Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/199

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It is truly said, the heart can never be sincere, till it be humbled and broken, and brought to abasement and deniall of it selfe: and what means hath God ordained so effectuall, as his word to worke this humiliation of spirit? Is not this the hammer which breaketh the stone? Is not this that which pricketh the heart, and maketh it to melt, and sometimes wringeth teares from the eyes of them that heare it? Besides, what hope that ever any mans disease of a false heart should be cured, untill he be brought to the sight of it? Who seeks for health, till he know himselfe to be diseased? And shall ever any man be brought to the understanding of his defect in this, untill he hath been made to see it by the word? What health is to the body, that truth and uprightnes is to the soul: now bodily health ariseth from the seed, is preserved by sound and good diet: But the word of truth is the wholsome food, wherby the soul is nourished. The word is a word of uprightnesse or rectitude, and when it is well learned, and throughly digested, safe lodged, and close applied, it doth season and regulate the heart and affections, and change them into the nature of it. If we bind our crooked affections close to the word of truth, they will become strait, agreeable unto the word, whereunto they are bowed. And the same word truly embraced, doth enflame the heart with a fervent desire to walke with God in all duties of holinesse and righteousnesse.

2. Thornie cares, vaine pleasures, sinfull delights must be stocked up and digged out of the heart. Weeds will grow of themselves, if the roots be not plucked up, good corne requireth tillage and sowing both. Perversenesse is naturall to man corrupt and sinfull, and will encrease of it selfe: but uprightnesse will not prosper, if the fallow ground of the heart be not ploughed, and the rootes of worldlinesse and voluptuousnesse killed in them. If the world be our treasure, our heart cannot be true and upright with God, for where our treasure is, there will our hearts be.

3. A third meanes is to possesse our hearts with this, and to have it ever in our thoughts, that in all things, especially in matters of Religion, we have to doe with God, and are ever in his sight and presence. In our common daily duties to labour thus to performe them with our heart, as in the sight of God, to his glorie, is a ready way to get this grace of truth deeply rooted. It is