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you? Are they legal, which require perfect, exact, and full degrees of faith, fear, and love? Or are they not evangelical, such as require truth and sincerity in all these, and not full and absolute perfection? If you have true desire to fear him, which is the one measure of the fear of God's people, Neh. i. 11; so if you desire to believe, Matt. ix. 24, and have a will to obey, Isa. i. 19, in the inmost longing of your soul, according to the measure and strength of grace in you; this, according to the tenor of the blessed gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, is true and acceptable through Christ, for whose sake God does accept the will for the deed, in all such cases wherein there is truth of will and endeavour, but not power to do, 2 Cor. viii. 12.

Furthermore, if you think that it is your well-doing which must make you acceptable to God, you are in a proud and dangerous error. Indeed God will not accept of you, if you do not endeavour to do his will; but you must propose to yourself another end, than to be accepted for your well-doing; you must do your duty to show your obedience to God, and to show your thankfulness, that God has pleased, and does please to accept you in his Son Christ; and that it is your desire to be accepted through him.

But I would have you, who are pressed with the load of your sins, to look judiciously and impartially into yourself; it may be, you have more faith, fear of God, and obedience, than you are aware of. Can you grieve, and does it trouble you that you have so little faith, so little fear of God, and that you show so little obedience? And is it your desire and endeavour to have more, and to do as well as you can; though you cannot do so well as you should? Then you have much faith, fear, and obedience. For to grieve for little faith, fear, and obedience, is an evident sign of much faith, fear, and obedience. For whence is this trouble and grief, but from God's saving grace? And to grieve for little, shows that you long for and would have much.

Let this suffice for a full answer to the principal