l in it. It is not exercised so much concerning a
man's own matters, as concerning the matters that are purely and merely
concerning God's glory. It is the most flexible, condescending, and
forbearing thing in those things that relate to ourselves and our own
interests. Thus Moses is commended as the meekest man, when Aaron and
Miriam raise sedition against him, Num. xii. 3. He had not affections to
be commoved upon that account. But how much is he stirred and provoked
upon the apprehension of the manifest dishonour of God, by the people's
idolatry? How many are lions in their own cause, and in God's as simple
and blunt as lambs? And how much will our spirits be commoved when our own
interest lies in the business, and hath some conjunction with God's
interest, but if these are parted, our fervour abates, and our heat cools?
I lay down this, then, as the fundamental principle of true zeal, it is
like charity that seeketh not its own things.

But to make the nature of it clear, I give you three characters of it,
verity, charity and impartiality. I say it hath truth in it, a good thing
for the object, and knowledge of that good thing in the subject, for the
principle of it: "It is good to be zealously affected always in a good
thing," Gal. iv. 18. Zeal is an evil thing, hath something of the
impatient and restless nature of the devil in it. There is nothing we
should be more deliberate and circumspect in, than what to employ or
bestow our affections upon. We should have a certain persuasion of the
unquestionable goodness of that which we are ardent and vehement to
obtain, else the more ardour and vehemency, the more wickedness is in it.
The Jews had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, and that is a
blind impetuous self will. For if a man take a race at his full speed in
the dark, he cannot but catch a fall.(440) The eager and hot pursuits of
men are founded upon some gross misapprehensions.

Secondly, There must not only be a goodness supposed in the object, but
some correspondence between the worth and weight of that goodness and the
measure of our desires and affections, else there wants that conformity
between the soul and truth which makes a true zeal of God. I mean this,
the soul's most vehement desires should be employed about the chiefest
good, and our zeal move in relation to things unquestionably good, and not
about things of small moment, or of little edification. This is the
apostolic rule, that not