4. *Over and above all this, are you zealous of good works? Do you, as you have time, do good to all men? Do you feed the hungry and cloath the naked, and visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction? Do you visit those that are sick? Relieve them that are in prison? Is any a stranger and you take him in? Friend, come up higher. Do you _prophesy in the name_ of Christ? Do you preach the truth as it is in Jesus? And does the influence of his Spirit attend your word, and make it the power of God unto salvation? Does he enable you to bring sinners from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God? Then go and learn what thou hast so often taught, _By grace ye are saved thro’ faith. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but of his own mercy he saveth us._ Learn to hang naked upon the cross of Christ, counting all thou hast done but dung and dross. Apply to him just in the spirit of the dying thief, of the harlot with her seven devils. Else thou art still on the sand, and after saving others, thou wilt lose thy own soul.
5. *Lord! increase my faith, if I now believe! else, give me faith, tho’ but as a grain of mustard-seed!――But _what doth it profit, if a man says he hath faith, and have not works? Can_ that _faith save him_? O no! That faith which hath not works, which doth not produce both inward and outward holiness, which does not stamp the whole image of God on the heart, and purify us as he is pure: that faith which does not produce the whole of the religion described in the foregoing chapters, is not the faith of the gospel, not the Christian faith, not the faith which leads to glory. O beware of this, above all other snares of the devil, of resting on unholy, unsaving faith! if thou layest stress on this, thou art lost for ever: thou still buildest thy house upon the sand. When _the rain descends and the floods come, it_ will surely _fall, and great_ will be _the fall of it_.
6. *Now therefore, build thou upon a rock. By the grace of God, know thyself. Know and feel, that thou wast shapen in wickedness, and in sin did thy mother conceive thee: and yet that thyself hast been heaping sin upon sin, ever since thou couldst discern good from evil. Own thyself guilty of eternal death: and renounce all hope of ever being able to save thyself. Be it all thy hope, to be washed in his blood, and purified by his Spirit, _who himself bore all thy sins, in his own body upon the tree_. And if thou knowest he hath taken away thy sins, so much the more abase thyself before him, in a continued sense of thy total dependance on him for every good thought and word and work, and of thy utter inability to all good, unless he _water thee every moment_.
7. Now weep for your sins, and mourn after God till he turns your heaviness into joy. And even then weep with them that weep: and for them that weep not for themselves. Mourn for the sins and miseries of mankind: and see, but just before your eyes, the immense ocean of eternity, without a bottom or a shore; which has already swallowed up millions of millions of men, and is gaping to devour them that yet remain. See here the house of God, eternal in the heavens; there, hell and destruction without a covering. And thence learn the importance of every moment, which just appears, and is gone for ever!
8. Now add to your seriousness, meekness of wisdom. Hold an even scale as to all your passions, but in particular, as to anger, sorrow and fear. Calmly acquiesce in whatsoever is the will of God. Learn in every state wherein you are, therewith to be content. Be mild to the good: be gentle toward all men; but especially toward the evil and the unthankful. Beware not only of outward expressions of anger, such as calling thy brother _Raca_, or thou fool! but of every inward emotion contrary to love, tho’ it go no farther than the heart. Be angry at sin, as an affront offered to the Majesty of heaven; but love the sinner still: like our Lord, who _looked round about upon_ the Pharisees _with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts_. He was grieved at the sinners, angry at the sin. Thus _be_ thou _angry and sin not_.