äO6 CHARACTER OF A SOUND, studieth to please above all the world, so it is God's approbation that he taketh up with for his justification and reward. He took him for hisabsolute Governor and Judge, and full felicity,.in the day when he took him for his God. He can live in peace without man's approbation. If men are never acquaintedwith his sinceri- ty, orvirtues, or good'deeds, it doth not discouragehim nor hinder him from his holy course ; he is, therefore, the same in secret as in public, because no place is secret from God. If men turn his greatest virtues or duties to his reproach, and slander him, and make him odious to men, and represent him, as they did Paul, a pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition, and the ringleader of a sect, andmake him as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things, this changeth him not, for it changeth not his felicity, nor doth he miss of his reward ; 1 Cor. iv. 9-14. Read the words in the text. Though he hath so much suspicion of his ownunder- standing, and reverence for wiser men's, that he will be glad to learn, and will hear reason from any one; yet praise and dispraise are matters of very small regard with him ; and as to himself, he counteth it but a very small thing to be judged of men, whether they justify or condemn him ; because they are fallible, and have not the power of determining any thing to his great commodity' or detriment ; nor is it their judgment to which he stands or falls ; 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4. He bath a more dreadful or comfortable judg- ment to prepare for. Man is of small account with him in com- parison of God ; Rom. viii. 33-36. 2. And though with the weakest true Christian it is soalso as to the predominancy of God's 'esteem and interest in him, yet is his weakness daily visible in the cùlpable effects. Though God have the chiefest place in his esteem, yet man bath much more than his due. The thoughts and words of men seem to such of far greater importance than they should. Praise and dispraise, favors and in- juries, are things which affect their hearts too much ; they bear not the contempts and wrongs of men with so quiet and satisfied a mind as beseemeth those that live upon God. They have so small an experience of the comforts of God in Christ, that they are tasting the deeper of other delights, and spare themnot so easily as they ought to do. God, without friends, or house, or land, or mainte- nance, or esteem in the world, Both not, fully quiet them ; but there is a deal of peevish impatience left in their minds, though it doth not drive them away from God. 3. But the seeming Christian can better take up with the world alone than with God alone : God is not so much missed by him as the world: he always breaks with Christ, when it cometh to for- saking all he is godly notionally and professedly, and therefore may easily say that God is his portion, and enough for those that
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