Captives bound in chains made free

2. Work upon your thoughts your utter inability and incapacity to make payment of your Debt, for want of which you might have been a Prisoner for ever. You could not say to God as the servant did to his fellow-servant that demanded his Debt of him; Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all, Mat. 18. 29. There was a double Debt that you owed unto God, one as a reasonable creature, the other, as an unreasonable sinner: the first was the debt of obedience required by the Law, the other the debt of punishment for the transgression of the Law; and you could have paid neither of them; Not ⟨p. 190⟩the debt of perfect and perpetual Obedience; First, because all that you can do is due for the present, and that which is due for the present will not be accepted as payment for that which is past: as if a Tenant owe for Rent, due many quarters past, the payment of what is the rent of the last quarter will not satisfy for all that was due before. Secondly, all that you could do is less than what you ought to do; and in strict justice a part of payment is not accepted for the whole; every living man comes far short of his duty to God, and runs more and more in arrears with God, and therefore so far from paying that we run daily behind hand. Thirdly, man in bondage had not the least mite of that kind which the Law requireth and accepts, to wit, sinless, spotless and perfect Obedience without mixture of sin, pure gold without any dross; and if the Prisoner offer for his liberty money that is not current, the Creditor may refuse it, and keep him in the Prison still. And as you could not pay the debt of obedience to the Law, so neither could you satisfy for the debt of punishment due to you for your disobedience thereunto: the payment or satisfaction must be equivalent to the wrong that was done. God that was offended is an infinite God; therefore that which satisfieth, that the Offender might be free, must be something of an infinite value, which no mere man had to give to God; and therefore those Prisoners that are not set free ⟨p. 191⟩by Christ shall be always paying, but can never fully pay; satisfying, but can never fully satisfy; and therefore such shall never be released, but must lie in Prison for ever.

2. Work upon your thoughts your utter inability and incapacity to make payment of your Debt, for want of which you might have been a Prisoner for ever. You could not say to God as the servant did to his fellow-servant that demanded his Debt of him; Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,