The 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.