17
Christ only; rejoicing in the ruins of thy own righteousness, the spoiling of all thy own excellencies, that Christ’s alone, as Mediator, may be exalted on his throne: mourning over all thy duties (how glorious soever) which thou hast not performed in the sight and sense of Christ’s love. Without the blood of Christ on the conscience, all this is dead service, Heb. ix. 14.
That opinion of free will, so cried up, will be easily confuted, as it is by scripture, in the heart that hath had any spiritual dealings with Jesus Christ, as to the application to its merit, and subjection to his righteousness. Christ is every way too magnificent a person for a poor nature to close withal or to apprehend. Christ is so infinitely holy, nature durst never look at him; so infinitely good, nature can never believe him to be such, when it lies under a full sight of sin. Christ is too high and glorious for nature so much as to touch. There must be a divine nature first put in the soul, to make it lie on him, he lies so infinitely beyond the sight or reach of nature.
That Christ, which natural free will can apprehend, is but a natural Christ of a man’s own making, not the Father’s Christ, nor Jesus the Son of the living God, to whom none can come without the father’s drawing, John vi. 44.46. Finally, search the scriptures daily, as mines of gold, wherein the heart of Christ is laid. Watch against constitutional sins, see them in their vileness, and they shall never break out into act. Keep always an humble, empty, broken frame of heart, sensible of any spiritual miscarriage, observant of all inward workings, fit for the highest communications. Keep not guilt in the conscience, but apply the blood of Christ immediately. God chargeth sin and guilt upon thee, to make thee look to Christ.
