148 COMING TO GOD WITHOUT must. (mice and punish them as criminals of a deep die, for God waa not in their thoughts, they lived without God in the world ! Ps. x. 4. Ephes. ii. 12. f0 Dare not therefore, O sinners, dare not continue one day longer in this practice : Renounce and abandon your false and foolish hopes : Walk no longer in this vain, this dangerous, this supposed way of innocency, for it will never bring you to God and his-favour. Nor go on to think yourself fit for heaven, be- cause you imagined you had done no wrong on earth, for upon a serious search you must be convinced in your consciences, that youhave been evident transgressors against the lawof God, both in regard of the duties of religion and morality, in what you owe both to God and man ; and innocency will be found a false and vain plea at the bar of God." But I will go one step further in making it appear with abundant evidence, that the way of pre- tended innocency can never bring such creatures as we are into the favour of God ; and that is, by enquiring, of such as call themselves christians ; what is the use of chrtstianity, and why Was it brought into the world ? Surely, if innocence hadbeen the tray to heaven, Christ Jesus the Son of God would never have come into flesh and blood, that he might die for us ; God would never have sent so glorious and divine a person to have exposed himself to so many infirmities and sorrows, fatigues and suffer- ings among the wretched inhabitants of this our globe, if we could have been saved in the way of innocence. Never would the Son of God have entered our world to have been driven out of this mortal life again by cruel and bloody men ; nor sustained the shame, the pangs and agonies of the cross, and a cursed death. 'There wouldhave been no new religion introduced by hitn ; therewould have been no gospel, for there needed none if we are saved by innocence. The coming of the Son of God into our world, his painful circumstances of life, and his atoning death at the end of them, sufficiently prove, that thelaw of inno- cency can never save mankind. The covenant or law of innocence was broken by our first parents ; our natures are corrupted, and this law or covenant is for ever weak, and unable to bring us to God again. Rom. viii. 3. What the law was not able to do in that it was weak through the flesh, Jesus Christ came to do for us, by coming in the flesh, and making his seulesn offering for sin. " Ifafter all this repre- sentation of things you are resolved to continue in this way, and seek eternal life in the way of innocence, you give a sensible affront to the Son of God, whocame down from heaven to bring sinners near to God, andyou say in effect, he might have spared his journey to earth to shew us the way to heaven, or to provide :t new way for us, for we have done no harm to God or man, here in this world, and therefore God will not condemn or hurt
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