from expectation passes into fruition. By this way of speaking, Christ designs to seal to us the certainty of the promise, and to assure us that we have firm hold of heaven, before we find an entrance into it.

The world surely would think that the poor man is of all persons living the most unfit to make a purchase, especially to buy kingdoms, and to bid a price for a crown and a sceptre. But it seems that the evangelically poor man can do all this, and yet not exhaust himself; which shews that the spiritual person is never so indigent, but that he can still outbid the world, and possess himself of that which all the riches upon the earth cannot compass; for immortality and heaven, and not only heaven, but also the God of heaven himself, is his possession.

To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON XLIII.

JOB Viii. 13.

The hypocrite's hope shall perish. THERE is nothing in the world, though never so excellent, but it has its counterfeit; religion and grace itself are not exempted: so that in these matters, as well as in others, we often suffer a fallacy in our choice, by embracing resemblances instead of things. Sincerity and hypocrisy are the two great things about which the whole stress and business of the gospel is laid out; namely, to persuade and enforce the one, and to discover and detect the other. And here we have hypocrisy presented in its greatest and most flourishing enjoyment, which is hope; and in its greatest misery, which is utter frustration.

There are only two things that can require any explication, and the words will be very clear: first, what is meant by the hypocrite; and secondly, what by the hypocrite's hope.

As for the first, all hypocrites in the world may be comprehended under these two sorts.

(1.) The first is the gross dissembler, who knowingly, and against his conscience, pursues some sinful course, endeavouring only to conceal it from the eyes of men: such an one was Gehazi, who concealed his sharking, covetous acts from his master Elisha, 2 Kings v. 25. Such an one also was Judas, while he plotted the betraying of his Lord; he could

eat and converse with him, and yet carry on a design against him at the same time; he could bring the guest and the traitor to the same table. Such an one was the lewd woman, in Prov. xxx. 20, who took secresy for innocence; and, putting a fair face upon a foul fact, wiped her mouth, and said, she had done no wickedness. Such were also the scribes and pharisees, whom our Saviour upbraids so severely, Matth. xxiii. 27; for as they had the outward varnish, so they had also the inward rottenness of a noisome sepulchre. In short, this sort of hypocrites, the utmost of whose religion is to conceal, not to renounce their sins, comes within the number of those that are even stigmatized by the heathen, qui famam, non conscientiam verentur; such as prefer credit before conscience, an outward, lying, pompous appearance, before an inward, sincere reality.

(2.) The other sort is the formal, refined hypocrite, who deceives his own heart. He is many degrees above the other; for his conscience and his convictions will not let him take up in a course of professed dissimulation. And therefore he makes some advances into the practice of holiness; but not being sound at the heart, not being thoroughly divided from his sin, he takes that for grace which is not sincerity, and therefore much less grace; and being thus deceived, he misses of the power of godliness, and embraces only the form. Such an hypocrite we have described in Matth. vii. 26, 27; he raised a very fair building, but he laid the foundation of it in the sand. Now both these hypocrites agree in this, that they are deceivers; for deceit is the formal, constituent reason of hypocrisy: only the difference lies here, that one deceives the world, the other de

ceives himself; one resolvedly goes towards hell, the other sets forth for heaven, but misses of his way; one is a mere shadow, the other is a rotten substance.

I conceive the hypocrite here spoken of in the text is to be taken in the latter sense; for the gross, palpable dissembler neither does nor can rise so high, as to entertain any seeming, rational hope of a future felicity. For he who knows his present estate to be totally bad, and knowingly persists in it, cannot with any colour of reason hope that his future condition should be good. And thus much for the first thing to be explained. As for the

Second, By the hypocrite's hope is here meant those persuasions that a man has of the goodness and safety of his spiritual condition, whereby he strongly persuades himself that he is now in a state of grace, and consequently shall hereafter attain to a state of glory.

Yet, since it is not to be imagined that this hope is in the same proportion in all hypocrites, we may justly distinguish in it these two degrees.

1. A probable opinion. Now opinion, we know, is but the lowest degree of assent; nay, it is rather thought, than assent; it is the understanding, as it were, halting between doubt and belief; rather catching at, than embracing its object. So that if opinion at best be so weak, what is that that is commenced upon a false ground? that hangs upon the thin, rotten thread of a bare peradventure: for the voice of the hypocrite is generally but the same with that of the king of Nineveh, peradventure the Lord will be gracious.

2. The second degree is a peremptory persuasion.

This is its highest pitch and perfection; and it seems seldom to be entertained, but where hypocrisy is in conjunction with gross ignorance or judicial searedness. It is hope raised into confidence, and confidence, as it were, screwed up to a kind of plerophory; when a man is so confident of his future happiness, that nothing seems wanting but an actual possession.

These things premised briefly by way of explication, the words naturally cast themselves into these two propositions.

First, that an hypocrite may proceed so far, as to obtain an hope and expectation of a future blessed

ness.

Secondly, that all the hypocrite's fairest expectations and hopes of such an happiness, will in the end vanish into miserable disappointment.

For the prosecution of the first of these, I shall do these three things.

I. I shall prove that the hypocrites have such hopes.

II. I shall shew how and by what ways these hopes are first produced in the hypocrite's mind. And,

III. I shall shew how they are cherished and preserved there.

I. And first for the first of these; to wit, that the hypocrites have and do obtain such hopes, may be evinced by these two arguments.

(1.) The first of which shall be taken from the nature and constitution of man's mind, which is vehement and restless in its pursuit after some suitable good. Now the happiness of man is not from within,