478 WHAT LIGHT MUST ocrites, who weed not only their neighbors' fields, and see the mote in another's eye, andnot the beam which is in yout own. " If the righteous smite us by reproofs, it must be taken as a kindness, and as aprecious balsam, which doth not break our head, but heal us; Psalm cxli. 5. Not that we are bound to belie ourselves in com- pliance with, every man's censorious humor that will accuse us ; but we mustbe readier to censure ourselves than others, and readier to confess a fault, than to expect a confession from others whom we reprove. Sincerity and serious repentance will be honorable in that person who is most careful to avoid sin, and most ready penitently to confess it when he hathbeen overcome, and truly thankful to those that call him to repentance; as being more de- sirous that God, and his laws and religion, have the glory of their holiness, than that he himself 'should have the undue glory of in- nocency, and escape the deserved shame of his sin. It is one of the most dangerous diseases of professors, and great- est scandals of this age, that persons taken for eminently religious are more impatient of plain (though just) reproof, than many a drunkard, swearer, or fornicator; and when they have spent hours or days in the seeming earnest confession of their sin, and lament before God and man that they cannot do it with more grief and tears, yet they take it for a heinous injury in another that will say half so much against them, and take him for a malignant enemy of the godly who will call them as they call themselves. They look that the chief .business of a preacher should be to praise them, and set them above the rest, as the only people of God; and they take him for an enemy that will tell them the truth. But the scandal is greatest in those preachers themselves, who cannot endúre to hear that they are sinners. So tender and impatient of reproof are some, yea, some that for their learning, and preaching, and piety, are ranked in the highest form, or expect to be so; that almost nothing but flattery or praise can please them ; and they can hardly bear the gentlest reproof, no,',nor a contradiction of any of their opinions ; but they seem. to tell men that it is their part and privilege to be the reprovers ofothers, and to have no reprov- er, and to tell other men of sin and be themselves accounted inno- cent ; and to call other men to repentance for particular sins, while they themselves must have no other repentance than_ in general to say that they are sinners ; and to proclaim to all 'that their public confessions are formalities, and that it is a Christ to heal. the souls of others that they preach, while they acknowledge but little work for his remedies on themselves. But he that."refuseth reproof doth err, and he that hateth it is brutish," however learned, or rev- erend, or pious he wouldbe accounted; Prov. xi. 17. and xii. 1. "He that regardeth reproof is prudent, and he that hateth it shall
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