160 co5iiÑO TO GOD BY Cantst: of the children of men, in their guilt and misery in general ; we also, in order to our recovery, must be brought to see ourselves guilty and miserable, we must see ourselves destitute of the image and the love of God in our fallen state of nature, if ever we would return to him by Christ and grace. God, who is essentially happy in being for ever near him- self, and one with himself, has made the happiness of his crea- tures to depend on their being near to him, and their union with him ; and he knows it is misery enough to beafar off from God : So must we be made deeply sensible of our wretchedness and misery in the loss of the favour and image of God, aid in our dreadful state of distance and estrangedness from him. We must behold ourselves exposed to the wrath of God, and under sentence of just condemnation and death, because of sin. We must see it so as to feel it, and be affected with it at our heart ; we must have such an impression of it made upon our souls, so as never to be satisfied to continue in such a state, and be restless in seeking some way of recovery, as I shall spew more particu- larly afterwards. II. The great God surveying his own glorious perfections in himself, and the just rightsof his government, tatting a view also of the holiness, justice and wisdom of his law, which sinful man had grievously dishonoured and affrontedbydisobedience : he did not think it proper for himself asthe supreme Governor of theworld, to receive sinful creatures into his favour again, with- out some signal honour clone to his broken law and his authority ; as a sort of righteous recompence for the affront and dishonours done thereto by the offence of his creatures. It became the great God to make his law appear wise and just, by demanding such a reparation ofthe dishonour done to it. But he found all mankind utterly incapable of making any such recompence, since all that they could do for time to come was but their known duty to their Creator, and none of their sufferings short of destruction or eternal death, could make atone- ment or satisfaction for the sins that were past : And in this view . of things the great God did, as it were, pronounce the recovery of his creature man, by all his own powers and capacities, alto- gether hopeless, and that his recovery must arise only from divine grace. In correspondence to this view of things in the eye of God, we should also set before our own eyes the holiness, justice and wisdom of the law of our Creator, in order to make ourselves deeply sensible of our great guilt, in breaking his law, and our desert of death by the transgression of it: We should also be made sensible in some measure of the right of his divine authority and government to demand some satisfaction for our offences, be- fore we be received into his favour again. The very workings
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