o fulfil one jot of it
yourselves, or any thing you do be accepted. And, till this foundation be
laid, you do but beat the air in religion, you build on the sand.

Now, if once you were brought this length, to renounce all confidence in
yourselves, and to flee into Christ's righteousness, then it were easy to
lead you a step further,--to renounce the love of your most beloved sins.
And the more lovely that Christ's righteousness is in your eyes, the more
beauty would holiness and obedience have in them also unto you. Then you
would labour to walk after the guidance of the Spirit.

I would have the impression of this deep in your hearts,--that the gospel
is not a doctrine of licentiousness, but a doctrine of the purest liberty,
of the completest redemption. Many think it liberty to serve their lusts;
and it is indeed as bonds and cords to restrain them. There is no man but
would be content to be saved from the wrath to come; and therefore many
snatch at such sentences of the gospel, and take them lightly, without
consideration of what further is in it. But truly if this were all, it
were not complete redemption, if there were not redemption from sin too,
which is the most absolute tyrant in the world. I think a true Christian
would account the service of sin bondage, though it were left at his own
option. He that commits sin, is the servant of sin; therefore the freedom
that Christ purchaseth, is freedom from sin, John viii. 36. I will say
more. We are delivered from wrath, that so we may be redeemed from sin. We
have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, that so the image of
Christ may be renewed within us; this is the very end of that. I am sure
any that discerns aright, knows sin to have infinitely more evil in it
than punishment hath; nay, punishment is only evil, as it hath relation to
sin. There is a beauty of justice and righteousness in punishment, but
there is nothing in sin but deformity and opposition to his holiness. It
is purely evil, and most purely hated of God. And if there were no more to
persuade you that sin is infinitely more evil than pain, consider how our
pain and punishment was really transferred upon the blessed Son of God,
and that all this did not make him a whit the worse. But he was not
capable of the real infusion of our sin. That would have made Christ as
miserable, wretched, and impotent, as any of us, that would have disabled
him so far from helping us, that he would have had as much