ghteousness, and therefore ye lie, with Adam's
posterity, without hope in the world Grace and truth must come from above
by Jesus Christ Grace and glory are the gifts of God. (3.) The sinner also
comes short of the glory of God, Rom. iii. 23. All sinners are born heirs
of hell and wrath, without the hope of happiness. There is none born with
a title to the kingdom of heaven, or any right to it. Man in his fall
lost his right to eternal life and immortality, and hath purchased a
doleful right to the Lord's wrath and to hell fire. Ye think it strange
that any christened or baptized person should be damned, but the scripture
knows no difference. "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth
any thing, but a new creature, and faith which worketh by love." Neither
to be a member of the visible church nor a pagan avails any thing, "for
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Now what have ye
since ye want righteousness? Ye want grace and ye want glory, and in the
place of these ye have unrighteousness, all sin, all God's curses and
wrath, and this makes up complete misery. In a word, ye want God and
Christ, and this is all, and enough for all, Eph. ii. 12. Ye have, by
nature, more sibness(486) with Satan, and nearer relation to him, than to
God, and if ye want God, what can ye have beside? Your abundance is want.
As all things are theirs who are Christ's, so nothing is theirs who are
not God's. In short, there is not in all the creation such a miserable
creature as man, whom God hath magnified and exalted above the angels, and
the rest of the works of his hands. Now all men want these, but no man
knows this but the Christian, whose eyes Christ hath opened, and to whom
he hath given eye salve. Laodicea was blind and saw not, but she thought
she was rich enough, when she had nothing, Rev. iii. 17, 18. The man, who
will discourse well on all the miseries of this life, and human
infirmities, may be ignorant of these things. There is no man but knows
some want. But what is it he misses? Nothing but what concerns his
present being and well being in this world, and so the world may supply
it. But the Christian wants something this vain world will not make up.
"Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon the earth I
desire beside thee," says the soul that hath found God. And whom want I in
heaven but thee? (Psal. lxxiii. 25, 26) says the soul that seeks God. He
wants God's favour, and the