abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost, that his spiritual faculties are all on the wing, even so as to cry out with the church, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love."* And it is not impossible that the very next hour such a train of irregular thoughts rushes into the mind, as would lead him to suppose all his late experience a delusion, if he did not know that they were the distinct acts of two distinct principles, the old man and the new, which will never be assimilated into each other. He attempts to recover himself, and to regain the blissful thoughts, but he cannot; whereas, the evil that he would not, that he does: Why is this? Because the acts of the new creature, called by Paul "the law in the mind," are altogether supernatural, entirely drawn into exercise by the power and influence of God; the Holy Ghost presenting Jesus to the view as the

* Cant. 2.

suitable object of excitement; whereas, corrupt nature, called the law in the members, is a self-acting principle in the element of sin; or, at least, is easily set in action by the objects around us; so that we say, with Paul, "I find a law in my members warring against the law that is in my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself, with the mind, serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin."*

* Rom. 7.

ESSAY VI.

ON FILLING UP THE MEASURE OF INIQUITY.

But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. Gen. 15. 16.

AFFLICTIONS are the general lot of God's dear people, and not a few. "Man is born. to trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" and it was a matter settled in an ancient synod of divines, that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom. It therefore behoves us to be furnished with every incitement that will help us to maintain our confidence in God, and enable us to run with patience the race that is set before us. The Lord's gracious designs, in laying afflictions on the loins of his people, may be drawn from several parts of Scripture:—the trial of our faith, which is much more precious

than that of gold; that we may be partakers of his holiness; that the carnal mind, or old man, which is not subject to the law of God, i.e. the new man, neither indeed can be, " may be kept in subjection by afflictions, as by an ordinance of God's appointing;" that the peaceable fruits of righteousness may be produced, and that the love and mercy of our heavenly Father may be more eminently manifest to us than it could otherwise have been. But in the passage of Scripture quoted above, here is another design of the Lord in afflicting his people, which seems almost totally overlooked, but when known will act as a powerful motive with them to acquiesce in his dispensations. "The iniquity of the Amo

* According to Mr. Romaine, the carnal mind here does not signify the ungodly, but the flesh, and that this, even in believers, is enmity against God; and that the law of God, to which the flesh, or old man, is not subject, is the new man, and not the moral law, since we all know that the ungodly are subject to this law of God. Romans 8.

rites is not yet full." The Lord was pleased to acquaint Abraham that his seed should possess the land in which he was only a sojourner; but that they were first to be strangers in a land that was not theirs; that they should serve the people of this land, who should afflict them four hundred years. Whatever other ends the Lord had in view in bringing them into this iron bondage, and keeping them under it so long, this is the only one he mentions-The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full; only that he glances, at the same time, at Egypt-"They shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall they come out.'

The Amorites were the descendants of Ham, and the chief nation that inhabited the land of Canaan; the chief of sinners, where all were "sinners before God exceedingly."

They are typical of the ene

* Gen. 13.