A man now in the state of grace must look for nothing from himself ; for as we are saved altogether out of ourselves by Christ the mediator, so the fitting for that glorious salvation that we have purchased by Christ, it is by the Spirit. The working of our salvation is by God, and the assurance of it to our souls is by the Holy Ghost, by the witness of God sealed to us. And the fitting and preparing and changing and sanctifying of us, it is by the Holy Ghost. All is out of us in the covenant of grace, wherein God is a gracious Father in Christ. All is out of us in regard of the spring. The work indeed is terminated in us. The Spirit of God alters our under- standing, will, and affections, but the spring is out of us. As in paradise
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those four streams that watered paradise, that ran through it, yet the head of them was out of paradise, in another part of the world. So though the work of the Holy Ghost, the streams of the Spirit, run through the soul and water it ; yet the spring of those graces, the Holy Ghost, is out of us, and Christ the root of salvation is out of us. For God in the covenant of grace will not trust us, as in Adam God trusted us with grace, he had grace in his own keeping. If he would he might have stood. He had liberty of will, but God saw we were all ill husbands of grace and goodness, that ho would not trust us again. Therefore he trusted God-man, the second Adam, with grace ; and he sends his Spirit into us, and conveys gi-ace ' from glory to glory ' by degrees, and all by the Spirit of the Lord.
And, in the next place, this point of doctrine should marvellously com- fort and stay us, and direct us.
Use 2. It should comfort us when we find no goodness at all, nor no strength at all in our natures. Doth God expect that we should have anything from ourselves ? Who expects anything from a barren wilderness ? Our hearts are such. God knows it well enough. There is no goodness in us, no more than there is moisture in a stone or a rock. Therefore he looks that we should beg the Spirit of him, and depend upon him for the Spirit of his Son, to open our eyes with the Spirit of illumination ; to reveal his love to us, and then to sanctify us and to work us more and more to glory, and to work out all corruption by little and little. He expects that we should depend upon him for the Spirit in all things we do.
Therefore Christians are much to blame. They think to work and to hew out of their own nature the love of God, and keep ado with their own hearts, as if they had a principle of grace in themselves as of them- selves ; and they may long enough work that way. But that is not the way, but aclcnowiedgment that in ourselves, as of ourselves, as Saint Paul saith, wo cannot do anything, Philip, ii. 13. We cannot so much, by all the power in the world, as think a good thought. If we should live a thousand years, there cannot rise out of our hearts a good desire of ourselves. All is out of us from the Spirit of the Lord. Now thereupon we must not look for it in ourselves, but go to God for his Holy Spirit. Go to Christ for his Spirit, for the Spirit proceeds from them both, that he would enlighten us and sanctify us, as I shewed in particular before. We must not there- fore presume that we can do anything of ourselves ; and so we must not despair. Shall we despair when once we believe in Christ ? when we have abundance of grace and Spirit in our head Christ ? And he can derive * his Spirit as he pleaseth. He gives the Spirit by degrees as he pleaseth ; for he is a voluntary head to dispense it as he will. He is not a natural head. Who shall despair when he is in Christ, who is complete ? And in him we receive grace for grace, grace answerable for grace in him.
Let none presume that he can do anything of himself, for you see how God sutfered holy men to miscarry. It was foUy in this case in Peter to presume of his own strength : ' Though all forsook Christ,' Mark xiv. 31, seq., yet would not he. He presumed upon his own strength. God left him to himself. You see how foully he fell. So it is with us all, when we presume upon the strength of our nature and parts. We must not come to this holy place in the strength of our own wit and parts, but come with a desire that the Sphit may join with his ordinances, and make them effica- cious for our change. All change is by the Spirit of the Lord. Nothing works above his own sphere. It is above the power of nature to work any- » That is, ' convey.' — G.