to do. Will God speak submissively to thee for fear of offending thee? Will he cry thee mercy for handling thee so roughly as to tell thee thou art yet the child of wrath? Is he afraid to talk to thee of death or of damnation? Will he recal his threatenings, and repent him of the severity of his laws, because such worms are angry with them, or will not believe them? Perhaps thou mayest make a falsehearted, frightful, man-pleasing minister, to change his strain or plainer dealing, and become thy flatterer, or be silent but will God be silenced? Will he stoop to thee, and bend or stretch his word to humour thee? O no; he will one day tell thee what thou art with another voice than this of a mortal and despised man, and in another manner than preachers tell it thee. If thou canst frown the preacher out of the pulpit, or out of his fidelity to God and thee, yet canst thou not frown God out of heaven. He will speak to thee more terribly than the most terrible preacher that ever thou heard and if thy pride shall rise up, and tell him that he doth thee wrong, how quickly will thy "mouth be stopped," and thou be forced to confess thy guilt! (Rom. iii. 5, 6. 19.) O stoop, man, to the humbling word of grace, or God will make thee stoop to the words and strokes of wrath! Fear him that will make the proudest fear, before he hath done with them. Judged thou must be; by thyself, to selfabasing and conversion, or by God to desolation and confusion: and canst thou easier bear God's judgment than thy own! Stoop, foolish self-deluding dust! Stoop, sinful wretch, and know thy misery! If thou stand it out a little longer, an undiscerned blow may bring thee down; and thou shalt not see the hand that strikes thee, till thou art humbled in the grave and hell. O how absurd, yet pitiful a sight is it, to see poor sinners brave it out against the humbling message of the Lord, as if they could make good their cause against him! And scorn to know that they are going to hell, till they are there! And then will pride preserve them from the knowledge of it? It is shameful folly to be proud and obstinate, where a man knoweth beforehand that he must submit at last, and is not able to stand it out.

2. The second intrinsical impediment to self-acquaintance is an unreasonable tenderness of ourselves; when an inordinate love of ease and quietness of mind doth prevail with us to hold fast all that thus quieteth us at the present,

without regard of due provision for the time to come; in this there is a mixture of unreasonableness and self-love: it is indeed the very brutish disposition. A beast will not. willingly be dieted for his future health: let him have at present what he loveth and you please him, though you feed him for the slaughter! for he hath not reason to foresee what followeth. An ox must be bound, and cast and held down by force, if you will shoe him, though it be to the keeping of his feet from hurt; or if you will pull out a thorn, or do any thing for his good that hurteth him at the present. You please not your horse by letting him blood, though you save his life by it. Fleshly-minded men have thus brutified themselves, so that they judge of things by present feeling, and have not reason and faith to look before them, and judge of things by what they tend to, even by the good or hurt. that will follow in the end. It is a very terrible troublesome thing for a man that is unregenerate, unjustified, and unreconciled to God, to know it; for a man that hath any feeling left, to find himself in a state of condemnation: this is to stir up all the terrors of his soul, and cast him into perplexing fears and disquietments of mind; so that he cannot eat or drink, or sleep in quietness, but the troublesome thoughts of sin and everlasting wrath torment him: and the inconsiderate man that judgeth of things by present feeling, will not endure this; and therefore must needs have the windows shut, and the light removed, that sheweth him these perplexing sights. As most men hate those that speak against them, be the matter never so true, so they cannot endure those thoughts that do accuse them, nor to have a reprover so near them, even in their own breasts: a conscience within them, to preach to them night and day; not one hour in a week, but wherever they go, and whatever they are doing; to be so near, so constant, so precise, and so severe and terrible a preacher, as usually a newly enlightened and awakened conscience is; this seemeth intolerable to them; and whatever come of it, this preacher must be silenced, as turbulent and vexatious, and one that would make them melancholy or mad. "And this is the condemnation (of these miserable souls,) that light is come into the world, and they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil: for every one that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should

be reproved," (John iii. 19, 20.) And thus while men are so tender of themselves, that they will do nothing that troubleth or hurteth them at the present, they venture upon all the miseries that they are forewarned of.

Direct. 2. Be not unreasonably tender of a little disturbance at the present, nor unbelievingly careless of the misery to come. Cannot you endure to know your sin and misery, and yet can you endure to bear it? Will you go to hell for fear of knowing that you are in the way? Must you not know it with everlasting woe and vengeance when you come thither, if by knowing your danger you prevent not your coming thither? Is it easier to bear God's wrath for ever, than to find at present that you have offended him? Sirs, the question is, Whether you are under the condemnation of the law, or not? Whether you are regenerate and justified, or yet in your sin? If you are justified, far be it from me to persuade you to think that you are under condemnation: I leave that to Satan and the malicious world, who are the condemners of those that Christ doth justify. But if you are unregenerate and unjustified, what will you do at death and judgment? Can you stand before God, or be saved upon any other terms? You cannot; if God be to be believed, you cannot: and if you know the Scriptures, you know you cannot! And if you cannot be saved in an unrenewed, unjustified state, is it not needful that you know it? Will you cry for help before you find yourselves in danger? or strive to get out of sin and misery, before you believe that you are in it? If you think that you have no other sin than the pardoned infirmities of the godly, you will never so value Jesus Christ, and pray and strive for such grace as is necessary to them that have the unpardoned, reigning sins of the ungodly. If it be necessary that you be saved, it is necessary that you value and seek salvation; and if so, it is necessary that you know your need of it, and what you must be and do if you will obtain it! It is a childish or brutish thing, below a man of reason, to stick at a little present trouble, when death cannot otherwise be prevented: If you can prove that ever any was converted and saved by any other way than by coming to the knowledge of their sin and misery, then you have some excuse for your presumption : but if Scripture tell us of no other way, yea, that there is no other way, and you know of none that ever was saved by any

other, I think it is time to fall to work, and search and try your hearts and lives, and not to stop at a straw when you are running for your lives, and when damnation is as it were at your backs. You should rather think with yourselves, If we can so hardly bear the forethoughts of hell, how shall we be able everlastingly to bear the torments?

And consider, that Christ hath made the discovery of your sin and misery to be now comparatively an easy burden, in that he hath made them pardonable and curable: If you had not had a Saviour to fly to, but must have looked on your misery as a remediless case, it had then been terrible indeed; and it had been no great mistake to have thought it the best way to take a little ease at present, rather than to disquiet yourselves in vain. But through the great mercy of God, this is not your case; you need not despair of pardon and salvation, if you will but hear while it is called to-day. The task that you are called to, is not to torment yourselves as the damned do with the thought of unpardonable sin, and of a misery that hath no help or hope; but it is only to find out your disease, and come and open it to the physician, and submit to his advice, and use his means, and he will freely and infallibly work the cure. It is but to find out the folly that you have been guilty of, and the danger that you have brought yourselves into, and come to Christ, and with hearty sorrow and resolution to give up yourselves unto his grace, to cast away your iniquities, and enter into his safe and comfortable service. And will you lie in hell and say, ' We are suffering here, that we might escape the trouble of foreseeing our danger of it, or of endeavouring in time to have prevented it! We died for fear of knowing that we were sick! We suffered our house to burn to ashes for fear of knowing that it was on fire! O, sirs, be warned in time, and own not, and practise not such egregious folly, in a business of everlasting consequence. Believe it, if you sin, you must know that you have sinned: and if you are in the power of Satan it cannot long be hid. Did you but know the difference between discovering it now while there is hope, and hereafter when there is none, I should have no need to persuade you to be willing to know the truth, whatever it should cost you....

Hind. 3. Another great impediment of the knowledge of ourselves, is, that self-love so blindeth men that they can see no great evil in themselves or any thing that is their own:

It makes them believe that all things are as they would have them be; yea, and better than they would have them: for he that would not indeed be holy, is willing by himself and others to be thought so: did not the lamentable experience of all the world confirm it, it were incredible that self-love could so exceedingly blind men. If charity think no evil of another, and we are very hardly brought to believe any great harm by those we love; much more will self-love cause men to see no evil by themselves, which possibly they can shut their eyes against, it being more radicated and powerful than the love of others. No arguments so cogent, no light so clear, no oratory so persuading, as can make a self-lover think himself as bad as indeed he is, till God by grace or terror shall convince him. When you are preaching the most searching sermons to convince him, self-love confuteth or misapplieth them; when the marks of trial are most plainly opened, and most closely urged, self-love doth frustrate the preacher's greatest skill and diligence: When nothing of sense can be said to prove the piety of the impious, and the sincerity of the formal hypocrite, yet self-love is that wonderful alchymist, that can make gold not only of the basest metal, but of dross and dirt. Let the most undeniable witness be brought to detect the fraud and misery of an unrenewed soul, self-love is his most powerful defender. No cause so bad which it cannot justify; and no person so miserable but it will pronounce him happy, till God by grace or wrath confute it. Self-love is the grand deceiver of the world.

Direct. 3. Subdue this inordinate self-love, and bring your minds to a just impartiality in judging. Remember that self-love is only powerful at your private bar; and it is not there that your cause must be finally decided: it can do nothing at the bar of God; it cannot there justify, where it is condemned itself: God will not so much as hear it, though you will hear none that speak against it. Self-love is but the vicegerent of the grand usurper, that shall be deposed, and have no show of power, at Christ's appearing, when he will judge his enemies.

And here it will be a helpless cause, to see your own sin and misery in others: and put the case as if it were theirs, and then see how you can discern the evil of it. O how easy is it with the most, to see and aggravate the faults of others!! How safe were we, if we were as impartial to ourselves!