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

SECONDLY, Thou must pay what thou owest It is undeniable thou art a sinner; and whatever thou mayest be in time to come, justice must be satisfied for thy sin already committed. The honour of the law must be maintained, by thy suffering the denounced wrath. It may be thou hast changed thy course of life, or art now resolved to do it, and set about the keeping of the commands of God: but what hast thou done, or what wilt thou do, with the old debt? Your obedience to God, tho' it were perfect, is a debt due to him, for the time wherein it is performed; and can no more satisfy for former sins, than a tenant's paying the current year's rent, can satisfy the master for all bygones. Can the paying of new debts acquit a man from old accounts? Nay, deceive not yourselves, you will find these laid up in store with God, and sealed up among his treasures, Deut. xxxii. 34. It remains then, that either thou must bear that wrath, to which, for thy sin, thou art liable according to the law; or else, thou must acknowledge thou canst not bear it, and thereupon have recourse to the surety, the Lord Jesus Christ: Let me now ask thee, art thou able to satisfy the justice of God? Canst thou pay thy own debt? Surely not: for, seeing he is an infinite God, whom thou hast offended; the ⟨p. 121⟩punishment, being suited to the quality of the offence, must be infinite. But so it is, thy punishment, or sufferings for sin, cannot be infinite in value, seeing thou art a finite creature: therefore they must be infinite in duration or continuance; that is, they must be eternal. And so all thy sufferings in this world, are but an earnest of what thou must suffer in the world to come.

Now, sinner, if thou canst answer these demands, thou mayst recover thyself in the way of the law. But art thou not conscious of thy inability to do any of these things, much more to do them all? Yet if thou do not all, thou dost nothing. Turn then to what course of life thou wilt, thou art still in a state of wrath. Screw up thy obedience to the greatest height thou canst; suffer what God lays upon thee, yea add, if thou wilt to the burden, and walk under all, without the least impatience: yet all this will not satisfy the demands of the law; and therefore thou art still a ruined creature. Alas! sinner, what art thou doing, while thou strivest to help thyself; but dost not receive and unite with Jesus Christ? Thou art labouring in the fire, wearying thyself for very vanity; labouring to enter into heaven by the door, which Adam's sin so bolted, as neither he, nor any of his lost posterity can ever enter by it. Dost thou not see the flaming sword of justice keeping thee off from the tree of life? Dost thou not hear the law denouncing a curse on thee for all thou art doing; even for thy obedience, thy prayers, thy tears, thy reformation of life, &c. because being under the law's dominion, thy best works are not so good, as it requires them to be, under the pain of the curse? Believe it, sirs, if you live and die out of Christ, without being actually united to him as the second Adam, a life-giving Spirit, and without coming under the covert of his atoning blood; though you should do the utmost that any man on earth can do, in keeping the commands of GOD, ye shall never see the face of GOD in peace. If you should from this moment, bid an eternal farewell to this world's joy, and all the affairs thereof; and henceforth busy yourselves with nothing, but the salvation of your souls: if you should go into some wilderness, live upon the grass of the field, and be companions of dragons and owls: if you should retire to some dark cavern of the earth, and weep there for your sins, until ye have wept yourselves blind yea, wept out all the moisture of your body; if ye should confess with your tongue, until it cleave to the roof of your mouth; pray, till your knees grow hard as horns; fast, till your body become like a skeleton; and after all this, give it to be burnt, the word is gone out of the Lord's mouth in righteousness, and cannot return;