But if you cannot find one such work, then see how unsuitable to your state is the doctrine for which you contend.
Perhaps it will be said, that God does not require of us imperfect creatures any thing that is perfect, but only that we be sincere. But who will venture to make his own sincerity the ground of his salvation ? If this be the law by which we are to be tried, who shall stand ? Who shall say, that from the earliest period of his life he has sincerely striven in every thing to please God, and to approve himself to God ? Alas ! those who stand upon their own sincerity are little aware of the deceitfulness and wickedness of their own hearts ; and if they would but look back throughout their whole hves, they would find, that their sincerity, like that of Saul of Tarsus, has only stimulated them to a greater measure of inveteracy against the Gospel of Christ.
We will mention only one more refuge to which these persons will be disposed to flee, and that is, their having done as zaell as they could : ' I have done as well as I could, and therefore I doubt not but that God will have mercy upon me.' But in this we shall all fail, as much as in all the fallacious hopes that have preceded it. For, who has done as well as he could throughout his own life ? Who will dare to appeal to God even respecting the best day in his life, that there was no one thing omitted which he might have done for him, nor any one thing done in a less perfect manner than it might have been done ?
It is clear, that in all the ways of salvation which men devise for themselves, whether by good works, or repentance, or faith and works united, or sincerity, or doing as well as we can, there is not a spot of ground whereon to place our foot : we must go to the ark of God, and there only can we find rest for our weary souls.
Permit me, then, to address you as dying persons, and to ask. What you will think of these things when standing on the brink and precipice of eternity? Now you can speculate, and dispute, and speak with