SHINE IN OUR WORKS. 463 cipline, or practice, they presently cast it as a football before the boys in the streets, and make it a matter of doubtful, endless dis- putations, of multiplied sects,of pernicious contentions, and cruel persecutions; and then.the reverence and glory of it is gone, and every philosopher will vie with it in subtilty, and every stranger will presume to censure it,if not to blaspheme it and deride it. And thus overdoers are the scandals of the world. II. The Christian that will glorify God, andhis profession, must be conscionable in the smallest matters, but he must ever describe and open the nature of, his religion, as consisting in great and cer- tain things, and not talk too much of smaller matters, as if it were those that men were to be saved by. Tell men of the necessity of believing, fearing, obeying, trusting, and loving God, and of coming to him by Jesus Christ, the great Mediator between God and man ; tell them of the intrinsic evil of sin, and of God's jus- tice, andof man's, corruption, and of the'nature and excellency of holiness, and of the necessity of being new-born of the Holy Spir- it, and of mortifying the desires and deeds of the flesh; and tell them ofjudgment, heaven, and hell, especially the certainty and excellency of the everlasting promised glory; persuade them to believe all this, to think much of all this, and to be true to what they know, and to make it the work of life to he always prepared for death. Let this be your discourse with sinners; (as I told you in' the 'first character it must be your own religion) and then men will perceive that religion is a. matter that doth indeed concern them, and that they are indeed great' and necessary things in which you differ from ungodly men ; but the scandalous Christian talketh most of external church-orders, and forms and opinions, and par- ties, and thereby maketh the ignorant believe that the difference is but that one will sit when the other kneeleth ; and one will pray by the book, and the other .without book ; and one is for this church-government, and another for that; and one for praying in white, and the other in black. And talking too much of such things as these deceiveth the hearers: some it maketh formal hyp- ocntesy who take up this for their religions; and the resi it harden- eth, and maketh them think that such people are Only more hu- morous, and self-conceited, and giddy, and factious than others, but no whit better. III. The genuine Christian hath an humble and cautelous un- derstanding ; sensible when he knoweth most how little he knorv- eth, and how much he is still unacquainted with, in the great mys- terious matters of God. His ignorance is his daily grief and bur- den, and he is still longing and looking for some clearer light. Not a new word of revelation from God, but aclearer understand- ing of his word. He knoweth how weak arid slippery man's un-
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