out for help against our sin to ministers or other friends. that could assist us: and that we use the confirming ordinances with no more care and diligence. All the abilities and willingness of others, and all the helps of God's appointment, will be neglected, when we should employ them against our sins, so far as self-ignorance doth keep us from discerning the necessity of them.

(5.) It is for want of a fuller knowledge of ourselves, that many lie long in sins unobserved by themselves and many are on the declining hand, and take no notice of it. And how little resistance or mortifying endeavours we are likely to bestow upon unknown or unobserved sins, is easy to conceive. How many may we observe to have notable blemishes. of pride, ostentation, desire of pre-eminence and esteem, envy, malice, self-conceitedness, self-seeking, censoriousness, uncharitableness, and such like, that see no more of it in themselves, than is in more mortified men! How ordinarily do we hear the pastors that watch over them, and their friends that are best acquainted with them, lamenting the miscarriages, and the careless walking and declining of many that seem religious, when they lament it not themselves, nor will be convinced that they are sick of any such disease, any more than all other Christians are! Hence comes the stiffness of too many such, against all that can be said to humble and reform them: and that they are so impatient of reproof, and think reprovers do them wrong; and it is well if it abate not Christian love, and procure not some degree of hatred or displeasure. Like a man that is entering into a consumption, and takes it for an injury to be told so, till his languishing and decay convince him. Hence it is that we have all need to lament in general our unknown sins, and say with David, "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults." (Psal. xix. 12.) Hence it is that we can seldom tell men of the most discernible faults, but they meet us with excuses, and justify themselves.

There are few of us, I think, that observe our hearts at all, but find both upon any special illumination, and in the hour of discovering trials, that there were many distempers in our hearts, and many miscarriages in our lives, that we never took notice of before. The heart hath such secret corners of uncleanness, such mysteries of iniquity, and depths of deceitfulness, that many fearing God, are strangely

unacquainted with themselves, as to the particular motions and degrees of sin, till some notable providence, or gracious light assist them in the discovery. I think it not unprofitable here to give you some instances, of sin undiscerned by the servants of the Lord themselves that have it, till the light come in that makes them wonder at their former darkness.

men.

In general, first observe these two. 1. The secret habits of sin, being discernible only by some acts, are many times unknown to us, because we are under no strong temptation to commit those sins. And it is a wonderful hard thing for a man that hath little or no temptation to know himself, and know what he should do, if he had the temptations of other And O, what sad discoveries are made in the hour of temptation! What swarms of vice break out in some, like vermin, that lay hid in the cold of winter, and crawl about when they feel the summer's heat! What horrid corruptions which we never observed in ourselves before, do show themselves in the hour of temptation! Who would have thought that righteous Noah had in the ark such a heart, as would by carelessness fall into the sin of drunkenness! Or that righteous Lot had carried from Sodom the seed of drunkenness and incest in him! Or that David, a man so eminent in holiness, and a man after God's own heart, had a heart that had in it the seeds of adultery and murder! Little thought Peter, when he professed Christ, (Matt. xvi. 16,) that there had been in him such carnality and unbelief, as would so soon have provoked Christ to say, "Get thee behind me Satan, thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men," (ver. 22, 23.) And little did he think when he so vehemently professed his resolution rather to die with Christ than deny him, that there had been then in his heart the seed that would bring forth this bitter fruit. (Matt. xxvi. 74, 75.) Who knows what is virtually in a seed, that never saw the tree, or tasted of the fruit?

Especially when we have not only a freedom from temptations, but also the most powerful means to keep under vicious habits, it is hard to know how far they are mortified at the root. When men are among those that countenance the contrary virtue, and where the vice is in disgrace, and where examples of piety and temperance are still before their eyes: if they dwell in such places and company, where au

thority and friendship and reason do all take part with good, and cry down the evil, no wonder if the evil that is unmortified in men's hearts, do not much break out to their own or others' observations through all this opposition. The instance of King Joash is famous for this, who" did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, all the days of Jehoiada the priest that instructed him," (2 Kings xii. 2,) but “ after his death, when the princes of Judah flattered him with their obeisance, he left the house of God and served idols, till wrath came upon the land: and was so hardened in sin, as to murder Zechariah the prophet of God, and son of that Jehoiada that had brought him out of obscurity, and set him upon the throne, even because he spake in the name of the Lord against his sin. (2 Chron. xxiv. 20. 22.)

Who would have thought that it had been in the heart of Solomon, a man so wise, so holy, and so solemnly engaged to God, by his public professions and works, to have committed the abominations mentioned 1 Kings xi. 4.?

If you say, 'That all this proveth not that there was any seed or root of such a sin in the heart before, but only that the temptation did prevail to cause the acts first, and then such habits as those acts did tend to;' I answer, 1. I grant that temptations do not only discover what is in the heart, but also make it worse when they prevail; and that is no full proof that a man had a proper habit of sin before, because by temptation he commits the act: for Adam sinned by temptation without an antecedent habit. 2. But we know the nature of man to be now corrupted, and that this corruption is virtually or seminally all sin, disposing us to all; and that this disposition is strong enough to be called a general habit. When grace in the sanctified is called a nature, (2 Peter i. 4,) there is the same reason to call the sinful inclination a nature too; which can signify nothing else than a strong and rooted inclination. Knowing therefore that the heart is so corrupted, we may well say, when the evil fruit appears, that there was the seed of it before. And the easy and frequent yielding to the temptation, shows there was a friend to sin within. 3. But if it were not so, yet that our hearts should be so frail, so defectible, mutable, and easily drawn to sin, is a part of self-knowledge necessary to our preservation, and not to be disregarded. 4. I am sure Christ himself tells us, that "out of the heart proceed

the sins of the life, (Matt. xv. 19,) and that the "evil things. of evil men come out of the evil treasure of their hearts." (Matt. xii. 35.) And when God permitted the fall of good King Hezekiah, the text saith, "God left him to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart," (2 Chron. xxxii. 31,) that is, that he might show all that was in his heart, so that the weakness and the remaining corruption of Hezekiah's heart were shewn in the sin which he committed.

2. And as the sinful inclinations are hardly discerned, and long lie hid till some temptation draw them out; so the act itself is hardly discerned in any of its malignity, till it be done and past, and the soul is brought to a deliberate review. For while a man is in the act of sin, either his understanding is so far deluded, as to think it no sin in its kind, or none to him that then committeth it; or that it is better venture on it than not, for the attaining of some seeming good, or the avoiding of some evil: or else the restraining act of the understanding is suspended, and withdrawn; and it discerneth not practically the pernicious evil of the sin, and forbiddeth not the committing of it, or forbids it so remissly and with so low a voice, as is drowned by the clamour of contradicting passion: so that the prohibition is not heard. And how can it be then expected, that when a man hath not wit enough in use, to see his sin so far as to forbear it, he should even then see it so far as rightly to judge of himself and it? And that when reason is low, and sensuality prevaileth, we should then have the right use of reason for self-discerning? When a storm of passion hath blown out the light, and error hath extinguished it, we are unlikely then to know ourselves. When the sensual part is pleasing itself with its forbidden objects, that pleasure so corrupts the judgment, that men will easily believe that it is lawful, or that it is not very bad: so that sin is usually least known and felt, when it is greatest and in exercise, and one would think should then be most perceptible. Like a phrensy or madness, or other deliration, that is least known when it is greatest and most in act, because its nature is destructive to the reason that should know it: like a spot in the eye, that is itself unseen, and hindereth the sight of all things else. Or as the deeper a man's sleep is, the less he knoweth that he is asleep. Somnium narrare vigilantis est,' saith Seneca: It is men awake that tell their dreams.

And thus you see that through self-ignorance it comes to pass, that both secret habits, and the most open acts of sin are ofttimes little known. A man that is drunk, is in an unfit state to know what drunkenness is, and so is a man that is in his passion: you will hardly bring him to repentance till it be allayed. And so is a man in the brutifying heat of lust: or in the childish use of such recreations as he doteth on: or in the ambitious pursuit of his deluding honours: and therefore abundance of unknown sin, may remain in a soul that laboureth not to be well acquainted with itself.

And as I have showed you this in general, both of habits and acts of sin, let us consider of some instances in particular, which will yet more discover the necessity of studying ourselves.

1. Little do we think what odious and dangerous errors may befal a person that now is orthodox! What a slippery mutability the mind of man is liable unto! How variety of representations causeth variety of apprehensions: like some pictures that seem one thing when you look on them on one side, and another thing when on another side; if you change your place, or change your light, they seem to change. Indeed God's word hath nothing in it thus fitted to deceive: but our weakness hath that which disposeth us to mistakes. We are like an unlearned judge that thinks the cause is good which he first hears pleaded for, till he hear the confutation by the other party, and then he thinks the other hath the best cause, till perhaps he hear both so long, till he know not whose cause is the best: The person that now is a zealous lover of the truth, (when it hath procured entertainment by the happy advantage of friends, acquaintance, ministers, magistrates, or common consent being on its side) may possibly turn a zealous adversary to it, when it loseth those advantages: When a minister shall change his mind, how many of the flock may he mislead!

When you marry, or contract any intimate friendship with a person of unsound and dangerous principles, how easily are they received!

When the stream of the times and authority shall change, and put the name of truth on falsehood, how many may be carried down the stream!

How zealous have many been for a faithful ministry, that have turned their persecutors, or made it a great part of