not only in words and speeches, but in his mind; acknowledging its excellency, its authority; wishing, also, and willing, to act up to it, but, in fact, doing no such thing; feeling, in practice, à lamentable inability of doing his duty, yet perceiving that it must be done. All he has hitherto attained is a state of successive resolutions and relapses. Much is willed, nothing is effected. No furtherance, no advance, no progress is made in the way of salvation. He feels, indeed, his double nature; but he finds, that the law in his members, the law of the flesh, brings the whole man into captivity. He may have some better strivings, but they are unsuccessful. The result is that he obeys the law of sin.

This is the picture which our Apostle contemplated, and he saw in it nothing but misery: "Owretched man that I am!" another might have seen it in a more comfortable light. He might have hoped that the will would be taken for the deed; that, since he felt in his mind a strong approbation of the law of God; nay,

since he felt a delight in contemplating it, and openly, professed to do so, since he was neither ignorant of it, nor forgetful of it, nor insensible of its obligation; nor ever set himself to dispute its authority; nay, since he had occa-` sionally likewise endeavoured to bring himself to an obedience to this law, however unsuccessful his endeavours had been; above all, since he has sincerely deplored and bewailed his fallings off from it; he might hope, I say, that his was a case for favourable acceptance.

He saw

St Paul saw it not in this light. in it no ground of confidence or satisfaction. It was a state, to which he gives no better name than "the body of death."

It was a

state, not in which he hoped to be saved, but

from which he sought to be delivered. It was a state, in a word, of bitterness and terror ; drawing from him expressions of the deepest anguish and distress: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?”

SERMON XXVII.

EVIL PROPENSITIES ENCOUNTERED BY

THE AID OF THE SPIRIT.

(PART II.)

ROMANS vii. 24.

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

HE,

who has not felt the weakness of his nature, it is probable, has reflected little upon the subject of religion: I should conjecture this to be the case.

But then, when men do feel the weakness of their nature, it is not always that this consciousness carries them into a right course,

but

but sometimes into a course the very contrary

of what is right.

They may see in it, as

hath been observed, and many do see in it, nothing but an excuse and apology for their sins since it is acknowledged, that we carry about with us a frail, not to call it a depraved, corrupted nature, surely, they say, we shall not be amenable to any severities, or extremities of judgment, for delinquencies, to which such a nature must ever be liable: or, which is indeed all the difference there is between one man and another, for greater degrees or less, for more or fewer, of these delinquencies. The natural man takes courage from this consideration. He finds ease in it. It is an opiate to his fears. It lulls him into a forgetfulness of danger, and of the dreadful end, if the danger be real. Then the practical consequence is, that he begins to relax even of those endeavours to obey God, which he has hitherto exerted. Imperfect and inconstant as these endeavours were at best, they become gradually more languid, and more unfrequent, and more insincere, than they were before: 3 F 2

his

his sins increase upon him in the same proportion: he proceeds rapidly to the condition of a confirmed sinner, either secret or open, it makes no difference, as to his salvation. And this descent into the depths of moral vileness and depravity began, in some measure, with perceiving and confessing the weakness of his nature; and giving to this perception that most erroneous, that most fatal turn, the regarding it as an excuse for every thing; and as dispensing even with the self-denials, and with the exertions of self-government, which a man had formerly thought it necessary to exercise, and in some sort, though in no sufficient sort, had exercised.

Now I ask, was this St. Paul's way of considering the subject? Was this the turn which he gave to it? Altogether the contrary. It was impossible for any christian, of any age, to be more deeply impressed with a sense of the weakness of human nature, than he was ; or to express it more strongly than he has done in the chapter before us. But observe;

feeling