A legal spirit.
In the next place, if you are delivered from the first into the second covenant, I admonish you to observe the following particulars. First, care that you do not content yourselves, though you do good works—that is, they are good. Secondly. In and with a legal spirit, which are done these ways as followeth.
First. If you do anything commanded in Scripture, and your doing of it, do think that God is well pleased therewith because you, as religious men, do the same. Upon this mistake was Paul himself in danger of being destroyed, for he thought, because he was zealous and one of the strictest sects for religion, therefore God would have been good unto him and have accepted his doings, as it is clear, for he counted them his gain (Phil 3:4-8). Now this is done thus—When a man doth think that because he believes he is more sincere, more liberal, with more difficulty, or to the weakening of his estate; I say, if a man, because of this doth think that God accepteth his labor, it is done from an old-covenant spirit.
Again, some men think that they shall be heard. They have prayer in their families because they can pray long, and speak excellent expressions, or express themselves excellently in worship, that because they have great enlargements in prayer, I say, that therefore to think that God doth delight in their doings, and accept their works, this is from a legal spirit.
Again, some men think that because their parents have been religious before them and have been indeed the people of God, they feel if they also do as to the outward observing of that which they learned from their forerunners, that therefore God doth accept them; but this also is from a wrong spirit; and yet how many are there in England at this day that think the better of themselves merely upon that account; ay, and think the people of God ought to think so too, not understanding that it is ordinary for an Eli to have a Hophni and a Phinehas, both sons of Belial; also a good Samuel to have a perverse offspring; likewise David an Absalom. I say, their being ignorant of, or else negligent in regarding this, they do think that because they do spring from such and such, as the Jews in their generation did, that therefore they have a privilege with God more than others when there is no such thing; but for sure, if the same faith be not in them which was in their forerunners, to lay hold of the Christ of God in the same spirit as they did, they must utterly perish, for all their high conceits that they have of themselves (John 8:33-35; Matt 3:7-9).
Second. When people come into the presence of God without having their eye upon the Divine Majesty, through the flesh and blood of the Son of Mary, the Son of God, they also come before God and do whatever they do from a legal spirit, an old-covenant spirit. As, for instance, you have some people, it is true, they will go to prayer, in appearance very fervently, and will plead very hard with God that He would grant them their desires, pleading their want, and the abundance thereof; they will also plead with God His great mercy, and also His free promises; but yet they neglecting the aforesaid body or Person of Christ, the righteous Lamb of God, to appear before Him in, I say, in thus doing they do not appear before the Lord no otherwise than in an old-covenant spirit; for they go to God as a merciful Creator, and they as His creatures; not as He is, their Father in the Son, and they His children by regeneration through the Lord Jesus. Ay, and though they may call God their Father, in the notion—not knowing what they say, only having learned such things by tradition—as the Pharisees did, yet Christ will have His time to say to them, even to their faces, as He did once to the Jews, Your father, for all this your profession, is the devil, to their own grief and everlasting misery (John 8:44).
Third. The third thing that is to be observed, if we would not be under the Law or do things in a legal spirit, is this—to have a care that we do none of the works of the holy Law of God for life or acceptance with Him; no, nor of the Gospel neither. To do the works of the law to the end we may be accepted of God, or that we may please Him, and to have our desires of Him, is to do things from a legal or old-covenant spirit, and that is expressly laid down where it is said, "To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt"; that is, he appears before God through the Law, and his obedience to it (Rom 4:4,5). And again, though they are in themselves Gospel-ordinances, as baptism, breaking of bread, hearing, praying, meditating, or the like; yet, I say, if they are not done in the right spirit, they are thereby used as a hand by the devil to pull thee under the Covenant of Works, as in former times he used circumcision, which was no part of the Covenant of Works, the Ten Commands, but a seal of the righteousness of faith; yet, I say, they being done in a legal spirit, the soul was thereby brought under the Covenant of Works, and so most miserably destroyed unawares to itself, and that because there was not a correct understanding of the nature and terms of the said covenants. And so it is now; souls, ignorant of the nature of the old covenant, do, even by subjecting to several Gospel ordinances, run themselves under the old covenant and fly off from Christ, even when they think they are coming closer to him. O, miserable! If you would know when or how this is done, whether in one particular or more, I shall show you as follows—
