wer, thou must put
these away. Give them a bill of divorcement, never to turn again. Many a
man parts with his sin, because it leaves him, he puts it not away,
temptation goes, and occasion goes away, but the root of it abides within
him. Many men have particular jars with their corruptions, but they
reconcile again, as differences between married persons. They do not
arise(291) to hate their sin in its sinful nature. But if thou hate it,
then put it away. And who would not hate that which Christ so hated, that
he came to destroy it? 1 John iii. 5. What a great indignity must it be to
the gospel, to make that the ground of living in sin, which is pressed, in
it, as the grand persuasion to forsake it? Seeing we are washed from the
guilt of it, O let us not love to keep the stain and filth of it! Why are
we washen? Was it not Christ's great intendment and purpose, to purify to
himself a holy people? We are washen from the guilt of our sins, and is it
to defile again? Is it not rather to keep ourselves henceforth clean, that
we may be presented holy and unblameable in his sight,--that we may seek to
be as like heaven as may be. But who ceases to do these evils, that he
says are pardoned? Who puts away the evil of these doings, the guilt
whereof he thinks God hath put away? Could ye find in your hearts to
entertain those evils so familiarly, to pour out your souls unto them, if
that peace of God were indeed spoken unto you? Would not the reflex of his
love prove more constraining on your hearts? Were it possible, that if ye
did indeed consider, that your lusts cost Christ a dear price to shed his
blood, that your pleasures made his soul heavy to death, and that he hath
laid down his life to ransom you from hell, were it possible, I say, that
ye would live still in these lusts, and choose these pleasures of sin,
which were so bitter to our Lord Jesus? I beseech you be not deceived,--if
ye love the puddle still, that ye cannot live out of it, do not say that
ye are washed. Ye may have washen yourselves with soap and nitre, but the
blood of Christ hath not cleansed; for, if that blood sprinkled your
conscience once, to give you an answer to all challenges, it could not but
send forth streams to purify the heart, and so the whole man. The blood
and water might be joined, the justifying Saviour, and the sanctifying
Spirit, for both these are in this gospel washing, 1 Cor vi. 11, 1 John v.
6. "This is he that came by water and blood