terpreter of the mind, and the actions of a man's life the interpreter
of his tongue? Here is that beautiful proportion, and that pleasing
harmony, when all these, though different in their own nature, yet conjoin
together, and make up one sweet concord. Now truly, if we take upon us the
profession of Christianity, and yet our ordinary and habitual speeches are
carnal and earthly, never salted with grace, often poisoned with
blasphemies, oaths, and cursings, and often defiled with filthy speeches,
and often intermingled with reproaches of others, if our conversation be
conformed to the course of the world, according to those lusts that hurry
away multitudes of mankind to perdition, and look to the heart within, and
behold never any labour about the purifying of it from corruption, never
any mortification of evil affections, and little or no knowledge of the
truth, not so much as may let Christ into the soul: this, I say, is as
unreasonable and absurd, as it is irreligious: It wholly perverts that
beautiful order, makes an irreconcilable discord between all the parts in
man, that neither mind, nor mouth, nor hands, answer one another, nor all
of them, nor any of them answer that holy calling a man pretends to. Such
a one pretends ordinarily the goodness of his heart towards God, but now
the tongue cannot interpret the heart. It is exauctorated out of that
natural office, for the ordinary current is contrary to that pretended
goodness of the heart, for "a good man, out of the good treasure of his
heart, sendeth forth good things," but all these are either evil, or never
seasoned with that spiritual goodness. Then the ways and actions of a
man's life which ought to interpret and expound his professions, these are
rendered altogether incapable of that. They give no confirmation to them,
but rather a manifest contradiction, for what are your multiplied oaths,
drunkennesses, fornications, railings, contentions, lyings,
sabbath-profanations, your woful neglect of prayer in secret, and in your
families, your continuing in these evils that ever you walked into? What
are they, I say, but a manifest violation of both religion and reason, and
a clear confirmation that ye are liars, and the truth is not in you?

There is something even in nature to declare the absurdity and
unnaturalness of this general discordance between men's profession and
practice. Look upon all the creatures, and do they not all with one voice
proclaim sincerity