It is true. I cannot but sin in all I do. My best duties are tainted and poisoned and mingled with sin. But will it follow that because I cannot be more clean, therefore, I must be more filthy than I need to be? Nay, oh my soul, If thou art married to that bridegroom Christ, duties and all things else are clean to thee. The whole filth and dung of our works through faith in Christ is extracted by Christ. And he presenting the same purged by himself alone, they are accepted with God. In this respect, there is a healing of duties if we be in Christ. Certainly, that fruit which cometh from a root of faith must be good fruit. Now the manner, oh my soul, how Christ heals our duties, it is thus. He takes our persons and carries them into God the father in a most unperceivable way to us. He knows that if our persons be not first accepted, our duties cannot be accepted. It is true that in the covenant of works, God first accepted of the work and then of the person, but in the covenant of grace, God first accepts of the person and then of the work. Now therefore that our works may be accepted, Christ Jesus, our great high priest, first takes our persons and carries them into the presence of God the father. This was plainly shadowed out to us by that of the high priest who went into the holy of holies with the nations of all the tribes upon his breast. Exodus twenty eight twenty nine. As Christ takes our persons and carries them into God the father, so when we perform duty, he observes what evil or failing there is in that duty and draws it out before he presents it to God the father. As a child that would present his father with a bouquet of flowers, he goes into the garden and gathers flowers and weeds together. But coming to his mother, she picks out the weeds and binds up the flowers by themselves, and so it is presented to the father. Thus, we go to duty, and we gather weeds and flowers together. But Christ comes and picks out the weeds, and so presents nothing but flowers to God the father.