From Volume Three on the Holy Spirit - 1674 2. There is yet another part or effect of our sanctification by the Holy Ghost, which consisteth in and is called mortification of sin. As what we have already insisted on concerneth the improvement and practice of the principle of grace, wherewithal believers are endued; so what we now propose concerneth the weakening, impairing, and destroying of the contrary principle of sin, in its root and fruits, in its principle and actings.

This is taken from the Christian in Complete Armour.

Afflictions have in them some token of God's displeasure against sin, which those who are exercised by them are led by the consideration of unto a fresh view of the vileness of it; for although afflictions are an effect of love, yet it is of love mixed with care to obviate and prevent distempers. Whatever they are else, they are always chastisements; and correction respects faults.

Charles Bridges on Psalm 119, from C. H. Spurgeon's Commenting. "Worth its weight in gold. Albeit that the work is neither learned nor very original we prize it for its surpassing grace and unction."

Whereas the spring and fountain of all the pollution of sin lies in the depravation of the faculties of our natures, which ensued on the loss of the image of God, he renews them again by his grace, Tit. iii. 5. Our want of due answering unto the holiness of God, as represented in the law, and exemplified in our hearts originally, is a principal part and universal cause of our whole pollution and defilement by sin.

Man is not now as God made him. He has lost the crown and glory of his creation, and has plunged himself into an awful gulf of sin and misery. By his own perversity he has wrecked himself and placed a consequence of woe on his posterity. He is a ruined creature as the result of his apostasy from God.

It is our deep conviction that the vital question most requiring to be raised today is this: Is man a totally and thoroughly depraved creature by nature? Does he enter the world completely ruined and helpless, spiritually blind and dead in trespasses and sins? According as is our answer to that question, so will be our views on many others. It is on the basis of this dark background that the whole Bible proceeds.