A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also…

There is a manifest prejudice daily accruing to the Christian name and profession, by the unequal estimation which that part of the Doctrine of Christ hath, that concerns the work of his Spirit upon us, regeneration, the new creature, repentance, and an holy life; in comparison of that which concerns his performances ⟨p. 301⟩and acquisitions for us, expiation of sin, satisfaction of Divine Justice, forgiveness and acceptance with God. How sweet ravishing transporting Doctrines, and how pure Gospel are these latter accounted by many, who esteem the former cold, sapless, unpleasant notions! Thence comes Christian Religion to look with so distorted a face and aspect, as if it suffered a convulsion, that hath altered and disguised it unto that degree, that it is hardly to be known; being made to seem as if it imported only a design to rescue some persons from Divine Wrath and Justice, without ever giving them that disposition of heart which is necessary both to their serving of God and their blessedness in him. This is not to be imputed so much to the misrepresentation made of it by them, whose business it hath been to instruct others, (though of them too many may have been very faulty in almost suppressing or insisting less, or very little, upon Doctrines of the former strain, while the stream of their Discourses hath mostly run upon the other); for it must be acknowledged, that by very many in our age, the absolute necessity of the great heart-change hath been both most clearly represented, and as urgently pressed as perhaps in most that have gone before. But the matter is plainly to be most attributed to that depravedness of mans nature, whence there is a most unequal and partial reception of the Truth of God; and that which seems (taken apart by it self) to import more of indulgence to sinners is readily catched at, that ⟨p. 302⟩which more directly strikes at the very root of sin, is let pass as if it had never been spoken. And so men make up to themselves a Gospel of this tenor and import, That let the temper of their spirits towards God be what it will, if they rely and rest upon the righteousness of Christ, God will be reconciled to them. And they think they need take no further care. But whatever is said in the Gospel of Christ besides, of the necessity of being born of God, of partaking a Divine nature, of putting off the old man, and putting on the new, &c.