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

3. And I beseech you consider, with what amazing horror it must needs surprise you, to find ox a sudden and unexpectedly ⟨p. 201⟩when you die, that all is worse with •ou then you imagined or would believe? After a whole life of confident presumption, to be suddenly convinced by so dreadful an experience, of your so long and wilful a mistake! To find in a moment, that you have flattered your souls, into so desperate a state of woe! To see and feel all the selfish cavils and reasonings confuted, in one hour, which the wisest and holiest men on earth, could never beat you from before! O Sirs, you know not now, what a day, what a conviction, that will be! You know not what it is for a guilty soul to to pass out of the Body, and find it self in the plague of an unsanctified state, and hated of the Holy God, that never would know it till it was too late. You know not what it is to be turned by Death into that world of spirits, where all self-deceit is detected by experience: and all must undergo a righteous judgement; where blindness and self-love can no more persuade the miserable that they are happy; the unholy that they are sanctified; the fleshly minded men that they are spiritual; the lovers of the world, that they are the Lovers of God: Men cannot there believe what they list: nor take that for a truth which makes ⟨p. 202⟩for their security, be it never so false▪ Men cannot there believe that they are accepted of God, while they are in the bonds of their iniquity; or that their hearts are as good as the best, while their tongues and lives are opposite to goodness; or that they shall be saved as soon as the godly, though they be ungodly.

3. And I beseech you consider, with what amazing horror it must needs surprise you, to find ox a sudden and unexpe••edly ⟨p. 201⟩when you die, that all is worse with •ou then you imagined or would believe? After a whole life of confident presumpti•n, to be suddenly convinced by so dreadull an experience, of your so long and wilfull a mistake! To find in a moment, that you have flattered your souls, into so desperate a state of woe! To see and feel all the selfish cavils and reasonings confuted, in one hour, which the wisest and holiest men on earth, could never beat you from before! O Sirs, you know not now, what a day, what a conviction, that will be! You know not what it is for a guilty soul to to pass out of the Body, and find it self in the plague of an unsanctified state, and hated of the Holy God, that never would know it till it was too late. You know not what it is to be turned by Death into that world of spirits, where all self-deceit is detected by experience: and all must undergo a righteous judgement; where blindness and self-love can no more perswade the miserable that they are happy; the unholy that they are sanctified; the fleshly minded men that they are spiritual; the lovers of the world, that they are the Lovers of God: Men cannot there believe what they list: nor take that for a truth which makes