Spiritual Life

We receive all our holiness of heart, as well as all our peace of conscience, out of Christ's fullness for both these things. Our holiness of heart is a thing already prepared for us and laid up for us in Christ. And thus, even as we are justified by a righteousness this is first wrought out for us by Christ, and which is, from Christ, imputed to us; even so, we are sanctified by a holiness that is first prepared for us in Christ, and is, then, imparted to us out of Christ's fullness. Every atom of our soul-sanctifying holiness is as truly and as wholly derived from Christ, as is every atom of our conscience-justifying righteousness. Many serious-minded men, says Marshall, make the greatest of mistakes here; just as he himself made this same greatest of mistakes at one time of his religious life. Many serious-minded men take an infinitude of pains to produce a true holiness for themselves out of their own corrupt heats; squeezing all the time oil out a flint. --From chapter 17, Squeezing Oil out of a Flint.