lay claim to you, that you are his, and resolved to live to him, to love him, to trust him, and to stand or fall to him alone. Let God be the very life, and sense, and end of all you do. When once man hath too much of your regard and observation, that you set too much by his favour and esteem, or eye him too much in your profession and practice; when man's approbation too much comforteth you, and man's displeasure or dispraise doth too much trouble you; when your fear, and love, and care, and obedience are too much taken up for man; you so far withdraw yourselves from God, and are becoming the servants of men, and friends of the world, and turning back to bondage, and forsaking our Rock and Portion, and your excellency; the soul of religion is departing from you, and it is dying and returning to the dust. And if once man get the pre-eminence of God, and be preferred and set above him in your hearts or lives, and feared, trusted, and obeyed before him, you are then dead to God, and alive to the world; and as men are taken for your gods, you must take up with such a salvation as they can give you. If your alms and prayer are done to be seen of men, and to procure their good thoughts and words; if you get them, make your best of them; "for verily," your Judge hath said unto you, "you have your reward," Matt. vi. 1-3. Not that man is absolutely to be contemned or disregarded.[78] No; under God, your superiors must be obeyed; you must do wrong to none, and do good to all, as far as in you lieth; you must avoid offence, and give good example, and, under God, have so much regard to men, as to become all things to all men for their salvation. But if once you set them above their rank, and turn yourselves to an inordinate dependence on them, and make too great a matter of their opinion or words concerning you, you are losing your godliness or divine disposition, and turning it into man-pleasing and hypocrisy. When man stands in competition with God, for your first and chief regard, or in opposition to him, or as a sharer in co-ordination with him, and not purely in subordination to him, he is to be numbered with things to be forsaken. Even good men, whom you must love and honour, and whose communion and help you must highly value, yet may be made the object of your sin, and may become your snare. Your honouring of them, or love to them, must not entice you to desire inordinately to be honoured by them, nor cause you to set too much by their approbation. If you do, you will find that while you are too much eyeing man, you are losing God, and corrupting your religion at the very heart. And you may fall among those, that, how holy soever, may have great mistakes in matters of religion, tending to much sin, and may be somewhat censorious against those that are not of their mind; and so the retaining of their esteem, and the avoiding of their censures, may become one of the greatest temptations of your lives. And you will find