418 DIRECTIONS AND PERSUASIONS thoughts of it : God is not in all our thoughts.(b) And some are already too wise to learn ; they will not so long abate their confidence of their former opinions ; though, poor souls, their ignorance do threaten their damnation: And some are so, engaged in a sinful party, that their companions will not give them leave to make so much question of the way that they are in ; and some will scarce take the scripture for the rule by which they must try and be tried ; but look more to custom, and the will of those in power over them. And most are unwilling to try, because they are unwilling to know the truth, and cannot endure to find themselves miserable, nor see the sin which they would not leave, nor see the duty which they love not to practise. And thus we cannot get them to try whether the things that we teach them be so. For want of this it is, that men deceive themselves, and think their case to be safe when it is miserable, because they will not try it by the word. This makes them rage and be confident in their folly, and laugh and sing at the brink of hell, and swim as merrily down the stream to the devouring gulph, as if no evil were near them. This makes them in the depth of misery, to have no pity on themselves, and to do so little to escape it : though they have time and means, and helps at hand, yet there are not hearts in them to make use of them ; yea, they run themselves daily further on the score ; and all because we cannot get them to search the scripture, and try whether sin be so small a matter, and whether this will not be bitterness in the end. Hence it is, that they are so easily drawn by a tempta- tion, and that they dislike a holy life ; and have base 'thoughts of them that are most diligent for salvation, and are most precious in the eyes of God ; and that they can even deride the way that they should.walk in ; because they will not search the scripture, to see what it saith to these matters. The word is a light, and would do múch to open their eyes, and win them over to God, if they would but come to it with a desire to (b) Psalm x. 4.
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