The excellency of a gracious spirit Delivered in a treatise upon the 14. of…The excellency of a gracious spirit Deliuered in a treatise upon the 14. of…

When the Spirit of God would set out, the greatest misery of men, when they are the children of wrath, without God in the world, without hope, it is, that they lived according to the common course of the world, Ephes. 2. 2. And those two are joined together, living according to the common course of the world, and according to that spirit, that rules in the children of disobedience: So long as they were acted by that spirit they did live so, but now there is another spirit, that they are acted by, and would you have them live so still as they did before? Certainly it cannot be; You cry out of dissimulation, and that justly; But what is dissimulation, if this be not? where there is not a suitableness between the inward principles, the inward frame, and disposition of the spirit, and the ⟨p. 154⟩outward actions: Now if Gods people should not live singular lives, certainly their outward actions would not be agreeable to the inward principles, frames, and dispositions of their spirits, for they are singular, differing from other mens. As there may be dissembling, for a man to seem better than he is; so there may be dissembling, to seem worse than we are; Is there not as much evil in a life differing from the spirit, as in a spirit differing from the life? If a man seems to be godly, and is not, it is an argument the man is vile, who will thus play the hypocrite; but it is a commendation to godliness, that men will account the very seeming of it to be honourable; but if a man hath godliness in his heart, and yet his life be no other than other mens, this would argue that a man were ashamed of godliness it self; here godliness it self would suffer; as if it were such a dishonourable thing, as would bring shame to a man, if it did appear; as if though indeed it must ⟨p. 155⟩be reserved in the heart, for necessity sake, yet it must be kept down, not suffered to appear in the life, for fear it be a disgrace to men. Is not here then as great an evil, in this way of dissimulation as in the other? Better all the men of the world had shame cast upon them, than that godliness should have the least stain. Surely then, where the spirits of men be other spirits, singular choice spirits, their lives ought, and must needs be other lives, singular from other men. Their conscience witness to them, that their spirits are changed, that they are other from that they were;