will and affections, to a very great prevalency and conquest.

Such a person hath cast off, as to the particular spoken of, the conduct of renewing grace, and is kept from ruin only by restraining grace: and so far is he fallen from grace, and returned under the power of the law; and can it be thought that this is not a great provocation to Christ, that men should cast off his easy gentle yoke and rule, and cast themselves under the iron yoke of the law, merely out of indulgence unto their lusts?

Try thyself by this also, when thou art by sin driven to make a stand, so that thou must either serve it, and rush at the command of it into folly, like the horse into the battle, or make head against it to suppress it; what dost thou say to thy soul? what dost thou expostulate with thyself? Is this all, hell will be the end of this course, vengeance will meet with me, and find me out? It is time for thee to look about thee, evil lies at the door. Paul's main argument to evince that sin shall not have dominion over believers, is, that they are not under the law, but under grace;' Rom, vi. 14. If thy contendings against sin be all on legal accounts, from legal principles and motives, what assurance canst thou attain unto, that sin shall not have dominion over thee, which will be thy ruin?

Yea know that this reserve will not long hold out: if thy lust hath driven thee from stronger gospel forts, it will speedily prevail against this also; do not suppose that such considerations will deliver thee, when thou hast voluntarily given up to thine enemy those helps and means of preservation which have a thousand times their strengh; rest assuredly in this, that unless thou recover thyself with speed, from this condition, the thing that thou fearest will come upon thee; what gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.

When it is probable that there is, or may be somewhat adiciary hardness, or at least of chastening punishment in uieting. This is another dangerous symptom,

netimes leave even those of his own, under er, at least of some lust or sin, to correct negligence, and folly, I no way doubt. plaint of the church, Why hast thou

hardened us from the fear of thy name?', Isa. lxiii. 17. That this is his way of dealing with unregenerate men, no man questions. But how shall a man know whether there be any thing of God's chastening hand, in his being left to the disquietment of his distemper? Ans. Examine thy heart and ways, what was the state and condition of thy soul before thou fellest into the entanglements of that sin, which now thou so complainest of? Hadst thou been negligent in duties? Hadst thou lived inordinately to thyself? Is there the guilt of any great sin lying upon thee unrepented of? A new sin may be permitted, as well as a new affliction sent to bring an old sin to remembrance.

Hast thou received any eminent mercy, protection, deliverance, which thou didst not improve, in a due manner, nor wast thankful for? or hast been exercised with any affliction, without labouring for the appointed end of it? or hast thou been wanting to the opportunities of glorifying God in thy generation, which in his good providence he had graciously afforded unto thee? or hast thou conformed thyself unto the world and the men of it, through the abounding of temptations in the days wherein thou livest?

If thou findest this to have been thy state, awake, call upon God, thou art fast asleep in a storm of anger round about thee.

already withstood particular This condition is described,

(6.) When thy lust hath dealings from God against it. Isa. lvii. 17. ‘For the iniquity of his covetousness I was wroth, and smote him, I hid me and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. God had dealt with them about their prevailing lust, and that several ways, by affliction and desertion, but they held out against all. This is a sad condition, which nothing but mere sovereign grace (as God expresses it in the next verse) can relieve a man in, and which no man ought to promise himself, or bear himself upon. God oftentimes in his providential dispensations meets with a man, and speaks particularly to the evil of his heart, as he did to Joseph's brethren in their selling of him into Egypt. This makes the man reflect on his sin, and judge himself in particular for it. God makes it to be the voice of the danger, affliction, trouble, sickness, that he is in, or under. Sometimes in reading of the word,

God makes a man stay on something that cuts him to the heart, and shakes him as to his present condition. More frequently in the hearing of the word preached, his great ordinance for conviction, conversion, and edification, doth he meet with men. God often hews men by the sword of his word in that ordinance; strikes directly on their bosom beloved lust; startles the sinner, makes him engage into the mortification and relinquishment of the evil of his heart. Now if his lust have taken such hold on him, as to enforce him to break these bonds of the Lord, and to cast these cords from him; if it overcomes these convictions, and gets again into its old posture; if it can cure the wounds it so receives, that soul is in a sad condition.

Unspeakable are the evils which attend such a frame of heart: every particular warning to a man in such an estate is an inestimable mercy; how then doth he despise God in them, who holds out against them; and what infinite patience is this in God, that he doth not cast off such a one, and swear in his wrath, that he shall never enter into his rest.

These and many other evidences are there of a lust that is dangerous, if not mortal. As our Saviour said of the evil spirit, 'This kind, goes not out but by fasting and prayer;' so say I, of lusts of this kind; an ordinary course of mortification will not do it, extraordinary ways must be fixed on.

This is the fifth particular direction; consider whether the lust or sin, you are contending with, hath any of these dangerous symptoms attending of it. Before I proceed, I must give one caution by the way, lest any be deceived by what hath been spoken. Whereas, I say, the things and evils above-mentioned may befall true believers, let not any that finds the same things in himself, thence or from thence conclude, that he is a true believer. These are the evils that believers may fall into, and be ensnared withal, not the things that constitute a believer. A man may as well conclude that he is a believer, because he is an adulterer; because David that was so, fell into adultery; as conclude it from the signs foregoing; which are the evils of sin and Satan in the hearts of believers. The 7th chapter of the Romans contains the description of a regenerate man. He that shall consider what is spoken of his dark side, of his

unregenerate part, of the indwelling power and violence of sin remaining in him, and because he finds the like in himself, conclude that he is a regenerate man, will be deceived in his reckoning. It is all one as if you should argue, a wise man may be sick and wounded, yea, do some things foolishly, therefore every one, who is sick and wounded, and does things foolishly is a wise man. Or as if a silly deformed creature hearing one speaking of a beautiful person, should say that he had a mark or a scar that much disfigured him, should conclude that because he hath himself scars, and moles, and warts, that he also is beautiful. If you will have evidences of your being believers, it must be from those things that constitute men believers. He that hath these things in himself, may safely conclude, if I am a believer, I am a most miserable one. But that any man is so, he must look for other evidences, if he will have peace.

CHAP. X.

The second particular direction. Get a clear sense of, 1. The guilt of the sin perplexing. Considerations for help therein proposed. 2. The danger manifold. (1.) Hardening. (2.) Temporal correction. (3.) Loss of peace and strength. (4.) Eternal destruction. Rules for this management of the consideration. 3. The evil of it. (1.) In grieving the Spirit. (2.) Wounding the new creature.

THE second direction is this: Get a clear and abiding sense upon thy mind and conscience of the guilt, danger, and evil, of that sin, wherewith thou art perplexed.

1. Of the guilt of it. It is one of the deceits of a prevailing lust, to extenuate its own guilt. Is it not a little one? When I go and bow myself in the house of Rimmon, God be merciful to me in this thing.' Though this be bad, yet it is not so bad, as such and such an evil; others of the people of God have had such a frame; yea, what dreadful actual sins have some of them fallen into. Innumerable ways there are, whereby sin diverts the mind from a right and due apprehension of its guilt. Its noisome exhalations darken the mind, that it cannot make a right judgment of things. Perplexings reasonings, extenuating promises, tu

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multuating desires, treacherous purposes of relinquishment, hopes of mercy; all have their share in disturbing the mind, in its consideration of the guilt of a prevailing lust. The prophet tells us, that lust will do thus wholly, when it comes to the height; Hos. iv. 11. Whoredom and wine, and new wine take away the heart;' the heart, i. e. the understanding, as it is often used in the Scripture. And as they accomplish this work to the height in unregenerate persons, so in part in regenerate also. Solomon tells you of him who was enticed by the lewd woman, that he was among the simple ones, he was a young man void of understanding;' Prov. vii. 7. And wherein did his folly appear? Why, says he, in the 23d ver. He knew not that it was for his life;' he considered not the guilt of the evil that he was involved in. And the Lord rendering a reason why his dealings with Ephraim took no better effect, gives this account; 'Ephraim is like a silly dove, without heart ;' Hos. vii. 11. had no understanding of his own miserable condition. Had it been possible that David should have lain so long in the guilt of of that abominable sin, but that he had innumerable corrupt reasonings, hindering him from taking a clear view of its ugliness and guilt in the glass of the law; this made the prophet that was sent for his awaking, in his dealings with him, to shut up all subterfuges and pretences, by his parable; that so he might fall fully under a sense of the guilt of it. This is the proper issue of lust in the heart, it darkens the mind that it shall not judge aright of its guilt, and many other ways it hath for its own extenuation, that I shall not now insist on.

Let this then be the first care of him that would mortify sin, to fix a right judgment of its guilt in his mind. To which end take these considerations to thy assistance.

(1.) Though the power of sin be weakened by inherent grace, in them that have it, that sin shall not have dominion over them, as it hath over others; yet the guilt of sin that doth yet abide and remain, is aggravated and heightened by it; Rom. vi. 1, 2. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?' How shall we that are dead; the emphasis is on the word 'we.' How shall we do it, who, as he afterward describes it, have received