I. But there be others of a more refined speculation, and reformed practice, who dare not use, and less adore, a piece of wood or stone, an image of silver and gold; nor yet allow of that Jewish, or rather Pagan pomp in worship, practised by others, as if Christ's worship were of this world, though his kingdom be of the other, but are doctrinally averse to such superstition, and yet refrain not to bow to their own religious duties, and esteem their formal performance of several parts of worship that go against the grain of their fleshly ease, and a preciseness therein, no small cross unto them; and that if they abstain from gross and scandalous sins, or if the act be not committed, though the thoughts of it are embraced, and that it has a full career in the mind, they hold themselves safe enough within the pale of discipleship and walls of Christianity. But this also is too mean a character of the discipline of Christ's cross: and those that flatter themselves with such a sort of taking it up, will in the end be deceived with a sandy foundation, and a midnight cry. For said Christ, "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment." (Matt. xii. 36.) II. For first, it is not performing duties of religion, but the rise of the performance that God looks at. Men may, and some do, cross their own wills in their own wills: voluntary omission and commission: "Who has required this at your hands?" (Isa. i. 12,) said the Lord of old to the Jews, when they seemed industrious to have served him; but it was in a way of their own contriving or inventing, and in their own time and will; not with the soul truly touched and prepared by the divine power of God, but bodily worship only: that, the apostle tells us, profits little. Not keeping to the manner of taking up the cross in worship as well as other things, has been a great cause of the troublesome superstition that is yet in the world. For men have no more brought their worship to the test, than their sins: nay less; for they have ignorantly thought the one a sort of excuse for the other; and not that their religious performances should need a cross, or an apology.