A cabinet of choice jewels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…A cabinet of choice jevvels, or, A box of precious ointment being a plain…

Eleventhly, An hypocrite never performs religious duties §11from spiritual principles, nor in a spiritual manner. An hypocrite is never inclined, moved and carried to God, to Christ, to holy duties, by the power of a new and inward principle of grace working a suitableness between his heart and the things of God. An hypocrite rests himself satisfied in the mere external acts of Religion, though he never feels any thing of the power of Religion in his own soul. An hypocrite looks to his words in prayer, and to his voice in prayer, and to his gestures in prayer, but he never looks to the frame of his heart in prayer. An hypocrites heart is never touched with the words his tongue utters, an hypocrites soul is never divinely affected, delighted, or graciously warmed with any duty he performs. An hypocrites spiritual performances never flow from spiritual principles, nor from a heart universally sanctified; though his works may be new, yet his heart remains old, his new practises always spring from old principles; and this will prove the hypocrites bane,¹ as you may see in that, Isa. 1.15. When you spread forth your hands to heaven, I will hide my eyes; and when you make many prayers, when you abound in duty, adding prayer to prayer (as the Hebrew runs) I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. These were unsanctified ones; their practises were new,² but their hearts were old still. The same you may see in the Scribes and Pharisees, who fasted, prayed, and gave alms, but their hearts were not changed, renewed, sanctified, nor principled from above; and this proved their eternal bane. Nicodemus was a man of great note, name,³ and fame among the Pharisees, and he fasted, and prayed, and gave alms, and paid tithes, &c. and yet a mere stranger to the new birth; Regeneration was a paradox to him. How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be born? ⟨p. 322⟩This great Doctor was so great a Dunce, that he understood no more of the doctrine of Regeneration, than a mere child does the darkest precepts of Astronomy.