5.  And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to commend Mr. Prywell to us—­to our trust, to our confidence, and to our imitation—­his royal certificate continues, ’One that looks into the very bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.’  The very bottom of matters—­that is, the very bottom of his own and other men’s hearts.  Mr. Prywell counts nothing else worth a wise man’s looking at.  Let fools and children look at the painted and deceitful surface of things, but let men, men of matters, and especially men of divine matters, look only at their own and other men’s hearts.  The very bottom of all matters is there.  All wars, all policies, all debates, all disputes, all good and all evil counsels, all the much weal and all the multitudinous woe of Mansoul—­all have their bottom in the heart; in the heart of God, or in the heart of man, or in the heart of the devil.  The heart is the root of absolutely every matter to Mr. Prywell.  He would not waste one hour of any day, or one watch of any night, on anything else.  And it was this that made him both the extraordinarily successful scout he was, and the extraordinarily sober and thoughtful and judicious man he was.  O yes, my brethren, the bottom of matters, when you take to it, will work the same change in you.  ’Two things,’ says one who had long looked at his own matters with Mr. Prywell’s eyes—­’two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself:  nature, which Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added.’  My brethren, that recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes to you, will sober you as it has sobered so many men before you:  when it comes to you, that is, about yourselves.  That discovery made in yourselves will make you deep-thinking men.  It will make common men and unlearned men among you to be philosophers and theologians and saints.  It will work in you a thoughtfulness, a seriousness, a depth, an awe, a holy fear, and a great desire that will already have made you new creatures.  When, in examining yourselves and in characterising yourselves, you come on what some clear-eyed men have come on in themselves, and what one of them has described as ’the diabolical animus of the human mind’—­when you make that discovery in yourselves, that will sober you, that will humble you and fill you full of remorse and compunction.  And if in God’s grace to you, that were to begin to be wrought in you this week, there would be one, at any rate, eating of that bread next Lord’s day, and drinking of that cup as God would have it.

6.  ’A man that is no tattler, nor raiser of false reports, and that talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.’  Mr. Prywell was more taken up with his own matters at home, far more than the greatest busybodies are with other men’s matters abroad.  His name, I fear, will still sound somewhat ill in your ears, but I can assure you all the ill for you lies in the sound.  Mr. Prywell