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

Lastly, Now the time is come when the man betwixt hope and despair, resolves to go to Christ as he is: and therefore, like a dying man stretching himself, just before his breath goes out, he rallies the broken forces of his soul; tries to believe, and in some sort lays hold on Jesus Christ. And now the branch hangs on the old stock, by one single tack of a natural faith, produced by the natural vigour of one's own spirit, under a most pressing necessity, Psal. lxxxviii. 34, 35. When he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and enquired early after God. And they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their Redeemer. Hos. viii. 2. Israel shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee. But the Lord minding to perfect his work, fetches yet another stroke, whereby the branch falls quite off. The Spirit of God convincingly discovers to the sinner, his utter inability to do any thing that is good: and so he dieth, Rom. vii. 9. That voice powerfully strikes through his soul, How can ye believe? John v. 44. Thou canst no more believe, than thou canst reach up thine hand to heaven, and bring Christ down from thence. And thus at length he sees, he can neither help himself by working, nor by believing: and having no more to hang by on the old stock, he therefore falls off. And while he is distressed thus, seeing himself like to be swept away with the flood of God's wrath; and yet unable so much as to stretch forth a hand to lay hold of a twig of the tree of life, growing on the banks of the river; he is taken up, and ingrafted into the true Vine, the Lord Jesus Christ giving him the spirit of faith.

Lastly, Now the time is come when the man betwixt hope and despair, resolves to go to Christ as he is: and therefore, like a dying man stretching himself, just before his breath goes out, he rallies the broken forces of his soul; tries to believe, and in some sort lays hold on Jesus Christ. And now the branch hangs on the old stock, by one single tack of a natural faith, produced by the natural vigour of one's own spirit, under a most pressing necessity, Psal. lxxxviii. 34, 35. When he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and enquired early after God. And they remembred that God was their rock, and the high God their Redeemer.