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

13. Moreover, you should consider that without the knowledge of your interest in Christ, you cannot live to the honour of your Redeemer, in such a measure as the Gospel doth require. The excellency of Gospel mercies will be veiled and obscured by you, and will not be revealed and honoured by your lives. Your low and poor dejected spirits, will be a dishonour to the faith and hope of the Saints, and to the Glorious inheritance of which you have so full a prospect in the promises. If you take the son of a Prince in his infancy, and educate him as the son of a ploughman, he will not live to the honour of his birth, which he is not acquainted with. The heirs of Heaven that know not themselves to be such, may live like the heirs of Heaven as to uprightness and humility; but not in the triumphant Joy, nor in the courageous boldness, which becometh a Believer. What an injury and dishonour is to our Redeemer, that when he hath done and suffered so much to make ⟨p. 384⟩us happy, we should walk as heavily as he had done nothing for us at all! An• when he hath so fully secured us of everlasting happiness, and told us of it so expressly that our Joy may be full, we shou•• live as if the Gospel were not the Gospel, […] such things had never been promised or revealed! When Heaven is the Object, a•• the promise of God is the groundwork […] our faith, we should live above all earth•• things, as having the honours and pleasure of the world under our feet, accounting all as loss and dung for the excellency of […] knowledge of Jesus Christ, Phil. 3.8. who• we should love though we have not seen him in whom though now we see him not, yet believing we should rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; as those that […] receive the end of their faith, the salvation o• our souls] 1 Pet. 1.8, 9. And how ca• we do this, if we are still questioning the Love of Christ, or our interest in it!