relish learning, and is pleased with its sweet taste, than he did in a month when he went to school, to please his master, whom he feared, not himself. Observe any person in tlie thing wherein he takes high content, and he is more careful and curious about that than any other : if his heart be on his garden, O how neatly it is kept! it shall lie, as we say, in print; all the rare roots and slips that can be got for love or money shall be sought for. Is it beauty that one delights in? how curious and nice is such a one in dressing herself; she hardly knows when she is fine enough. Truly thus it is here ; a soul that truly loves Christ delights in holiness ; all his strength is laid out upon them ; may he but excel in this one thing, be more holy, more heavenly, he will give others leave to run before him in anything else.
Section II. — Secondly, Be sure to keep thy eye on the right rule thou art to walk by. Evei-y calling hath a rule to go by pecidiar to itself, which requires some study to get an insight into, without which a man will but bungle in his woi-k. No calling hath such a sure rule and perfect law to go by as the Christian's; therefore, in earthly professions and worldly callings, men vaiy in their way and method, though of the same trade, because there is no such per- fect rule but another may superadd to it. But the Christian hath one standing rule, the word of God, ' able to make the man of God perfect:' now, he that would excel in the power of holiness nuist study this. The physician, he con- sults with his Galen ; the lawyer with his Littleton ; and the philosopher with his Aristotle; the masters of these arts. How much more should the Christian with the word, so as to be determined by that, and drawn by that, more than by a whole team of arguments from men ! ' We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth,' saith Paul, 2 Cor. xiii. 8. O Christian! when credit votes this way, friends and relations that way ; when ])rofit bids thee do this, and pleasure that; say, as Jehoshaphat concerning Micaiah, ' Is thei'e not here a prophet of the Lord besides, that I may inquire of him ?' 1 Kings xxii. 7. Is there not the word of God, that I may be concluded by it, rather than by any of these lying prophets ? Now, thei'e are three ways that men go contrary to this direction, all of them destructive to the power of holiness : some walk by no rule ; some by a false rule ; and the third by the true rule, but partially. The first is the antinomist and libertine ; the second is the superstitious zealot ; the third is the hyjjocrite : beware of all these, except thou meanest to lay the knife to the throat of holiness.
First, Take heed thou dost not take away the rule God sets before thee with the antinomist and libertine, who say the law is not a rule to the Christian. These must needs make crooked lines in their lives, that live by I'ote, and not by rule. I had thought Christ had baptized the law and gospelized it, both by preaching it as a rule of holiness in his sermons, Matt. v. 27, and by walking in his life by the rule of it, 1 Pet. ii. 21, 22. That principle, therefore, may be indited for a murderer of a righteous and holy life, which takes away the rule by which it should be led. This is a subtle way indeed of Satan to surpi'ise the poor creature ; if he make the Christian traveller weary of his guide, and once send him away, then it will not be long before he will wander out of heaven- way, and fall into hell-roads. The apostle tells us of a generation of men who, 'while they promise tliemselves liberty, are themselves servants of corruption,' 2 Pet. ii. 19. Truly, these, methinks, look like the men who slip off the yoke of the command under a pretence of liberty, that soon have a worse yoke on in its room, even the yoke of sin.
Secondly, Take heed thou walkest not by a false rule. There is but one true rule, the word of God ; and therefore we may soon know which is a false, Isaiah viii. 20 : ' To the law and to the testimony ; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.' Pretend not to more strictness than the word will vouch ; this is to be over-righteous indeed, Eccl. vii. 16. Excess makes a monster, as well as defect; not only he that hath but one hand, but he that hath three, is one. There is a curse scored up for him ' that adds to,' as well as for him ' that takes from the words of this book,' llev. xxii. 18. The devil hath had of old a design to imdermine scriptural holiness, by crying up an apocryphal holiness ; he knows too well, that as the pot, by boiling over, puts out the fire, and so comes in a while not to boil at all ; thus, by making men's zeal to boil over into a false pretended holiness, he is
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