TO A SOUND CONVERSION. J8'( their honours and dignity, you are provoked to envy them. If you see their riches, you are ready to covet them. If you look upon beauty, you are stirred up to lust. And it is well if godliness be not an eye -sore to you. 7. The very gifts which God bestows on you, and the ordinances of grace, you turn to sin. If you have better parts than others, you grow proud and self - conceited. You take the bare hearing of your duty for so good a work, as will excuse you for not obeying it. Your prayers are turned into sin, because you regard. iniquity in your hearts,(i) and depart not rom of iniquity when you call on the name the Lord. 'Your prayers are abominable, because you turn away your ear from hearing the law ?(le) and are more ready to offer the sacrifice of fools, (thinking you do God some special service,) than to hear his word, and obey it.(l) And thus I might show you, in many other cases, . how you turn all that comes near you to your own de- struction ? So clear is it, that the ungodly are self -de- stroyers, and that their perdition is of themselves. Methinks now, upon the consideration of what is said, and the review of your own ways, you should consider what you have done, and be ashamed, and deeply humbled. If you be not, I pray you consider these following truths. 1. To be your own destroyers, is to sin against the deepest principle in your natures, even the principle of self - preservation. Every thing naturally desires its own welfare or preservation. And will you set your- selves to your own destruction ? When you are com- manded to love your neighbours as yourselves, it is supposed that you naturally love yourselves: but if you love your neighbours no better than yourselves, it seems you would have all the world damned. 2. How extremely do you cross your own inten- tions ! I know you intend not your own damnation, even when you are procuring it ; you think you are but doing good to yourselves, by gratifying the desires. (i). Psal. lxvi. 18. (k) Prov. xxviii. 9. (l) Eccles. v. L
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