Part 2 — Chapter 4: Now We Are in Christ Dying and Crucified in Him

It is objected, that we were not born, nor [reconstructed: have] we any being, when Christ died, then we died not in Christ, nor could we rise, ascend to heaven, nor sit in heavenly places with him? Answer: But first, in physical actions there is required the real existence of the worker. Not so in legal actions, for as we had no being, who now believe, when Christ died, so our sins had no being; how then could our sins, that were not, deserve punishment? Yet I desire to believe that Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:24) his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree. And that he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, who now live (Isaiah 53:5), and they cannot deny this, who teach that Christ died for the sins of the world, none excepted. And the child in the womb, when the father is absolved from treason is really and in law restored to his father's inheritance: and the sucking child may be crowned a king, and take possession of a kingdom, and take the oath of loyalty of the subjects in the person of another, though physically he neither does, nor knows what is done, but sleeps in the arms of the nurse. So we legally in Christ satisfied, our nature in Christ was crucified, and we, though not born, did satisfy and suffer satisfactory punishment in Christ. (Hebrews 1:3) Having by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 9:28) So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. And in him we were (legally) crucified, and dead to the law: as (Galatians 2:19) so as Christ once being dead and crucified, the head and members, whole Mystical Christ is dead to the law, and Christ can die no more, for he cannot satisfy and pay the debt twice: and so are we in him dead to hell, to wrath, to law-vengeance. Satan raises a [reconstructed: devised] plea against the conscience, you are a sinner, and under the curse of the law. There is no answer to that, but by believing I was with Christ, crucified, and am dead to the law and died to death first and second. For Christ suffered mystically, Christ legally satisfied, and so did I in him (I speak not now of personal suffering with, or for Christ) and therefore that is a plea of Satan's forging, and taken away. And unjust summons may be answered by non-compearance and by the appeal of faith to Christ who having paid the debt sits Judge upon his own debts, which he himself paid, and therefore cannot suffer these for whom he died to suffer for his proper debt, which once he paid. The husband cannot endure the wife to be imprisoned for the debts which he made his own and fully satisfied.

Objection 2: All men must die and return to dust, and so must sinners, as the law requires, therefore Christ died not for you?

Answer: Socinus, and Crellius object the same, which Satan does. For that death in the hue and color of law-wrath is held before a believer now and then under doubting as a temptation. For we suffer not death such as Christ suffered, to wit, for sin, watered and affected with the curse of the law; nor must we measure death from body or bulk of departing, but from the salt, and worst of death, which is the curse, and that being removed, we never die (John 11:26; John 5:24). No more look upon death in the law, for there it reigns, but in Christ, and in him death is dead and removed; the formal demeriting power is removed, when the law is satisfied: and a believer being dead to the law is dead to the curse and to the worst of death, as Christ is dead to it now.

Objection 3: But the conscience of the believer, suppose there were no devil, challenges him of sin, and therefore that he is under a curse?

The conscience may be the factor and deputy of Satan in that also, for it is the deposing of Christ from his Office of Mediator in satisfying and answering by his death all the demands of the Law, there is none but Christ, when the Law demands blood and the torments of the second death, can plead anything on the contrary. (Romans 3:19) We know that whatever things the Law speaks, it speaks to these that are under the Law: but the Law speaks not then to a believer, for he is under grace, and so is not in terms of treating or parleying with the Law. Christ was crucified and the believer is legally crucified with Christ, buried and risen again with Christ. 1. Then the Law is not his judge, it spoke to Christ and condemned him and put him to death, when he was under the Law, and condemned you in him, now you say, Christ is not condemned and crucified, when you enter in a new treaty with the Law to receive a new sentence from it, and thus you undo what Christ has perfectly done. 2. To hearken to conscience composing and making another pact with the Law than Christ has made, is to take the plea that Christ has embarked in, off his hand; you are to stand still and be silent, and believe that Christ's dying, and your dying in him, is a closing of a satisfactory bargain with the Law. Christ condemned sin in the flesh, by taking on his flesh the curse due to us for sin, and for sin, that is, for sin's cause, that it might be taken away, he sent his Son to die (Romans 8:3) and judge and condemn sin. 3. This is to misstate a question well debated and discussed by Christ; for he being the end and perfection of the Law, has silenced, and satisfied the Law, and to what use can it serve to make a new plea and a bastard controversy with a satisfied party, or to hearken to conscience which craves in the name of mistaken Law well-paid debts, and this is but Satan abusing the Law, and feigning Letters of Caption in the name of the Law, to trouble the quieted conscience of a believer. But it is safest to say, I stand to what Christ has done and suffered to fulfill the Law, and I believe I was crucified in him, judged, and condemned legally in Christ: and what can you seek more of an ill-doer? He is condemned, crucified, hanged on a tree, and so is justice quieted. Some raise the devil and a storm in the soul and cannot calm it again: It is not good to provoke, irritate, and waken a sleeping dog. There is quietness and peace of believing what Christ has done as well done, and comfortably to rest on his deed by faith. Hence a case of some, who, because they are under deadness and security, desire a wakening of conscience, and Satan has taught some to commit some heinous guiltiness, that they may fall in the hand of justice, and so be wakened, and Satan gives them their fill of it. Hence, we had rather take a Law-way which is not God's way, as lie under deadness; there may be a legal looking upon deadness, whereas it is a Gospel-sin that we should be humbled for, and in which we should not please ourselves; but no man freed from the Law and brought out of prison, should be willing or desirous to return to the dungeon again. We should let God guide us under a fever, and not be our own Physicians, but be quiet at Christ's part, if he be pleased to cure by contraries, and to quicken me by deadening me, or to make a soul humble by smiting with a spirit of pride: it is good, we are to submit.

Obj. How could we be in Christ as in our surety (for says Arminius) we did not give nor appoint Christ to be our Cautioner or Surety?

It is evil arguing of Arminius or Satan, who would make the union either natural or legal between us and Christ, weak, far off, general, and such as is between Christ and Pagans and all the world: But this reason is nought, for we sinners were not born and very nothing, when God made the first Adam our father and head in Law as in nature, nor had we any hand or action in substituting the first Adam in his place, and yet we sinned in Adam, and his sin is ours, by divine imputation. But can any deny but Christ on the Cross did act the cause of many believers not born? This is peculiar to this dispensation, that the creditor, not the debtor, appoints both the Law-head, and the Evangelical Surety. The Surety had from us a Cautionary, sponsorial, and deputed nature, but no subscribed commission from us, it was in the heart of the Creditor by grace efficacious to obtain our consent, and to make a sort of legal marriage assuming our nature before we either knew our husband, or gave consent to the marriage-Covenant. As the Advocate speaks in the person of the Client absent and sleeping, and when the Client hears and sees how his cause is promoted, he both assents to, and renders thanks and praises to the Advocate: and so the absent and far off Client not knowing anything does act in the Advocate. And how many answers does our Advocate in Heaven make for sinners on earth in his pleadings, of which we know not in particular anything? Nor does Christ speak or plead for believers as a private man, nor appear in his Name as it were, but in our person.

Neither is there a feigning of a person here, or a borrowed and feigned redemption, there be these five here. 1. A Redeemer Christ. 2. Persons redeemed, sinners. 3. A Lord from whom we are redeemed, the Lord Jehovah, not simply, as God, he is the party from whom we are redeemed, but God as the offended Law-giver, who had us liable to eternal punishment. 4. There was a price, the life and blood of God, which though not profitable to God (for that is extrinsic to real satisfaction) yet an abundant compensation to justice for declarative glory taken from God which is the nature of real satisfaction. 5. There is here a God just, true, holy, unchangeable, to whom the price is paid. Nor does Christ sustain the person of the enemy Satan from whom we are redeemed, for he is but the lictor who then had no right to detain us, we are redeemed from evils of sin and punishment: Nor does Christ in suffering sustain the person of God. Hence, from our being crucified with Christ crucified, something is to be said in a practical way of our mortification; for mortification flows originally from Christ's death, we being crucified in him and with him (Galatians 2:20).

Q. What is mortification?

It is a deadening of the whole powers and inclinations of the soul in their bentness and operations, in order to things forbidden by the Law of God, or in things indifferent and commanded. Hence, not the affections only, but the understanding and mind must be deadened. And therefore this is no mortification until sin original be subdued in its damnation by Christ's death, and in its dominion by the Spirit of Sanctification. A tree is not withered while standing on its root, bulk and branches are green and flourishing: it is much to know the withdrawing of sap and life from the root and the vital parts of old Adam. The ebbing of a river is not the drying up of it; the new birth only is mortification.

Since mortification comes only from Christ's death, what is the influence of Christ's death herein?

The influence is real, ad modum causae physicae, the merit of blood has bought us from our vain conversation (1 Peter 1:18). Christ dying does merit by blood the Spirit, and infused grace, which deadens the whole life of sin. Evangelical arguments from ten heavens, from ten Gospels working morally and in a persuasive way, cannot work mortification any more than touching can make a real change on a dead corpse; we were legally dead and crucified in Christ, and with Christ, when he died, many not being born then: but in the infusing of the life of God, Christ applies the real principle of mortification. Now the redemption from a vain conversation (1 Peter 1:18), from the present evil world (Galatians 1:4), is as real and proper a bargain, except we follow Socinus, as redemption from the wrath to come. Christ's death has an influence moral and persuasive to work mortification: as (1 Peter 1:16) Be holy. (1 Peter 1:17) Pass the time of your sojourning in fear. For you are bought with his blood from your vain conversation. And (1 Peter 5:1-2) Christ has suffered in the flesh, therefore be mortified to your lusts, and serve them not, as the Gentiles do: so (Colossians 3:1, 5). But the moral action of the Gospel does not work upon the natural man: for like works upon the like; carnal reason upon a carnal spirit; and spiritual arguments upon a renewed man; as an argument from a painted feather works upon a child, more than an argument from an inheritance, which no doubt will work upon a man come to age, and yet neither the one nor the other works upon a renewed mind to remove him off Christ his rock. Hence it is, that acts of omnipotence are used as moral arguments: also, God works in you to will and to do, therefore work out your salvation. And choosing, redeeming, calling, justifying, quickening, converting, are brought in as causes in Scripture, both real and moral; but they work morally on reason, where there is an impression of faith and principle of life. The Gospel works on an unrenewed man to persuade him almost to be a Christian: you may persuade a youth to a course, and get his word, consent, and write; but because reason is green and young, he falls off it again, but a man of judgment shall stand to it: yet if he be not renewed, reason is also green and raw before a spiritual temptation.

What are the actings of a mortified man?

Ans. No actings. 2. Slow actings and slow. 3. Actings indifferent. 4. Closing with contrary providences, reproaches, work not on mortification to fire the man. Psalm 35:12. They speak mischievous things. 13. But I as a deaf man, heard not. David feared to be the reproach of the foolish: Such a case, though from God, would raise a cry in a child of this world. Psalm 39:9. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because you did it. A mortified man is dead to the voice of men-singers and women-singers, and musical instruments of all sorts (Ecclesiastes 2:8), and houses, gardens, vineyards, orchards, great possessions, cattle, treasures, gold, silver, are all as music to a dead man: and repenting Solomon now mortified, looks on them as a wise man upon experienced vanity and vexation of spirit. Will he sing and dance at a shadow? Except a mad man, none will do that. 2. If anything, without a child of God, work upon him, they move him not much: Psalm 131:2. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child. Acts 20:24. None of these things move me: I make not much reckoning of bonds. Peter (1 Peter 4:12) will have the saints not to think burning quick, strange; grace's motions are quiet, slow, modest, there is not much fire in the spirit of a weaned child: A mortified soul is as a sea that has no winds, nor low ebbings, nor high spring tides. Grace stirs leisurely and slowly toward all things, except to God: were there ten paradises offered to it, it cries not, a dying man's pulse beats weakly. Grace shouts at nothing, wonders at, and admires nothing; weeps slowly, laughs slowly, sings weakly, eats slowly, drinks not wantonly, feasts, and yet trembles and fears, whether it be the outward or the inward man. David says it well (Psalm 62:2): He only is my Rock — I shall not greatly be moved. The believer sings, and yet he is not wanton; and weeps, and yet is not sad; dies, and yet lives; is fervent in the cause of God, and yet stayed and composed in spirit. 3. The actings of mortification are indifferent, not fixedly bent upon anything but God, no not upon the Ark and spiritual comforts. Weeping David (2 Samuel 16:25) says to Zadok, carry back the Ark of God into the City (better I want my comfort, than the Ark be taken); if I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again and show me both it and his habitation. 26. But if he say, I have no delight in you, here am I, let him do to me as seems good to him. O how sweet, when for God, Moses can lay down his personal satisfaction in a share of life eternal. What if he tramp upon my eternal Crown, I should lay it down at his feet; and is not this mortification? Should he hide his face, for eternity, from me, and I never see him in his manifestations, so his glory shine in my everlasting sad desertion; there is required an indifference to all created things without; no peremptory and absolute fixedness of the affection to any good, God excepted, is good: the contrary of this is an engaging of the heart more than is right to anything, give me children, or then I die, there should be a contented living without children, if God so will: love the creature, as if you loved not, the Lord would have us hungering for the creature, and yet not eagerly desiring, and thirsting, and yet have a slow and well ordered appetite to drink: love the child, but let the heart cleave leisurely to the child. Plowing, and no heart-laboring, buying and selling, and no heart-engaging to the bargain is best here. 1 Corinthians 7: They that have wives should be as if they had none. 30. And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not. In the acting of affections toward the things of this life, as father, mother, husband, wife, children, houses, gain, beauty, honor, and new bought farm, there would be a godly distance of the heart from the thing you do: Loving, and no loving; rejoicing, and no rejoicing; weeping, and no weeping; speaks most mortification. We cannot do here, except sinfully we over-do, and the out-goings of the heart to the creature must be fiery, which is childish, whereas mortification is a gracious well composed grave temper of the aged in Christ. There is a fire-edge and a fervor or fever of affections even to spiritual objects that are created at the first conversion, for mortification does not so soon begin as the new heart. As for God, love as one that loves, desire and desire, and when he hides himself, weep as if you wept, so the weeping be terminated upon God, not upon his dispensations, to quarrel at, and censure his ways, but let the out-goings of the heart to God, and to Christ loved and longed for, be with fire, and full strength (Song of Solomon 3:1-4; Song of Solomon 2:5; Psalm 42:1-3; Psalm 84:1-2; John 20:13; Luke 7:38; Revelation 1:17). 4. It is mortification to have a heart closing with all providences. Philippians 1:21. To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain: To live is good, to die is good, because the Lord so wills, the Lord's giving is to Job praising, and the Lord's taking away is to Job praising. Philippians 4:12. I know both how to be abased, and how to abound: everywhere, and in all things I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. If I die, it is good; if I live, it is good; if I be full, and rich, it is good; if I be hungry, and poor, it is good; if David be on the Throne, it is good, and he sings Psalms; if he be chased barefoot, and ashes on his head, by the ascent of Mount Olivet, it is good; he also praises and sings Psalms (2 Samuel 15:30; Psalm 3:1-3). If he be at home in his house, it is good, he praises (Psalm 30; Psalm 101). If he be banished in the wilderness, and chased from the house of God, it is good, he praises (Psalm 42; Psalm 63; Psalm 84). Nothing falls wrong to a mortified soul. The people cry Hosanna, Christ bids them rejoice, their King comes (Zechariah 9:9). The wicked spits on his face, and plucks off the hair, that is good (Isaiah 50:6): I gave them face and back to be doing their will. Heat to a gracious spirit is good, cold is good, joy is good, sorrow is good, health is good, sickness is good: Hezekiah gets a victory, the Assyrians are slain, that is good. Isaiah prophesies that all that are in his house, and his treasures shall be spoiled, and his children carried captive, good is the word of the Lord: Is spoil and captivity and the sword good? Indeed Hezekiah closes with it (Isaiah 39:8). Grace wonders at nothing, laughs at nothing, weeps at nothing but faintly, rejoices at nothing wantonly; closes with all, says Amen to all: for Christ was crucified for me, and I am crucified in, and with him.

Q. 3. What are the species or sorts of mortifications, that we may know the true mortification?

A. 1. It's hard to give the division of them logically: There is 1. a natural mortification, there is no fire in the affections of sucking infants to crowns, kingdoms, to treasures of gold and silver, that is not mortification, but virtually there is as much fire in a flint stone, though formally it be cold, as may burn twenty cities. Concupiscence driven away from the aged (Ecclesiastes 12), the hearth-stone is cold, and there is in it such a deadness to lusts, not because of deadness of sin original, it lives, as the souls of the old men live, but because the tools are broken, the animal and vital spirits are weakened, the man loves the journey, but the horse is crooked and laid by: there is nothing of Christ's death here.

2. There is a compelled mortification, sickness and withered arms and legs, and strong fetters in the prison, poverty and want, care for bread, and the armed man poverty that has a sharp sword, necessity blunts the affections in their second acts, the man has no mind of whoring: And many drink water, who through Christ crucifying, are not mortified to wine and strong drink. 1. There is often in this, an ignorance of Christ crucified, and no faith. 2. A reluctance to divine dispensation, and no gracious submission to God, which is in one crucified to the world.

3. There is a philosophical mortification to the creatures which are seen by the light of nature to be very nothing and most unsatisfactory to the natural man: but there is no supernatural deadness in the heart wrought by the death of Christ. Archimedes, and other great spirits, sick of love to know the nature, motion, and influence of the stars, and pained with a speculative disease of books, and to know much, do contemn and despise honor, gain, pleasure, the three idols, of ambitious, of covetous and voluptuous men; but there is no deadness, no blunting of the operations of the soul toward the idol world, flowing from the believed-in crucified Lord of Glory, except you say that Plato, and Aristotle, and such, were crucified with Christ: Learning works not mortification.

4. There is a religious or a madly superstitious mortification. The Monks (says Luther) dreamed that the world was crucified to them, and they to the world, when they entered to their monasteries, but by this means Christ is crucified, not the world: Indeed the world is delivered from crucifying, and is the more quickened by that opinion of trust they had in their own holiness and righteousness. (Colossians 2:23). In will-worship, in humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. There is much vain and counterfeit mortification; and Papists have as good warrant to sacrifice their lives to God, and to offer a bloody sacrifice to God, under the New Testament, as to shed their own blood in whipping and scourging, and such bloody worship, has the ground of mortification that Baal's priests had to lance themselves with knives to the effusion of blood. And the same may be said of pilgrimages, of voluntary poverty, in which (as Luther said) the world and all their lusts are quickened.

5. Not unlike to this is the Pharisees' mortification, in which they are not crucified with Christ, but alive and vigorously strong to self-righteousness, to merits, to dead works.

6. There is a civil or moral mortification which has diverse branches. As 1. Seneca teaches that nature is satisfied with water for drink, and a [reconstructed: purse] for a house, yet he was a covetous man himself. And shall Horatius Cocles be a mortified man, because he defended the Romans against the three Curiatii alone? Though the bloody gallant killed his own sister? And was the state mortified who pardoned him that bloody fact, for his gallant service? And Decius father and son who suffered so much for their country, and loved it more than their own blood? And must Africanus Major, and Cato, who suffered for the liberty of the public, and Diogenes, who lived on herbs, be mortified men to the world? But what avails it to be dead to the bulk of a bit body of clay, and yet be alive to vain glory? 2. There is an occasional deadness rising from the sight of a father, a brother, a friend dead, not from the death of Christ. An unbeliever dies with this word, I would not live for all the world, and, we are like water spilt on the ground. The house is burnt, all spoiled, treasures, and the stock, by land and sea-robbers, are plucked away; and riches have wings. Hence, mortification transient for a time: but lusts fallen in a swoon, are not dead, they rise again and live. 3. There is another transient mortification, as Doctor Preston observes, when the conscience is frightened with judgment, and some flash of restraining grace is up. 4. A good calm nature naturally either dull and stupid, or some clement and meek disposition, and free of the fire that often follows the complexion, and hampered in with teachers, parents, company, education, learning, seems a mortified nature. But that is true mortification, that flows from faith in a humbled crucified Savior, and it is not to believe that Christ was mortified in our room and place, as Saltmarsh and Antinomians would say. Faith in Christ crucified is our mortification causatively, in radice, not formally.

Q. 4. To what things must we be crucified?

Answ. (Galatians 6:14). To all things created, to the world; we condemn and despise and hate the world, and the world does value us nothing.

1. There is a deadness to self which was in Christ our example of mortification (Romans 15:1). Let us not please ourselves, but bear the infirmities of others. 3. For even Christ pleased not himself. Self loved and adored, and mortification do not consist, too much life in apprehension, and admiring self, argues deadness of deadness and of mortification. Was not Christ a noble self? Yet for the Lord, and his ransomed ones, Christ got above noble excellent self. It is true, there is a renewed spiritual self, a new I in the Saints, [in non-Latin alphabet], (Romans 7:17). Now it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. (Galatians 2:20). It is not I that lives, but Christ lives in me. Mortification sets us above new [in non-Latin alphabet] renewed self, and regenerated and crucified I; it being a created excellency that we are not to adore.

2. Mortification requires a deadness to the will, as in Christ, not my will, but your will be done: Much life in the will to created things, speaks little or no mortification. Christ excelled in this (John 5:30): I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me. O what court, and power, and life has our will? And how soon the will is broken and dead, then is the man broken, dead and crucified with Christ. Much will, much life of sin: See (John 5:40), (Luke 19:14), (Mark 6:25), (Matthew 1:19), (Mark 15:15), (Acts 24:27), (Acts 25:9), (Luke 10:29), (Revelation 22:17). All will, argues no mortification.

3. There is required deadness to our life, which was eminently in Christ (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6; John 10:11). So Paul (Acts 20:24): You speak of bonds and affliction, but none of those things move me, neither do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my course with joy. To be mortified to life, is to hate the life (Luke 14:26) for Christ. And in Revelation 12, they overcame: mortification was their victory. Verse 11: They overcame, for they loved not their lives to death: Love of life is the life of sin when it is not loved in God.

4. We must be dead to wisdom, and to all the gifts of the mind, for the wisdom of the world is foolishness, and God has befooled it, when it comes in competition with the wisdom of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 1:18-19). Unless we are dead to it, we cannot glory in the Lord (verses 27, 28, 29, compared with verse 31).

2. There must be a deadness to learning, to books, and book-vanity (Ecclesiastes 12:12): There is no end of making many books, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastes 1:17: And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is a vexation of spirit. Verse 18: For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow. Paul spoke more with tongues than they all (1 Corinthians 14:18), but he was dead to that gift; he had rather have brought them nearer to Christ. 1 Corinthians 4:10: We are fools, and hardly we can bear that; but we are fools for Christ's sake, and for the interest of Christ and the Gospel, let us so be counted. It is nearness to Christ that makes us, for him, to be willing that what is most eminent in us be trampled upon, even shining wisdom, sciences, arts, eloquence, knowledge which puffs up. Indeed there is, 3rd, required a deadness to the knowledge of Gospel-mysteries (1 Corinthians 13:2): Paul was not lacking in knowledge, but he was dead to that, and would not glory in that. And 4th, they are not crucified with Christ who are not dead to opinions and sides, and who lead factions: I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, was no honor to Paul in his own esteem (1 Corinthians 1). What? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Who excels in learning, who does not admire his own — the birth of his own mind? — if it were but to hold that there are ten new worlds in the Moon, and millions of worlds on the other side of this world? My brethren, be not many masters. Ah! we are not dead to the chair, the pulpit; every one loves to be counted and called Rabbi. The blessed man Christ confesses that he knows neither the day nor the hour of the Son of Man's coming; yet there are those who dare define the time of his coming, and the day. The mind is a proud and haughty thing, and we are not dead to it; the mind is not mortified to the mind (1 Corinthians 8:1-2).

5. We are not dead to Mammon: O who is like Christ and refuses to be a rich King (John 6)? Paul (2 Corinthians 8-9): For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor: He had a greater mind than that he could live to riches. Paul (Acts 20:33) says not I have sought neither silver nor gold, as the godly judge, Whose ox have I taken (1 Samuel 12:3), but I have coveted no man's silver or gold, or apparel: The life of lust to riches is in the trusting in it. Job 31:24: If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, you are my confidence; or verse 25, have rejoiced because my wealth was great. It is true, a beggar and an extremely poor man who cannot have bread, is not troubled nor much tempted to seek a kingdom and the millions and tons of gold that many rich ones have; but yet there are speculative desires and rolling waves and floods of wishes in the heart for these: and because hunger and want of bread is his door enemy lying between him and the hope of great riches, the man is neither mortified to the love of bread nor to the millions of gold that the heart is sick after. And as there are diverse kinds and species of plagues, and they are not all of one kind, yet all contrary to the blood and the heat of life: so are there sundry kinds of unmortified lusts about riches according to the sickness of the desire.

Objection: But is not the desire of food and clothing natural — how then is it faulty?

Answer: The desire simply is natural, and the ants and the rabbits do desire. But the desire 1st, beyond measure; 2nd, with a sinful doubting that they shall not have it, which reproaches Omnipotency; 3rd, a desire wider than that of ants and rabbits, of that which is more than sufficient, which would destroy and not feed but over-feed, is the faulty desire; as sickness desires drink more than sufficient, not for health, but to feed the disease, it is the desire of the disease rather than of the man diseased; and the forbidden desire is the sin.

Objection 2: May not a child of God desire more than enough — how then is he mortified?

Ans. If the desire of more than enough come from the habit of covetousness, the man is not mortified to Mammon: all sinful habits in the child of God are broken, and lessened, and chased into inclinations, or to the habit of Original corruption slackened and by grace subdued; but in every child of God there is sin dwelling and the flesh (Hebrews 12:1; Romans 7:17-18; 1 John 1:8, 10; James 4:5; Galatians 5:17), and the old man, which is put off by degrees (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:5, 10), which is a habit of corruption not in full vigor, but sickening, decaying, and dying daily, but even a grown child of God from this broken and sick habit may, temptation invading, and the Lord withdrawing his influence of grace, may break out into gross acts of covetousness, adultery, murder, as is clear in David, Lot, Peter, Asa, and that says that mortification is complete in none. And there is too often a sort of sinful resurrection of the habit of sin and the flesh, so that David seems not to be David, but an adulterer, a murderer: as we see it is the same River that swells over its banks, that it was before, but the overflowing is from without, from the clouds and from excessive rain, the river also has a receptive capacity in itself to exceed its banks and channel: so has a child of God from strong temptation from without, and broken corruption from within, a more than his own ordinary quantity and swelling over his channel; to teach us that our mortification is a work not of day, but of our whole life. Neither would the wise Agur pray against riches (Proverbs 30) if temptations contrary to mortification did not follow them.

6. There is a necessity of deadness to honor, and to learn the noble and excellent art of self-contempt, that the Spirit shall teach us that spiritual lesson to be willingly trampled on, and the face spitted on, and the hair plucked off the cheeks, as our Blessed Lord went out and in the way met with spitting and shame (Isaiah 50:6; Matthew 26:67; Matthew 27:26). O great word! (Philippians 4:12) [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], I have learned to be abased. (1 Corinthians 4:12) Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we suffer, being defamed we entreat, we are made as the filth of the world, and are as the off-scouring of all things to this day. [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], the sweepings of the house: Erasmus, the filth wiped off any thing. Valla, the filth that sticks to the shoes. The Syriac has a word that notes the dung of the belly. As the condemned man tumbled into the sea as a sacrifice to Neptune from a steep place was called peripsema. So Budaeus thinks Paul alludes to heathen expiations. And when they reproached me, David (Psalm 38:13), But I was as a deaf man that hears not, as a dumb man that opened not his mouth. The sense and discerning of heat and cold, of railings, and applauses, would be dead: that is mortification, when the sense of hearing is dead to sounds, to music, and to pleasant songs, these are not delightful to a crucified or hanged man, when the life is out: nor can all the sweet smells, flowers, roses, precious ointments, affect the smelling of a crucified man, nor all the fair and magnificent palaces, meadows, gardens, rivers, mountains, hangings, painted pictures, work upon the sight or eyes of a crucified man. When the heart is ravished with honor, as the man who said the glory of Themistocles hindered him to sleep in the night, as little mortified as Themistocles who said sleep was taken from him, and he was raised out of his bed in the night by reason of the brave trophy and renown of the victory of Miltiades, that renowned man of Athens, who, as is known, with 10,000 Greeks, put to flight 60,000 Persians. And Alexander the Great, his heart must have been waking at the sound of honor, who, when a messenger came running to him full of joy, said what should you tell me, but that Homer is living again? for he thirsted for nothing so much as honor: and how soft and very nothing is the spirit that is broken with riches or honor and pleasure? And often men judge themselves mortified, because they are dead, it may be to riches, but alive to ambition and desire of honor. As Nebuchadnezzar spared no charges for his gods, his pleasure, but he was alive to honor (Daniel 4:30): Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the Kingdom, by the might of my power, and the honor of my majesty? Satan does often change post-horses, and can seemingly deaden men to riches, when they are not mortified, and yet the heart is strongly vigorous to honor. When it was told Zeno that his ship, which he did trade with, was broken: Well done, Fortune, (says he) you compel us to go within our cloak; he meant, To live upon the glory of virtue and learning, when riches are spent and gone, was well done. But mortification, in the habit and root, is like the works of nature. The Sun equally enlightens the whole Air from the East to the West: Life comes in equally upon the whole Embryo and birth. Saving mortification goes through the whole soul. Christ merited by his death deadness to honor as well as to riches; though in the actual subduing of lusts Doctor Preston does well observe that there is not that labor required in subduing and mortifying all sins. For love of sin being the dominion, life and castle of sin, the more love to the heart-idol and to the right eye, the harder it is to be mortified. Some sins cleave to us as our hair and nails, as a custom of some sinful words, these are sooner mortified; and yet if mortification be not in the heart, these take life again, as hairs and nails cut and shaved grow again. The trees in Winter are not dead: but there be master-devils and strongly rooted heart-darlings, pride, covetousness, to which we are mortified, with a hugely greater deal of pains and wrestling, for they are to men as the eye and the right hand.

7. We are not soon dead to injuries. Our blessed Copy in this excels: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And Stephen (Acts 7:60): Lord lay not this sin to their charge. (Colossians 3:13) Forgiving one another. Indeed, but he wronged me, and injuries have a strong impulsion upon our spirits. I cannot forget it. If any man have a quarrel at any (says he) let it fall: even as Christ forgave you, so do you also. Shall not Socrates witness against us, who answered his friends, willing him to accuse before the Judge a vain youth who did smite him with his foot, If an Ass lift his heels against me, shall I lift my heels against the Ass? And the youth was so convinced that he hanged himself. And he said nothing to a multitude of reproaches cast upon him in the Theater, but, I am vexed with words in the Theater as in a great banquet. But natural reason mortifies men to injuries, as cold water allays and for a time softens the pain of the child's burnt finger, but the pain is the greater when the water is removed; or as want of money mortifies a man to drunkenness, he drinks not excessively, not because the heart will not dare to sin, but because he cannot. The Word backed with influences from the death of Christ strongly mortifies to all sins.

8. And the soul is not easily deadened to an office or place of a Prince, a Ruler, a Master, a Prophet, a Teacher. Abishai (2 Samuel 16:9): Why should this dead dog curse my lord the King? Let me go over, I pray you, and take off his head. David stands not much upon cursing the lord the King. He is so mortified to that style as he forgets it, and, verse 10, he says, Let him curse, because the Lord has said to him, Curse David. He says not, the Lord has told him to curse the lord King David. Do you answer the high Priest so? It is a great word. Christ was the Messiah, that is a great office of King, Priest and Prophet: but he was willing to forget his office, by way of taking much on him, that he might fulfill his office by way of suffering. As Rulers and such as are in place must so far be dead to their office and place, as they must be willing to bear in their bosom the reproaches of all the mighty people, and to have their footsteps, even as Rulers, reproached (Psalm 89:50-51). Places and office too often have an influence and strong enough on our unmortified hearts. But there are some providential sufferings that befall Rulers, as Rulers, against which they should be hardened, knowing that the Lord suffers in them.

9. It should be our work to be deadened to pleasure. I have married a wife, and therefore [illegible], I cannot come. This is the most lively lust. There is a mortified eye (Job 31:1): I have made a covenant with mine eye, why then should I look on a maid? Mortified eye-looks call for mortified heart-looks. It is an old sin (Genesis 3:6): And when the woman saw the tree that it was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes — she did eat. Mortified Joseph saw sin engraved on pleasure (Genesis 39:9): How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

10. There must be a deadened heart to all the three, to the world (1 John 2:15): Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (James 4:4). There is some life between the friends of the world and the world, and James doubts not to call that enmity with God. And the three great idols of the world, gain, glory and pleasure, cannot make any happy, which heathens, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca saw: and therefore they pressed a contempt of the world. For strength is the glory of the Elephant or the Bull rather than of man, and plucked away by age and time; and beauty is no less uncertain, being made up of quantity and color, and the Rose and the lily has more of it than man. Riches have wings, and render not the owner happy: nobility is a borrowed good, and the parent's glory not ours: and honor is the opinion and esteem of men, and we yet cannot be dead to nothings, to shadows, to emptiness and to vanity: and fair buildings are well ordered dead stones.

11. They are not rightly mortified who are not deadened to creature-comforts, to father and mother, for they forsake, and the mother may forget the fruit of her own womb, but the Lord cannot forget his own (Psalm 27:10; Isaiah 49:15). My friends (Job 19:19): 2. All my friends, 3. All my inward (and dearest) friends, 4. Abhor me. Forsaking is hard, but abhorring is most sad. Indeed even in the cause of God Paul is put to this (2 Timothy 4:16): At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. 2. So must the Church be dead to foreign forces (Hosea 14:3): Ashur shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses. And the people must be dead and sit still from help from Egypt (Isaiah 30:7): For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I cried concerning this, Your strength is to sit still. Sitting still is a ceasing from relying upon the Chariots and strength of Egypt, as being dead to them: For thus says the Lord, the holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and you would not. And 4. his people must cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of (Isaiah 2:22)? And be dead to multitude: for (Psalm 33:16) no King is saved by a host, a mighty man is not delivered by much strength. 17. A horse is a vain thing for safety. The help of the creature substitute in the room of God, having the luster of blue and purple, or clothed in scarlet, riding upon horses. Young men of desire (Ezekiel 23:23) do easily dazzle our eyes, and when we are not renewed in the spirit of our mind, unsanctified hearts are weak in apprehending, and more weak in discerning of things. 5. So must there be a deadening of the husband to the wife (Job 19:17), to servants (Job 15:16), to sons (2 Samuel 16:11), of the mother to the daughter, of the daughter-in-law to the mother-in-law (Micah 7:6), to blood-friends.

12. All the godly and zealous Prophets said Amen to the word of the Lord, even Christ with sighs and tears, to the extreme desolation and ruin of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41; Matthew 23:37-38), and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, etc. to the plowing of Zion as a field, to the sword, captivity, to the laying waste of the land without inhabitants (Isaiah 5:9; Isaiah 6:10-12; Jeremiah 9:1-4; Jeremiah 16:1-3, etc.; Micah 3:12; Hosea 4:3; Hosea 5:6, 9, etc.). There must be a deadening to our country and Mother-Church, that the glory of justice may shine; indeed to our father's grave, our own bed, our own fireside.

13. The Lord would have Isaiah and the godly dead to laws and government, to vision and prophesying, when judge and prophet shall be taken away (Isaiah 3:2), and children shall be their princes, and babes shall rule over them (verse 4), and the vineyard broken, and the hedge spoiled. And he would have the godly dead to king and priest and law (2 Chronicles 15:3): Now for a long season Israel had been without the true GOD, and without a teaching priest, and without law. Hosea 3:4; Hosea 10:3: And now shall they say, We have no king, because we feared not the Lord — what shall then a king do to us? Hence we must be mortified to every thing created which the Lord may take from us.

14. And upon this account there is required a deadening of our hearts to shipping and trading with diverse mighty nations, as we see in the case of Tyre (Ezekiel 27), of Babylon (Revelation 18:11-13; Jeremiah 51). So are we to be mortified to fair houses (Isaiah 5:8), stately cities (Isaiah 14), to all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up: to all the oaks of Bashan, to all the high mountains, to every high tower, to every fenced wall, to all the ships of Tarshish, to all the fenced cities — for the day of the Lord may be upon these (Isaiah 2), to all fair rivers, to oxen, horses, chariots, fair acres of land, to vineyards, to olive trees (Ezekiel 29:4-5; Isaiah 50:2; Exodus 7:19; Deuteronomy 28:31, 40-41, 51), to seed time and harvest (Deuteronomy 28:38; Haggai 1:6), to corn, wine, oil, to cattle, increase of kine and flocks of sheep (Deuteronomy 28:51; Amos 4:9), to wine-trees, to fig-trees, to seasonable rains, grass and fruitful fields (Joel 1:4-5, 7, 10; Jeremiah 14:3-6), to peace, safe down-lying and safe rising (Leviticus 26:36), for in all this the hand of the Lord's anger is stretched out.

15. The Lord would have us dead to valiant and to mighty men, to captains (Isaiah 3:1, 3-4). Indeed he makes true (Psalm 76:5): The [reconstructed: stout]-hearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep, and none of the men of might have found their hands. Verse 6: At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and the horse are cast into a dead sleep. And therefore he would have us dead to courage in war. Who brings on faintness and terror upon the spirit, when the sound of a shaking leaf shall chase men (Leviticus 26:36), and when the Lord sends a trembling of heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind (Deuteronomy 28:65)?

16. We are called to be dead to honorable birth, blood, and noble families, when princes are filled with contempt, and those that were clothed in scarlet embrace the dunghill (Lamentations 5:12; Isaiah 40:23, 20).

17. And we must be dead to the vigorousness of youth, when we read Ecclesiastes 12:1-3, etc., and Barzillai's complaint (2 Samuel 19:35): Can I taste what I eat? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? And why but this should make us dead to sports, pastime, dicing, gaming, dancing, feasting, chambering, wantonness, to all plenty and fullness, when God can remove the appetite, and give bread, or remove bread, and give the appetite. So as the Lord leaves that doom on you (Leviticus 26:26): And when I have broken the staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied. So is Solomon dead to laughter (Ecclesiastes 2:2): I said of laughter it is mad.

18. There is required a deadness to ordinances — the Tabernacle is not God: David may be banished from it. The Temple is a type of Christ, yet it is burnt with fire, and the sanctuary profaned. And the Lord required a sort of slowness of motion of the heart toward these, and would have his people in their exile resting upon this (Ezekiel 11:16): Therefore say, thus says the Lord God, although I have cast them far off from the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. And they who remained still at Jerusalem reproached their poor captivated brethren, as hated of God, and gloried in themselves as citizens and inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying (verse 15) to the exiled brethren, Get you far from the Lord, to us is this land given in possession. They were not mortified in looking upon the Holy Land and city, but vainly gloried in it. And therefore there are two things in ordinances: 1. God that fills the ordinances. 2. The external bulk of them. Mortification to God and his presence in ordinances is not that we here require, for the affections cannot be vigorous enough in following God. There may be a limiting and binding of God to means, to the Temple, sanctuary, hearing, seals, and a fleshly heat and liveliness to means, and bare and naked ordinances; and in both these there is so far required a deadness, as there would be a holy submission to all these, when the Lord deprives us of ordinances, and a retiring into the fountain, to the Lord himself, that he may be all in all. So some cannot sleep except the Bible be under the head in the night: some tie their faith and comfort so to one man, if he be not their pastor nothing is right. But so much of Christ, or the substance of gospel promises must be neglected, as means and instruments and ordinances are idolized: in a word, mortification calls for liveliness of affection to God in Christ, and a holy deadness to all things that are not God.

19. There is necessary here a deadness to works, for there be these defects in them. 1. They cannot save (Ephesians 2). (2.) They were not crucified for you, let them not have the place and chair of Christ. 3. They cannot quiet the conscience, because they cannot justify. Paul preached from Jerusalem to Illyricum, labored more abundantly than they all, was blameless, was conscious to himself of nothing, yet was he as dead to these as to very nothing (1 Corinthians 4:4), and to loss and dung (Philippians 3:8). Hence must we be dead to the idol of godliness, for it's not God.

20. And dead to godly men, in point of confidence, we must not know the Man Christ after the flesh (2 Corinthians 5:16), nor any mere man, to cry man up as God — every man is a liar — is contrary to Gospel-mortification.

21. It were good to pray much, and to be dead to prayer: One of the main causes why we cry and pray much and are not heard (Psalm 22:2; Psalm 69:1-3), is, because that which is proper to God the hearer of prayer, to wit, confidence and hope, we give to prayer which is not God. We pray to our own prayers and to our own wrestling often, rather than to God: and we believe praying does the business and works the charm, as if prayer were Omnipotency itself.

22. Nor are we dead to faith and hope, but we believe in faith and in believing, and we hope in our own hoping in God. But was faith crucified for you? How many fetch peace, pardon and righteousness, not from Christ, but from their act of believing? Hence a case, whether some may not fervently pray and believe strongly, and yet be disappointed in the particular they pray for and believe they shall have? Certain it may be, especially when we are dead to Omnipotency and alive to praying and believing, and lay more weight on faith in God than on God, and on praying to God than on God himself. What Antinomians say unjustly we give to works, to wit, our peace with God, they and many unduly give to faith, not to Christ.

23. We fail in being more alive to comforts than to God the comforter: the infant may at once both suck the breasts, and also sleep. And is one flower more to be smelled than the whole Garden? And shall feelings and raptures, and manifestations of God in his outgoings be courted and over-courted by us beyond the God of all comforts? There is need that the heart be deadened to sense, for feeling and sense is fiery and idolatrous; and were sense more mortified at the outgoings of faith, hope, love, it were good, for our faith should be the more lively and vigorous to lay hold on God. Q. Is it not lawful to be taken and feelingly delighted with the influences of God? Ans. Sure, feeling of itself is not faulty, the fierceness and excessive fervor of feeling is faulty, especially when terminated upon created actings of love, faith, joy, desire, hope, and not upon influences as coming from the free grace of God, otherwise, we are but sick and pained of love of our own gracious actings, because they are our own; and this is the sickness of selfishness. Ah! a Godhead, a Godhead is not known.

23. Nor must we be, in a too lively way, taken with our own stock, nor trust in the habit of grace or the new heart: for grace in us is a created rose that spreads fair and broad and smells well, but it is not God nor Christ, that we may learn not to trust in ourselves [illegible] (2 Corinthians 1:9). But why but we may trust in our renewed selves now furnished with a stock and infused habits, the excellent blossoms and blooms of heaven? Nay, not in our selves thus fitted, but in God who raises the dead: for it's not possible both to trust in renewed self and in God: And Paul never meant that any that professes Christ, is to lean upon sinful self or upon lost and condemned self. And sure it is as self-centered to be alive to infused habits, as to ignore Christ, and think, being once a convert, we can send ourselves all the rest of the way to heaven without Christ, we need not Christ for a Guide or a Tutor, it's within us may save us. And nothing can be more contrary to a living the noble and sure life of continual dependency by faith on the given Leader of the people, Jesus Christ, than to trust on habits of grace, they are not Christ.

25. Ah! who is that mortified as to be dead to the created sweetness of joy, and the right hand pleasures of God, and the formal beatitude of glory, and alive to the only pure objective happiness of glory? And yet that is mortification, to love and be sick and thirsty for heaven, not for the pleasures of the Garden, and the streets of gold, and the Tree of Life, and the River of Water of life, but for only only God, the heaven of heavens: And therefore we cannot be alive to pure and the only abstracted and unmixed Godhead, except we be thus dead to heaven.

26. There is a deadness to the letter of the promise: The promise (says M. Ambrose) is but the casket, and Christ the jewel in it; the promise is but the field, Christ is the pearl hid in it. Christ removed, the promise is no promise, or but [reconstructed: hapless signs].

27. We must also be dead to the rays, outshinings and manifestations of God to the soul here, and must transchange God in all presence and all love embracements, and no more: but be dead to the house of wine, to the [reconstructed: lifted] up banner of love, to love-kisses of Christ, to the love-banquets, and to the felt lying, as the beloved, all the night between the breasts: for these nearest communions are not God himself. There is required a godly hardness for receiving sparkles of hell and some drafts of sore trying wrath, and the hell of his most wise and righteous frownings, and necessary absence and night of hiding himself.

28. And should not the Church be dead to providences of fair weather, and Court, or the blessing of a godly King David, Hezekiah, and mortified to miraculous deliverances, dividing of the Red Sea, defeat of enemies, to confirmation of the truth by martyrdom and sufferings to blood? He who is dead to himself and his body and ease, and hardened against contradictions of sinners, against torment of body, cold, imprisonment, sickness, death, and can in patience submit to all providences, is crucified with Christ, if God give or withdraw, he is dead to both.

28. All who are dead with Christ, are dead to all dead worship, sapless ceremonies, and formal worship (Colossians 2:20; Galatians 4:9), and are lively in the serving of God, and fervent in spirit, serving the Lord: and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3; Romans 12).