rrow and tears, and
a resolution of amending. This, then, is all your covering and
ornament,--something done by you, as many will make the wings of two good
works stretch themselves out so far as to cover and hide a multitude of
offences between them. Therefore I declare, in the Lord Jesus his name,
unto you, whose conscience must go along in the acknowledgment and owning
of your case, that you have covered yourselves with your own
righteousness, that you have taken as filthy rags to cover your nakedness
and sin with, as your sins are, and so you have made an addition to your
uncleanness, you are more unclean by your prayers and repentance than
before; and so God is of more pure eyes than to look graciously on such as
you are. You have gone about to establish your own righteousness, and have
not known the righteousness of God, and so you have come short of it; you
are yet persons in a state of enmity,--God is your judge, you are rebels.
It concerns you much to heed this well, to judge of your own actions and
persons as God judgeth of them; for if God shall judge one way, and you
judge another way, you may be far mistaken in the end. If you have so good
an opinion of yourselves and your duties, that you can plead interest in
God for them, and absolve yourselves from such grounds; and if God have
not the same judgment, but rather think as evil of your prayers as of your
cursing, and abhor the thing that satisfieth you, will it not be dreadful
in the end? For his judgment shall stand, and you will succumb in
judgment, since you crossed God's mind. Therefore we would have you
solidly drink in this principle of religion;--that man is so unclean, and
God so abhorreth him, that whatever he doth or can do, it cannot make him
righteous; that no good action can make him acceptable, and take away the
uncleanness of the evil actions; and that any sinful action taketh away
all the cleanness of the good actions. Once believe this,--if I should
sweat out my life in serving God, and never rise off my knees, if I should
give my body to the fire for the truth, if I should melt away in tears for
sin, all this is but filthy rags, and I can never be accepted of God for
all that, but the matter of my condemnation groweth,--if I justify myself
my own mouth proves me perverse: God needeth no more but my good deeds to
condemn me for, in all justice: and therefore it is a thing impossible,--I
will never put forth a hand, or open a mouth upon that a