which therefore you are accountable to God. But if you had improved them all, if you really had done all the good you possibly could to all men, yet this does not at all alter the case: still you must be born again. Without this nothing will do any good to your poor sinful, polluted soul. “Nay, but I constantly attend all the ordinances of God: I keep to my church and sacrament.” It is well you do. But all this will not keep you from hell, except you be born again. Go to church twice a day, go to the Lord’s table every week, say ever so many prayers in private, hear ever so many good sermons, read ever so many good books, still you must be born again: none of these things will stand in the place of the new birth: no, nor any thing under heaven. Let this therefore, if you have not already experienced this inward work of God, be your continual prayer, “Lord, add this to all thy blessings, let me be _born again_. Deny whatever thou pleasest, but deny not this, Let me be _born from above_. Take away whatsoever seemeth thee good, reputation, fortune, friends, health. Only give me this, To be _born of the Spirit_! To be received among the children of God. Let me be born, _not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, by the word of_ God, _which liveth and abideth for ever_. And then let me daily _grow in grace_, and _in the knowledge of our_ Lord _and Saviour_ Jesus Christ!” SERMON XLVI. THE WILDERNESS STATE. JOHN xvi. 22. _Ye now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you._ 1. AFTER God had wrought a great deliverance for _Israel_, by bringing them out of the house of bondage, they did not immediately enter into the land which he had promised to their fathers, but _wandered out of the way in the wilderness_, and were variously tempted and distressed. In like manner after God has delivered them that fear him from the bondage of sin and _Satan_; after they are _justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus_, yet not many of them immediately enter into _the rest_ which _remaineth for the people of_ God. The greater part of them wander, more or less, out of the good way into which he hath brought them. They come as it were into a _waste and howling desert_, where they are variously tempted and tormented. And this some, in allusion to the case of the _Israelites_, have termed _a wilderness-state_.