every Prayer, with full Affurance of obtaining Mercy. So the Apostle, Heb. 10. 22. Let us draw near in full Affurance of Faith, having our Hearts Sprinkled from an evil ConScience. And a like parallel Place we have, 1 John 3.21. Beloved, if our Heart condemn us not, then have we Confidence towards God. When the Face of a Man's Conscience looks chearfully, not a Frown, nor a Wrinkle upon it, this makes us joyfully apprehend that God's Face towards us is ferene alfo, and that we shall at all Times be welcome into our Father's Prefence.

4thly. A clear Confcience is the fweetest Bofom Friend, with which we may at all Times freely converse. Wicked Men, indeed, of all Company in the World, dread and hate themselves moft. They have a lowring, brawling Confcience within, that always threatens and difquiets them; and therefore they love to keep Abroad. Soliloquies, and Heart-Difcourfes, are Torments to them; and they wonder at the Pfalmift for bidding them, Commune with their own Hearts, and be still, Pfal. 4.4. They are never less ftill, than when they difcourfe a while with their own Confciences; which upon many high Provocations given them, are grown fo quarrel fome, and do fo thunder out Woes and Curfes

against

against them, and fo hurl about Swords, Firebrands and Death, that they dare not fo much as once look within Doors. Oh, but a Chriftian whofe Confcience is clean and clear, finds it the beft Companion in the World! In his Solitudes and Retirements, with what Delight doth he call his own Heart afide? There is he, and his God, fweetly and peaceably conferring together, and pafs mutual Indearments and Embraces. The Soul embraces and clafps about God, with the Arms of Faith and Dependance; and God embraceth the Soul with the Arms of his everlasting Love. Here is mutual Communication of Secrets: The Soul unlocks the Secrets of its own Confcience before God; and God again reyeals the Secrets of his own Love to the Soul. Here are mutual Rejoycings; the Soul rejoyceth in God its Saviour, and God rejoyceth over the Soul to do it good. And under these Intercourfes of Love and Favour, 'tis ready to faint away, and to dif folve with Sweetness and Delight. This is that continual Feast, which a good Confcience entertains a Chriftian with, where all is tranfacted with a noiseless Mirth.

5thly. A clear Confcience is the best Comfort, when Fear, and Trouble, and Danger, is on every Side. 'Tis a most

bleffed

bleffed Thing when Trouble is without, to have Peace within, in our own Bofom; To be then at Peace with God and our felves. And therefore faith Chrift, John 16. 33. Thefe Things I have Spoken unto you, that in me ye might have Peace. In the World you shall have Tribulation. A Christian is a Man made up of Paradoxes ; he is forrowful, yet always rejoycing; poor himself, and yet enriching many he hath nothing, and yet poffeffeth all Things; 2 Cor. 6. 10.

And fo

here, he hath Tribulation in the World, and yet is at Peace. When once that great and bloody Quarrel between God and the Soul, is taken up and compounded; when we are reconciled to God, and our Confciences to us, all the Enmity and Perfecutions of the World are but little pelting Differences, which cannot disturb the folid and inviolate Peace of a Chriftian. This is a Peace, which as the Friendship of the World cannot give fo neither can the Enmity of the World take away. 'Tis obfervable concerning Jofiah, 2 Kings 22. 20. God promifeth him by the Mouth of Huldah the Prophetels, that he should be gathered into his Grave in Peace: And yet in the very next Chapter, Ver. 29. 'tis related, that

he

he was flain in the Wars that he undertook against Pharaoh-nechoh King of Egypt. He was flain in War, and yet he died in Peace; and no Wonder, for whofoever dies in Peace with God, and his own Conscience, dies peaceably, though he die in the midst of Wars and Tumults.

6thly. A clear Confcience affords fweet Comforts in a dying Hour. When all Things must take their last Leave of us, and we of them; when Death fets all its Terrours in array against us; Oh what a bleffed Support will it then be to the departing Soul, to be able to make its Appeal, as Hezekiah did! Ifa. 38. 3. Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in Truth, and with a perfect Heart, and have done that which is right in thy Sight. Such a Testimony, at such a Time, is as much worth as Heaven it felf. This is to have Heaven let down into us one Hour, and to be our felves taken into Heaven the next. Now poffibly Men may frolick away their Days in Sin and Vanity, and live as though they were unaccountable; but that Day and Hour is coming, wherein Confcience will begin to open its Eyes, when their Friends ftand ready about them to close up theirs : And then it will fee thofe horrid Shapes

up

of

of Death, and Hell, and Wrath eternal fuch as while they were fecure Sinners, they never believed; and now that they are awakened Sinners, (and, alas! poffibly too late awakened) they cannot escape. If therefore you would have Peace and Comfort in Death, be fure you cherish a good Confcience in your Life. You may now, indeed, bribe it to give in a false and flattering Teftimony; but when Eternity is in View, it will then fpeak Truth. And, Oh! thrice happy they, to whom a true Confcience becomes then an excusing Confcience.

[To be inferted in the Sermon, concerning the Ufe of the Scriptures: Folio, p. 714. at the End of the first Paragraph.]

UT to fay, That therefore we must

Bur

not read the Scriptures, becaufe fome wreft it to their own Perdition; is alike reasonable as to fay, That therefore we must not eat nor drink, becaufe that fome eat to Gluttony, and others drink to Giddinefs and Madness. The Apostle St. Peter tells us, Epift. 2. Chap. 3. Ver. 16. that in St. Paul's Epiftles there were fome Things hard to be understood, which the

Unlearned