2. It is not only in us, but it is always working in us, and striving for the mastery. Sin is not as other things, which, as they grow in age, they grow more quiet and tame. No; it is every day more active and stirring: James 4:5, 'The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy.' It is not a sleepy, bat a working stirring principle: Rom. 7:8, 'Sin wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.' If it were a dull and an inactive habit, the danger were not so great; but it is always working, and putting forth itself; and seeking to gain an interest in our affections, and a command over all our motions and actions. Therefore, unless we do our part to keep it under, we shall soon revert to our old slavery. It is like a living fountain, that poureth out waters, though nobody cometh to drink of it; though there be nothing to irritate it but God's law and the motions of his Spirit, there is a continual fermentation of the corrupt humours in our souls.
3. It is always warring, as well as working: Rom. 7:23, ‘I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.' Sin seeketh to deface all these impressions of God which are upon the heart, which bind the conscience to holiness, and to stifle all these motions that tend to it. That it may alone reign in the heart without control, it sets itself in direct opposition against all those dictates of conscience, and holy motions and inspirations, that the sinner may be fully captivated to do what the flesh requireth to be done by him; therefore it must be kept under as a slave, or it will get up as a tyrant and domineer. One sin that we least suspect may bring us under this slavery. It doth not only make us flexible and yielding to temptations, but it doth urge and impel us thereunto. We think and speak too gently of corruption when we think and speak of it as a tame thing, that worketh not till it be irritated by the suggestions of Satan. No; it riseth up in arms against everything of God in the heart.
4. The more it acteth, the more it getteth strength, as all habits are increased by multiplied acts; and when we have once yielded, we are ready to yield again, as a brand that hath been once burned is more apt to take fire a second time: Deut. 29:19, 'And it come to pass, when he heareth to words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst.' After men have once committed a sin, they are more vehement to venture on it again; at first we cannot get down sin so easily, till a habit and custom hath smoothed it to our throats. Well, then, this bondage is daily increasing, and more hard to be prevented. By multiplied acts a custom creepeth on us, which is as another nature, and that which might be easily remedied at first groweth more difficult to be subdued. As diseases looked to at first are easy to be cured, but when once they become inveterate the cure is more desperate, so are sins before we are hardened into a custom: Jer. 13:23, 'Can an Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good who are accustomed to do evil.' No means will then prevail to work it out of them, or bring them to any good; the more we sin, the more are we enthralled to sin, as a nail, the more it is knocked, the more it is fastened into the wood. A sinner is often compared to a slave or servant; now there were two sorts of servants or slaves - such as were so by covenant and by their own consent, or such as were so by conquest or surprisal in war. The first similitude is used, Rom. 6:16, 'Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.' The other servant by conquest is spoken of, 2 Peter 2:19, 'For of whom a man is overcome, of the same also is he brought into bondage.' Now these notions I would rank thus: every carnal man at his first entrance into a course of vanity and sin is a servant by consent, hire, or contract, for he doth consecrate his life and his love, his time and his care, his actions and his employments to please his lusts; we first willingly and by our own default give up ourselves to this course. But the customary sinner by conquest, that hath so crippled and maimed his faculties that he cannot be at liberty if he would, then they grow complete slaves to their lusts, as captives in war are servants to their conquerors; for whilst they do voluntarily and ordinarily give up themselves to serve the devil and their own corruptions without resistance, or crying to Christ for help, they are very bond-slaves and held in chains of darkness, till the supreme Judge execute deserved wrath upon them. Augustine complaineth, Ligatus cram, non ferro alieno, sed mea ferrea voluntate, velle meum tenebat inimicus, et me mihi catenam fecerat et constrinxerat me - Lord, I am bound, not with iron, but with an obstinate will; I gave my will to mine enemy, and he made a chain of it to bind me, and keep me from thee; quippe ex voluntate perversa facta est libido; et. dum servitur libidini, facta est consuetudo; et dum consuetudini non resistitur, facta est necessitas - a perverse will gave way to lustings, and lusting made way for a custom, and custom let alone brought a necessity upon me, that I can do nothing but sin against thee. Thus are we by little and little enslaved, and brought under the power of every carnal vanity. Well, now, put all together; are these things spoken of ourselves or of another? Is it so indeed, that there is such a warring? and are we not obliged to be watchful and careful?
Secondly, From the mischievous influence and heinous nature of reigning sin.
1. When sin reigneth, it plucketh the sceptre out of God's hands, and giveth it to some vile and base thing which is set up in God's stead; as the setting up of a usurper is the rejection of the lawful king. The throne belonging to God must be kept for him alone; therefore every degree of service done to sin includeth a like degree of treason and infidelity to Christ. Our Lord telleth us, Mat 6:24, 'No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other: ye cannot serve God and mammon.' As no man can serve two masters, God and mammon, so every one serveth one of these, God or mammon, for the throne is never empty; but between both of them you cannot divide your heart. Neither dominion nor wedlock can endure partners; so that by cleaving to the one, you refuse and renounce the other. To serve God is to give up a man's mind, and heart, and whole man, to know and do what God requireth, whatever be the consequences. Now this doth necessarily imply a renunciation of all those things which cross and contradict the will of God, be it devil, world, or flesh. So to serve mammon is to give up a man's mind, heart, endeavour to find out and follow after the riches, honours, and pleasures of the world, whatever may come of it. He that would serve God must do nothing but what God alloweth him in the matter of pleasure, profit, or preferment, or any other thing; for God is not well served unless he be served as a master commanding and governing all our actions. On the other side, he that serveth the world giveth God only what the world and flesh can spare, so much religion, strictness, and good conscience as will stand with his carnal ends and affections; for then the world is served as a master when men dispose of themselves and all their concernments, and rule themselves and please themselves, according to that fleshly and worldly appetite and fancy that governeth them; and God is no further loved, obeyed, pleased, than that love of honour, profit, or pleasure will give leave. Well, then, by this you may plainly see that the setting up of any lust to reign is a laying aside and a deposing of God; for if a man be bound absolutely to resign up himself to the will and disposal of God, and to obey him, and love and serve him with all his powers, and this man on the contrary giveth up himself into the hands of some carnal affection of his, be it pride, sensuality, or love of worldly things, and this ruleth him, and this governeth him, and this he studieth to please and gratify, certainly these pleasures, or profits, or honours are set up in God's stead; it is a plain refusing one, and a cleaving to the other, a despising God and Christ, and a preferring the world and Satan. And it will not help the matter, though we profess Christ to be the Lord: all formal titles are a mockage: Mat 7:21, 'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven;' Luke 6:46, 'And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?' Many who profess Christ to be their Lord, are as true bondmen to Satan as the heathen who offered sacrifice to him; and a drunken and unclean Christian is as true a servant to the devil as the votaries and worshippers of Priapus, or Bacchus, or Venus; for he doth as absolutely command your affections as he did theirs; and though you are Christ's by profession, yet you are Satan's by possession and occupation, and the bond of your servitude is altogether as firm and as strong, though it be more inward and secret, than their rites of worship. Neither will it help the matter, that as you do not profess, so you do not intend so; though we do not formally intend this, yet virtually we do, and so God will account it; it is finis operis, though not operantis. If a wife be false to her husband's bed, will it be excuse enough to say she did not intend to wrong him? or will such a saying excuse a subject that is disloyal to his prince, and sets up a usurper? Well, then, what horror should this beget in our minds! and what care should we take that sin may not reign!
2. The reign of sin is mischievous to us. Sin, when it once gets the throne, it groweth outrageous, and involveth us in so many inconveniences, that we cannot easily disentangle ourselves, and get out again.
[1.] This is one, that it turneth the man upside down, and degradeth and depresseth him to the rank of beasts. A brutish worlding, that once gratifieth his carnal affections, is but a nobler kind of beast; he employeth his reason to gratify his appetite, and puts conscience under the dominion of sense, and so inverteth the whole nature of a man: Titus 3:3, 'Serving divers lusts and pleasures.' The worldly bait taketh advantage of the brutish part, when reason is asleep, and then the beast rideth and ruleth the man, and reason becometh a slave to sensuality.
[2] This servitude is so burdensome as well as base, and attended with so much pain and shame, that those that know the service of sin (as we all do by sad experience) should use all caution that it never bring them into bondage. Again the apostle dissuadeth from the reign of sin by this argument: Rom. 6:21, 'When ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness; what fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?' As if he had said, You have full experience of the service of sin, and the fruits of it; what fruit then? Before you had a contrary principle set up in your hearts, you are ashamed now; that is, now ye know better things, but what fruit then? Nothing but toils, and gripes, and fears, and sad twinges of conscience; for what other thing can be expected of him that every day liveth within a step of hell? The devil hath one bad property, which no other master hath, how cruel soever, and that is, to plague and torment them most who have done him most continual and faithful service. Those that have sinned most have most horror, and every degree of carnal indulgence hath a proportionable degree of fear and shame and punishment. I speak nothing all this while of the wasting of estate and health, of the loss of credit and interest, of the cost and pains which the drudgery of sin puts men upon; many suffer more hardship in Satan's service than any man in God's; their sin costs them dearer than any martyr ever endured to go to heaven. Lastly, the reward of all is everlasting destruction: Rom. 6:21, 'For the end of these things is death; but being made free from sin, and become the servants of righteousness, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.' After all your time and strength hath been spent in the pursuit of vanity, what is the issue but everlasting horror and punishment? Oh! then, when you see the bait, remember the hook; when you hear the serpent hiss, see its sting; and reckon that everlasting death is attending the eating of forbidden fruit When it seemeth most pleasant to the eye, let not the pomp and vanities of the world entice you into a forgetfulness of God, before whom you must appear as your judge; nor of your immortal souls, which must one day be rent from the embraces of the body, and will survive them, and be commanded into the everlasting regions of light or darkness, ease or sorrow. Hell and heaven are not matters to be trifled with, nor should we easily hazard the feeling of the one, or the loss of the other.
3. The mischievous influence and heinous nature of reigning sin appeareth in this, that it rendereth your sincerity questionable; yea, rather it is a sure note of a carnal state, where it is habitual. There will be pride, earthliness, and sensuality dwelling, stirring and working in the best of God's children; but it hath not its wonted power over them. Christ will not reckon men slaves by their having sin, nor yet by their daily failings and infirmities, nor by their falling now and then into foul faults by the violence of a temptation, unless they settle in a constant trade of sin, and set up no course of mortification against it Though there be not a good man upon earth that sinneth not, yet surely there is a difference between the regenerate and unregenerate. There are some 'whose spot is not as the spot of God's children,' Deut. 32:5. There is a difference between sins. God gave the priest under the law direction how to put a difference between leprous persons, some of which were unclean, others clean, Lev. 13: 38,39; there was some leprosy that spoiled the skin, but did not fret the flesh, which the priest was to pronounce clean. God showeth himself hereby merciful to the infirmities of his people, not esteeming every spot and deformity in them as malignant sin; so ver. 23, 'If the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not, it is a burning boil, and the priest shall pronounce him clean;' to wit, from the contagion of leprosy; which signified, that though the signs and marks of sin which God hath healed by forgiveness remain still, yet, if they spread not, that is, reign not in our mortal bodies, they shall not be imputed to us, but forgiven: 'Because we are not under the law, but under grace,’ On the other side, if the spot were turned bright, and deeper than the skin, the priest was to pronounce him unclean; ver. 25, 'And if it did spread much abroad, the priest was to pronounce him unclean; it was the plague of leprosy,’ ver. 27. And again we read in ver. 44, 'When the priest was to pronounce him utterly unclean, his plague was in his head,’ If to infirmity there be added malignity and presumption, it ranketh the sinner a spiritual leper in the sight of God; and 'he did rend his clothes, and make bare his head, and cry out, Unclean, unclean,' ver. 45, importing thereby humble and penitent acknowledgment, or broken-hearted representing of our sin and misery, or sense of our own plague and grief: and he was to dwell alone till he was healed, ver. 46; that is, he was deprived of communion with God till a thorough cure was wrought in him. As it was in the ordinances of the law, so it is true also in the gospel. There is a difference between sins and sins, and sinners and sinners; there is a difference between dimness of sight and blindness, between numbness and death, between want of sense and want of life, between slumbering and sleeping, between slipping into a ditch and tumbling ourselves headlong into the mire; so there is a difference between infirmities and iniquities, a failing out of ignorance and weakness and some powerful temptation, and a running headlong unto all ungodliness. God's children have their failings, but a burning and earnest desire to be freed from them; in others there is a wallowing in sin without any care of remedy; in the one it is a failing in point of particular duty, in the other a rebellion. Judas and Peter both sinned against their master; the one denied him, the other betrayed him; the one was overcome by fear, the other inclined by covetousness of a little money; the one plotted, the other was surprised. A purpose and a surprise are two different things; the one went out and wept bitterly, the other was given up to raging despair. David did not make a trade of adultery, nor bathe himself in filthy lusts. Noah was drunk by not knowing the force of the juice of the grape. They do not lie in this state, but seek to get out of it by repentance. Closer discoveries I reserve to the use. Thirdly, My next argument is the unsuitableness and uncomeliness that sin should reign in Christians, who are Christ's, and should live to him, and for him. It misbecometh them as they profess themselves to be Christ's. We have no power to dispose of ourselves, being wholly his by purchase and covenant.
1. By purchase: 1 Cor. 6:9,20, 'Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.' Quod venditur transit in potestatem ementis - the buyer hath a power over what he hath bought We were lost, sold away, had sold ourselves against all right and justice; but Christ was pleased to redeem us, and that with no slight thing, but his own blood. Now how can you look your Redeemer in the face at the last day? If you have any sense and belief of Christian mysteries, you should be afraid to rob Christ of his purchase: 1 Cor. 6:15, 'Shall I take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid!' He hath bought us to this very end, that you may be no longer under the slavery of sin, but under his blessed government, and the sceptre of his Spirit: Titus 2:14, 'He hath redeemed us from all iniquity;' that was his end, to set us at liberty, and free us from our sins; and therefore, for us to despise the benefit, and to count our bondage to be a delight and privilege, this is to build up again that which he came to destroy, to put our Redeemer to shame, to tie those cords the faster which he came to unloose; and so it is as great an affront and disparagement of his undertaking as possibly can be. Therefore let not sin live and reign.
2. We are his not only by purchase, but by covenant: Ezek. 16:8, 'I entered into covenant with, thee, and thou becamest mine.' We wholly gave over ourselves to his use and service. This covenant was ratified in baptism, wherein 'we were planted into the likeness of his death,' Rom. 6:3-5. How into the likeness of his death? To die unto sin, as he died for sin; that is explained by the apostle, ver. 9, 'Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him.' His resurrection instated him in an eternal life, never to come under the power of death again; so are we to rise to a new life, never to return to our sins again. Now shall we rescind our baptismal vows, and after we have resigned ourselves to Christ, give the sovereignty to another? The hands of consecration have been upon us, and therefore to allow ourselves in any course and way of sinning is to alienate ourselves, and to employ ourselves not only to a common, but a vile and base use. When Ananias had dedicated that that was in his power, and kept back part for private use, God struck him dead in the place, Acts v.; and if we alienate ourselves, who were not in our own power, and were Christ's before the consecration, of how much severer vengeance shall we be worthy! God complaineth of the wrong of parents, Ezek. 16:20, that they took sons and daughters born to him, and sacrificed them to be devoured by Moloch. Children born during the marriage covenant were his; they were circumcised, and so dedicated to him; yet they gave them to Moloch; as many parents dedicate their children to God by baptism, and bring them up for the world and the flesh. This is verily a great sin in parents; but we are more answerable for our own souls, when we have owned the dedication, and ratified it by our own professed consent; and if we shall willingly yield to the world and the flesh, and suffer them to have a full power and dominion over us, how do we defy Christ, whom yet in words we profess to be our Lord! It is said, Gal. 5:24, 'They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof.' How shall we interpret this scripture, and reconcile it with the carriage of most Christians? De jure all will grant that they should crucify the flesh, with the affections and lusts thereof; but the apostle seemeth to speak de facto, 'they have,' and that maketh the difficulty. All true Christians indeed have done so. Christians in the letter are bound to do so; and let them look to it how they will answer it to Christ another day. All in their baptism have renounced the desires of the flesh, and the passions of it also; they are engaged to do it; and all that are serious and real have begun to do this act of mortifying sin, and must go on yet more and more to smother the endeavours and effects of it. Because this is a momentous business, and it is charged on us 'as we are Christ's,' as we profess ourselves to be so, and take ourselves to be so, let us see what it importeth. They must; all are bound; they really have crucified the flesh, mortified and deadened the root of corruption, that it shall not easily sprout and put forth its lustings. Carnal nature in them is weakened, it is not so vigorous and stirring as it was wont to be; there is some preventing of the first risings, though sin dwell in them, and work in them. So far all that are Christ's have put to death their fleshly corruption. But now, as to the several ways of venting of it, expressed by pathè and epithumiai, either by sinful passions, as malice, envy, hatred, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, they do in a great measure and considerable degree get above these; or by lust is meant all fleshly and worldly desires, which carry us out of the pleasures, and profits, and honours of the world, the pleasing baits and enticements of sense; they are dead to these also; all motions to uncleanness, intemperance, ambition, love of riches and vain pleasures: all the children of God have actually begun this work, and are still suppressing these things; for they have resigned their hearts for Christ to dwell in, and they are advancing his sceptre and rule continually, for they have given up themselves to be guided by him. Whether they be pleasant sins or vexatious evils, the heart of a Christian is set against them; and therefore you see how unsuitable it is for those that are Christ's, his redeemed ones, and his covenanted ones, to give way to the reign of sin.
Fourthly, My last argument to evince this necessity that is incumbent on the people of God, that this dominion of sin be not set up in their hearts, is because otherwise they cannot maintain and keep up any lively hope of glory. That I shall evidence by some scriptures: Rom. 6:8, 'If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.' If we die to sin so as never to allow it, or to return to the love and practice of it any more, then the Christian faith promiseth some good to us, we have hopes of living with Christ, or a joyful resurrection to eternal life; for the Christian life is an entrance and introduction into the life of glory. So Rom. 8:13, 'If ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.' The scripture is plain in setting down the characters of those that shall go to heaven or to hell, and very decisive and peremptory: 'If we live after the flesh, we shall die.' It doth not say, if we have lived after the flesh; for that would cut off the hope of all the living. One man was first good, and after bad, as Adam; another never bad, always good, as Christ; of all the rest, none ever proved good who was not sometimes bad; we all live after the flesh before we come to live after the Spirit. But if we do still accommodate ourselves to obey and fulfil the motions of the flesh, Christ speaketh no good to such. But now, see the promise of God to those that keep mortifying of sin, striving against sin; 'they shall live,’ not only the life of grace, for surely by their progress in mortification vivification is furthered and increased; as we grow dead to sin, we are more alive to righteousness; but the life of glory is a greater boon than we can deserve, as much as we can desire, more than we can make any part of requital for. There is scarce any one scripture by which a man may sooner come to a decision of his spiritual estate than this, for it puts it to a short issue; prevent the reign of sin, and your title to everlasting glory will not be so dark and litigious; make conscience of subduing and suppressing the secret inclinations and desires of the flesh by the Spirit, and you have by warrant of scripture a full and sufficient evidence. All the deeds of the flesh must be mortified before we can see our interest; though not universally and totally, yet still we must go on with it. Sin is mortal if it be not mortified; so that a necessity is laid upon us of killing our lusts, or being killed by them. The apostle doth not say, 'If the deeds of the flesh be mortified in you through the Spirit;' but 'if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body.' We must not dream of a mortification to be wrought in us without our consent or endeavours, as well whilst we are asleep as whilst we are waking, as if it were wrought in our cradles, whilst we are passing our time in childish play and pastime, or should be done in our riper age, without any careful watch over our works and thoughts; or it may be by a sluggish wish or slight prayer, as if this would master sin. No; all renewed ones must seriously address themselves to the work; the flesh must be mortified, and mortified it must be by us through the Spirit, if we would cherish the hopes of eternal life. The Spirit alone giveth victory, but we must be active in it; for his grace and powerful victorious work doth not license us to be idle, but rather calleth for an assiduous, diligent, and faithful use of means. The less earnest the conflict is between the flesh and the Spirit, the longer will the old man live in us, and our peace and hope will be the more doubtful; but the more serious our endeavours are, the sooner shall we come to a determination in the great affairs and interests of our precious and immortal souls.
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