822 THE POU'ERS AND CONTESTS OP ELESSE AND SPIRIT. that it may not get the mastery. over the soul. Gal. v. 24. and 1 Cor. ix. 27. Nourish and support the flesh, that is your duty : Heal it when it is sick, and endeavour to preserve it in health, that it may be a proper servant to the spirit.. It was made for this end ; and the soul' should know its own dignity, and keep the body in its place: But dare not pamper it with too much fondness, lest it usurp the do- minion, and cause the soul to walk after it in the sinful appetites and inclinations thereof; which is quite con- trary to the character of the saints, as they are described by the apostle ; Rom. viii. 1. " Those that are in Christ Jesus, to whom there is no condemnation, walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." MEDITATION II. Is the body such a 'foul and wretched spring of sin ? Then what a heaven of purity and pleasure is provided for the children of God at their 'death, and is contained in those fewwords of the apostle, absentfrom the body ;" Cor. v. 8, When a child of Adam has received a new nature by the new -creating power of the Holy Spirit, and is become a son or daughter of God, it is thencefòrward as it were, a prisoner in this untoward mansion of flesh and blood : It is in a state of perpetual conflict, yet it cannot change these old sensual Appetites, nor correct at once these long habits of irregular desire. It labours daily in this work ; it maintains, a vigorous warfare against the flesh; but, through the-power of sensible enticing ob- jects all around us, it is too often carried away into sinful compliances, O wretched man that Iam, saith the apos- tle, what an unhappy laze, or spring of sin, is there in mry members, that carries me away from the better dic- tates of the law of my renewed mind and bears me cap- tive to the law ofsin that is in my flesh ! O wretched man. indeed ! and who shall deliver Me? O blessed hour of death, that shall break the chain and set the prisoner free ! O sweet and glorious moment of release from this body, which tainted my spirit early with its poisonous influences; and, by drawing me away perpetually by its dangerous attachments to things sensible, has kept me long at a painful distance frommy God ! THE IMPROVEMENT. The former part of this discourse proposed this senti-
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