How highly, therefore, does it now become us, to consider of that time when we must meet one another before the chief Shepherd? When I must give an account of my stewardship, of the service I have done for, and the reception and treatment I have had among the people he sent me to: And you must give an account of your own conduct towards me▪ and the improvement you have made of these three and twenty years of my ministry. For then both you and I must appear together, and we both must give an account, in order ⟨p. 119⟩to an infallible righteous and eternal sentence to be passed upon us, by him who will judge us with respect to all that we have said or done in our meetings here, all our conduct one towards another, in the house of God and elsewhere, on Sabbath days and on other days; who will try our hearts, and manifest our thoughts, and the principles and frames of our minds, will judge us with respect to all the controversies which have subsisted between us, with the strictest impartiality, and will examine our treatment of each other in those controversies: There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, nor hid, which shall not be known; all will be examined in the searching penetrating light of God's omniscience and glory, and by him whose eyes are as a flame of fire; and truth and right shall be made plainly to appear, being stripped of every veil; and all error, falsehood, unrighteousness, and injury shall be laid open, stripped of every disguise; every specious pretence, every cavil, and all false reasoning, shall vanish in a moment, as not being able to bear the light of that day.— And then our hearts will be turned inside out, and the secrets of them will be made more plainly to appear than our outward actions do now. Then it shall appear what the ends are which we have aimed at, what have been the governing principles ⟨p. 120⟩which we have acted from, and what have been the dispositions we have exercised in our ecclesiastical disputes and contests. Then it will appear, whether I acted uprightly, and from a truly conscientious careful regard to my duty to my great Lord and Master, in some former ecclesiastical controversies, which have been attended with exceeding unhappy circumstances and consequences: It will appear whether there was any just cause for the resentment which was manifested on those occasions.
How highly, therefore, does it now become us, to consider of that time when we must meet one another before the chief Shepherd? When I must give an account of my stewardship, of the service I have done for, and the reception and treatment I have had among the people he sent me to: And you must give an account of your own conduct towards me▪ and the improvement you have made of these three and twenty years of my ministry. For then both you and I must appear together, and we both must give an account, in order ⟨p. 119⟩to an infallible righteous and eternal sentence to be passed upon us, by him who will judge us with respect to all that we have said or done in our meetings here, all our conduct one towards another, in the house of God and elsewhere, on Sabbath days and on other days; who will try our hearts, and manifest our thoughts, and the principles and frames of our minds, will judge us with respect to all the controversies which have subsisted between us, with the strictest impartiality, and will examine our treatment of each other in those controversies: There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, nor hid, which shall not be known; all will be examined in the searching penetrating light of God's omniscience and glory, and by him whose eyes are as a flame of fire; and truth and right shall be made plainly to appear, being stripped of every veil; and all error, falsehood, unrighteousness, and injury shall be laid open, stripped of every disguise; every specious pretence, every cavil, and all false reasoning, shall vanish in a moment, as not being able to bear the light of that day.— And then our hearts will be turned inside out, and the secrets of them will be made more plainly to appear than our outward actions do now. Then it shall appear what the ends are which we have aimed at, what have been the governing principles ⟨p. 120⟩which we have acted from, and what have been the dispositions we have exerercised in our ecclesiastical disputes and contests. Then it will appear, whether I acted uprightly, and from a truly conscientious careful regard to my duty to my great Lord and Master, in some former ecclesiastical controversies, which have been attended with exceeding unhappy circumstances and consequences: It will appear whether there was any just cause for the resentment which was manifested on those occasions.
