sure to quench all true holiness, and bring them at last to have no zeal, but prove key-cold atheists. The Pharisee he must add to the commands of God the traditions of men ; the Papist, his true son and heir, hath his imwritten verities, holy orders, and rules for a more austere life than ever came into God's heart to require ; and of late the Quakers have borrowed many of their shreds from both, with which they are very busy to patch up a ridiculous kind of reli- gion, which a man cannot possibly take up, till he hath first fore-done his own understanding, and renoimced all subjection to the word of God. O beware of a will-holiness, and a will-worship ! It is a heavy charge God put in against Israel, Ilosea viii. 14: ' Israel hath forgotten his Maker, andbuildeth temples.' This may seem strange, forget God, and yet so devout as to build temples ! Yes, she built them without warrant from God ; God counts himself forgot, when we forget his word, and keep not close to that. It is laid at Jeroboam's door as a great sin, ' that he offered ujDon the altar which he made at Bethel, in the month which he had devised in his heart,' 1 King xii. 33. He took counsel of his own heart, not of God, when and where to offer. A holiness which is the device of our heart, is not the holiness after God's heart; the cvu-se that falls upon such bold men is, that while they seek to establish a holiness of their own, they submit not to the true holiness God reqiiires in his word. God justly gives them over to real unholiness, for pretending to a further holiness than they should. Witness those sinks and common shoals of all abominations, religious houses, I mean, as they are called by the Papists, which being the institutions of men, for want of the salt of a divine warrant to keep them sweet, have run into filthiness and corruption. God will not endure his creature should be a self-mover ; it is a greater sin to do what we are not commanded, than not to do what we are commanded by God; as it is in a subject, to presume to make laws of his own head, than to obey the law his prince enacts. By setting up a holiness of our own, we take God's mint, as it were, out of his hand, to whom alone it belongs to stamp what is holy, and what not.
Thirdly, Use not the true rule partially. To be partial in practising is as bad as to be partial in handling of the law. This made the priests contemptible, Mai. ii. 9 ; and so will that the professor, to God and man. Square the whole frame of thy life by rule, or all is to no purpose : ' Divers measures are as an abomination to the Lord,' Prov. xx. 10. He is the honest man in his dealings with men, that hath but one measure, and that according to law, which he useth in his trade. And he is the holy man, that useth but one rule for all his actions, and that no otlier than the word of God. O how fulsome was the Jews' hypocrisy to God, that durst not go into the judgment-hall, for fear of rendei-- ing themselves unclean, John xviii., but made no scruple of imbruing their hands in Christ's blood ! and the Pharisees, who observed the rule of the law strictly, in ' tithing anise and cummin,' but dispensed with themselves in the ' weightier matters of the law !' O beware of this as thou lovest thy soul's life. You would not thank that customer who comes into your shop, and buys a pennyworth of you, but steals from you what is worth a pound ; or him that is very punctual in paying a small debt he owes, only that he may get deeper into your book, and at last cheat you of a greater sum. This is horrid wickedness, to comply with the word in little matters, on a design that you may covertly wrong God in greater.
Section III. — Thirdly, Propound a right end to thyself in thy righteous, holy walking ; and here be sure thou standest clear off a legal end; do not think by thy righteousness to purchase anything at God's hand. Heaven stands not upon sale to any : ' The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord,' Rom. vi. What God sold to Christ he gives to us. Christ was the purchaser, believers are but heirs to what he hath bought, and must claim nothing but in his right : by claiming anything of God for our righteousness, we shut oiu-selves out from having any benefit of his. We cannot be in two places at the same time ; if we be found leaning on our own house, we cannot also be found in Christ ; Paitl knew this, and there- fore renounceth the one, that he may be entitled to the other, Phil. iii. 8, 9. It is Satan's policy 'to crack the breastplate of thy own righteousness, by beating it out further than the metal will bear; indeed, by trusting in it, thou destroyest the very nature of it; thy righteousness becomes unrighteousness, and
THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. gOg