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 5. Fifthly, Conclude it to be your great advantage to be throughly tried, whatever you be found to be in the trial: if you be found sincere, you are richly rewarded for all your pains and labour: never did that man repent of digging and toiling, that after all hit upon the rich vein that he digged for: what is a vein of gold to a vein of sincerity!

Motive 5. Fifthly, Conclude it to be your great advantage to be throughly tryed, whatever you befound to be in the tryal: if you be found sincere, you are richly rewarded for all your pains and labour: never did that man repent of digging and toyling, that after all hit upon the rich vein that he digged for: what is a vein of gold to a vein of sincerity!

If upon search you find the contrary, a false Hypocritical unsound heart, yet in that very sad discovery you meet with the greatest advantage that ever you had in your lives for salvation. This discovery is your great advantage: for now your vain confidence being over-turned, and your ungrounded hopes destroyed; you lye open to the stroke of a deep and effectual conviction o• your sin and misery, which is the introductive mercy to all other mercies to your souls• and surely till you come to that, to give up your false hopes, and quit your vain pretensions: there is no hope of you. Christ told the Pharisees, Matth 21. 31. Publicans and Harlots enter into the Kingdom of Heaven before you: Publicans were the worst sort of men, and harlots the worst sort of women, and yet they stood in a fairer way for heaven than the Hypocritical Pharisees, because conviction had easier access to their consciences: they had not those defences and pleas• of duty and strictness to ward off the word, that the self-cozening Pharisees had.

If upon search you find the contrary, a false Hypocritical unsound heart, yet in that very sad discovery you meet with the greatest advantage that ever you had in your lives for salvation. This discovery is your great advantage: for now your vain confidence being over-turned, and your ungrounded hopes destroyed; you lye open to the stroke of a deep and effectual conviction o your sin and misery, which is the introductive mercy to all other mercies to your souls and surely till you come to that, to give up your false hopes, and quit your vain pretensions: there is no hope of you. Christ told the Pharisees,