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rest, and finding none.
When they are beat out of one refuge, they fly to another; till they are
as it were debilitated, broken, and subdued with legal humblings; in
which God gives them a conviction of their own utter helplessness and
insufficiency, and discovers the true remedy in a clearer knowledge of
Christ and His gospel.
When they begin to seek salvation, they are commonly profoundly ignorant
of themselves; they are not sensible how blind they are; and how little
they can do towards bringing themselves to see spiritual things aright,
and towards putting forth gracious exercises in their own souls. They
are not sensible how remote they are from love to God, and other holy
dispositions, and how dead they are in sin. When they see unexpected
pollution in their own hearts, they go about to wash away their own
defilements, and make themselves clean; and they weary themselves in
vain, till God shows them that it is in vain, and that their help is not
where they have sought it.
But some persons continue wandering in such a kind of labyrinth, ten
times as long as others, before their own experience will convince them
of their insufficiency; and so it appears not to be their own experience
only, but the convincing influence of God's Holy Spirit with their
experience, that attains the effect. God has of late abundantly shown
that He does not need to wait to have men convinced by long and often
repeated fruitless trials; for in multitudes of instances He has made a
shorter work of it. He has so awakened and convinced persons'
consciences, and made them so sensible of their exceeding great
vileness, and given them such a sense of His wrath against sin, as has
quickly overcome all their vain self-confidence, and borne them down
into the dust before a holy and righteous God.
There have been some who have not had great terrors, but have had a very
quick work. Some of those who have not had
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