WILL shut up all with five or six concluding counsels, (which the Lord impress upon the heart of him that writes, and those that shall read them) to preserve and antidote the soul against the dangerous insinuation and leaven of hypocrisy.
Counsel 1. Intreat the Lord night and day ^ for a renewed and right spirit. All the helps and directions in the world will not anti- dote and preserve you from hypocrisy ; nothing will be found able to keep you right, till sanctification hath first set you right. Ezek. xxxvi. 27. "I will put my Spirit within you; and cause you to walk " in my statutes.""
A bowl may keep by a strait line, so long as the impressed force of the hand that delivered it remains strong upon it ; but as that Av^ears off, so its motion fails, and its own basis sways and turns it. A fright of conscience, a pang of warm affection, or the influence of some great example or a good education, may influence an unrenewed sou), and push it on the w^ay of salvation for a season ; but the heart so influenced, must, and will return to its own natural course again. And I think there wants nothing but time, or a suitable temptation, to discover the true temper of many a professor's spirit : pray, there- fore, as that holy man did, Psal. cxix. 80. " Let my heart be sound " in thy statutes, that I be not ashamed."
Counsel 2. Always suspect and examine your ends in what you do. Sincerity and hypocrisy lie much in your ends and designs ; as they are, so are you. The intentions of the heart lie deep ; a man may do the same action to an holy end, and his person and service be accepted with God ; which another doing for a corrupt end, it may be reck- oned his sin, and both his person and service be abhorred by the Lord. We find two men riding in one chariot, and both of them concerned in the same expedition, Jehu, the son of Nimshi, and Jona- dab, the son of Rechab, 2 Kings x. 15, 23. But though the work they engaged in was one, and the same, yet the different ends they aimed at, made the same action an excellent duty in Jonadab, and an act of vile hypocrisy in Jehu : Idem quod duo faciunty non est idem : It was the saying of a good soul, commended for a good action : the work indeed is good, but I fear the ends of it. Self ends are creepino-, and insinuatincj thins^s into the best actions.
Counsel 3. Scare yourselves with the daily Jears of the sin that is 171, and the misery that will follow hypocrisy. Look upon it as the most odious sin in the eyes of God and men ; to want holiness is bad enough, but to dissimulate and pretend it, when we have it not, is double impiety : to make religion, the most glorious thing in the world, a mere stirrup to preferment, and a covert to wickedness: O how vile a thing is it ! God made Christ a sacrifice for sin, and the hypocrite will make him a cloak for sin.
And as to the punishments that follow it, they are suitable to the nature of the sin : for as hypocrisy is out of measure sinful, so the re-
602 NECESSARY COUNSELS TO ALL PR0F2SS011S.
ward and punishment of it will be out of measure dreadful. Mat, xxiv. 51. " He shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion " with hypocrites; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Counsel 4, Be daily at worh in the mortification of those lusts that breed hypocrisy. It is plain, without much sifting, that pride, vain- glory, self-love, and a worldly heart, are the seeds out of which this cursed plant springs up in the souls of men. Dig but to the root, you shall certainly find these things there ; and till the Lord help you to kill and mortify these, hypocrisy wilf spring up in all your duties to God, and in all your converses with men.
Counsel 5. Attend the native voice of your own consciences in the day of sickness, fear or trouble, and take special notice of its checks or vijbraldings, which like a stitch in your side, will gird at such times : Commonly in that lies your greatest danger: Beware of that evil which conscience brands and marks at such times, whether it be your living in the practice of some secret sin, or in the neglect of some known duty: These frights of conscience mark out the corruption, wherein your danger mostly lies.
Counsel. 6. Let us all that 'profess religion he unform and steady in the profession a7id practice of if, without politic reserves, and by-ends. O take heed of this Laodicean neutrality and indifferency which Christ hates : Be sure your ground be good, and then be sure you stand your ground. The religion of time-servers is but hypocrisy : They have sluices in their consciences which they can open or shut as occasion requires ; Every fox will at least have two holes to his den, that if one be stopt, he may escape at the other. The hypocrite poiseth himself so evenly in a mediocrity, that, asitis said of Baldwin, Let Anthony win, let Augustus win,"'all is one: So let Christ win, or let Antichrist win, he hopes to make every wind that can blow serviceable to waft him to the port of his own interest.
The hypocrite hath always more of the moon than of the sun ; little light, many spots, and frequent changes : It is easier to him to bow to the cross, than to bear the cross ; to sin, than to suffer.
Our own story tells us of a poor simple woman that lived both in the reign of queen Mary and queen Elisabeth, and would constantly say her prayers both in Latin and English, that she might be sure to please one^ side or other ; and let God, said she, take which likes him best. What is noted as an act of ridiculous simplicity in her, the time-serving hypocrite accounts a point of deep policy in himself
The times under Dioclesian were Pagan ; under Constantine, Christian; under Constantius, Arian ; under Julian, Apostate; and under Jovian, Christian again : And all this within the space of seventy years, the age of one man. O what shifting and shuffling was there among the men of that generation ! The changes of weather shew the unsoundness of men's bodies, and the changes of times, the un- soundness of their souls. Christian, if ever thou wilt manifest and maintain thine integrity^
NECESSAllY C0CX5ET.S TO ALL PIlOFESSORS. 603
bo a man but of one design, and be sure that be an honest and good design, to secure heaven, whatever becomes of earth : To hold fast integrity, whatever thou art forced to let go for its sake.
Take heed of pious frauds : Certainly it was the devil that first married these two words together, for they never did, nor can agree betwixt themselves, nor was ever such a marriage made in heaven.
Never study to model religion, and the exercises thereof, in a con- sistency with, or subserviency to your fleshly interests : If your reli- :gion be but a mock religion, your reward shall be but a mock heaven, that is a real hell.