Jib DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING AND KEEPING science here, yet there will no cure nor ease for it be found here- after. Your merry hours will then all be gone, and your worldly delights forsake you in distress ; but these solid comforts which you judged too dear, would have ended in theeverlasting joys of glory. When men do flinch God and his truth in straits, and juggle with their consciences, and will take out all the honorable, easy, cheap part of the work of Christ, and make a religion of that by itself, leaving out all the disgraceful, difficult, chargeable, self-denying part, and hereupon call themselves Christians, and make a great show in the world with this kind of religiousness, and take them- selves injured if men question their honestyand uprightness in the faith; these men are notorious self-deceivers, mere hypocrites; and, inplain truth, this is the very true description by which dam- nable hypocrites . are known from sound Christians. The Lord openmen's eyes to see it in time while it may be cured ! Yea, and the nearer any true Christian doth come to this sin, the more he disoblige God, and quench the spirit of comfort, and darken his own evidences, and destroy his peace of conscience, and create unavoidable troubles to his spirit, and estrangedness betwixt the. Lord Jesus and his own soul. Avoid this, therefore, if ever you will have peace. Direct. XXV. My next advice shall be somewhat near of kin to the former. If you would learn the, most expeditious way to peace and settled comfort, 'Study well the art of doing good ; and let it be your every day's contrivance, care and business, how you may lay out all that God bath trusted you with, to the greatest pleasingof God, and to your most comfortable account.' Still remember, (lest any Antinomian should tell you that this savors of Popery, and trusting for peace to our own works ;) 1. That you must not think of giving any of Christ's honor or office to your best works. You must not dream that they can do any thing to the satisfaction of God's justice for your sins; nor that they have any proper merit in them, so as for their worth to oblige God to reward you ; nor that you must have any righteousness or worthiness in yourself and works, which the law of works will so denominate or own. But only you must give obedience its due under Christ; and so you honor Christ himself, when those that detract from obedience to him, do dishonor him; and you must have an evangelical worthiness and righteousness, (so called, many and many times over in the gospel) which partly consisteth in the sincerity of your obedience and good works; as the condition of continuing your state of justification, and right to eternal life. 2. Remember I have given you many arguments before, to prove that you may take comfort from your good works and gra- cious actions.
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