Gods husbandry

AND in the next place,¹ for those that are found in this trial unfruitful, let them not hide it from themselves, let them not deceive themselves, but let them see and confess it, and withal see and feel their unhappiness in ⟨p. 132⟩regard of it: for in Gods name we must deal plainly with them, and assure them, that (whatsoever hitherto, either they have thought of themselves, or others have thought of them) they be no better than very plain hypocrites. For all their hanging upon the Vine, for all their flourishing greenness of profession, for all their fair and pleasant leaves, of coming to Church, delighting to hear Sermons, loving some good men, commending Preachers, speaking against profaneness and common abuses, dealing truly with men, and such like; for all these I say (and an hundred more things which they trust upon, if an hundred more there be of the like kind), they be but dissemblers, guileful persons, goats in sheep's skins, painted tombs, rotten-hearted persons, and very rank hypocrites. Brethren, I pray you conceive not, that we delight in disgracing men, in terrifying their consciences, in discouraging their hearts, in making their states and themselves appear evil, if they were not so. Alack what good shall we get by your discomfort or disgrace! what benefit will your misery bring unto us? Nay verily, we have no pleasure (yea, we have much grief) in pronouncing against men, that they be hypocrites. But we must needs speak the truth, that God hath put into our mouths, and that with all plainness, and with all earnestness, and with all authority: yea, so much the plainer, and more earnest must we be in this matter, by how much we do better understand, both the needfulness of discovering to the hypocrite his hypocrisy, and withal the difficulty of making