07/11/2016
TAKE HEED UNTO THYSELF...
Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those sins which you preach against in others, and
lest you be guilty of that which daily you condemn. Will you make it your work to magnify
God, and, when you have done, dishonour him as much as others? Will you proclaim Christ’s
governing power, and yet contemn it, and rebel yourselves? Will you preach his laws, and
wilfully break them? If sin be evil, why do you live in it if it be not, why do you dissuade men
from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? if it be not, why do you tell men so? If
God’s threatening be true, why do you not fear them? if they be false, why do you needlessly
trouble men, with them, and put them into such frights without a cause Do you ‘know the
judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death," and yet will you do
them? ‘Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that sayest a man should
not commit adultery,’ or be drunk, or covetous, art thou such thyself ‘Thou that makest thy
boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonorest thou God ‘ What! shall the same
tongue speak evil that speakest against evil? Shall those lips censure, and slander, and
backbite your neighbour, that cry down these and the like things in others? Take heed to
yourselves, lest you cry down sin, and yet do not overcome it; lest, while you seek to bring it
down in others, you bow to it, and become its slaves yourselves: ‘For of whom a man is
overcome, of the same is he brought into bo***ge.’ ‘To whom ye yield yourselves servants to
obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness.’ O brethren! it is easier to chide at sin, than to overcome it.
