fruits of righteousness are said to be by Jesus Christ. What men do by them- selves, they do for themselves; they eat their own fruit, devour the praise of what they do. The Christian only that doth all by Christ, doth all for Christ ; he hath his sap from Christ, into whom he is grafted, that makes him fruitful, and thei-efore he reserves all tlie fruit he bears for him. Thus we see how this moral uprightness is itself fundamentally defective, and therefore cannot be that girdle which hides and covers our other defects : yet, before I pass on to the other, I would leave a twofold caution for improvement of what hath been said concerning this uprightness; the one is to the sincere Christian, the other is to such as have no more than a moral uprightness.
Caution 1. To the sincere Christian. May there be found a kind of upright- ness among men that are carnal and destitute of God's sanctifying grace? O then look you to it, in whose hearts dwell the Spirit of grace, that you be not put to shame by those that are graceless, which you nmst needs be when you are taken tardy in those things that they cannot be charged for. Many among them there are that €corn to lie : shall a saint be taken in an vmtruth .' Their moral principles bind them over to the peace, and will not suffer them to wrong their neighbour : and can cheating, overreaching, oppression, follow a saint's hand ? Except your righteousness exceeds their best, you are not Christians ; and can you let them exceed you in those things which, when they are done, leave them short of Christ and heaven ? It is time for the scholar to throw off his gown, and disclaim the name of an academic, when every schoolboy is able to dunce and pose him. And for him also to lay aside his profession, and let the world know what he is, yea, what he never was, that can let a mere civil man, with his weak bow, only backed with moral principles, outshoot him that pretends to Christ and his grace. I confess it sometimes so falls out, that a saint imder a temptation may be outstripped by one that is carnal in a parti- cular case ; as a lackey that is an excellent footman may, from some prick or present lameness in his foot, be left behind by one that at another time should not be able to come near him. We have too many sorrowful examples of moral men's outstripping even a saint, at a time when under a temptation; a notable passage we meet with concerning Abimelech's speech to Sarah, after her dissembling and eqiuvocating speech, that Abraham was her brother, Gen. XX. 16 : 'And imto Sarah he said,' that is, Abimelech said to her, ' Behold, I have given thy bi-other a thousand pieces of silver ; behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes unto all that are with thee, and wilh all other.' Now mark the words which follow: 'Thus she was reproved.' How? where lies the reproof? Here are none but good words, and money to boot also. He pro- miseth protection to her and Abraham ; none should wrong him in wronging her ; and tells her what he had freely given Abraham. Well, for all this we shall find a sharp reproof, though lapped up in these sweet words, and silvered over with his thousand pieces. First, She was reproved by the upi-ightness of Abimelech in that business, wherein she had sinfully dissembled. That he who was a stranger to the true God and his worship should be so square and honest as to deliver her up vnitouched, when once he knew her to be another man's wife ; and not only so, but instead of falling into a passion of anger, and taking up thoughts of revenge against them, for putting this cheat upon him, which, having them under his power, had not been strange for a prince to have done, — for him to forget all this, and rather shew such kindness and high bounty to them, this must needs send a sharp reproof home to Sarah's heart, especially considering that he, a heathen, did all this; and she, one called to the knowledge of God, in covenant with God, and the wife of a prophet, was so poor-spirited as, for fear of a danger, which only her husband, and that without any great groimd, surmised, to connnit two sins at one clap, — dissemble, and also hazard the loss of her chastity ; the least of which was worse than the thing they were so afraid of: these things, I say, laid together, amounted to such a reproof, as no doubt made her, and Abraham too, heartily ashamed before God and man. Again, Abimelech, in calling Abraham her brother, not her husband, did give her a smart rebuke, putting her in mind how with that woid he had been deceived by them. Thus godly Sarah was reproved by a profane king. O Christians ! take heed of putting words into the mouths of wicked men to rej^rove you withal ; they cannot reprove you, but they reproach God. Christ is put to shame
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