A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

§. Sect. 4 Of impediments arising from corrupted and erroneous judgement.

§. Sect. 4 Of impediments arising from corrupted and erroneous iudgement.

The judgement also corrupted with error and ignorance, is a notable impediment to hinder us from the sincere practice of all Christian duties of a godly life. For hereby men be fool themselves with idle conceits, that have no ground or warrant in Gods Word, and thereby rest contented with their present estate, and never labour to attain unto a better. For so are they blinded with natural ignorance, that they cannot discern their blindness, but think themselves as sharp sighted as any other. So poor are they and destitute of the riches of Gods saving graces, that they have no sense of their poverty, but please themselves with shadows in stead of substance, like men replenished with wind, in stead of wholesome nourishment, and those who mistake the swelling of their dropsy humours, for sound and good flesh. So dead they are in sin, that they have no feeling of their deadness, and though they be never so much cut and launched with the sword of the Spirit, and keen Razor of the Word, they have no sense of it, nor ever complain more then dead men of their wounds and gashes. Finally, lying in their sins, as in their proper element, though they be never so heavy and intolerable, yet like a fish under the water, they do not at all feel the weight of them. As we see in the example of the proud Pharisees, who thought themselves sharp sighted and righteous, when as they were in Christs estimate stark blind, ¹and wicked above all men, even Publicans and sinners: of the Jews, who thought themselves free-men, and the children of Abraham, when as they ⟨p. 789⟩²