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1. Man discovers this corrupt principle by adopting or maintaining a profession of religion hypocritically. Those who are conscious of hypocrisy may adopt and maintain a religious profession merely in some degree to pacify conscience. When this is alarmed by a sense of sin, they are fain to lull it, if possible, by the semblance of holiness. Others may assume a cloak of religion, that in this way they may display their natural abilities, and gain the affection or admiration of the religious: or they may design the advancement of their temporal interests. They use religion just as it serves their own purposes. Some throw aside the cloak of a profession as being too cumbersome, as soon as their purposes are served by it; or perhaps when they find themselves disappointed in their expectations. Others continue to wear it to the end, and will never be discovered, till the Son of Man shall send His angels to separate the precious from the vile.

2. The deceitfulness of the heart appears when men discover greater zeal about matters of indifference, or, at least, of comparatively less importance than about those of the greatest moment. They are perhaps regular in the observation of secret, private, and public ordinances, but in a great measure negligent of relative duties. They are undutiful husbands or wives, parents or children, masters or servants. You can have little dependence on their word, or confidence in their uprightness in civil dealings. Perhaps they carry on a practice of deceit, extortion, and oppression in so secret a manner, that although suspected by all around, no one can prove it. There are others who go still farther. They place the greatest part of their religion in scrupulosity about matters of mere indifference. The smallest deviation from a common form, which has no other sanction than that of custom, and it may be, not even that of common sense, will be esteemed a grievous defection. The most innocent and necessary recreations will be reckoned unlawful freedoms. Notwithstanding all this warmth of zeal, you may perhaps find some of this character, if carefully watched, almost strangers to a principle of common integrity. They will make conscience a plea for all their impositions on others. But they more generally arise from the deceitfulness of the heart than from any tenderness of conscience.

3. The short continuance of religious impressions, whether on saints or sinners, is another evidence of this deceitfulness.

(1) Unrenewed men, when they have heard an awakening sermon, or been visited with some severe affliction, set about external reformation, and, it may be, endeavour to cleanse their hearts and mortify their lusts by prayer and fasting; but the first temptation that assails them effaces all these serious impressions, and plunges them into those sins that they pretended to forsake. Now, as the leading reason of this is that they have not undergone a saving change in regeneration, it argues the great deceitfulness of their hearts, that all their zeal for God and religion, for the purification of their hearts and reformation of their fives, is dissipated by the first blast of temptation.

(2) The deceitfulness that also prevails in the hearts of the Lord's people, appears by the short duration of their religious impressions. Often, after enjoying the most comfortable communion with God, and resolving to walk always with Him, they find that the duty in which they have been engaged is scarcely ended ere their warmth of affections and holy resolutions are vanished.

4. This deceitfulness appears by the many delusions of the imagination, in forming great hopes of earthly riches, honour, or pleasure. How often does the poor man build himself up, and regale his fancy with the empty prospect of great riches. How often does the mean man amuse his imagination with the delusive hope — we can scarcely call it hope, for it hath not probability sufficient to constitute hope — with the idea, with the supposition of honour and dignity, to which it is possible he may yet be advanced. If one of his acquaintance has been unexpectedly exalted in his situation in fife, he will consider this as a strong argument for the probability of his own advancement. And is not this vanity of imagination, which all must feel in some degree, because of the natural folly of all, a decisive proof of the deceitfulness of the heart?

5. The extreme reluctance of the heart to believe its own deceitfulness, is a great evidence of its power. So great is this reluctance, that sinners, instead of crediting what they hear from the law and testimony, are apt to take offence at the servants of Christ, when they insist on the evils of the heart; as if they had a pleasure in magnifying the wickedness of man, and in representing human nature as vastly worse than it really is.At any rate, they deny the applicableness of the doctrine to themselves, and proudly say, with the vain-glorious Pharisees, Are we blind also? Learn:

1. The origin of hypocrisy in a religious profession. Of this the natural deceitfulness of the heart is the parent.

2. The only cure of hypocrisy. This is the destruction of the principle of deceit.

3. The danger of this course.

(J. Jamieson, M. A.)

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KJV: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

WEB: The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?