Address to the Regenerate. 115 walk together, unless they be agreed? We must change our enmity into friendship if ever we would be happy. We must accept of his terms, to be at peace with him, or feel the bitter fruits of his powerful justice. We may pronounce in the presence of God, that if we henceforward endeavour not to get out of a natural state, it is a resolute maintaining the war against heaven. Lament this enmity, and be humbled for it. If there be a common ingenuity, it will make thee tremble to think of thy hatred of mercy itself. Every sin is a branch of this enmity, and doth contribute to the increase of it, as acts strengthen habits, and as every part of the sea, according to its quantity and strength, contributes to the roaring and violent eruptions of it. We have robbed God; for as much obedience as we have given to the flesh, we have taken from God: therefore rise as high as the fountain in your humiliations; and lie low, not for a particular sin only, but for that enmity in thy nature, which is the root of all the sins thou ever didst act, The evil in our actions is transient; but there is a perfect and overflowing fulness of evil in thy nature to animate a thousand acts of the same kind; as the habit of love to God resident in the soul, can command and spirit a thousand acts with its own nature. 2. Use of exhortation. To regenerate persons, such as by the powerful working of the grace of God, and the over-ruling hand of the Spirit, have been brought out of this state of enmity. Besides those things which you may gather from the former informations, as to grow up in all the parts of the new creature, to further and advance that regenerate work in your soul to make frequent applications of the blood of Christ, and to have your heart lifted up in the ways of God, and obedience to him, thereby to bear witness to Christ, the righteousness of God in his administrations in the world: let me advise to these things. the 1. Possess your hearts with great admirations of the grace of God towards you, in wounding this enmity in your hearts, and changing your state. The apostle winds up our admirations of the love of Christ upon this peg; When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life, Rom. 5. 10. Our salvation from sin by regeneration, is the fruit of his resurrection and life, as our salvation from the guilt of sin by satisfaction was the fruit of his death: and not only so, saith he, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we now receive the atonement, ver. 11. This reconciliation of us being fruit of the first promise of breaking the serpent's head, Gen. 3. 15; i. e. the projects and designs of the devil, to set God and man at eternal variance, makes it the more admirable: that as soon as man had immediately after his creation, and being made lord of the rest of the sublunary creatures, cast off his Lord and Creator, that just at that time, under the present sense of that unworthy slight, he should be laying about for the good of fallen man, and make a promise for the dissolving this enmity, and change this resistance of God into a more righteous one; viz. a variance with, and an eternal enmity against the serpent. And hath not this been the case of some of our souls, that God hath grappled with us, and changed the current of our wills, even at the very time of the spitting out our venomous disaffection against him? It was Paul's case, and the case of many, I am sure, since that time: if such a circumstance as this did attend thy first conversion, it should methinks enlarge thy notes, and wind up thy astonishments to a higher pitch. But howsoever it be, change your complaints into praises for your deliverance, though it be as yet imperfect. A lively and warm sense of it would quicken thy obedience, and spirit thee more in the ways of God than all thy complaints can do. It is Address to the Regenerate. : 117 to the grace of God that we owe the decays of it. It is a particular assisting grace that keeps it down, and binds it up at any time. If we are sometimes without considerable disturbances by it, it is not for want of the will of the flesh, nor for want of strength enough in the flesh, even in the best of men, but it is staked down, and stopped by the powerful operation of the Spirit, and the working of irresistible grace. To this purpose often reflect upon your former state; it will set a gloss upon gloss upon the grace of God. The more disingenuous our enmity was, the more illustrious will it make the love of God to appear in our eye. 2. Endeavour to hate sin as much as thou hast hated God. What reason have we to bewail ourselves? None of us have ever yet hated sin so much, as naturally we have hated God. Turn this affection now as much upon thy great enemy, as thou hast done upon thy best friend. The deeper gashes thou hast given to God, Christ, and his glory, the wider wounds, the harder blows, the sharper stabs give to thy sin. Have as great an animosity against it, as you have had stoutness of heart against God. Come not under the power of any one: lift up thy hand most against spiritual sins: shew no obedience to the law of sin in thy members. 3. Inflame thy love to God by all the considerations thou canst possibly muster up. Outdo thy former disaffection by a greater ardency of love. Sincerely aim at his glory. Eye his command only in every thing thou dost. Delight to please him above thyself. Endeavour by all means to draw others to think well of him, and be at peace with him. Take pleasure in thy conversion of others to him. Rejoice at any glory he gains in the world. The unjust enmity he receives from others, should procure a greater respect from us to God. Oh that we could make up, by an intenseness of love, the injury he receives by the enmity of others, and balance their hatred by an increase of our affection! Oh that we could delight 1 ourselves in him, as much as we have been displeased with him! That he might be as dear to us, as he is odious to devils; and that the devils themselves, in the degrees of their detestation of God, might not outstrip us in the degrees of our affection to him. 4. Bewail this enmity. Are the best of us perfect ? Are we stripped of all relics of it? Has any man on earth put off the dregs of the flesh, and commenced an angel in purity? Have we got the start of all the saints of old, and expelled it wholly out of us? Have we outstripped the great apostle, who complained of sins dwelling in his flesh? Is there no more need of groans to be delivered from this body of death? Ah! what relics are there? Doth not the best man find it a laborious, undertaking, to engage against the remainders of nature in him, and to manage a constant and open hostility against the force of the sensual appetite, and the spiritual wickedness in the high places of his soul, though much wounded by the grace of God? It is this gasping body of death in a regenerate man that gives life to those swarms of imperfections in his religious duties. It is this that cripples our obedience; that shackles our feet, when they should run the ways of God's commandments. It is this drags away our heart after unworthy objects, in the midst of those services wherein we attempted the nearest approaches to God. It is upon the score of this lurking principle in us, that we may charge all the foils we suffer in our strongest wrestling for heaven. And is not this cause enough to bewail it? One great ingredient in any day's repentance is, an acknowledgment of the due demerit of sin, and the righteousness of God in his threatenings and punishment; and this must be the ground the abhorrency our souls naturally have to his statutes; They shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity, Levit. 26, 43; i. e. they shall repent of it, and acknowledge my righteousness in it, because, even because: and Address to the Regenerate. 119 wer. 40, they were to confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, i. e. the iniquity derived from their fathers; for their actual sins are expressed by the trespass they trespassed against God. Are there not daily starts of this nature in us? Do we not need a daily pardon for it? And is it for God's honour to pardon us without an humble acknowledgment? It is the greatest part of our enmity that we are not more affected with it. Our breaking God's commands, is not so much as the inherent contempt of God in us; a man may receive injuries from another, and lightly pass them over, when he knows the person hath no disaffection to them. It was not so much the act of adultery and murder that Nathan by God's commission charges so home upon David, as his despising God's commands, and despising God himself; Wherefore hast thou despised the command of the Lord? 2 Sam. 12. 9; and ver. 10, thou hast despised me. And it is not so much our actual breaches, as our natural and indwelling contempt of God, that is most chargeable upon us in our approaches to him, and exercises of our repentance before him. If a likeness to Adam's sin be made a ground of the aggravation of actual sin; But they like men have transgressed, Hos. 6. 7; implying that to be the greatest; then the corruption of nature we derived from him by the means of that sin, must be the highest and most lamented. 5. Watch against the daily exertings and exercises of this enmity. When we would be serious in the concerns of God and our own souls, do we not feel some inward assaults against our own resolutions, and some secret adversary within striving against our most spiritual reflection? and is there no need of a watch? Alas! this being a constant adversary, requires our constant care. It being a secret and inward adversary, requires our utmost diligence and prudence. Who is there of us, who serves God with that care, and obeys him with that reverence, as he |