APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN HELMET, ALIKE TO THOSE WHO HAVE, AND TO THOSE WHO HAVE IT NOT 3/3

           But may be thou hast more yet to say for thyself than this comes to.  Thou art not only a knowing per­son but a reformed also; the pollutions in which once thou layest, now thou hast escaped; yea, thy reformation is embellished and set forth with a very gaudy profession of religion, both which have gained thee a very high opinion in the thoughts of all thy neigh­bours; so that if heaven might be carried by thy hands, thou couldst haply have a testimonial for thy unblam­able and saint-like behaviour among them; yet, let me tell thee, if thou meanest to be faithful to thy own soul, thou must not rest in their charitable opinion of thee, nor judge of thy hopes for heaven by what comes under their cognizance, to wit, the behaviour of thy outward man—for further their eye and observation reacheth not—but art to look inward to thy own bos­om, and inquire what spring thou canst find thereto have been the cause of this change and new motion that hath appeared in thy external conversation.  This, and this alone, must decide the controversy, and bring thy thoughts to an issue, what to judge of thy hope, whether spurious or legitimate.  It is not a new face that colours our outward behaviour, but a new principle that changeth the frame of the heart within, will evince thy hope to be good and genuine. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope,’ I Peter 1:3.  The new birth entitles to a new hope. If the soul be dead, the hope cannot be alive.  And the soul may be dead, and yet put into a very handsome dress of external reformation and profession, as well as a dead body may be clad with rich clothes.  A beggar’s son got into the clothes of a rich man’s child, may as well hope to be heir to the rich man's land, as thou, by an external reformation and profession, to be God's heir in glory. The child's hopes are from his own father, not from a stranger.  Now, while thou art in a natural estate —though never so finished—old Adam is thy father; and what canst thou hope from him who proved worse than nought, and left his poor posterity noth­ing, except we should put a crazy mortal body, a sinful nature, and a fearful expectation of death tem­poral and eternal from the wrathful hand of a pro­voked God—which indeed he left all his children —into his inventory?  O sirs, how can you give way that any sleep should fall upon your eyes, till you get into this relation to God!  Hannah was a woman of a bitter spirit till she got a child from God; and hast not thou more reason to be so, till thou canst get to be a child of God?  Better a thousand times over that thou shouldst die childless than fatherless; my meaning is, that thou shouldst leave no child to inherit thy estate on earth, than to have no father to give thee an inher­itance in heaven when thou art taken hence.