E USE OF FOR JUSTIFICATION AS A WAY.

What Christ hath done to purchase, procure, and bring about our
justification before God, is mentioned already, viz. That he stood in
the room of sinners, engaging for them as their cautioner, undertaking,
and at length paying down the ransom; becoming sin, or a sacrifice for
sin, and a curse for them, and so laying down his life a ransom to
satisfy divine justice; and this he hath made known in the gospel,
calling sinners to an accepting of him as their only Mediator, and to a
resting upon him for life and salvation; and withal, working up such, as
belong to the election of grace, to an actual closing with him upon the
conditions of the covenant, and to an accepting of him, believing in
him, and resting upon him, as satisfied with, and acquiescing in that
sovereign way of salvation and justification through a crucified
Mediator.

Now, for such as would make use of Christ as the way to the Father in
the point of justification, those things are requisite; to which we
shall only premise this word of caution, That we judge not the want of
these requisites a ground to exempt any, that heareth the gospel, from
the obligation to believe and rest upon Christ as he is offered in the
gospel.

1. There must be a conviction of sin and misery. A conviction of
original guilt, whereby we are banished out of God's presence and
favour, and are in a state of enmity and death, are come short of the
glory of God, Rom. iii. 23; becoming dead or under the sentence of
death, through the offence of one, Rom. v. 15; being made sinners by one
man's disobedience, verse 19, and therefore under the reigning power of
death, verse 17, and under that judgment that came upon all men to
condemnation, verse 18. And of original innate wickedness, whereby the
heart is filled with enmity against God, and is a hater of him and all
his ways, standing in full opposition to him and to his holy laws;
loving to contradict and resist him in all his actings; despising and
undervaluing all his condescensions of love; obstinately refusing his
goodness and offers of mercy; and peremptorily persisting in rebellion
and heart-opposition; not only not accepting his kindness and offers of
mercy, but contemning them, trampling them under foot as embittered
against him. As also, there must be a conviction of our actual
transgressions, whereby we have corrupted our ways yet more, run farther
away from God, brought on more wrath upon