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Before and after...
by Alleine
Before conversion man seeks to cover himself
with his own
fig-leaves, and to make himself whole by his duties.
He is apt to trust in himself, and set up his own righteousness,
and to reckon his counters for gold, and not to submit to the
righteousness of God.
But conversion changes his mind;
now he counts his own righteousness as filthy rags.
He casts it off, as a man would the venomous tatters
of a nasty beggar.
Now he is brought to poverty of spirit, complains of and
condemns himself,and all his inventory is "poor, and
miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked".
He sees a world of iniquity in his holy things, and calls his once
idolized righteousness but filth and loss; and would not for a
thousand worlds be found in it.
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