ou did
know your hearts you would find their faces turned backward and averted
from God, and could no more please yourselves in such a confession of the
truth, than the devil hath reason to think himself a believer, because he
is convinced that Christ is the Son of God, and confessed it too, no more
than the son that promised to go to the garden to work, and went not, had
ground to think himself an obedient son, (Matt. xxi. 30). Such a
confession of duty may be extorted from damned spirits, and therefore you
would not draw this vail over the wretched wickedness of your natures, to
the end that you may conceive well of yourselves. It is so far from
extenuating or excusing, that the very conviction of the great obligation
to love and obey God, is the greatest aggravation of the enmity. It is
this which makes it the purest malice and perfectest hatred, that knowing
the goodness of God, convinced of our bound duty to love and serve him,
yet in the very light of such a shining truth, to turn our hearts away
from him, and exercise all acts of hostility against him. That you may
know, then, wherein the enmity of your hearts consists, I shall instance
it in three branches or evidences. There is an enmity in the
understanding, that it cannot stoop to believing of the truth, there is an
enmity in the will, that it cannot subject to the obedience of God's holy
commands, and this is extended also to a stubborn rebellion against the
will of God, manifested in the dispensations of his providence, in a word,
the natural and carnal mind is incapable of faith, of obedience, and of
submission. There are many things revealed in the scripture, that the
natural man cannot receive or know, "for they are foolishness to him," 1
Cor. ii. 14. Some spirits there are lifted up above others, either by
nature or education, in which this rebellion doth more evidently appear,
reason in them contends with religion, and they will believe no more than
they can give a reason for. There is a wisdom in some men, that despiseth
the simplicity, or the inevidence(185) of the gospel, and accounts it
foolishness, the carnal mind will needs start out from implicit trusting
of God, when once it is possessed with some imagination of wisdom,
therefore how many are the insurrections of men's spirits against God's
absolute power over the creatures, against the mysteries of the holy
Trinity and incarnation, against the resurrection of our bodies? In these,
and such like,