rinimissk nttfotio Ea ftt: thither: Faith thews it to be an evil always prefent; the Believer fliakec himfeif, and it ad- hers; flys, and it encompafTes; mortifies, and it lives,; prays, weeps, fweats, and fights, and yet the Canaanite is in the Lind; like a living man chained to a dead, he carries about his own loathfomnefs,a body of death all his days; this cleaves to him as the blácknefs to the Ethi- opian, and as the fretting Breading L.eprofie to the houfe;after all his waffling and fcraping of himfelf, it will yet be in him, till death dif= folve him into duff : Such reprefentations as thefe made by Faith,fill the Believer with fhame and felf - abhorrency, and raife up in him an irreconcileable hatred againf it. Fourthly, Faith, f far as it is acted, though it make not a total riddance of it, doth yet im- prifon it, that it cannot go at large and riot in fcandalous Sins. No, nor fteal out in an evil thought, but it will be arrested in its paffage to the Will for a content; as it was Gods cau- tion, beware that there be not a thought in thy Belial -heart againft Charity, Deut. 15.p. So it is Faiths endeavour to hop corruption even in a thought; the firth is hill a lufting,and would have one piece of forbidden fruit or other in its mouth ; but Faith oppofes, and would,if it could,leave nothing of it to breath in the Believer: This is that the Scripture calls, The crucifying of the old man; Faith arraigns the old man as the Arch- malefaeror in the World,ccndemns him as worthy to die ; firips of his veils and falfe coverings, and by holy 265
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