One calls it a metropolitan sin: it doth twist a great many sins in with it. There is hardly any sin, but covetousness is a main ingredient in it; and yet you are like the two daughters of the Horse-leech, which cry, Give, give.

How much have you heard against rash anger? That it is a short phrenzy, a dry drunkenness; that it rests in the bosom of fools; and, upon the least occasion, do your spirits begin to take fire. How much have you heard against swearing?* It is Christ's express mandate, Swear not at all, Matt. v. 34. This sin, of all others, may be termed, The unfruitful work of darkness, Eph. v. 11. It is neither sweetened with pleasure, nor enriched with profit, the usual vermilion wherewith Satin doth paint sin. Swearing is forbidden with a subpoena. While the swearer shoots his oaths, like flying arrows, at God, to pierce his glory, God shoots a flying roll of curses against him, (Zech. v. 2, 3.) and do you make your tongue a rocket, by which you toss oaths as tennis-balls? Do you sport yourselves with oaths, as the Philistines did with Samson, which will at last pull the house about your ears? Alas! how have they learned what sin is, that have not yet learned to leave sin? Doth he know what a viper is, that plays with it?

* Swearing makes men appear more like the devil than any other sin, because it is the breathing of a Satanical spirit, and if not repented of, and resisted, will exclude a man from the kingdom of heaven.

2. You have heard much of Christ. Have you learned Christ? The Jews, as one saith, carried Christ in their Bibles, but not in their hearts, (Rom. xiv.) their sound went into all the earth, Rom. x. 18. The Prophets and Apostles were as trumpets, whose sound went abroad into the world; yet many thousands, who heard the noise of these trumpets, had not learned Christ. They have not all obeyed, verse 16.

1. A man may know much of Christ, and yet not learn Christ. The devils knew Christ, Matt. viii. 29.

2. A man may preach Christ, and yet not learn Christ as Judas.

3. A man may profess Christ and yet not learn Christ. There are many professors in the world that Christ will profess against, Matt. vii. 22, 23.

QUEST. What is it then to learn Christ?

ANSW. 1. To learn Christ is, to be made like Christ, when the divine characters of his holiness are engraven upon our hearts. "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image," 2 Cor. iii. 18. There is a transformation. A sinner, viewing Christ's image in the glass of the Gospel, is transformed into that image. Never did any man look upon Christ with a spiritual eye, but went away quite changed. A true saint is a divine landscape, or picture, where all the rare beauties of Christ are lively pourtrayed and drawn

forth. He hath the same spirit, the same judgment, the same will, with Jesus Christ.

2. To learn Christ, is to believe him to be my Lord and my God, (John, xx. 28.) which is the actual application of Christ to ourselves; and, as it were, the spreading of the sacred medicine of his blood upon our soul. You, that have heard much of Christ, and yet cannot, with an humble adherence, say, my and my God, be not offended if I tell you, the devil can say his creed as well as you.

Jesus

3. To learn Christ, is to live to Christ.* When we have Bible-conversations, our lives, as rich diamonds, cast a sparkling lustre in the church of God; (Phil. i. 27.) and are, in some sense, parallel with the life of Christ, as the transcript with the original. So much for the first sentiment in the text.

CHAP. III.

Containing the Second Proposition.

II. THIS word I have learned, is a word importing difficulty. It shews how hardly the Apostle came by his contentment of mind. St. Paul did not come naturally by it, but he

* We should live in the daily practice of examining ourselves, whether our lives correspond with the life of the meek and lowly Jesus, and to let our conversation be such as becomes the Gospel.

had learned it. It cost him many a prayer and tear-it was taught him by the Spirit of God.

From whence we may learn that, 2. Good things are hard to come by. The business of religion is not so easy as most do imagine. I have learned, saith St. Paul. Indeed, you need not learn a man to sin. This is natural, (Psal. lviii.) and therefore easy: it comes as water out of a spring. It is an easy thing to be wicked: hell will be taken without storm, but matter of religion must be learned. To cut the flesh is easy; but to prick a vein, and not to cut an artery, is hard. The trade of sin needs not to be learned; but Divine Contentment is not achieved without holy industry. I have learned.

There are two pregnant reasons why there must be so much study and exercise.

1. Because spiritual things are against nature. Every thing in religion is antipodes to nature. There are, in religion, two things: faith, and practice; and both are against nature. 1. Faith, or matters of faith; as, for a man to be justified by the righteousness of another; to become a fool, that he may be wise to save all, by losing all-this is against nature. 2. Matters of practice. As, 1. Selfdenial; for a man to deny his own wisdom, and see himself blind; his own will, and have it melted into the will of God; plucking out the right eye, beheading and crucifying that sin, which is the favourite, and lies nearest to

the heart for a man to be dead to the world; and, in the midst of want, to abound: for a man to take up the cross, and follow Christ, not only in golden, but bloody paths; to embrace religion, when it is dressed in its nightclothes, all the jewels of honour and preferment being pulled off. This is against nature; and, therefore, must be learned. 2. Self-examination: for a man to take his heart, as a watch, all in pieces; to set up a spiritual inquisition, or court of conscience, and traverse things in his own soul; to take David's candle and lanthorn, (Psal, cxix. 105.) and search for sin; nay, as judge, to pass the sentence upon himself, 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. This is against nature, and will not easily be attained to without learning. 3. Self-reformation. To see a man, as Caleb, of another spirit, walking antipodes to himself, the current of his life altered, and running into the channel of religion-this is wholly against nature. When a stone ascends, it is not a natural motion, but a violent; the motion of the soul heaven-ward, is a violent motion-it must be learned. Flesh and blood is not skilled in these things. Nature can no more cast out Nature, than Satan can cast out Satan.

2. Because spiritual things are above nature. There are some things in nature, that are hard to find out, as the causes of things, which are not learnt without study. Aristotle, a great philosopher, whom some have