492 CHARACTER. Os' A SOUND, which thinketh highly of him, and applaudeth and commendeth him, and neither, by their reproofs or stricter lives, will trouble his conscience with the remembrance of his sin, or the knowledge of his misery. He will take you for his .enemy for telling him the truth, ifyou go about to convince him of his undone condition, and tell him of his beloved sin. Sin is taken to be as himself: it is he that doth evil, ánd not only sin that dwelleth in him ; and there- fore all that you say against his sin, he taketh as spoken against himself; and he will defend his sin as he would defend himself: he will hear you till you come to touch himself, as the Jews did by Stephen, (Acts vii. 51.54.,) when they heardhim call them stiff- necked resisters of God, and persecutors, then they were cut to the heart, and did grind their teeth at him. And as they dìd. by Paul, (Acts xxii. 22.,) "They gave audience to thisword; and then lift up their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should. live ; " Gal. iv. 16. John ix. 40. Matt. sxi. 45. The priests and Pharisees would have laid hands pnChrist, when they perceived that he spake of them. And Ahab hated Mit;aiah, because he did not prophesy good of him, but evil ; 1 Kings xxii. 8. . Deservedly do they perish in their sin and misery, that hate him that would deliver Alen', and refuse the remedy. " Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge, but he that hateth reproof is brutish ; ". Prov. xii. 1. ." He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.;" Prov. xxii. 1. XII. 1. A Christian indeed is one that unfeignedly desireth to attain to the highest,degree of holiness, and to be perfectly freed from every thing that is sin. He desireth perfection, though not with a perfect desire. He sittethnot down contentedly in any low degree of grace. He looketh on the holiest (how poor soever) with much more reverence and esteem than on the most rich and honorable in the world. and he bad far rather be one ofthe most holy, than one of the most , prosperous and great : he had rather be a Paul or Timothy, than a Cæsar or an Alexander. He corn- plaineth of nothing" with to much sorrow, as that he can know and love his God no more. Nowhappy an exchange would he count it, if he had more of the knowledge and love of God, though he lost . all his wealth and honor in the would!- His smallest sins are a greater burden to him than his greatest corporal wants and suffer- ings ; as Paul, who, because he could not perfectly fulfill .God's law, and be as good as he would, he crieth out? as in bondage, "O wretched man that I am ; who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" Rom. vii. 24. 2. And for the weak Christian, though he is habitually and re- solvedly of the same mind, yet, alas ! his desires after perfection
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