which persuades you most? And
do not these make you loathe yourselves and love holiness? Encourage
yourselves therefore in him. Hold fast the righteousness that is without
you by faith, and certainly you shall find that righteousness and holiness
shall in due time be fulfilled within you. I know no soul so wretched, but
it may lay hold on that perfect righteousness of Christ's, and go under
the covering of it, and take heart from it, if so be the desire and
affection of their soul be directed to a further end, to have his Spirit
dwelling within them, for the renewing of their heart "in righteousness
and true holiness." I do not say, that this is a condition which you must
perform before you venture to lay hold on Christ's righteousness without
you; nowise, but rather I would declare unto you the very nature of faith
in Christ, that it seeks delivery from wrath in him, not simply and
lastly, but that a way may be made for redemption from sin, and that there
may be a participation of that divine nature, which is most in its eye.

Sermon XVI.

Verse 4, 5.--"Who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
For they that are after the flesh," &c.

If there were nothing else to engage our hearts to religion, I think this
might do it, that there is so much reason in it. Truly it is the most
rational thing in the world, except some revealed mysteries of faith,
which are far above reason, but not contrary to it. There is nothing
besides in it, but that which is the purest reason. Even that part of it
which is most difficult to man, that which concerns the moderating of his
lusts and affections, and the regulating his walk and carriage;--there is
nothing that Christianity requires in these matters, but that which may be
persuaded by most convincing reasons, to be most suitable and comely for
man, as man. You may take it in the subject in hand. There is nothing
sounds harsher to men, and seems harder in religion, than such a victory
over the flesh, such an abstractedness from sensual and earthly things.
And yet, truly, there is nothing in the world, that more adorns and
beautifies a man, nothing so elevates him above beasts as this, insomuch
that many natural spirits, void of this saving light, have notwithstanding
been taken with somewhat of the beauty of it, and so far enamoured with
the love of it, as to account all the world mad and brutish that followed
these lower things, and enslaved themselves unto th