this death and life is; 2dly, The designing of it in the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ; 3dly, The effecting of it by them.

1st, What this death and life is. Whatsoever it is, surely it is no small change that bears the name of the great and last natural change that we are subject to, a death, and then another kind of life succeeding to it.

In this the greatest part of mankind are mistaken, that they take any slight alteration in themselves for true conversion. A world of people are deluded with superficial moral changes in their life, some rectifying of their outward actions and course of life, and somewhat too in the temper and habit of their mind. Far from reaching the bottom of nature's wickedness, and laying the axe to the root of the tree, it is such a work as men can make a shift with by themselves. But the renovation which the Spirit of God worketh, is like Himself: it is so deep and total a work, that it is justly called by the name of the most substantial works and productions; a new birth, and more than that, a new creation, and here, a death and a kind of life following it.

This death to sin supposes a former living in it, and to it; and while a man does so, he is said indeed to be dead in sin, and yet withal, this is true, that he lives in sin, as the Apostle, speaking of widows, joins the expressions, 1 Tim. v. 6, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. So, Eph. ii. 1, Dead in trespasses and sins, and he adds, wherein ye walked, which imports a life, such an one as it is; and more expressly, (ver. 3,) We had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh. Now, thus to live in sin, is termed being dead in it, because, in that condition, man is indeed dead in respect of that Divine life of the soul, that happy being which it should have in union with God, for which it was made, and without which it had better not be at all. For that life, as it is different from its natural being, and a kind of life above it, so it is contrary to that corrupt being and life it hath in sin; and therefore, to live in sin, is to be dead in it, being a deprivement of that

Divine being, that life of the soul in God, in comparison whereof not only the base life it hath in sin, but the very natuwhich the body hath by it, is You see the body, when the

ral life it hath in the body, and not worthy of the name of life. thread of its union with the soul is cut, becomes not only straightway a motionless lump, but within a little time, a putrefied, noisome carcass; and thus the soul by sin cut off from God who is its life, as is the soul that of the body, hath not only no moving faculty in good, but becomes full of rottenness and vileness: as the word is, (Psalm xiv. 2,) They are gone aside and become filthy. The soul, by turning away from God, turns filthy; yet, as a man thus spiritually dead, lives naturally, so, because he acts and spends that natural life in the ways of sin, he is said to live in sin. Yea, there is somewhat more in that expression than the mere passing of his life in that way; for instead of that happy life his soul should have in God, he pleases himself in the miserable life of sin, that which is his death, as if it were the proper life of his soul: living in it imports that natural propension he hath to sin, and the continual delight he takes in it, as in his element, and living to it, as if that were the very end of his being. In that estate, neither his body nor his mind stirreth without sin. Setting aside his manifest breaches of the Law, those actions that are evidently and totally sinful, his natural actions, his eating and drinking, his religious actions, his praying, and hearing, and preaching, are sin at the bottom. And generally, his heart is no other than a forge of sin. Every imagination, every fiction of things framed there, is only evil continually; (Gen. vi. 5;) every day, and all the day long, it is his very trade and life.

Now, in opposition to this life of sin, this living in it and to it, a Christian is said to die to sin, to be cut off or separated from it. In our miserable natural state, there is as close a union betwixt us and sin, as betwixt our souls and bodies: it lives in us, and we in it, and the longer we live in that condition, the more the union grows, and the harder it is to dissolve it; and it is as old as the union of soul and body, begun with

it, so that 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 affec tion 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. (Psal. 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 it— I hate vain thoughts (Psal. 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. 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 eye 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