5. A rent heart: Joel, ii. 13. "And rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God." The plough of humiliation and repentance is drawn through the heart, which tears up the fallow-ground, and pierces to the věry foul. Many a man's heart is rent with remorse, or rather mangled, which is never tho roughly rent; and fo their wound goes together again after fome time, and they are as before. But the truly broken heart is rent to purpose, till the plough reach to the root of fin.

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Here there may be propofed this question, What is the difference of these rentings? To this I fwer, An unrenewed man's heart may be rent for fin, but it is not rent from it. The heart truly broken is not only rent for, but from fin; not only affrighted at, but framed into a hatred of it, Ezek. xxxvi. 31." Then fhall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and fhall loathe yourfelves in your own fight for your iniquities, and for your abominations.". The heart is fo broken, that the reigning love of fin runs out of it, as water out of a cracked veffel, or as filthy matter out of a wound which is laid open. He digs deep, as the wife builder; the other, like Balaam, who profeffed a regard to the authority of God, but still loved the wages of iniquity.Again, the rent of the former either clofes too foon, as those who quickly fall fecure again, getting cafe by bribing their confciences; or it never was closed at all, falling under abfolute defpair, like Judas. But the other is at length healed, yet not till the great Physician takes the cure in hand. The wound is kept open, and the foul refuseth healing, till the Lord looks down and beholds from heaven, as in Lam. iii. 50. The wound is too deep to

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be cured, but by his blood and Spirit, yet not fo deep, but that fome ray of hope is always left; there is a "who knows but the Lord will yet return?"-The broken heart is,

6. A pliable heart. The hard heart is a heart of ftone, unpliable. When the Spirit breaks the heart for fin, he makes it a heart of flesh, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. Hearts which the grace of God has not touched, are like young horfes not used to the faddle, young bullocks unaccustomed to the yoke; they are unpliable and unmanageable, because they are not yet broken, Jer. xxxi. 18. But if ever any good be made of that heart of thine, the Spirit of God will break it; however wild and untractable it be, the Spirit will make it pliable.He will make it pliable to the will of his commandments, faying, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do? and what shall we do?" Acts, ii. 37. They had often heard before what they fhould do, but they would not comply; but now, fince their hard heart is broken, they are very pliable. Many a time the finner's heart gets fuch a piercing thrust in his finful course, that one would think, furely he will comply now. Yes, but the heart is not broken yet, therefore the man will not comply, according as Solomon represents it in the cafe of the drunkard, Prov. xxii. 29. 32. and 34. "They have ftricken me, fhalt thou fay, and I was not fick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not; when fhall I awake? I will seek it yet again." But if God have any thoughts of love to him, the Spirit of God will take the cafe in his own hand; and were he as ftiff as the devil and his hard heart can make him, he will break him to that rate, that he fhall ply as wax ere he have done with him. Witness Saul the perfecutor, VOL. III.

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who was fo foftened, that he cried, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do ?" Acts, ix. 6.-The heart becomes pliable alfo to the will of his providence: Pfal. li. 4. "That thou mightest be juftified when thou speakest, and be cleared when thou judgeft." An unrenewed heart is a murmuring one under the hand of God, and will readily chufe to fin rather than fuffer. But the broken heart will fay, Give me thy favour, and take from me what thou wilt: Luke, xiv. 26. « If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and fifters, and his own life alfo, he cannot be my difciple." Sometimes one meets with an affliction, and they cry out they are broken, they are not able to bear it. God fends them a heavier one, they are ftricken till they leave off weeping, and withal opens the heart-vein to bleed for fin, and fo in fome fort they are made to forget their affliction. And it is their great concern to get their foul's difeafe healed, let God do with them otherwife as he will.-A broken heart is,

Laftly, A humble heart: Ifa. Ivii. 15. quoted above. The hard heart is a gathered boil; when it is broken, it is difcuffed. As foon as the heart is broken under a sense of fin, pride and felf-conceit vanifh away; and the more broken-hearted that a perfon is, the lefs proud. Paul was a proud perfecutor, but the Lord laid the pride of his heart, when he broke it, Acts, ix. 4. 5. Hezekiah, in his brokenness of heart is very humble: "I fhall go foftly," faid he, " all my years in the bitterness of my foul," Ifa. xxxviii. 16. O! if the proud and empty profeffors of this day had a tafte of this broken heart, it would foon lay their gay feathers, let out the ulcers of pride, felf-con

ceit, which are fwollen fo big in many a poor foul. It would turn the faying, "Stand by, for I am holier than thou," unto "Depart from me, for I am a finful man." It would make them think little of what they have been, of what they are, and of what they have done or suffered; little of what all their attainments, gifts, yea, and graces alfo, if they have any, are.