remarked.
and by no other power is it to be brought about." Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a selfrighteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world. And this is a second principle of my ensuing discourse.
4. The duty itself, "Mortify the deeds of the body," is nextly to be remarked.
Three things are here to be inquired into:-- (1.) What is meant by the body; (2.) What by the deeds of the body; (3.) What by mortifying of them.
(1.) The body in the close of the verse is the same with the flesh in the beginning: "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye .... mortify the deeds of the body," -- that is, of the flesh. It is that which the apostle hath all along discoursed of under the name of the flesh; which is evident from the prosecution of the antithesis between the Spirit and the flesh, before and after. The body, then, here is taken for that corruption and depravity of our natures whereof the body, in a great part, is the seat and instrument, the very members of the body being made servants unto unrighteousness thereby, Romans 6:19. It is indwelling sin, the corrupted flesh or lust, that is intended. Many reasons might be given of this metonymical expression, that I shall not now insist on. The "body" here is the same with the "old man," and the "body of sin," Romans 6:6; or it may synecdochically express the whole person considered as corrupted, and the seat of lusts and distempered affections.
(2.) The deeds of the body. The greek word denoteth the outwards actions chiefly, "the works of the flesh," as they are called, Gal. 5:19; which are there said to be "manifest," and are enumerated. Now, though the outward deeds are here only expressed, yet the inward and next causes, from whence they spring. The apostle calls them deeds, as that which every lust tends unto; though it do but conceive and prove abortive, it aims to bring forth a perfect sin.
Having, both in the seventh and beginning of this chapter, treated of indwelling lust and sin as the fountain and principle of all sinful actions, he here mentions its destruction under the name of the effects which it