We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one, we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other, the savour of life unto life: And who is sufficient for these things? But to return.

§ 65. There must be an internal fikeness or capacity, that act of regeneration spoken of by our Lord in John iii. or there can be no communion or fellowship of the Divine Spirit, so often dwelt upon in the Scriptures. Light and darkness cannot assimilate. The reign of sin is in' perpetual opposition to the reign of holiness. But true believers, with minds renewed, have an access through Christ, by one Spirit, unto the Father, and are thereby enabled to enjoy and rejoice in the privilege of his children. In them, the body is become, with respect to its prevailing desires and activity, mortified or dead because of the sin that is

in it and it is one great part of their Christian warfare to fight down and to keep down the in-bred corruptionsof the body, and to crucify the everrising affections and lusts of the flesh; for which purpose they are entitled to pray for the continual aid of the Holy Spirit, without whose assistance nothing of this kind can be truly and effectually performed.-But all this is quite another conduct from what some men inculcate; even that untrue and impossible thing, the making flesh and blood holy in and by itself, instead of looking to Christ for pardon, and to the Holy Spirit for their daily crucifixion. Such persons are ignorantly striving, if they really do strive, to bring something to the Law as a ground of hope, and are not living graciously in the faith of the Gospel for their present and eternal salvation. In this way, the divine order is inverted; and so false applications of the Gospel

Gospel are often made to those who have no preparation for and no faith in it, and wrong references to the Law respecting others, who, as à Covenant of works, have fled from it to Jesus Christ as their only refuge. Such persons know not truly what real holiness is, nor that Sanctification hath a two-fold sense: 1. of Separation or setting apart particular persons as vessels of mercy for the master's use; 2. of Purification or keeping those. vessels of mercy clean, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. These two cannot be separated.-None but such appropriated vessels can enter into the sanctuary of God, and as such must be kept holy, and be daily cleansed from all defilement.

§ 66. Scarcely any thing more demonstrably proves the weakness and the falsehood of merely human power in the business of salvation, than the

common

common effect of those resolutions, which are made by men, from natural fear only, in the hours of sickness and danger, concerning the great amendment of future life, and the diligent pursuit after (what they think to be) peace with God. Certainly the Divine Spirit hath often blessed these visitations to the conversion of sinners; but not by leaving them to the force of their own resolutions, but by convincing them of their undone state by nature, and by showing them first the want and then the worth of the Saviour. The former persons, however, we must and do suppose to be as sincere as their fears and horrors can make them in the moments of their distress; and there is no doubt, that they do firmly intend, at the time, to abide by their resolves and professions: But all this sincerity of intention, arising, not from genuine abhorrence of sin or hope in the Redeemer, but from

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from the gloomy uncertainty, or rather the dismal apprehensions, of the eternal state before them, leads only, if left to itself, to increase the number of those sorrowful examples, which justify the strong and antient proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. These examples, therefore, serve to convince us, more entirely, that human nature, corrupted as it now is in all its faculties and powers, is utterly incapable of assuming a life of faith and real holiness, or, in the language of our Lord, that flesh and blood (carnal and corrupt nature) cannot inherit, cannot understand, cannot receive, or enter into, the kingdom of God. The greatest saint that ever lived could not have become so of himself. Saul, the PhaFisee, who possessed more natural advantages to this end, perhaps, than any other man, could not have become

Paul,