The anatomy of secret sins, presumptuous sins, sins in dominion, & uprightness. Wherein divers…

First, There is no deceit or error in the world, of more dangerous ¹consequence, then for a man to deceive himself, and to err about the right temper of his soul. A man may mistake himself in the depth of his riches, or the altitude of worldly friendship, or latitude of his intellectual qualifications and abilities, he may think himself rich, and favoured, and learned, when perhaps he is not so; but these mistakes are about nostra, not about nos, ours, but not our selves, and the danger may be only a tempest, but not a shipwreck: But for a man to deceive himself about his heart, about his soul; why? what hath he more? what hath he like them? they are fundamental errors; if a man lays a rotten foundation instead of a sound, all his building at length sinks to the ground: If a man sets forth in a fair ship, whose bottom is unsound and leaking, he loseth himself in the voyage. Why? upon the right and solid frame of the soul depends the eternity of our happiness; and therefore the error here is great and irrecoverable: when a man hath past over many years in a form of godliness, in an ingenuity of a civil carriage, in a courting ⟨p. 195⟩of God by some external and naked performances, and comes to die, and then his conscience riseth up and opens the secrets of his heart and life, and makes him to know and feel, that notwithstanding all his pretences and conceits that his heart hath continually harboured many known lusts, and he did not mind God, but himself basely in all that he did; what a fearful day will this be? ho• will it make the soul to tremble, when it hath no more time now but to see, and eternally bewail its own errors and deceits: O Lord, saith that oppressed man, I have deceived my own soul, I thought my self thus and thus; but my heart hath deceived and beguiled me.

First, There is no deceit or errour in the world, of more dangerous ¹consequence, then for a man to deceive himself, and to erre about the right temper of his soul. A man may mistake himself in the depth of his riches, or the altitude of worldly friendship, or latitude of his intellectual qualifications and abilities, he may think himself rich, and favoured, and learned, when perhaps he is not so; but these mistakes are about nostra, not about nos, ours, but not our selves, and the danger may be only a tempest, but not a shipwrack: But for a man to deceive himself about his heart, about his soule; why? what hath he more? what hath he like them? they are fundamental errors; if a man lays a rotten foundation instead of a sound, all his building at length sinks to the ground: If a man sets forth in a fair ship, whose bottom is unsound and leaking, he loseth himselfe in the voyage. Why? upon the right and solid frame of the soul depends the eternity of our happinesse; and therefore the error here is great and irrecoverable: when a man hath past over many years in a form of godlinesse, in an ingenuity of a civil carriage, in a courting