wounded conscience? Can they now support your tottering tabernacle? Can they keep your departing soul in your body? or save you from mine everlasting wrath? or redeem your soul from eternal flames? Cry aloud to them, and see now whether these will be to you instead of God and his Christ." O how this works now with the sinner! Sense acknowledges the truth, and even the flesh is convinced of the creature's vanity, and our very deceiver is undeceived. § 8. The people of God are likewise convinced of the absolute necessity, the full sufficiency, and perfect excellency of Jesus Christ: As a man in famine is convinced of the necessity of food; or a man that had heard, or read, his sentence of condemnation, of the absolute necessity of pardon; or a man that lies in prison for debt, is convinced of his need of a surety to discharge it. Now the sinner feels an insupportable burden upon him, and sees there is none but Christ can take it off. He perceives the law proclaims him a rebel, and none but Christ can make his peace. He is as a man pursued by a lion, that must perish, if he finds not a present sanctuary. He is now brought to this dilemma; either he must have Christ to justify him, or be eternally condemned; have Christ to save him or burn in hell for ever; have Christ to bring him to God, or be shut out of his presence everlastingly. And no wonder if he cry, as the martyr, "None but Christ, none but Christ." Not gold, but bread, will satisfy the hungry; nor anything but pardon will comfort the condemned. _All things_ are _counted but dung_ now, _that he may win Christ; and what was gain_, he _counts loss for Christ_.[193] As the sinner sees his misery, and the inability of himself, and all things to relieve him, so he perceives there is no saving mercy but of Christ. He sees, though the creature cannot, and himself cannot, yet Christ can. Though the fig leaves of our own unrighteous, righteousness are too short to cover our nakedness, yet the righteousness of Christ is large enough: Ours is disproportionate to the justice of the law, but Christ's extends to every tittle. If he intercede, there is no denial; such is the dignity of his person, and the value of his merits, that the Father grants all he desires. Before, the sinner knew Christ's excellency, as a blind man knows the light of the sun; but now, as one that beholds its glory. [Footnote 193] Philippians iii, 7, 8.