Mortification of Sin

In an unmortified course, you frustrate the very end of your graces. Hath God implanted in you a noble, active, and divine principle that will certainly, in the end, prove victorious if it be employed? And will you—while lusts and temptations are overrunning your souls and making a prey of you—will you, I say, check it and keep it under a restraint? Grace hath in it a natural antipathy and repugnance against sin and would, where it hath its free scope, naturally and necessarily destroy it. The apostle tells us, “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit” (Gal 5:17). And, what! Doth the Spirit sit down tame and quiet under such…opposition? No, saith he, “the Spirit” also lusteth “against the flesh.” It doth no sooner see a corruption begin to heave and stir in the heart, but it would be presently upon it. It would beat it down and keep it under, did not your deceitful hearts betray it or did they but concur with it. Now consider,

i. Is not this a foul piece of ingratitude and disingenuousness against God, the God of all grace? He, seeing thy weakness and impotence to deal with those mighty corruptions that storm, rage, and domineer within thee, hath sent the auxiliaries and succors of His divine grace to aid thee. And thou either turnest treacherous and deliverest them up bound to be abused, yea, if possible to be slaughtered by thy lusts…

ii. Is it not desperate madness and folly to neglect or hinder that, which would side with thee and fight for thee? Alas! The quarrel is not grace’s, but thine; and it is no less than thine eternal salvation or thine eternal damnation about which this war is commenced. When corruption comes up against thee in a full body and the devil in the head of it leading it on, dost thou think thou canst of thyself stand against these many legions? Yet shall grace stand by and proffer thee a sure aid, and thou refuse or neglect it? What else is this, but to make void the use and office of grace and to be injurious to the goodness of God, Who hath therefore given thee grace to this very end that thou shouldst employ it against thy lusts?

2. Unmortified sin doth not only frustrate the end and use of grace; but, what is worse, it doth also miserably weaken and waste grace. It is impossible that both grace and corruption should at once be strong and vigorous in the same soul. If the one thrive, the other must needs languish…if thy soul be overspread with unmortified sins, like so many rank and hurtful weeds sprouting up in it, grace must needs decay and wither; for [your soul] cannot have its sap to nourish it.

There are two things that do, as it were, nourish grace unto a mighty increase both of strength and beauty: and they are holy thoughts and holy duties. A man ordinarily needs nothing more to strengthen him but food and exercise. Holy thoughts are, as it were, the food of grace…Holy duties are, as it were, its exercise, whereby grace is breathed and preserved in health. But an unmortified lust hinders grace from gathering strength from thoughts or duties. For,

i. An unmortified lust doth usually sequester a man’s thoughts to itself. How doth such a lust summon all the thoughts to attend upon it! Some it sends out upon one errand, some upon another, and all must be busied about its object. Where covetousness, pride, or wantonness is the unmortified sin, how is the imagination crowded full of thoughts that are making provision for these lusts! Some fetch in their objects, and some beautify and adorn them, and some buzz and whisper the commendations of those objects to the soul. Nay, and lest any thought should be vacant, some it will employ in fancying fictions and chimeras, things that never were nor are like to be, if they have but any tendency to feed and nourish that corruption. I appeal to your own experience for the confirmation of this. And this indeed is a good mark, whereby we may find out what is our unmortified sin: see what it is that most of all defiles your fancy, that the stream and current of your thoughts most run out after. Do your thoughts, when they fly abroad, return home loaded with the world? Do they ordinarily present to you fantastic riches, possessions, gains, purchases, and still fill you with contrivances how to make them real? Then covetousness is your unmortified lust. Do they dwell and pore upon your own perfections? Can you erect an idol to yourselves in your own imaginations, and then fall down and worship it? Or do your thoughts, like flies, pitch only upon the sores and imperfections of others? Then your unmortified sin is pride. And the like trial may be made of the rest. Now, I say, when an unmortified lust hath thus seized all the thoughts and pressed them to the service of a corrupted imagination, grace then [lacks] its food: it is ready to be starved. No wonder if it languishes and decays!

ii. An unmortified lust doth much hinder and interrupt the life, vigor, and spirituality of holy duties. This it doth two ways: either by deadening the heart through the guilt of it or by distracting the heart through the power of it.

(1) An unmortified lust deadens the heart in holy duties through the sense of the guilt of it lying upon the conscience. Alas! How can we go to God with any freedom of spirit, how can we call Him Father with any boldness, while we are conscious of an unmortified lust that lies still at the bottom? Speak: do not your consciences fly in your faces and even stop your mouths, when you are praying with some such suggestions as these? “What! Can I pray for pardon of sin, for strength against sin, [though I] harbor and foster a known lust unmortified? Do I beg grace against sin and yet maintain a known sin?...Is not such a prayer mere hypocrisy and dissimulation Will the Lord hear it? Or if He doth hear it, will He not count it an abomination to Him?” You, now, whose consciences thus accuse you, do you not find such reflections to be a great deadening unto duty?...Certainly, guilt is the greatest impediment to duty in the whole world. It…fills us with distrust, diffidence, and a slavish fear of coming before God, rather as our Judge than as our Father.

(2) An unmortified lust hinders holy duty by distracting the heart through the power of it. It draws away the heart from God: it entangles the affections, it scatters the thoughts, it discomposes the whole frame of the soul, so that at best, it proves but a broken and a shattered duty. And herein lies the cunning of Satan, that if there be any corruption in the soul more unmortified than another, that corruption he will be sure to stir up and interpose between God and the soul in the performance of duty. Now when lust thus hinders duty, grace hath not its breathing nor exercise. No wonder if it grows faint and decays!

3. Some foul and scandalous actual sin lies at the door of a neglected mortification. [When] we see a professor at any time break out into the commission of some notorious wickedness, what can it be imputed unto, but that corruption took advantage of his neglect of mortification? When inward motions are suffered perpetually to solicit, tempt, and importune the soul, it is a sign that lust hath already gained the affections. And could conscience be laid a-sleep, nothing would hinder it from breaking out into act…And therefore beware you do not license corruption to stir and act within. You cannot set it bounds nor say to it, “Thus far thou shalt go, and no farther. Thou shalt go as far as thoughts, as far as fancy. But, Conscience, look thou to it that it proceed no farther.” If you would therefore secure yourselves from this danger, mortify lust in the very womb! Stifle and suppress the motions and risings of it. Otherwise, ye know not to what a prodigious height of impiety it will grow. The least and most inconsiderable sinful thought tends to an infinite guilt: an unworthy and unbecoming thought concerning God tends to horrid blasphemy; every lascivious thought, to open uncleanness; every envious thought, to blood murder. Unless mortification be daily exercised to suppress and beat down these motions, you know not into how many soul-destroying sins they may hurry you.

4. One unmortified lust doth mightily alienate the heart from its acquaintance and communion with god…There are but two things that keep up acquaintance between God and the soul: on God’s part, the gracious communications of His Spirit, through which, by enlightening, enlivening, supporting, and comforting influences, He converseth with that soul to whom He vouchsafes them. On our part, the spiritual frame of the heart, whereby it doth with a holy delight, freedom, and frequency converse with God in the returns of sincere and cordial obedience. But an unmortified lust breaks off this acquaintance, as to both the parts of it.

i. It provokes God to suspend the influences of His Spirit and so to cut off the intercourse on His part: “For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him; I hid me, and was wroth:” (Isa 57:17)…

ii. One unmortified lust doth mightily untune the soul and disorder the spirituality of that frame and disposition in which it should be kept, if we would maintain communion with God. Look how estrangement and distance grow between familiar friends. So likewise grows the estrangement between God and the soul. If a man be conscious of any injury that he hath done his friend, this will make him afraid and ashamed to converse with him, less free and less frequent in his society. So it is here in this case: an unmortified lust fills the soul with a guilty shame, arising from the consciousness of an injury done to God…

Now reflect upon yourselves, you who have indulged any sin: hath it not by degrees eaten out the spirituality of your hearts, and weak-ened the life and vigor of your communion? Hath it not made you dead, cold, and indifferent unto the things and ways of God? Have you not beheld God as it were at a great distance and cared not for a nearer converse with Him? Is it not high time, think you, that this lust, which hath thus divided between God and your souls, should now at length be mortified; and, this make-bait being once removed, that you again should renew the nearness of your acquaintance with Him? Otherwise, let me tell you, it is sadly to be feared, lest this estrangement grow into a woeful apostasy and end in a fearful perdition.