62 THE CHARACTER OF THOSE formation of life that can be attained to, without this new life wrought in the soul, may procure our farther delusion, but never our salvation. # 5. (4) This new life in the people of God discovers itself by conviction, or a deep sense of divine things. As for instance They Are convinced of the evil of sin. The sinner is made to know and feel, that the sin, which was his delight, is a more loathsome thing than a toad or serpent, and a greater evil than plague or famine; being a breach of the righteous law of the most high God, dishonourable to him, and destructive to the sinner. Now the sinner nò more hears the re- proof of sin as words of course; but the mention of his sin speaks to his very heart; and yet he is con- tented you should show him the worst. He was wont to marvel, what made men keep up such a stir against sin, what härm it was for a. man to take a little for - biddén pleasure ; he saw no such heinousness in it, that Christ must needs die for it, and a christless world be eternally tormented in hell. Now the case is al- tered : God bath opened his eyes to see the inexpres- sible vileness in sin. # 6. They are convinced of their own misery by reason of sin. The \, who before read the threats of God's law, as men do the story Of foreign wars now, find it their own story, and perceive_ they read their own doom, as if they found their own names written in the curse, or heard the law say, as Nathan, Thou art the man.(q) The wrath of God seemed to him before but as a storm to a man in a dry house; or as the pains of the sick to the healthful stander -by ; but now he finds the disease is his own, and feels himself a condemned man, that he is dead and damned in point of law, and that nothing was wanting but mere execution to make him absolutely and irrecoverably miserable. This is a work of the Spirit, wrought in some measure in all the regenerate How should he come to Christ for pardon, that did not first find himself guilty, and condemned ? or fbr life, that never found himself spiritually dead? The whole need not (q) 2 Sam. xii, 7.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=