they thought themselves as good men as he ; but when they wei"e nonphised in the ' plagxie of lice,' and could not, with all their art, produce the like, they acknowledged the ' finger of God to be in it,' Exod. viii. IG. Do no more than carnal men do, and you stand but level with themselves in their opinions of you, yea, they think themselves better than you, because they ccinal you, who pretend to holiness more than they. It is expected that every one in the calling he professeth should more than a little exceed another that is not of that calling, which, if he do not, he becomes contemptible.
CHAPTER XV.
CONTAINS TWO USES OF THE POINT.
We come to the application, in which we shall be the shorter, having sprinkled something of this nature all along as we handled the doctrinal part.
Section I. — Use 1. First, For information in two particulars.
First, Are we thus to endeavoiir the maintainmg of the power of holiness, then, sure, there is such a thing as righteousness and unrighteousness, holiness arid sin that opposeth it : yet there is a generation of men that make these things to be mere fancies, as if all the existence they had were in the melan- choly imaginations of some poor-spirited, timorous men, who dream of these things, and then are scared with the bugbears that their own foolish thoughts represent to them. Hence some among us have dared to make it their boast and glorying that they have at last got from under the bondage of that tyrant, conscience ; they can now do that which we call swearing, lying, yea, what not? without being bearded and checked by an imperious conscience; yea, that there is no sin to any but him that thinks so. These are worse fools than he the psalmist speaks of, Psa. xiv. 1 : he doth but ' say in his heart. There is no God;' but these tell the world what fools they are, and cannot hide their shame. I do not mention these so much to confute tthem, that were to as little purpose as to go to prove there is a sun shining in a clear day, because a mad, frantic man denies it, but rather to affect your hearts with the abomi- nations of the times, ye holy ones of God ! O how deep asleep were men, that the enemy could come and sow such tares as these amongst us ! Perhaps they thought such poisonous seed would not grow in our soil, that hath liad so much laboiu" and cost bestowed on it by Christ's husbandmen ; that such strong delusions woidd never go down with any that had been used to so pure a gospel diet. But, alas! we see by woful experience that as a plague, w'hen it hits into a city that stands in the purest air, often rages more than in another place, so when a spirit of delusion falls upon a people that have enjoyed most of the gospel, it grows most prodigious. It makes me even tremble to think what a place of nettles England, that hath so long continvied without wrong to any other church Christ hath in the w'orld, one of his fairest, most fruitful garden-plots, may at last become, when I see what weeds have sprung up in our daj's. I have heard that reverend and holy nuister Greenham should say, he feared rather atheism than popery would be England's ruin. Had he lived in our dismal days, he would have had his fears much increased. Were there ever more atheists made and making in England, since it was acquainted with the gospel, than in the compass of the last dozen years ? I have reason to think there were not. When men shall fall so far from the profession of the gosjiel, and be so blinded that they cannot know light from darkness, righteousness from unrighteousness, are they not far gone in atheism i This is not natural blindness ; for the heathen could tell when they did good and evil, and see holiness from sin, without Scripture light to shew them, Rom. ii. 14, 15. No, this blindness is a plague of (iod falling on them for rebelling against the light when they could see it. And if this plague should gi-ow more common, which God forbid, woe then to England.
Secondly, If we be to maintain the power of holiness, then surely it is not impossible. God would not command what he doth not enable his own peculiar people to do, only here you must remember carefully the distinction, premised in the opening ot the text, between a legal righteousness and an evangelical righteousness; the latter of which is so far from being unattainable, that there is not a sincere Christian in the world but is truly holy in this sense; that is.
ggQ AND HAVING ON