A Saint Indeed

The importance and necessity of making this our great and main business, will manifestly appear in that, 1. The honour of God. 2. The sincerity of our profession. 3. The beauty of our conversation. 4. The comfort of our Souls. 5. The improvement of our graces: and 6. Our stability in the hour of temptation, are all wrapped up in, and dependent on our sincerity and care ⟨p. 18⟩in the management of this work.

The importance and necessity of making this our great and main business, will manifestly appear in that, 1. The honour of God. 2. The sincerity of our profession. 3. The beauty of our conversation. 4. The comfort of our Souls. 5. The improvement of our graces: and 6. Our stability in the hour of temptation, are all wrapt up in, and dependent on our sincerity and care ⟨p. 18⟩in the management of this work.

1. The Glory of God is much concerned therein; heart-evils are very provoking evils to the Lord. The Schools do well observe, that outward sins are majoris infamiae, sins of greater infamy, but heart-sins are majoris reatus, sins of deeper guilt. How severely hath the Great God declared his wrath from Heaven against heart-wickedness? The great Crime for which the old World stands indicted, Gen. 6. 5, 6, 7. is heart-wickedness; God saw that every imagination (or fiction) of their heart was only evil, and that continually: for which he sent the dreadfullest Judgment that was ever executed since the World began: And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of heaven, for it repenteth me that I have made man, v. 7. We find not their murders, adulteries; blasphemies, (though they were defiled with these) particularly alleged against them; but the evils of their hearts: yea, that which God was so provoked by, as to give up his peculiar Inheritance into the enemies hand, was the evil of their hearts,