V. Of the nature of true conversion
But tell me, gentlemen, seriously, what do you say, or plead for yourselves more in all this, than those convicted hypocrites did, Isa.
58:2. "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my way, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their God: They ask of me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to God." Or to come nearer yet to your case, and cut off, at one stroke, for ever this vain plea of yours, read and ponder
God's own censure of it, in Jer. 7:8, 9, 10, 11, 12. "Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery, and swear falsely, &c. and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord; but go ye now to my place, which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it, for the wickedness of my people Israel."
Of the Nature of True Conversion YOU have heard, that conversion does not consist in these external things; at your eternal peril be it, if you trust in them: But true conversion is the turning of the whole man to God, Acts 26:18 it is nothing less, than the total change of the inward temper and frame of the heart, and the external course of the life, Isa. 55:8. It is not the cool confession, but the real forsaking of sin, in which we shall find mercy, Prov. 28:13. Thy heart and will, love and delight, must turn sin out, and take Christ in, or thou art no gospel-convert. A true convert loaths every sin, and himself for sin, Ezek. 36:31 but general confessions of sin are consistent with the full dominion of sin.