(3.) NoTjfiaTa. Their contrivances and counsels are to accomplish their worldly ends : Rom. xiii. 14, ' Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.' Not how to glorify God or save their souls, but how to enrich, promote, and advance themselves, and gratify their brutish lusts. Now when the hearts of men are taken up about such low and base things, they are nothing worth. To conclude, if men's thoughts were but written upon their foreheads, how ashamed would they be to have such an infinite variety of blasphemous reasonings, filthy, malrcious, covetous thoughts exposed to open view ! Surely then you would be ashamed to see with what filth and vanity you feed the pleasure of your minds, with what dross and rubbish you stuff your hearts. They are seen to God : Ps. cxxxix. 2, ' Thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine up-rising ; thou understandest my thought afar oflF.' And they will be publicly seen at the day of judgment: 1 Cor. iv. 5, ' God will make manifest the counsels of the heart.'
Use 1. Let this humble us, for this was the temper of our hearts ; they were the devil's nest, where his eggs are cherished, and we our- selves set abrood to hatch sin. Instead of being full of holy thoughts and motions and inclinations towards God, they are stuffed with vanity and sin. Sometimes pride employeth our thoughts, and sometimes covetousness, and sometimes revenge, and sometimes uncleanness.
VOL. xviii. 2 c
402 SERMONS UPON PROVERBS X. 20.
Our hearts are averse from God, and pronely inclined to the world and the false inferior happiness. Such an heart it was, where all good is, like fire in wet wood, easily quenched ; and all bad, like a spark in gunpowder, soon kindled. Our hearts by nature are styes of all filthi- ness, foolishness, perverse, deceitful, vain, earthly, proud, self-loving. We were neither allured by promises, nor frightened by threatenings, nor reclaimed by the powerful reasons of kindness and love. We were unthankful for mercies, obstinate under corrections, forgetting what is past, neglecting what is present, slighting what is to come. What is this heart worth ? good for nothing, unless God change it. You must bemoan it to God as Ephraim : Jer. xxxi. 18, ' I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus. Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke ; turn thou me, and I shall be turned.' Alas ! of ourselves we cannot subdue and tame this obstinacy. By art man can melt the hardest metals, and yet cannot soften his own heart. No creature so stubborn and wild but ' they are tamed, or have been tamed of mankind,' James iii. 17. But yet it passeth our skill to subdue ourselves to God.
2. Be sure that you get another heart ; for though it be not in our power to make to ourselves a new heart, yet it is our duty to get it ; and, as creatures in misery, we must use all means we can, whatever be the event. We can abstain from gross sins, such as adultery, forni- cation, wantonness, drunkenness, gluttony, and the like ; we can go to the ordinances as well as to the resorts of vain companions ; we can read the holy scriptures as well as worldly histories ; we can be con- vinced of our impotency and misery out of the word of God. We need not increase our bondage and impotency by indulging carnal affections, and so put more impediments in God's way by prosecuting our worldly and fleshly lusts. If you will cherish your vainglory, ambition, sensuality, covetousness, rather than resist it, and feed the distemper, no wonder that our chains are the more fastened upon us. We may seek help of God, who hath promised to give us a new heart and a new spirit : Ezek. xxxvi. 26, * A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh.' Therefore this is that we should seek after. Would you have God to force grace upon you, and give you a benefit which you have no mind to ask or receive ? do but attend upon the work with earnestness ; see how the heart of the carnal is made spiritual, of earthly is made heavenly, 'of sinful. is made holy, of obstinate and disobedient is made tractable and teachable, of vain is made solid and serious. Besides, God often sendeth in holy motions and inspirations, reproving our sloth and negligence, and exciting us to get a better heart. When he draweth, will you run ? Cant. i. 4, ' Draw me ; we will run after thee.' When he knocketh, will you open to him ? Kev. iii. 20, ' Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me.' When he bloweth, will you put forth the sails ? John iii. 8, ' The wind bloweth where it listeth.' When the waters are stirred, will you put in for cure? What shall I say more ? Though you have not grace, you have reason and conscience to consider of the vanity of all these things.