Devil to exercise his Arts upon us A Self-conceited Christian is a fair invitation to him nor can he have a better prospect of success than when he finds a Man puffed up with an over-weaning Confidence of his own strength For then sometimes he works upon him by a sudden surreption or surprize as being not thoughtfully disposed nor in a watchful posture sometimes again he insinuates with and prevails upon him he not having his Mind furnished with wise Considerations He that once begins to abate his Endeavours to disuse that strict discipline he was wont to exercise himself under to admit of larger allowances and to limit himself to present attainments will go back much faster than ever he went forward for those Vertues he has acquired being not constantly exercised will by degrees grow weak and faint and at length terminate into final Apostacy And besides this it is just with God to suffer such a one finally to miscarry who has been so long taking Heaven by storm and violence has broken through so many oppositions to come at it and in despite of all the darts of temptation from without and of all the weights and pressures of inclination from within was gotten up as it were to the top of the Scaling Ladder had laid his hands on the Battlements of Heaven and was ready to leap in and take possession of the joys of it and at last slackens his hold abates his industry and sits down secure and careless I say it is just with God to permit such a one to fall and that finally That after the blessed Spirit has cultivated his Nature and planted it with Vertues he unravels his Workmanship and turns his growing Sharon into a barren Wilderness Thus we see how dangerous it is to stop at any determinate degree in goodness out of a fond conceit that we are good enough already that we are liable to relapse into our former state and shall plunge our selves into a miseferable condition The Apostle therefore wisely considered this and resolved to be still advancing more and more in the Christian Warfare I count not my self says he to have apprehended or either were already perfect but I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth to those things which are before I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus I now proceed to draw some useful and practical Inferences from what hath been said and so conclude And here First If this Life be a time of Trial and probation wherein God has appointed much work to be finished by us let us forthwith set our selves about it especially considering how uncertain our stay is here Let us never abate our endeavours nor slacken our diligence out of a fond conceit that we are good enough already lest we finally miscarry It is not enough that we correct the indecencies of our natures and stem the Tide of our evil inclinations that we forsake our Sins and hate them but that we also attain all the Christian Vertues and Graces and these to grow and flourish by exercising them about their proper Object even God Now this is not a fatigue to be accomplished on a sudden it is not an easy thing to make an evil mind comply with a Vertue here must be many Strifes and Contentions strong Disputes and shrewd Arguings before our stubborn Wills can be brought to a fair compliance with a Christian Grace and then here must be great industry used to digest it into habit and Custom or otherwise it is sooner lost than it was gained And then considering the many Temptations from without us which are continually interrupting us by their restless importunities it is very difficult to retain a Vertue after a long and tedious pursuit after it and the case being so this will keep us for ever sufficiently Employed and oblige us to Eternity to be still aspiring beyond our present Attainments Secondly Nor is there the want of Encouragement to spur us on in the Christian Warfare The Reward far exceeds our Labour will make us amends for the very worst we can undergo What is it to spend a few days or years in striving and contending with our inclinations in Consideration and Watchfulness in Earnest Prayer and Severe Refiections on our selves when we are assured before-hand that at the End of this short conflict we shall be carried off by Angels in Triumph into Heaven and there receive from the Captain of our Salvation a Crown of Everlasting Joys and Pleasures when after a few moments Pains and Labour we shall live Millions of most happy Ages in the ravishing fruition of a boundless Good I say Who that considers what great things God has prepared for them that love him would boggle at the difficulties in the Christian Warfare Is it not a ravishing Contemplation to think that the time is coming when we shall bathe our dilated Faculties in an overflowing River of Pleasures and feed upon an Happiness which is as large as our Capacities and as lasting as our Beings Let us therefore run with Patience the Race that is set before us And may the God of Peace which brought again from the Dead our Lord Jesus Christ the great Shepherd of the Sheep through the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good Work to do his Will Working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ our Lord. To whom with the Father and Ever Blessed Spirit be goven all Honour Praise Thanksgiving and Obedience now henceforth and for Evermore Amen THE THIRD SERMON Prov. XIV Latter part of the 32d verse But the Righteous lath hope in his Death BESIDES the many Blessings which Religion Intitles a good Christian to while he continues in this Life such as God's special Favour and Protection Success to his Endeavours a reputable Name and such like there is yet one eminent advantage which it produces at the last gasp as our Wise man observes in the Text and that is a solid Hope and Considence of an Inheritance with the Saints in Light an assurance of going to God and living with him to all Eternity This was it which solaced the Apostle St. Paul when under the apprehension of an approaching and cruel Death 2 Ep. Tim. 4.6 I am now ready to be offered up and the time of my departure is at hand but still this is my Comfort my Life hath been spent in God's Service I have fought the good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith and therefore I rest in this that henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the Righteous Judge will bestow upon me when he comes in the last Day to dispense his Rewards and Punishments It is a sweet Reflection to a good man when he is packing up for Eternity that
good or bad And in regard that God made us rational and considering creatures he has prescribed certain Laws to observe and keep and by these he also intends to judge us that is whether we have obeyed or violated them he having suited his Commandments to our capacities which are able to distinguish between good and evil right and wrong And therefore by way of exprobration How wretchedly does Man degrade himself while he acts in opposition to his reason and allows himself in those things which his own mind disapproves of and condemns How inferior is he to the beasts they act according to sense they move in their sphere and what they do is agreeable to their nature and being But when Man by the order of his superior faculties is directed to good he commIts evil as he does that which he cannot give a good account of to himself so he acts contrary to his very nature and the knowledge he has of things for by the very design of his constitution he knows what is good and what is evil and that the former is beneficial and the latter hurtful unto him And how inexcusable must he needs be that all the injury which is done unto him he did it himself and was conscious thereof when he transacted it And this is it which will vindicate the Divine Justice in passing sentence of eternal death upon wicked men That they are condemned for doing of evil which they knew was so in it self and resusing of good which they also knew was really so It generally prevents men from pitying one who wilfully and wittingly worked his own ruin when it was in his power to have avoided the mischief and so ungodly men shall go off unpitied in the day of Judgment because they might have obtained mercy but would not It will be an ill plea in the day of Judgment to say That we did not consider what we did that we lived without care without thought without observation for this is not an allowable plea for a reasonable creature much less for one who knows he must be judged for why did you live without thought without consideration Had you not the power of thinking of reasoning of considering And did not God give these powers and saculties to you to direct and govern your lives Did he not make you reasonable creatures that you might consider and live by reason And is it any excuse then for a reasonable creature that he lived and acted without reason and a wise consideration of things This is the great degeneracy of humane nature the abuse and corruption of those natural powers which God has given us the source of all the evils that are in this world and therefore can be no excuse And this seriously layed to heart must needs make men have a special regard to their discerning faculties and that since they must be judged and that is to give a reason for what they do to consider what reason to give before they do it And this leads me to draw some practical and useful inferences from what has been said and so come to a Conclusion And here First of all it is true That to him that knows to do good and doth it not to him it is sin What a woful reckoning will those Wretches have who here live without care thought or consideration Who that they may come at and enjoy their Lusts lay aside their reason and understanding that they may not be disturbed in their vicious enjoyments nor plagued with uneasy reflections What a sad consideration will it be at the hour of death when all arguments to and opportunities of sin cease that they have allowed themselves in the practice of those things which they are now ashamed of and condemn as disagreeable to rational Creatures and should heretofore had they but given way suffered their discerning faculties to have interposed and given judgment before they had passed into action It seems a Paradox that man who has a right notion of Good and Evil that the one is profitable and the other mischievous unto him that he should refuse his comfort and court his own misery by withstanding the Good and embracing the Evil In fine that he should do that which he cannot give a sufficient reason for to his own Conscience and if it be so How will he be able to stand in the great Assembly of Angels and Saints before the Judge Christ Jesus to render a reason wherefore he so often drank to Excess committed Adultery prophaned God's Holy Name by Oaths Curses and Imprecations Why he lived in the 〈◊〉 observance of his Sabbath and offered contempt to his most righteous Laws Why he omitted known Duties and committed as palpable Wickednesses In fine Why he hated reproof and cast God's Holy Word behind How will Wicked men be able to stand in the Judgment and answer to these things Sometimes Sinners are here sadly put to it to invent excuses to inculcate arguments and raise propositions to extenuate their guilt and obtain a favourable judgment they are forced to endure many shameful retreats false colours and loose dawbings with untempered Mortar to prevent contradiction and discovery But in the day of Judgment such pleas will not be admitted nor need they then endeavour to conceal their Villanies for all things are naked and open to him with whom we have to do he knows our down-sitting and up-rising he understands all our ways he enters every Item of our guilt into his Debt-book with the purpose to bring every Evil into Judgment whether committed publickly or privately and this considered What a forcible argument is it to be careful thoughtful and considerate to examine wisely to judge prudently and to give a good reason for what we do before we commit it in all our prosecutions to call in the Auxiliaries of Nature and Grace Religion and Reason in fine to do those things approved of by our more refined Faculties and to omit those which they condemn Such a wary Conversation as this would administer much satisfaction to our Spirits defend us from many Dangers and Mischiefs produce a comfortable Death and a joyful Resurrection Secondly It is a pleasant consideration That God has created us Rational Beings capable of knowing Good and Evil of contriving our safety and shunning our destruction What a comfortable thought is it that we are not meer Machines moved and actuated only by Sense like the brute Beasts but understanding thinking and considerate Creatures that can judge of the nature of things debate and examine before we approve or disapprove of them Let us then live like such especially considering that we must give an account how we have used our Talents what improvement we have made of our Faculties and what we are the better for being furnished with such large capacities They were not given us merely to be useful in our secular businesses but to help us to the knowledge of God of our selves and of those things which belong to our Everlasting peace that we may rightly understand our duty and dispose our selves to serve him acceptably with reverence and godly fear We rather abuse our Natural Powers when we only imploy them in plodding and contriving about worldly matters their proper business is to search after truth to find out the way of the Kingdom and to remove those impediments which retard our spiritual warfare and hinder us from bringing our holy concernments to a happy and comfortable conclusion Let us then bend all our powers this way Are we rational Creatures Let us be able to give a good reason for a thing before we do it this will render our Judgment hereafter more feisible and less tremendous when our Consciences testify that in simplicity and godly sincerity we passed the time of our sojourning here I conclude my Discourse with that Collect of our Church We beseech thee O Lord to grant unto us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful that we who cannot do any thing that is good without thee may be thee be enabled to live according to thy will through Jesus Christ our Lord To whom with Thee O Father and the Ever Blessed Spirit be given all Honour Praise Thanksgiving and Obedience now henceforth and for Evermore Amen FINIS
he made it his care and business to dress his Soul for the embraces of the Father of Spirits to think that he shall bathe his dilated Faculties in an overflowing River of Pleasures and feed upon an Happiness which is as large as his Capacity and as lasting as his Being to think that as soon as his Soul is stormed out of the outworks of Nature the Angels which are ministring Spirits will convey it into Abraham's Bosom I say such a thought as this upon a Death-bed mitigates the Ragings of an imperious Disease sweetens the bitter Cup and renders the approaches of Death less formidable and scaring Whereas when a Wicked man after repeated Provocations and wilful resistings of Divine Grace is flung by an invisible hand upon his Sick or Death-bed he is presently Arraigned by his injured Conscience and a large Catalogue of all his Sins is opened and read before him he is afraid to Dye because he has all along lived in Rebellion against God And here we may imagine what a surprize the Wretch is in to think that he must live out a long Eternity in unpitiable Sighs and Groans and endure the Vengeance of an irreconcilable God that no sooner will Death cut the Thread of Life but he enters into a World of despairing Ghosts and that at the Day of Judgment must change his unhappy condition for a much worse these are the Thoughts which usually attend ungodly men when they are making their Exit unless they are hardned or deprived of their senses through the Violence of their Distemper This is the last punishment of a vicious course in this Life And one would think that such an uncouth remembrance of things at such a time when a man is under the ill circumstance of an intolerable Distemper when Nature is almost spent the Eyes darkned like a sullied Mirror the Face besmeared with a clammy sweat the whole Body trembling under the Severity of death when the Soul as it were sets hovering upon the Lip just advancing upon the Shoar of another invisible World I say one would think that it were enough to make men afraid of Sin to be thus miserably tormented with the Reflections of it when they are stepping out of this into a wide World of Spirits where their sorrows will be Augmented and the remembrance how they have lived here will afflict them more than to be stung with Snakes whipt with Scorpions and all the Instruments of torture applied unto them And it is no less a prevalent Motive to the Study and Practice of Religion that it influences a man to generous Actions and to order his Conversation so that he shall not be ashamed nor afraid to look back upon the passages of his Life past when he comes to dye but revive his drooping Spirits with the Hope and Assurance of commencing a Happy and Joyful Eternity having in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly Wisdom but by the Grace of God had his Conversation in the World And so says Solomon in the Text The righteous hath hope in his death the consideration of his well-spent Life lifts him up at the last gasp with the confidence of living with God Angels and Saints Which words manifestly imply this Proposition viz That a truly pious and holy Life produces a happy and comfortable Death Now my Business shall be First To prove the Truth of this Then Secondly To persuade Men to the Practice of Religion from the consideration that it brings Peace at the last and qualifies their Souls for the Embraces of the Father of Spirits First then I am to prove the Truth of this viz. That a truly Pious and Holy Life produces a Happy and Comfortable Death which is the same in sense and meaning with what the Wise-man asserts in the Text That the Righteous hath hope in his Death as if he had said That man that Exercises himself daily to have a Conscience void of offence towards God and towards man who by Study and special Arts hath contracted an intire love to God and Religion and lives in a constant and unfeigned Obedience to the Institutions of the Gospel shall be so far from having any frightful Reflection upon what is past or dismal Prospect of what is to come at the time of his Death that the very consideration of his sincerity in the Practice of Religion will revive and cheer his drooping Spirit with the Hope and Assurance of a joyful Resurrection to Eternal Life through the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ by the imputation of whose Righteousness he shall be enabled to stand blameless before God How true this is our own Experience and Observation tells us When we have visited a Friend Neighbour or Relation who have had their Conversation here in simplicity and godly sincerity with what cheerfulness have they resigned to God's Will and Disposal How little have they been concerned at the Thoughts of approaching Death With what Comfort and Satisfaction have they looked back upon and remembred the general course of their Actions How have they rejoiced in the Testimony of a good Conscience How light and easy did the Yokes of Pain and Sickness set upon them being taken up with the Thoughts of a future happy Life and Established with the assurance of Reigning the Lives of Victorious Saints What Lectures of Admonishment have they delivered to their surviving Acquaintances that they would live in the fear of God and dedicate their days to his Service for that such a Conversation only will bring them peace at the last With what Courage did they meet the King of Terrors How familiar and comfortable were his approaches to them having the same mind which was in the Apostle desirous to be dissolved being confident of spending an Eternity with Christ whose Vertues they endeavoured to imitate and whose Example they made the Pattern and Model of their Actions This is the comfortable State and Condition of good Christians when lying under the unhappy circumstances of Mortal Pains or Sicknesses neither the inconvenience of a crazy and distempered Body nor the fear of Death nor all the disturbances which usually attend a death-bed can shake their Faith or remove their Hope of a blessed Immortality For the very Design and Purpose of Religion is To teach men how to dress their Souls for the embraces of the Father of Spirits to furnish them with such necessary Graces as may prepare them to stand before the Son of Man when he comes to Judgment and he that is endued with this holy Principle and by Practice hath digested it into habit has answered the great end of his being sent into the World and is fortified with considerations sufficient against the worst that may happen to him Of such an excellent and gracious Nature is Religion that it qualifies a man for all states and conditions of Life if he be Rich it instructs him to set loose in his Affections to the Goods and Affluences of this World
not to prefer the Creature to or bring it in competition with the Creator but to use this World as not abusing it moderately embracing sublunary Blessings with a generous Resignation of mind to leave them without murmuring if Providence so ordains it either to take them from us or we from them In fine Religion also learns the Man who is fortunately blessed to be charitably disposed to feed the hungry to clothe the naked to minister to persons according to their unhappy circumstances If a man be poor Religion teaches him to be content with his Lot and to submit cheerfully to him that governs the World who knows what condition is best for us it learns him not to covet the Goods of another it being a mighty disturbance to the Tranquility of the mind to Desire and not to have it also instructs to be honestly inclined by abstaining from pilfering and stealing poverty being a strong temptation thereto without the prevention of Divine Grace In brief Religion prompts us to whatsoever things are honest just pure lovely and of good Report and he that by special arts and strengths of Mortification has reduced his nature to the evenness of Vertue and a good disposition has laid up a good foundation against the time to come Whenever God sends his Messenger to call him off the Stage of this World he comforts himself as the holy Apostle did The time of my departure is at hand I am now ready to be stripped into a naked Spirit and to lanch into a wide Eternity but this is my Consolation I have fought the good fight I have finished my course and have kept the Faith upon which I ground this assurance That when Christ who is my Life shall appear I also shall appear with him in Glory Whereas when a man whose Life has been a perpetual course of uninterrupted iniquity comes to dye with what reluctancy does he submit to the Condition of Nature and the Will of Providence What dreadful Apprehensions is his crazy mind infested with What Fears and Amazements does he labour under Conscience which before was lulled into a fatal slumber is now awakened and alarms him with a repetition of his wonted insolencies and at once gives him a View of his whole Life These things hast thou done and I kept silence but I will reprove thee and set all thy sins in order before thee This is but a bad Character to be given of a man by his own Spirit and the very consideration of it must needs invade his Mind with abundance of ill-aboding Thoughts and scaring Reflections and the more because he has no time to recover himself by Repentance and a new Life he has neither strength nor opportunity to express such sorrow for his miscarriages as may move an offended God to Reconciliation but must leave this World in doubts and fears and which he has too much reason to believe must endure the despair of a damned Ghost for ever This I say is the sorrowful conflict of a wicked man upon his death-bed a sad Reflection upon what is past and a dismal Prospect of what is to come But it is not so with him who has ordered his Conversation aright he says my Text has hope in his death that after this painful Life is ended he shall enter into an house not made with hands whose builder and maker is God where nothing shall interrupt or call him off from his Enjoyments no satiety shall render his fruition loathsom or tedious but shall spend a long Eternity in perfect constant and unmixed Happiness But thus much for the first thing which was That a truly pious and holy Life produces a happy and comfortable Death according to the Wiseman's assertion in the Text The righteous has hope in his death I proceed from hence to the Second thing which is Secondly To persuade Men to a Holy and Religious Life from the consideration that it brings peace at the last and prepares our Souls for the embraces of the Father of Spirits And here First of all Religion does not put a man upon any thing which he shall be ashamed of but as he is a rational Creature capable of distinguishing between Good and Evil only obliges him to such actions which he may give a good account of to his own Conscience and to God who is greater than his Conscience It instructs him to chuse what is good in it self and to reject what is sinfully evil Now to be thus prudent and circumspect in matters of choice in the general course of our actions What a comfort is it to a man to be followed with the joyful whispers of a well-pleased mind where-ever he goes to be caressed by an innocent Conscience and continually entertained with a sweet Reflection upon what he has done Whereas a man of a cajative disposition who gives Reins to his Passions and no Bounds to his Lusts is often put upon unmanly Prosecutions and hurried into abundance of Inconveniences to gratify his greedy and unsatiable Appetite he is frequently tempted to such low-spirited actions which he is ashamed to own and blushes at them though no body be privy To how many inconveniences is a wicked man daily exposed And what base and unmanly shifts is he put upon to extricate himself out of those difficulties wherein he involves himself What violent passions and perturbations are raised in his mind And into what wild tumults of action doth sin frequently hurry him How doth it perplex and intriegue the whole course of his Life and intangle him in a Labyrinth of Knavish Tricks and Collusions so that many times he is at his wits end and knows not which way to turn himself These difficulties and many more attend a vicious and irregular course But now Religion only engages a man to do those things which in their very nature contrive his good are commendable and praise-worthy and administer abundance of satisfaction to him when he thinks upon them it diverts him from every transaction which confronts the Law of Reason and would disturb his mind upon an after-thought In fine the very purpose and design of Religion is to make a Man happy even in this Life by managing his Concernments so that he may neither be afraid or ashamed to think upon what he has done at any time And what a comfortable state is it to be always at peace within from the consideration of a Conversation managed with Christian prudence To lie down and rise with a mind resounding those best and sweetest Ecchoes Well done good and faithful Servant How bravely dost thou acquit thy self how manfully dost thou stand to thy duty against all oppositions And with what a gallant resolution dost thou repulse temptations that bear up against thee This therefore I take to be one great and forcible Argument to a holy Life That it preserves tranquility of Mind peace of Conscience as consisting of the best actions and the best choice But Secondly As Religion
and the prevalency of their corrupt inclinations and their unwillingness to oppose the violence of their uncontrollable will for were they really concerned for their unhappiness as they seem to be did they make conscience of committing of evil as they pretend they would study arguments inculcate reasons hold disputes summon together the auxiliaries of Nature and Grace Religion and Reason to back them in the encounter they would use special arts and strengths of mortification pray often fast frequently abstain from the appearance of evil which are the means our Saviour prescribes as proper to confront the incursions of Satan the temptations of the world and the lustings of the flesh and which the Apostle St. Paul recommends to us from his own example I labour says he to bring my body under that it may be obedient to the Spirit Would a man that foresees a danger approaching him and that unless he uses some speedy prevention he will inevitably be ruined by it stand still and suffer the damage when it is in his power to preserve himself Would he not rather plod and contrive contend with difficulties and consult an escape if he were in his wits Would he suffer the Notion of natural impotency to divert him from endeavouring to eschew his Destruction And the case is much the same when an Evil presents it self and the man has an aversion to it would he not invent means to withstand its proffers for this is Argument sufficient against it that he hates the very thoughts of it for thus holy Joseph replied when Potipher's Wife importuned him to violate his Chastity with her how can I do this great wickedness It was not only the awful apprehension he had of God which withheld him from complying with her insinuating inticements but the abhorrence he had of the Evil it self And in this sense the Scripture understands Conversion when a man by Consideration and Watchfulness by earnest Prayer and Abstinence by certain Propositions and severe Reflections on himself has brought things to this pass that he not only abstains from sinful actions but contracts an absolute hatred against them when he hates evil for evil sake And this without all Controversy is the best and surest defensitive against all wicked allurements for doubtless many who not having strictly observed the Discipline and Constitution of Religion that is refrained only from the overt-act but have maintained a love for and a desire after some certain evils have been betrayed and seduced to sin in the action for outward Religion without an inward Conversion is not Argument enough against a Relapse says St. Paul Rom. 2. ult he 's not a Jew who is one outwardly neither is that Circumcision which is outward in the flesh But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and Circumcision is that of the heart and in the spirit not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God Hence therefore are these Precepts inclucated Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart with all thy mind with all thy soul and with all thy strength that we present our Bodies a living Sacrifice holy and acceptable unto God that we be renewed in our minds that we put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is after the flesh and that we put on the new which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness In fine That we deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly righteously and godly in this present world looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearance of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works But furthermore there can no other reason be given why a man commits an evil which he knew to be so and which God had forbidden but that either he resolved to come at and enjoy the sin though he broke through never so many Barricadoes and this can be nothing less than a horrid contempt of the Lawgiver or that he could not withstand the impetuousness of his rude inclinations nor the force of his predominant will and this argues him of the number of those whom the Apostle speaks of that their consciences are seared as it were with a hot iron It is the determination of the Gospel that he who knows his Master's will and prepares not himself to do it shall be far more severely punished than he who is ignorant thereof and does not fulfil it for this is the aggravation of his guilt and the improvement of his crime he knew his duty but presumtuously neglected it And we observe that when habitual sinners come to diâ— if then they have any sense of the condition or consider the righteousness of the Judgment to come to which they are hastning the accusation they then bring against themselves is That they have committed many evils against their knowledge They lived intemperately accustomed themselves to swear and blaspheme to commit adultery to prophane the Sabbath to injure their neighbours and such like these were sins they knew to be so and that God had prohibited them upon pain of damnation but notwithstanding this they presumptuously allowed themselves therein And it cannot but be a very uncouth reflection to consider that though they knew they were in a state of damnation yet would not retreat but have continued therein to the last hours of their life But enough for the proof of the first Proposition namely that the knowledge of a sin improveth guilt and leaves a man without excuse who knows to do good and does it not and to him it is sin From this I proceed to the second Proposition which is Secondly That Man is set out in the world furnished with such faculties as are capable of distinguishing between good and evil right and wrong whereby he may be acquainted with the good enjoined and the evil neglected this requires no great proof because our own experience evinces us that we can judge and determine and make a true discrimination between things that we can consider and make reflections applaud and condemn our selves when either we have wisely done that which is good or foolishly and unadvisedly committed that which is evil We often perceive hopes of joy within our breasts when we can answer our prosecutions and are apt to blush though no body sees when conscience calls us to the Baâ— to hear our Indictment and thus we become our own Judges either acquit or condemn our selves and this because we are capable of knowing good and evil and have reason to direct us in chusing of the one and refusing of the other and therefore it is that we become accountable also hereafter as the Apostle expresses it We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ to give an account for what we have done in the flesh and to receive according to that we have done whether it be