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hearts, how soon doth he deliver them from all fears of any evil intended by him against them? yea he will not allow them to darken the joy which that day had with them brought to him, so much as by expressing their own grief before him, for their old cruelty to him; so perfect a conquest had he got of all revenge. Gen. xlv. 5. And what preserved him in this hour of great temptation? he told them, "This do and live, for I fear God;" Gen. xlii. 18. as if he had said, Though you be here my prisoners, at my will and mercy for all that you can do to resist, yet I have that which binds my hands and heart too from doing or thinking you evil: I fear God; this was his preservative, he sincerely feared God. The other instance is Nehemiah, governor of that colony of Jews which, under the favour of the Persian princes, were again planting their native country: by his place he had an advantage of oppressing his brethren, if he durst have been so wicked; and from those that had before him been honoured with that office, he had examples of such as could not only swallow the common allowance of the governor, without rising in their consciences, which shewed a digestion strong enough, considering the peeled state of the Jews at that time, but could when themselves had sucked the milk, let their cruel servants suck the blood of this poor people also by illegal exactions; so that Nehemiah coming after such oppressors, if he had taken his allowance, and but eased them of the other burdens which they groaned under, no doubt he might have past for merciful in their thoughts; but he durst not go so far. A man may possibly be an oppressor in exacting his own. Nehemiah knew they were not in case to pay, and therefore he durst not require it. But as one who comes after a bad husbandman that hath driven his land, and sucked out the heart of it, casts it up fallow for a time till it recovers its lost strength, so did Nehemiah spare this oppressed people; and what, I pray, was it preserved him from doing as the rest had done? see Nehem. v. 15. "But I did not so, because of the fear of the Lord." The man was honest, his heart touched with a sincere fear of God, and this kept him right.

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CHAP. XVII.

OF A RECOVERING STRENGTH THAT SINCERITY HATH, AND WHENCE.

SECONDLY, Sincerity hath a recovering strength with it; when it doth not privilege from falling, yet it helps up again: whereas the hypocrite lies where he falls, and perisheth where he lies, who therefore is said, "to fall into mischief," Prov. xxiv. 16. The sincere soul falls, as a traveller may do, by stumbling at some stone in his path, but gets up, and goes on his way with more care and speed; the other falls, as a man from the top of a mast, that is ingulphed, past all recovering, in the devouring sea. He falls as Haman did before Mordecai; when he begins, he stays not, but falls till he can fall no lower. This we see in Saul, whose heart was never right; when once his naughty heart discovered itself, he tumbled down the hill apace, and stopped not, but from one sin went to a worse; and in a few years you see how far he was got from his first stage, where he first took his leave of God. He that should have told Saul, when he betrayed his distrust and unbelief in not staying the full time for Samuel's coming, which was the first wry step taken notice of in his apostacy, that he, who now was so hot for the worship of God, that he could not stay for the prophet's coming, would ere long quite give it over, yea fall from enquiring of the Lord, to ask counsel of the devil, by seeking to a witch; and from seeking counsel of the devil, should, at the last and worst act of his bloody tragedy, with his own hands throw himself desperately into the devil's mouth by self-murder, surely he would have staggered at it more than Hazael did at the plain character Elisha gave of him to his face. And truly all the account we can give of it is, that his heart was naught at first; which Samuel upon that occasion hinted to him, 1 Sam. xiii. when he told him, "the Lord had sought him a man after his own heart;" David he meant, who afterward fell into a sin greater as to the matter of the

fact, than that for which Saul was rejected of God, and yet having but an habitual sincerity, as the root of the matter in him, happily recovered out of it; for want of which, hypocritical Saul miscarried finally: so true is that proverb, that frost and fraud have dirty ends. Now there is a double reason for this recovering strength of sincerity: one taken from the nature of sincerity itself, the other from the promise by God settled on the soul where sincerity is found.

First, From the nature of sincerity itself. Sincerity is to the soul as the soul is to the body: it is a spark of divine life kindled in the bosom of the creature by the Spirit of God. It is "the seed of God remaining in the saint." John iii. 9. Now as the seed cast into the womb of the earth, and quickened there by the influence of Heaven upon it, doth put forth its head fresh and green in the spring, after many a cold nip it hath had from the winter; so doth sincere grace after temptations and falls, when God looks out upon it with the beams of his exciting grace. But the hypocrite, wanting this inward principle of life, doth not so; he is a Christian by art, not by a new nature, dressed up like a puppet, in the fashion and outward shape of a man, that moves by the wires which the workman fastens to it, and not informed by a soul of its own; and therefore as such an image, when worn by time, or broken by violence, can do nothing to renew itself, but crumbles away by piece-meal, till it comes at last to nothing; so doth the hypocrite waste in his profession without a vital principle to oppose his ruin that is coming upon him. There is a great difference between the wool on the sheep's back, which shorn will grow again, and the wool of the sheep's-skin on a wolf's back; clip that, and you shall see no more grow in its room. The sincere Christian is the sheep, the hypocrite is the wolf clad in the sheep's skin; the application of it is obvious.

Secondly, The sincere soul is under a promise, and promises are restorative: "the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul;" in Hebrew, restoring the soul. Psal. xix. 7. It fetcheth back the soul to life, as a strong cordial one

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in a fainting fit, which virtue is proper to the promissory part of the Word, and therefore so to be taken in this place. Now the sincere soul is the only right heir of the promises. Many sweet promises are laid in for the assuring succour and auxiliary aid to bring them off all their dangers and temptations: "whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved." Prov. xxviii. 18. Now mark the opposition: "but he that is perverse shall fall at once;" that is, suddenly, irrecoverably. "God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers;" Job viii. 20. he will not take them by the hand, that is, to help them-up when they fall; nay the hypocrite is not only destitute of a promise for his help, but lies also under a curse from God. Great pains we find him take to rear his house, and when he hath done, "leans on it, but it shall not stand; he holds it fast, but it shall not endure," Job viii. 15. "A little that the righteous hath is better than the riches of many wicked." Psalm xxxvii. 16. but why? see the reason, ver. 17, 18. " for the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholdeth the righteous." The righteous man in that Psalm is the upright, by the wicked is meant the hypocrite. A little true grace mixed with much corruption in the sincere Christian is better than the hypocrite's riches, great faith, zeal, and devotion, he brags so of. The former hath the blessing of the promise to recover it when decaying; these the curse of God threatening to blast them, when in their greatest pomp and glory. The hypocrite's doom is to grow worse and worse. 2 Tim. ii. 13. Those very ordinances, which are effectual through the blessing of the promise to recover the sincere soul, being cursed to the hypocrite, give him his bane and ruin. The Word which opens the eyes of the one, puts out the eyes of the other, as we find in the hypocritical Jews, to whom the word was sent to "make them blind," Isaiah vi. 9, 10. It melts and breaks the sincere soul, as in Josiah, 2 Kings xxii. 19; but meeting with a naughty false heart, it hardens exceedingly, as appeared in the same Jews, Jerem. xlii. 20. Before the sermon they speak fair: "whatever God saith, they will do;" but when sermon is done, they are further off than

ever from complying with the command of God. The hypocrite hears for the worse, prays for the worse, fasts for the worse: every ordinance is a wide door to let Satan in more fully to possess him, as Judas found the sop.

OF A SUPPORTING

CHAP. XVIII.

AND COMFORTING PROPERTY SINCERITY HATH, SHEWN IN SEVERAL PARTICULAR INSTANCES.

THIRDLY, Sincerity hath a supporting, comforting vir tue; it lifts the head above water, and makes the Christian float atop of the waves of all troubles with a holy presence and gallantry of spirit. "Unto the upright there ariseth light in darkness;" Psal. cxii. 4. not only light after darkness, when the night is past, but in darkness also: "out of the eater comes meat, and out of the strong, sweetness." Those afflictions which feed on, yea eat out the hypocrite's heart, the sincere soul can feed on them, suck sweetness from them, yea hath such a digestion, that he can turn them into high nourishment both to his grace and comfort. A naughty heart is merry only while his carnal cheer is before him, Hosea ii. 11. God tells Israel, he will take away her feasts, and all her mirth shall cease; her joy is taken away with the cloth sincerity makes the Christian sing, when he hath nothing to his supper. David was in none of the best case when in the cave, yet we never find him merrier; his heart makes sweeter music than ever his harp did: "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed, I will sing and give praise." Psal. lvii. 7. The hypocrite's joy, like the strings of musical instruments, crack in wet weather; but sincerity keeps the soul in tune in all weather. They are unsound bodies that sympathize with the season, cheerly in fair, but ill and full of aches in foul; so the unsound heart, a few pinching providences set him

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