5. When I had been disappointed again and again, I was in the utmost perplexity to find where the fault lay. I found this way of covenanting with God mentioned in scripture, recommended by ministers, and approved by the experience of all the people of God. I could not tax myself with guile in doing it: I was resolved to perform the engagement I made. I made it with much concern and solemnity, and for some time kept it strictly. But though I could not then see where the failing was, I have since been enabled to see it clearly. 1. _Being ignorant of the righteousness of_ God, I was still _establishing a righteousness of my own_: and though in words I renounced this, yet in fact I sought righteousness and peace, not in the Lord Jesus, but in my own covenants and engagements, so that I really put them in Christ’s room: and as to forgiveness of sins, my real trust was not in his blood, but in the evenness of my own walk. Therefore, I obtained not righteousness, _because I still sought it, as it were by the works of the law_. And it was evident I did so, by this plain sign; whenever I was challenged for sin, instead of recourse to the blood of Christ, I still sought peace only in renewing my vows again; the consent I gave to the law, was not from the reconcilement of my heart to its holiness; but merely from fear. The enmity against it continued: nor would I have chosen it, had that force been away. Farther, my eye was not single; provided I was safe, I had no concern for the glory of God. In a word, I engaged, before God had thoroughly engaged me. We may be in a sort willing, before he hath made us truly so. But the first real kindness begins with him: and we never love till his kindness draws us. Fear may indeed overpower us into something like it, as it did me. I was willing to be saved from hell: but not to be saved in God’s way, and in order to those ends he proposes in our salvation. 6. This was not my only trouble. I was now engaged in metaphysics and natural divinity; accustomed to subtil notions, and pleased with them; whence, by the just permission of God, the devil took occasion to cast me into doubts about the great truths of religion, especially the being of a God. I not only felt, as formerly, the want of evidence for it, but various arguments were suggested against it. But though the enmity of my heart against God was still great, yet he suffered me not to yield to them. There remained so much evidence of his being, in his works of creation and providence, as made me recoil at the terrible conclusion, aimed at by those arguments. And being likewise affected with deep apprehensions of the shortness and uncertainty of the present life, I dreaded a supposition that shook the foundations of any hope of relief, from the other side of time.