(3.) Judicial hardness is attended with a total neglect of all holy duties, more especially those that are secret; but that hardness of heart which a believer complains of, though it occasions his going on very uncomfortably in duty, yet it rather puts him upon, than drives him from it.
(4.) When a person is judicially hardened, he makes use of indirect and unwarrantable methods to maintain that false peace, which he thinks himself happy in the enjoyment of; that, which he betakes himself to, deserves no better character than a refuge of lies; and the peace he rejoices in, deserves no better a name than stupidity: but a believer, when complaining of the hardness of his heart, cannot take up with any thing short of Christ, and his righteousness; and it is his presence that gives him peace; and he always desires that faith may accompany his repentance, that so, whenever he mourns for sin, the comfortable sense of his interest in him, may afford him a solid and lasting peace, which is vastly different from that stupidity and hardness of heart, which is a punishment of sin.
There is another expression in this answer, which denotes little more than a greater degree of judicial hardness, when it is styled, _A reprobate sense_, or, as the apostle calls it, _A reprobate mind_, Rom. i. 28. which God is said to have given them up to, _who did not like to retain him in their knowledge_; the meaning of which is, that persons, by a course of sin, render their hearts so hard, their wills so obstinate and depraved, as well as their understandings so dark and defiled, that they hardly retain those notices of good and evil, which are enstamped on the nature of man, and, at some times, have a tendency to check for, and restrain from sin, till they are entirely lost, and extinguished by the prevalency of corrupt nature, and a continued course of presumptuous sins; and, as the result hereof, they extenuate and excuse the greatest abominations: Thus Ephraim is represented, as saying, _In all my labours, they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin_, Hos. xii. 8. whereas God says in a following verse, that _they provoked him to anger most bitterly_, ver. 14. and, after this, they entertain favourable thoughts of the vilest actions, as some are represented doing, _Who call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter_, Isa. v. 20.