A39695:647
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.
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.
Counsel 2.
Always suspect and examine your ends in what you do: Sincerity and hypocrisy lye much ⟨p. 195⟩•n your ends and designs: as they are, so are you. The intentions of the heart lye deep. A man may do the same action to an holy end, and his person and service be accepted with God; which another doing for a corrupt end, it may be reckoned his sin; and •oth his person and service be abhorred by •he Lord: we find two men riding in one Chariot, and both of them concerned in the same expedition; Jehu the son of Nimshi and Jonadab the son of Rechab, 2 Kings 10. 15, 23. but though the work they engaged in was one and the same, yet the different ends they aimed at, made the same action an excellent duty in Jonadab, and an act of vile Hypocrisy in Jehu: idem quod duo faciunt, non est idem: it was the saying of a good soul, commended for a good action; the work indeed is good, but I fear the ends of it. Self-ends are creeping and insinuating things into the best actions.
Alwayes suspect and examine your ends in what you do: Sincerity and hypocrisie lye much ⟨p. 195⟩•n your ends and designs: as they are, so are you. The intentions of the heart lye deep. A man may do the same action to an holy end, and his person and service be accepted with God; which another doing for a corrupt end, it may be reckoned his sin; and •oth his person and service be abhorred by he Lord: we find two men riding in one Chariot, and both of them concerned in the same expedition; Iehu the son of Nimshi and Ionadab the son of Rechab,