2. This alone will give you such Motives and Encouragements unto Obedience, as will give you Life, Alacrity, and Delight in it. You perform Duties, abstain from sins, but with heaviness, fear, and in bondage. Could you do as well without them, as with them, would Conscience be quiet, and hope of Eternity hold out, you would omit them for ever. This makes all your Obedience burdensome, and you cry out in your thoughts with him in the Prophet, behold what a weariness it is! the service of God is the only drudgery of your lives, which you dare not omit, and delight not to perform. From this wretched and cursed frame, there is nothing can deliver you, but this closing with forgiveness. This will give you such motives, such encouragements, as will greatly influence your hearts and souls. It will give you freedom, liberty, delight, and cheerfulness in all duties of Gospel Obedience. You will find a constraining power in the love of Christ therein; a freedom from bondage, when the Son truly hath made you free. Faith and love will work genuinely and naturally in your spirits; and that which was your greatest burden, will become your chiefest joy: 2 Cor. 7. 1. Thoughts of the Love of God, of the Blood of Christ, or the Covenant of Grace, and sense of pardon in them, will enlarge your hearts, and sweeten all your duties. You will find a new life, a new pleasure, a new satisfaction, in all that you do. Have you yet ever understood that of the Wise man, Prov. 3. 17. The ways of Wisdom are pleasantness, and her paths are peace? Have the ways of Holiness, of Obedience, of Duties been so unto you? Whatever you pretend, they are not, they cannot be so, whilst you are strangers unto that which alone can render them so unto you. I speak unto them that are under the Law; Would you be free from that bondage, that galling yoke in duties of Obedience? Would you have all that you do towards God, a delight and pleasantness unto you? this, and this alone will effect it for you.
2. This alone will give you such Motives and Encouragements unto Obedience, as will give you Life, Alacrity, and Delight in it. You perform Duties, abstain from sins, but with heaviness, fear, and in bondage. Could you do as well without them, as with them, would Conscience be quiet, and hope of Eternity hold out, you would omit them for ever. This makes all your Obedience burdensome, and you cry out in your thoughts with him in the Prophet, behold what a weariness it is! the service of God is the only drudgery of your lives, which you dare not omit, and delight not to perform. From this wretched and cursed frame, there is nothing can deliver you, but this closing with forgiveness. This will give you such motives, such encouragements, as will greatly influence your hearts and souls. It will give you freedom, liberty, delight, and chearfulness in all duties of Gospel Obedience. You will finde a constraining power in the love of Christ therein; a freedom from bondage, when the Son truely hath made you free. Faith and love will work genuinely and naturally in your spirits; and that which was your greatest burden, will become your chiefest joy: 2 Cor. 7. 1. Thoughts of the Love of God, of the Blood of Christ, or the Covenant of Grace, and sence of pardon in them, will enlarge your hearts, and sweeten all your duties. You will find a new life, a new pleasure, a new satisfaction, in all that you doe. Have you yet ever understood that of the Wiseman, Prov. 3. 17. The wayes of Wisdom are pleasantness, and her paths are peace? Have the wayes of Holyness, of Obedience, of Duties been so unto you? Whatever you pretend, they are not, they cannot be so, whilst you are strangers unto that which alone can render them so unto you. I speak unto them that are under the Law; Would you be free from that bondage, that galling yoke in dutyes of Obedience? Would you have all that you do towards God, a delight and pleasantness unto you? this, and this alone will effect it for you.
