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…

Motive 1. And the first shall be the exceeding difficulty of this work: difficulty in some cases may be a discouragement, but where the matter is of absolute necessity as it is here; nothing provokes more to diligence; strive (saith our Lord) to enter in at the strait gate, for many will seek to enter in and shall not be able, Luke 13. 24. A double difficulty is found attending this work of self-trial. Difficulty in bringing the heart to it, and difficulty in the right and successful management of it: who find it not hard to persuade his heart to such work as this? nature declines it, flesh and blood relish it not: it's one of the great severities in Religion: 'tis no easy thing to bring a man and his own heart together.

Motive 1. And the first shall be the exceeding difficulty of this work: difficulty in some cases may be a discouragement, but where the matter is of absolute necessity as it is here; nothing provokes more to diligence; strive (saith our Lord) to enter in at the strait gate, for many will seek to enter in and shall not be able, Luke 13. 24. A double difficulty is found attending this work of self-tryal. Difficulty in bringing the heart to it, and difficulty in the right and successful management of it: who find it not hard to perswade his heart to such work as this? nature declines it, flesh and blood relish it not: it's one of the great severities in Religion: 'tis no easie thing to bring a man and his own heart together.

It is in this case as in the study of Geography, we are more inquisitive to know, and delighted when we discover the rarities of foreign Countries, and strange things in •he remote parts of the world; than those of our own native Country. I fear there ⟨p. 174⟩be many professors of Religion that can spend day after day in hearing, & love to be disputing fruitless controversies, that never spent one day in searching what influence all those Sermons they have heard, have had upon their hearts, or in rightly stating & determining that great Controversy, in whose right and possession their souls are, & which way they shall go as soon as death hath divided them from those mortal bodies; yea, I doubt many sinful hours are spent in praying into, reporting and censuring the failings of others, and not one hour faithfully employed in judging their own hearts before the Lord: O men had rather be about any other work than this: there's no pleasure in it to the flesh.