ble thing in the
world, that is, the sins of other men, for ordinarily the seeing and
speaking of them doth rather dispose us and incline us to more liberty to
sin. Many look on them with delight, some with contempt and hatred of
those that commit them, but few know how to speak or look on sin itself
with indignation, or themselves, because of the seeds of it within them,
with abhorrency. I would think if we were circumspect in this, the worse
the world is, we might be the better, the worse the times are, we might
spend it better, the more pride we see, it might make us the more humble,
the more impiety and impurity abound, it might provoke us to a further
distance from, and disconformity with, the world. Thus, if we were wise,
we might extract gold out of the dunghill, and suck honey out of the most
poisonable weed. The surrounding ignorance and wickedness of the world
might cause a holy antiperistasis(194) in a Christian, by making the grace
of God unite itself, and work more powerfully, as fire out of a cloud, and
shine more brightly, as a torch in the darkness of the night.

As for you, whose woful estate is here described, who are yet in the
flesh, and enemies to God by nature, I would desire you to be stirred up
at the consideration of this, that there are some who are delivered out of
that prison, and that some have made peace with God, and are no more
enemies but friends, and fellow citizens of the saints. If the case were
left wholly incurable and desperate, you had some ground to continue in
your sins and security, but now when you hear a remedy is possible, and
some have been helped by it, I wonder that you do not, upon this door of
hope offered, bestir yourselves, that you may be those who are here
excepted, "but you are not in the flesh." Since some are, why may not I
be? Will you awake yourselves with this alarm! If you had any desire after
this estate, certainly such a hope as this would give you feet to come to
Jesus Christ, for these are the legs of the soul,--some desire of a better
estate, and some probability of it conceived by hope.

Sermon XXIV.

Verse 9.--"If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any
man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."

"But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth?" 2 Chron. vi. 18.
It was the wonder of one of the wisest of men, and indeed, considering his
infinite highness above the height of heavens, his immense and
i