goes on hi the road he hath set out in for heaven. O remember, proud man, who thou art, and cease thy vam attempt. Art not thou of Adam's seed? Hast not thou traitor's blood in thy veins? If 'every month be stopped,' Rom. iii. 19, 20, how darest thou open thine ? If 'all the world is become guilty before God, that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified in his sight,' where then shalt thou stand to plead thy innocency before him, who sees thy black skin under thy white feathers, thy foul heart through thy fair carriage? It is faith on Christ that alone can purify thy heart, without which thy washed face and hands (external righteousness I mean) will never commend thee to God. And therefore thou art under a horrible delusion, if thou dost not think that thou needest Christ, and a faith to interest thee in him, as much as the bloodiest murderer or filthiest Sodomite in the world. If a company of men and children in a journey were to wade throvigh some brook, not beyond a man's depth, the men would have the advantage of the children ; but if to cross the sea, the men would need a ship to waft them over, as well as the children : and they might well pass for madmen, if they should think to wade through without the help of a ship, that is offered them as well as the other, because they are a little taller than the rest are : such a foolish desperate adventure wouldst thou give for thy soul, if thou shouldst think to make thy way through the justice of God to heaven, without shipping thyself by faith in Christ, because thou art not so bad in thy external conversation as others. Let me therefore again and again beseech all that are yet destitute of faith, to endeavour for it, and that sjieedilj^ There is nothing deserves the precedency in your thoughts before this. David resolved 'not to give sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids till he found out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob,' Psa. cxxxii. 4, 5. The habitation which pleaseth God most, is thy heart; but it must be a believing heart, Ephes. iii. 17: ' That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' O, how dare you sleep a night in that house where God doth not dwell? and he dwells not in thee, if thou carriest an unbelieving heart in thy bosom. There is never a gospel-sermon thou hearest, but he stands at thy door to be let in. Take heed of multiplying unkindnesses in denying him entertainment; how knowest thou but God may, finding thy heart so often shut by vmbelief against his knocks, suddenly seal thee up under final unbelief.
Quest. But possibly, thou wilt ask now, how thou mayest get this precious grace of faith? — Ans. The answer to this question takes in these following directions.
Section I. — First, Labour to get thy heart convinced of, and affected with, thy imbelief : till this be done, thou wilt be but sluggish and slighty in thy en- deavours for faith. A man may be convinced of other sins, and never think of coming to Christ. Convince a drunkard of his drunkenness, and upon leaving his drunken trade his mind is pacified, yea, he blesseth himself in his reforma- tion, because all the quarrel his conscience had with him was for that particular sin ; but when the Spirit of God convinceth the creature of his unbelief, he gets between him and those burrows in which he did use to earth and hide himself; he hath no ease in his spirit from those plasters now which formerly have relieved him, and so kept him from coming over to Christ. Before, it served the turn to bring his conscience to sleep, when it accused him for such a sin, that he had left the practice of it, and for the neglect of a duty, that now he had taken it up, without any inquiry into his state whether good or bad, par- doned or unpardoned. Thus many make a shift to daub and patch the peace of their consciences, even as some do to keep up an old rotten house, by stopping in here a tile, and there a stone, till a loud wind comes and blows the whole house down. But when once the creature hath the load of its unbelief laid upon his spirit, then it is little ease to him to think he is no drunkard as he was, no atheist in his family, without the worship of God as he was. Thy present state, saith the Spirit of God, is as damning, in that thou art an unbeliexer, as if thou wert these still ; yea, what thou wert thou art, and will be found at the great day, to be the drunkard and atheist, for all thy seeming reformation, except by an intervening faith thou gainest a new name. What though thou art drunk no more, yet the guilt remains upon thee till faith stiikes it off with the blood of Christ. God will be paid his debt by thee, or Christ for thee ; and Christ pays no reckoning for unbelievers.
ABOVE ALL, TAKING THK SHIELD OV FAITH. 455