SERMON XLIV.

JOB Viii. 13.

The hypocrite's hope shall perish.

I FORMERLY made an entrance upon these words, in which, after some brief explication of the terms, I shewed that they naturally cast themselves into these two propositions.

I. That even an hypocrite may proceed so far, as to entertain hopes and expectations of a future happiness.

II. That the hypocrite's fairest and most promising expectation of a future blessedness would in the end vanish into miserable disappointment.

For the first of these, I cast the prosecution of it under these three heads.

1. To prove that an hypocrite may and does entertain such hopes.

2. To shew by what ways and means he comes first to obtain them.

3. And lastly, to shew how he continues and preserves them.

For the first, That an hypocrite may and does entertain such hopes: I proved it by two reasons, the first of which was taken from the nature of man's mind, which was vehement and restless in its pursuit after a suitable good, and accordingly was put to seek out for a good that might bear proportion to both its conditions; that is, both a present and a fu

ture and a present good it takes in by actual possession, and a future only by its hopes.

2. The second reason was taken from that peace and tranquillity of mind that even hypocrites enjoy; which are the certain effects, and therefore the infallible signs of some hope abiding in the mind.

As for the next thing, which was to shew by what ways and means the hypocrite comes first to obtain this hope:

I mentioned four.

1st, By his misunderstanding of God, especially in his two great attributes, his justice and his mercy. 2dly, His misapprehending of sin. 3dly, By his ignorance of the spiritual rigour and strictness of the gospel. And 4thly, By his mistakes about the nature of repentance, faith, and conversion.

These things I then insisted upon at large, and so far I have gone; and I shall not prevent myself in what remains by any further repetitions; but shall now proceed to the third and last thing proposed for the prosecution of the first proposition, which was to shew by what ways and means the hypocrite preserves and continues this false hope. And here we must observe, that those methods by which he first gets it have in them also a natural fitness to continue, cherish, and foment it: the same thing being usually the producing and the preserving cause; as the parent that begot the child will also foster and maintain it.

But I shall instance in three ways more especially, by which the hypocrite keeps up and continues those hopes, which upon the former false grounds he took up.

1. The first is, by keeping up a course of external

obedience, and abstaining from gross, scandalous sins. Now the hypocrite's confidence having no reality or ground in being, but only an imaginary foundation in his own apprehensions, it concerns him by all means to keep fair with conscience; forasmuch as that has the keeping of, and the power over all his contents. And it is withal of a lively, active nature, apt to discern sin, and apt to pursue and vex the soul for it; it will be flying in a man's face, if not pacified, or at least deluded, by some seeming pursuit of religion. It is to the soul as the disease called the wolf to the body; if it be not continually fed, it will gnaw and prey upon the body itself, devour and consume the flesh. So if conscience be not gratified by some outward services, it will recoil upon the soul, and with much rage and bitterness torment and feed upon that.

Wherefore the hypocrite, that his conscience may not pass the condemning sentence upon him, will be often bribing it with some specious outward performances: and that he may pacify it, his chief work and business must be to possess it with this persuasion, that he is in a state of grace: which being that, which the scripture in other words calls spiritual life, it does by consequence imply in it two things; first, the principle and fountain of this life, which is faith and this the hypocrite thinks himself endued with, from his forementioned mistakes about conversion. The second is the acting and exercise of this principle, which is called gospel obedience; and of this the hypocrite must endeavour to assure himself by his behaviour, in the continued tract and course of his life. Hereupon he is careful to conform himself to the exact letter of the law, and not to pursue

those practices that carry in them an open, barefaced opposition to it. And so long as he does this, his conscience is silent, and his hope continues.

The young man in the gospel was a pregnant instance of this, who, reflecting upon his strict and unblameable conversation according to the several precepts of the law, vaunted himself in that confident reply to Christ in Matth. xix. 20, All these things have I kept from my youth. See St. Paul also before his conversion: questionless his hopes of heaven were as full and fair, as large and promising, as his heart could desire, and the foundation of them all (as we may collect from his own writings) was only his external conformity to the words of the law. Philipp. iii. 6, Touching the righteousness (says he) that is in the law, I was blameless. That is, according to the doctrine of the pharisees, of which sect he was, he placed a legal righteousness in abstaining from those external commissions of sin, that were prohibited in the letter of the law, and in the performance of those outward acts of duty that were there enjoined: whereupon, leading his conversation in an accurate observance of the outward letter, he pronounces himself blameless; and therefore, doubtless, while he thought himself thus blameless, he had all those hopes of happiness that it is natural for a person, that thinks himself blameless, to entertain. And that he gathered this opinion of himself and of his condition only from his fulfilling the outward letter, without insisting upon the inward, spiritual, stricter part of it, is clear and manifest from Rom. vii. 7, I had not known sin (says he) but by the law : for I had not known lust, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. In which words he considers

the law not barely according to the letter, but according to the spiritual scope and intention of it: and though the law taken in the former sense did acquit and absolve, yet in this latter sense it did condemn him. And the reason is, because the law considered in the letter did only regulate external actions: but, thus considered, it was a searcher into, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and consequently did arraign the very desires of sin, the first risings and movings of concupiscence.

Now that this external obedience to the law, and refraining from gross, notorious sins, is a singular preservative of the hypocrite's hope, and a strong maintainer of his confidence, as it has been sufficiently proved by these scripture-instances; so the same is yet further manifest from that strange method that God has sometimes used for the conversion of formal hypocrites. He has let them fall into some gross, open, scandalous sin, the cry of which has exceedingly troubled and disquieted them, and beat them out of all those refuges of hope, which the former civility of their conversation had afforded them. Whereupon, being utterly bereaved of their confidence, God has took this occasion to let into their hearts a full sense of all their sins, even so far as to discover and rip open to them their sinful nature, their original corruption, and thereby to convert and cause them to repair to Christ, and by a lively faith cast all their hopes upon his satisfaction. And no doubt but it was upon this account that our Saviour said, that the publicans and harlots, persons of scandalous lives and prostitute reputations, yet went to heaven sooner than those glorious but rotten coun

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