This is a very dead-like condition,—­what can be the causes or occasions thereof?

I answer, (and this is the second particular,) some or all of these things may be considered as having a hand in this: 

1.  No care to keep up a tender frame of heart, but growing slack, loose, and careless, in going about Christian duties, may bring on such a distemper.

2.  Slighting of challenges for omission of duties, or leaving duties over the belly of conscience, may make way for such an evil.

3.  Giving way to carnality and formality in duties, is a ready mean to usher in this evil.  For when the soul turns carnal or formal in the discharge of duties, duties have not that spiritual lustre which they had, and the soul becometh the sooner wearied of them, as seeing no such desirableness in them, nor advantage by them.

4.  When people drown themselves in cares of the world, they occasion this deadness to themselves; for then duties not only are not gone about heartily, but they are looked on as a burden, and the man becometh weary of them; and from that he cometh to neglect them; and by continuing in the neglect of them, he contracteth an aversion of heart for them; and then an utter unfitness and indisposition for discharging of them followeth.

5.  Satan hath an active hand here, driving on with his crafts and wiles from one step to another.

6.  The hand also of a sovereign God is to be observed here, giving way to this, yea, and ordering matters in his justice and wisdom so, as such persons shall come under such an indisposition, and that for wise and holy ends; as, (1.) That by such a dispensation he may humble them, who possibly were puffed up before, as thinking themselves fit enough to go about any duty, how difficult or hazardous soever, as Peter, who boasted so of his own strength, as he thought nothing to lay down his life for Christ, and to die with him; and yet at length came to that, that he could not, or durst not speak the truth to a damsel. (2.) That he may punish one spiritual sin with another. (3.) To give warning to all to watch and pray, and to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, and not to be high-minded, but fear. (4.) That thereby, in his just and righteous judgment, he may lay a stumbling-block before some, to the breaking of their neck, when they shall, for this cause, reject and mock at all religion. (5.) That he may give proof at length of his admirable skill in recovering from such a distemper, that no flesh might have ground to despair, in the most dead condition they can fall into. (6.) And to shew, sometimes, what a sovereign dispensator of life he is, and how free he is in all his favours.

As to the third particular, how Christ is life in this case,

We answer, 1.  By keeping possession of the believer, even when he seemeth to be most dead; and keeping life at the root, when there is neither fruit appearing nor flourishes, and hardly many green leaves to evidence life.