Heavenly merchandiseHeavenly merchandize

1. No Understanding Man will part with that which he cannot subsist without, and if he put it out of his hands, cannot get it again; for by so doing he at once undoes himself: such a thing is Truth; it is a mans life, if he have it not, he is an undone man: without Truth no man can be saved; he who sells the Truth, hates his own soul; he is guilty of destroying himself with his own hands, it is utterly impossible that he should ⟨p. 31⟩barter for any thing in exchange for it, that can supply the necessary use of it to him; for the world hath it not to offer him: in the very same moment wherein a man parts with the Truth, he parts with God, and Christ, and Heaven, and all grounded hope of happiness: and if men will be so foolish as to sell the Truth, God is wont to be so severe in bearing witness against them, as to give them up to believe a lye, to their own damnation; as that Awful Scripture denounceth, 2 Thes. 2. 9, 10. and what will become of such an unhappy wretch, when he hath sold the Truth that could have saved him, and purchased a lye in the room of it, that will damn him?

2. The next end of buying and selling is to get gain; and no man would willingly if he could avoid it, sell any thing to his loss, much less to his irreparable loss. A man may possibly be a loser by trading, and it may be unavoidable, but it is no mans proposed end so to be, but the contrary; but we cannot sell the Truth upon any account, but our loss by this sale will be incomputable: let the offer which is made for it look never so big, and that a man gets by his parting with the Truth be in vulgar esteem of never so great worth, yet this man that hath thus sold, hath sold to ⟨p. 32⟩the loss; he puts off an Oriental Jewel for a pebble stone, that gives the Truth for it: Suppose a man should purchase the Lease of ten or twenty years in this world of quiet, and freedom from molestation by forsaking of it, when possibly he must have been cut off from life it self, if he would have kept the Truth: nay, suppose that he should have had the whole world as a compensation for it, yet before a man strikes up, it is good for him seriously to ponder and chew upon that of our Saviour,