coveries of new lights of spiritual mysteries; when these, I say, have
flattered themselves for a season, in the monstrous exorbitant conceit of
their own perfection, and immunity from sin, and, it may be, deceived some
others too, when they have lived some time in this golden dream of
innocency, the time will come, either when the mighty hand of God is on
them here, or when they must enter eternity, that they shall awake, and
find all their iniquities in battle array, mustered by the Lord of hosts,
in their conscience against themselves, and then they shall be the rarest
examples of fear, terror, and unbelief who pretended to the greatest
confidence, clearness, and innocency. My beloved, let us establish this as
an infallible rule, to discern the spirits by, and to know what religion
is,--if it tend to glorify God, and abase man, to make him more humble, as
well as holy,--if it give the true and perfect discovery of God to man, and
of man to himself,--that is true religion and undefiled. But away with
those sublime speculations, those winged and airy mysteries, those
pretensions to high discoveries and new lights, if they do not increase
that good old light of "humble walking with thy God" &c. If they tend to
the loosing of the obligation of divine commands on thee, if they ravish
man so high that he seeth not himself any more to be a poor, miserable,
and darkened creature, certainly that is no fellowship with the pure
light, which is not continually the discovery and further manifestation of
more sin and darkness in us. For what is a man's light in the dark night
of this life, but the clearing light of that darkness that is in man? And
his holiness what is it, but the abhorring of himself for that? It is
true, something further is attained than the knowing of this, but it is
always so far short of that original pattern that the best way of
expressing our conformity to it, is by how much we apprehend our distance
and deformity from it.

But, my beloved, this is not all that is here meant, nor must we take it
so grossly, as if this did only check the open professors of a sinless,
spotless sanctity. Nay, certainly, there is another way of saying this
than by the tongue and many other ways of self deceiving than that gross
one, many more universal and more dangerous, because less discernible.
There is something of this that even true believers may fall into, and
there is something of it more common to the generality of prof