Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/204

 192

and unsoundnesse of our heart and life, we must take up our selves for halting, bewaile it with shame and sorrow, stirre up our selves to more uprightnesse and sincerity, and fly unto God by hearty prayer to be established and confirmed. Though there may be some reliques of hypocrisie in a good man, yet the nature of halting is, it will goe quite out of the way if it be not healed. And make straight steps unto your feet, least that which is halting be turned out of the way. Ah, the frowardnesse of my heart, how crooked have my wayes been in the sight of the Lord? I have regarded vanity, doted upon transitory pleasures and profits, undervalued the true treasure. The streames of mine affections have been driven with full saile to that which is little worth; but ebbe to what they should covet above measure. My whole soule, all that is within me, should have looked continually upon God, and my conversation directed towards him: but my thoughts, desires, affections, words and actions have looked ordinarily, very often, another way. How farre am I from that truth which God requires in the inward parts? what a masse of wicked fraud and deceit is heaped and piled up within me? what rottennesse doth lodge still in my breast? what am I but a shop of lies and vanities? Easier it is a great deale to know the number of my haires, then the running motions of my heart and affections. Oh, the blind corners, the secret turnings and windings, the close lurking holes that are therein: upon examination I have found a world of falshood in my soul, more then ever I suspected or imagined. My cogitations are vaine, if not wicked and ungodly, mine affections unsound, mine aimes indirect, my course of life palpably grosse in dissimulation before God, and towards men. If the members of my body were crooked and deformed; my mouth, face, eyes drawne awry or squint; if one part did swell, another wither and pine away; I should esteeme it an heavy crosse. But the distemper of the soule is much more dangerous, as the safety of the soule is more precious then of the body. If in a journey I chance to strike out of the way, or fetch compasse about, when I might have gone a shorter cut, how am I grieved at my ignorance, that I knew not, or negligence, that I enquired not the right way in time? But in the course of Christianity I have turned aside, and stepped out of the right path to my great losse and prejudice. Did I stand convicted before men for some notorious coozener or deceiver, I could not