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

If any of you devote not your selves unfeignedly to God, and make it not your first enquiry, what God would have you be and do, but live to your selves, and yet think your selves in a state of Life, you are mistaken, and do not know your selves. What abundance might easily see their miserable condition in this discovery! Who say in effect [our lips are our own: Who is Lord over us? Psal. 12.4.] and rather hate and oppose the interest of God and Holiness in the world, then devote themselves to the promoting of it! Deut. 32.6. [Do ye ⟨p. 268⟩thus requite the Lord, ye foolish people and unwise? Is not he thy father that hath bought thee? Hath he not made thee, and established thee?]

2. All those are unregenerate and in a state of death, that are not sincerely subjected to the Governing will of God, but are Ruled by their carnal Interest and desires; and the word of a man that can gratify or hurt them, can do more with them then the word of God: To show them the command of a man that they think, can undo them if they disobey, doth more prevail with them then to show them the command of God that can condemn them unto endless misery: They more fear men that can kill the body, then God that can destroy both soul and body in Hell fire. When the lust of the flesh, and the will of man, do bear more sway then the will of God, its certain that such a soul is unregenerate, Rom. 6.3, 4, 6. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? therefore we are buried with him by Baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life — Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth ⟨p. 269⟩