contemned. "What!" saith God, "presumptuous
sinner, wilt thou give me a farthing in payment of a sum which all the
world, sold at the dearest, would not discharge?" Psal. xlix. 7, 8, 1
Pet. i. 18. It is no corruptible thing, but the blood of the Son of God. O
what must the debt be, when the price is so infinite! the Son of God must
die, nay, it is not sacrifice or offering--"Lo, I come to do thy will," it
is Christ himself that is the ransom, Psal. xl. 6, 7. And it is not much
soap or nitre, it is not much repentance and tears that will wash away
this filthiness, no, it is of a deeper dye, it is crimson ingrained
filthiness, Jer. ii. 22 and Isa. i. 16. Blood of bulls and goats cannot do
it, but only the blood of the immaculate Lamb offered up by himself, (Heb.
x. 4, 5,) the blood of Him, "who by the eternal Spirit offered up himself
without spot unto God," Heb. ix. 14. What must sin be, that must have such
a fountain opened for it? It must be strange uncleanness when the blood of
Christ only can cleanse it, Zech. xiii. 1.

"We all," &c. Mark, _first_, Sin hath gone over us all, and made all
mankind unclean, Rom. iii. 10, 22. Every one of Adam's posterity is born
unclean, "For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" Job. xiv. 4.
Consider: How sin defaced innocent Adam, how one sin made him so vile, and
spoiled him of the divine nature, and so the root was made unclean, and
the branches must follow the root, and so are we all born and conceived in
sin, Psalm li. 5. We carry in us original corruption, flowing from the
first actual sin of Adam, and this maketh poor children, before they do
good or evil, to be abominably vile in God's sight, even as the child is
set out, Ezek. xvi. Every one cometh of evil parents, all come of Adam the
rebel, what a loathsome sight would a child be to us so described, "Cast
out in the open field, to the loathing of its person in the day it is
born," and what must it all be before God, who is of purer eyes than to
behold sin? _Secondly_, Unto all this we have added innumerable actual
transgressions as so many filthy streams flowing out at the members, from
the inward puddle of original corruption; and so how much more vile are we
all nor infants can be, or Adam was in the day he was cast out of
paradise! And thus, Rom. iii. from verse 10, are the branches set down in
word, thought, and deed; so that all the inclinations and motions and
actions of the man are only evil continually. Ever