eth to clothe it
with his own garments! Praise the virtue of that blood, that is more
precious than the blood of bulls and goats, that can so throughly purge,
as you shall have no more conscience of sin.

Unclean sinners, wash you, make you clean,--there is a fountain opened;
though sin were as scarlet, it can perfectly change the colour of it. If
you wash not while the fountain is open, it will quickly be sealed on you,
and then it shall be said, when the angel sweareth by him that liveth
forever and ever, that time shall be no more, then shall it be said, "let
him that is unclean be unclean still." Now, cleansing is offered in the
gospel,--if you will love your loathsomeness so well, as not to dip
yourselves in this fountain, then let the unclean be so still. Your
repentance will never change your colour, though you should melt in
sorrow: and therefore you who have found a way to be saved otherwise
nor(307) by Jesus Christ, you shall be deceived. Your tears and mourning
that you might have had, though Christ had never come into the world, is
all you use to speak of, and build your hope on; and if you speak of
Christ, it is in such terms as to buy him by such repentance; so that the
truth is, you use but Christ's name as a shadow, you make no use of him;
he needed not to have come into the world, for many of you could have done
as well without him. But as many of you as cannot find cleansing, who see
filth increase by washing, come to Christ Jesus, and say, "If you wilt,
thou canst make me clean," Matt viii. 2. Nothing beside Jesus can do
it--believe his sufficiency. Nothing beside him will do--believe his
willingness; for, for this cause he is an open fountain, that all may come
and draw.

Sermon XVI.

Isaiah lxiv. 6, 7.--"All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags,
and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind,
have taken us away."

Not only are the direct breaches of the command uncleanness, and men
originally and actually unclean, but even our holy actions, our commanded
duties. Take a man's civility, religion, and all his universal inherent
righteousness,--all are filthy rags. And here the church confesseth nothing
but what God accuseth her of, Isa. lxvi. 8, and chap. i. ver. 11, 12, 13,
&c. This people was much in ceremonial and external duties; and therefore
they cried, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of Lord!" as if this would
have outcried all their other sins;