+V. Stores up a retrospect of bitter and humiliating regret.+ _Review of a Misspent Life._--1. A sincere convert will not shun to make confession of his wicked life, not omitting anything which may tend to a just aggravation of it, not in a boasting manner, but that the freedom of God's grace may be commended. 2. That the Scriptures were indited by the Spirit of God, and the penmen not actuated with human policy, appears from this, with other evidences in the Scripture itself, that they concealed not their own faults, but blazed them to the world when the glory of God did so require. 3. Though the Church of God, as to the inward estate, cannot be utterly wasted, neither can the outward state be so far decayed as to cease to be, yet the Lord may so far give way to the rage of persecutors that the outward face and beauty of the Church may be totally marred, the members partly killed, partly scattered, the public ordinances suppressed, and the public assemblies interrupted. 4. The life and way of some engaged in a false religion may be so blameless and, according to the dictates of their deluded conscience, so strict, as that it may be a copy unto those who profess the true religion and a reproof for their palpable negligence. 5. As our affections of love, joy, hatred, anger, and grief are by nature so corrupt that even the choicest of them, if not brought in subjection to the Word by the Spirit, will lay forth themselves upon forbidden and unlawful objects, so our zeal and fervency of spirit will bend itself more toward the maintenance of error than of truth. Error is the birth of our own invention; so is not truth.--_Fergusson._ _True and False Zeal._ +I. Zeal is a certain fervency of spirit arising out of a mixture of love and anger,+ causing men earnestly to maintain the worship of God and all things pertaining thereto, and moving them to grief and anger when God is in any way dishonoured. +II. Paul was zealous for the outward observance of the law+ and for Pharisaical unwritten traditions. +III. He himself condemns his zeal because it was against the Word,+ and tended to maintain unwritten traditions, and justification by the works of the law, out of Christ. What Paul did in his religion we are to do in the profession of the Gospel. 1. We are to addict and set ourselves earnestly to maintain the truth of the Gospel. 2. We are to be angry in ourselves and grieved when God is dishonoured and His Word disobeyed. 3. We are not to give liberty to the best of our natural affections as to zeal, but mortify and rule them by the Word.--_Perkins._ _MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 15-19. _The Imperative Claims of a Divine Commission--_