g did obtain it, and yet to look upon his walking, as if it were not
at all. Your diligence and seriousness in godliness should be upon the
growing hand, as if doing did save you; yet you ought to deny all that,
and look to the righteousness of another, as if nothing were done at all
by you. How doth Paul, (Phil. iii. 8,) unite these in his practice, "I
count all loss and dung to be found in Christ, not having mine own
righteousness, and yet I press forward, and follow after perfection, as
having attained nothing yet." One of these two is the original of many
stumblings and wanderings in our Christian way. Either there is not a
necessity and constraint laid upon the souls of many to walk in all
well-pleasing, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God,--we look on it
as a thing indifferent, that is to be determined according to the measure
of our receivings from God, or we look on it as a thing not urging all,
but belonging to ministers, or more eminent professors; and hence there
ariseth much carnal liberty, in walking without the line of Christian
liberty, because there is an indifference in the spirit that gives that
latitude in walking; or else there is not that following of holiness in
such a way, as can consist with the establishing of Christ's
righteousness,--no denial of ourselves in our actions. We act as if we were
sufficient of ourselves, and walk as if we were thereby justified, and
commend ourselves to God in our own consciences, whenever we can have the
testimony of our consciences for well-doing. And by this means the Lord is
provoked. Because we do not honour the Son, the Father counts himself
despised, and the Spirit is grieved and tempted to depart, and leave us to
our own imaginations, till our idol which we established fall down, and
our understanding return to us.

As it would be of great moment to the peace of Christians, and increase of
holiness, to have that union of justification and sanctification stamped
on their hearts, so especially to have the due and evangelic method and
order of these impressed on their consciences, would conduce exceedingly
both to their quickening and comforting. As there is nothing, that either
so deadens or darkens, and saddens the spirits of the godly, as darkness
in this particular, the ignorance and mistake of the method and order of
that well-ordered covenant must certainly be very prejudicial to the life
and consolation tendered by the gospel. This spiritual walkin