The saints everlasting rest

2. The soul in this great work is convinced and sensible, as of the evil of sin, so of its own misery by reason of sin. They who before read the threats of GOD's law, as men do the stories of foreign wars; now find it is their own story, and perceive they read their own doom, as if they found their names written in the curse, or heard the law say, as Nathan, thou art the man. The wrath of GOD seemed to him but as a storm to a man in a dry house: but now he finds the disease is his own, and feels the pains in his own bowels. In a word, he finds himself a condemned man, dead and damned in point of law, and that nothing is wanting but mere execution to make him absolutely and irrecoverably miserable.

Whether you will call this a work of the law or gospel, it is a work of the Spirit wrought in some measure in all the regenerate: And though some judge it unnecessary bondage, yet it is beyond my conceiving, how he should come to Christ for pardon, that first ⟨p. 74⟩found not himself guilty and condemned: The whole need not the physician, but they that are sick. Yet I deny not, but the discovery of the remedy as soon as the misery, may prevent a great part of the trouble, and the distinct effect on the soul, to be with much more difficulty discerned: nay, the actings of the soul are so quick, and oft so confused, that the distinct order of these workings may not be apprehended or remembered at all: and perhaps the joyful apprehensions of mercy may make the sense of misery the sooner forgotten.

3. So doth the spirit also convince the soul, of the creature's vanity and insufficiency. Every man naturally is a flat idolater, our hearts were turned from GOD in our first fall; and ever since the creature hath been our GOD: this is the grand sin of nature: when we set up to ourselves a wrong end, we must needs err in all the means. The creature is to every unregenerate man his GOD: he ascribeth to it the divine prerogatives, and alloweth it the highest room in his soul, or if ever he come to be convinced of misery, he fleeth to it as his Saviour. Indeed GOD and his Christ have usually the name; but the real expectation is from the creature, and the work of GOD is laid upon it. His pleasure, his profit, and his honour, is the natural man's trinity; and his self, that is these in unity: indeed, it is that flesh that is the principal idol; the other three are deified in their relation to ourselves. It was our first sin, to aspire to be as gods; and it is the greatest sin that runs in our blood, and is propagated in our nature from generation to generation.