The gallants burden A sermon preached at Pauls Cross, the twenty nine of March,…The gallants burden A sermon preached at Paules Crosse, the twentie nine of March,…

If thy heart be corrupt, thy hands filthy, thy tongue false, thy evidence is but counterfeit. Christ gives not title of inheritance in Heaven, to such as have no holiness on Earth:¹ Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither Fornicators, &c. ²And there shall enter into it no unclean thing, nor any thing that worketh abomination, or lies. Perhaps thou wilt yet stand upon it: produce thy witnesses: they are only two, thy Life, thy Conscience: they cannot speak with thee, against their maker and thine. Thy life speaks loud, and plain: Thy pride, drunkenness, oppression, cozenage, lusts, blasphemies, manifest thou hast but a broken title: and Paul pleads against thee,³ from this clear advantage: Protest to them ye believe in God, that they be careful to show forth good works. They that have the evidence of faith, must have the witness of works: It is a poor deed, without witnesses. Thy conscience speaks plain too, that thy faith is but a carnal persuasion, bred of security; a forged Evidence, made by a false Scrivener the Devil, to deceive thy own eyes and the worlds, not Gods. Now where is thy claim? stand upon good assurance, lest when that subtle winnower Satan, comes to fifth thee grain after grain, thou provest Chaff: we may come with this carnal persuasion, little better then reprobate hope, to the Temples, to the Pulpits to the Sacraments, but if we come so to the tribunal of Christ, woe unto us: the too much trusting to a verbal, lean, sick, starved faith, deceives many a Soul: whiles we covet to be solifidians in opinion, we prove nullifidians in practise: no matter for wisdom in the Soul, grace in the conscience, honesty in the life, if the profession of faith be in the tongue: but the Poor may say as he in the Comedie: (Oculatae mihi sunt manus, credunt, ⟨p. 32⟩quod vident:) My hands have eyes, and they believe what they see: we carry the forms and outsides of Christians, and think God beholding to us, for gracing his material, earthly Temples; when in the Temples of our own hearts, we set up the Idols of our own affections,⁴ yet are these the Temples, wherein he is best pleased to dwell: But if we be come to God by faith,