O that men would balance the advantages and disadvantages of religion, and thoroughly ponder the matter in their deepest thoughts! To the test you must come. The rain will fall, and the storm beat upon your buildings. Look carefully therefore to the foundations.

6. Learn from this point the unavoidableness of scandals and offences in the way of religion; for if there be a necessity of trial, there is also a necessity of scandal. “It must needs be that offences come," Luke xvii. 1. Why must it needs be? The reason is evident-all must come to the trial, and all are not able to bear it. Our Lord tells us, Matth. xxiv. 8, 9, 10, of a day of great straits and perplexity coming; "And then," says he, "shall many be offended." The day of trial is the day of scandal. By these offences some are put to search themselves, and some begin censuring all others; but the holy God brings about his end both ways, in them that are saved and in them that perish.

SECTION II.

Well then, if it be so that all must go into the furnace, let every man try his own work. Examine yourselves, professors, search your hearts, commune with your reins. Nothing more concerns you in all the world than this does. O that you would be more in your closets, and oftener upon your knees! O that you would look into the Bible, then into your hearts, and then to God, saying with David," Search me, O God, and know my heart; prove me and try my reins, and see if there be any way of iniquity in me!" Never did religion thrive in the world since men's heads have been so over-heated with notions and controversies, and their hearts so sensibly cooled in their closet-work. I have elsewhere, in my Saint Indeed, more largely pressed this duty upon the professors of this generation, and thither shall refer the reader for the present, to see the necessity and importance of this work. Here I shall only urge the duty of selftrial by some pressing motives and awakening considerations.

1. And the first shall be the exceeding difficulty of this work.

It is

Difficulty in some cases may be a discouragement; but where the matter is of absolute necessity, as it is here, nothing excites more to diligence. "Strive," says our Lord, "to enter in at the strait gate, for many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able," Luke xiii. 24. A double difficulty is found attending this work of self-trial. Difficulty in bringing the heart to it, and difficulty in the right and successful management of it. Who finds it not hard to persuade his heart to such work as this? Nature declines it, flesh and blood relish it not. one of the great severities in religion. It is no easy thing to bring a man and his own heart together. It is in this case as in the study of geography. We are more inquisitive to know, and more delighted when we discover, the rarities of foreign countries and strange things in the remote parts of the world, than we are with those of our own native country. I fear there are many professors of religion who can spend day after day in hearing, and love to be disputing fruitless controversies, who never spend one day in searching what influence all those sermons they have heard have had upon their hearts, or in rightly stating and determining that great controversy, in whose right and possession their souls are, and which way they shall go as soon as death has divided them from their mortal bodies; yea, I doubt, many sinful hours are spent in prying into, reporting, and censuring the failings of others, and not one hour faithfully employed in judging their own hearts before the Lord. Oh! men had rather be about any work than this. There is no pleasure in it to the flesh.

And yet how difficult soever it be to bring our hearts to the work, it is certainly much more difficult to manage it successfully, and bring the great question of our sincerity to a clear result and issue. O how many upright hearts have applied closely to this work many a year, and lifted up many a cry to heaven, and shed many secret undissembled tears about it, and yet are still in the dark, and their minds greatly perplexed, and filled with fear about it! What would they not do, what would they not

suffer, what pleasant enjoyment would they not gladly part with, to arrive at the desire of their souls, the full assurance of their sincerity? It was the saying of a pious woman, "I have borne seven children, and they have cost me as dear as ever children cost a mother; yet would I be content to endure all that sorrow over again, to be assured of the love of God to my soul."

2. And as the work is full of difficulty, so the discovery of your sincerity will be full of sweetness and joy unspeakable. It will never repent you that you have prayed and mourned, that you have trembled and feared, that you have searched and tried; nay, it will never repent you, that God has tried you by thousands of sharp afflictions and deep sufferings, if, after all, your sincerity may be fully cleared up to the satisfaction of your souls for in the same day in which your sincerity shall be cleared, your title to Christ will be made as clear to your souls as your sincerity is. You may then go the promises boldly, and take your own Christ into the arms of your faith, and say, "My beloved is mine, and I am his!" Yea, you may be confident, that it shall be well with you in the judgment of the great day, for "God will not cast away the upright man," Job viii. 20. If the word clears you now, it cannot condemn you then.

to

O what an ease it is to the soul, when the fears and doubts that hang about it are gone! when a man sees what he is, and what he has in Christ and the promises! what he has to do, even to spend the time betwixt this and heaven in admiring the grace of God that has delivered him from the ruining mistakes and miscarriages by which so great a part of the professing world are lost to all eternity!

3. The deep concernment of your souls in the matter to be tried, should awaken you to the utmost diligence

about it.

The trials of men for their life, at human bars, is but a trifle to this. It is your eternal happiness that stands or falls with your sincerity. It is said in the trial of opinions, that if a man build hay or stubble upon the foundation, he shall suffer loss; yet he himself may be saved, 1 Cor.

iii. 12. But if hypocrisy be in the foundation, there is no such relief; there is no possibility of salvation in that

case.

Ah, reader, thou must be cast for ever according to the integrity or hypocrisy of thy heart with God. Summon in them all the powers of thy sou: bring thy thoughts as closely as it is possible to bring them to this matter. If there be any subject of consideration able to drink up the spirits of a man, here it is. Never was time put to a higher improvement, never were thoughts spent upon a more important business, than this is. Happy is the man who rescues the years, months, days, yea, the very moments of his life from other employments to consecrate them to this solemn, awful, and most important business!

4. How evidential will it be of your sincerity, when you are willing to come to the trial of your own hearts!

sent.

Suppose your doubts and fears should in some degree remain with you, yet in this you may take some comfort, that if hypocrisy be in your heart, it is not there by conYou are not loth to rise and come to trial, because, like Rachel you sit upon your idols. Certainly it is a good sign that thy heart is right when it is filled with so much fear lest it should be false. You know all the disciples said, "Master, is it I?" before Judas, who was the traitor, spake a word. "Last of all Judas said, Is it I?" Our willingness to be tried is a good sign that the desire of our soul is to be right with God.

5. Conclude it to be your great advantage to be thoroughly tried, whatever you may be found to be in the trial.

If you are found sincere, you are richly rewarded for all your pains and labor. Never did that man repent of digging and toiling, who, after all, hit upon the rich vein that he digged for. What is a vein of gold to a vein of sincerity? If upon search you find the contrary, a false, hypocritical, unsound heart, yet in that very sad discovery you meet with the greatest advantage that ever you had in your lives for salvation. This discovery is your great advantage; for now your vain confidence being overturned, and your ungrounded hopes destroyed, you lie open to the stroke of a deep and effectual conviction of

your sin and misery, which is the introductive mercy to all other mercies to your souls; and surely till you come to that, to give up your false hopes and quit your vain pretensions, there is no hope of you. Christ told the Pharisees, that publicans and harlots would enter into the kingdom of heaven before them. Publicans were the worst sort of men and harlots the worst sort of women, and yet they stood in a fairer way for heaven than the hypocritical Pharisees, because conviction had easier access to their consciences: they had not those defences and pleas of duty and strictness to ward off the word that the self-cozening Pharisees had.

I may say of your vain and groundless hopes, as Christ, in another sense, said to the officers that came to seize him in the garden, " If ye seek me, let these go their way." So it is here; if you expect Christ and salvation by him, let your vain confidences go their way. Away with your masks and vizards, if ever you expect to see Christ. it is your happiness to have all these things stript off and your nakedness and poverty discovered, that you may be rich, as the text speaks.

6. Consider how near the day of death and judgment approaches you.

O these are searching days wherein you cannot be hid. Will your consciences, think you, be put off in a dying day as easily as they are now? No, you know they will

not.

I have heard of a good man that consumed not only the greatest part of the day, but a very considerable part of the night also in prayer, to the great weakening of his body; and being asked by a relation why he did so, and urged to favor himself, he returned this answer, “OI must die! I must die!" plainly intimating, that so great is the concernment of dying in a clear assured condition. that it is richly worth the expence of all our time and strength to secure it.

You

You know also that after death is the judgment. are hastening to the judgment of the great and terrible God. Death will put you into his balance to be weighed exactly; and what can give the soul a louder call to search itself with all diligence, whilst it stands at the door