My God, my God, all that thou askest of me is my heart, _My Son, give me thy heart_.[147] Am I thy Son as long as I have but my heart? Wilt thou give me an inheritance, a filiation, any thing for my heart? O thou, who saidst to Satan, _Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him upon the earth_,[148] shall my fear, shall my zeal, shall my jealousy, have leave to say to thee, Hast thou considered my heart, that there is not so perverse a heart upon earth; and wouldst thou have that, and shall I be thy son, thy eternal Son's coheir, for giving that? _The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?_[149] He that asks that question makes the answer, I the Lord search the heart. When didst thou search mine? Dost thou think to find it, as thou madest it, in Adam? Thou hast searched since, and found all these gradations in the ill of our hearts, _that every imagination of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually_.[150] Dost thou remember this, and wouldst thou have my heart? O God of all light, I know thou knowest all, and it is thou[151] that declarest unto man what is his heart. Without thee, O sovereign Goodness, I could not know how ill my heart were. Thou hast declared unto me, in thy word, that for all this deluge of evil that hath surrounded all hearts, yet thou soughtest and foundest a man after thine own heart;[152] that thou couldst and wouldst give thy people pastors according to thine own heart;[153] and I can gather out of thy word so good testimony of the hearts of men as to find single hearts, docile and apprehensive hearts; hearts that can, hearts that have learned; wise hearts in one place, and in another in a great degree wise, perfect hearts; straight hearts, no perverseness without; and clean hearts, no foulness within: such hearts I can find in thy word; and if my heart were such a heart, I would give thee my heart. But I find stony hearts too,[154] and I have made mine such: I have found hearts that are snares;[155] and I have conversed with such; hearts that burn like ovens;[156] and the fuel of lust, and envy, and ambition, hath inflamed mine; hearts in which their masters trust, and _he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool_;[157] his confidence in his own moral constancy and civil fortitude will betray him, when thou shalt cast a spiritual damp, a heaviness and dejection of spirit upon him. I have found these hearts, and a worse than these, a heart into the which the devil himself is entered, Judas's heart.[158] The first kind of heart, alas, my God, I have not; the last are not hearts to be given to thee. What shall I do? Without that present I cannot be thy son, and I have it not. To those of the first kind thou givest joyfulness of heart,[159] and I have not that; to those of the other kind thou givest faintness of heart;[160] and blessed be thou, O God, for that forbearance, I have not that yet. There is then a middle kind of hearts,