The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

First, Be able to make satisfaction for the wrong that sin hath done; the broken Law and he must agree.

Secondly, He must be able to subdue all the enmity of his heart against God; all his lusts and corruptions he must mortify, and walk before God in a holy frame continually: he that undertakes this, undertakes a hard task; if he understand it, he will soon find either of them impossible, one as easy as the other; choose which you think is the easiest. Thus then the Spirit takes him off,

Secondly, He must be able to subdue all the enmity of his heart against God; all his lusts and corruptions he must mortifie, and walk before God in a holy frame continually: he that undertakes this, undertakes a hard task; if he understand it, he will soon find either of them impossible, one as easie as the other; chuse which you think is the easiest. Thus then the Spirit takes him off,

First, By convincing him of the nature of sin, of guilt, what it is to have a holy and just Law broken: What are all thy duties thou performest? What is thy righteousness, though it were pure, which it is not, to satisfy the holy Law of a Just God, which thou hast broken so many thousand times, and hast a heart opposite and enemy to it? If thy nature were now holy, and all thy life from this time holy, this is but thy duty, and so it was always. Can thy doing that which is now thy duty to answer this day, make satisfaction for not doing thy duty all thy life before? If a man be taken clipping the Kings Coin, or hath committed some one capital Crime, if he comes before the Judge and pleads, he lived all his life time before clear from such Crime, and will do from henceforth, it was but once that he did so; will this answer the Law? Will the Judge acquit him? He did and doth but his duty if he lived before, and will do after as he pleads, he should have done so when he committed that Crime; the Law calls him a Son of death, and dye he must for that one Crime. Shall then a man, having a nature that hates the righteous Law of God, and tramples upon it daily, think with a