lin, and wakned a challenge for ï.t in his Confcience ; fast: when the commandment came (faith he) fin revived, and died. Now,can we think with any shadow of reafon, that after God called him effe&wally by his grace, that he hart more of a finful nature in him than he had before ? Sure no; but the body of death,the corruption ofhis nature,wast now clearly difcovered ,to him, and became lothfom challenges came to be quick and fharply piercing, and his Confcience began to be touched with the lively fenfe of its own defilement : He was before alive, or rather feemed to himfelf to be fo ; but now he became a dead man in his own eíteem, as he was molt really before the gracious change was wrought ; and fin, to his fenfe, re vived, and he, as to any account of his own righteoufnefs died. O firs, do ye underftand this do&rine ? We are afraid that many of you do not underftand it, at leaft iii your own experience ; and, for as abominable as corrupt nature and fin is, that yet ye are fleeping fecurely in it and are often returning with the dog to lick up that vile vomit. It is a very shrewd and evil token of a defiled and unclean Confcience, where there was never any chal- lenge for, nor any the leaft kindly fenfe of, its defilement and pollution. idly, Was the Confcience ever wafhea with the blood of Chrift ? for,always till that be, it is de filed and polluted : Did ye ever find your Confcience fo polluted, that ye could not get lived with it, till ye was made to run to the fountain opened up in the houfe of Davict for fin and uncleannefc ? ípoke of, Zech. 13. I. I fuppofo feveral of you have had now and then your own challen ges for lin, but what courfe took ye to anfwer them ? dick ye ftrive to clofe and flop the mouth of your Confcience; by betaking yourfelves to paftime, and to good compa- ny (as ye ufe ro call it) looking on Inch exercife (as to® many do) as a fit of melancholly ? or, did ye go further tar betake y©urfelves, for filencing your Confcience, to prayer and reading (good in themfelves) only, without going tap the blood of Chrift ? That will not be an evidence of a cleats: and purged Confcience, but there mutt be a bringing of it to the fountain, to JefusChri(t, to be cleanfed and calmed Thus it was with Paul, Rom. 7.who, when he law hi poi., lutíonp even in but a (mall remainder of ir and wait cal.
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