Heavenly merchandiseHeavenly merchandize

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, Mat. 16. 26. What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own Soul? this is certain, that one Truth hath ten thousand times more worth in it, than ten thousand worlds; what wise man then would sell it?

3. A man will deny himself in parting with something to do a friend a kindness, but both to do wrong to himself, & really to gratify or advantage no other, is nothing less then madness: and so doth that man that sells the Truth. They are not friends, but the worst of enemies (because they are so to our Souls) who seek to get it from us; and that also to no benefit of theirs at all, but only to satisfy their own malignity, and to do a spite unto us. He that sells the Truth, ⟨p. 33⟩grieves all that he had any reason to please, God and his Holy Spirit are grieved, and Gods people are thereby scandalized: and whilst he does no true good to any in the world, he quite undoeth himself; and this is always the undoubted issue of such a bargain,