The application of redemption

That we may follow the footsteps of a corruption, and track a distemper to the full, we must have our COMMISSION that must Authorize us, and carry us on in our Course. And here the Direction is this:

That we may follow the footsteps of a corruption, and tracka distemper to the full, we must have our COMMISSION that must Authorize us, and carry us on in our Course. And here the Direction is this:

We must go out to this Work of Meditation in the virtue ¹of an Ordinance, and so of Commission from God: We must attend a Word that must guide us in it, and look to Christ and […] Pro nise, and set our Grace awork, that by the power of his might, and the help of his Grace, we may both be enabled and preserved in the service; ⟨p. 250⟩for such is the ticklishness of our corrupt hearts, and the infecting and tainting Nature of sin, that it's hard to meddle with it, but some pollution will cleave unto us by it. And it is that which the Saints, and those most sincere, have found by experience, and in much bitterness have complained of, that […] they have set themselves about this work by Meditation of their sin, their hearts have suddenly been carried aside with it, and tainted with a kind of delight in it, when they intended to loath and abhor themselves in the Consideration thereof. Thus by the abuse of this Duty, we come to be moulded and melted into the temper of sin by Meditation, when we intended to be burdened with it. The error and mistake is here; We do not bring the Authority of the Word, and Power of Christ, and help of his Grace against sin, which would both discover and subdue it: But we bring the Temptation, and occasion, and our corrupt hearts together, they solder and suit one with another, like tinder to the spark, it increaseth the fire, not quencheth it, provokes a corruption, not kills it. This is to make a brabble with a mans lust, when out of our own strength we enter into a contestation with our distemper; we act under the Covenant of Works, by an irritating power we add to the strength and dominion of sin. Whereas did we go against it in the Covenant of Grace, we should destroy the dominion of it,