3. How to hide from themselves their own de- formity—
[One would suppose that the impiety of this conduct should appear at once to every man who is capable of the least reflec- tion. But men contrive, by various arts, to hide it from them- selves. They, in the first place, determinately " call evil good, and good evil : they put darkness for light, and light for dark- ness; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter^." Then, not being able to conceal from themselves that they have committed some iniquity, they compare themselves, not with the word of God or with the saints of old, but with persons all around them : of these, however, they will select for the pvu'pose those only whom they think not better than themselves : and thus will they satisfy themselves that they are as good as others. If there be some particular evils, of which their consciences accuse them, they will endeavour to find out some good deeds to put into the opposite scale, and to neutralize the effect of them upon their minds : or, if they cannot easily do this, they will satisfy themselves, that, though their actions have been evil, their intentions have been good ; they have injured nobody but themselves ; they have good hearts ; and what they have done amiss, was not so much their own fault, as the fault of human- nature in general, and of the temptations to which they were
^ Hos. xiv. 3. 1 Phil. iii. 19. ^ QoI. iii. 5. Job xxxi. 24, 25. " John v. 44. o Jer. ii. 13. P Ezek. xiv. 4. 1 Mic. iv. 5. r Rom. i. 25. >* Isai, v. 20.