The Soul's Conflict with Itself

3. Consider the spiritualness and large extent of the law of God, together ¹with the curse annexed, which forbids not only particular sins, but all the kinds, degrees, occasions, and furtherances of sin in the whole breadth ⟨p. 169⟩and depth of it, and our very nature it self so far as it is corrupted; For want of which, we see many alive without the law, jovial and merry from ignorance ²of their misery, who if they did but once see their natures and lives in that glass, it would take away that liveliness and courage from them, and make them vile in their own eyes; Men usually look themselves in the laws of the State wherein they live, and think themselves good enough, if they are free from the danger of penal statutes; this glass discovers only foul spots, gross scandals, and breakings out: Or else they judge of themselves by parts of nature, or common grace, or by outward conformity to Religion, or else by that light they have to guide themselves in the affairs of this life, by their fair and civill carriage, &c. and thereupon live and die without any sense of the power of godliness, which begins in the right knowledge of our selves, and ends in the right knowledge of God. The spiritualness and purity of the law should teach us to consider ⟨p. 170⟩the purity and holiness of God; the bringing of our souls into whose presence will make us to abhor our selves ³(with Job) in dust and ashes; contraries are best seen by setting one near the other; Whilst we look only on o• selves, and upon others amongst whom we live, we think our selves to be some body. It is an evidence of some sincerity wrought in the soul, not to shun that light which may let us see the soul corners of our hearts and lives.

3. Consider the spiritualnesse and large extent of the law of God, together ¹