156 COMING TO GOD WITHOUT CHRIST. justice of God; and the best of them are so defective thai they can never claim or pretend to any merit in them, since they do not come up to a;sorer the requirements of God in his general rule of government. 2. Our obedience of to-day cannot wipe away or cancel the crimes of yesterday or our past life : These crimes stand like high and unpassable mountains in the way betwixt God and us: Paying a new debt never wipes off old scores among men, and why should we imagine it will do so before the throne of God ? 3. Were our duties perfect, yet it is not only a guilty, but a worthless creature, a mere pollutedworm performs them ; and the eternal favour of an offended God is not to be purchased for rebels at so cheap a rate. 4 It is true, it is by duties of worship we must draw near unto God, and by the acts of our mind and will, by knowledge, assent, faith, trust, hope, prayer and repentance, we must come to God ; but it is still by and through the mediation and interest of Jesus the Son, that these acts of the soul must be addressed to the Father. These considered alone in themselves, are not prescribed in my text as the way itself, for Christ is the way, the truth and the life: He is the only true and living way to God : These actions performed with a due regard to Christ, are properly our walking in the way which God bath appointed ; but if we have no regard to Christ in. these actions, we are not walking in God's way, nor can we raise any solid hope that we shall arrive at his gracious presence, while we neglect or refuse the only way which God has ordained. Perhaps some more intelligent or more conceited hearers may cry out here, Why are these rudiments and plain principles of christianity preached to us? Surely we know better, and un- derstand more of the gospel of Christ, than to make such dis- courses necessary for us to attend them ? I answer, L However Iearned some may be in these truths, yet per- haps there maybe others coining continually into our assemblies, whoknow little enough either of the law or the gospel ; and they had need of the doctrines of their own guilt and misery, and danger, to be spoken in very plain and clear language to them, before theywill, hearken and stand still, and consider their own circumstances, and their peril : And the nature of man when under the awakenings of conscience, is so prone to take hold of every false and feeble refuge, and to venture their eternal hopes upon them, that it is very necessary to speak these things often, and to represent them in the clearest light, in order to caution sinners against building their hopes on the sand, and resting all their expectation of the favour of God and happiness, upon some feeble foundation which will not bear them. It is not the wise and the learned that I pretend to instruct ; but it is a pity any poor soul, even of the lowest ranks of mankind, should abide
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