this command of believing in Christ is
answerable to all the breaches of the law, and tends to make them up in
Christ. When he proclaimed the law on mount Sinai, with terror, that which
ye hear expressed is not his first commandment, which ye are in the first
instance to obey, for all these we have broken, but it hath a gospel
command in its bosom, it leads to Jesus Christ, and if ye could read the
mind of God in it, ye would resolve all these commands which condemn you
and curse you, into one command of believing in the Son, that ye may be
saved from that condemnation. And if ye obey this command, which is his
last command, and most peremptory, then are the breaches of all the rest
made up, the intent of all the rest is fulfilled, though not in your
obedience, yet in Christ's, which is better than ours. Believing in Christ
presents God with a perfect righteousness, with an obedience even to the
death of the cross. When a sinner hears the holy and spiritual sense of
the law, and sees it in the light of God's holiness, O how vile must he
appear to himself, and how must he abhor himself! What original pollution,
what actual pollution, what a fountain within, what uncleanness in streams
without, will discover itself! Now, when the most part of men get any
sight of this, presently they fall a washing and cleansing themselves, or
hiding their filthiness. And what water take they? Their own tears and
sorrows, their own resolutions, their own reformations. But alas, we are
still more plunged in our own filthiness; that is still marked before him,
because all that is as foul as that we would have washen away. What
garment do men take to hide themselves ordinarily? Is it not their own
righteousness? Is it not a skirt of some duty that is spread over
transgressions? Do not men think their sins hid, if they can mourn and
pray for a time? Their consciences are eased by reflection upon this. But
alas, thine iniquity is still marked! Shall filthiness hide filthiness?
Thy righteousness is as a vile garment, as a menstruous cloth, (Isa. lxiv.
6.) as well as thine unrighteousness, how then shall it cover thine
nakedness? Seeing it is so then, what is the Lord's mind concerning our
cleansing? Seeing stretched out hands and many prayers will not do it,
what shall I do? The Lord hath showed thee what thou shalt do, and that
is, that thou do nothing in relation to that end, that thou shouldst
undertake to wash away the least spot by all thy re