The fountain opened, or, The great gospel privilege of having Christ exhibited to sinful…The fountain opened, or, The great gospel priviledge of having Christ exhibited to sinfull…

1. Have you ever felt the bitterness of Sin it self? Many an one finds sorrow by his sins, and is forced to acknowledge that his Sin hath brought it upon him, who yet is not led by it to see and believe that Sin is in its own nature so vile and evil as to be odious. It may be he only reads it in the Law, and he sees that God will maintain his own Law; but mean while he lays the blame, not on the sin that procured his sorrow, but on the Law that had such a Sanction in it: and he is therefore sorry for his sin, only because he is sorry that there is ⟨p. 152⟩such a Law, that will not suffer him to si• with impunity: this is no Godly Sorrow: it •• not acted by Humility, but by pride an• prejudice; and he saith as they, Ezek. 33. 10▪ If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, an• we pine away in them, how shall we then live?

2. Have you been deeply oppressed with the burden of sin, so as thereby to be made weary of it? Though God improves the troubles and mischiefs procured by Sin, to bring us to see the evil of it, and cry out by reason of th• bitterness there is in it, yet in a kindly mourning, sin it self is made to be a burden that we cannot tell how to bear, and hereupon we long to be rid of it, and earnestly seek after a freedom from it; thus it was with Paul, Rom. 7 24. Oh wretche• man that I am, wh• shall deliver the from the body of this death? We seek a par•••, for we are undone without it: but we eek the death of Sin too, nor can we be at quiet but in the assurance and experience of the beginning of it in us, and a comfortable persuasion that it will ere long be wholly destroyed: hence that groan of his, Psal 38. 4. Mine iniquities are gone over mine hea, as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.