t to the end, whether he be Christian
or heathen, until he believes the Bible and the Sacraments, which
tell him, 'God does not hate you: He hates your sins, and loves
you; He wills not your misery but your happiness; and therefore
God's will, yea, God's earnest endeavour, is to raise you out of
those sins of yours, which make you miserable now, and which, if you
go on in them, must bring of themselves everlasting misery to you.'
Of themselves; not by any arbitrary decree of God (whereof the Bible
says not one single word from beginning to end), that He will
inflict on you so much pain for so much sin: but by the very nature
of sin; for to sin is to be parted from God, in whose presence alone
is life, and therefore sin is, to be in death. Sin is, to be at war
with God, who is love and peace; and therefore to be in
lovelessness, hatred, war, and misery. Sin is, to act contrary to
the constitution which God gave man, when He said, 'Let us make man
in our image, after our likeness;' and therefore sin is a disease in
human nature, and like all other diseases, must, unless it is
checked, go on everlastingly and perpetually breeding weakness, pain
and torment. And out of that God is so desirous to raise you, that
He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for you, if
by any means He might raise you out of that death of sin to the life
of righteousness--to a righteous life; to a life of Duty--to a
dutiful life, like His Son Jesus Christ's life; for that must go on,
if you go on in it, producing in you everlastingly and perpetually
all health and strength, usefulness and happiness in this world and
all worlds to come.

But men will not hear that voice. The fact is, that simply to do
right is too difficult for them, and too humbling also. They are
too proud to like being righteous only with Christ's righteousness,
and too slothful also; and so they go about like the old Pharisees,
to establish a righteousness of their own; one which will pamper
their self-conceit by seeming very strange, and farfetched, and
difficult, so as to enable them to thank God every day that they are
not as other men are; and yet one which shall really not be as
difficult as the plain homely work of being good sons, good fathers,
good husbands, good masters, good servants, good subjects, good
rulers. And so they go about to establish a righteousness of their
own (which can be no righteousness at all, for God's righteousness
is the