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uprightness proves not a snare to thee, and keeps thee from getting evangelical uprightness. I am sure it was so to the young man in the gospel. In all likelihood he might have been better, had he not been so good. His honesty and moral uprightness was his undoing, or rather his conceit of them, to castle himself in them. Better he had been a Publican, driven to Christ in the sense of his sin, than a Pharisee, kept from him with an opinion of his integrity. These, these are the weeds with which many (thinking to save themselves by) keep themselves under water to their perdition. "There is more hope of a fool," Solomon tells us, "than of one wise in his own conceit;" and of the greatest sinner, than of one conceited of his righteousness. If once the disease take the brain, the cure must needs be the more difficult; no offering Christ to one in this frenzy. Art thou one kept froin these unrighteous ways wherein others walk? May be thou art honest and upright in thy course, and scornest to be found false in any of thy dealings. Bless God for it, but take heed of blessing thyself in it; there's the danger, this is one way of being righteous overmuch;" a dangerous pit, of which Solomon warns all that travel in heaven's road, Eccles. vii. 16. There is undoing in this over-doing, as well as in any under-doing; for so it follows in the same verse, "why shouldest thou destroy thyself?" Thou art not, proud man, so fair for Heaven as thou flatterest thyself. A man upon the top of one hill may seem very nigh to the top of another, and yet can never come there, except he comes down from that where he is the mount of thy civil righteousness and moral uprightness (on which thou standest so confidently) seems perhaps level in thy proud eye to God's holy hill in Heaven, yea so nigh that thou thinkest to step over from one to the other with ease. But let me tell thee, it is too great a stride for thee to take; thy safer way and nearer way were to come down from thy mountain of self-confidence (where Satan hath set thee on a design to break thy neck) and to go thy ordinary road, in which all that ever got to Heaven went; and that is by labouring to get an interest in Christ and his righteousness, which is provided on purpose for the creature to wrap up his naked

soul in, and to place his faith on; and thus thy uprightness (which before was but of the same form with the Heathen's moral honesty) may commence, or rather be baptized Christian, and become evangelical grace. But let me tell thee this before I dismiss thee, that thou canst not lay hold of Christ's righteousness, till thou hast let fall the lie (thy own righteousness) which hitherto thou hast held so fast in thy right hand. When Christ called the blind man to him, it is said, "he casting away his garment, rose aud came to Jesus;" Mark x. 50. Do thou so, and then come and welcome.

CHAP. VII.
VII. .

OF EVANGELICAL OR GODLY SINCERITY, WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT UNCOMELINESSES THIS GIRDLE COVERS; AS ALSO HOW IT COVERS THEM.

WE proceed to the second kind of truth, or uprightness, which I called an evangelical uprightness. This is a plant found growing only in Christ's garden, or the inclosure of a gracious soul. It is, by way of distinction from that I called moral, known by the name of a "godly sincerity," or the sincerity of God: "our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world." 2 Cor. i. 12. Now in two respects this evangelical sincerity may be called godly sincerity. First, because it is of God. Secondly, because it aims at God,

and ends in God.

SECT. I.

First, It is of God. It is his creature, begot in the heart by his Spirit alone. Paul in the place before

mentioned, doth excellently derive its pedigree for us. What he calls walking in "godly sincerity" in the first part of the verse, he calls "having our conversation by the grace of God" in the latter part; yea opposeth it to "walking with fleshly wisdom in the world," (the great wheel in the moral man's clock) and what doth all this amount to, but to shew that this sincerity is a babe of grace, and calls none on earth father? But this is not all: this godly sincerity is not only of divine extraction, for so are common gifts that are supernatural, the hypocrite's boon as well as the saint's, but it is part of the new creature, which his sanctifying Spirit forms and works in the elect, and none besides. It is a covenant grace. "I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you." Ezek. xi. 19. That "one heart," is this godly sincere heart opposed to the double heart, or a heart and a heart, by which the hypocrite is so often descried in the Word.

Secondly, It aims at God, and ends in God. The highest project and most ultimate end that a soul, thus sincere, is big with, is how it may please God. The disappointment such a godly sincere person meets with from any other, troubles him no more than it would a merchant, who speeds in the main end of his voyage to the Indies, and returns richly laden with the prize of gold and silver he went for, but only loseth his garter or shoe-string in the voyage. As the master's eye directs the servant's hand (if he can do his business to his master's mind he hath his wish, though strangers, who come into the shop, like it not), thus godly sincerity acquiesceth in the Lord's judgment of him. Such a one shoots not at small nor great, studies not to accommodate himself to any, to hit the humour of rich or poor, but singles out God in his thoughts from all other, as the chief object of his love, fear, faith, joy, &c. He directs all his endeavours like a wise archer at this white, and when he can most approve himself to God, he counts he shoots best. Hear holy Paul speaking, not only his own private thoughts, but the common sense of all sincere believers: "we labour, whether present or absent, that we may be accepted of him." 2 Cor. v. 9. The world's true man is he that will not

wrong man; though many go thus far who can make bold with God, for all their demure carriage to man. Some that would not steal the worth of a penny from their neighbour, yet play the notorious thieves with God in greater matters than all the money their neighbour hath is worth. They can steal that time from God, to gratify their own occasions, which he hath enclosed for himself, and lays peculiar claim to, the Sabbath-day I mean, by such a title as will upon trial be found stronger than we can shew for the rest of the week to be ours. Others will not lie to man possibly in their dealing with him, and it were better living in the world if there were more of this truth among us; but these very men (many of them, yea all that are not more than morally upright) make nothing of lying to God, which they do in every prayer they make, promising to do what they never bestow a serious thought how they may perform: they say they will sanctify God's name, and yet throw dirt on the face of every attribute in it; they pray that the will of God may be done, and yet while they know their sanctification is his will, they content themselves with their unholy hearts, and think it enough to beautify the front of their lives and natures, that part which faceth man, and stands to the street (as I may so say) with a few flourishes of civility and justness in their worldly dealings, though their inward man lies all in woeful ruins at the same time. But he is God's true man, that desires to give unto God the things that are God's, as well as unto man the things that are man's, yea who is first true to God, and then to man for his sake. Good Joseph, when his brethren feared as strangers to him (for yet they knew no other) they should receive some hard measure at his hands, mark what course he takes to free their troubled thoughts from all suspicion of any unrighteous dealing from him: "do this (saith he) and live, for I fear God," Gen. xlii. 18. As if he had said, Expect nothing from me but what is square and upright, for I fear God; you possibly may think because I am a great man, and you poor strangers (where you have no friends to intercede for you) that my might should bear down your right; but you may save your. selves the trouble of such jealous thoughts concerning

me;

for I see one infinitely more above me than I seem to be above you, and him I fear; which I could not do, if I should be false to you. The word, 2 Cor. i. 12. for sincerity is emphatical, eilikrineia; a metaphor from things tried by the light of the sun: as when you are buying cloth, or such like ware, you will carry it out of the dark shop, and hold it up to the light, by which the least hole in it is discovered; or as the eagle, it is said,, holds up her young againt the sun, and judgeth them her own if able to look up steadily against it, or spurious if not able. Truly that is the godly sincere soul, which looks up to Heaven and desires to be determined in his thoughts, judgment, affections, and practices, as they can stand before the light which shines from thence through the Word, the great luminary into which God hath gathered all light for guiding souls, as the sun in the firmament is for directing our bodies in their walking to and fro in the world. If these suit with the Word, and can look on it without being put to shame by it, then the sincere soul goes on in his enterprize with courage, nothing shall stop him; but if any of these be found to shun the light of the Word (as Adam would if he could the seeing of God), not being able to stand to its trial, then he is at his journey's end, and can be drawn forth by no arguments from the flesh; for it goes not on the flesh's errand, but on God's; and he that sends him, shall only stay him. Things are true or right, as they agree with their first principles. When the copy agrees with the original writing, then it is true; when a measure agrees with the legal standard, or town bushel, then it is true: now the will of God is standard to all our wills, and he is the sincere man that labours to take the rule and measure of all his affections and actions from that. Hence David is called a man after God's own heart, which is but a periphrasis of his sincerity, and is as much as if the Spirit of God had said, he was an upright man, he carries on his heart the sculpture and image of God's heart, as it is engraved on the seal of the Word. But enough for the present: this may serve to shew what is evangelical uprightness. Three things would be desired further before we fall on the application.