_Answ._ If you speak falsely and dissemblingly, you play the hypocrite; but you may force yourselves to speak of good, without any falsehood or hypocrisy. Words signify, as I told you, the matter spoken, and the speaker's mind. Now your speaking of the things of God doth tell no more of your mind but this, that you take them to be true, and that you desire those that you speak to, to regard them: and all this is so; and therefore there is no hypocrisy in it. Indeed if you told the hearers, that you are deeply affected with these things yourselves, when it is not so, this were hypocrisy. But a man may exhort another to be good, without professing himself to be good; yea, though he confess himself to be bad. Therefore all the good discourses of a wicked man are not hypocrisy; much less the good discourse of a sincere christian, that is dull and cold in that discourse. And if a duty had some hypocrisy in it, it is not the duty, but the hypocrisy, that God disliketh, and you must forsake: as if there be coldness in a duty, it is the coldness, and not the duty, that is to be blamed and forborne. And wholly to omit the duty, is worse than to do it with some coldness or hypocrisy, which is not the predominant complexion of the duty. _Object._ But if it be not the fruit of the Spirit, it is not acceptable to God; and that which I force my tongue to, is none of the fruits of the Spirit. Therefore I must stay till the Spirit move me. _Answ._ 1. There are many duties done by reason, and the common assistances of God, that are better than the total omission of them is. Else no unsanctified man should hear the word, or pray, or relieve the poor, or obey his prince or governors, or do any duty towards children or neighbours, because whatsoever is not the fruit of the special grace of the Spirit, is sin; and without faith it is impossible to please God; and all men have not faith, Heb. xi. 6; 2 Thess. iii. 2. 2. It is a distracted conceit of the quakers, and other fanatics, to think that reason and the Spirit of God are not conjunct principles in the same act. Doth the Spirit work on a man as on a beast or stone? and cause you to speak as a clock that striketh it knoweth not what? or play on man's soul, as on an instrument of music that hath neither knowledge of the melody, nor any pleasure in it? No, the Spirit of God supposeth nature, and worketh on man as man, by exciting your own understanding and will to do their parts. So that when, against all the remnant of dulness and backwardness that is in you, you can force yourselves to do your duty, it is because the Spirit of God assisteth you to take that resolution, and use that force. For thus the Spirit striveth against the flesh, Gal. v. 17; Rom. vii. 16-18. Though it is confessed, that there is more of the Spirit, where there is no backwardness or resistance, or need of forcing.