hearts, they serve God, and seek God more for that internal worth and
An unsound heart, a rotten heart, strikes at some sins, and yet falls in with others; he cries down pride and ignorance, and yet falls in with oppression and cruelty; he cries down tyranny and injustice in others, and yet plays the tyrant and unjust one himself. There are men who are blinded by Satan, and he hath them by the hand, and the Lord knows whither he will lead them.
And as an upright heart hates all sins, even those he cannot conquer, so an upright soul loves all truths, even those that he cannot practise. Every word of the Lord is just and righteous in the eye of an upright soul; he loves all truth strongly, though he can practise no truth but very weakly. Every word of grace is glorious, every line of grace is very glorious. Truth is homogeneal; where one truth is sweet, there every truth is sweet to an upright soul. In Ps. 119:127, 128, saith David there, 'I have loved thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold: I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right.' That is the first thing.
2. Secondly, Concerning upright hearts, I shall premise this: Upright hearts, they serve God, and seek God more for that internal worth and that eternal good that is in him, than for any external good they receive from him. So it was with upright Job. The devil, in Job 1, would fain charge Job that his heart was not right with God, that God had made a hedge about him, and therefore Job served him. The Lord therefore gives Satan liberty to break down that hedge, that Job's uprightness might appear, and that it might appear to all the world, that Job served God for that internal and eternal worth that was in him—viz., holiness, wisdom, and goodness. Therefore, when that hedge was down, and Job was stripped of all, yet in ver. 21, 'The Lord hath given,' saith he, 'and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' Oh, upright Job served God for that internal and eternal worth that is in him; and therefore, though all his outward goods were lost, his soul could bless God.