A discourse concerning meekness and quietness of spirit to which is added, A sermon…

6. Be often examining your growth and proficiency in this Grace. Enquire what ground you have got of your Passion,¹ and what Improvements you have made in Meekness. Provocations recur every day, such as have been wont perhaps, to put you into a Passion, these give you an opportunity to make the Trial. Do you find that you are less subject to Anger, and when angry, that you are less transported by it than formerly, that your apprehension of Injuries is less quick, and your Resentments less keen than usual? Is the little Kingdom of your Mind more quiet than it hath been, and the discontented Party weakened and kept under? 'Tis well if it be so, and a good sign that the Soul prospereth, and is in Health. We should examine every Night, whether we have been quiet all Day? we shall sleep the better if we find we have. Let Conscience keep up a Grand Inquest in the Soul, under a Charge from the Judge of Heaven and Earth, to enquire, and due presentment make of all Riots, ⟨p. 148⟩Routs, and Breaches of the Peace, and let nothing be left unpresented for Favour, Affection or Self-love; nor let any thing presented, be left unprosecuted according to Law. Those whose natural Temper, or their Age, or Distemper leads them to be hot, and hasty, and unquiet, have an opportunity by their Meekness and Gentleness to discover both the Truth and Strength of Grace in general; for it is the surest mark of Upright•••sness to keep our selves from our own Iniquity, Psal. 18. 23. And yet if the Children of God bring forth these Fruits of the Spirit in old Age, when commonly Men are most froward and peevish, it shows not only, that they are upright, but rather that the Lord is upright, in whose strength they stand, that he is their Rock, in whom they have cast Anchor, and there is no unrighteousness in him, Psal. 92. 14, 15.

6. Be often examining your growth and proficiency in this Grace. Enquire what ground you have got of your Passion,¹ and what Improvements you have made in Meekness. Provocations recur every day, such as have been wont perhaps, to put you into a Passion, these give you an opportunity to make the Trial. Do you find that you are less subject to Anger, and when angry, that you are less transported by it than formerly, that your apprehension of Injuries is less quick, and your Resentments less keen than usual? Is the little Kindom of your Mind more quiet than it hath been, and the discontented Party weakned and kept under? 'Tis well if it be so, and a good sign that the Soul prospereth, and is in Health. We should examine every Night, whether we have been quiet all Day? we shall sleep the better if we find we have. Let Conscience keep up a Grand Inquest in the Soul, under a Charge from the Judge of Heaven and Earth, to enquire, and due presentment make of all Riots,