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order to an eternal acceptation, because they took no heed to keep their bearts with God in those duties: this is that h tal rock, upon which thousands of vain professors split themselves eternally; they are curious about the externals of religion, but regardless of their hearts. O how many hours have some professors spent in hearing, praying, reading, conferring ? And yet, as to the main end of religion, as good they had sat still, and done nothing for all this signifies nothing, the great work, I mean heart work, being all the while neglected. Tell me, thou vain professor, when didst thou shed a tear for the deadness, hardness, unbelief, or earthliness of thy heart? Thinkest thou, such an easy religion can save thee? If so, we may invert Christ's words, and say, wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to life, and many there be that go in thereat. Hear me, thou, selt deluding hypocrite, thou that hast put off God with heartless duties, thou that hast acted in religion as if thou hadst been blessing an idol, that could not search and discover thy heart; thou that hast offered to God but the skin of the sacrifice, not the marrow, fat, and inward of it; how wilt thou abide the coming of the Lord? how wilt thou hold up thy head before him, when

he shall say, O thou dissembling false hearted man? how couldst thou profess religion? with what face couldst thou so often tell me, thou lovedst me, when thou knewest all the while in thine own conscience, that thine heart was not with ine? O tremble to think, what a fearful judgment it is to be given over to a heedless and careless heart; and then to have religious duties, instead of a rattle, to quiet and still the conscience !

2, Hence I also infer, for the humiliation even of upright hearts, that, unless the people of God spend more time and pains about their hearts, than generally and ordinarily they do, they are never like to do God much service, or be owners of much comfort in this world.

I may say of that christian, that is remiss and careless in keeping his heart, as Jacob said of Reuben, thou shalt not excel. It grieves me to see how many christians there are, that go up and down dejected and complaining, that live at a poor low rate, both of service and comfort; and how can they expect it should be otherwise, as long as they live at such a 'careless rate? O how little of their time is spent in the closet, in searching, humbling, and quickning their hearts!

You say, your hearts are dead; and do

you

wonder they are so, as long as you keep them not with the fountain of li? If your bodies had been dieted as you souls have been, they would have been dead too; never expect better hearts, till you take more pains with them he that will not have the sweat, must not expec the sweet of religion.

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Ochristians, I fear your zeal and strength hath run in the wrong channel: I fear most of us may take up the church's com plaint, Cant. i. 6. They have made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept. Two things have eaten up the time and strength of the professors of this generation, and sad. ly diverted them from heart work; fruitless controversies started by satan, 1 doubt not to this very purpose, to take us off from practical godliness, to make us puzzle our heads, when we should be searching our hearts. O how little have we minded that of the apostle, Heb. xiii. 9. It is a good thing, that the heart be established with grace, and not with Inears, that is with disputes and controver sies about meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein !

O how much better is it to see men live exactly, than to hear them dispute subtilly! these unfruitful questions, how

ye,

have they ruined the churches, wasted time and spirits, and called' christians off from their main business, from looking to their own vineyard? What think sirs, had it not been better if the questions ventilated among the people of God' of late days, had been such as these How shall a man discern the special, from the common operations of the spirit How may a soul discern its first declinings from God? How may a backsliding christian recover his first love? How may the heart be preserved from unseasonable thoughts in duty? How may a'bosom sin be discovered' and' mortified? &c. Would not this have tended more to the credit of religion, and comfort of your souls? O it is time to repent and be ashamed of this folly! when I read, what Suarez, a papist, said, who wrote many tomes of disputations, that he prized the time he set apart for the searching and examining of his heart, in reférence to God, above all the time that ever he spent in other studies! I am ashamed to find the professors of this age yet insersible" of their folly shall the conscience of a Suarez feel a relenting pang för strength and time so ill employed? and shall not yours? This is it your ministers long

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since warned you of; your spiritual nurses were afraid of the rickets, when they Saw your heads only to grow, and your hearts to wither. O when will God beat our swords into plowshares! I mean, our disputes and contentions, into practical Godliness. 2. Another cause of neglecting our hearts hath been earthly incumbrances: The heads and hearts of many have been filled with such a crowd and noise of worldly business, that they have sadly and sensibly declined and withered in their zeal, love and delight in God; in their heavenly, serious and profitable way of conversing with man.

O how hath this wilderness intangled us! our discourses and conferences, nay, our very prayers and duties, have a tang of it we have had so much work without doors, that we have been able to do but little within. It was the sad com-. plaint of an holy one, O (saith he) it

is sad to think how many precious op'portunities I have lost, how many sweet motions and admonitions of the spirit I have posted over unfruitfully, and made the Lord to speak in vain : In the secret illapses of his spirit the Lord hath 'called upon me, but my worldly thoughts 'did still lodge within me, and there was

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no place in my heart for such calls of

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