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 disingenuo...