which we will not cut off. The profane sinner must abandon all his evil ways, and turn unto God with his whole heart. The proud formalist must renounce all his self-dependence, and must live a life of faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, and a life of entire devotedness of heart to God. The inconsistent •professor also must be brought to a sense of his peculiar guilt and danger; and must become like his blessed Lord and Saviour in all his tempers and dispositions, in all his spirit and deportment towards God and man.
True it is, that these things cannot be done by any power of our own : but this is no reason that we should not address ourselves to the work ; nor will it be any excuse for not accomplishing the work, since God has promised to give his Holy Spirit unto all that ask him, and has assured us that his grace shall be sufficient for us. This then is the direction which all must follow ; and the foregoing statement clearly shews how important it is that we should follow it earnestly and without delay.]
2. Of encouragement ; " So iniquity shall not be your ruin " —
[Iniquity must be our ruin, if we do not thus repent : nothing can save us : God himself, if we may so speak, cannot save us; because he cannot depart from the rules which he has prescribed to himself for his procedure in the last day. How- ever much he may desire to extend mercy to us, he will not do it to the dishonour of his own perfections, and to the destruction of all the established principles of his moral government. No : " except we repent, we must all" inevi- tably and eternally " perish." But if we thus repent, all will be well: our iniquities, whatever they may have been, shall all be put away from us, as far as the east is from the west. Hear the declaration of the Most High God: " Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon f." O let this sink down into our ears : let it encourage us to put away all our hard thoughts of God, and to seek him with our whole hearts. Let us search and try our ways : let us bring ourselves to the touchstone of God's unerring word: let us now so " judge ourselves, that we may not hereafter be judged of the Lord : " and, if a fear arise in our minds that our sins are too great to be forgiven, let this thought comfort us, that " where sin has abounded, grace shall much more abound ; and that, as sin has reigned unto death, even so shall grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord."]
f Isai. lv. 7.