2. Be persuaded and assured, that as long as you do either for the whole, or for any fast of your Justification place your trust in your own Righteousness, Christ will never offer you his to justify you: There is no dividing or parting of stakes in this matter: Christ is resolved, that he will either be a whole Saviour, or none at all; there shall no person or thing come in to share with him in the honour of this, but he will do the whole work, and he will have the whole glory of it: man must be utterly lost, before he will come to seek him up, he must be a bankrupt, a beggar, a ⟨p. 145⟩prodigal that hath spent all, and hath not an husk to live upon, before he will entertain him: It is therefore one part of the work of the Spirit whom Christ sends, to convince the world of Righteousness, John 16 9 i. e. firstly of the Righteousness of the Law in all its demands and sentences, that it requires nothing, and that it threatens nothing but what is according to the strictest equity, and there can be no fault found with it; and then of the only Righteousness of Jesus Christ, that is able to answer both the commands and menaces of the Law: that, that and no other is fitted up to respond for man to the Law. They therefore who come to Jesus Christ must deny themselves, and abjure every thing of their own, or he will none of them: so that as long as men have in their apprehension a way of their own Righteousness, they are too many to be saved by him: and the truth is, to believe in Christ alone for Justification, is altogether inconsistent with a mans having any confidence in the flesh. If then you account it a matter of any moment to be found having a righteous cause at that day; and when you have examined your selves, and made proof of your own hearts and lives, and upon trial found by experience, that you are altogether ⟨p. 146⟩defective of a personal Righteousness to that end, you here see what it is that is incumbent on you to do, i. e. you must trample upon all your own rags, throw them off as filthy and noisome things; let them be so to you, and then think how much more they are so to God, and now come as naked to Christ as ever you were born:
2. Be perswaded and assured, that as long as you do either for the whole, or for any fast of your Justification place your trust in your own Righteousness, Christ will never offer you his to justifie you: There is no dividing or parting of stakes in this matter: Christ is resolved, that he will either be a whole Saviour, or none at all; there shall no person or thing come in to share with him in the honour of this, but he will do the whole work, and he will have the whole glory of it: man must be utterly lost, before he will come to seek him up, he must be a bankrupt, a beggar, a ⟨p. 145⟩prodigal that hath spent all, and hath not an husk to live upon, before he will entertain him: It is therefore one part of the work of the Spirit whom Christ sends, to convince the world of Righteousness, John 16 9 i. e. firstly of the Righteousness of the Law in all its demands and sentences, that it requires nothing, and that it threatens nothing but what is according to the strictest equity, and there can be no fault found with it; and then of the only Righteousness of Jesus Christ, that is able to answer both the commands and menaces of the Law: that, that and no other is fitted up to respond for man to the Law. They therefore who come to Jesus Christ must deny themselves, and abjure every thing of their own, or he will none of them: so that as long as men have in their apprehension a way of their own Righteousness, they are too many to be saved by him: and the truth is, to believe in Christ alone for Justification, is altogether inconsistent with a mans having any confidence in the flesh. If then you account it a matter of any moment to be found having a righteous cause at that day; and when you have examined your selves, and made proof of your own hearts and lives, and upon trial found by experience, that you are altogether ⟨p. 146⟩defective of a personal Righteousness to that end, you here see what it is that is incumbent on you to do, i. e. you must trample upon all your own rags, throw them off as filthy and noisom things; let them be so to you, and then think how much more they are so to God, and now come as naked to Christ as ever you were born:
