Lastly, The Spirit binds this fast upon us, for the soul of man he hath chosen for his habitation, and there he delights to dwell, in the heart of the contrite and humble, and this he intends to beautify and garnish, and to restore it to that primitive excellency it once had. The spirit of man is nearer his nature, and more capable of being conformed unto it, and therefore his peculiar and special work is about our spirits. First, to enlighten and convince them, then, to reform and direct them and lead them, and this binds as forcibly, and constraineth a believer certainly to resign himself to the Spirit, to study how to order his walk after that direction, and to be more and more abstracted from the satisfaction of his body; else he cannot choose but grieve the Spirit, his best friend, which alone is the fountain of joy and peace to him, and being grieved, cannot but grieve himself next.
Now, my beloved, consider, if you owe so much to the flesh, whether or not it be so steadable[209] and profitable unto you? And if you think it can give you a sufficient reward to compense all your pains in satisfying it, go on, but, I believe, you can reckon no good office that ever it did you, and your expectation is less. What fruit have you of all, but shame and vexation of conscience? And what can you expect but death, the last fruits of it? What then do you owe unto it? Are you debtors to its pleasure and satisfaction, which hath never done you good, and will do you eternal hurt? Consider whether you are so much bound and obliged to it as to lose your souls for it, (one of them must be,) and whether or not you be not more obliged to God the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, to “live after the Spirit,” though for the present it should be painful to beat down your body. You are debtors indeed, but you owe nothing to the flesh but stripes and mortification.
Sermon XXXIV.
Verse 13.—“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die, but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”
Though the Lord, out of his absolute sovereignty, might deal with man in such a way, as nothing should appear but his supreme will and almighty power, he might simply command obedience, and without any more persuasions either leave men to the frowardness of their own natures, or else powerfully constrain them to their duty, yet he hath chosen that way that is most suitable to his own wisdom, and most connatural to man's nature, to lay out before him the advantages and disadvantages, and to use these as motives and persuasives of his Spirit. For since he hath by his first creation implanted in man's soul such a principle as moveth itself upon the presentation of good or evil, that this might not be in vain, he administers all the dispensations of the law and gospel in a way suitable to that, by propounding such powerful motives as may incline and persuade the heart of man. It is true, [pg 248] there's a secret drawing withal necessary, the pull of the Father's arm and power of the Holy Ghost, yet that which is visible or sensible to the soul is the framing of all things so as to engage it upon rational terms. It is set between two contraries, death and life,—death which it naturally abhorreth, and life which it naturally loveth. An even balance is holden up before the light of the conscience, in which obedience and sin are weighed, and it is found even to the convincing of the spirit of man, that there are as many disadvantages in the one as advantages in the other.
This was the way that God used first with man in paradise. You remember the terms run so,—“'What day thou eatest thou shalt die.” He hedged him in on the one side by a promise of life, on the other by a threatening of death. And these two are very rational restraints, suited to the soul of man, and in the inward principles of it, which are a kind of instinct to that which is apprehended good or gainful.
Now, this verse runs even so in the form of words “If ye live after the flesh ye shall die.” You see this method is not changed under the gospel, for, indeed, it is natural to the spirit of man, and he hath now much more need of all such persuasions, because there is a great change of man's inclination to the worst side. All within is so disordered and perverse that a thousand hedges of persuasive grounds cannot do that which one might have done at first. Then they were added out of superabundance, but now out of necessity,—then they were set about man to preserve him in his natural frame and inclinations, but now they are needful to change and alter them quite, which is a kind of creation, therefore saith David, “create in me a new spirit,” and, therefore, the gospel abounds in variety of motives and inducements, in greater variety, of far more powerful inducements than the law. Here is that great persuasion taken from the infinite gain or loss of the soul of man, which, if any thing be able to prevail, this must do, seeing it is seconded with some natural inclination in the soul of man to seek its own gain. Yet there is a difference between the nature of such like promises and threatenings in the first covenant and in the second. In the first covenant, though life was freely promised, yet it was immediately annexed to perfect obedience as a consequent reward of it. It was firstly promised unto complete righteousness of men's persons. But in the second covenant, firstly and principally life eternal, grace and glory is promised to Jesus Christ and his seed, antecedent to any condition or qualification upon their part. And then again, all the promises that run in way of condition, as, “He that believeth shall not perish,” &c., “If ye walk after the Spirit, ye shall live.” These are all the consequent fruits of that absolute gracious disposition and resignation of grace and life to them whom Christ hath chosen. And so their believing, and walking, and obeying, cometh in principally as parts of the grace promised, and as witnesses and evidences and confirmations of that life which is already begun, and will not see an end. Besides that, by virtue of these absolute promises made to the seed of Christ, and Christ's complete performance of all conditions in their name, the promises of life are made to faith principally, which hath this peculiar virtue to carry forth the soul to another's righteousness and sufficiency, and to bottom it upon another and in the next place, to holy walking, though mixed with many infirmities, which promise, in the first covenant, was only annexed to perfect and absolute obedience.
You heard, in the preceding verse, a strong inducement taken from the bond, debt, and duty we owe to the Spirit, to walk after it, and the want of all obligation to the flesh. Now, if honesty and duty will not suffice to persuade you, as you know in other things it would do with any honest man, plain equity is a sufficient bond to him. Yet, consider what the apostle subjoins from the damage, and from the advantage which may of itself be the topics of persuasion, and serves to drive in the nail of debt and duty to the head. If you will not take with this debt you owe to the Spirit, but still conceive there is some greater obligation lying on you, to care for your bodies and satisfy them, then, I say, behold the end of it, what fruit you must one day reap of the flesh and service of sin. “If ye live after the flesh, you shall die.” But then, consider the fruit you shall reap of the Spirit, and holy walking “you shall live.” It is true the flesh may flatter you more for the present, but the end of it will lie bitter as death, amplectitur ut strangulet, “the flesh embraces you that it may strangle you.” And so if you knew all well you would not think [pg 249] you owed it any thing but enmity and hatred and mortification. If your duty will not move you, let the love of yourselves and your souls persuade you, for it is an irrepealable statute: “The wages of sin is death.” Every way you choose to fulfil the lusts of your flesh, and to make provision for it, neglecting the eternal welfare of your souls, certainly it shall prove to you “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” it shall be as the forbidden fruit, which instead of performing that which was promised will bring forth death,—the eternal separation of the soul from God. Adam's sin was a breviary or epitome of the multiplied and enlarged sins of mankind. You may see in this tragedy all your fortunes (so to speak,)—you may behold in it the flattering insinuations and deceitful promises of sin and Satan, who is a liar and murderer from the beginning, and murdered man at first by lying to him. You find the hook covered over with the varnished bait of an imaginary life and happiness, satisfaction promised to the eye, to the taste, and to the mind. And upon these enticements, man bewitched and withdrawn from his God, after these vain and empty shadows, which, when he catched hold upon, he himself was caught and laid hold upon by the wrath of God,—by death and all the miseries before it or after it. Now, here is the map of the world,—for all that is in the world is but a larger volume of that same kind, “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life!” Albeit they have been known and found to be the notablest and grossest deceivers, and every man, after he hath spent his days in pursuit and labour for them, is constrained to acknowledge at length, though too late, that all that is in the world is but an imposture, a delusion, a dream, and worse, yet every man hearkens after these same flatteries and lies that hath cast down so many wounded, and made so many strong ones to fall by them. Every man trusts the world and his own flesh, as if they were of good report and of known integrity. And this is men's misery, that no man will learn wisdom upon others expenses, upon the woful and tragical example of so many others, but go on as confidently now, after the discovery of these deceivers, as if this were the first time they had made such promises, and used such fair words to men. Have they not been these six thousand years almost deluding the world? And have we not as many testimonies of their falsehood, as there have been persons in all ages before us? After Adam hath tasted of this tree of pleasure and found another fruit growing on it and that is death, should the posterity be so mad as to be meddling still with the forbidden tree? And wherefore forbidden? Because destructive to ourselves.