An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

7. Let us consider, What are the opposites to this grace of God; or, What are those sins that do keep off this grace of God from us. For though this Sun shine never so gloriously; though this Ocean be never so full, yet if we shut our eyes, or wilfully stop the streams of this fountain, we shall not receive any good by it. And there are these remarkable sins, like so many opacous bodies, that do interclude this grace from us. I shall not meddle with Doctrinal opinions, but practical indispositions. And

7. Let us consider, What are the opposites to this grace of God; or, What are those sinnes that do keep off this grace of God from us. For though this Sunne shine never so gloriously; though this Ocean be never so full, yet if we shut our eyes, or wilfully stop the streams of this fountain, we shall not receive any good by it. And there are these remarkable sins, like so many opacous bodies, that do interclude this grace from us. I shall not meddle with Doctrinal opinions, but practical indispositions. And

1. He who seeketh to be justified by the works of the Law, by his external obedience thereunto, he will never come under the sweet benefit of Gods grace. A man that is fully confident in his own righteousness, and the good of his own heart, will always be neglective of the grace of God. You may see this largely by those arguments the Apostle hath in his Epistles. A pharisaical spirit is always an adversary to Free-grace; but oh the proneness in all to this sin, especially men civilized, and merely moralized, that are kept from the gross pollutions of the world! You may as soon remove the earth, as such, from their supposed righteousness. The Apostle speaketh it as the general sin of the Jews, Rom. 10. 2. That being ignorant of the righteousness of God, they went about to establish their own righteousness. They would fain set up this Dagon. This is the sweet poison, that is the death of so many; Intus existens prohibet alienum. And when the sensible object is put upon the sensitive faculty, it cannot perceive. And hence it is that there are very few, that do indeed admire and set up this grace of God. If the Prodigal had fared as deliciously every day, as Dives, he would never have desired his Fathers house.