not comfort yourself by extenuation
or mitigation of sin; but by repentance toward God, and faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ. It is not by diminishing or denying your debt;
but by confessing it, by owning that you have nothing to pay, that
forgiveness is to be hoped.

_Bragwell._ I don't understand you. You want to have me as good as a
saint, and as penitent as a sinner at the same time.

_Worthy._ I expect of every real Christian, that is, every real
penitent, that he should labor to get his heart and life impressed
with the stamp of the gospel. I expect to see him aiming at a
conformity in spirit and in practice to the will of God in Jesus
Christ. I expect to see him gradually attaining toward the entire
change from his natural self. When I see a man at constant war with
those several pursuits and tempers which are with peculiar propriety
termed _worldly_, it is a plain proof to me that the change must
have passed on him which the gospel emphatically terms becoming "a
new man."

_Bragwell._ I hope then I am altered enough to please you. I am sure
affliction has made such a change in me, that my best friends hardly
know me to be the same man.

_Worthy._ That is not the change I mean. 'Tis true, from a merry man
you have become a gloomy man; but that is because you have been
disappointed in your schemes: the principle remains unaltered. A
great match for your single daughter would at once restore all the
spirits you have lost by the imprudence of your married one. The
change the gospel requires is of quite another cast: it is having "a
new heart and a right spirit;" it is being "God's workmanship;" it
is being "created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works;" it is
becoming "new creatures;" it is "old things being done away, and all
things made new;" it is by so "learning the truth as it is in
Jesus--to the putting off the old man, and putting on the new, which
after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" it is by
"partaking of the divine nature." Pray observe, Mr. Bragwell, these
are not my words, nor words picked out of any fanatical book; they
are the words of that gospel you profess to believe; it is not a new
doctrine, it is as old as our religion itself. Though I can not but
observe, that men are more reluctant in believing, more averse to
adopting this doctrine than almost any other: and indeed I do not
wonder at it; for there is perhaps no one which so attacks
corruption in its strongholds; no on