A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

3. Otherwise you are not acquainted with the spirit, his work is to mortify lusts, Rom. 8. 13. and they that are after the flesh, do savour of the things of the flesh; and they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit; Rom. 8. 5. After whom do ye walk? After your own lusts? Or after the Spirit of God?

3. Otherwise you are not acquainted with the spirit, his work is to mortifie lusts, Rom. 8. 13. and they that are after the flesh, do savour of the things of the flesh; and they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit; Rom. 8. 5. After whom do ye walk? After your own lusts? Or after the Spirit of God?

4. God doth not only require you in point of Sovereignty, to put away your lusts, but also pleadeth with you upon terms of grace, Titus 2. 14. The grace of God that bring th• salvation, teacheth you to deny worldly lusts: Grace hath denied us nothing, it hath given us Christ, and all things with him; and shall we stick at our lusts, that are not worth the keeping? Nature is much addicted to these lusts, but surely God loves Christ much more then we love the world; ⟨p. 472⟩his love is infinite and unlimited, like his essence, yet God gave up the Son of his love; Grace counteth nothing too dear for us, not the blood of Christ the joys of Heaven, and shall we count any thing too dear to part with for Graces sake? God forbid. A ^*right eye, and a right hand, cannot be so dear to us a Christ was to God: At what cost hath Grace been at to redeem us, and save us! And shall Grace be at all this cost for nothing? If God had commanded us a greater thing, ought we not to have done it? If to give the body to be burnt, to offer the first born for the sin of thy soul? considering his absolute right over the crew ture, he might have require thy life, and thy children's life, but he only requireth thy lusts, things not worth the keeping, the bane of the soul, a bad inmate; which if we know its pestilent influence, we needed no more arguments to turn it out of doors; thy lusts God requireth, things we are bound to part with, to preserve the integrity and perfection of our natures, if God had never dealt with us in a way of grace; but now shall grace plead in vain, when it presseth to deny lusts, will be the shame and horror of the damned to all eternity, that they have stood with God for a trifle, that they would not part with dng for gold, with a little brutish contentment, for the consolations of the Spirit, especially when grace which hath so deeply pe-engaged us, pleadeth for it.