life. As the love of God in Christ towards us worketh forgiveness of sin; so our reciprocal love, wrought by the feeling and comfort of that forgiveness, worketh in us a hatred of sin. A direct love begets a reflect love, as the heat, wrought in the earth, strikes back a heat into the air again. The woman in the gospel, “having much forgiven her, loved much." "We love him because he loved us first:" and love will not suffer a man to wrong the things which he loves. What man ever threw away jewels or money, when he might have kept them, except when the predominant love of something better, made these things comparatively hateful? What woman would be persuaded to throw away her sucking child from her breast unto swine or dogs to devour it? Our love to Christ and his law will not suffer us to cast him off, or to throw his law behind our backs. New obedience is ever joined unto pardon of sin and repentance for it, by the method of God's decrees, by the order and chain of salvation; and ariseth out of the internal character and disposition of a child of God. We are not sons only by adoption, appointed to a new inheritance; but we are sons by regeneration also, partakers of a new nature, designed unto a new life, joined unto a new head, descended from a new Adam; unto whom, therefore, we are, in the power of his resurrection, and in the fellowship of his sufferings, to be made conformable. And the apostle hath many excellent and weighty arguments to enforce this upon us. "If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God: when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

1st. Our fellowship with Christ: "We are risen with him :" what he did corporally for us, he doth the same spiritually in us. As a Saviour and mediator, he died and rose alone; but as a head and second Adam, he never did any thing, but his mystical body and seed were so taken into the fellowship of it, as to be made conformable unto it. Therefore if he

* Luke vii. 47. 1, 2, 3, 4.

y Luke xiv. 26.

z Phil. iii. 10.

a Col. iii.

rose as a Saviour to justify us, we must, as members, be therein fashioned unto him, and rise spiritually by heavenlymindedness, and a new life to glorify him.

2nd. We must have our affections in Heaven, because Christ is there. The heart ever turns toward its treasure: where the body is, thither will the eagles resort.

3rd. He is there in glory at God's right hand; and grace should move to glory, as a piece of earth to the whole. And he is there in our business, making intercession in our behalf, providing a place for us, sending down gifts unto us. And the client cannot but have his heart on his business, when the advocate is actually stirring about it.

4th. We are dead with Christ, as to the life of sin; and a dead man takes no thought nor care for the things of that life from whence he is departed. A man, naturally dead, looks not after food, or raiment, or land, or money, or labour, &c. And a man, dead to sin, takes no more care how to provide for it.

5th. In Christ we have a new life: therefore, we should have new inclinations suitable unto it, and new provisions laid in for it. A child in the womb is nourished by the navel; being born, it is nourished by the mouth. A natural man feeds on worldly things by sense; a spiritual man feeds on heavenly things by faith and conscience. We can have nothing from the first Adam, which is not mortal and mortiferous; nothing from the second, which is not vital and eternal. Whatever the one gives us, shrinks and withers unto death whatever the other, springs and proceeds unto immortal life. Our life, therefore, being new, the affections. that serve it and wait upon it, must be new likewise.

6th. This life is our own; not so any thing in the world besides. I can purchase in the world only to me and mine heirs for ever but spiritual purchases are to myself for ever; and every man's affections are naturally most fixed upon that, which is most his own.

7th. It is a hidden life; the best of it is yet unseen b; and though the cabinet which is seen, be rich,--yet the jewel which is hidden in it, is much richer. As there is a sinful curiosity in lust, to look after the hidden things of iniquity,

b 1 John iii. 2.

and to hanker after forbidden pleasures; so there is a spiritual curiosity or ambition in grace, to aspire toward hidden treasures, to press forward towards things that are before us, "to be clothed upon with our house that is from Heaven.” As Absalom, being brought from banishment, longed to see the face of his father; so the soul, being delivered out of darkness, never thinks it sees enough of light. When God did most intimately reveal himself unto Moses, Moses did most earnestly beseech him to "show him his glory." The more sweetness we find in the first-fruits, insomuch of Christ as is revealed to us, the more strong are our affections to the whole harvest, to that abundance of him which is hidden from us. A few clusters of grapes, and bunches of figs, will inflame the desire of enjoying that Canaan, which abounds with them.

8th. It is hidden with Christ; so hidden as that we know where it is hidden, so that the enemy cannot reach it; but not hidden from the faith of the child.

9th. It is hidden in God. It is life in the fountain. And every thing is perfectest in its original and fountain. And this is such a fountain of life, as hath in it fulness without satiety, and purity without defilement, and perpetuity without decay, and all-sufficiency without defect.

Lastly, It is but hidden, it is not lost; hidden like seed in the ground. When Christ the Sun of Righteousness shall appear, this life of ours in him will spring up and appear glorious.

SECT. 14. Now next let us consider this care of repentance against a man's own more particular and special sins. "Asshur shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses," &c. Israel had been guilty of very many provocations; but when they come to covenant with God, and to renew their repentance, their thoughts and cares are most set against

e Non quiesco, nisi osculetur me osculo oris sui. Gratias de osculo pedum, gratias et de manus; sed si cura est illi ulla de me, osculetur me osculo oris sui : non sum ingrata, sed amo: accepi, fateor, meritis potiora, sed prorsus inferiora votis; desiderio feror, non ratione, &c. Bern. Ser. 9. in Cant.-Testimonium credibile nimis gustatæ sapientiæ est esuries ipsa tam vehemens. Serm. 2. de duabus mensis. Non excudit desiderium sanctum felix inventio, sed extendit, &c. ser. 84. in Cant.-Videsis Claudi. Espencei libellum de Languore Spirit. c. 3. et 4. Exod. xxxiii. 11, 18. e Psalm xxxvi. 9.

their carnal confidence, and spiritual adultery: their most unfeigned detestations, their most serious resolutions, were against these their most proper sins. True repentance worketh indeed a general" hatred of every false way f," and suffereth not a man to allow himself in the smallest sin. Yet as the dog in hunting of the deer, though he drive the whole herd before him, yet fixeth his eye and scent upon some one particular, which is singled out by the dart of the huntsinan; so though sound conversion do work a universal hatred of all sin, because it is sin,-for hatred is ever against the whole kind of a thing,-though every member of the old man be mortified, and every grace of the new man shaped and fashioned in us;-yet the severest exercise of that hatred is against the sins whereunto the conscience hath been more enslaved, and by which the name of God hath been most dishonoured. A man that hath many wounds, if there be any of them more deep, dangerous, or nearer any vital part than the other, though he will tend the cure of them all, yet his chiefest care shall be towards that. As the king of Syria gave command to his army to single out the king of Israel in the battle"; so doth repentance lay its batteries most against the highest and strongest and most reigning sin of the heart; and by how much the more a man prized it before, by so much the more doth he detest it now. They counted no silver nor gold too good to frame their idols of before; their ear-rings shall go to make them a calfi: but when they repent, nothing can be too base to compare them, or to cast them unto.

The human nature is the same in all men; yet some faculties are more vigorous in some, and other in others: some witty, others strong; some beautiful, others proper; some a quick eye, others a ready tongue; some for learned, others for mechanical professions. As some grounds take better to some kind of grain than to others; so in the new man, though all the graces of Christ are, in some degree and proportion, shaped in every regenerate person, yet one excels in one grace, another in another. Abraham in faith,

f Psalm cxix. 128. yévn. Arist. Rhet. 1. 2. c 4. ii. 20. xxx. 22.

Β' Οργὴ περὶ τὰ καθ ̓
h1 Kings xxii. 31.

ἕκαστα· τὸ δὲ μίσος, πρὸς τὰ i Exod. xxii. 3. J Isai.

Job in patience, Moses in meekness, David in meditation, Solomon in wisdom, Phinehas in zeal, Mary Magdalen in love, Paul in labour, &c. And so it is in the old man too. Though, by nature, we have all the members of original corruption, yet these put themselves forth in actual vigour *differently. One man is more possessed by a proud devil,another, by an unclean one; Ahaz, superstitious; Balaam, ambitious; Cain, envious; Korah, stubborn; Esau, profane; Ishmael, a mocker; the young man, a worldling. According to different complexions and tempers of body (by which habitual lust is excited and called forth into act), or according to the differences of education, countries', callings, converse, and interests in the world,-so men are differently assaulted with distinct kinds of sin; and most men have their 'peccatum in deliciis,' which they may more properly call "their own "." And as this sin is usually the special bar and obstacle that keeps men from Christ, as we see in the example of the young man ", and of the Jews; so when Christ hath broken this obstacle, and gotten the throne in a man's heart, then the chief work of repentance is to keep this sin from gathering strength again: for, as they say of some kind of serpents, that, being cut in pieces, the parts will wriggle towards one another, and close and get life again; so, of all sins, a man is in most danger of the reviving of his own proper corruption: as being like the nettle, whose roots are so crooked, so catching to the ground, that it is a work of much care to keep the ground clean of them, after they are weeded out.

And therefore repentance sets itself particularly against that sin, as a special argument of sincerity. "I was up

In eodem prato, bos herbam quærit, canis leporem, ciconia lacertum. Senec. ep. 128. 1 Multæ gentes ob specialia quædam peccata infames; unde illud τρία κάππα κάκιστα Suid. in κάππα διπλοῦν.—Beoti, Pharsali, Thessali, ob voracitatem, Vid. Athen. 1. 40. Isauri et Arabes ob latrocinia. Dion. 1. 55.-Ammian. Marcel. 1. 14.-Theodos. Cod de feriis, 1. 10. &c.-Plin. 1. 6. a. 28.-Strabo lib. 16.-Diodor. Sicul, 1.3.—Qui mancipia vendunt, nationem cujusque in venditione pronunciare debent: præsumptum etenim est quosdam servos malos videri, quia et natione sunt, quæ magis infamis est. Leg. 31. sect. 21. D. de Edilitio Edicto.-Athenarum linguata civitas. Tert. 1. de Anima c. 3.-Hinc adagia, "Cretensi mendacior, Pœno perfidior, Scytha asperior, Sybarita fastuosior, Milesiis effeminatior," &c. Vid. Erasm, in initio Chiliad.-et Alex. ab Alex. Genial. 4. cap. 13.-Arist. Rhet. 1. 6. c. 7.-Liv. 1. 45. m Psalm xviii. 23.