re, you see the punishment is lengthened throughout
eternity to them who have this to undergo alone. Go then, and first suffer
the eternal wrath of an infinite God, and then come and offer obedience if
thou can. But now, thou art in a double error, both of which are damnable;
one is, thou thinkest thou art able, by consideration and resolution, to
perform some acceptable obedience to God; another, that performance of
obedience, and amending in time coming, will expiate former
transgressions. If either of these were true, Christ needed not to have
come in the likeness of sinful flesh, because it had been possible for the
law to save thee. But now, the truth is, such is the utter disability and
impotency of man through sin, that he can neither will, nor do the least
good, truly good and pleasant to God. His nature and person being defiled,
all he doth is unclean. And then, suppose it were possible that man could
do any thing in obedience to his commands, yet it being unquestionable
that all have sinned, satisfaction must first be made to God's
threatening, "thou shalt die," before obedience be acceptable, and that is
impossible too. This, then, I leave upon your consciences, beseeching you
to lay to heart the impossibility you are encompassed with on both hands;
justice requiring a ransom, and you have none, and justice requiring new
obedience again, and you can give none; old debts urging you, and new duty
pressing you, and ye alike disabled for both; that so finding yourselves
thus environed with indigency and impossibility within, you may be
constrained to flee out of yourselves unto him that is both able and
willing. This is not a superficial business, as you make it. It is not a
matter of fancy, or memory, or expression, as most make it. Believe me, it
is a serious business, a soul-work, such an exercise of spirit as useth to
be when the soul is between despair and hope. Impossibility within,
driving a soul out of itself, and possibility, yea, certainty of help
without, even in Christ, drawing a soul in to him. Thus is the closure
made, which is the foundation of our happiness.

Sermon XI.

Verse 3.--"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh."

For what purpose do we meet thus together? I would we knew it,--then it
might be to some better purpose. In all other things we a