only endeavouring to impose upon others, by indulging wayward passions, or carrying on indirect designs, under pretences of it; but also excusing and palliating such things to ourselves; serving ourselves of such pretences to quiet our own minds in anything which is wrong.
Liberty, in the writings of the New Testament, for the most part signifies, being delivered from the bondage of the ceremonial law, or of sin and the devil, which St. Paul calls "the glorious liberty of the children of God," Rom. viii. 21. This last is a progressive state: and the perfection of it, whether attainable in this world or not, consists in that "perfect love," 1 John iv. 18, which St. John speaks of; and which, as it implies an entire coincidence of our wills with the will of God, must be a state of the most absolute freedom, in the most literal and proper sense. But whatever St. Peter distinctly meant by this word liberty, the text gives occasion to consider any kind of it, which is liable to the abuse he here warns us against. However, it appears that he meant to comprehend that liberty, were it more or less, which they to whom he was writing enjoyed under civil government; for of civil government he is speaking just before and afterwards, 1 Peter ii. 13: "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing," of which dutiful behaviour towards authority is a very material instance,
act upon in the daily course of life, or when their notions of religion (and I might add of virtue) are, in any sort, reconcilable with what is vicious, it is some faulty negligence, or prejudice, which thus deludes them; in very different ways, perhaps, and very different degrees. But when any one is thus deluded through his own fault, in whatever way or degree it is, he deludes himself. And this is as properly hypocrisy towards himself, as deluding the world is hypocrisy towards the world: and he who is guUty of it, acta as if h« could deceive and mock God; and, therefore, is an hypocrite towards him, in as strict and literal a sense as the nature of the subject will admit.
