The Way to Christ

When Man will enter upon Repentance, and with his Prayers turn to God, he should, before he beginneth to pray, seriously consider the State of his own Soul. How it is wholly and altogether turned away from God, become faithless to Him, and only bent upon this temporary, frail, and earthly Life; bearing no sincere Love towards God and its Neighbor, but wholly lusting and walking contrary to the Commandments of God, and seeking itself only, in the temporal and transitory Lusts of the Flesh.

2. In the next Place, he should consider that all this is an utter Enmity against God, which Satan hath raised and wrought in him, by his Deceit in our first Parents; for which Abomination’s Sake we must suffer Death, and undergo Corruption with our Bodies.

3. He should consider the three horrible Chains wherewith our Souls are fast bound during the Time of this earthly Life. — The First is the severe Anger of God, the Abyss, and dark World, which is the Center, Root, or constituent Principle of the Soul’s Life. The Second is the Desire of the Devil against the Soul, whereby he continually sifteth and tempteth it, and without Intermission striveth to throw it from the Truth of God into his own evil Nature and Element, viz. into Pride, Covetousness, Envy, and Anger; and with his Desire, bloweth up and kindleth those evil Properties in the Soul, whereby its Will turneth away from God, and entereth into SELF. The Third and most hurtful Chain of all, wherewith the poor Soul is tied, is the corrupt and altogether vain, earthly, and mortal Flesh and Blood, full of evil Desires and Inclinations. Here he must consider that he lies close Prisoner with Soul and Body in the Mire of Sins, in the Anger of God, in the Jaws of Hell; that the Anger of God burneth in him in Soul and Body, and that he is that very loathsome Keeper of Swine, who hath spent and consumed his Father’s Inheritance, namely, the precious Love and Mercy of God, with the fatted Swine of the Devil in earthly Pleasures, and hath not kept the dear Covenant and Atonement of the innocent Death and Passion of Jesus Christ; which Covenant God of mere Grace hath given or put into our Humanity, and reconciled us in Him. He must also consider that he hath totally forgotten the Covenant of Holy Baptism, in which he had promised to be faithful and true to his Saviour, and so wholly defiled and obscured his Righteousness with Sin, (which Righteousness, God had freely bestowed upon him in Christ), that he now stands before the Face of God, with the fair Garment of Christ’s Innocency which he hath defiled, as a dirty, ragged, and patched Keeper of Swine, that hath continually eaten the Husks of Vanity with the Devil’s Swine, and is not worthy to be called a Son of the Father, and Member of Christ.