The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

10. Consider also, that the Ignorance of ⟨p. 140⟩your selves, doth much unfit you to be useful unto others. If you are Magistrates, you will never be soundly faithful against the sin of others, till you have felt how hurtful it is to your selves. If you are Ministers, you will scarce ever be good at heart-searching work, till you have searched your own: Nor will you know the deceitfulness of sin, and the turnings and windings of the crooked Serpent, till you have observed them in your selves: Nor will you have due compassion on the ignorant, impenitent, ungodly, unconverted, or on the tempted, weak, disconsolate souls, till you have learned rightly to be affected with sin and misery in your selves. If men see a Magistrate punish offenders, or hear a Minister reprove them, that is as bad or worse himself, they will but deride the Justice of the one, and reproofs of the other, as the acts or words of blind partiality and hypocrisy; and accost you with a Medice cura teipsum, Physician heal thy self: with a Loripidem rectus derideat, Aethiopem abbus, &c.—and a Primus jussa subi, &c. and a Qui alterum incusat probri, ipsum se intueri oportet] First sweep before your own door. Its ridiculous for the blind to reproach the purr-blind: Qua in aliis reprehendis, ⟨p. 141⟩in teipso maximè reprehend. Reprehend that more in thy self, which thou reprehendest in another. The eye of the soul is not like the eye of the body, that can see other things, but not it self. There are two evils that Christ noteth in the reproofs of such as are unacquainted with themselves, in Math. 7.3, 4. Hypocrisy and Unfitness to reprove. [Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the moat out of thine eye, and behold, a beam is in thy own eye? Thou Hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the moat out of thy brothers eye.] Thy own vices do corrupt thy judgement, and cause thee to excuse the like in others, and to accuse the virtue that in others is the condemner of thy vice, and to represent all as odious that is done by those that by their piety and reproofs are become odious to thy guilty and malicious soul. Dost thou hate a holy heavenly life, and art void of the love of God, and of his servants?