Twenty sermons preached at Oxford before His Majesty, and elsewhere

EPH. 2.1, 2, 3. And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in times past you walked according to the course of this World, according to the Prince that ruleth in the Air, the Spirit that worketh in the Children of disobedience. Amongst whom also, &c.

EPH. 2.1, 2, 3. And you hath he quickned who were dead in trespasses and sins, where in times past you walked according to the course of this World, according to the Prince that ruleth in the Air, the Spirit that worketh in the Children of disobedience. Amongst whom also, &c.

THE last time I declared unto you the duty that was necessarily required of us if we look to be saved, that we must not only take the matter speedily into consideration, and not be deluded by our own hearts and the wiles of Satan; but that we must not do it superficially or perfunctorily, but must bring our selves to the true touchstone, and not look upon our selves with false glasses, because there is naturally in every one self-love; and in these last and worst times men are apt to think better of themselves then they deserve. If there be any beginning of goodness in them, they think all is well, when there is no greater danger in the World then being but half-Christians. He thinks (the half-Christian I mean,) that if he hath escaped the outward pollutions of the world, through lust, and be not so bad as formerly he hath been, and not so bad as many men in the World are, therefore he is well enough: Whereas his end proves worse then his beginning. This superficial repentance is but like the washing of a Hog, ¹the outside is only washed, the swinish nature is not taken away. There may be in this man some outward abstaining from the common gross sins of the World, or those which he himself was subject unto; but his disposition to sin is the same, his nature is nothing changed: there is no renovation, no casting in a new mould, which must be in us. For it is not a little reforming will serve the turn, no, nor all the morality in the World, nor all the common graces of Gods Spirit, nor the outward change of the life: they will not do, unless we are quickened, and have a new life wrought in us; unless there be a supernatural working of Gods Spirit we can never enter into Heaven. Therefore in this case it behoves every man to prove his own work,