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

By what has been said upon this head, I design not to rack or distress tender consciences; for, tho' there are but few such, at the day, yet, God forbid I should offend any of Christ's little ones. But, alas! a dead sleep is fallen upon this generation; they will not be awakened, let us go as near the quick as we will: and therefore, I fear there is another sort of awakening abiding this sermon-proof generation, which shall make the ears of them that hear it to tingle. However, I would not have this to be looked upon as the sovereign God's stinted method of breaking off sinners from the old stock: but this I assert as a certain truth, that all who are in Christ, have been broken off from all these several confidences; and that they who were never broken off from them, are yet in their natural stock. Nevertheless, if the house be pulled down, and the old foundation razed: it is all a case, whether it was taken down stone by stone, or whether it was undetermined, and all fell down together.

Now it is, that the branch is ingrafted in Jesus Christ. And, as the law, in the hand of the Spirit of God, was the instrume•• to cut off the branch from the natural stock, so the gospel, in the hand of the same Spirit, is the instrument used for ingrafting it in the supernatural stock, 1 John i. 3. That which we have seen and heard, declare ⟨p. 184⟩we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. See Isa. lxi. 1, 2, 3. The gospel is the silver cord let down from heaven, to draw perishing sinners to land. And, tho' the preaching of the law prepares the way of the Lord; yet it is in the word of the gospel, that Christ and a sinner meet. Now, as in the natural grafting, the branch being taken up is put into the stock; and being put into it, takes with it; and so they are united: even so in the spiritual ingrafting, Christ apprehends the sinner; and the sinner being apprehended of Christ, apprehends him; and so they become one,