The following sermon by Thomas Adams, from 1615, is called Mystical Bedlam, or The World of Madmen. The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, And madness is in their heart while they live, And after that they go to the dead. Ecclesiastes 9 verse 3. The subject of the discourse is man, And the speech of him has three points in the text, A comma, a colon, a period. Men's hearts are full of evil, Comma. Madness is in their hearts while they live. Colon. We're at not staying. After that they go down to the dead, and there is their period. The first begins, the second continues, and the third concludes their sentence. Here is man setting forth his journey, and then his journey's end. At first putting out, his heart is full of evil. Madness is in his heart, all his journey long, while they live, and his journey's end is the grave. He goes to the dead. Man is born from the womb as an arrow shot from the bow. His flight through this air is wild and full of madness, of indirect courses. The center where he ends is the grave. His comma begins so harshly. that it promises no good consequence, in the colon. The colon is so mad and inordinate, that is the journey, that there is small hope of the period. When both the premises are so faulty, the conclusion can never be good. Wickedness in the first proposition, madness in the second, and the end is fearful. The conclusion of all is death. So then first, the beginning of man's race is full of evil, as if he stumbled at the threshold. And then the further he goes, the worse. Madness adjoined, tented in his heart with life. At last in his frantic flight, not looking to his feet, he drops into the pit. He goes down into the dead. To begin in the uppermost air of this gradual descent, the comma of this tripartite sentence gives man's heart for a vessel. And this observed number one. the owners of this vessel, men, and derivatively the sons of men. Number two, the vessel itself is earthen, a pot of God's making, and man's marring, the heart. 3. The liquor it holds is evil, a defective, privative, abortive thing, not instituted, but destituted by the absence of original goodness. Number four, the measure of this vessel's pollution with evil liquor. It is not said to be sprinkled or seasoned with a moderate and sparing quantity. It is not an aspersion nor imputation, but an impletion. It is filled to the brim, full of evil. Thus at first putting forth, we have man and his best member corrupted. The owners or possessors are sons of men. Adam was called the son of God, Luke 3.38. Enos was the son of Seth. Seth, the son of Adam. Adam, the son of God. But all this posterity, the sons of man, we receiving from him both flesh and the corruption of flesh, yea, and of the soul too. Though the substance of it is inspired of God, not produced from man, for the purest soul becomes stained and corrupt when once it touches the body. The Sons of Man This is a derivative and diminutive speech, in which man's conceit of himself is lessened, and himself lessened to humility. Man, as God's creation left him, was a goodly creature, an abridgment of heaven and earth, an epitome of God in the world, resembling God who is a spirit in his soul, and the world which is a body in the composition of His. God, the greatest of invisible natures, the world the greatest of visible creatures, both brought into the little compass of man. Now man has grown less, and as his body in size, his soul in vigor, so himself in all virtue is abated, so that the son of man is a phrase of diminution, a bar in the arms of his ancient glory, a mark of his derogate and degenerate worth. Two instructions may the sons of men learn in being called so. Number one, their spiritual corruption. Number two, their natural corruptible-ness. The corruption and original pravity, which we have derived from our parents, Psalm 51 verse five. Behold, saith David, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. The original word is warm me, as if the first heat derived to him were not without contamination. I was born a sinner, says the saint. It is said in Genesis 5.3 that Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image, and called his name Seth. This image and likeness cannot be understood of the soul, for Adam did not beget this, nor properly and merrily of the body's shape. So was Cain as like to Adam as Seth, of whom it is spoken. Nor did this image consist in the piety and purity of Seth. Adam could not propagate that to his son, which he didn't have in himself. Virtues are not given by birth, nor does grace follow generation, but regeneration. Neither is Seth said to be begotten in the image of Adam, because mankind was continued and preserved in him, but it intends that corruption which descended to Adam's posterity by natural propagation. The title then, the Sons of Men, puts us in mind of our original contamination in which we stand guilty before God and liable to present and eternal judgments. You will say with the disciples, John 6, 60, this is a hard saying, who can hear it? Barrett, may be ready to conclude with a sadder inference, as the same disciples after a particular instance in Matthew 15 25, who then can be saved? I answer we derive from the first Adam sin and death, but from the second Adam grace and life. As we are the sons of man, our state is wretched, as made the sons of God blessed. It is a peremptory speech, 1 Corinthians 15, 50. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption inherit incorruption. It is a reviving comfort in the sixth chapter of the same epistle, verse 11. Such we were, but we are washed. but we are sanctified, but we are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. The conclusion or inference hereon is most happy, Romans 8.1. Now therefore, there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. We may live in the flesh, but if after the flesh, we shall die, verse 13. If our endeavors be wholly armed and aimed to content the flesh, But if we be led by the Spirit, with love, with delight, we are the sons of man made, the sons of God, verse 14. It is our happiness not to be born, but to be newborn, John 3, 3. The first birth kills, the second gives life. It is not the seed of man in the womb of our mother, but the seed of grace, 1 Peter 1.23, in the womb of the church that makes us blessed. Generation lost us. It must be regeneration that recovers us. As a tree falls, so it lies, and lightly it falls to that side which is most laden with fruits and branches. If we abound most with the fruits of obedience, we shall fall to the right hand, life. If with wicked actions, affections, to the left side, death. It is not then worth the ascription of glory to, what we derive naturally from man. David accepts it as a great dignity to be a son-in-law to a king, to descend from potentates, and to fetch our pedigree from princes, is held as a dignity not to be slighted or forgotten, but to be a monarch. Oh, this is the supremest honor of this world. Yet princes are but men, saith the psalmist. Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth. They may be high by their calling, princes, Yet they are but low by their nature, sons of men. And merely to be the son of man is to be corrupt and polluted. They are sinful, the sons of men, weak. There is no help in them. Corruptible, their breath goes forth. Dying, they return to the earth. It is registered as an evident praise of Moses' faith, Hebrews 11.24, that for the rebuke of Christ who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, there is no ambition good in the sons of men but to be adopted the sons of God, under which degree there is no happiness, above which no cause of aspiring. Number two, our corruptible-ness is here also demonstrated. A mortal father cannot beget an immortal son. If they that brought us into the world have gone out of the world themselves, we may infallibly conclude our own following. He that may say, I have a man to my father, a woman to my mother, in his life, may in death, with Job, Chapter 17, 14, say to corruption, you are my father, and to the worm, you are my mother and my sister. It has been accepted against the justice of God that the sin of one man is devolved to his posterity, and that for the father's eating sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. Ezekiel 18, 2, according to the Jewish proverb, Jeremiah 31 29 As if we might say to every son of man as Horace sung to his friend You be an innocent do suffer for your no sense superiors this a philosopher objected against the gods strangely conferring it as if for the father's disease medicine should be ministered to the son and I answer, Adam is considered as a root of mankind, that corrupt mass, into which can be deduced no pure thing. Can we be born Mauryans without their black skins? Is it possible to have an Amorite to our father and a Hittite to our mother, without participation of their corrupted natures? If a man slip a scion from a hawthorn, he will not look to gather from it graves. There is not then a son of man in the cluster of mankind, but he is liable to that common and equal law of death. You shall die, O son of man, not because you are sick, but because the son of man, who happened to come into the world, must upon necessity go out of the world. It is no new thing to die, since life itself is nothing else but a journey to death. He that has climbed to his highest is descending to his lowest. All the sons of men die, not one death, for time and manner. For the matter and end, one death is infallible to all the sons of men. This corn is sometimes bitten in the spring, and often trod down in the blade, but it never fails to be cut up in the ear when ripe. Who laments that a man is dead, laments that he was a man. When Anaxorus heard that his son was dead, he answered without astonishment, I know that I beget a mortal man. It was a good speech that fell from the shame of philosophy. I am not eternity, but a man, a little part of the whole, as an hour is of the day. Like an hour I came, and I must depart like an hour. Some fruit is plucked violently from the tree, some drops with ripeness. All must fall because all are sons of men. This should teach us to arm ourselves with patience and expectation to encounter death. Adam knew all the beasts and called them by their names, but his own name he forgot, Adam. of earth what bad memories we have that forget our own names and selves that we are the sons of men corruptible mortal You don't know in what place death will find you. Therefore, do look for him in every place. Matthew 24, 42. Watch therefore, for you know not what hour your Lord comes, thus for the owners. The vessel itself is a heart. Hence Satan directs his malicious strength against the heart. The fox goes after the neck. The mastiff flies at the throat. And the ferret nips the liver. But the devil aims at the heart. The heart he desires because he knows God desires it. and his ambition still inclines, intends his purposes and plots to rob God of his delight. The heart is a chief tower of life to the body, and a spiritual citadel to the whole man, always besieged by a domestical enemy, the flesh, by a civil enemy, the world, by a professed enemy, the devil. Every perpetrated sin does some hurt to the walls, but if the heart is taken, the whole corporation is lost. How should Christ enter into your house and sup with you? Revelation 3.20. When the chamber is taken up in which he would rest. The heart. All the faculties of man follow the heart. The servants. The mistress. When the sun rises, all rise, beasts from their dens, birds from their nests, men from their beds. So the heart leads, speaks, your hand works, your eye looks, your ear listens, your foot walks, all producing good or evil from the good or evil treasure of the heart. Luke 6 45. Therefore the penitent publican beat his heart as if he would call up that and call up the rest. It is conspicuous then that the heart is the best vessel in which any son of man can boast himself, possessor. And yet, even this is corrupted. To declare this volition, the next circumstance does justly challenge us. Only one caveat to our hearts, of our hearts, or we leave them. Since the heart is the most precious vessel man has in his corporal household, let him have regard to it. Keep your heart with all diligence, says Solomon. God has done much for the heart, naturally, spiritually. For the former he has placed it in the midst of the body, as a general in the midst of his army, bulwarked it about with breast, ribs, and a back. Lest it should be too cold, a liver lies not far off, to give it heat. Lest it be too hot, the lungs lie near it, to blow cool wind upon it. It is the chief, and therefore should wisely temper all other of our members. Spiritually, God has done more for the heart, giving the blood of His Son to cleanse it, soften it, sanctify it, when it was full both of hardness and turpitude. By His omnipotent grace, He unroosted the devil from it, who had made it a stable of uncleanness, and now requires it, being created new, for His own chamber, for His own bed. The purified heart is God's sanctuary, his house, his heaven. Augustine glosses the first words of the paternoster, our Father which art in heaven, that is, in a heart of a heavenly disposition. The heart then being so accepted, a vessel, keep it at home. Having but one so precious or movable, part not with it upon any terms. He that would buy this vessel of us is a devil, is one that distrusts to have it for nothing, and therefore, set what price you will upon it, he will either pay it or promise it. Saint would fain have his jewel house full of these vessels, and think them richer ornaments than the Babylonian ambassadors thought the treasures of Hezekiah. Second Kings 20 verse 13. Haman shall have grace with the king, Absalom, honor. Jezebel, revenge. Amnon, his lusts. Satisfy Judas, money. Demas, the world. If they will sell him their hearts. If any man like Ahab sell his heart to such a purchaser, let him know that he does buy it to butcher it. The flesh is a borrower of the heart, and he would have this vessel to use with promise of restoring. Let him have it a while, and you shall have it again. But it's from an evil neighbor, so broken, lacerated, deformed, defaced. That though it went forth rich like the prodigal, It returns home tattered and torn and worn, Nor more like a heart than Michal's image On the pillow is like David. The suitor borrows it of the citizen, Till usury has made him an alderman, Of the courtier, until ambition has made him noble, Of the officer, until bribery has made him master, Of the gallant, until riot has made him a beggar. Of the luxurious, until lust has filled him with diseases. This is that wicked borrower mentioned in the psalm, which pays not again. You would not lend your beast, nor the worst vessel in your house, to such a neighbor. And will you trust him with your heart? Either don't lend it, or don't look for it again. The world is a thief, which, like Absalom, steals away the heart, 2 Samuel 15, 6. This cunningly insinuates into your breast, beguiling the watch or guard, which are your senses, and corrupting your servants, which are your affections. The world has two properties of a thief. First, It comes in the night time, when the lights of reason and understanding are darkened, and security has gotten the heart into a slumber. This dead sleep, if it does not find it, it brings it. Secondly, it makes no noise incoming, lest a family of our revived thoughts awake and our sober knowledge discern his approach. This thief takes us as it took Demas. Napping terrifies us not with noise of tumultuous troubles and allure of persecutions, but it pleasantly gives us a music of gain and laps us warm in the couch of lusts. This is the most perilous opuner of our hearts. Neither beggar, buyer, nor borrower could do much without this thief. It is some respect to the world that makes men either give, or sell, or lend the vessel of their heart. First, turn a beggar from your door. He is too saucy in asking your best movable, whereas beggars should not choose their arms. Then reject the buyer. Set him no price for your heart, for he will take of any reckoning. He is near driven that sells his heart. I have heard of a Jew that would, for security of his lint money, have only assured to him a pound of his Christian debtor's living flesh, a strange forfeit for the fault of paying a little money. But the devil, in all his covenants, indents for the heart, and other bargains, saith the proverb, let the buyer take heed. And this, let the seller look to it. Make no mart nor market with Satan. Thirdly, for the borrower, don't lend your heart in hope of interest, lest you lose the principle. Lend him not your implement in your house, any affection in your heart, but to spare the best vessel to such an abuser is no other than mad charity. Lastly, beware of the thief, and let his subtlety excite your more provident prevention. Many a man keeps his goods safe enough for beggars, buyers, borrowers, yet is met with by thieves. Therefore lock up this vessel with a key of faith. bar it with resolution against sin, guard it with supervisiting diligence, and repose it in the bosom of your Savior. Let not your heart stray from this home, lest, like Dinah, it be deflowered. Jacob bought Ethos' birthright, and Satan stole Adam's paradise, while the tenure was in their own hands. An apple beguiled the one, a mess of pottage the other. Don't trust your heart in your own custody, but lay it up in heaven with your treasure, committed to him that is a maker and preserver of man, who will lap it up with peace and lay it in a bed of joy, where no adverse power can invade it, nor a thief break through to steal it. The liquor this vessel holds is evil. Evil is double, either of sin or of punishment, the deserving and retribution, the one of man's own affecting, the other of God's just inflicting. Deformer is evil of its own nature. The latter but, in respect of the sufferer being good in regard of God's glory as an act of his justice, the juice in the heart of the sons of man is evil. All have corrupted their ways. Solomon speaks not here, this or that son of man, but all, with an universal extent to sons of men. And leaving the plural with the possessors by a significant solacism, he names a vessel in the singular, the heart, not hearts, as if all mankind had one heart in the unity of sin. The matter of the vessel being of one polluted lump, that every man that has a heart has naturally an evil heart. Adam had no sinner by his one sin slain as posterity, but he beget a son that slew his brother. Adam was planted by God a good vine, but his apostasy made all his children sour grapes. Our nature was sown good. Behold, we have come up evil. Through whose default arises this badness? God created this vessel good. Man poisoned it in the seasoning. And being thus disdained in a tender newness, it smells of the old infection, till a new juice be put into it. or rather itself made new. As David says in Psalm 51 10, Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me. God made us good. We have mourned ourselves, and behold, we call on him to make us good again. Yet even the vessel that recreated is not without a tang of the former corruption. Paul confesses in himself a body of death, Romans 7, as well as David, a native uncleanness, Psalm 51. The best grain sends forth that chaff in which before the sowing it was purged by the fan. Our contracted evil had been the less intolerable if we had been not made so perfectly good. He that made heaven and earth, air and fire, sun and moon, all elements, all creatures good, surely would not make him evil for whom these good things were made. So how came he to be this bad? In the words of our royal preacher Ecclesiastes 729, Lo, this only I have found, that God has made man upright, but that he hath sought out many inventions. Man was created happy, but he found out tricks to make himself miserable, and his misery had been less, if he had never been so blessed. The better we were, now we are the worse. If the heart were thus good by creation, or is thus good by redemption, how can it be the continent of such evil liquor, when by the word of his mouth that never erred, a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruits? Matthew 7, 18. I answer, that saying must be construed, a good tree continuing good cannot produce evil fruits. The heart born of God does not commit sin, 1 John 3, 9, as far as it is born of God. Yet even in this vessel, while it walks on the earth, are some drops of the first poison. And so the same fountain sends forth sweet water and bitter. though not at the same place as James propounds at chapter 311. But Solomon speaks here of the heart as it is degenerate or generate, not as regenerate, what it is by nature, not by grace. as it is from the first Adam, not from the second. It is thus a vessel of evil. Sin was brewed in it, and is brooded into sin. It is strangely unknown not how truly reported of a vessel that changes some kind of liquor put into it. into itself, as fire transforms a fuel into fire. But here the content does change the continent, as some mineral veins do the earth that holds them. This evil juice turns a whole heart into evil, as water poured upon snow turns it into water. The wickedness of man was so great in the earth that it made every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually. Genesis 6.5. Here, if we consider the dignity of the vessel and the filthiness of the evil it holds, or is rather holding of, the comparison is sufficient to astonish us. O ingrate, inconsiderate man, to whom God has given so good a vessel, and he fills it with so evil a sap? In a great house there are vessels of honour and vessels of dishonour, 2 Timothy 2.20, some for better, some for baser uses. The heart is a vessel of honour, sealed, consecrated for a receptacle, For a habitacle of the graces of God, 1 Corinthians 6.15. Shall we take the member of Christ and make it in harlots, the vessel of God, and make it Satan's? Did God infuse into us so noble a part, and shall we infuse into it so noble a stuff? Was fraud, falsehood, malice, mischief, adultery, idolatry, variance, variableness, ordained for the heart or the heart for them? When the seed of holiness has become the seed of hollowness, The house of innocence becomes a house of impudence. The place of love becomes a place of lust. The vessel of piety, the vessel of uncleanness. The throne of God becomes a court of Satan. The heart has become rather a jelly than a heart. wherein there is a tumultuous, promiscuous, turbulent throng, heaped and amassed together like a wine-drawer's stomach, full of envy, lust, treason, ambition, avarice, fraud, hypocrisy, obsessing it. And by a long tenure, pleading prescription, that custom being a second nature, the heart has lost the name of a heart, and has become the nature of that it holds, a lump of evil. It is a detestable ingratitude in the subject on whom his sovereign has conferred a golden cup to employ it to base uses, to make that a washpot which should receive the best wine he drinks. Behold, the King of heaven and earth has given you a rich vessel, your heart, in which, though it be a piece of flesh or clay of itself, he has placed the chief faculties of your spirit in his. How adverse to thankfulness and his intent is your practice, when you will pour into this cup dregs, muddy pollutions, tetrical poisons, the waters of hell, wines which the infernal spirits drink to men. Take the heart from him that created it, from him that bought it, from him that keeps it, and bequeath in it, in the death of your soul, to him that infects, afflicts, tempts, and torments it, making him your executor, which shall be your executioner, which has no more a right to it than Herod had to the bed of his sister. What injury, what indignity is offered to God when Satan is gratified with his goods? when his best movable on earth is taken from him and given to his enemy, alas! How comes it about that he which is the owner can have no admission to the heart? That we don't open the doors of our hearts, that the King of glory might enter? Who will then one day open the doors of heaven, that a man of earth may enter? Did God erect it as a lodging for His own majesty, leaving no window in it for the eye of man so much as to look into it, as if He would keep it under lock and key to Himself, as a sacred chalice, in which He would drink the wine of faith, fear, grace, and obedience? wine which himself had sent before for his own supper, Revelation 3 20. And must he be turned forth by his own steward, and have his chamber let out for an ordinary, where sins and lusts may securely revel? Will not he that made it one day break it with a rod of iron, and dash it in pieces like a potter's vessel? Psalm 2 verse 9. Shall the great Belshazzar Daniel 5-2, that tyrant of hell, sit drinking his wines of abomination and wickedness in the sacred bowls of the temple, the vessels of God, the hearts of men, without ruin to those that delightfully allow him? Was it a thing detestable in the eyes of God to profane the vessels of the sanctuary? And will he brook with impunity the hearts of men to be abused to his dishonor? Sure as justice will punishment, if our injustice do it, the very vessels under the law that had but touched an unclean thing must be rinsed or broken. What shall become of the vessels under the gospel, ordained to hold the faith of Christ, if they be more than touched, actually polluted with uncleanness. They must either be rinsed with repentance, or broken with vengeance. Shall none of us ask his own heart how it is doing? Perhaps security will counterfeit the voice of the heart, as Jacob did Esau's hands, to supplant it of this blessing, saying, I am well, and stop the mouth of diligent scrutiny, Take heed, the heart of man is deceitful above all measure. He will not stick to the symbol that dares to do evil. You need not rip up your breasts to see what blood your heart holds, though you have been unkind enough to it in your iniquities. Behold the beams of the sun on earth witness his shining in heaven, and the fruits of the tree declare the goodness or badness of the tree. What is lust in your heart, you adulterer? Malice, you envious? Usury in your heart, you covetous? Hypocrisy in your heart, you sons of Gibeon? Pride in yours, you daughters of Jezebel? Falsehood in yours, you brothers of Joab, and treachery in yours, you friends of Judas. Is this wine fit for the Lord's bowl or dregs for the devil to carouse of? Perhaps the sons of Belial will be filthy. Let them be filthy still, Revelation 22.11. Who can help them that will not be saved? Let them perish. Let me turn to you that seem Christians, for you are in the temple of Christ, and I hope, come here to worship Him with confidence of better success. What should uncleanness do in the holy city? Evil in a heart sanctified to grace and sealed to glory. The vessel of every heart is by nature tempered by the same mold. How ill becomes it of such a heart to have hypocrisy, injustice, fraud, covetousness seen in it. Let these bitter waters remain in heathen cisterns. To the master of malediction and his ungodly imps we leave those vices. Our hearts are not vessels for such liquor. If we should entertain them, we give a kind of warrant to others' imitation. The habits of vices, while they dwell in the hearts of Belial's children, are merely sins. But when they have room given them in the hearts of the sons of God, They are sins and examples, not simply evil deeds, but warrants to evil deeds, especially with such despisers and despiders of goodness, who, though they love, embrace, and resolve to practice evil, yet are glad they may do it by patronage and go to hell by example. But how can this evil juice in our hearts be perceived? Were beams of the sun ever pierced into that abstruse and secret pavilion? The animatizing of the heart remains for the work of that last and great day, Ecclesiastes 7, 14, Romans 2, 16. As no eye can look into it, so let no reason judge it. But our Savior answers out of the heart precede actual sins. The water may be closed in the fountain, but will be discerned, and it will issue out. The heart cannot so contain the unruly affections, but like headstrong rebels they will burst out into actions, and works are infallible notes of the heart. I say not that works determine a man to damnation or bliss, the decree of God orders that. But works do distinguish of a good or a bad man. The saints have sinned, but the greatest part of their converted life has been holy. Indeed, we are all subjects to passions, because we are men. But let us order our passions well, because we are Christian men. And as a skillful apothecary makes wholesome potions of noisome poisons, by a wise melling and allaying them. So let us meet with the intended herd of our corruptions and turn it to our good. It is not a sufficient commendation of a prince to govern peaceable and loyal subjects, but to subdue or subvert rebels. It is the praise of a Christian to order refractory and wild affections, more than to manage yielding and pliable ones. Let your heart keep a straight and awful hand over your passions and affections, that if they move you, they may not remove you from your rest. A man then sleeps surely, securely, when he knows not that he will not, but that his enemy cannot hurt him. Violent is a force and fury of passions, overbearing a man to those courses which in his sober and collected sense he would abhor. They have this power to make him a fool that otherwise is not, and him that is a fool to appear so. If in strength you cannot keep out passion, yet in wisdom you must temper it, that if notwithstanding a former, it comes to whisper in your ears your own weakness, Yet it may be hindered by the latter from divulging it to your shame. You see how excellent in principle a work it is to manage the heart, which indeed manages all the rest, and is powerful to the carrying away with itself the attendance of all the senses, who be as ready to call, and as speedy to execution as any servant the centurion had, waiting only for a command from their leader, the heart. The ear will not hear where the heart minds not, Nor the hand relieve where the heart pities not, Nor the tongue praise where the heart does not love. All look, listen, and attend, Stay upon the heart, as a captain, to give the onset. The philosopher says it is not the eye that sees, but the heart. So it is not the ears that hear, but the heart. Indeed, it sometimes falls out that a man hears not a great sound or noise, though it be near him. The reason is his heart is fixed and easily taken up in some object, serious in his imagination, though perhaps in itself it is vain. And the ears, like faithful servants, attending their master, the heart, lose the act of their auditive organ by some suspicion, until the heart has done with them and given them leave. Curious and rare sights, able to ravish some with admiration, don't affect others, while they stand as open to their view, because their eyes are following the heart and doing service about another matter. So our feet stumble in a plain path, because our eyes, which should be their guides, are sent some other way, on the heart's errand. Be then all clean, if you can, but if your happiness be denied on earth, let your heart be clean. There is then the more hope of the rest. So I have run these four circumstances of the comma, or first point of man, observing, from the owner's incorruptible fragility, number two, from the vessel, the heart's excellency, number three, from the liquor contained in it, the pollution of our nature, and number four, and lastly, from the plenitude, the strength and height of sin. The sum is, one, the heart, two, of man, three, is full, four, of evil. I should now conclude leaving my discourse and you to the meditation of it, but that you should then say I had failed in one special part of a physician, that having described a malady, I don't prescribe a remedy, since it is not only expedient to be made experient of our own estate, but to be taught to help it. Give me leave, therefore, briefly to tell you that some principal intentions to the repair of your hearts, ruins, or these, seeing that the vessel is full, to empty it, seeing it as foul, to wash it, since it is caught in ill tang, to sweeten it, and when it is well, so to preserve it. With these four uses go in peace. First. There is first a necessity that the heart, which is full of evil by nature, must be emptied by conversion, and replenished with grace, or not saved with glory. What scuppet have we then to free the heart of this muddy pollution? Lo, how happily we fall upon repentance! God grant repentance fall upon us! Two, the heart thus emptied of that inveterate corruption should fitly be washed before it be replenished. The old poison sticks so fast in the grain of it that there is only one thing of validity to make it clean, the blood of Jesus Christ. It is this that has bathed all hearts that ever were or shall be received in the God's house of glory. This blood cleanses us from all sin, 1 John 1, 7. Number 3. All is not done with this vessel when it is washed. Shall we empty it, cleanse it, and so leave it? Did not Satan re-enter to the house swept and garnished with seven worse spirits? Matthew 12.44. While it was empty, Behold, then, when it is emptied and washed and sweetened, it must be filled again. A vacuum is not allowable. It must be replenished with somewhat either evil or good. If God is not present, Satan will not be absent. When it is evacuated of the works of the flesh, Galatians 5.24, it must be supplied with the fruits of the Spirit. Humility must take up the room which pride had in the heart. Charitableness must step into the seat of avarice. Love must cast out malice, Mildness cast out anger, Patience murmuring, Sobriety must dry up the floods of drunkenness, Continence cool the inflammations of lust, Peace must quiet the head from dissensions, Honesty pull up hypocrisies viscer, And religion put profaneness to an irrevocable exile. For we have now done, if when on our hearts be thus emptied, cleansed, and supplied, so we keep them that way. For it was God's preventing grace that cleansed our hearts, and it is a subsequent grace that so preserves them. Yet have we not herein a patent for security and negligence sealed us, as if God would save us while we only stood and looked on? But he that has this hope purges himself, 1 John 3.3, and we are charged to keep and possess our vessel in sanctification and honor, 1 Thessalonians 4.4, and to live unspotted of the world, James 1.27. Return not to your former abominations, lest your latter end be worse than your beginning. Luke 11 26 Has God done so much to make your hearts good? And will you frustrate his labors, annihilate his favors, and Reel back to your former sin, God forbid it, and a serious deprecation of your own soul forbids it. Yea, O Lord, since you have dealt so graciously with these frail vessels of flesh, empty them, wash them, season them, supply them, seal them up with your Spirit to the day of redemption and preserve them, that the evil one touches them not. Grant this, Almighty Father, for the sake of Christ. Amen.