An Alarm to Unconverted Sinners

Dir. IV. Settle it upon thine heart, that thou art under an everlasting inability ever to recover thy self. Never think thy praying, reading, hearing, confessing, amending will do the cure. These must be attended; but thou art undone if thou restest in them. Rom. 10. 3. Thou art a lost man, if thou hopest to escape drowning upon any other plank, but Jesus Christ. Act. 4. 12. Thou must unlearn thy •elf, and renounce thine own wisdom, thine own righteousness, thine own strength, and throw thy self wholly upon Christ, as a man that swimmeth casteth himself upon the water, or else thou canst not escape. While men trust in themselves, and establish their own righteousness, and have confidence in the flesh, they will not come savingly to Christ. Luke 18. 19. Phil. 3. 3. Thou must know thy gain to be but loss and dung, thy strength but weakness, thy righteousness rags and rottenness, before there will be an effectual closure between Christ and thee. Phil. 3. 7, 8, 9. 2 Cor. 3. 5. Isaiah 64. 6. Can the lifeless carcass shake off his grave-cloths, and loose the bonds of death? Then mayest thou recover thy self, who art dead in trespasses, and sins, and under an impossibility of serving thy maker (acceptably) in this condition. Rom. 8. 8. Heb. 11. 6. Therefore, when thou goest to pray, or meditate, or to do any of the duties, to which ⟨p. 148⟩thou art here directed; go out of thy self, call in the help of the spirit, as despairing to do any thing pleasing to God, in thine own strength. Yet neglect not thy duty, but lie at the pool, and wait in the way of the spirit. While the Eunuch was reading, then the Holy-Ghost sent Philip to him.