Motive 5. Fifthly^ Conclude it to be your great advantage to be thoroughly tried, whatever ^^ou be found to be in the trial : If you be found sincere, you are richly rewarded for all your pains and labour : Never did that man repent of digging and toiling, that, after all, hit upon the rich vein that he digged for : What is a vein of gold to a vein of sincerity 1
If upon search you find the contrary, a false, hypocritical, unsound heart, yet in that very sad discovery you meet with the greatest ad- vantage that ever you had in your lives for salvation. This discovery is your great advantage : For now your vain confidence being over- turned, and your ungrounded hopes destroyed ; you lie open to the stroke of a deep and elfectual conviction of your sin and misery, which is the introductive mercy to all other mercies to your souls; and sure- ly till you come to that, to give up your false hopes, and quit your vain pretensions, there is no hope of you. Christ told the Pharisees, Matth. xxi. 31. Publicans and harlots enter into the kingdom of heaven before you : Publicans were the worst sort of men, and har- lots the worst sort of vronien, and yet they stood in a fairer way for heaven than the hypocritical Pharisees, because conviction had easier access to their consciences : They had not those defences and pleas of dut}' and strictness to ward off the word that the self-cozening Pharisees had.
I may say of your vain and groundless hopes, as Christ, in another sense, said to the officers that came to seize him in the garden. If you secJc me^ let these go their icay. So it is here, if you expect Christ and salvation bv him, let your vain confidences go their v.ay ; away M'ith vour masks and vizards, if ever you expect to see Christ. O it is your happiness to have all these things stript off, and your nakedness and poverty discovered, that you may be rich, as the text speaks.
Motive 6. Sixthly^ Consider how near the day of death and judg- ment approach you. O these are searching days wherein j^ou cannot be hid : Will your consciences, think you, be put off in a dying day as easily as they are now ? No, vou know they will not.
I have heard of a good man that consumed not only the greatest part of the day, but a very considerable part of the night also in
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prayer, to the great weakening of his body ; and being asked by a relation why he did so, and prayed to favour himself, he returned this answer, O I must die, I must die ; plainly intimating, that so great is the concernment of dying in a clear assured condition, that it is richly worth the expence of all our time and strength to secure it.
You know also that after death the judgment, Heb. ix. 27. you are hastening to the judgment of the great and terrible God. Death will put you into his balance to be weighed exactly ; and what gives the soul a louder call to search itself with all diligence, whilst it stands at the door of eternit}^, and its turn is not yet come to go before that awful tribunal : O that these considerations might have place upon our hearts !
Containing divers helps for the clearing of sincerity and discovery
OU see of what importance the duty of self-examination is, and how many things put a necessity and a solemnity upon that work. Now, in the close of all, 1 would offer you some helps for the due management thereof, that is as far as I can carry it : the Lord per- suade your hearts to the diligent and faithful application and use of them. The general rules to clear sincerity are these that follow :
Rule 1. We may not presently conclude roe are in the state of hypocrisy, because we find some worliings of it, and tendencies to it in our spirits : The best gold hath some dross and alloy in it. Hypocrisy is a weed naturally springing in all ground, the best heart is not perfectly clear or free of it : It may be we are stumbled, when we feel some workings or grudgings of this disease in ourselves, and looking into such scriptures as these, John i. 47. " Behold an *' Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile:" and PsaL xxxii. 1. " Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, " and in whose spirit there is no guile."
This I say may stumble some upright soul, not understanding in what an allayed and qualified sense those scriptures are to be under- stood : For by a spirit without guile, is not understood a person abso- lutely free from all deceitfulness and falseness of heart ; this was the sole prerogative of the Lord Jesus, who was separated from sinners, in whose mouth was no guile found : In whom the prince of this world, in all his trials and attempts upon him, found nothing : But we must understand it of reigning and allowed hypocrisy; there is no such guile in any of the saints : distinguish the presence frgm the predominance of hypocrisv, and the doubt is resolved.
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Rule % Evert/ true gi^ound of humiliation for sin is not a sujffi^ cient ground for doubting and questionings our estate and condition.
There be many more things to humble us upon the account of our infirmity, than there are to stumble us upon the account of our integrity : It is the sin and affliction of some good souls to call their condition in question upon every slip and failing in the course of their obedience. This is the way to debar ourselves from all the peace and comfort of the Christian life : We find that Joseph was once minded to put away Mary his espoused wife, not knowing that the holy thing which was conceived in her was by the Holy Ghost. It is the sin of hypocrites to take brass for gold, and the folly of saints to call their gold brass : Be as severe to yourselves as you will, provid- ed always you be just : " There is that maketh himself rich, and yet " hath nothing; and there is that maketh himself poor, and yet hath " great riches,'' Prov. xiii. 7. Hiram called the cities Solomon gave him, Cabul, Dirty, for they pleased him not, 1 Kings ix. 13. It is but an ill requital, an ungrateful return to God for the best of mer- cies, to undervalue them in our hearts, and be ready upon all occa- sions to put them away as worth nothing.