impose upon by a lie, or a false appearance? Indeed there cannot be a greater absurdity, and no man can act more inconsistently with himself than at once to profess homage to an object; and think it possible at the same time to impose a cheat upon it. It is truly to deface my own act : I give him worship; that carries the face and appearance of very high thoughts which I have of him, and as if I took him for a very excellent being but to think to impose upon him by a piece of falsehood; that carries the appearance of the meanest and most despicable thoughts of him which can be imagined. And therefore we find with what severity the holy God speaks, in that case of any man, who does but say in his heart; I shall have peace, though he walks after the imaginations of his heart my jealousy shall smoke against that man, Deut. 29. 19. 20. "What, will he take up such contemptuous thoughts of me? I will make him pay dear for that very thought, and my jealousy shall smoke against him.”

(3.) By this attempt to impose upon the blessed God by false appearances, we bring in very pregnant convictive testimony against our own souls. Hypocrisy always does that. There is no man who plays the hypocrite, but that which he counterfeits, and whereof he puts on the appearance, he doth, thereby proclaim it to be good, and valuable; otherwise why doth he imitate or counterfeit? People are not wont to put on a false appearances, to make themselves seem worse than they are, but to make themselves appear better: and their very practice in this thing carries this testimony with it against themselves, that they judge that to be better, and yet decline it. They judge that to be a good whereof they thought fit to clothe themselves with the shew; they practically acknowledge it to be a good, and thereby give a mighty testimony against themselves. Thou thoughtest it a good and desirable thing to be a christian; otherwise why didst thou seem one? to be sincere; otherwise why didst thou pretend to it? And if thou dost think so, why didst thou not aim to be such a one? Beside,

(4.) They hereby lose the opportunity which they might otherwise have had of becoming what they seemed to be. The moralist speaks about the business of wisdom, Multi ad sapientiam pervervissent, nisi se ad sapientiam pervenisse putarant: many had attained to be wise, had they not thought themselves to be already so. If they had not cozened themselves with the appearance of it, many might have come to have been sincere. And it is a miserable thing to please one's self with the shadow, all that time

wherein one should have been getting the substance, till the time is expired and gone.

But here now a question may perhaps arise, by some such person or other, who may fear himself not yet to be sincere, and may therefore say, "What am I to do in this case? while I think I am not sincere and while perhaps that really is my case? Am I to throw away all my profession? Or am I to profess enmity against God? Being not yet regenerate, and therefore not yet a subject, must I therefore profess myself a rebel?" It would be very easy to discover what is duty in this case, if we do but consider and fasten upon what is only faulty in it. Now wheresoever there is hypocrisy there must be some good wanting; and there must be the present appearance and semblance of that good which is wanting. Thus it is in the present case. This good is wanting, a real subjection of heart and spirit to the laws and constitutions of God's spiritual kingdom, which is only brought about by the new birth. Well, but here is the appearance of it too, else there could not be hypocrisy. Now let us consider where the fault lies in this case: the fault cannot lie simply in the appearance, but only as it is untrue; for there are true appearances, as well as false. The appearance therefore is upon no other account faulty, but as it is false; for if the good were there, whereof there is the appearance, the appearance would not only be lawful, but a duty. We are to hold forth the word of life, by which we have been made to live; as the apostle directs, Phil. 2. 16. Now therefore inasmuch as the fault here is, that while there is such an appearance, that good doth not subesse, there is not that good underneath which there ought to be; so the thing now to be done, is not to throw away the appearance, but to have the good supplied; that is in this case, to be restlessly intent to obtain that Spirit, and the vital influences and operations of it, by which that great transforming work may be done. And how great encouragement is there for this at his hand, who hath told us, that if earthly parents who are evil, will give good gifts to their children; bread rather than a stone; a fish rather than a scorpion; how much rather will our heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them who ask it? It is not because this Spirit is out of our power, and not at our command, that we have not the influences and operations of it, according to our need; but because we apprehend not, and will not admit the serious apprehension, of our need. It is a kind of contempt of this blessed Spirit that these pleasant vital influences are so little valued by creatures lost in darkness and death; that we rather content ourselves to be desolate, and seem careless whether we live or die for the

present; or are happy or miserable to all eternity. It is upon such accounts as these that the blessed Spirit, though the Author and Fountain of all love and goodness, and benignity, and sweetness, retires: and that resolution seems taken up, "My Spirit shall no longer strive." It is no wonder if it do not, when there is so little apprehension of our need of him, so little dependance upon him; so little craving and seeking and solicitude, whether it be an indweller in our souls, or no: as if the doctrine of the Holy Ghost were a strange and new thing to our ears; or we had not yet heard whether there was a Holy Ghost or no.

SERMON VIII.*

SEVERAL inferences have been recommended to

already, and others remain to be added. A fifth infe rence, is that the depravation of man's nature in the state of apostacy is total.-Being born denotes a total production, and the thing produced is only somewhat substituted in the room of the nature depraved: and what was corrupted and what is substituted instead of it, must necessarily be commensurate and proportionable to one another. If a man should have a leg or arm perish; he would not say, the production of that arm was a being born; for being born, is the production of all the parts together, not of this or that single part alone. And hence it is that that which is corrupted, and that which is anew produced, are in Scripture spoken of under the name of a man; an old man, and a new man. The frame of graces,

that impress of holiness, wherein the new creature doth consist, must be understood to be a whole entire body of graces; as the sins which meet together originally in the nature of man, are called by the name of the body of the sins of the flesh,

*Preached February 6th, 1677. at Cordwainer's Hall.

which is to be destroyed; and elsewhere, the body of sin. It is therefore a forlorn miserable state that men are antecedently in, to their being born spirit of spirit. And it is of no small consequence, that it be distinctly understood, and sink into our hearts, that this depravation is total, and that we need to be made new throughout. As we have it in 2 Cor. 5. 17. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away, and all things are become new. Where this is not understood, it is of most unhappy consequence in these two respects-men take not up right thoughts of the distressedness of their own case; and-by consequence they never apply themselves to the proper business of the redress of it.

I. They never take up right thoughts of the wretchedness of their own case. They understand neither the extent of it, nor wherein it doth especially consist. They understand not how extensive it is in a twofold respect, that is, to the subject disaffected, and the object whereunto they are disaffected. There is a twofold totality to be considered in this matter, both subjective, and objective. The subject is disaffected universally in every faculty; the mind, and judgment, and will, and conscience and affections, and executive powers; and by a kind of participation, the whole outward man. The apostle applying passages out of the Old Testament, runs over the several parts; Their throat is an open sepulchre, the poison of asps is under their lips, their feet make haste to shed blood, &c. Rom. 3. This is little apprehended by them who consider not the work to be wrought under the notion of a birth, which supposes the antecedent corruption, which always leads the way to generation, to have been universal and total.

And it is as little considered, that this disaffection, as it hath spread itself through the whole subject; so it refers to the whole object, which they ought to be otherwise affected to.: that is, the whole law of God, or the entire sum of their duty. They make nothing of it, considered as a duty and enjoined by God, and whereby they pay a respect and homage to him; and indeed every act of duty should be in that regard an act of religion; and that religion is of no value, if this do not run through it, and is only the body and carcass of it, but not the soul and spirit. This is not understood, that in reference to every part of duty which is enjoined, there is a disaffection in the spirits of men, and they are to every good work reprobate: that is, they do not know how to make proof of themselves, or approve themselves in any work they undertake which is truly good; and cannot accordingly be approved of God in what they do or go about.

But besides that the extent of this wretched case is not un