Further, before you can speak peace to your hearts you must not only
be troubled for the sins of your life, the sins of your nature, but
likewise for the sins of your best duties and performances.

When a poor soul is somewhat awakened by the terrors of the Lord,
then the poor creature, being born under the covenant of works,
flies directly to a covenant of works again. And as Adam and Eve hid
themselves among the trees of the garden and sewed fig-leaves together
to cover their nakedness, so the poor sinner when awakened flies to
his duties and to his performances, to hide himself from God, and goes
to patch up a righteousness of his own. Says he, I will be mighty good
now--I will reform--I will do all I can; and then certainly Jesus
Christ will have mercy on me. But before you can speak peace to your
heart you must be brought to see that God may damn you for the best
prayer you ever put up; you must be brought to see that all your
duties--all your righteousness--as the prophet elegantly expresses
it--put them all together, are so far from recommending you to God,
are so far from being any motive and inducement to God to have
mercy on your poor soul, that He will see them to be filthy rags, a
menstruous cloth--that God hates them, and can not away with them, if
you bring them to Him in order to recommend you to His favor.

My dear friends, what is there in our performance to recommend us unto
God? Our persons are in an unjustified state by nature; we deserve to
be damned ten thousand times over; and what must our performance be?
We can do no good thing by nature: "They that are in the flesh can not
please God."

You may do things materially good, but you can not do a thing formally
and rightly good; because nature can not act above itself. It is