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

And sure it is not for want of an ingenuous education: As you would take it ill to be thought below them in natural endowments, so much more in those acquisitions and furniture of the mind, which comes by breeding and due culture of your Naturals. You would disdain in these to be compared with many poor rustics and mechanics, that are almost as fluent in speaking of the great things of immortality, as you are in talking of your transient occurrences, your sublunary felicities, and the provisions of your Appetites and your Skins. What then can be the cause of this dumb disease, but that you are unacquainted with your ⟨p. 176⟩selves? and as you have not a New-birth, and a Divine Nature, and the Spirit of Christ, to be either the spring and principle or the Matter of your discourse; so you have not the due knowledge of your sin and misery, which should teach you the language of serious Penitents, before you have the language of justified Believers.

And sure it is not for want of an inge•nous education: As you would take it ill to be thought below them in natural endowments, so much more in those acquisitions and furniture of the mind, which comes by breeding and due culture of your Naturals. You would disdain in these to be compared with many poor rusticks and mechanicks, that are almost as fluent in speaking of the great things of immortality, as you are in talking of your transient occurrences, your sublunary felicities, and the provisions of your Appetites and your Skins. What then can be the cause of this dumb disease, but that you are unacquainted with your ⟨p. 176⟩selves? and as you have not a New-birth, and a Divine Nature, and the Spirit of Christ, to be either the spring and principle or the Matter of your discourse; so you have not the due knowledge of your sin and misery, which should teach you the language of serious Penitents, before you have the language of justified Believers.

If you say again, It is because we have not been used to this kind of speech. I answer, And whence is it that you have not been used to it? If you had know the Greatness and Goodness of the Lord, as sensibly as they, would not you have used to Pray to him and speak of him as well as they? If you had known and considered your sin, and wants, and miseries, or dangers, as well as they, would you not have been used to beg mercy, pardon and relief, and to complain of your distress as much as they? If you did as highly value the matters of Eternal consequence as they do, and laid them to heart as seriously as they, would not your minds and hearts have appeared in your speeches, and made you use your selves to prayer and holy conference as well as others?