Heaven upon earth in the serene tranquillity and calm composure, in the sweet peace…

Now if we lay by •ll these seeming and false grounds, it will be found that many, yea most persons have but an empty and •oom testimony, and a very ill grounded and unwarrantable peace.

For the third thing we proposed to be spoke to, viz. The grounds of a good testimony; we have them from the Text here in five or six steps, supposing the matter to be right, as all along we have done; The first is, singleness in a mans end, that he be not seeking himself, but Gods honour mainly; which is implied in that word simplicity; a single end conduces much to a mans peace; its a sine quo non to a joyful testimony of the Conscience, and the first step to it here. The second is, godly sincerity, which is not only opposite to more gross hypocrisy, dissembling and counterfeiting, but contradistinguished also from merely moral sincerity; its not only to be honest before men and (to say so) before the Conscience, but also before God; I was also upright before him, and in his eye sight, says David, Psal. 18. See to this purpose, Luke 1 verse 6. and verse 75. and what the same Apostle says in the following Chapter, verse last. But as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ; this godly sincerity in a word is, when through grace a man walks so as he may be approven and commended by God, and not by his own Conscience only, let be by men, by whom to be judged either this or that way, is but a small thing as the Apostle speaks, 1 Cor. 4 3. Sincerity puts a man to aim ⟨p. 270⟩at holiness and a conformity to God, and suffers him not to think it enough to have no challenge, but to try if there be ground for it. A third ground (which is negative) is in the next words, not with fleshly wisdom, but (as he said) with spiritual wisdom, with that wisdom which is from above; for though fleshly wisdom be decried, yet so is not spiritual wisdom; it being a great help to a circumspect Christian walk, as we show from these words,