SPIRITUAL PEACE AND COMPORT.. 357 or unwilling to be at that labor which you must needs be atbefore you can know it. Secondly, That you do not either condemn yourself when your conscience doth acquit you, or vex your soul with needless scruples, or make unavoidable or ordinary infirmities to seem such willful heinous sins as should quite break your settled peace. O, how narrow is the path between these two mistaken roads, and how hard a thing, and howrare is it to find it and to keep it ! For yourself and all tender-conscienced Christians that are heartily willing to be ruledbyChrist, I would persuade you equally to beware of both these ; because some souls are as inclinable to the latter extreme as to the former, (during their troubles.) But for the most Christians in the world, I would have them first and prin- cipally avoid the former, and that with far greater diligence than the latter. For, 1. Naturally, all men's hearts are far more prone to deal too remissly, yea, unfaithfully with themselves, in search- ing after their sins, than too. scrupulously and tenderly. The best men have so much pride and carnal self-love, that it will strongly incline them to excuse, or mince, or hide their sins, and to think far lighter and more favorably of it than they should do, because it is theirs. How was the case altered with Judah towards Tha- mah, when he once saw it was his own act! How was David's zeal for justice allayed, as soon as he heard, "Thou art the. man!" This is the most common cause why God is fain to hold our eyes on our transgressions byforce, because we are so loath to do it more voluntarily; and why he openeth our sin in such criínson and scarlet colors to us ; because we are so apt either to look on them as nothing, or to shut our eyes and overlookthem and why God doth hold us so long on the rack, because we would still ease our- selves by ingenious excuses.and extenuations; and why God doth break the skin so oft, and keep open our wounds, because we are still healing them by such carnal shifts. This proud, sin-excusing distemper needs no other proof or discovery, than our great ten- derness and backwardness in 'submitting to.reproofs : how long do we excuse sin, and defend our pretended innocency, as long as we can find a word to say for it! Doth not daily experience of this sad distemper, even in most of the godly, discover fully to us, that most men (yea, naturally all) are far more prone tooverlook their sins, and deal faithlessly and negligently in the trial, than to be too tender, and to charge themselves too deeply? Besides, if a Christian be heartily willing to deal impartially, and search to the quick, yet the heart is lamentably deceitful, that he shall overlook much evil in it, when he bath done his best. And the devil will be far more industrious to provoke and help you to hide, excuse, and extenuate sin, than to open it and see it as it is: His endeavor to drive poor souls into terrors, is usually but 1
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