tion like Christ's-his blood cleanseth from all sin.'

If, however, you will not believe while your sins are so great, and your heart so polluted; it is probable, were your heart less defiled, and your sins less in number, that you would not believe in Christ at all. You would be more likely to trust in your own heart, and to rely on your own righteousness, instead of believing and trusting in Christ. Great sins and a bad heart, felt and bewailed, should operate in this case like hunger, which becomes an incentive to seek food. If men had clean hearts, it is very likely they would dispose of them otherwise, and rather think that Christ should come to them, than they to him. Instead of a man's poverty making him less desirous of relief, it should make him more importunate. To say, I will not come to Christ because I have great sins, is as if one should say, I will have nothing to do with happiness, if offered, because I have great misery: I will not go to a surgeon for healing, because my wounds are so great: I will eat no

bread because I am ready to starve with hunger. This, surely, is bad logick; and it is not better to argue, Because I am filthy, therefore I will not go to the fountain to be cleansed.

'But, admitting that you are a great sinner, nay, one of the greatest; will your staying away from Christ make your sins less? Are you so rich as to pay the debt out of your own revenue? or have you any hopes of another surety? Can complaints of a great load, without endeavouring its removal, ease the shoulders. that bear it? If your sins be so great, surely the Lord Jesus Christ, who is an almighty Saviour, and who delighteth in mercy, will not lose an opportunity of evidencing both his power and his pity on such a, miserable subject: for, if there cannot be so great a sinner as you are, this is the last season he can have in which to display them!'

Ever since the fall of our first parents, all men invariably manifest a strong propensity to cleave to their own righteousness: to some

thing they have performed, or are to perform, in order to final happiness. When a man contemplates the turpitude of his nature, and the imperfection of his conduct, he must, as a moral agent, be conscious of numberless defects; of being extremely culpable; and, as he cannot but acknowledge, on reflection, that his pravity has been the result of his own choice, it is quite natural for him to look to future reformation for something that may counterbalance his guilt, and avert the punishment he has reason to expect. Without revelation, he has no other medium by which to obtain forgive. ness and, if this revelation be neglected or despised, he will not see the absurdity of his conduct; his deceptive hope will keep pace with his diligence; and, if divine goodness do not interpose, never perceive his mistake till too late to prevent it.

On this principle those Jews acted of whom it is said, They trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. They had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge: for they, being ignorant of

God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.' But, before a man can cordially receive the salvation revealed in the gospel, every pretension to forgiveness, on the ground of human worthiness, must be entirely relinquished. To talk of pardoning one that is innocent, or of forgiving a debt that never was contracted, is absurd in the extreme:' it is, therefore, a part of the Holy Spirit's work to convince the sinner that in his flesh dwelleth no good thing; that his own righteousness is as filthy rags, and that, if he expect to be justified before God, all he has ever esteemed .gain, in reference to this grand affair, must be esteemed loss for Christ.

'Heaven,' says the very ingenious Spurstow, 'stands like a little mark in a wide field, where there are a thousand ways to err from it, and but one to hit it. Yea, though God hath said that there is but one sacrifice by which we can be perfected; but one blood by which we can be purified; but one name by

which we can be saved; yet how hardly are the best drawn to trust perfectly to the grace revealed, and to look from themselves to Christ, as the author and finisher of their blessedness? Seeing, therefore, Holy Father, that thou hast made the whole progress of salvation to be in Christ, and by Christ; election to be in him; adoption to be in him; justification to be in him; sanctification to be in him; glorification to be in him; grant that, whatever others do, I may never choose the light of reason, but the sun of righteousness to guide my feet into the paths of life; and that, both in life and in death, I may say as that blessed martyr did, None but Christ, none but Christ!"

While the awakened sinner surveys himself, he can meet with nothing but discouragement. If he look within, he perceives that the heart in which he trusted, has turned him aside; that it is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and the fruitful source of all the evils committed in his life. If he advert to actions in which there was ap