own image created he him; Gen. i. 27., to be like God in all his attributes, particularly in that glorious one of his immutability; whereby he is, as the Scripture speaks, without variableness, or shadow of turning; James i. 17. the same yesterday, to-day and for ever, Heb. xiii. 8.

Now this immutability of God is twofold, relating either to his nature, or his purposes. The unchangeableness of his nature we have no room to imitate: for he designed us for a changeable state, made us creatures that were to purify our natures, and exalt them by degrees; till, by his last great and glorious change, he should translate us into an immortal and unalterable state, and make us eternally the same in our natures, and eternally happy in the exercise of them. But his moral immutability, the steadiness of his counsels, purposes, and actions, we may in some measure, and therefore must imitate, as far as human frailty will suffer us. We are like him in this perfection, when we get to ourselves, by thought and reflection, a firm persuasion of the eternal differences of good and evil, and of that inseparable dependance which reward and punishment have upon them; and when we govern our lives under the sense of these persuasions, evenly and uniformly. This is truly godlike! the great improvement, the honour, and the excellence of our natures! And this perfection he robs himself of, who wavers between different principles and practices; and is sometimes good and sometimes bad, as it happens. He puts not his faculties to that use, for which they were given him; employs not his reason to those purposes, for which it was designed, the establishing and strengthening of his mind in moral principles but lives as much at random, and without hold, as if the breath of the Almighty were not in him.

Indeed, unless reason gives us a firmness and constancy of acting, it is so far from being the glory and the privilege, that it is really the reproach and disgrace of our natures; and makes us lower than even the horse and mule that have no understanding, Psal. xxxii. 9. For they, without that, act always regularly and consonantly to themselves, under the never-erring guidance of instinct;

a blind, but sure principle; whilst man, with all his boasted titles and privileges, wanders about in uncertainties, does and undoes, and contradicts himself throughout all the various scenes of thinking and living.

2. But the dignity of our nature, is a consideration capable of touching but few. Let us go on therefore to more plain and affecting considerations. For such an unsettled temper of mind as we have described, creates a great deal of trouble and disturbance to the man, who is so unhappy as to be master of it.

And this follows plainly from what has been discoursed upon the former head. For whatsoever is natural, becoming, and worthy of us, is attended always with ease and delight to the doer; whereas that which thwarts our first end and design, and is destructive of our natural perfections, must needs be pain and grief to us. For the truth of which, in this particular case, we may appeal to the feeling of all those, who have ever once made the experiment. How uneasy is that man always to himself, who acts backwards and forwards, and has no sound bottom to rest upon! What disquiets does it create in his mind, to see himself perpetually condemning himself, allowing himself in that opinion or practice this hour, which he is sure he shall disallow and go against in the next! And this, perhaps, is the only part of his temper that he ever can be sure of.

Certainly a mind, thus at odds with itself, cannot but be very troublesome to the man that has it, unless, together with the power of keeping his resolutions, he has lost also that of reflecting afterwards on the breach of them. For whenever he looks back upon his actions, guilt and folly will appear written, as it were, upon the front of them. He must needs pronounce himself light and inconsistent, insincere, and void of that true fear of God, which dwells only with simplicity and a single heart. In fine, so many disagreeable and mortifying thoughts will offer themselves to him, as cannot but leave a wound behind him. And a spirit thus wounded (with guilt and folly too) who can bear? In truth, as

to ease of mind, it belongs oftentimes to the completely wicked, more than to those who are by halves so. For the first may have hardened and stupified his conscience so far, till it lets him alone, and gives him no further notice of the dangerousness of the state he is in. But he who sins and repents, and then'sins again in an endless circle, is sure to hear of his own follies, and be sensible of his own miseries. His good fits are like the short intervals of madness, which serve only to let the madman into a knowledge of his own disease; whereas it would be much more to his satisfaction and content, if he were mad always.

Good God! when a man finds himself breaking through all the strongest bonds that should hold him; through his most deliberate resolutions, made in time of great danger and adversity, or upon his solemn approach to the table of the Lord, but forgotten again in the presence of any new temptation, what horrors must the sense of this create in him! What hatred and contempt of himself! What despair almost of ever arriving at that strength and firmness of mind, which is requisite to carry him evenly on through the paths of virtue! Surely he is like the troubled sea, that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to such a wicked one as this. Isa. lvii. 20, 21.

But further, such a temper, so distracted between contrary inclinations and practices, is, in the

Third place, mischievous to a man in point of interest, as well as ease. For it renders him unfit for all the affairs and business of life; incapable of forming advantageous designs with confidence, or of prosecuting them with effect. A double-minded man, saith St. James, ch. i. 8., is unstable in all his ways. He that is so in point of religion (the greatest and most important concern of life, the one thing necessary) will probably be so in every thing beside; and then what kind of undertaking is such an one qualified for? To what calling can he betake himself with any probability of success, who wants the very first elements of thriving, industry, con

stancy and perseverance? Alas! the doubts and misgivings of his heart concerning his own internal state are such, as take away from him the taste of all outward comforts at present, and hinder him from an effectual pursuit of them. It must be a mind easy and at rest, that can apply itself thoroughly towards making those advantages of the things of this life, which are innocent and lawful. And such an one is not his, whose ways (as the wise man speaks) are double before the Lord. Besides, this unequalness in acting, these heats and these colds in religion when once they appear, (and how can they choose but appear some time or other?) will draw upon a man the suspicion of hypocrisy and dissimulation. He, who in the eye of the world is sometimes good, and sometimes bad, as it happens, will be sure to have the measure of himself taken from the worst side of him; and the other parts of his character esteemed only as pure artifice and feigning. His credit will be blasted, and his good name taken away; that engine, by which he is to profit himself and others, and to do all the good he is like to do in the world. Intimacies and friendships are the great comforts and supports of life, and of these such a man will be always thought incapable. What ground can his levity give any one to build their confidence upon? What encouragement is there to venture an acquaintance with the rash and unstable? What reason to expect a mutual consent and agreement of thoughts and affections, from a mind so little at unity in itself?

4. But these are slight inconveniencies, in comparison of what follows; that such a wavering, uncertain temper of mind is utterly inconsistent with the terms of salvation, and the hopes of eternal happiness. For 'tis not an holiness taken up by fits and starts, that can carry a man to heaven. It must be a constant regular principle, influencing us throughout, that must do that. If ye continue in my word, says our Saviour, John viii. 31, then are ye my disciples indeed. An uninterrupted course of virtue and goodness, and nothing less, can justify us

before God, and entitle us to our reward. And the reason is, because nothing less can prove our sincerity to God, which is the great and fundamental rule, by which we are to be tried. And a vein of this must run through all our thoughts and actions, to make them acceptable before God. My son, give me thy heart, says God; that is, come to me with a sincere and unfeigned design of serving me; surrender up to me all thy inclinations and affections without reserve; and give me possession of thy soul, without any rival or competitor. Which how can he be said to do, that admits contrary interests perpetually to struggle within him, and in his heartiest repentances is not without some prospect of sinning again? Holy David, therefore makes insincerity the character and mark of these kind of men ; their heart was not right with God, says he, neither were they steadfast in his covenant. Psal. lxxviii. 37. The one follows upon the other; if so be that they are not steadfast, neither can their hearts be right with God.

Let not a man, therefore, flatter himself that things are well with him, because he is not absolutely given over to work wickedness, but though he sometimes seems to be dead in trespasses and sins, Eph. ii. 1, yet he soon rises again by repentance; for assuredly this (which is at the bottom nothing but an art of getting to heaven, and yet enjoying his lusts all the while) will not serve his turn. There is no promise in Scripture that belongs to the unstable and wavering man; the terms of the covenant are universal purity; or at least universal sincerity: and under these can no man be saved. And as the state of a man is thus, with respect to another world, very dangerous and bad already, so is it likely to grow worse and worse still without remedy. For every new return to sin, every single desertion of virtue, does naturally unqualify a man more and more for a sound repentance, and weakens all the motives that lead to it. Sin does by this means grow familiar to us; and loses its frightfulness. By our suffering its continual approaches, it begins to appear to us in a more harmless shape: we