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them, what doctrine, and what administrations they must have. Yea, they that will not be directed or healed by us, will blame us if others be not healed, and hit the minister in the teeth with the errors and faults of his unteachable hearers. Though we do our best, in season and out of season, and they cannot tell us what we have neglected, on our part, that was like to do the cure (though I confess we are too often negligent) and though we succeed to the conversion of many others, yet must we be reproached with the disobedience of the impenitent! As if it were not grief enough to us, to have our labours frustrated, and see them obstinate in their sin and misery, but we must also be blamed or derided for our calamity!

12. Lastly, consider but how many great and necessary things concerning yourselves you have to know, and it will show you how needful it is to make this the first of your studies. To know what you are as men; with what faculties you are endowed, and to what use; for what end you live; in what relation you stand to God and to your fellowcreatures; what duties you owe; what sin is in your hearts; and what hath been, by commission and omission, in your lives; what humiliation, contrition, and repentance you have for that sin; whether you have truly entertained an offered Christ; and are renewed and sanctified by his Spirit; and unreservedly devoted to God, and resolved to be entirely his whether you love him above all, and your neighbours as yourselves: whether you are justified and have forgiveness of all your sins: whether you you can bear afflictions from the hand, or for the

sake of Christ, even to the forsaking of all the world, for the hopes of the heavenly, everlasting treasure how you perform the daily works of your relations and callings: whether you are ready to die, and are safe from the danger of damnation. O did you but know how it concerneth you to get all these questions well resolved, you would find more matter for your studies in yourselves, than in many volumes. You would then perceive that the matters of your own hearts and lives, are not so lightly and carelessly to be passed over, as they ordinarily are by drowsy sinners.

If you have but many and weighty businesses to think on in the world, you are so taken up with care, that you cannot turn away your thoughts. And yet do you find no work at home, where you have such a world of things to think on, and such as, of all the matters in the world, do most nearly concern you?

CHAPTER V.

Exhortations to cultivate Self-Acquaintance.

HAVING showed you so much reason for this duty, let me now take leave to invite you all, to the serious study of yourselves. It is a duty past all controversy, agreed on by heathens as well as Christians, and urged by them in the general, though many of the particulars to be known are beyond their light. It brutifieth man to be ignorant of himself: "Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, (him

self especially,) is as the beasts that perish." Saith Boetius, "It is worse than beastly to be ignorant of ourselves, it being a vice in us, which is nature in them."

nearer

Come home, you wandering, self-neglecting souls; lose not yourselves in a wilderness or tumult of impertinent, vain, distracting things; your work is the country you; should first surthat you vey and travel, is within you; from which you must pass to that above you: when by losing yourselves in this without you, you will find yourselves, before you are aware, in that below you. And then (as Gregory speaks) he that was "a fool in sinning, will be wise in suffering!" You shall then have time enough to review your lives, and such constraining help to know yourselves, as you cannot resist. O that you would know but a little of that now, which then you must else know in that overwhelming evidence which will everlastingly confound you! And that you would now think of that for a timely cure, which else must be thought of endlessly in despair. Come home then, and see what work is there.

the earth!

Let the eyes of fools be in the corners of Leave it to men beside themselves, to live as without themselves, and to be still from home, and waste that time in other business, that was given them to prepare for life eternal. "The soul is more laudable that knows its own infirmity, than he that without discerning this doth search after the compass of the world, the courses of the stars, the foundations of the earth, and the heights of the heavens."-Augustine. Dost thou delight in the mysteries of nature? Consider well the mysteries of thy own. "Some men admire the

heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the great falls of the rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuit of the stars, and they pass by themselves without admiration." The compendium of all that thou studiest without thee, is near thee, even within thee, thyself being the epitome of the world. If either necessity or duty, nature or grace, reason or faith, internal inducements, external repulses, or eternal attractives and motives, might determine the subject of your studies and contemplations, you would call home your lost, distracted thoughts, and employ them more on yourselves and God.

But before I urge this duty farther, I must prevent the misapplication of some troubled souls. I must confess it is a grievous thing for a guilty soul to judge itself, and see its own deformity and danger: and I observe many troubled, humbled souls, especially where melancholy much prevails, are exceedingly prone to abuse this duty, by excess and misdoing it. Though wandering minds must be called home, we must not run into the other extreme, and shut up ourselves, and wholly dwell on the motions of our own distempered hearts. Though straggling thoughts must be turned inward, and our hearts must be watched, yet must we not be always poring on ourselves, and neglect the rest of our intellectual converse. To pore too long on the disordered motions, the confused thoughts, the wants, the passions of our diseased minds, will but molest us, and cast us into greater disquiet and confusion. The words of Anselme notably express the straits that Christians are here put to, "O grievous strait!

If I look into myself, I cannot endure myself: if I look not into myself, I cannot know myself. If I consider myself, my own face affrighteth me: if I consider not myself, my damnation deceiveth me: if I see myself the horror is intolerable: if I see not myself, death is unavoidable."

To

In this strait we must be careful to avoid both extremes; and neither neglect the study of ourselves, nor yet exceed in poring on ourselves. be carelessly ignorant of ourselves, is to undo ourselves for ever. To be too much about ourselves, is to disquiet rather than to edify ourselves; and to turn a great and necessary duty into a great unnecessary trouble.

Consider, 1. That we have many other matters of great importance to study and know, when we know ourselves. We must chiefly study God himself, and all the books of Scripture, nature, and governing providence, which make him known. What abundance of great and excellent truths have we in all these to study! What time, what industry is necessary to understand them! And should we lay out all this time about our own hearts and actions, which is but one part of our study? What sinful omissions should we be guilty of, in the neglecting of all these! It is indeed but the burying of our talent of understanding, to confine it to so narrow a compass as ourselves, and to omit the study of God, and his word and works, which are all, with delight and diligence, to be studied. We have also Christ, and his gospel mysteries and benefits to study. We have the church's ease, its dangers, sufferings, and deliverances to study: we have

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