🚀 go-pugleaf

is remarkable, that persons when they first have this sense of
the justice of God, rarely, at the time, think any thing of its being
that humiliation they have often heard insisted on, and that others
experience.

In many persons, the first conviction of the justice of God in their
condemnation which they take particular notice of, and probably the
first distinct conviction of it that they have, is of such a nature, as
seems to be above any thing merely legal. Though it be after legal
humblings, and much of a sense of their own helplessness, and of the
insufficiency of their own duties; yet it does not appear to be forced
by mere legal terrors and convictions, but rather from a high exercise
of grace, in saving repentance, and evangelical humiliation. For there
is in it a sort of complacency of soul in the attribute of God's
justice, as displayed in His threatenings of eternal damnation to
sinners. Sometimes at the discovery of it, they can scarcely forbear
crying out, It is just! It is just! Some express themselves, that they
could see the glory of God would shine bright in their own condemnation;
and they are ready to think that if they are damned, they could take
part with God against themselves, and would glorify His justice therein.
And when it is thus, they commonly have some evident sense of free and
all-sufficient grace, though they give no distinct account of it; but it
is manifest, by that great degree of hope and encouragement they then
conceive, though they were never so sensible of their own vileness and
ill-deservings as they are at that time.

Some, when in such circumstances, have felt that sense of the excellency
of God's justice, appearing in the vindictive exercises of it, against
such sinfulness as theirs was; and have had such a submission of mind in
their idea of this attribute, and of those exercises of it-together with
an exceeding loathing of their