Transcribed from the 1826 R. Weston edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org Many thanks to the Bodleian Library for allowing their copy to be consulted. [Picture: Public domain book cover] IS THIS YOUR LIKENESS? A Scriptural Definition OF _HYPOCRISY AND SINCERITY_. * * * * * BY J. CHURCH. * * * * * WHAT SAITH THE SCRIPTURE? “TRUST ME I DRAW THE LIKENESS TRUE AND NOT AS FANCY PAINTS.” * * * * * LONDON: PRINTED BY R. WESTON, QUEEN’S GARDENS, CROSBY ROW, SOUTHWARK. 1826. * * * * * IS THIS YOUR LIKENESS? “AS WE HAVE BORNE THE IMAGE OF THE EARTHLY SO SHALL WE ALSO BEAR THE IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY.” THE great and excellent Mr. Toplady remarks on painting— 1. When a portrait painter takes a likeness, there most be an _original_ from whom to take it. Here the original are God and Christ. ‘When I awake up after thy likeness,’ &c.; and, we are “predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son.” 2. The painter _changes_ the materials on which he will delineate his piece. There are paintings on wood, on glass, on metals, on ivory, on canvass. So God _chooses_ and _selects_ the persons, on whom his uncreated spirit shall, with the pencil of effectual grace, re-delineate that holy likeness which Adam lost. Among these are some, whose natural capacities, and acquired improvements, are not of the first-rate: there the image of God is painted on _wood_. Others of God’s people have not those quick sensibilities, and poignant feelings, by which many are distinguished: there the Holy Spirit’s painting is on _marble_. Others are permitted to fall from the ardour of their first love, and to deviate from their stedfastness: there the Holy Spirit paints on _glass_, which, perhaps, the first stone of temptation may injure. But the celestial Artist will, in time, repair those breaches, and restore the frail brittle Christian, to his original enjoyments, and to more than his original purity; and, what may seem truly wonderful, divine grace restores the picture, by breaking it over again. It is the broken-hearted sinner to whom God will impart the comforts of salvation.