enant, ye fall upon doing something, to mend
your faults, with some good turns, and some will make a few good works
answer all the challenges of sin. Alas! this is a seeking of your own
righteousness. Many a poor broken man seeks to make up his fortune. Poor
wretched sinners are building up the breach of the old covenant, putting
up props under an old ruinous house, seeking to establish it, and rear it
up again. But ye will never seek Christ till ye cannot do better, till ye
be desperate of helping yourselves without him. Now I appeal to your
consciences. Who among you was ever serious in this matter, to examine
your own condition, whether you were enemies or friends? Ye took it for
granted all your days. But never a man will betake himself to an imputed
righteousness, but only he that flies, taking with(494) his enmity, and is
pursued by the avenger of blood, and flies in to this righteousness as a
city of refuge.

_Thirdly_, Ye must seek this righteousness, and what is it to seek it? It
is even to take it and to receive it. It is brought to your door. It is
offered. And the convinced sinner hath no more to do but hearken, and this
righteousness is brought near unto him. Prayer to God, and much dealing
with him, is one of the ways of obtaining this righteousness. But coming
to Jesus Christ is the comprehensive short gate,(495) and therefore it is
called "the righteousness of faith," and "the righteousness of God by
faith." Now shall ye be called seekers of Christ's righteousness, who will
not receive it when it is offered? Ye who have so many objections and
scruples against the gospel and the application of it, ye in so far are
not seekers, but refusers of the gospel, and disobedient. Christ's
righteousness should meet with a seeker not a disputer. Any thing God
allows you to seek, certainly he allows you to take and receive it, when
it is brought unto you. And therefore, whoever have need of Jesus Christ,
not only refuse him not, but stay not till they find him come to them.
This is a noble resolution, I will give myself no rest till I be at a
point in this. Seek him as a hid treasure, as that which your happiness
depends upon.

(1) The kingdom of grace is worthy of all your affections and pains. That
despised thing in the world called grace is the rarest piece of the
creation, and if we could look on it aright, we would seek grace, and
follow after it. Grace extracts a man out of the multitude of men that are
all of