corrupted by Papifts and other enemies to the Doctrine of Free Grace. And indeed, however, natural men's heads may be fet right in this point, as furely as they are out of Chrift, their faith, repentance and obedience, (fuch as they are) are placed by them in the room of Chrift and his righteoufnefs; and fo trufted to, as if by these they fulfilled a new law.

4. Great is the difficulty in Adam's fons their parting with the Law, as a covenant of works. None part with it in that respect, but thefe whom the power of the Spirit of grace feparates from it. The Law is our first husband, and gets every one's virgin-love. When Chrift comes to the foul, he finds it married to the Law; fo as it neither can, nor will be married to another, till it be obliged to part with the first husband, as the Apostle teacheth, Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3. 4. Now that ye may fee what fort of a parting this is, confider,

1.) It is a death, Rom. vii. 4. Gal. iii. 19. Intreaties will not prevail with the foul here; it faith to the first husband, as Ruth to Naomi, "The Lord do fo to me, and more alfo, if -ought but death part thee and me." And here finners are true to their word; they die to the Law, ere they be married to Chrift. Death is hard to every body; but what difficulty do ye imagine muft a loving wife, on her death bed, find in parting with her husband, the husband of her youth, and with the dear children she has brought forth to him? the Law is that husband, all the duties performed by the natural man, are thefe children. What a ftruggle, as for life, will be in the heart ere they be got parted? I may have occafion to touch upon this aferwards. In the mean time, take the Apostle's short, but pithy defcription of it, Rom x 3. For they being ignorant of God's righte oufnefs, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not fubmitted themfelves to the righteousness of God." They go about to eftablish their own righteousness, like an eager difputant in fchools, feeking to eftablish the point in queftion; or like a tormentor, extorting a confeflion from one upon the rack. They go about to establish it, to make it stand: their righteoufness is like a houfe built upon the fand, it cannot ftand, but they will have it to ftand; it falls, they fet it up again; but ftill it tumbles down on them: yet they ceafe not to go about to make it ftand. But wherefore all this pains about a tottering righteoufnefs? Becaufe, fuch as it is, it is their What ails them at Chrift's righteoufnefs? Why, that would make them Free-grace's debtors for all; and that is what the proud heart by no means can-fubmit to.

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The ftrefs of the matter, Pfal. x. 4. " The wicked, through the pride of his contenance, will not feek :" (to read it without the fupplement :) that is, in other terms, "He cannot dig, and to beg he is afhamed." Such is the itruggle ere the foul die to the law. But what fpeaks yet more of this woful difpofition of the heart, nature oft-times gets the maftery of the difeafe, infomuch that the foul, which was like to have died to the law, while convictions were harp and piercing, fatally recovers of the happy and promifing fickness; and (what is very natural) cleaves more clofely than ever, to the Law, even as a wife brought back from the gates of death, would cleave to her hufband. This is the iffue of the exercife of many about their fouls cafe; they are indeed brought to follow duties more closely, but they are as far as ever from Chrift, if not farther.

(2.) It is a violent death, Rom. vii. 4. " Ye are become dead to the law :" being killed, flin, or put to death, as the word bears. The law itfelf has a great hand in this; the huf band gives the wound, Gal. ii. 19. I, through the law, am dead to the law." The foul that dies this death, is like a loving wife matched with a rigorous husband: fhe does what the can to please him,yet he is never pleafed; but toffeth, harraffeth, and beats her, till fhe breaks her heart, and death fets her free; as will afterwards more fully appear. Thus it is made evident, that men's heart, are naturally bent to the way of the Law, and ly crofs to the Gofpel contrivance; and the fecond article of the charge against you that are unregenerate, is verified, namely, That ye are enemies to the Son of God.

3dly, Ye are enemies to the Spirit of God. He is the Spirit of holiness; the natural man is unholy, and loves to be so, and therefore refifts the Holy Ghoft, Acts vii. 51. The work of the Spirit is to convince the world of fin, righteoufnefs, and judgement, John xvi. 8. But O how do men ftrive to ward off thefe convictions, as ever they would ward off a blow, threatning their lofs of a right eye, or a right hand! If the Spirit of the Lord dart them in, fo as they cannot evite them, the heart fays, in effect, as Ahab to Elijah, whom he both hated and feared," Haft thou found me, O mine enemy?" And indeed they treat him as an enemy, doing their utmost to stifle convictions, and to murder thefe harbingers, that come to prepare the Lord's way into the foul. Some fill their hands with bufinefs, to put their convictions out of their heads, as Cain, who fell a building of a city: Some put them off with delays. and fair promifes, as Felix did: Some will fport them away in

company, and fome fleep them aay. The holy Spirit is the Spirit of fanctification; whofe work it is to fubdue lufts, and burn up corruption: how then can the natural man, whofe lufts are to him as his limbs, yea, as his life, fail of being an enemy to him!

LASTLY, Ye are enemies to the Law of God. Tho' the natural man defires to be under the Law, as a covenant of works, chufing that way of falvation in oppofition to the my ftery of Christ yet as it is a rule of life, requiring univerfal holinefs, and discharging all manner of impurity, he is an enemy to it; "Is not fubject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be," Rom. viii. 7. For, (1.) There is no unrenewed man, who is not wedded to fome one luft or other, which his heart ean by no means part with. Now, that he cannot bring up his inclinations to the holy Law, he would fain have the Law brought down to his inclinations: a plain evidence of the enmity of the heart against it. And therefore, " to delight in the law of God after the inward man, "is proposed in the word, as a mark of a gracious foul, Rom. vii. 22. Pfal. i. 2. It is from this natural ennnty of the heart against the law, that all the Pharifaical gloffes upon it have arifen; whereby the Commandment, which is in itself exceeding broad, has been made very narrow, to the intent it might be the more agreeable to the natural dispofition of the heart. (2) The Law laid home to the natural confcience, in its fpirituality, irritates corruption. The nearer it comes, nature rifeth the more against it. In that cafe, it is as oil to the fire, which inftead of quenching it, makes it flame the more: "When the Commandment came, fin revived," fays the Apoftle, Rom. vii. 9. What reafon can be affigned for this, but the natural enmity of the heart against the holy Law? Unmortified corruption, the more it is oppofed, the more it rageth. Let us conclude then, that the unregenerate are heart-enemies to God, his Son, his Spirit, and his Law; that there is a natural contrariety, oppofition, and enmity in the Will of man to God himself, and his holy Wil.

FIFTHLY, There is in the Will of man, Contumacy against the Lord. Man's Will is naturrally wilful in an evil courfe. He will have his Will, though it should ruin him: it is with him, as with the leviathan, (Job xli. 29.) Darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the fhaking of a fpear." The Lord calls him by his word, fays to him, (as Paul to the jailor, when he was about to kill himself,) "Do thyfelf no harm." Sinners, Why will ye die " Ezek. xviii. 3. But they will nor

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hearken, "Every one turneth to his courfe, as the horse rufheth into the battle," Jer. viii. 6. We have a promise of life in", form of a command, Prov. iv. 4. "Keep my commandments, and live." It fpeaks impenitent finners to be felf-deftroyers, wilful felf-murderers. They tranfgrefs the command of living; as if one's fervant fhould wilfully ftarve himself to death, or greedily drink up a cup of poifon, which his mafter commands him to forbear, even fo do they they will not live, they will die, Prov. viii. 36. "All they that hate me, love death." O what a heart is this! It is a ftony heart, (Ezek. xxxvi. 26.) hard and inflexible, as a ftone: mercies melt it not, judgments break it not; yet it will break ere it bow. It is an infenfible heart; tho' there be upon the finner a weight of fio, which makes the earth to ftagger; although there is a weight of wrath on him, which makes the devils to tremble; yet he goes lightly under the burden: he feels not the weight more than a ftone, till the Spirit of the Lord quicken him fo far as to feel it.

LASTLY, The unrenewed Will is wholly Perverse in reference ró man's chief and higheft end. The natural man's chief end is not his God, but his felf. Man is a mere relative, dependent, borrowed being he has no being nor goodness originally from himself; but all he hath is from God, as the first cause and spring of all perfection, natural or moral: dependence is woven into his. very natute: fo that if God fhould totally withdraw from him, he would dwindle into a mere nothing. Seeing then whatever man is, he is of him, furely in whatever he is, he should be to him; as the waters which come from the fea, do of course, return thither again. And thus man was created, directly looking to God, as his chief end: but falling into fin, he fell off from God, and turned into himself; and like a traitor ufurping the throne, he gathers in the rents of the crown to himfelf: Now this infers a total apoftafy, and univerfal cor. ruption in man; for where the chief and laft end is changed, there can be no goodness there. This is the cafe of all men in their natural state, Pfal. xiv. 2, 3. "The Lord looked downto fee if there were any that did-feek God. They are all gone afide;" to wit from God: they feek not God, but themfelves. And tho' many fair fhreds of morality are to be found amongst them, yet there is none that doth good, no not one:" For tho' fome of them run well, they are ftill off the way; they never aim at the right mark. They are lovers "of their own-felves, (2 Tim. iii. 2.) more than God," ver. 4.

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Wherefore Jefus Chrift, having come into the world, to bring men back to God again, came to bring them out of themfelves, in the first place, Matth. xvi. 25. The godly groan under the remains of this woful difpofition of the heart; they acknowledge it, and fet themselves against it, in it's fubtile and dangerous infinuations. The unregenerate, tho' mot infenfible of it, are under the power thereof; and whitherfoever they turn them. felves, they cannot move without the circle of felf: they feek themselves, they act for themfelves; their natural, civil, and religious actions, from whatever fprings they come, do all run into, and meet in, the dead fea of felf.

Moft men are so far from making God their chief end, in their natural and civil actions, that in thefe matters, God is not in all their thoughts. Their eating and drinking, and fuch like natural actions, are for themfelves; their own pleafare or neces fity, without any higher end' Zech. vii, 6. "Did ye not eat for yourselves?" They have no eye to the glory of God in these things, as they ought to have, 1 Cor. x. 31. They do not eat and drink, to keep up their bodies for the Lord's fervice; they do them not, becaufe God has faid," Thou shalt not kill:" neither do thefe drops of sweetness God has put into the creature, raise up their fouls towards that ocean of delight that is in the Creator, tho' they are indeed a fign hung out at heaven's door, to tell men of the fulness of goodness that's in God himself, Acts xiv. 16. Bat it is felf, and not God, that is fought in them by natural men. And what are the unrenewed man's civil actions, fuch as buying, felling, working, &c. but “fruit to himfelf" Hof. x. 1. So marrying, and giving in marriage, are reckoned amongst the fins of the old world, (Matth. xxiv. 38.) for they had no eye to God therein, to please him ; but all they had in view was to pleafe themfelves, Gen. vi. 3. Finally, Self is natural men's higheft end, in their religious actions. They perform duties for a name, Math. vi. 1, 2. or fome other wordly intereft; John vi. 26. Or, if they be more refined, it is their peace,, and at most their falvation from hell and wrath, or their own eternal happiness, that is their chief and highest end, Matth. xix. 16.-22. Their eyes are held, that they fee not the glory of God. They feek God indeed, but not for himself, but for themfelves. They feek him not at all, but for their own welfare: fo their whole life is woven into one web. of practical blafphemy, making God the means, and felf their end, yea, their chief end.

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