Chapter 2
I. The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.
“Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
“And if this were the work and business of Paul, who was so incomparably exalted in grace, revelations, enjoyments, privileges, consolations, above the ordinary measure of believers, where may we possibly bottom an exemption from this work and duty whilst we are in this world? Some brief account of the reasons hereof may be given:”
1. Indwelling sin always abides whilst we are in this world; therefore it is always to be mortified. “Now, it being our duty to mortify, to be killing of sin whilst it is in us, we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, doth but half his work, Gal. 6:9; Heb 12:1; 2 Cor. 7:1.”
2. Sin doth not only still abide in us, but is still acting, still labouring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh. “I shall discharge him from this duty who can bring sin to a composition, to a cessation of arms in this warfare; if it will spare him any one day, in any one duty (provided he be a person that is acquainted with the spirituality of obedience and the subtlety of sin), let him say to his soul, as to this duty, "Soul, take thy rest." The saints, whose souls breathe after deliverance from its perplexing rebellion, know there is no safety against it but in a constant warfare.”
3. Sin will not only be striving, acting, rebelling, troubling, disquieting, but if let alone, if not continually mortified, it will bring forth great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins. “There is not the best saint in the world but, if he should give over this duty, would fall into as many cursed sins as ever any did of his kind.”
4. This is one main reason why the Spirit and the new nature is given unto us, -- that we may have a principle within whereby to oppose sin and lust. “His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin, is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who hath furnished us with a principle of doing it.”
5. Negligence in this duty casts the soul into a perfect contrary condition to that which the apostle affirms was his, 2 Cor. 4:16, "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." “Exercise and success are the two main cherishers of grace in the heart; when it is suffered to lie still, it withers and decays: the things of it are ready to die, Rev. 3:2; and sin gets ground towards the hardening of the heart, Heb. 3:13.”
6. It is our duty to be "perfecting holiness in the fear of God," 2 Cor. 7:1; to be "growing in grace" every day, 1 Pet. 2:3, 2 Pet 3:18; to be "renewing our inward man day by day," 2 Cor. 4:16. “He who doth not kill sin in his way takes no steps towards his journey's end.”
“This, then, is the first general principle of our ensuing discourse: Notwithstanding the meritorious mortification, if I may so speak, of all and every sin the cross of Christ; notwithstanding the real foundation of universal mortification laid in our first conversion, by conviction of sin, humiliation for sin, and the implantation of a new principle opposite to it and destructive of it; -- yet sin doth so remain, so act and work in the best of believers, whilst they live in this world, that the constant daily mortification of it is all their days incumbent on them.”
There are two evils which certainly attend every unmortified professor; -- the first, in himself; the other, in respect of others:
1. In himself. Let him pretend what he will, he hath slight thoughts of sin; at least, of sins of daily infirmity. The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart. When a man hath confirmed his imagination to such an apprehension of grace and mercy as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. neither is there a greater evidence of a false and rotten heart in the world than to drive such a trade.
2. To others. It hath an evil influence on them on a twofold account:--
(1.) It hardens them, by begetting in them a persuasion that they are in as good condition as the best professors.
(2.) They deceive them, in making them believe that if they can come up to their condition it shall be well with them; and so it grows an easy thing to have the great temptation of repute in religion to wrestle withal, when they may go far beyond them as to what appears in them, and yet come short of eternal life.
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