preserved from every degree of fainting.

4. Neglect to make use of him, and to come to him with all their wants,
failings and necessities, as they ought; or come not with that freedom
and boldness which the gospel grounds allow.

VI. This preacheth out the woful misery of such as are strangers to
Christ. For being strangers to the Life, they have no life, they are
dead, and death is engraven on all they do; even though,

1. They should be very diligent in external duties, yea, and outstrip
many true believers; as the Pharisees had their fasts twice a-week, Luke
xviii.

2. They should be eminently gifted, able to instruct others, and to
speak of the mysteries of the gospel, to purpose and to edification.
For such gifts of knowledge and utterance may be, where the lively
operations of the grace of Christ are not, and consequently where Christ
is not, as the Life.

3. They should seem eminent in all their outward carriage, and seem to
carry most christianly in all their walk, and appear most devout in the
matter of worship.

4. And they should have something more than ordinary; even taste of the
heavenly gift, and be made partakers of extraordinary gifts of the Holy
Ghost; yea, and taste the good word of God, and the powers of the world
to come, Heb. vi. 4, 5.

VII. This discovereth the noble advantage of such as have accepted of
Christ for their life. Their condition is happy, sure, desirable, and
thriving; for Christ is theirs, and life is theirs; because Christ, who
is the Life, is theirs.

_Obj._ 1. But some wicked persons may say, We see not that happy and
advantageous condition of such as go for believers; for we observe them
to be as little lively ofttimes as others, and as unfit for duties; yea,
and sometimes as much subject to sin and corruption as others.

_Ans._ 1. However it be with them, either in thine eyes, or possibly in
their own sometimes, yet thou mayest hold thy peace; for in their worst
condition, they would not exchange with thee for a world; in their
deadest-like condition, they are not void of all life, as thou art,
notwithstanding all thy motions, and seeming activeness in duty; because
all thy motion in and about duty is but like the moving of children's
puppets, caused by external motives, such as a name, applause, peace
from a natural conscience, or the like; and not from any inward
principle of grace and life.

2. Howbeit they sometimes seem to be dead, yet they are not always so;