t so subtile, but it may soon be discerned; your lie is gross, and
quickly seen through. But I would turn myself to you Christians, who are
in some measure acquainted with yourselves, yet there is something against
you from this word. After ye have once got some peace from the challenge
of sin, and hope of pardon, you many times fall out of acquaintance with
yourselves. Having attained, by the Lord's grace, to some restraint of the
more visible outbreakings of sin, you have not that occasion to know
yourselves by, and so you remain strangers to your hearts, and fall into
better liking with yourselves, than the first sight of yourselves
permitted you. Now, my beloved in the Lord, herein you are to be blamed,
that you do not rather go to the fountain, and there behold the streams,
than only to behold the fountain in the streams. You ought rather, upon
the Lord's testimony of man, to believe what is in you, before you find
it, and see it breaking out; and keep this character continually in your
sight, which will be more powerful to humble you than many outbreakings. I
think we should be so well acquainted with our own natures, as to account
nothing strange to them that we see abroad, but rather think all the
grossness and wickedness of men suitable and correspondent to our
spirits,--to that root of bitterness that is in them. The goodness of God
in restraining the appearance of that in us, which is within us in
reality, should rather increase the sense of our own wickedness, than
diminish it in our view.

Indeed, self love is that which blinds us, and bemists us in the sight of
ourselves. We look upon ourselves through this false medium, and it
represents all things more beautiful than they are, and therefore the
apostle hath reason to say, "We deceive ourselves, and we make God a
liar." O how much practical self-conceit is there in the application of
truth! There are many errors contrary to the truths themselves, and many
deceivers and deceived, who spread them, but I believe there are more
errors committed by men in the application of truths to their own hearts,
than in the contemplation of them, and more self deceiving than deceiving
of others. It is strange to think, how sound, and clear, and distinct a
man's judgment will be against those evils in others, which yet he seeth
not in himself, how many Christians will be able to decipher the nature of
some vices, and unbowel the evils of them, and be quick-sighted to espy