his, and a conceit of
freedom, that securely and certainly destroys the world, by keeping souls
from Jesus Christ, the Prince of Life.

But there is a delivery, and that is the thing expressed in the words.
There is freedom from both attainable. And I think, the very hearing of
such a thing, that there is a redemption from sin and misery possible,
yea, and that some are actually delivered from it; this might stir up in
our hearts some holy ambition, and earnest desire after such a state. How
might it awaken our hearts after it! But this is the wofulness of a
natural condition, that a soul under the power of sin can neither help
itself nor rightly desire help from another, because the will is captive
too. This makes it a very desperate and remediless business to any human
expectation, because such a soul is well-pleased with its own fetters, and
loves its own prison, and so can neither long for freedom, nor welcome the
Son who is come to make free. But yet, there is a freedom and delivery;
and if ye ask who are partakers of it, the text declares it to you,--even
those who are in Jesus Christ, and walk according to the Spirit of Christ.
All those, and those only, who, finding themselves "dead in trespasses and
sins," under the power and dominion of sin, and likewise under the
sentence of death and condemnation, begin to lift up their heads upon the
hope of a Saviour, and to look unto their Redeemer as poor prisoners,
whose eyes and looks are strong entreaties, and instead of many
requests;--such as give an entire renounce unto their former ways and
prevailing lusts, and give up themselves, in testimony of their sense of
his unspeakable favour of redemption, to be wholly his, and not their own.
There are some souls who are free from the dominion of sin, and from the
danger of death, some who were once led about with divers lusts, as well
as others, who walked after the course of this world, and fulfilled the
desires of the flesh, and were children of wrath, as well as others; but
now they are quickened in Christ Jesus, and have abandoned their former
way. They have another rule, another way, other principles. Their study is
now to please God, and grow in holiness. The ways they delighted in, in
former times, are now loathsome. They think that a filthy puddle, which
they drank greedily of; and now it is all, or their chiefest grief and
burden, that so much of that old man must be carried about with them,--and
so this express