the person. If in a lawsuit, all the ablest lawyers tell you that your cause is good, it is possible they may be deceived, but it is not likely. If in a fever, all the ablest physicians tell you the danger is past, it is possible yet that they may be all deceived: but yet I think you would take some comfort in such a testimony; so should you here. Though the judgment of ministers be not infallible, it may be much better than your own, though about yourselves; and it may be set against the jealousies and fears of a disquiet soul, and against abundance of the molesting suggestions of the

accuser.

If

I do not by all this draw you to lay too much on man; I advance them not too high, and make them not lords of your faith, but helpers of your joy. I draw you not to any deceitful course, nor into any way of danger to your souls. I bid you not fully and finally rest in the judgment of man; I bid you not neglect any means to come to fuller knowledge, and certainty of your own sincerity. I bid you not forbear any means that tend to the getting of true grace. you have it, and know it not, the same means (for the most part) may increase it, which you use to get it: and if you have it not, when it is thought you have it, the means may work it, that are intended to increase it. Do all that you can to repent, believe, and love God, and live to him, whether you ever did these before or not. But yet let the judgment of your faithful pastors, the officers and experienced servants of the Lord, keep off despondency and despair, that would disable you from the use of the means, and would weaken your hands, and make you sit down in unprofitable complaints, and give up all as hopeless. Let their judgment quiet you in the way of duty; lean on them in the dark, till you come into the light. Yea, be glad that you have so much encouragement and hope, from those that are by Christ appointed to subserve the Spirit, in the com forting as well as the sanctifying work, and to shew to man his uprightness, and to say to the righteous, "It shall be well with him.” (Isa. iii. 10.) I tell you, all the wealth of the world is not worth even this much ground of comfort: Live upon this much, till by diligent attendance, and waiting on the Spirit of grace and comfort, you can get higher.

2. The second extrinsic hindrance of Self-knowledge is

prosperity, and the flattery that usually attendeth it. The one disposeth men to be deceived, and the other putteth the hood over their eyes, and tells them the falsehoods which deceive them.

When men prosper in the world, their minds are lifted up with their estates; and they can hardly believe that they are indeed so ill, while they feel themselves so well; and that so much misery is joined with so much content and pleasure. They cannot taste the bitterness of their sin, and God's displeasure, while the sweetness of worldly delights and honours is in their mouths. The rich man in Luke xvi, it is likely would have given a man but an unwelcome entertainment, that had come to tell him that within a few days. or years he should lie in hell, and not be able to get a drop of water to cool his tongue! What need we doubt of that, when his five brethren, that he left on earth behind him, would not be persuaded (to know their danger of those flames, and to use the necessary means to escape them), though one had come to them from the dead! (Luke xvi. 31.) You plead against their feeling, when you tell them of their misery, when they feel prosperity. Their fleshly appetite and sense, which is in them the reigning faculty, doth tell them they are well and happy: and that which must confute this, and tell them that they are miserable, must be an inward sense of the sin and diseases of their souls, and a foreseeing faith that must look before them unto eternity, and fetch its proofs from the word of God, and fetch its motives from another world: And, alas, they have no such inward sense, nor no such faith as can prevail against their sensual feeling. And therefore it is a matter of lamentable difficulty, to make a prospering sinner well acquainted with his misery. He is drunken with fleshly pleasures and contentments and when the drink is in a man's head, you can hardly make him sensible of his misery, though he be a beggar, or a prisoner, or were to die within a week. The devil is therefore willing to reach his servants as full a cup of prosperity as he can, that their drunkenness may keep them from the true use of their reason for if they once come to themselves, they will come home to God. When misery brought the prodigal to himself, he resolveth presently of going to his father. (Luke xv.) The bustle of his worldly business, and the chattering, vain discourse that

is in his ears, and the mirth and sport that takes him up, will not allow him so much of reason, as seriously to consider of his soul's condition. Alas, when poor men, that must labour all day for food and raiment, can find some time for serious converse with God, and with their consciences, the great ones of the world have no such leisure. How many are going apace towards hell, and say they cannot have while to bethink themselves what way they are in, or whither it is that they are going! That which they have all their time for, they have no time for, because they have no hearts for it. Prosperity doth so please their flesh, that they can give no heed to conscience or to reason: it doth so charm their minds, and enslave their wills to sense and appetite, that they cannot abide to be so melancholy, as to prepare for death and judgment, or to consider seriously how this will relish with them at the end; nor scarcely to remember that they are men, that should rule their senses, and be ruled by God, and that have another life to live.

And as prosperity in itself is so great a hindrance to the knowledge of yourselves, so flatterers, that are the flies of summer, are always ready to blow upon the prosperous, and increase the danger. What miserable men are extolled as wise, and virtuous, and religious, if they be but rich and great! their vices are masked, or extenuated, and made but little human frailties; though they were swinish gluttons or drunkards, or filthy fornicators, or mere flesh-pleasing, sensual brutes, that waste most of their lives in ease and sports, and eating and drinking, and such delights; yet with their flatterers all these shall go for prudent, pious, worthy persons, if they can but seek when they have done, to mock God and their consciences with some lip-service and lifeless carcase of religion. O happy men, if God would judge of them as their flatterers do; and would make as small a matter of their wickedness, and as great a matter of their outside hypocritical, heartless worship! But they must be greater than men or angels, and higher than either earth or heaven, before God will flatter them. When they can make him afraid of their high looks or threatenings, or when they can put him in hope of rising by their preferment, then they may look that he should comply with their parasites, and compliment with his enemies, and justify the ungodly; but not till then. O did they consider how little flattery doth

secure them, and how little the Judge of all the world regards their worldly pomp and splendour; yea, how greatly their greatness doth aggravate their sin and misery, they would frown their flatterers out of doors, and call for plain and faithful dealers. Of all the miseries of worldly greatness, this is not the least, that usually such want the necessary blessing of a glass that will truly shew them their faces; of a friend at hand that will deal plainly and justly with their souls. Who tells them plainly of the odiousness, and bitter fruits of sin; and of the wrath of God, and endless misery? How few such true and faithful friends have they! and what wonder! when it is a carnal inducement that draweth men to follow them: It is their wealth and honour, and their power, to do men good or hurt in outward things, that makes their friends. They are attended by these flies and wasps, because they carry the honey-pot which they love. And God saith to his followers, "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world: if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John ii. 15.) And it is for love of worldly things, even the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and pride of life, &c., which are not of the Father, but of the world: (1 John ii. 16:) it is for these that great men have their friends and followers for the most part and therefore it is plain, that the worst sort of men are ordinarily their friends; for those are the worst men, that have not the love of the Father in them, but are the friends of the world, and therefore the enemies of God. (James iv. 4.) And the best, though fit to be their truest friends, are seldom their followers, as knowing that the attractive of the sensual world is a shadow unfit to deceive those that are acquainted with its vanity, and a snare unfit to take those that have observed how Satan lays and baits the trap, and how they have fared that have been taken in it. A despised Christ that hath the words of eternal life, is much more followed by men that have the heavenly relish. Such gracious souls, whose appetites are not corrupted by the creature and their sickness, have more mind to flock after a spiritual and powerful messenger of Christ, that talks to them of his kingdom, and the righteousness thereof, which they first seek, than to gape after the preferment and vainglory of prosperity. Christ, that despised the offer of

all: the kingdoms and glory of the world, (Matt. iv. 8, 9,) doth teach his followers to despise them.

Seeing then the ordinary attendants of the prosperous are the worst of men, that seek themselves, and are purveying for the flesh, what wonder if they be flatterers, that have neither skill, nor will to speak that unpleasing language of reproof, that should make the prosperous know themselves! O how seldom (or never) do they hear, what the poor can hear from every mouth! If a man of low degree be wicked, or offend, his enemy dare tell him of it, and his friend dare tell him of it, and his angry neighbour or companion will be sure to tell him of it; and they dare tell him frequently till he amend, and tell him plainly, and set it home. But if great ones be as bad, and need more help, as having more temptation, yet, alas, they may sin, and sin again, and perish, for any body that will deal faithfully with their souls, except some faithful minister of Christ, whose plainness is taken but for a thing of course. And usually, even ministers themselves are some of them so unfaithful, and some so fearful, and some so prudently cautelous, that such persons have no such help from them to know themselves, as the poorer sort of people have. If we deal freely with them, and set it home, it will be well taken; or if it offend, yet offence may be easily borne, as bringing no ill consequents to our ministry: But if we deal so with the great ones of the world, what outcries would it raise, and by what names should we and our preaching be called! If it were not for fear, lest some malicious hearers would misunderstand me, and misapply my words, as spoken of those we are bound to honour, and as tending to diminish the reputation of any of our superiors (which I detest), I should have shewed you all this in Scripture instances. When Haman could not bear the omission of one man's obeisance, what wonder if such cannot bear to be spoken to, as indeed they are! Not only an Ahab hateth one faithful plain Michaiah, because he prophesieth not good of him, but evil; (1 Kings xxii. 8;) but Asa, that destroyed idolatry, can imprison the prophet that reproveth him for his sin. (2 Chron. xvi. 10.) I will not tell you of the words that were spoken to Amos by the priest of Bethel, (Amos vii. 10-13,) or to the prophet, (2 Chron. xxv. 15, 16,) lest