Preaching

There is  sufficiently evidenced a comprehensive difference between a spiritual life unto God by evangelical holiness, and a life of moral virtue, though pretended unto God also. Unto the first, the original and continual purification of our nature and persons by the Spirit of God and blood of Christ is indispensably required. Where this work is not, there neither is nor can be any thing of that holiness which the gospel prescribes, and which we inquire after. Unless the purification and cleansing of sin belong necessarily unto the holiness of the new covenant, all that God hath taught us concerning it in the Old Testament and the New, by his institution of legal purifying ordinances; by his promises to wash, purify, and cleanse us; by his precepts to get ourselves cleansed by the means of our purification, namely, his Spirit and the blood of Christ; by his instruments and directions of us to make use of those means of our cleansing; by his declarations that believers are so washed and cleansed from all the defilements of their sins, – are things fanatical, enthusiastic notions, and unintelligible dreams. Until men can rise up to a confidence enabling them to own such horrible blasphemies, I desire to know whether these things are required unto their morality? If they shall say they are so, they give us a new notion of morality, never yet heard of in the world; and we must expect until they have farther cleared it, there being little or no signification in the great swelling words of vanity which have hitherto been lavished about it. But if they do not belong thereunto, – then is their life of moral virtue (were it as real in them as it is with notorious vanity pretended) cast out from all consideration in a serious disquisition after evangelical holiness. And what hath been spoken may suffice to give us some light into the nature of this first act of our sanctification by the Spirit, which consists in the cleansing of our souls and consciences from the pollutions of sin, both original and actual