Page:Sins and sorrows spread before God.pdf/22

Rh name and mediation of Jesus Christ his Lord. It is for the sake of Christ, who has purchased all the blessings of the covenant, that a saint hopes to receive them; and for the sake of Christ, he pleads that God would bestow them.

But having treated largely on this subject, it remains that I make a few useful reflections on the whole foregoing discourse.

W a dull and uncomfortable thing is religion without drawing near to God! for this is the very business for which religion is designed; the end and aim of religion is getting nigh to God; if it attain not this end it is nothing.

O the madness of hypocrites, who satisfy themselves to toil in long forms of worship, and appear perpetually in the shapes of religion, but unconcerned whether they ever get near to God by it or no! They lose the end and design for which religion was made. What if we know all the doctrines of the gospel; what if we can talk rationally about natural religion; what if we can deduce one truth from another, so as to spread a whole scheme of godliness before the eyes or ears of those we converse with; what if we can prove all the points of Christianity, and give uncontestable arguments for the belief of them; yet we have no religion if our souls never get near to God by them. A saint thinks it a very