and dwell in it. The day of judgment will be a
great day of excommunication. O how many thousands will be then cut off
from the church of the living God, and delivered over to Satan, because
they were really under his power, while they were church-members and
Abraham's sons! Let me tell you then, that all of us were once in this
state of bondage which Christ speaks of,--he that "committeth sin is the
servant of sin," John viii. 34; "and the servant abideth not in the house
for ever." So that I am afraid, many of us who are in the visible church,
and stand in this congregation, shall not have liberty to stand in the
assembly of the first-born, when all the sons are gathered in one to the
new Jerusalem. Sin hath a right over us, and it hath a power over us, and
therefore it is called a law of sin. There is a kind of authority that it
hath over us, by virtue of God's justice, and our own voluntary consent.
The Lord in his righteousness hath given over all the posterity of Adam,
for his sin, which he sinned, as a common person, representing us,--he hath
given us all over to the power of a body of death within us. Since man did
choose to depart from his Lord, he hath justly delivered him into the
hands of a strange lord to have dominion over him. The transmitting of
such an original pollution, to all men, is an act of glorious justice. As
he in justice gives men over to the lusts of their own hearts now, for
following of these lusts contrary to his will; so was it, at first, "by
one man's disobedience many were made sinners," and that, in God's holy
righteousness, sin entered into the world, and had permission of God to
subdue and conquer the world to itself, because man would not be subject
to God. But as there is the justice of God in it, so there is a voluntary
choice and election, which gives sin a power over us. We choose a strange
lord, and he lords it over us. We say to our lusts, come ye and rule over
us. We submit our reason, our conscience, and all, to the guidance and
leading of our blind affections and passions. We choose our bondage for
liberty. And thus sin hath a kind of law over us, by our own consent. It
exerciseth a jurisdiction; and when once it is installed in power and
clothed with it, it is not so easy again to put it out of that throne.
There is a conspiring, so to speak, of these two, to make out the
jurisdiction and authority of sin over us. God gives us over to iniquity
and unrighteousness, and we yiel