A plain discourse upon uprightness showing the properties and privileges of an upright man…A plain discourse upon uprightness shewing the properties and priviledges of an upright man…

SECT. III.

The third Use of this Doctrine leads ¹unto Trial and Examination of our own selves. I report me to your own Consciences, how needful this is. Needful for your comfort here, needful for your salvation hereafter. And pray be exact and serious herein.

THe third Use of this Doctrine leads ¹unto Tryal and Examination of our own selves. I report me to your own Consciences, how needful this is. Needful for your comfort here, needful for your salvation hereafter. And pray be exact and serious herein.

1. 1§. 3. Examination.

1. Because mans heart by Nature is false and froward. Deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, Jer. 17. 9. The Nature of God, the Love of Christ, and the Heart of man, are things inscrutable. Its true, Eccl. 7. 29. God made man upright at first. Our faces were directly upon God, our hearts uniform, but we got a fall, and ⟨p. 138⟩now the whole man is turned quite another way. He that says, I have ever had a good heart, that man never had a good heart: we are estranged from the womb from our God, and from our best selves. No cheat so cunning as the heart of man, 'twill cry out as the Pharisee, I thank God I am not as other hearts are, when seven abominations are therein. And not only false but froward; in other diseases the diseased party is called the Patient, and patient they are to abide the Physicians order, but here the Patient is the greatest Disease. Quid miserius misero non miserante seipsum? What greater misery than a miserable man not commiserating himself? Having to do therefore with such a Piece, what need have you of the strictest care, that you may not be bankrupt, before you feel your decay, and broken for want of bruising?