The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

Exhort one another daily, &c. lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, Heb. 3.13. He that is deceived in a thing, did not see it as it is in it self, for had he done so, he would not have been deceived with it. If sin doth thus deceive and cheat, then the deceived Soul doth not see it as it is: And this is the case of us all till that good Spirit comes to work, then what strange and different apprehensions hath the converting Soul of these things over it had before.

Fifth Position. That which makes sin, creature, guilt, &c. to be known as they are is, a clearer discovery of God to the understanding, whence it comes to know God in another manner then he did before.

Sin and the creature are never known as they are, till God be known in some measure as he is: And proportionable to the knowledge of God, the high and honourable conceptions of God, so is our knowledge, and the conceptions we have of the vanity of the creature, the evil of sin, and that misery into which we have brought our selves; the Text is plain and full for this purpose, 3 Epist. John ver 11. He that doth evil hath not seen God. See God? Can a man see God? Yes that he must, or else will never be drawn off from sin: Moses endured, as seeing him who is invisible, Heb. 11.27. What cares Moses for all the pleasures and honours in Pharaoh's Court, he slights them; what cares he for the wrath of the King, though it be as the roaring of a Lyon, Prov. 19.12. Haman knew the truth of it, Esther 7.7. Moses makes nothing of him; He (as one said of Mr. Thomas Hooker, a man so awed with the Majesty and dread of God) would put a King in his pocket. But how comes Moses to this frame? He saw him who is invisible: This is Contradictio in adjecto, in one sense, but a great truth in a spiritual sense: Moses saw by the eye of faith, or by the spiritual eye of his understanding,