2. Do it impartially; as one that is not willing to find himself deceived, as soon as death hath acquainted him with the truth. O take heed, as you love your souls, of being foolishly tender of yourselves, and resolving for fear of being troubled at your misery, to believe that you are safe, whether it be true or false. This is the way that thousands are undone by. Thinking that you are sanctified will neither prove you so, nor make you so; no more than thinking that you are well, will prove or make you well. And what good will it do you to think you are pardoned and shall be saved, for a few days longer, and then to find too late in hell that you were mistaken? Is the ease of so short a deceit worth all the pain and loss that it will cost you? Alas, poor soul! God knoweth it is not needlessly to affright thee, that we desire to convince thee of thy misery! We do not cruelly insult over thee, or desire to torment thee. But we pity thee in so sad a case: to see an unsanctified person ready to pass into another world, and to be doomed unto endless misery, and will not know it till he is there. Our principal reason of opening your danger is, because it is necessary to your escaping it: if soul diseases were like bodily diseases, which may sometimes be cured without the patient's knowing them, and the danger of them, we would never trouble you at such a time as this. But it will not be so done; you must understand your danger, if you will be saved from it: therefore be impartial with yourself if you are wise, and be truly willing to know the worst. 3. In judging yourselves, proceed by the same rule or law that God will judge you by; that is, by the word of God revealed in the gospel. For your work now is not to steal a little short-lived quiet to your consciences, but to know how God will judge your souls, and whether he will doom you to endless joy or misery: and how can you know this, but by that law or rule that God will judge you by? And certainly God will judge you by the same law or rule by which he governed you, or which he gave you to live by in the world. It will go never the better or worse there with any man, for his good or bad conceits of himself, if they were his mistakes; but just what God has said in his word that he will do with any man, that will he do with him in the day of judgment. All shall be justified whom the gospel justifieth; and all shall be condemned that it condemneth: and therefore judge yourself by it: by what signs you may know an unsanctified man, I have told you before, part i. chap. i. direct. 8. And by what signs true grace may be known, I told you before, in preparation for the sacrament. 4. If you cannot satisfy yourself about your own condition, advise with some godly, able minister, or other christian that is best acquainted with you; that knoweth how you have lived towards God and man: or at least, open all your heart and life to him that he may know it; and if he tell you that he feareth you are yet unsanctified, you have the more reason to fear the worst. But then be sure that he be not a carnal, ungodly, worldly man himself; for they that flatter and deceive themselves, are not unlike to do so by others. Such blind deceivers will daub over all, and bid you never trouble yourself; but even comfort you as they comfort themselves, and bid you believe that all is well, and it will be well; or will make you believe that some forced confession and unsound repentance will serve instead of true conversion. But a man that is going to the bar of God, should be loth to be deceived by himself, or others.
[Sidenote: For humiliation and repentance.]