Religion & morality > Human nature in its four-fold state ... in several practical discourses

3 j i How a Sinner is State III.
Hand to Heaven, and bring Chrift down from
thence. And thus at length he fees, he can neither
help himfeU by (forking, nor by Believing : And
having no more to hang by, on the old Stock, he
therefore falls off And while he is diflreft thus,
feeing himfelf like to be fwept away with the Flood
of God’s Wrath ; and yet unable fo much as to
ftretch forth a Hand to day hold of a Twig of the
Tree of Lite, growing on the Banks of the River ;
he is taken up, and ingrafted in the true Vine, the
Lord Jefus Chrift giving him the Spirit of Faith.
By what has been (aid upon this Head, I de-
fign not to rack or diftrefs tender Confcienees ; for
tho’ there are but few fuch, at this Day, yet
God forbid I fhould offend any of Chrift’s little
Ones. But alas, a dead Sleep is fallen upon
this Generation ; they will not be awakened, let
us go as near the Quick as we will: And there¬
fore I fear there’s another Sort iff Awakening
abiding this Sermon-proof Generation, which fhall
make the Ears of them that hear it to tingle. How¬
ever, I would not have this to be look’d upon, as
the Sovereign God’s Mited Method of breaking off
Sinners from the old Stock : But this I affert as a
certain Truth, That all who are in Chrift, have
been broken off from all thefe feveral Confidences j
and that they who were never broken off from them,
are yet ii\ their natural. Stock. Neverthclefs, if the
Hcufe be pull’d dovWn, and the old Foundation
raz’d ; ’tis all a Cafe, whether it was taken down
Stone by Stone, or whether it was undermined,
and all fell down together.
Now it is, that the Branch is ingrafted in Jefus
Chrift. And as the Law, in the Hand of the Spi¬
rit of God, was the Jnftrument to cut off the
Branch