Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

(1) It is a death, Rom. vii. 4. Gal. iii 19. Entreaties will not prevail with the soul here; it saith to the first husband, as Ruth to Na•i, The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. And here sinners are true to their word; they die to the law, ere they be married to Christ Death is hard to every body: but what difficulty do ye imagine must a loving wife, on her death-bed, find in parting with her husband, the husband of her youth, and with the dear children she has brought forth to him: the law is that husband; all the duties performed by the natural man, are these children. What a struggle, as for life, will be in the heart ere they be got parted? I may have occasion to touch upon this afterwards. In the mean time, take the Apostle's short, but pithy description of it, Rom x. 3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. They go about to establish their own righteousness▪ like an eager disputant in schools, seeking to establish the point in question: or like a tormentor, extorting a confession from one upon the rack. They go about to establish it to make it stand: their righteousness is like a house built upon the sand; it cannot stand, but they will have it to stand: it falls, they set it up again: but still it tumbles down on them; yet they cease not to go about to make it stand. But wherefore ⟨p. 76⟩all this pains about a tottering righteousness? Because, such as it is, it is their own. What ails them at Christ's righteousness? Why, that would make them free grace's debtors for all; and that is what the proud heart by no means can submit t•. Here lies the stress of the matter, Psal. x 4 The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek: (to read it without the supplement) that is, in other terms, He cannot dig, and to beg he is ashamed: Such is the struggle, ere the soul die to the law: But what speaks yet more of this woeful disposition of the heart, nature oft-times gets the mastery of the disease, insomuch that the soul, which was like to have died to the law, while convictions were sharp and piercing, fatally recovers of the happy and promising sickness;