_Secondly_, It were useful, and of great advantage for such as would
grow in grace, and advance in the way of holiness, to be living in the
constant conviction,

1. Of the necessity of holiness, "without which no man shall see God,"
Heb. xii. 14. "Nothing entering into the New Jerusalem that defileth,"
Rev. xxi. 7.

2. Of their own inability to do any one act right; how they are not
sufficient of themselves to think any thing as of themselves, 2 Cor.
iii. 5; and that without Christ they can do nothing, John xv. 5.

3. Of the insufficiency of any human help, or means, or way which they
might think good to choose, to mortify aright one corruption, or to give
strength for the discharge of any one duty; for our sufficiency is of
God, 2 Cor. iii. and it is "through the Spirit that we must mortify the
deeds of the body," Rom. viii. 13.

4. And of the treachery and deceitfulness of the heart, which is bent to
follow by-ways, being not only "deceitful above all things, but also
desperately wicked," Jer. xvii. 9.

That by this means, the soul may be jealous of itself, and despair of
doing any thing in its own strength, and so be fortified against that
main evil, which is an enemy to all true sanctification, viz. confidence
in the flesh.

_Thirdly_, The soul will keep its eye fixed on those things:

1. On Christ's all-sufficiency to help; in all cases that "he is able to