plucking out of a right eye. To
make a man cease from such evils, requires that a stronger power be within
him than is in the world. Men may cease for a time, for want of occasions
or temptations to sin, when there is no active principle in them,
restraining or keeping their souls from such sins as appear after, when no
sooner is occasion offered, but they run as the horse to his course, or
the stone falleth downward,--they receive fire as easily as dry stubble.
That is not Christian ceasing, which is that which the soul argues itself
into, from grounds of the gospel. Should I, who am dead to sin, live any
longer therein? This is a principle of cessation, and this is true
liberty,--when the soul can abstain from present temptations upon such
grounds and persuasions of the gospel, then it is really above itself and
above the world, then hath it that true victory. Many men cease only from
sin, because sin ceases from them, they have not left it, but it hath left
them. The old man thinks himself a changed man, because he wallows not in
the lusts of the flesh, as in his youth. But, alas! no thanks to him for
that, he hath not ceased from his lusts. But temptations to him, or power
and ability in him to follow them hath ceased,--there is no change in his
spirit within, for he can talk of his former sins with pleasure, he
continues in other evils as bad, but more suitable to his age. In a word,
he is so inwardly, that if he were in his body, and occasions offering as
before, he would be just the same. Some, again, cease from some evils,
from some principles, but, alas! they are no Christian principles. What
restrains the multitude of civilians from gross scandals? Is it any thing
but affectation of a good name and report in the world? Is it not fear of
reproach or censure? Is it not because possibly they have no particular
inclination to such evils? And yet there are many other evils of the heart
as evil though more subtile, that they please themselves in, as pride,
covetousness, malice, envy, ambition, &c. What shall all your abstinence
be accounted of, when it is not love to Jesus Christ, or hatred of sin,
that principles it? It is not the outward abstinence that will commend
you such it is, as the principles of it are. And these only are the true
Christian principles of mortification,--love of Jesus Christ, which
constrains men to live no more to themselves, but to be new creatures, 2
Cor. v. 14, 15; and hatred of