ye have in heaven a better and more enduring substance." This "knowing in yourselves" is by inward and sensible experience, taste, and feeling, which is abundantly satisfying to the soul; and stands opposed to all that traditional knowledge we receive from others, which, as it leaves the mind fluctuating, so it leaves the heart also dead and comfortless.

4. In that day the root and foundation of a man's faith and hope is tried, and then they who have built upon the sand must needs fail; for every thing is as its foundation. Principles are to us what a root is to a tree, or a foundation to a house; a flaw or grand defect there most assuredly ruins all. This we find to be the very scope of the two famous parables in Luke xiv. 25; and Matth. xiii. 21. Lesser troubles shake but the branches, but these try the very root. If nothing be found there but selfends, the force of education, and the influence of example, surely when the winds rise high and beat upon it, they will quickly lay the loftiest professor even with the ground.

And thus you see what a crisis an hour of temptation, the suffering hour, is, and what discoveries of hypocrisy it must needs make; for now the hypocrite, like Orpah, will forsake religion; but sincerity will make the soul cleave to it, as Ruth did to Naomi.

SECTION IV.

What advantages sincerity gives the soul for its establishment and perseverance in suffering times, I shall briefly account for in the following particulars

1. Sincere godliness dethrones that idol, the love of this world, in all true Christians; and this is that which makes men shrink from Christ in a day of suffering. I do not deny but that even believers themselves love the world too much; but they love it not as their chief good: it is not their portion or happiness; if any man so love the world, "the love of the Father is not in him," 1 John ii. 15. How much soever a sincere Christian loves the world, yet still it is in subordination to the love of God, John xxi. 15. Sincerity can consist with no other love

of the world; it will not suffer such a cursed plant to grow under its shadow.

Now what is it, but this inordinate, supreme love of the creature, that makes men forsake Christ in time of temptation? This was the ruin of that young man in Mat. xix. 22; "He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." This was the overthrow of Demas, 2 Tim. iv. 10; "He hath forsaken me," says the apostle, "having loved this present world." The love of this world, like sap in green wood, will not suffer you to burn for Christ; get but the heart mortified to the creature by a discovery of better things in heaven, and it will esta blish and fix your spirit, so that it shall not be in the power of creatures to shake you off from Christ your foundation.

2. Sincerity knits the soul to Christ, and union with him secures us in the greatest trials. The hypocrite having no union with Christ, can have no communion with him, nor communications of grace from him; and so that little stock of his own being quickly spent, I mean natural courage and resolution, and no incomes from Christ, he must needs give up in a short time. But it is with a believer in a day of trouble, as it is with a garrison besieged by land, but free and open to the sea, whence fresh supplies are daily sent in to relieve it. See 2 Cor. i. 5; "As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ;" we have fresh aids and daily supplies proportionable to our expences and decays of strength. So Col. i. 11; "Strengthened with all might in the inner-man, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness." And this is the believer's great advantage by his union with Christ in a day of trial.

3. As sincerity unites the soul to Christ, so it sets the heart on heaven and things eternal, Col. iii. 1. Surely nothing is more conducive to our stability than this, in the hour of temptation. This is the most effectual preservative from temptations upon the right hand, and upon the left. Moses could cast a kingdom at his heels, despise the riches, pleasures, and honors of Egypt, whilst his eye was fixed upon him that is invisible, and had

respect to the recompence of reward. And it was a brave reply of the forty martyrs to Valence the emperor, tempting them with the preferments and honors of the world, "Why offer ye these trifles to us, when you know how the whole world is contemned by us?" And as for temptations on the left hand, how little can they move that soul, who realizes the glory of the approaching world, and sees the afflictions and sufferings of this world preparing him for, and hastening him to, the enjoyment of it! Temptations meet with but cold entertainment from such souls. 4. Sincerity drives but one design, and that is to please and enjoy God; and what can more establish and fix the soul in the hour of temptation than this? The reason why the hypocrite is unstable in all his ways, is given us by the apostle James, i. 8; he is " a double-minded man," a man of two souls in one body; as a profane wretch once boasted, that he had one soul for God, and another for any thing. But all the designs of a gracious heart are united in one; and so the entire stream of his affections runs strong.

It is base by-ends and self-interests, that, like a great many ditches cut out of the bank of a river, draw away the stream out of its proper channel, and make its waters fail. But if the heart be united for God, as the expression is in Psalm lxxxvi. 11, then we may say of such a Christian as was said of a young Roman, "What he does is done with all his might." A man of only one design, puts out all his strength to carry it; nothing can stand before him.

5. Sincerity brings a man's will into subjection to the will of God; and this being done, the greatest danger and difficulty is over with such a man. This is that holy oil which makes the wheels of the soul run nimbly, even in difficult paths of obedience. Let but a man be once brought to that, "The will of the Lord be done," as it is in Acts xxi. 13, to see the highest reason of cheerful obedience in the holy, just, and good will of God, and then all the difficulty is over; he can suffer quietly what men inflict unjustly.

6. Sincerity takes its measures of present things by the rules of faith and eternity. It goes not by the same

reckoning and account that others do, who judge of things by sense, and the respects they have to the present world; "We look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen;" and this is given as the reason of the apostle's not fainting under present difficulties. So in Rom. viii. 18, "I reckon that the sufferings of the present times are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." He will not allow himself to undervalue eternal glory, by once mentioning present sufferings, in a way of bemoaning himself for them. A steady eye upon the other world makes us more than conquerors over the troubles of this world.

7. Sincerity alone has all the heavenly aids and assistances to stability and perseverance in suffering times. Upright ones, and such only, have Christ's intercession in heaven for them, Rom. viii. 34; the Spirit's consolation in all their troubles, 1 Pet. iv. 14; the beneficial ministry of angels, who are sent forth on their account, Heb. i. 14; a stock of prayers, going up from them all the world over, Eph. vi. 18; multitudes of precious promises in the scriptures for every line, word, and syllable of which, the faithfulness of God stands engaged; so that it is impossible such gold can perish in the fire.

And thus of the several ways by which grace is here tried.

CHAPTER IX.

The Designs and Ends of God, in bringing the Professors of Religion into such various Trials of their Graces in this World.

SECTION I.

THESE are some of the ways and methods in which God brings his gold to the touchstone and to the fire, even in this world, before the awful and solemn trial we must come to in the final judgment: and if we desire to

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be satisfied what the design or end of God in making such probations of his people is, we must conclude, in the general, that he certainly designs his own glory, and his people's advantage and profit, by them. If he suffer them to be tried by reproaches, "happy are they, the Spirit of God and of glory resteth on them;" there is their profit; and though his name be evil spoken of, yet in the meekness of their spirits "he is glorified," as it is in 1 Pet. iv. 14. "If the scourge slay suddenly, he laugheth at the trial of the innocent," Job ix. 23; not at their afflictions, but at the effects and blessed issues and results of them; not that it gives them pain, but that it gives them glory. On this account the apostle bids us count it all joy when we fall into manifold temptations or trials; and still the more trials the more joy; for thereby God will produce such effects as are more precious than gold that perisheth," 1 Pet. i. 7. O who can value the comfort that is tasted by the soul upon the trial and discovery of its sincerity, when after some sore temptation wherein God has helped us to maintain our integrity, or after some close pinching affliction wherein we have discovered in ourselves a sweet resignation to and contentment in the will of God, a heart cleaving to the Lord, purged and made more spiritual under the rod, we can turn to the Lord, and appeal to him, as the prophet did, "But thou, O Lord, knowest me; thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart towards thee," Jer. xii. 3.I say, who can duly value such an advantage? Who would exchange such a comfort for all the gold and silver in the world? How many trials soever God brings his people under, neither his own glory nor their interest shall suffer any damage by them.

SECTION II.

But more particularly let us bring our thoughts close to the matter before us, and we shall find many great advantages and benefits rising out of these trials of sincerity.

1. Hereby hypocrisy is unmasked and discovered. The vizard is plucked off from the false professor, and his