| "One
great mystery is, that the holy frame and disposition whereby our souls are
furnished and enabled for immediate practice of the law, must be obtained by
receiving it out of Christ's fullness, as a thing already prepared and
brought to an existence, for us in Christ, and treasured up in Him; and
that, as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ, and
imputed to us, so we are sanctified by such an holy frame and qualification
as are first wrought out and completed in Christ for us, and then imparted
to us.
As our natural
corruption was produced originally in the first Adam, and propagated from
him to us, so our new nature and holiness is first produced in Christ, and
derived from Him to us, or, as it were, propagated. So that we are not at
all to work together with Christ in making or producing that holy frame in
us, but only to take it to ourselves, and use it in our holy practice, as
made ready to our hands. Thus we have fellowship with Christ, in receiving
that holy frame of spirit that was originally in Him; for fellowship is
where several persons have the same things in common. This mystery is so
great, that notwithstanding all the light of the Gospel, we commonly think
that we must get an holy frame by producing it anew in ourselves, and by
pursuing it and working it out of our own heart”.
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