* ' Meditations.' Sibbes liimsolf prnotised tbis cxcollent counsel, as witness his golden little volume of ' Meditations,' first published in 1638, 18mo. t That is, ' fancy.' — G.
THE soul's conflict. 187
It is an indignity for men to be led with surmises and probabilities, and so to pass a rash judgment upon persons and things. Oftentimes falsehood hath a fairer gloss of probability than truth ; and vices go masked imder the appearance of virtue, whereupon seeming likeness — similitudo mater errorum — breeds a mistake of one thing for another ; and Satan oftentimes casts a mist before our imagination, that so we might have a misshapen conceit of things. By a spirit of illusion he makes worldly things appear bigger to us, and spiritual things lesser than indeed they are ; and so by sophisticating of things our affections come to be misled. Imagination is the womb, and Satan the father of all monstrous conceptions and disordered lusts, which are well called deceitful lusts, Eph. iv. 22, and lusts of igno- rance, 1 Tim. vi. 9, foohsh and noisome lusts, because they both spring from error and folly, and lead unto it.
^ We see, even in religion itself, how the world, together with the help of • the god of the world,' 2 Cor. iv. 4, is led away, if not to worship images, yet to worship the image of their own fancy. And where the truth is most professed, yet people are prone to fancy to themselves such a breadth of religion as will altogether leave them comfortless when things shall appear in their true colours. They will conceit to embrace truth without hatred of the world, and Christ without his cross, and a godly life without perse- cutions. They would pull a rose without pricks. Which, though it may stand with their own base ends for a while, yet will not hold out in times of change, when sickness of body and trouble of mind shall come. Empty conceits are too weak to encounter with real griefs.
Some think orthodox and right opinions to be a plea for a loose life, whereas there is no ill course of life but springs from some false opinion. God will not only call us to account how we have beheved, disputed, and reasoned, &c., but how we have Uved. Our care, therefore, should be to build our profession, not on seeming appearances, but upon sound grounds, that the gates of hell cannot prevail against. The hearts of many are so vain that they delight to be blown up with flattery, because they would have their imaginations pleased, yea, even when they cannot but know themselves abused, and are grieved to have their windy bladder pricked, and so to be put out of their conceited happiness. Others, out of a tedi- ousness in serious and settled thoughts, entertain everything as it is offered to them at the first blush, and sufler their imaginations to carry them pre- sently thereunto without further judging of it. The will naturally loves variety and change, and our imagination doth it sendee herein, as not de- lighting to fix long upon anything. Hereupon men are contented, both in rehgion and in common life, to be misled with prejudices upon shallow grounds ; whence it is that the best things and persons sufler much in the world. The power and practice of religion is hated under odious names, and so condemned before it is understood ; whence we see a necessity of getting spiritual eye- salve, for without true knowledge the heart cannot be good, Prov. xix. 2.
It is just with God that those who take liberty in their thoughts should be given up to theu- own imaginations, Rom. i. 28, to delight in them, and to be out of conceit with the best things, and so to reap the fruit of their own ways. Nay, even the best of God's people, if they take hberty herein, God will let loose their imagination upon themselves, and sufler them to be entangled and vexed with their own hearts. Those that give way to their imaginations, shew what their actions should be, if they dared ; for if they forbear doing evil out of conscience, they should as well forbear
188 THE soul's conflict.
imagining evil, for botli are alike open to God and hateful to him ; and, there- fore, oft where there is no conscience of the thought, God gives men up to the deed. The greatest and hardest work of a Christian is least in sight, ■which is the well ordering of his heart. Some buildings have most work- manship under gi'ound. It is our spirits ' that God, who is a Spirit,' John iv. 24, hath most communion withal ; and the less freedom we take to sin here, the more argument of our sincerity, because there is no law to bind the inner man but the law of the Spirit of grace, whereby we are ' a law to ourselves,' Rom. ii. 14. A good Christian begins his repentance where his sin begins, in his thoughts, which are the next issue of his heart. God counts it an honour when we regard his all-seeing eye so much, as that we will not take liberty to ourselves in that which is offensive to him, no, not in our hearts, wherein no creature can hinder us. It is an argument that the Spirit hath set up a kingdom and order in our hearts, when oux spirits rise within us against any thing that lifts itself up against goodness.