A39695:546
The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptoms of hypocrisy opened…The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptomes of hypocrisie opened…
The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptoms of hypocrisy opened in a practical treatise upon Revelations III 17, 18 being the second part of the Saint indeed / by John Flavell ...The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptomes of hypocrisie opened in a practical treatise upon Revelations III 17, 18 being the second part of the Saint indeed / by John Flavell ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1698
Title page typeset from the transcription.
THE Touchstone of Sincerity: OR, THE SIGNS Of GRACE, AND Symptoms o… › Chapter 11 › Section 1
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
SECT. I.
Infer. 1. Are there such variety of trials appointed to examine the sincerity of mens graces, how great a vanity then is Hypocrisy, and to how little purpose do men endeavour to conceal and hide it! We say, murder, will out, and we may as confidently affirm hypocrisy will out. When Rebekah had ⟨p. 166⟩laid the plot to disguise her son Jacob, and by personating his brother to get the blessing; Jacob thus objects against it, My Father perad venture will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing, Gen. 27. 12. as if he should say; but what if my Father detect the cheat, how then shall I look him in the face? how shall I escape a curse? After the same manner every upright soul scares it self from the way of Hypocrisy. If I dissemble, and pretend to be what I am not: my Father will find me out. Ah there is no darkness nor shadow of death that can conceal the the Hypocrite: but out it will come at last, let him use all the art he can to hide it▪ Oftentimes God discovers him by the trials he appoints in this world, and men in that day shall return and discern betwixt the righteous and the wicked; between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not, Mal 3. 18. but if he make an hard shift to get by a private way to hell, carrying this comfort with him to the last step; that no body know• or thinks he is gone thither; yet there wil• be a day when God will strip him naked before the great assembly of Angels and men, and all shall point at him and say,
Infer. 1. ARe there such variety of tryals appointed to examine the sincerity of mens graces, how great a vanity then is Hypocrisie, and to how little purpose do men endea•our to conceal and hide it! We say, murder, will out, and we may as confidently affirm hypocrisie will out. When Rebekah had