SERMONS. 383 



is taught us only by the statutes of Omri, or at 

 Caesar's judgment-seat, will never come up to 

 what the perfect law of God requires. While we 

 are under this lower and external discipline only, 

 if we can but skulk and shift, and play least in 

 sight, and seem to be righteous, though we are 

 not so ; recti in curia, though not upright in heart: 

 or if we be discovered and impleaded too, if we 

 can, whether by power or artifice, break through 

 the venerable cobweb, and run under the miserable 

 shelter of a temporal indemnity at these lower 

 bars ; why, all is well : with * Solomon's wanton 

 we wipe our mouths, and are suddenly very vir- 

 gins again, not only safe, but innocent too. But, 

 though human laws exact only outward compli- 

 ances, assume not to themselves to judge the 

 heart, because they cannot discern it, nor take 

 cognizance of secret thoughts and purposes, fur- 

 ther than they are declared by overt acts : yet 

 God is a spirit, and a discerner of the inmost 

 thoughts and intentions ; and his law spiritual 

 too, and given to the spirit ; and the righteousness 

 tauo'ht m his school is not a carcass, nor an out- 

 side only, but a living soul, and a spirit of righte- 

 ousness : and by consequence it stays not in the 

 outward act, (the proper object of human laws 

 and provisions ;) restrains not only open violences 

 (such as the judgment-seat of man condemns, and 

 the scaffold or the gibbet take notice of;) not only 



* Prov. XXX, 20. 



