THE ARGUMENT Which Gives Peace To The Conscience 2/3

   From what quarter comes this good news, that God is reconciled to a poor soul, and that his sins are pardoned?  Surely from the gospel of Christ, and no other way besides.  Here alone is the covenant of peace to be read betwixt God and sinners; here the sacrifice by which this pardon is purchased; here the means discovered by which poor sinners may have benefit of this purchase; and therefore here alone can the accusing conscience find peace.  Had the stung Israelites looked on any other object besides the bra­zen serpent, they had never been healed.  Neither will the stung conscience find ease with looking upon any besides Christ in the gospel promise.  The Levite and the priest looked on the wounded man, but would not come near him.  There he might have lain and per­ished in his blood for all them.  It was the good Sa­maritan that poured oil into his wounds.  

Not the law, but Christ by his blood, bathes and supplies, closeth and cureth, the wounded conscience.  Not a drop of oil in all the world to be got that is worth anything for this purpose besides what is provided and laid up in this gospel vial.  There was abundance of sacrifices offered up in the Jewish church; yet, put all the blood of those beasts together which was poured out from first to last in that dispensation, and they were not able to quiet one conscience or purge away one sin. The ‘conscience of sin,’ as the apostle phraseth it, Heb. 10:2—that is, guilt in their conscience—would still have remained unblotted notwithstanding all these, if severed from what was spiritually signified by them.  And the reason is given, ver. 4, ‘for it is not pos­sible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.’  There is no proportion betwixt the blood of beasts, though it should swell into a river—a sea, and the demerit of the least sin.  Man’s sin deserves man’s death, and that eternal, both of body and soul, in hell.  

This is the price God hath set upon the head of every sin.  Now, the death of beasts being so far be­neath this price which divine justice demands as satis­faction for the wrong sin doeth him, it must needs be as far beneath pacifying the sinner’s conscience —which requires as much to satisfy it, yea, the very same, as it doth to satisfy the justice of God himself. But in the gospel, behold, joyful news is brought to the sinner’s ears, of a fountain of blood there opened, which for its preciousness is as far above the price that divine justice demands for man's, as the blood of bulls and beasts was beneath it, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ, who freely poured it out upon the cross, and by it ‘obtained eternal redemption for us,’ Heb. 9.  This is the door all true peace and joy comes into the conscience by.  Hence we are directed to bot­tom our confidence and draw our comfort here, and nowhere else: ‘Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,’ Heb. 10:22.  Mark that, ‘sprin­kled from an evil conscience.’