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

And doth so much of our work and ⟨p. 224⟩of your recovery lie upon this point and yet shall we not be able to ac• complish it? Might you be brought into the way to Heaven, if we could b• persuade you that you are yet out of t•• way, and will you be undone, because yo• will not suffer so small and reasonable part of the cure as this is? O God forbid O that we knew how to illuminate yo•• minds so far as to make you find that yo• are lost! How ready would Christ be the• to find you, and to receive and welcome you upon your return! Here is the first difficulty, which if we could but overcome, […] should hope to conquer all the rest. H•• we but a wedge to cleave this knot, the rest would the more easily be done. Coul• we draw but this one pin of self-deceit ▪ the frame of Satan's building were like to tumble down. O that any of you that know the nature of self-deceit, and know the accesses to the inwards of a sinner, and know the fallacious reasonings of the heart, could tell us but how we might undeceive them! O that any of you that know the nature of humane understanding, with its several maladies and their cure, and know the power of saving truth, could tell us what key will undo this lock! ⟨p. 125⟩what medicine will cure this disease, of wilful, obstinate, self-deceiving? Think but on the case of our poor people, and of ours, and sure you cannot choose but pity both them and us. We are all professors of the Christian faith, and all say we believe the word of God: This word assureth us that all men are fallen in Adam, and are by nature children of wrath, and increase in sin and misery, till supernatural grace recover them. It tells us that the Redeemer is become by office, the Physician or Saviour of souls, washing away their guilt by his blood, and renewing and cleansing their corrupted natures by his Spirit: It tell us that he will freely work the cure, for all that will take him for their Physician, and will forgive and save them, that penitently fly to him, and value, and accept, and trust upon his grace: And that, except they be thus made new creatures, all the world cannot save them from everlasting wrath. This is the Doctrine that we all believe, or say we do believe: Thus doth it open the case of sinners. We come now, according to our office. and the trust reposed in us, and we tell our Hearers what the Scripture saith of man, and what it commandeth us to tell