A nature changed

This nature is changed in every believer; for it is impossible a man should stand bent to Christ with his old nature predominant in him, any more than a pebble can be attracted by a lodestone, till it put on the nature of steel. An unrighteous man cannot act righteously, it must therefore be God, who is above nature, that can clothe the soul with a new nature, and incline it to God and goodness in its operations. Now to see a lump of vice become a model of virtue; for one that drank in iniquity like water, to change that sinful thirst for another for righteousness; to crucify his darling flesh; to be weary of the poison he loved for the purity he hated; to embrace the gospel terms, which not his passion but his nature abhorred; to change his hating of duty to a free-will of offering of it; to make him cease from loathing the obligations of the law, to a longing to come up to the exactness of it; to count it a burden to have the thoughts at a distance from God, when before it was a burden to have one serious thought fixed on him, speaks a supernatural grace transcendently attractive and powerfully operative.

Don't you love Stephen Charnock's writing? Doesn't his words flow in poetic melody? Every time I read something like this, the more I am convinced to read classic Christian literature, penned by the Puritans and faithful believers of old, whose intimacy with the Lord seemed uninterrupted. Their circumstances then were different, but their struggles were similar. Never mind the fact that it may be hard to decipher the sentences. I suppose the effort is well worth it—there is treasure hidden in these works.