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tience and pleasure, racking their brains upon some dry school problem, or some nice mathematical point; whilst no reasons or persuasions can prevail with them to spend one serious hour in the search and study of their own hearts!

It was a saying of the great Cicero, "I would give all the wealth in the world that I might wholly live in my studies, and have nothing to hinder me." What a brave offer had that been, if heaven, and the clearing of a title to it, had been the subject-matter of those studies! "Believe me," says another, "it were a sweet death to die in the study of the mathematical arts." And I should be ready to believe it too, did I not know that eternal judgment immediately follows death; and that they who stand at the door of eternity have higher matters to mind than mathematical niceties. To discern the harmonies and proportions in nature is pleasant; but, to discern the harmony and proportion of the signs of grace laid down in the word, with the works of grace wrought in our souls, is a far more pleasant and necessary employment; and, to be extinguished in such a work as this, were a lovely death indeed. "Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing!"

My friends, a day of trouble is near, a dying hour approaches us; and when our eye-strings and heart-strings are breaking, when we are taking the last grasp of Christ and the promises, you will then know to what purpose those hours spent in such work as this were. Search yourselves, yea, search yourselves before the decree bring forth, as that text may be read, Zeph. ii. 1, 2, “Enter into thy chamber and shut thy door;" sit close to this employment thou art here directed to: and however times shall govern, whether it be fair or foul weather abroad, thou shalt never repent such an expense of thy time. "I am never better" said a devout soul, "than when I am at my book or on my knees."

This may seem but a dull melancholy life to the brisk and airy spirits of these times; but let us be content with it as it is, and leave them, if we cannot have their company, to their sportiveness and frolics, never once grudging them in their short and dear-bought pleasures.

Assurance that sin is pardoned and Christ is ours, with the unspeakable joys that are inseparably connected therewith, is that "white stone, and new name, which none knoweth but he that receiveth it;" for no words can possibly explain to another what the soul tastes and feels in such an hour as this.

And be not discouraged at the difficulty of obtaining it. This white stone is no philosopher's stone, which no man could ever say he had in his hand; for many a Christian has really found it in waiting upon the Lord by prayer, and diligently searching the scriptures and his own heart.

Reader, the time will come when they who scoff at the serious diligence of the saints, and break many a pleasant jest upon the most solemn and awful things in religion, will tremble when they shall hear the midnight cry, "Behold the bridegroom cometh!" and see the lamps of all vain and formal professors expire, and none admitted into the marriage but such whose lamps are furnished with oil, whose professions and duties are enlivened and maintained by vital springs and principles of real grace within them.

It is a very remarkable story which Melchior Adams records in the life of Gobelinus; he says that a little before his time there was a play exhibited at Isenach in Germany, of the wise and foolish virgins, wherein the Virgin Mary was one of the five saints that represented the wise virgins; she was brought in with the rest, telling the foolish virgins who cried to her for oil, that it was too late; and then others representing the foolish virgins, began to weep and make most bitter lamentations. Hereat prince Frederic, who was one of the spectators, greatly amazed, cried out, "What is our faith worth, and to what purpose are all our good works, if neither Mary nor any other saint can help us?" And such was his consternation, that it threw him into a sore and violent disease which ended in an apoplexy, whereof he died about four days after. If the representation of these things in a play ended the life of so great a man so tragically, O think with thyself, Reader, what will the effects of the Lord's real appearance in the clouds of heaven, and the

mourning and wailing of the tribes of the earth in that day be! Think, I say, and think again and again, what the dismal effects of such a sight and sound will be upon all who neglect serious preparation themselves, and scoff at them who do prepare to meet the Lord!

The design of this manual is to bring every man's gold to the touchstone and fire, I mean every man's grace to the trial of the word; that thereby we may know what we are, what we have, and what we must expect and trast to at the Lord's coming. I pretend not to any gift of discerning spirits; such an extraordinary gift there once was in the church, and it was very necessary for those times, wherein Satan was so busy and the canon of scripture not completed; and some are of opinion, that by virtue of this gift Peter discerned the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira; but whatever that gift was, it is utterly ceased now; no man can pretend to it; but the ordinary aids and assistances of the Spirit are with us still, and the lively oracles are among us still; to them we may freely go for the resolving of all doubts and the decision of perplexed cases. And thus we may discern our own spirits, though we want the extraordinary gift of discerning other men's spirits.

I have little to say of this Treatise, more than that it is well aimed and designed, however it be managed. The ear tries words, as the mouth tastes meat. These things will relish according to the palates they meet with.

It is not the pleasing, but the profiting of men, that I have herein labored for. I know nothing in it that is likely to wound the upright, or slightly heal the hypocrité, by crying Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Scripture light has been my cynosura; and with that thread in my hand I have followed the search of hypocrisy through the labyrinths of the heart. Some assistance I hope I have had also from experience; for scripture and experience are such relative things, and the tie betwixt them so discernible, that nothing in nature can be more so. What we feel in our hearts, we might have read in the scriptures before ever we felt it.

That the blessing of God may go forth with it, and accompany it to thy soul, reader, is my heart's desire and prayer.

THE

TOUCHSTONE OF SINCERITY.

REV. iii. 17, 18.

Because thou sayest I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see.

CHAPTER I.

Wherein the Text is opened, and the Doctrines are propounded.

ALTHOUGH the revelation of St. John is a compendium of intricate visions and obscure prophecies, containing almost as many mysteries as words, yet that cloud overshadows the prophetical part only which begins where this chapter, with the doctrinal part, ends. Here the waters are found no deeper than in other places of the scripture; but if we go a little farther, they become an overflowing flood. Hitherto we touch ground, but a step further carries us into the depths, which are above the heads of the tallest Christians. Here the spirit

speaks doctrinally and perspicuously; but in the following chapters mystically and in great obscurity.

Seven epistles are found in this doctrinal part, immediately dictated from heaven and sent by John to the seven churches of Asia, to instruct, correct, encourage, and confirm them, as their several cases required.

My text falls in the last epistle, sent to the church of Laodicea, the worst and most degenerate of all the rest. The best had their defects and infirmities, but this labored under the most dangerous disease of all. The fairest face of the seven had some spots, but a dangerous disease seems to have invaded the very heart of this. Not that all were equally guilty, but the greatest part, from which the whole is denominated, were lukewarm professors; men who had a name to live, but were dead; who being never thoroughly engaged in religion, easily embraced that principle of the Gnostics, which made it a matter of indifferency to own or deny Christ in times of persecution, the most saving doctrine that some professors are acquainted with. This lukewarm temper Christ hated; he was sick of them, and loathed their indifferency. "I wish," says he, ver. 16. "thou wert either cold or hot," an expression of the same meaning with that in 1 Kings xviii. 21, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" and is manifestly translated from the qualities of water, which is either cold, or hot, or lukewarm, a middle temper betwixt both, and more nauseous to the stomach than either of the former. Cold is the complexion and natural temper of those who are wholly alienated and estranged from Christ and religion; hot is the gracious temper of those who know and love Jesus Christ in an excelling degree; lukewarm is the temper of those who have too much religion to be esteemed carnal, and too little to be truly spiritual; a generation that is too politic to venture much, and yet so foolish as to lose all; they are loth to forsake truth wholly, and more loth to follow it too closely: the form of religion they affect as an honor, the power of it they judge a burden.

This is that temper which the Lord hates, and this was the disease of Laodicea, which Christ, the great and only heart-anatomist and soul-physician, discovers in

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