very lame and imperfect conceptions of the great God. And the reason of it is manifest; because we are forced to understand that which is infinite, after a finite manner. For philosophy teaches, that intelligere est pati, et pati est recipere. And one thing receives another, not according to the full latitude of the object, but according to the scanty model of its own capacity. If we let down a vessel into the sea, we shall bring up, not what the sea can afford, but what the vessel can hold: and just so it is in our understanding of God. Besides, it is the proper quality of the intellect in apprehending, naturally to assimilate the thing apprehended to itself. And these are the true grounds of the natural, unavoidable imperfection of our apprehensions of God.

However, God is pleased to bear with our apprehensions of him, though imperfect, so long as they are not impious and absurd; and to accept of them, though below him, so long as they are not contrary to him. But the hypocrite frames to himself such notions of a god, as have no foundation either in his nature or his word. He does (as it were) create to himself a deity, and sets up a god according to the model of his own senseless imaginations. I know nothing that does so lively characterize and express those gross, carnal, groveling conceptions that hypocrites entertain of God, as that signal place in Psalm 1. 21, Thou thoughtest, says God, that I was altogether such an one as thyself. That is, he took the measure of God's thoughts of sin by his own; he rated God's esteem of duty by his own indifference. Every man, through the native pride of his heart and the deceitfulness of sin, is naturally

very prone rather to bring down God to his thoughts, than to raise up his thoughts to God.

Now the soul in its course and practice of religion, having immediate intercourse with God, according to those thoughts it takes in concerning him, it is suitably affected either with fear or hope, comfort or distraction: and when it has once got this cursed, fallacious way of misrepresenting God to the conscience, there is nothing in him from whence it will not draw an argument of hope. It will suck poison out of every attribute, strain every perfection to make it subservient to the interest of its hypocrisy.

And first for that sin-devouring attribute of God's justice, which one would think should rout the hypocrite out of all his satisfactions; yet even this attribute, (which carries in it nothing but fire and brimstone, speaks nothing but lightning and claps of thunder to the secure sinners,) as it is qualified, and allayed by the shifts and evasions of a treacherous heart, shall not at all disturb his quiet, or entrench upon his hope. The hypocrite indeed does and must acknowledge that God hates sin, and that his jealousy burns against the sinner; that his law is violated, and his justice provoked: but then he has this evasion, that justice is God's strange work, that he does not afflict willingly, nor take any delight in the exercise of that severe attribute; and that if at any time he does think fit to exercise it, it is only upon gross, scandalous sinners, such as wallow in the enormities and pollutions of the world; such, whose damnation is visibly writ upon their present lives, as swearers, atheists, whore

mongers, and such like modish fashionable sinners. But as for those who are civilized in their manners, and stand guilty of no such clamorous sins, who carry a fair profession, and keep the church constantly, though perhaps it is chiefly to see and to be seen; to such the hypocrite concludes that there is no condemnation.

But now, if after all these debates and reasonings conscience is still unsatisfied, and God's justice appears terrible, and his power grim and dreadful, yet then the thoughts of mercy shall come in, and clear off all. So that if conscience and sins unrepented of begin to cry out, mercy shall cry louder: if vengeance seems ready to strike, mercy shall divert the stroke. Whatsoever objections the hypocrite can make against himself from God's justice, he will answer from the topic of his mercy.

But then here the fallacy lies: the hypocrite considers God's justice appeased and his mercy enlarged; but he does not consider the qualifications of those persons to whom these attributes bear such a gracious aspect. It is confessed, God's justice is satisfied and his anger is disarmed; but it is so, to those only whose sins are remitted, and whose persons justified; and whose burden is entirely transferred, and cast upon the person of Christ their great surety, whose satisfaction wards off the sin-revenging justice of God, only from the penitent and truly pious. But what is this to the hypocrite, who was never translated and implanted into Christ by a true and lively faith?

And then for that other attribute of mercy: it is indeed infinite and boundless in its outgoings; it covers all sins, keeps off the law, and evacuates the

curse. But it does these great things only for such as are true believers and regenerate; and to be so is an harder matter than the world generally takes it for. But this the hypocrite does not consider, and therefore he retains his confidence; he catches at the mercy, but overlooks the condition; and so no wonder, if he has hope, where he has no interest. And thus much for the first way, by which the hypocrite raises his false hope, namely, by his misapprehensions of God, and particularly in respect of those two great attributes, his justice and his mercy.

(2.) The second way by which he raises the same false hope is by his misunderstanding of sin. Sin, one way or other, is the true cause of all the trouble, anguish, and despair, that is incident to the mind of man. Every tear springs from this fountain. Every thought of terror and distrust issues from sin, as from its first occasion and original. But now these troubles and despairs about the main issues of a man's future happiness being very irksome, and contrary to the heart's content, a man is willing to gratify his heart so far, as to endeavour their removal, by winking at sin that is their cause. Hence it is, that men hold fast their confidence of life, though they walk in the ways of death: for they studiously cast a mist before their own eyes, that they may go on securely, and not be forced to see that, which, being seen, would certainly constrain them to lay down their hopes. Sin rightly apprehended would quickly confound all their comforts, dash their peace and security, and lay their fairest confidence in the dust.

Wherefore the hypocrite, to establish his heart in hope, labours with all his might, and casts about,

to relieve his conscience with such easy conceptions of sin, as may not at all grate or fall foul upon his comforts. He cannot persuade himself, that that can be so heinous and dreadful, that is committed with so much facility. Many are apt to look upon actual, as some do upon original sin, not as the error, but as the condition of their nature. Love to sin naturally covers all its deformities.

And first for the nature of sin in general, as stript of all its circumstances and particularities. The hypocrite does not look upon it in its native filth, as contrary to the infinite purity of God's nature and his law, as leaving an everlasting, indelible stain upon the conscience; no, nor yet in its dangerous effects, as dooming the sinner to all the curses that an infinite wrath can inflict: but because punishment is only threatened while pleasure is presented, the colour of the serpent covers his poison, the danger is overlooked, and the proffer accepted, and so the pardon of sin is counted as easy as the commission.

And from this undervaluing of the nature of sin in general, he quickly passes into a cursed extenuation of particulars. Some indeed hold and maintain a distinction of sins into mortal and venial; calling those mortal, that for their greatness and enormity deserve death; and those venial, that for their smallness naturally deserve pardon: which distinction as some assert in doctrine, so all hypocrites own in practice, and it is the inward language of all their hearts. For though perhaps they may strain at camels, yet they can easily swallow gnats; though blasphemies, thefts, and murders may be shunned, yet sinful, impure thoughts, words, and desires are passed over by the hypocrite, not only without re