Under this conviction, the gate of life is opened to us. And therefore it is, that all the preparatory parts of religion, all the various proceedings of God either over our _inward_, or _outward_ state, setting up and pulling down, giving, and taking away, light and darkness, comfort and distress, are for this only end, to bring us to this conviction, that all that can be called _life_, _good_, and _happiness_, is to come solely from God, and not the smallest spark of it from ourselves. When man was first created, all the good that he had in him was from God alone. This must be the state of man for ever.――From the beginning of time through all eternity, the creature can have no goodness, but that which God creates in it. Our first goodness is lost, because our first father departed from a full, absolute dependance upon God. For a full, continual, unwavering dependance upon God, is that alone which keeps God in the creature, and the creature in God. Our lost goodness can never come again, till by a power from Christ, we are brought out of ourselves, into that full and blessed dependance upon God, in which our first father should have lived. What room now, my dear friend, for complaint at the sight, sense, and feeling of your inability to make yourself better? Did you want _this sense_, every part of your religion would only have the nature and vanity of idolatry. For you cannot come unto God, you cannot believe in him, you cannot worship him in spirit and truth, till he is regarded as the _only giver_, and you yourself as nothing else but the receiver of every heavenly good, that can possibly be in you. God must for ever be God alone; heaven, and the heavenly nature are his, and must for ever be received only from him, and preserved, by an entire dependance upon, and trust in him. Now as all the religion of fallen man, fallen from God into himself, and the spirit of this world, has no other end, but to bring us back to an _entire dependance_ upon God; so we may justly say, Blessed is that light, happy is that conviction, which brings us into a full and settled despair, of ever having the least good from ourselves. Then we are truly brought, and laid at the gate of mercy: at which gate, no soul ever did, or can lie in vain. A broken and contrite heart God will not despise. That is, God will not pass by, overlook, or disregard it. But the heart is then only broken and contrite, when all its strong holds are broken down, and false coverings taken off, and it sees, with inwardly opened eyes, every thing to be bad, false, and rotten, that does, or can proceed from it as its own. But you will perhaps, say, that _your conviction_ is only an uneasy sensibility of your own state, and has not the goodness of a broken and contrite heart in it.