The new birthThe nevv birth

CHAP. XI. Exhorting the Regenerate to grow in Grace.

And this is the consolation of God we have to give you: O, all ye, his sons and daughters;¹ hearken a little further (I pray you) to the exhortation that must ensue: Seeing the Lord of Heaven hath created a new life in you, learn you two things for the necessity thereof to salvation; First,² to cherish it in your selves; secondly, so much as is possible, to propagate it unto others. First (I say), make much of this life of grace; this new man created in you according to God in righteousness, and true holiness; make much of it: strive to confirm it; strengthen it, and increase it; so soon as the life of nature is seen in a man, he is made (you know) desirous of nourishment, that augmentation may follow generation: So be you also for your souls, that you may at one time, both show your new birth, and confirm it. In truth this I must tell you assuredly (for I know it to be as true, as the Lord himself is to be trusted of his word), he that once hath this life, shall never see death. But I told you before, that he may feel sickness; and that if it were not for the sick-making physic; which the Lord will give him for his recovery, he might feel death. Now therefore I am to entreat you all, to save the labour of taking ⟨p. 130⟩physic, and that by seeking to prevent diseases, and to grow in soundness of spiritual strength. You all know right well, what be the chief things which impair natural strength, and procure diseases of body, namely, poison, surfeiting, and starving. It is even so likewise with the soul:³ first, by poison it envenometh it self; secondly, by surfeiting it distempereth it self; and lastly, by starving it infeebleth it self. Beware of rank poison: Sin, I say, sin; things unlawful and condemned; these are very stark poison to the soul: Rats-bane, and Hen-bane, and Mercury, and Opium; yea, the very inward moisture of a Toad or Serpent, are no more dangerous to the flesh, then this is to the spirit. And when a Christian man begins to yield so much to the naughtiness of his own hart, that he takes leave to allow some sin in himself, in some small degrees; then it ceaseth not to work woefully in his soul, till at last it have caused him to break forth into the gross and foul practice of it, and then is he poisoned indeed; and if the Lord should not come with his physic, he could not but be damned: