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To the former part of this enquiry we may answer briefly, We must be that habitually and prevalently, which, according to our original state, we ought to have been without the least interruption or imperfection; for though we are not now obliged, under pain of his final displeasure, to that absolute perfection of love and obedience to the Deity which was required by the law of our creation, (for then no one could be saved,) yet are we undoubtedly obliged, under the said penalty, to this temper and conduct in a degree which shall habitually prevail over every tempta tion to the contrary.

This doctrine appears to be fully established by the Saviour of the world, when, to guard his disciples against the evil of covetousness, he tells them, that No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other; ye cannot (says he) serve God and mammon *

* Matt. vi. 24.

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And the impossibility must evidently be the same in case of any other worldly object; for no one, I suppose, will imagine, that a subjection to the pride or pleasures of life is more consistent with the service of God than a passion for riches. Whatever has the ascendancy in the heart of man is the god that he serves, and the reward will correspond to the service; or, as the apostle speaks to the Romans, To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness*; and again, in the same epistle, he tells them, that to be carnally minded, (or, as the next verse explains it, to have a mind not subject to the law of God,) is death; but to be spiritually minded, (which, by the rule of opposition, must import a mind obedient to the divine law,) is life and peace. Such is the doctrine of seripture; to which reason, if unbiassed, cannot refuse to yield its suffrage; for nothing would be more contrary to its uncorrupted † Rom. viii. 6.

* Rom. vi. 16.

dictates, than to suppose that life and peace can inhabit that bosom where God is not seated in his supremacy, where the creature has usurped the place of the Creator, where the eternal laws of rectitude are made subject to the laws of corrupt passion and custom, and where the truth is held in unrighteousness. To suppose this, would be to violate all the measures of true judgment, and to offend equally against the light of nature and revelation*.

Though, after the joint testimony of scripture and reason, there can be no need of human authority, the reader will permit me to subjoin a passage or two, from a famous divine in the seventeenth century, as they relate to the scriptures above cited, and the author is still held in high esteem by many pious people. The passages are as follows:

"The affections of our minds will, and must be placed in chief on things below, or things above; there will be a predominant love in us; and therefore, although all our actions should testify another frame, yet if God, and the things of God, be not the principal object of our affections, by one way or other, unto the world we do belong: this is that which is taught us so expressly by our Saviour,

It is therefore a melancholy consideration, that amongst those who profess them

Luke, xvi. 13. No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other: ye cannot serve God and mammon." Dr. OWEN on Spiritual-mindedness, ch. 11.

«To be carnally and spiritually minded constitute two states of mankind, unto the one of which every individual person in the world doth belong. And it is of the highest concernment unto the souls of men, to know whether of them they appertain unto. As to the qualities expressed by the flesh and the spirit, there may be a mixture of them in the same persons at the same time; there is so in all that are regenerate: for in them the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh; and these are contrary. Gal. v. 17. Thus different contrary actings. in the same subject constitute not distinct states: but where either of them is predominant, or hath a prevalent rule in the soul, there it makes a different state. This distinction of states the apostle expresseth, v. 9. the flesh, but in the spirit. Some are in the flesh, and cannot please God, v. 8; they are after the flesh, v. 5; they walk after the flesh, v. 1; they live after the flesh, v. 13. This is one state. Others are in the spirit, v. 9; after the spirit, v. 5, walk after the spirit, v. 1. This is the other state. The first sort are carnally minded, the other are spiritually minded. Unto one of these doth every living man belong, he is under the ruling conduct of the flesh or of the spirit;

But ye are not in

selves Christians, there are so many who discover no signs of that predominant piety and virtue, to which it is one great design of Christianity to form its disciples. This is a deception of so fatal a nature, and so dishonourable to the cause of true religion in the world, that to guard against it no caution can justly be thought unnecessary, and no vigilance too great.

Among the causes of this deception, the brevity of this discourse allows me only to specify the following, which appears to be one of the most general; namely, a vain confidence in the privi

there is no middle state; though there are different degrees in each of these as to good and evil.

"The difference between these two states is great, and the distance in a manner infinite, because an eternity in blessedness or misery doth depend upon it. And this at present is evidenced by the different fruits and effects of the principles, and their operations, which constitute these different states; which is expressed in the opposition that is between the predicates of the proposition; for the minding of the flesh is death, but the minding of the spirit is life and peace." Id. ch. 1.

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