yea many of you have not so much knowledge as to cover your ignorance and Hypocrisy, neither can any gain the least ground of you, to make you sensible that your faith and Communion with God are unsound and delusory, because they have not had a right rise from conviction of sin and of distance from God, putting you on to repentance and covenanting with him. But because several persons will be ready to think and say, that they have convictions of sin: as indeed there is much ground and reason for them: I shall point at some ⟨p. 191⟩convictions, for which there is Just ground, and whereby ye may know if your Convictions have been through and sound: most whereof, if not all of them may be gathered from the words. 1. There is a Conviction of the want of Faith: The holy Spirits first work, John 16.9. Is to convince the world of sin, because they believe not on him: Were ye ever convinced of your unbelief: Many will be convinced of Sabbath-breaking, of cursing, Swearing, lying. Drunkenness, &c. to be sins, who were never convinced of the sin of their want of Faith, for they always had it, as they think: and what, I pray, can such as ye do at a fast or humiliation for sin, when this is your great sin, and ye cannot by any means be brought to take with it, though you take with other sins; but can come boldly to the Table of the Lord as Believers, and such as have no just reason to doubt of the soundness of your Faith, while in the mean time, all the Faith that ye have, is but rotten presumption: This is a most fearful condition: for so long as ye think that ye have Faith, ye cannot think your selves to be lost: neither can ye cast your selves down with a stopped mouth before God: nor is there access for any word from him to do you good. A 2d. Conviction or challenge is of or for the want of a new nature? were ye ever convinced of this? not only, of this and that and the other particular sin, but that ye were in a sinful and unrenewed state? Nicodemus John 3. comes to Christ and speaks him fair; but the Lord lets him know that fair words, a great Profession, and some, yea much knowledge will not do the turn, he must necessarily have somewhat else, even a new nature, He must be born again, else he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: He is very unwilling and loth to digest that Doctrine; but the Lord tells him, that, that which is born ⟨p. 192⟩of the flesh is flesh:
yea many of you have not so much knowledge as to cover your ignorance and Hypocrisie, neither can any gain the least ground of you, to make you sensible that your faith and Communion with God are unsound and delusory, because they have not had a right rise from conviction of sin and of distance from God, putting you on to repentance and covenanting with him. But because severall persons will be ready to think and say, that they have convictions of sin: as indeed there is much ground and reason for them: I shall point at some ⟨p. 191⟩convictions, for which there is Just ground, and whereby ye may know if your Convictions have been thorow and sound: most whereof, if not all of them may be gathered from the words. 1. There is a Conviction of the want of Faith: The holy Spirits first work, John 16.9. Is to convince the world of sin, because they believe not on him: Were ye ever convinced of your unbelief: Many will be convinced of Sabbath-breaking, of cursing, Swearing, lying. Drunkenness, &c. to be sins, who were never convinced of the sin of their want of Faith, for they always had it, as they think: and what, I pray, can such as ye do at a fast or humiliation for sin, when this is your great sin, and ye cannot by any means be brought to take with it, though you take with other sins; but can come boldly to the Table of the Lord as Believers, and such as have no just reason to doubt of the soundness of your Faith, while in the mean time, all the Faith that ye have, is but rotten presumption: This is a most fearfull condition: for so long as ye think that ye have Faith, ye cannot think your selves to be lost: neither can ye cast your selves down with a stopped mouth before God: nor is there access for any word from him to do you good. A 2d. Conviction or challenge is of or for the want of a new nature? were ye ever convinced of this? not only, of this and that and the other particular sin, but that ye were in a sinfull and unrenewed state? Nicodemus John 3. comes to Christ and speaks him fair; but the Lord lets him know that fair words, a great Profession, and some, yea much knowledge will not do the turn, he must necessarily have somewhat else, even a new nature, He must be born again, else he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: He is very unwilling and loth to digest that Doctrine; but the Lord tells him, that, that which is born ⟨p. 192⟩of the flesh is flesh:
