Mortification of Sin in Believers - Chapter 4 Summary

Chapter 4

III. That the life, vigour, and comfort of our spiritual life depend much on our mortification of sin.

Strength and comfort, and power and peace, in our walking with God, are the things of our desires. Now, all these do much depend on a constant course of mortification, concerning which observe, --

1. I do not say they proceed from it, as though they were necessarily tied to it.
2. In the ways instituted by God for to give us life, vigour, courage, and consolation, mortification is not one of the immediate causes of it. They are the privileges of our adoption made known to our souls that give us immediately these things.
3. In our ordinary walking with God, and in an ordinary course of his dealing with us, the vigour and comfort of our spiritual lives depend much on our mortification, not only as a "causa sine qua non," but as a thing that hath an effectual influence thereinto.

Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things:--

1. It will weaken the soul, and deprive it of its vigour. 1st. It untunes and unframes the heart itself, by entangling its affections. 2dly. It fills the thoughts with contrivances about it. 3dly. It breaks out and actually hinders duty.
2. It will darken the soul, and deprive it of its comfort and peace. As sin weakens, so it darkens the soul. It is a cloud, a thick cloud, that spreads itself over the face of the soul, and intercepts all the beams of God's love and favour. It takes away all sense of the privilege of our adoption; and if the soul begins to gather up thoughts of consolation, sin quickly scatters them: of which afterward.

• Mortification prunes all the graces of God, and makes room for them in our hearts to grow.
• As to our peace; as there is nothing that hath any evidence of sincerity without it, so I know nothing that hath such an evidence of sincerity in it; -- which is no small foundation of our peace.
• Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.