Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulness of sin. The life…Three treatises of the vanity of the creature. The sinfulnesse of sinne. The life…

Fourthly, though sin seem dead to secure, civill, moral, superstitiously zealous men, in regard of any present sense or sting, yet all that while it is alive in them, and will certainly, when the book shall be opened, either in the ministry of the word to conversion, or in the last judgement to condemnation, revive again. All these points are very natural to the Text, but I should be too long a stranger to the course I intend if I should insist on them. I return therefore to the main purpose. Here is the state of sin, sin revived; the Guilt of sin, I died; the Conviction of it by the spirit bringing the spiritual sense of the Commandment, and writing it in the heart of a man, and so pulling him away from his own Conclusions.

Fourthly, though sinne seeme dead to secure, civill, morall, superstitiously zealous men, in regard of any present sense or sting, yet all that while it is alive in them, and will certainely, when the booke shall be opened, either in the ministry of the word to conversion, or in the last judgement to condemnation, reviue againe. All these points are very naturall to the Text, but I should be too long a stranger to the course I intend if I should insist on them. I returne therefore to the maine purpose. Here is the state of sinne, sinne revived; the Guilt of sinne, I died; the Conviction of it by the spirit bringing the spirituall sense of the Commandement, and writing it in the heart of a man, and so pulling him away from his owne Conclusions.

The Doctrines then which I shall insist on are these two. First, the spirit by the Commandment convinceth a man to be in the state of sin. Secondly, the spirit by the Commandment convinceth a man to be in the state of death because of sin. To convince a man that he is in the state of sin is To make a man so to set to his own seal and serious acknowledgement to this truth That he is a sinner, as that withal he shall feel within himself the quality of that estate, and in humility and self-abhorrency conclude against himself all the naughtiness and loathsome influences which are proper to kindle and catch in his nature and person by reason of that estate: and so not in expression only but in experience, not in word but in truth, not out of fear but out of loathing, not out of constraint but most willingly, not out of formality but out of humility, not according to the general voice but out of a serious scrutiny and self examination, load and charge himself with all the noisomeness and venom, with all the dirt and garbage, with all the malignity and frowardness that his nature and person do abound withal even as the waves of