John Hill
I have been suffering from a very dangerous fit of sickness. Yet I have learned one lesson by this affliction, which I never knew before so perfectly – I am sure not so feelingly – and that is the need and efficacy, the infinite merit and conscience-pacifying virtue, of the blood of Christ.
When death and judgement appear in view, and the soul has not one good work he can call his own, even if he were sure he might plead it at God’s bar, what must that soul do on the edge of the eternal world, when he has not one good work he can call his own? And what must that soul do when he is one whom the law charges with guilt; whom conscience condemns for it; who sees justice armed with vengeance to execute the law’s curse, and himself about to fall into the Lord’s hand and be arraigned before the bar of the living God; who has no worthiness to recommend him to the blood of Christ, and nothing but guilt and terror, sin and uncleanness all about him? What a hell must there be in such a person’s conscience, if there was not a Christ ready at hand to help him, and his soul did not have liberty to venture upon Him, without any merit on his own part?
Had I been sent to works to recommend me to Christ, to make me welcome to the blessed Jesus, I had been undone. I must have called the man who had preached that doctrine no messenger, no interpreter, one among a thousand, but I must have judged of him as one sent to torment me before the time. Ministers do not know what they are doing when they send poor souls to the law for life. The law has become weak through the flesh. No one can keep the law; therefore no one can be saved by it.