a word, may be thou hast laid down this sinful practice; but didst thou hate it, and love God, and so leave it? Thou art become strange to one, have you not got acquaintance with any other in the room of it ? Thou hast laid down the commission of an evil, but hast thou taken up thy known duty ? He is a bad husbandman that drains his ground, and then neither sows nor plants it? It is all one if it had been under water, as di'ained and not improved. What if thou cease to do evil, if it were possible, and thou learn not to do well ? It is not thy fields being clear of weeds, but fruitful in corn, that pays thy rent, and brings thee in thy profit; nor thy not being drunken, imclean, or any other sin, but thy being holy, gracious, thy having faith unfeigned, pure love, and the other graces, which will prove thee soimd, and bring in evidence for thy interest in Christ, and through him of heaven.
CHAPTER XI.
THE WEAK GROUNDS WHEREBY TEMPTED SOULS ARGUE AGAINST THEIR OWN UPRIGHTNESS.
We proceed to the false grounds from which sincere souls do many times go about to prove themselves hypocrites, yea, for a while conclude they are such.
First, Sure I am a hypocrite, saith the poor soul, or else I should not be as I am ; God would not thus follow me on with one blow after another, and suffer Satan also to use me as he doth. This was the grand battery Job's friends had against his sincerity ; and sometimes Satan so far prevails, as to make the sin- cere soul set it against his own breast, saying, much like him, ' If God be with us, why is all this befallen us ?' If God be in us by his grace, why appears he against us ?
Ans. This fire into which God casts thee proves thou hast dross ; and if, because thou art held long in the furnace, thou shouldst say, thou hadst much dross, I would not oppose ; but how thou shouldst spell hypocrite out of thy afflictions and troubles I marvel : the wicked indeed make much iise of this argument to clap hypocrite on them ; but the Christian methiuks should not use it against himself; though the barbai-ians presently gave their verdict upon the sight of the viper on Paul's hand, that he was a murderer, yet Paul thought no worse of himself for it. Christian, give but the same counsel to thyself, when in affliction and temptation, that thou usest to do to thy fellow-brethren in the same condition, and thou wilt get out of the snare ; darest thou think thy neigh- bour a hypocrite, merely from the hand of God upon him? no, I warrant thee, thou rather pitiest him, and helpest him to answer the doubts that arise in his spirit from this very argument. It would make one smile to see how handsomely and roundly a Christian can untie the knots and scruples of another, who after- ward, when brought into the like condition, is troubled with the same himself; he that helped his friend over the stile is now unable to stride it himself; God so orders things that we should need one another. She that is midwife to others, cannot well do that office to herself; nor he that is the messenger to bring peace to the spirit of another, able to speak it to his own : the case is clear. Christian ; affliction cannot prove thee a hypocrite, which, wert thou without altogether, thou mightest safer think thou wert a bastard ; the case I say is clear, but thine eyes ai-e held for some further end God hath to bring about by thy affliction. But may be thou wilt say, it is not simply the affliction makes thee think thus of thyself; but because thou art so long afflicted, and in the dark also, as to any sense of God's love in thy soul. Thou hast no smiles from God's sweet countenance to alleviate thy affliction; and if all were right, and thou a sincere child of God, would thy heavenly Father let thee lie groaning, and never look in upon thee, to lighten thy affliction with his sweet presence ? As to the first of these, the length of thy affliction, I know no standard God hath set for to measure the length of his saints' crosses by ; and it becomes not us to make one ourselves; which we do, when we thus limit his chastisements to time, that if they exceed the day we have written down in our thoughts, which is like to be short enough, if our hasty hearts may appoint, then we are hypocrites. For the other, thou must know, CJod can, without any impeachment to his love, hide it for a while; and truly he may take it very ill, that his children, who have security enough given them for his loving them, besides the sensible manifestation
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of it to their souls, should call this in question, for not coming to visit them, and take them up hi his arms, when they would have him : in a word, may be thy affliction comes in the nature of purging physic ; God intends to evacuate some corruption by it, which endangers thy spiritual health, and hinders thy thriving in godliness. Now the manifestation of his love God may reserve, as the physicians do their cordials, to be given when the physic is over.