be reconciled to
God in Christ. Would ye then spend your time and thoughts upon other
things, if ye knew what need ye have of his righteousness, and how
suitable it were to your need? Should not the beggar seek food and
clothing? Should not the sick man seek health, and the poor man riches?
Here they are all in Christ's righteousness. Ye are under the curse of
God. This righteousness redeems from the curse. Ye are sinners, and none
of you righteous, no not one. But Christ was made sin for us, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him. O sinners, wonder at the
change! Hath Christ taken on your sins, that his righteousness might
become yours, and will ye not do so much as seek it? But many a man
beguiles his own soul, and thinks he seeks this righteousness in the
gospel. Therefore ye would know what it is to seek his righteousness. If
ye seek it, ye want your own righteousness. And who of you have come this
length, to judge yourselves that ye be not judged? It is a great
difficulty to convince the multitude of sin. That general notion, that we
are all sinners, is but the delusion that many souls perish in. Never any
will deny themselves to seek another righteousness, till they be beaten
and driven out of their own. There is need of submission to take and
receive this righteousness, let be to seek it, And now tell me, can ye say
that ye have seen all in yourselves as dung and dross, that ye count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus,
(Phil. iii. 8, 9.) that ye have seen all your own privileges and duties
loss, and are ye even sensible that prayer will no more help you than the
cutting off a dog's neck? Ye that lay so much weight upon your being
baptized, and upon outward privileges, are ye void of righteousness? No,
ye seek to establish your own, and do not submit to the righteousness of
God. In a word, all who are ignorant of this righteousness of God in
Christ, ye all seek to establish your own. There needs more. But not one
of twenty of you can tell what this is, it is a mystery. Ask at any of
you, how ye shall be saved, ye will say, by prayer to God, and the mercy
of God. Ye cannot tell the necessity of Christ's coming into the world.

_Secondly_, Ye must see an impossibility to attain a righteousness, or to
stand before God another way. When ye miss this righteousness and are
convinced of sin, it is not the running to prayer will help or mend it.
When ye see the broken cov