On this ground it is, that the apostle said, "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing"; and on the same ground it must be said, that popery is nothing, and Protestantism is nothing, because all is nothing, as to salvation, but a sinner changed into a saint, or the apostle's new creature. Call nothing therefore your holy, salvation -church, but that which takes away all your sins; this is the only way not to be deceived with the cry about churches, reformations, and divisions. If it be asked, What is meant by taking away all our sins? The whole is fully told us in these words, "To as many as believed, to them he gave power to become sons of God." This is the true taking away, or forgiveness of sins; not a strong imagination, or brain-fancy, that on such an hour, on such a day, or in such a place, you felt and knew assuredly that all your sins were forgiven you: by such a forgiveness of sins, that which made you a sinner is not destroyed, but you will have every day the same necessity of confessing yourself a miserable sinner, as you had that morning, when your sins were not forgiven you till the afternoon. The true forgiveness of sins is only then, when that which sinned in us is done away, or become powerless in us; but nothing can do this, but that power by which we became sons of God. A blind man has then only a deliverance from his blindness, when he is put in full possession of seeing eyes; this is the only doing away of his darkness. Just so, and no otherwise, are our sins forgiven us, or done away, when the power by which we become sons of God, or the new creature, is so given to us, so possessed by us, as seeing eyes are given to and possessed by the man, who before that was all blindness. And as our old man can only then be said to be truly put off, when the new man in Christ is raised to life in his stead, so our sins are only then truly blotted out, or done away, when an unsinning nature, or a birth of God that sinneth not, is come to be the ruling life in us.