Seeing acknowledging is repeated twice as an evidence of a good Chris- tian, to approve of the image of God in another, and to acknowledge it, therefore often examine your hearts what you acknowledge. Do you ac- knowledge that the abstaining trom evil courses, from fraud and cunning in your callings, that the abstaining from sensual living, from carnal policy, is good '? Why then, take that course, resolve upon it. Are the courses of God's children good ? Why will you oppose them ? St Paul gives an excellent rule, Rom. xiv. 22, ' We should not condemn ourselves in that which we allow.' Do you allow in your judgment and in your conscience the best courses ? as, indeed, you will do one day. Then do not condemn yourselves in the present for them. ' Happy is the man that condemneth not himself in that which he aUoweth,' saith the apostle, Rom. xiv. 22.
Examine offctimes seriously, how your judgment stands in the ways of God ; how it is built, whether upon human fancy, to please any man, or upon divine directions, the word of God. If it be so, take heed that you do not condemn yourselves in those courses, and those persons that you allow. Do you in your soul justify such persons ? Why do you not join with them ? Why do you not walk their ways ? Are such courses good ? Why do you not take them ? Your justifying them in the end will be little to your comfort, if you condemn them all your life against your conscience ; for afterwards it is not so much a work of grace for you to justify good courses, and to acknowledge good things. In most men it is not so much a work of grace as it is the evidence of the thing. And when the cloud of sensuality, and the fume that riseth out of worldly pomp is taken away, then the natural conscience comes to see clearly better things, not from the love of them, not that it is changed and transformed with the love of them ; but God so discovers it to them, to make them justify his sentence of dam- nation the more. He discovered to them better courses than they took : it shall justify their damnation.
We are deceived ofttimes in men's ends. They acknowledge good ways and good courses ; and on the other side some of God's good children they pronounce the contrary. But let none trust to that. Good courses are so evident and clear, that if men be not atheists, they must acknowledge them, especially when the impediment that hindered them before is taken away. You must acknowledge, therefore ' acknowledge ' now ; not in your hearts only, but acknowledge them in laying aside your opposition, in casting away your weapons, and by joining with them in good courses. Set not yoiir hands against good courses and good persons ; set yom' topgues to speak
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for their good. Take Goil's part ; stand on God's side. It is the best side. If you allow it only hereafter, it will be a barren allowance, it will be no comfort to you ; it often falls out to be so.
0 beloved ! whatsoever courses else you take, they will sink and fall. They will sink first in your own souls, and none will be readier to condemn you than your own conscience. When God shall make you wiser, you wall censure yourselves. What folly was it ! How was I deluded with this ill company and with that ! As wicked company is wondrous powerful to infuse ill conceits : as the spies they infused discouragement by the oration they made of the gitints in the land, &c., they altered the mind of the whole people. Numb. xiii. 33. It is a dangerous thing to converse with naughty persons. The devil slides together into the soul with their carnal reason- ing, and alters the judgment for the time, that tliey are not so wise as con- science would make them, and as they might be, if they did not hearken to the hissing of the serpent.
Fii'st, if you take any course but good, your own conscience is by, and will he the first that vill find you out. For sin is a base thing, a work of dark- ness. It must be discovered. It is a madness. It must be manifest to all men. Popery and all their sleights must be discovered, and the whore must lie naked and stink. Nothing shall be so abominable as popeiy and popish persons ere long.
Truth will get the victory in the consciences of people ; and good courses will get approbation. Therefore, if you approve them not, first you shall be unhappy in this life, and everlastingly hereafter. This shall be the principal torment in hell, that you saw better courses than you lived [in, and you would not give your judgments leave to lead you. There was something better, conscience told 3'ou, but you gave way to your lusts, and to the insinuations of wicked men, instruments of the devil, rather than to the motions of conscience, and of God's Spirit, that awakened con- science.
This I say will more ease * your torment of hell that you might have done otherwise if you had had grace. But _you willingly betrayed yourselves, you silenced conscience, you willingly condemned yourselves in the things that you acknowledged were naught, you did that which you condemned, and you did not practise that which your judgment did allow.