198 Seif iceiang fclf-lofing : fell: denying our fafety, acquainted with the depths of Satan , the fubtilties of men , nor the way of your efcape, but may eafily be over-reached to your undoing. If you are in your ownhands , you are in thehands of bad men, that though they have felf-love, yet are fo blinded by impiety that they will live like fe/f hater: ; And this expecience fully manifefteth, in that all finirers are felf- cleftroyers : No enemy could do fo much againft us as the bell ofuscloth againft himfelf : Did a man hate himfelf as bad as the Devil hateth him, he could Phew it by no worfe a way then fin ; nor do himfelf a greater mifchief then by neglecting God, and the life to come, and undoing his own foul, as the ungodly do. Should you fit down of purpofe to chicly how to do all the hurt to your felves that:you can, and toplay the part of your deadlieft enemies,I know not what yon could do more then is ordinary with ungodly men to do, except to go a little further in the fame way. Nothing but fin could alienate you fromGod, or make you liable to his heavy wrath : and this no Irian elfe couldyou make you guilty of, if you did not vo- luntarily choofe to be evil. If you could ask any man that is this day in hell, or that will ever be there, what brought him thither, and who it was long of that he came to fuch a mife- rable end, he mutt needs tell you it was himfelf If you come to any in earthlymifery, and ask them, who brought thisup- on them ? if they will fpeak truly they mutt fay, it was them- [elves. And thiswill be a great aggravation of their mifery, and the fewel that will feed the unquenchable fire, to think that all this was their own doing, and that they had not been -deprivedof the heavenly Glorybut for their own refufal or negled. It will fill the foul with an everlafling indignation againft it felf to confider t that it bath call it fef wilfully in- ta mifery I that, when Satan could nor, and men could not, andGod world not, ifhe had not done it himfelf, he Thould be fo witlefs and gracelefs as tobe the choofer of fin, the refuter of holinefs, and his own undoer. So that theex- perience of all the world telleth you, how unfafe man is iu his own hands : the experience of thole in hell may tell'us, whither it is that [elf would lead us if we follow its con- ,du.d: Whither didfelf lead Adam when he hearkened to it
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