life he calls a living, to the lusts of men; this new spiritual life, to the will of God.

The lusts of men.] Such as are common to the corrupt nature of man; such as every man may find in himself and perceive in others. The apostle in the 3d verse more particularly, for further clearness, specifies those kinds of men that were most notorious in these lusts, and those kinds of lusts that were most notorious in men. Writing to the dispersed Jews, he calls sinful lusts the will of the Gentiles, as having least controul of contrary light in them; and yet the Jews walked in the same, though they had the law as a light and rule for the avoiding of them; and implies, that these lusts were unbeseeming even their former condition as Jews; but much more unsuitable to them, as now Christians. Some of the grossest of these lusts he names, meaning all the rest, all the ways of sin, and representing their vileness in the more lively manner; not as some take it, when they hear of such heinous sins, as if it were to lesson the evil of more civil nature by the comparison or intimate freedom from these to be a blameless condition, and a change of it needless. No, the Holy Ghost means it just contrary. That we may judge of all sin and of our sinful nature, by our estimate of these sins that are most discernible and abominable; all sin, though not equal in degree, yet is of one nature, and originally springing from one root, arising from the same unholy nature of man, and contrary to the same holy nature and will of God.

So then, 1. These that walk in these highways of impiety, and yet will have the name of Christians, they are the shame of Christians, and the professed enemies of Jesus Christ, and of all others the most hateful to him: they seem to have taken on his name, for no other end but to shame and disgrace it; but he will vindicate himself, and the blot shall rest upon these impudent persons, that dare hold up their faces in the church of God as parts of it, and are indeed nothing but the dishonour of it, spots and

blots; that dare profess to worship God as his people, and remain unclean, riotous and profane persons. How suits thy sitting here before the Lord, and thy sitting with vile ungodly company on the ale-bench? How agrees the word, sounds it well, "There goes a drunken Christian, an unclean, a basely covetous, an earthly minded, Christian!" and the naming of these is not besides the text, but agreeable to the very words of it; for the apostle warrants us to take it under the name of idolatry; and in that name he reckons it to be mortified by a Christian; Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

2. But yet men, that are someway exempted from the blot of these foul impieties, may still remain slaves to sin, alive to it, and dead to God, living to the lusts of men, and not to the will of God, pleasing others and themselves, displeasing him. And the smoothest, best bred, and most moralized natural man, is in this base thraldom: and the more miserable, that he dreams of liberty in the midst of his chains, thinks himself clean by looking on those that wallow in gross profaneness; takes measure of himself by the most crooked lives of ungodly men about him, and so thinks himself very straight; but lays not the straight rule of the will of God to his ways and heart, which, if he did, he would then discover much crookedness in his ways, and much more in his heart, that now he sees not, but takes it to be square and even.

Therefore I advise and desire you to look more narrowly to yourselves in this, and see whether you be not still living to your own lusts and wills instead of God; seeking, in all your ways, to advance and please yourselves, and not him. Is not the bent of your hearts set that way? Do not your whole desires and endeavours run in that channel, how you and yours may be somebody, and you may have d Col. iii. 5.

wherewithal to serve the flesh, and to be accounted of and respected amongst men? And if we trace it home, all a man's honouring and pleasing of others, tends to, and ends in pleasing of himself. It resolves in that, and is it not so meant by him? He pleases men, either that he may gain by them, or be respected by them, or something that is still pleasing to himself may be the return of it. So self is the grand idol, for which all other heart-idolatries are committed. And, indeed, in the unrenewed heart there is no scarcity of them. Oh! what multitudes, what heaps, if the wall were digged through, and the light of God going before us, and leading us in to see them? The natural motion and way of the natural heart is no other but still seeking out new inventions, a forge of new gods, still either forming them to itself, or worshipping these it hath already framed; committing spiritual fornication from God with the creature, and multiplying lovers every where, as it is tempted: as the Lord complains of his people, upon every high hill, and under every green tree.

You will not believe so much ill of yourselves, will not be convinced of this unpleasant but necessary truth and this is a part of our self-pleasing, that we please ourselves in this, that we will not see it; not in our callings and ordinary ways, not in our religious exercises, for in these we naturally aim at nothing but ourselves; either our reputation, or at best our own safety and peace; either to stop the cry of conscience for the present, or escape the wrath that is to come: but not in a spiritual regard of the will of God, and out of pure love to himself for himself; yet thus it should be, and that love the divine fire in all our sacrifices. The carnal mind is in the dark, and sees not its vileness in living to itself; will not confess it to be so; but when God comes into the soul, he lets it see itself, and all its idols and idolatries, and forces it to abhor and loath itself for all its abominations; and having discovered e Jer. ii. 20. iii. 6, L

VOL. II.

its filthiness to itself, then he purges and cleanses it for himself, from all its filthiness, and from all its idols, according to his promise, and comes in and takes possession of it for himself, enthrones himself in the heart, and it is never right nor happy till that be done.

But to the will of God.] We readily take any little slight change for true conversion, but we may see here that we mistake it; it doth not barely knock off some obvious apparent enormities, but casts all in a new mould; alters the whole frame of the heart and life; kills a man, and makes him alive again; and this new life is contrary to the old for the change is made with that intent, that he live no longer to the lusts of men, but to the will of God,

He is now indeed, a new creature, having a new judgment and new thoughts of things, and so accordingly, new desires and affections, and answerable to these new actions; Old things past away and dead, and all things become new.

Politic men have observed, that in states, if alterations must be, it is better to alter many things than a few. And physicians have the same remark for one's habit and custom for bodily health, upon the same ground; because things do so relate one to another, that except they be adapted and suited together in the change, it avails not; yea, it sometimes proves the worse in the whole, though a few things in particular seem to be bettered. Thus, half reformations in a Christian turn to his prejudice; it is only best to be thoroughly reformed, and to give up with all idols; not to live one half to himself and the world, and, as it were, another half to God; for that is but falsely so, and, in reality, it cannot be. The only way is to make a heap of all, to have all sacrificed together, and to live to no lust, but altogether, and only, to God. Thus it must be; there is no monster in the new creation, no half new creature, either all, or not at all, oros i un onws. We have to deal with the Maker and the Searcher of the heart f Ezek. xxxvi. 25. 8 2 Cor. v. 17.

in this turn, and he will have nothing unless he have the heart, and none of that neither, unless he have it all. If thou pass over into his kingdom, and become his subject, thou must have him for thy only sovereign. Loyalty can admit of no rivality, and least of all the highest, and best of all. If Christ be thy king, then his laws and sceptre must rule all in thee, thou must now acknowledge no foreign power; that will be treason.

And if he be thy husband, thou must renounce all others; wilt thou provoke him to jealousy? yea, beware how thou givest a thought or a look of thy affection any other way, for he will spy it, and will not endure it, The title of a husband is as strict, and tender, as the other of a king.

It is only best to be thus: it is thy great advantage and happiness to be thus entirely freed from so many tyrannous base lords, and now subject only to one, and he so great, and withal so gracious and sweet a king; the Prince of Peace. Thou wast hurried before, and racked with the very multitude of them; thy lusts, so many cruel task-masters over thee, they gave thee no rest, and the work they set thee to was base and slavish, more than the burdens, and pots, and toiling in the clay of Egypt; thou wast held to work in the earth, to pain, and to soil and foul thyself with their drudgery.

Now thou hast but one to serve, and that is a great ease; and it is no slavery, but true honour, to serve so excellent a Lord, and in so high services: for he puts thee upon nothing but what is neat, and what is honourable. Thou art as a vessel of honour in his house, for his best employments; now thou art not in pain how to please this person and the other; nor needest thou to vex thyself to gain men, to study their approbation and honour; nor to keep to thine own lusts and observe their mind. Thou hast none but thy God to please in all; and if he be pleased, thou mayest disregard who be displeased. His will is not fickle and changing as mens are, and h Omnisque potestas impatiens consortis.