so the vital and sensitive actions of things that have life and sense. The reasonable creature, it is true, hath more liberty in its actions, freely chusing one thing and rejecting another; yet it cannot be denied, that in acting of that liberty, their choice and refusal follow the sway of their nature and condition. As the angels and glorified souls, (their nature being perfectly holy, and unalterably such) they cannot sin, they can delight in nothing but in obeying and praising that God, in the enjoyment of whom their happiness consisteth; still ravished in beholding his face. The saints again that have not yet reached that home, and are but on their journey, they are not fully defecated and refined from the dross of sin: there are in them two parties, natural corruption, and supernatural grace, and these keep a struggling within them; but the younger shall supplant the elder. Grace shall in the end overcome, and in the mean while, though it be not free from mixture, yet it is predominant. The main bent of a renewed man is obedience and holiness, and any action of that kind he rejoices in, but the sin that escapes him, he cannot look upon but with regret and discontent. But alas! they that be so minded are very thin sown in the world, even in God's peculiar fields, where the labourage of the gospel is, and the outward profession of true religion unanimously received. Yet the number of true converts, spiritual-minded persons, is very small, the greatest part acting sin with delight, and taking pleasure in unrighteousness, living in disobedience to God, as in their proper element; and the reason is, the contrariety of their nature to our holy Lord. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

The mind Opovna] Some render it the prudence or wisdom of the flesh. Here you have it, the carnal mind, but the word signifies, indeed, an act of the mind, rather than either the faculty itself, or the habit of prudence in it, so as it discovers what is the frame of both these. The minding, as it is used,

Ver. 5. conform to that of Moses, Gen. vi. Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually. The word indeed signifies the wise thoughts. So then take the full latitude of it thus: "The carnal mind, in its best and wisest thoughts, is direct enmity against God."

Carnal, rn's σapx] What is meant by the flesh here? It is the whole corrupt nature of man; and that we may know by its opposition to the Spirit, not to the spirit or soul of a man, for so it hath no thoughts nor minding, these being proper to the soul, but opposed to the Spirit of God.

Now the corruption of nature is called the flesh, not without very good reason, not only to signify the baseness of it, the flesh being the more ignoble and meaner part of a man, but because the greatest part of the sins of men's lives are about sensitive objects, and things that concern the flesh or the body. It lets in temptation of sin to the soul by the doors of the senses, and it gives the last perfection or accomplishment to sin, by external acting of it. The very first sin, that brought in death and misery with it upon mankind, the pleasures of the eye and of the taste, were sharers in the guiltiness of it.

The carnal mind] Man in regard of his composition is, as it were, the tie and band of heaven and earth; they meet and are married in him. A body he has taken out of the dust, but a soul breathed from heaven, from the father of spirits; a house of clay, but a guest of most noble extraction. But the pity is, it hath forgot its original, and is so drowned in flesh, that it deserves no other but to go under the name of flesh. It is become the slave and drudge of the body, and, as the Israelites in Egypt, made perpetually to moyl in clay. What is all your merchandise, your trades and manufactures, your tillage and husbandry, but all for the body, in its behalf, for food and raiment? In all these, the mind must be careful and thoughtful, and yet properly they reach it not, for itself hath no interest in them. VOL. III, P

It is true, the necessity of the body requires much of these things, and superfluous custom far more; but it is lamentable that men force their soul to forget itself, and its proper business, to attend these things only, and be busy in them. They spend all their time, and their choicest pains upon perishing things, and which is worse, engage their affections to them. They mind earthly things, whose end is destruction". The same word that is here, povnux rùs cápx&, &c.

Will you consider seriously, that your souls run the hazard of perishing, because you consider not their spiritual nature? When that earthly tabernacle of yours shall fall to the ground (and ere long it must) your souls must then enter eternity, and though you had as large a share of earthly things as your earthly hearts now would wish, they all lose their use in that moment. They are not a proper good for the soul at any time, and least at that time. If you keep it all your life long, busy about the interest and benefit of the flesh, the body, how poor will it be when they part, having provided nothing at all for itself, but the guiltiness of a sinful life, which will sink it into that bottomless pit. Be forewarned then; for to be carnally minded is death, Ver. 6. preceding the text.

The carnal mind.] Now as sin hath abased and degenerated the soul of man, making it carnal, so the Son of God, by taking on our nature, hath sublimated it again, and made it spiritual. The souls that received him are spiritualized, yea, as sin made the soul carnal, grace makes the very body to become spiritual, making it partaker and co-worker in spiritual things, together with the soul, in doing and suffering, and participant of the hopes too of an everlasting reward. This is the main christian character our Apostle gives here, that they are spiritually minded, and that their actions suit their minds, they walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Whereas before, with the rest of the world, they a Philip. iii. 19.

were eager in the pursuit of honours, and profits, and worldly pleasures; the new stream of their desires run in another channel, they seek after honour, and are very ambitious of it; but it is such honour as the apostle speaks of in this epistle, By patient continuance in well doing, they seek for glory, and honour, and immortality: their mind is upon profit and gain, but it is with the same apostle, that they may win Christ, and they account all other things loss in comparison; and their desires are after pleasure too, but not carnal pleasures, these are both base, and of short continuance, but the pleasures they aim at, are those that are at God's right hand, and for evermore“, and that path of life he there speaks of, that way holiness that leads thither, is their delight. Spiritual exercise they go to, not as their task only, but more as their joy and refreshment. And this change the Spirit of God works in the soul, making it (yea, and the body wherein it dwells) of carnal, to become spiritual, as the fire, to which the Holy Ghost is compared, refines sand and ashes, and makes of them the purest glass, which is so neat and transparent.

of

Enmity against God.] Sin hath not only made us unlike God, by defacing his beautiful image in us; not only strangers by making us wander far off from him, but enemies; nor enemies only, but enmity in the abstract; for that is emphatical, the carnal mind is enmity, nothing else but enmity.

Now this enmity is described in the latter clause of the text, by an antipathy, so to call it, or not compliance with the law of God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be, to wit, while it remains such. There is an absolute impossibility in it, to suit with the law of God, and consequently, with God himself. The reason lies in their opposite qualities, God is spiritual and holy, and so is the law, as our apostle hath it in the preceding chapter; and the opposition he there makes betwixt his

b Rom. ii. 7.

c. Phil. iii.

d Psalm xvi. 11.

unregenerate part and the law, is wholly true of the unregenerate man. The law is holy, says he, Ver. 12. and Ver. 14. it is spiritual; to which too he opposes, but I am carnal, sold under sin.

Where are now those that so vilify grace and magnify nature? Or, shall I rather say, nullify grace, and deify nature? Here is the best eulogy the apostle will bestow upon the best of natures, Enmity against God. Nay, all the sparkles of virtue and moral goodness in civil men, and ancient heathens, are no better; besides many other things, to be said of the virtues of those philosophers, as ignorance of Christ, by whom alone this enmity is removed.

I should easily confess, nor (I think) can any deny it, but that there is in the very ruins of our nature, some character left of a tendency to God. as our chief and only satisfying good, which we may call a kind of love, and when we hear him spoken of, find it flutter and stir; and hence men so abhor the imputation of hating God, and being enemies. Yet this is so smothered under sensuality and flesh, that until we be made spiritual, nothing appears, but practical, and, as they call it, interpretative enmity.

There is one thing stains them enough, they were all, as that Father speaks, animalia gloriæ, they aimed not in their study of virtue at God's glory, but at their own; and is not that quarrel enough, and matter of enmity? Says not he, My glory I will not give unto another?

But that is most useful for you, to convince you of that too good conceit men have of their natural condition. You would take it hardly, the most profane of you all, if any should come to you in partiticular, and tell you, you are an enemy to God; but I answer, there is none of you, if you believe the scriptures, but will confess that all men are naturally such; and therefore, except we find in ourselves a notable alteration from the condition of nature, we must take with it, that we are enemies, yea,