cisely and narrowly examining every thing? It is true, says the Christian, that the time was when I advised as little with conscience as others, but sought myself, and pleaded myself, as they do, and looked no further; but that was when I was alive to those ways; but now, truly I am dead to them: and can you look for activity and conversation from a dead man? The pleasures of sin wherein I lived, are still the same but I am not the same. Are you such a sneak and a fool, says the natural man, as to bear affronts, and swallow them, and say nothing? Can you suffer to be so abused by such and such a wrong? Indeed, says the Christian again, I could once have resented an injury as you, or another would, and had somewhat of what you call high-heartedness, when I was alive after your fashion; but now, that humour is not only something cooled, but it is killed in me; it is cold dead, as ye say; and a Greater Spirit, I think, than my own, hath taught me another lesson, hath made me both deaf and dumb that way, and hath given me a new vent, and another language, and another Party to speak to on such occasions. They that seek my hurt, says David, speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long. What doth he in this case? But I, as a deaf man, heard not, and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. And why? For in thee, O Lord, do I hope. Psal. xxxviii. 12—15. And for this deadness that you despise, I have seen Him who died for me, who, when he was reviled, reviled not again.

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

may recover out of again: the Apostle, Rom. vi. 4, adds, that the believer is buried with Christ.

But this is an unpleasant subject, to talk thus of death and burial. The very name of death, in the softest sense it can have, makes a sour melancholy discourse. It is so indeed, if you take it alone, if there were not, for the life that is lost, a far better one immediately following; but so it is here; living unto righteousness succeeds dying to sin.

That which makes natural death so affrightful, the King of terrors, as Job calls it, ch. xviii. 14, is mainly this faint belief and assurance of the resurrection and glory to come; and without some lively apprehension of this, all men's moral resolutions and discourses are too weak cordials against this fear. They may set a good face on it, and speak big, and so cover the fear they cannot cure; but certainly, they are a little ridiculous, who would persuade men to be content to die, by reasoning from the necessity and unavoidableness of it, which, taken alone, rather may beget a desperate discontent, than a quiet compliance. The very weakness of that argument is, that it is too strong, durum telum. That of company is fantastic it may please the imagination, but satisfies not the judgment. Nor are the miseries of life, though an argument somewhat more proper, a full persuasive to meet death without reluctance: the oldest, the most decrepit, and most diseased persons, yet naturally fall not out with life, but could have a mind to it still; and the very truth is this, the worst cottage any one dwells in, he is loath to go out of, till he knows of a better. And the reason why that which is so hideous to others, was so sweet to martyrs, (Heb. xi. 35,) and other godly men who have heartily embraced death, and welcomed it though in very terrible shapes, was, because they had firm assurance of immortality beyond it. The ugly Death's head, when the light of glory shines through the holes of it, is comely and lovely. To look upon Death as Eternity's birth-day, is that which makes it not only tolerable, but amiable. Hic dies pos

tremus, æterni natalis est, is the word I admire more than any other that ever dropt from a heathen.

Thus here, the strongest inducement to this Death, is the true notion and contemplation of this Life unto which it transfers us. It is most necessary to represent this, for a natural man hath as great an aversion every whit from this figurative death, this dying to sin, as from natural death; and there is the more necessity of persuading him to this, because his consent is necessary to it. No man dies this death to sin, unwillingly, although no man is naturally willing to it. Much of this death consists in a man's consenting thus to die; and this is not only a lawful, but a laudable, yea, a necessary selfmurder. Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth, says the Apostle, Col. iii. 5. Now no sinner would be content to die to sin, if that were all; but if it be passing to a more excellent life, then he gaineth, and it were a folly not to seek this death. It was a strange power of Plato's dis course of the soul's immortality, that moved a young man upon reading it, to throw himself into the sea, that he might leap through it to that immortality: but truly, were this life of God, this life to righteousness, and the excellency and delight of it known, it would gain many minds to this death whereby we step into it.

But there is a necessity of a new being as the principle of new action and motion. The Apostle says, While ye served sin, ye were free from righteousness, Rom. vi. 20; so it is, while ye were alive to sin, ye were dead to righteousness. But there is a new breath of life from Heaven, breathed on the soul. Then lives the soul indeed, when it is one with God, and sees light in His light, Psal. xxxii. 9,—hath a spiritual knowledge of Him, and therefore sovereignly loves Him, and delights in His will. And this is indeed, to live unto righte ousness, which, in a comprehensive sense, takes in all the frame of a Christian life; and all the duties of it towards God and towards men.

D 2

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

xxxvii. 30, 31; and from thence, as Solomon says, are the issues of his life, Prov. iv. 3. That law in his heart, is the principle of this living to righteousness.

2. The second thing here, is, that it was the design of the sufferings and death of Christ, to produce in us this death and life: He bare sin, and died for it, that we might die to it.

Out of some conviction of the consequence of sin, many have a confused desire to be justified, to have sin pardoned, who look no further they think not on the importance and necessity of Sanctification, the nature whereof is expressed by this dying to sin, and living to righteousness.

But here we see that Sanctification is necessary as inseparably connected with Justification, not only as its companion, but as its end, which, in some sort, raises it above the other. We see that it was the thing which God eyed and intended, in taking away the guiltiness of sin, that we might be renewed and sanctified. If we compare them in point of time, looking backward, holiness was always necessary unto happiness, but satisfying for sin and the pardon of it, were made necessary by sin: or, if we look forward, the estate we are appointed to, and for which we are delivered from wrath, is an estate of perfect holiness. When we reflect upon that great work of redemption, we see it aimed at there, Redeemed to be holy, Eph. v. 25, 26. Tit. ii. 14. And if we go yet higher, to the very spring, the decree of election, with regard to that it is said, Eph. i. 14, Chosen before, that we should be holy. And the end shall suit the design: Nothing shall enter into the new Jerusalem, that is defiled, or unholy; nothing but perfect purity is there; not a spot of sinful pollution, not a wrinkle of the old man. For this end was that great work undertaken by the Son of God, that he might frame out of polluted mankind a new and holy generation to his Father, who might compass His throne in the life of glory, and give Him pure praises, and behold His face in that eternity. Now, for this end it was needful, according to the all-wise purpose of the Father, that the guiltiness of sin and sentence of death should be once removed; and thus, the