'Voices From The Past' Vol. 1 — July 26

The greatest and hardest work of a Christian is the well ordering of his heart, which is unseen. A good Christian begins his repentance where his sin begins, in his thoughts. God has sovereignty over the inward as well as the outward man. As we desire our whole man to be saved by Christ, so we must yield the whole man to be governed by him. We must conform to the truth and goodness of God in the inner man, or we will wrong our own souls with false apprehensions and will view things in a way different than God intended. What a wrong we do to others when we take up false prejudices against them! We are poisoned toward others with unjust suspicions. Our nature is so apt to judge, and this faculty exercises a tyranny in the soul, setting up and pulling down whom we will. Satan often casts a mist before our imagination so that we might have a misshapen concept of things. By the spirit of illusion, Satan makes worldly things appear bigger to us, and spiritual things lesser than indeed they are, and our affections are misled. Imagination is the womb, and Satan the father of all monstrous conceptions and disordered lusts. Even the best of God's people that are kept from evil because of their conscience may fail in their imagination. Both, however, are open before God and hateful to him. When one does not exercise his conscience concerning his thoughts, God often gives him up to the actual deed. God counts it an honour when we regard his all-seeing eye so much that we do not take liberty in what is offensive to him, no, not even in our hearts. It is evident that the Spirit has set up a kingdom in our hearts when our spirits rise within us against anything that lifts itself up against goodness in the inner man.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Devotional Readings 'Voices From The Past Vol.1.'
Richard Sibbes, Works, I:186-188
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