Heaven upon earth in the serene tranquillity and calm composure, in the sweet peace…

The 3. Use serves to demonstrate, and clearly to hold forth the absolute necessity of Jesus Christ, and the transcendent worth and matchless excellency that is in him, that even when a man is thus defiled and polluted by sins these dead works▪ there is access by his blood, to get the Conscience purged; and this is the thing that we would mainly point at from these words (and which we intend, God willing, afterward more largely to insist in) not only the necessity of coming to Christ; but of knowing certainly that ye are got out of black Nature into him, ⟨p. 332⟩and have gotten your Consciences purged by his Blood: Think ye it a small or little concerning matter; to be lying in a •est house, where thousands die at your right and left hand, and not to know if ye be cleansed? To have the Plague in your bosom, and not to know whether ye be cured of it or o• not? and yet such is the state and condition of all of you, while ye are in corrupt Nature: And if ye would (as ye are mightily concerned) have some Evidences whereby ye may be helped to know if ye be as yet purged from this total pollution; there are some things that may be gathered from this Verse to that purpose: And 1. Did ye ever know and acknowledge your Conscience to be defiled? It can hardly be expected that a man having such a Botch, and Plague running on him, can think seriously of, let be▪ seriously seek after washing, before he know that he is thus defiled, and thereby in such a deplorable state: I speak not now of what gracious change may be wrought in some persons more early, and in their younger years, nor how secretly and little discer•ibly the work of Conversion may be wrought in some that are come to age; But I speak of Gods more ordinary way of dealing, and reclaiming and converting of sinners▪ When Paul speaks of himself, Rom. 7. He tells us that He was alive once without the law, he was a clean man as he thought, and in his own eyes; before the Lord discovered Sin, and wakened a Challenge for it in his Conscience; But when the Commandment came (sayeth he) sin revived and I died: Now can we think with any shadow of reason, that after God called him effectually by his Grace, that he had more of a […] nature in him than he had before? sure no;