couldst thou profess religion? With what face couldst thou so often tell me, that thou lovedst me, when thou knew all the while, in thine own conscience, that thine heart was not with me? O tremble to think what a fearful judgment it is to be given over to a heedless and careless heart; and then to have religious duties instead of a rattle, to quiet and still the conscience!

2. Hence also infer for the humiliation even of upright hearts, that unless the people of God spend more time and pains about their hearts, than generally and ordinarily they do, they are never likely to do God much service or be owners of much comfort in this world.

I may say of the Christian who is remiss and careless in keeping his heart, as Jacob said of Reuben, "Thou shalt not excel." It grieves me to see how many Christians there are who go up and down dejected and complaining, who live at a poor low rate both of service and comfort; and how can they expect it should be otherwise, as long as they live at so careless a rate? O how little of their time is spent in the closet in searching, humbling, and quickening their hearts!

You say that your hearts are dead; and do you wonder that they are so, as long as you keep them not with the fountain of life? If your bodies had been dieted as your souls have been, they would have been dead too. Never expect better hearts till you take more pains with them. He who will not have the labor, must not expect the sweet of religion.

O Christians, I fear your zeal and strength have run in the wrong channel. I fear most of us may take up the church's complaint, in Cant. i. 6, "They have made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept." Two things have eaten up the time and strength of the professors of this generation, and sadly diverted them from heart-work-fruitless controversies started by Satan, I doubt not to this very purpose, to take us off from practical godliness, to make us puzzle our heads. when we should be searching our hearts. O how little have we minded that saying of the apostle in Heb. xiii. 9, "It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, and hot with meats," that is, with disputes and

controversies about meats, "which have not profited them that have been occupied therein." O how much better is it to see men live exactly, than to hear them dispute subtlely! These unfruitful questions, how have they rent the churches, wasted time and spirits, and called Christians off from their main business, from looking to their own vineyard! What think ye? Had it not been better if the questions agitated among the people of God of late days had been such as these-how shall a man discern the special, from the common operations of the Spirit? How may a soul observe its first declinings from God? How may a backsliding Christian recover his first love? How may the heart be preserved from unseasonable thoughts in duty? How may a bosom-sin be discovered and mortified? Would not this have tended more to the credit of religion and comfort of your souls? O it is time to repent and be ashamed of this folly! When I read what Suarez, a Papist, said, who wrote many volumes of disputations, that he prized the time he set apart for the searching and examining of his heart in reference to God, above all the time that ever he spent in other studies, I am ashamed to find the professors of this age yet insensible of their folly. Shall the conscience of a Suarez feel a relenting pang for strength and time so ill employed, and shall not yours? This it is of which your ministers long since warned you. Your spiritual nurses were afraid when they saw your heads only grow, and your hearts wither. O when will God beat our swords into plough-shares? I mean, our disputes and contentions into practical godliness?

Another cause of neglecting our hearts have been earthly incumbrances. The heads and hearts of many have been filled with such a crowd and noise of worldly business, that they have sadly and sensibly declined and withered in their zeal, love, and delight in God; in their heavenly, serious, and profitable way of conversing with

men.

O how has this wilderness entangled us! Our discourses and conferences, nay, our very prayers and duties have a savor of it. We have had so much work without doors, that we have been able to do but little within.

It was the sad complaint of a holy man, "O it is sad to think how many precious opportunities I have lost! how many sweet motions and admonitions of the Spirit I have passed over unfruitfully, and made the Lord to speak in vain! In the secret lapses of his Spirit, the Lord has called upon me, but my worldly thoughts did still lodge within me, and there was no place within my heart for such calls of God." Surely there is a way of enjoying God, even in our worldly employments; God would never have put us upon them to our loss. "Enoch walked with God, and begat sons and daughters," Gen. v. 19; he walked with God, but he did not retire and separate himself from the things of this life. And the angels who are employed by Christ in the things of this world, are finite creatures, and cannot be in two places at one time; yet they lose nothing of the beatific vision all the time of their administration: for "their angels," even whilst they are employed for them, "behold the face of their Father which is in heaven." We need not lose our visions by our employments, if the fault were not our own. that ever Christians, who stand at the door of eternity, and have more work upon their hands than this poor moment of interposing time is sufficient for, should yet be filling both their heads and hearts with trifles!

Alas!

3. Hence I infer for the awakening of all, that if the keeping of the heart be the great work of a Christian, then there are but few real Christians in the world.

Indeed if every one who has learned the dialect of Christianity, and can talk like a saint; if every one who has gifts and parts, and by the common assisting presence of the Spirit can preach, pray, or discourse like a Christian; in a word, if such as associate themselves with the people of God and delight in ordinances, may pass for Christians, the number then is great. But, alas! to what a small number will they shrink, if you judge them by this rule! how few are there that make conscience of keeping their hearts, watching their thoughts, judging their ends! O there are but few closet men among professors! It is far easier for men to be reconciled to any duties in religion than to these. The profane part of the world will not so much as touch the outside of religious Div. No. XVIII.

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duties, much less this; and as for the hypocrite, though he be careful about these externals, yet you can never persuade him to this inward work, this difficult work to which there is no inducement from human applause, this work which would quickly discover what the hypocrite cares not to know; so that by a general consent, this heartwork is left to the hands of a few secret ones, and I tremble to think in how few hands it is.

SECTION II-Inferences for Exhortation.

If the keeping of the heart is so important a business, if such choice advantages accrue to you thereby, if so many precious interests be wrapt up in it, then let me call upon the people of God every where to attend closely to this work.

O study your hearts, watch your hearts, keep your hearts. Away with fruitless controversies and idle questions; away with empty names and vain shows; away with unprofitable discourse and bold censures of others; turn in upon yourselves; get into your closets, and resolve to dwell there. You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept others' vineyards too long; you have trifled about the borders of religion too long; this world has detained you from your great work too long; will you now resolve to look better to your hearts? Will you haste and come out of the crowds of business and clamors of the world, and retire into yourselves more than you have done? O that this day you would resolve upon it!

Reader, methinks I should prevail with thee. All that I beg for is but this, that thou wouldst step aside a little oftener to talk with God, and thine own heart; that thou wouldst not suffer every trifle to divert thee; that thou wouldst keep a more true and faithful account of thy thoughts and affections; that thou wouldst but seriously demand of this thy own heart, at least every evening, O my heart, where hast thou been to-day? Whither hast thou made a road to-day? If all that has been said by way of inducement be not enough, I have yet more motives to offer you.

And the first is this, The studying, observing, and diligent keeping of your own hearts, will marvellously help your understanding in the deep mysteries of religion.

An honest well-experienced heart, is a singular help to a weak head. Such a heart will serve you instead of a commentary upon a great part of the scriptures. By this means you will far better understand the things of God, than the learned rabbies and profound doctors, if graceless and ungodly, ever did. You will not only have a more clear, but a more sweet perception and taste of them, A man may discourse orthodoxly and profoundly of the nature and effects of faith, the troubles and comforts of conscience, the sweetness of communion with God, and yet never have felt the efficacy and sweet impressions of these things upon his own spirit; but O how dark and dry are these notions, compared with his in whose heart they have been felt! When such a man reads David's psalms or Paul's epistles, there he finds his own objections made and answered. O, says he, these holy men speak my very heart. Their doubts were mine, their troubles mine, and their experiences mine. I remember that Chrysostom, when speaking to his people of Antioch, once used this expression, "Those who are initiated know what I say." Experience is the best schoolmaster. O then study your hearts, keep your hearts.

2. The study and observation of your own hearts will guard you against the dangerous and infecting errors of the times and places you live in.

For what think you is the reason that so many professors in England have departed from the faith, giving heed to fables; that so many thousands have been led away by the error of the wicked; that those who have sown corrupt doctrine, have had such plentiful harvests among us; but because they have met with a company of empty notional professors, who never knew what belongs to practical godliness and the study of their own hearts? If professors did but give diligence to study, search and watch their own hearts, they would have that stedfastness of their own, of which Peter speaks 1 Pet. iii. 17; and this would ballast and settle them, Heb. xiii. 9. Suppose a subtle Papist should talk to such of the dignity and