nothing but the death here spoken of can part them. And this death, in this relative sense, is mutual: in the work of conversion, sin dies, and the soul dies to sin, and these two are really one and the same thing. The Spirit of God kills both at one blow, sin in the soul, and the soul to sin: as the Apostle says of himself and the world, Gal. vi. 14, each is crucified to the other.

And there are in it chiefly these two things, which make the difference, [1.] The solidity, and, [2.] The universality of this change here represented under the notion of Death.

Many things may lie in a man's way betwixt him and the acting of divers sins which possibly he affects most. Some restraints, either outward or inward, may be upon him, the authority of others, the fear of shame or punishment, or the check of an enlightened conscience; and though by reason of these, he commit not the sin he would, yet he lives in it, because he loves it, because he would commit it: as we say, the soul lives not so much where it animates, as where it loves. And generally, that metaphorical kind of life, by which man is said to live in any thing, hath its principal seat in the affection: that is the immediate link of the union in such a life and the untying and death consists chiefly in the disengagement of the heart, the breaking off the affection from it. Ye that love the Lord, says the Psalmist, hate evil, Psalm xcvii. 10. An unrenewed mind may have some temporary dislikes even of its beloved sins in cold blood, but it returns to like them within a while. A man may not only have times of cessation from his wonted way of sinning, but, by reason of the society wherein he is, and the withdrawing of occasions to sin, and divers other causes, his very desire after it may seem to himself to be abated, and yet he may be not dead to sin, but only asleep to it; and therefore, when a temptation backed with opportunity and other inducing circumstances, comes and jogs him, he awakes, and arises, and follows it.

A man may for a while distaste some meat which he loves, (possibly upon a surfeit,) but he quickly regains his liking of it.

Every quarrel with sin, every fit of dislike to it, is not that hatred which is implied in dying to sin. Upon the lively representation of the deformity of his sin to his mind, certainly a natural man may fall out with it; but this is but as the little jars of husband and wife, which are far from dissolving the marriage: it is not a fixed hatred, such as amongst the Jews inferred a divorce-If thou hate her, put her away; that is to die to it; as by a legal divorce the husband and wife are civilly dead one to another in regard of the tie and use of marriage.

Again, some men's education, and custom, and moral principles, may free them from the grossest kind of sins, yea, a man's temper may be averse from them, but they are alive to their own kind of sins, such as possibly are not so deformed in the common account, covetousness, or pride, or hardness of heart, and either a hatred or a disdain of the ways of holiness which are too strict for them, and exceed their size. Besides, for the good of human society, and for the interest of his own Church and people, God restrains many natural men from the height of wickedness, and gives them moral virtues. There be very many, and very common sins, which more refined natures, it may be, are scarcely tempted to; but as in their diet, and apparel, and other things in their natural life, they have the same kind of being with other persons, though they are more neat and elegant, so, in this living to sin, they live the same life with other ungodly men, though with a little more delicacy.

They consider not that the devils are not in themselves subject to, nor capable of, many of those sins that are accounted grossest amongst men, and yet are greater rebels and enemies to God than men are.

But to be dead to sin goes deeper, and extends further than all this; it involves a most inward alienation of heart from sin, and most universal from all sin, an antipathy to the most beloved sin. Not only doth the believer forbear sin, but he hates itI hate vain thoughts, Psalm cxix. 113; and not only doth he hate some sins, but all—I hate every false way, ver. 128. A stroke at the heart does it, which is the certainest and quickest

death of any wound.

eye

For in this dying to sin, the whole man of necessity dies to it: the mind dies to the device and study of sin, that vein of invention becomes dead; the hand dies to the acting of it; the ear, to the delightful hearing of things profane and sinful; the tongue, to the world's dialect of oaths, and rotten speaking, and calumny, and evil-speaking, which is the commonest effect of the tongue's life in sin,-the very natural heat of sin exerts and vents itself most that way; the becomes dead to that intemperate look that Solomon speaks of, when he cautions us against eying the wine when it is red, and well coloured in the cup, Prov. xxiii. 31: it is not taken with looking on the glittering skin of that serpent till it bite and sting, as there he adds. It becomes also dead to that unchaste look which kindles fire in the heart, to which Job blindfolded and deadened his eyes, by an express compact and agreement with them: I have made a covenant with mine eyes. Job xxxi. 1.

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

Men think it strange that the Godly are not fond of their diet, that their appetite is not stirred with desire of their delights and dainties; they know not that such as be Christians indeed, are dead to those things, and the best dishes that are set before a dead man, give him not a stomach. The godly man's throat is cut to those meats, as Solomon advises in another subject, Prov. xxiii. 2. But why may not you be a little more sociable to follow the fashion of the world, and take a share with your neighbours, may some say, without so pre

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.

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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