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

Eleventhly, The man being thus far humbled, will no more plead, he is worthy for wh•m Christ should do this thing: but, on the contrary, looks on himself as unworthy of Christ, and unworthy of the favour of God. We may compare him, in this case, to the young man who followed Christ, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body […] on whom, when the young men laid hold, he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked, Mark xiv. 51, 52. Even so the man had been ⟨p. 182⟩following Christ, in the thin and coldrise garment of his own personal worthiness; but by it, even by it, which he so much trusted to, the law catcheth hold of him, to make him prisoner; and then he is fain to leave it, and flees away naked; yet not to Christ, but from him. If you now tell him, he is welcome to Christ, if he will come to him; he is apt to say, Can such a vile and unworthy wretch as I, be welcome to the holy Jesus? If a plaster be applied to his wounded soul, it will not stick He says, Depart from m•, for I am a sinful man, O Lord, Luke v. 8. No man needs speak to him of his repentance, for his comfort; he can quickly espy such faults in it as makes it naught: nor of his tears, for he is assured, they have never come into the Lord's bottle. He dispute himself away from Christ; and concludes, now that he has been such a slighter of Christ, and is such an unholy and vile creature, he cannot, he will not, he ought nor, to come to Christ; and that he must either be in better case, or else he'll never believe. And hence, he now makes his strongest efforts, to amend what was amiss in his way before: He prays more earnestly than ever, mourns more bitterly, strives against sin in heart and life, more vigorously, and watcheth more diligently; if by any means he may, at length be fit to come to Christ. One would think the man is well humbled now: But ah! devilish pride lurks under the veil of all this seeming humility. Like a kindly br•nch of the old stock; he adheres still; and will not submit to the righteousness •f God, Rom. x 3. He will not come to the market of free-grace, without money. He is bidden to the marriage of the King's Son, where the bridegroom himself furnisheth all the guests with wedding garments, stripping them of their own: but he will not come, because he wants a wedding-garment; howbeit he is very busy making one ready. This is sad work;