The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened and Applied

II. The Causes.

1. A magnifying Christ, and making him our Sanctification, when as you heard the last day, this is to deny him to be our Sanctification: He becomes our righteousness by imputation of his holiness, and our Sanctification by infusing of it. Nay, hence a man deprive• himself, of all good in the Lord Jesus, when a man denies all grace in himself, and then flies for Sanctuary unto Jesus Christ, • John 1. 6, 7. If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, &c. And hence it seems they denied men to have sin, vers. 8. boasting of fellowship with Christ, vers. 6.

1. A magnifying Christ, and making him our Sanctification, when as you heard the last day, this is to deny him to be our Sanctification: He becomes our righteousness by imputation of his holiness, and our Sanctification by infusing of it. Nay, hence a man deprive• himself, of all good in the Lord Jesus, when a man denies all grace in himself, and then flies for Sanctuary unto Jesus Christ, • Iohn 1. 6, 7. If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, &c. And hence it seems they denied men to have sin, vers. 8. boasting of fellowship with Christ, vers. 6.

2. Because there are (say men) only immediate actings of the Spirit. If this be so, then there is seeing in a Christian without an eye, and hearing without an ear, and knowing Christ without an understanding, and loving without love, and living without life, and feeding and eating without a mouth; and then when these actings are over, a Christian is like another man, there is no Law remains written on his heart, and so Christ should enter into his Saints, like Satan into the Serpent, who only acts the Serpent, and when that is done, he remains a Serpent again. Know it, the Lord Jesus his greatest work is not only to change the acts, but to change the frame of the heart, not only to put new actions, but a new nature into men.