5. God hath required our open and bold profession of him, with the strictest commands, and upon the greatest penalties. 1 Pet. v. 3, "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." Rom. x. 9, 10, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Mark viii. 38, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."[42] _Direct._ II. Next, understand what it is in religion that you must principally profess.[43] It is not every lesser truth, much less every opinion of your own, in which you are confident that you are wiser than your brethren. This is the meaning of Rom. xiv. 22, "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God." By "faith" here is not meant the substance of the christian belief, or any one necessary article of it. But a belief of the indifferency of such things as Paul spake of, in meats and drinks. If thou know these things to be lawful when thy weak brother doth not, and so thou be wiser than he, thank God for thy knowledge, and use it to thy own salvation; but do not proudly and uncharitably contend for it, and use it uncharitably to the danger of another's soul, much less to the wrong of the church and gospel, and the hinderance of greater truths. 2 Tim. ii. 14, "Of these things put them in remembrance," (that is, of the saints' hope in God's faithfulness,) "charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but the subverting of the hearers." Yet "for the faith we must earnestly contend," Jude 2, 3. 2 Tim. ii. 23, 24, "But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strife. And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle to all men." But that which is the chiefest matter of our profession is, The being and perfections of God himself; his love to man, and power over him, and man's subjection and obligations unto God; the person, and office, and works, and benefits of our Redeemer, with all the duty that we owe to him in perfect holiness, and all the hopes that we have in him; the happiness of the saints, the odiousness of sin, and the misery of the wicked. These, and such as these, are things that we are called to profess; yet so as not to deny or renounce the smallest truth.