A68877:45
Gods husbandry
Gods husbandry: the first part. Tending to show the difference betwixt the hypocrite and the true-hearted Christian. As it was delivered in certain sermons, and is now published by William Whately, preacher of the Word of God in Banbury in OxfordshireGods husbandry: the first part. Tending to shew the difference betwixt the hypocrite and the true-hearted Christian. As it was deliuered in certaine sermons, and is now published by William Whately, preacher of the Word of God in Banbury in Oxfordsheire
London: printed by Bernard Alsop and Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1622
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.
CHAP. V. Showing the general notes of difference betwixt the true man and the hypocrite.
CHAP. V. Shewing the generall notes of difference betwixt the true man and the hypocrite.
AND so have I dispatched the second point I undertook to show, viz. the sorts of hypocrites. I now come to set down certain general notes of difference betwixt the true-hearted, and the hypocrite. These are very many; I will insist alone upon four, which to me seem the most evident and easily-discerned.1 First, the hypocrite is a great find-fault abroad, a little find-fault at home. Many things (almost all things) are out of order in his neighbours; in him, little or nothing is amiss, if you will take his own judgement. Yea, the smaller ⟨p. 27⟩faults of others, he knows how, even skilfully to aggranate; his own greater faults, he wanteth neither will nor wit to extenuate: so that in thinking or speaking of his brethren, and those that live with him, and about him, he can discover divers great and strange enormities, and is much troubled at them; in thinking or speaking of himself, all things are well, and in very good order, at least not so far amiss, as to procure any great trouble or disquietment to him. Other sins and wrongs (for those sins pinch hardest that seem wrongful) make the hypocrite often even weary of his life: but seldom do his own sins so much perplex him; unless in the agony of bitter tentation, as it fared with Judas, when his conscience and he fell out. This note our Saviour Christ doth point us to, when he bringeth in the hypocrite speaking to his brother in this wise,2 Let me pull the moth out of thine eye, when in the mean space he felt not the beam in his own eyes. A good man can see a moth abroad, but not with the neglect of a beam at home: but the hypocrite will make a great stir about a small matter in others; in himself the greatest are slightly passed over. But how now the true-hearted? even quite contrary: the faults of others do less trouble him, than his own; and he can far rather excuse and defend them than himself. Yea, he hath more to say against himself before God in secret, than against all the world besides in public; and he will rather pass by a sin any where, than in his own breast and life. He follows Christs counsel, and