with you, and by you: for the good name's sake of Christ, which cannot but be dearer to you, if saints, than your lives, look to your walking, and especially your civil converse with the men of the world ; they know not what you do in yoiu- closet, care not what you are in the congregation; they judge you by what you are when they have to do with you. As they find you in your shop, bargains, promises, and such like, so they think of you and yoiu- profession. Labour therefore for this uprightness to man ; by this you may win some, and judge others. Better vex the wicked world with strict walking, as Lot did the Sodomites, than set them on work to mock and reproach thee and thy profes- sion by anv scandal, as David did by his sad fall. They that will not follow the light of thy holiness, will soon spy the thief in the candle, and point at it.
Caution 2. Tlie second word of caution is to those that are morally upright, and no more. Take heed this uprightness proves not a snare to thee, and keeps thee from getting evangelical uprightness. I am sure it was so to the young man in the gospel. In all likelihood he might have been better, had he not been so good. His honesty and moral uprightness was his undoing, or rather his conceit of them, to cast himself in them. Better he had been a publican, driven to Christ in the sense of his sin, tlian a Pharisee, kept from him with an opinion of his integrity. These, these are the weeds, with which many, thinking to save themselves by, keep themselves under water to their ])erdition. ' There is more hope of a fool,' Solomon tells us, ' than of one wise in his own conceit;' and of the greatest sinner^ than of one conceited of his righteousness. If once the disease take the brain, the cure must needs be the more difficult: no offering Christ to one in this frenzy. Art thou one kept from these un- righteous ways wherein others walk? May be thou art honest and upright in thy course, and scornest to be found false in any of thy dealings. Bless God for it, but take heed of blessing thyself in it; there is the danger; this is one way of being 'righteous over-much;' a dangerous pit, of which Solomon warns all that travel in heaven road, Eccles. vii. 10. There is undoing in this over-doing, as well as in any under-doing ; for so it follows in the same verse, ' Why shouldst thou destroy thyself?' Thou art not, proud man, so fair for heaven, as thou flatterest thyself^ A man upon the top of one hill may seem very nigh to the top of another, and yet can never come there, except he comes down from that where he is. The mount of thy civil righteousness, and moral uprightness, on which thou standest so confidently, seems perhaps level in thy proud eye to God's holy hill in heaven, yea, so nigh, that thou thinkest to step over from one to the other with ease. But let me tell thee, it is too great a stride for thee to take ; thy safer way and nearer were to come down from thy mountain of self- confidence, where Satan hath set thee on a design to break thy neck, and to go the ordinary road, in which all that ever got heaven went ; and that is, by la- bouring to get an interest in Christ and his righteousness, which is provided on pm-pose for the creature to wrap up his naked soul in, and to place his faith on; and thus thy uprightness, which before was but of the same form with the heathen's moral honesty, may connnence, or rather be bajitized. Christian, and become evangelical grace : but let me tell thee this before 1 dismiss thee, that thou canst not lay hold of Christ's righteousness till thou hast let fall the lie, thy own rigliteousiuss, which hitherto thou hast held so fast in thy right hand. When Christ called the blind man to him, Mark x. 50, it is said, ' He, casthig away his garment, rose and came to Jesus;' do thou so, and then come and welcome.
CHAPTER VI L
OF EVANGELICAL OR GODLY SINCERITY, WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT U NCOMELINESSES THIS GIRDLE COVERS, AS ALSO IIOW IT COVERS THEM.
We proceed to the second kind of truth, or uprightness, which I called an evangelical uprightness. This is a plant found growing oidy in Christ's garden, or the enclosure of a gracious soiU. It is, by way of distinction i'rom that I called moral, known by the name of a ' godly sincerity,' or the sincerity of God, 2 Cor. i. 12: ' Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with tleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, wc have had our conversation in the world.' Now in two respects this
230 HAVING YOUR LOINS
evangelical sincerity may be called godly sincerity. First, because it is of God. Secondly, because it aims at God, and ends in God.