ate and senseless creatures. It is some
one or other consideration without us moves us,--custom, censure,
education, and such like. Ah! these are the principles of our religion.
How many would have no religion, no form of it, if they were not among
such company! And therefore we see many change it according to companies,
as the fish doth its skin, according to the colour of that which is
nearest it. How many would do many things they dare not for punishment and
censure, and for that same dare not leave other things undone! In a word,
the most part of us are such as would walk in no path of godliness, if it
were not the custom of the time and fear of men that constrained us. But,
my brethren, let it not be so among you, you who are in Christ Jesus. Let
this be predominant in your hearts to constrain you not to live to
yourselves, but unto God, even this,--that you believe Christ hath died for
sinners, that they might live from sin. And from this let your hearts be
inflamed with his love, that it may carry you on in a sweet and blessed
necessity to walk in all well-pleasing. Let the consideration of his love
lay on a constraint, but a constraint of willingness, to live to him who
hath thus loved you. But as the principle is spiritual, so must the end
be; and I think these two complete the mystery of the practice of
Christianity,--to act from another principle unto another end; even as
these two make up the mystery of iniquity in our hearts,--to act from
ourselves unto ourselves. Every man naturally makes a god of himself, is
his own Alpha and Omega, the beginning of his actions, and the end of
them, which is proper to God. As the fall hath cut off the subordination
of the soul to God in its actions, that it cannot now derive all from that
blessed Fountain of all-being and well-being, so is this channel of
reference of all our actions to God stopped, that they do not tend unto
him, as they are not derived from him; and thus they return unto a man's
self again. There is one point of self, and making it our aim and design,
which possibly many do not take heed unto. It is ordinary for us to act
and walk in Christian duties, for our salvation,--for obtaining of life
eternal, as our chief and only end, which is but an inferior end; because
we ought not to walk mainly for life, but to life. We should not walk
after the command only for heaven, but in the way of it unto heaven. Our
spiritual walking can never purchase us a right unt