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

First, When the Spirit of the Lord comes to deal with a person, to bring him to Christ; he finds him the Laodlee• 's case, in a sound sleep of security, dreaming of heaven and the favour of God tho' full of sin against the holy One of Israel. Rev. iii 17. Thou know si•n• no that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. And therefore he darts in some beams of light into the dark soul; and lets the man see he is a lost man, if he turn not over a new leaf, and betake himself to a new course of life. Thus by the Spirit of the Lord, acting as a spirit of bondage, there is a criminal court erected in the man's breast; where he is arraigned, accused, and condemned for breaking the law of God, convinced of sin and judgment, John xvi. 8. And now he can no longer sleep securely in his former course of life. This is the first stroke the branch gets, in order to cutting off.

Secondly, Hereupon the man forsake his former profane courses; his lying, swearing, Sabbath-breaking, stealing, and such like practices, though they be dear to him as right eyes, he will rather quit them, than ruin his soul. The ship is like to sink, and therefore he throweth his goods over-board, that he himself may not perish. And now he begins to bless himself in his heart, and look joyfully on his evidences for heaven; thinking himself a better servant to God than many others, Luke xviii. 11. God, I thank that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, &c. But he soon gets another stroke with the axe of the law, showing him that it is only he that doth what is written in the law, who can be saved by […]; and that his negative holiness is too scanty a cover from the storm of God's wrath. And thus, although his sins of commission only were heavy on him before: his sins of omission now crowd into his thought•, attended with a train of law-curses and vengeance. And c•th o the ter commands discharges thunder-claps of wrath against him, for his omitting required duties.