An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

Nay, the Lord loads, and tires, and wearies the Soul, by its own endeavours, till it can stir no more; That is, when the Soul labours to repent and reform; the Spirit of God, which should assist such pious endeavours withdraws it self; because it knows the Soul would rest therein without Christ: Now I know not, who suffers most by this: The sinner who is thus humbled, or God who thus humbles him; for it must needs be as contrary to the holy merciful nature of God, to use such methods of Humiliation, as it is to the proud heart of man, to be thus humbled: Thus you see that Humiliation hath nothing to do with repentance, and reformation of our lives.

The steps of the Soul towards Christ, ¹are conviction, compunction, Humiliation, Faith: Now if there be nothing of forsaking of sin in all this, then men ⟨p. 491⟩must be united to Christ before they forsake their sins: So the Author: But doth Mr. Shepherd allow of no kind of forsaking of sin before union to Christ? Yes surely, There is, saith he, a separation from sin; so much separation, as makes the Soul willing, that sin should be taken away: So much separation, as is necessary to the Souls closing with Christ: He never thought that a man indulging his lusts, should immediately come, and be united to Christ: No, every step or degree, which he sets in the Souls progress to a closure with Christ, proves the contrary, what need conviction, compunction, humiliation; If the Soul, wallowing in its lusts, might be united to Christ. But Mr. Shepherd makes the end of conviction to be, not reformation of sin, but compunction: But how doth he so? What, that there is no tendency at all in conviction towards reformation? No, he saith expressly, that the next end of it is compunction. Sorrow for sin is so called for in Scripture; that no man may deny it to be one of God's methods, by which he uses to bring men home to himself: Neither is it imaginable, that sin our old joy, unless in some measure it become our sorrow, should ever be ⟨p. 492⟩