be so far unacquainted with it, as to pass an unrighteous judgment on themselves, and condemn themselves when God hath justified them.

you

But, 1. To be continually ignorant of the excellency and capacity of your immortal souls. 2. To be void of an effectual knowledge of your sin and misery, and need of the remedy. 3. To think have saving grace, when you have none; that you are regenerate by the Spirit, when you are only sacramentally regenerate by baptism; that you are the members of Christ, when it is no such matter; that you are justified, adopted, and the heirs of heaven, when it is not so; all this is doleful and damnable unacquaintedness with yourselves.

To be unacquainted with a state of grace, when you are in such a state, is sad and troublesome, and brings many and great inconveniences. But to be unacquainted with a state of death, when you are in it, doth fasten your chains, and hinder your recovery. To be willing and diligent to know your state, and yet be unable to attain to assurance and satisfaction, is common to many true believers; but to be ignorant of it because you have no grace to find, and because you mind not the matters of your souls, or think it not worth your diligent consideration or inquiry, this is the case of the miserable despisers of salvation.

new man.

CHAPTER II.

The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance.

1. ATHEISM is cherished by self-ignorance. The knowledge of ourselves as men, doth greatly conduce to our knowledge of God. Here God is known but darkly, and as in a glass, and by his image, and not as face to face. And, except his incarnate and his written Word, what glass revealeth him so clearly as the soul of man? We bear a double image of our Maker: his natural image in the nature of our faculties; and his moral image in their holy qualifications, in the nature of grace, and frame of the By knowing ourselves, it is easy to know that there is a God; and it much assisteth us to know what he is, not only in his attributes and relations, but even in the Trinity itself. He may easily know that there is a primitive being and life that knoweth he hath himself a derived being and life. He must know that there is a Creator, that knoweth he is a creature. He that findeth a capacious intellect, a will and power in the creature, and that is conscious of any wisdom and goodness in himself, may well know that all these are infinite in the first cause that must thus have in itself whatsoever it doth communicate. He that knoweth that he made not, and preserveth not himself, may well know that he is not his own, but his that made him and preserveth him, who must needs be his absolute Proprietor and Lord. He that knoweth that he is

an intellectual moral agent, and therefore can act morally, and is moved by moral means; and that he is a social creature, a member of the universe, living among men, may well be sure, that he is made to be a subject, and governed by laws, and by moral means to be directed and moved to his end; and, therefore, that none but his absolute Lord, the Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, can be his absolute and highest sovereign. He that is convinced that he is, he lives, he hopeth, and enjoyeth all that is good, from a superior bounty, may be sure that God is his principal Benefactor. And to be, 'The first and infinite being, intellect, will, power, wisdom, goodness, and cause, of all things; the absolute Owner, the most righteous Governor, and the most bounteous Benefactor,' is to be God. This being the description of Him that is so called; such a description as is fetched from his created image, man, and expressed in the terms that himself hath chosen, and used in his word, as knowing that if he will be understood by man, he must use the notions and expressions of man; and though these are spoken but analogically of God, yet are there no fitter conceptions of him that the soul of man, in flesh, is capable of. So that the atheist carrieth about him that impress and evidence of the Deity, which may convince him, or condemn him for his foolishness and impiety. deed, that "saith in his heart when that heart itself, in its being, and life, and motion, is his witness; and soul and body, with all their faculties, are nothing but the effects of this Almighty Cause. And when they prove that there

He is a fool, inthere is no God,"

is a God, even by questioning or denying it, being unable, without him, so much as to deny him; that is, to think, or speak, or be. As if a fool should write a volume, to prove that there is no ink or paper in the world, when it is ink and paper by which he writes.

And whether there be no representation of the Trinity in unity in the nature of man, let them judge that have well considered, how in one body there are the natural, vital, and animal parts, and spirits; and in one life or soul, there are the vegetative, sensitive, and rational faculties; and in one rational soul as such, there are an intellect, will, and executive power, morally perfected by wisdom, goodness, and promptitude to well-doing. As in one

sun there are light and heat, and moving force.

So

that man is both the beholder and the glass; the reader and the book; he is the index of the Godhead to himself; yea, partly of the Trinity in unity. We need not say, Who shall go up into heaven? Saith Seneca himself, by the light of nature, "God is nigh us; with us; within us; a holy Spirit resideth within us; the observer of our evil and good, and our preserver; he useth us as he is used by us; no good man is without God." Saith Augustine, "God is in himself as the Alpha and Omega; in the world as its governor and author: in angels, as their sweetness and comeliness; in the church, as the master of the family in his house; in the soul, as the bridegroom in his bed-chamber; in the righteous, as their helper and protector," &c. and as all declareth him, so all should praise him."Let the mind be exercised in loving him, the tongue

in singing him, the hand in writing him; let these holy studies be the believer's work."

2. He that knoweth himself, may certainly know that there is another life of happiness or misery for man, when this is ended. For he must needs know, that his soul is capable of a spiritual and glorious felicity with God, and of immaterial objects, and that time is as nothing to it, and transitory creatures afford it no satisfaction or rest; and that the hopes and fears of the life to come, are the divine engines, by which the moral government of the world is carried on; and that the very nature of man is such, as that, without such apprehensions, hopes, and fears, he could not, in a connatural way, be governed, and brought to the end, to which his nature is inclined and adapted; but the world would be as a wilderness, and men as brutes. And he may well know that God made not such faculties in vain, nor suited them to an end which cannot be attained, nor to a work which would prove but their trouble and deceit; he may be sure that a mere probability or possibility of an everlasting life, should engage a reasonable creature in all possible diligence, in piety and righteousness, and charity to attain it: and so religious and holy endeavours become the duty of man as man; there being few such infidels or atheists to be found on earth, as dare say, they are sure there is no other life for man; and, doubtless, whatsoever is by nature and reason made man's duty, is not delusory and vain: nor is it reasonable to think that falsehood, frustration, and deceit, are the ordinary way by which mankind is governed by the most wise and holy God. So that, the end of man