down to be familiar with us and to bring us into a state of friendship and holy boldness with God himself And yet shall we draw back 17. I would put this question to you for your serious answer Can you be contented yea do you desire to have no more of God than here you have Is this much of the knowledge of him and his will and works sufficient for you Would you be no nearer him and enjoy no more of him What ever your flesh say sure the love of God in your hearts will not suffer you considerately to say so Consult with your new nature with the holy principle that is in you Me thinks you should not be content to remain for ever at such a distance from God as you are If you can I blame you not to be afraid of death If not Why then are you loth to go to him 18. And I would ask you also Whether you are content with the measure of sanctification which you have or which is to be attained in this life Are you content to live for ever with no more knowledge or love of God No more faith or love to Christ No more sense of the worth of Grace No more righteousness or peace or joy in the Holy Ghost No more meekness humility or heavenly mindedness Are you contented rather to live for ever under all the pride and ignorance and passion and selfishness and lust and worldliness and all other sins that here beset you rather than to remove to the place of perfection and yield that death shall break the vessel and nest of your corruptions If you care so little for the grace of God and see so little beauty in his image and see so little odiousness in sin that you had rather keep it for ever than go to God by the passage of death I blame you not to be afraid to die But if otherwise Why do you desire perfection and deliverance and yet be so loth to come and receive it When you know that it is not to be had on earth 19. Moreover are you contented to remain for ever as unserviceable to God as here you are Alas how little do you for him how much do you to displease him lay together all the service of your lives and how small and poor a matter is it And would you still live at these rates Will this content you Me thinks it should not if you have grace in your hearts Why then do you not desire to depart and to be with Christ There you shall be perfectly fitted for his service and therefore perfectly perform it What other service God will have for us we cannot yet tell but Love and Praise we are sure will be the chief and the rest will be good and holy and honourable what ever it be If you are Christians me thinks the sense of your unprofitableness and of your unpleasing frame of heart and life should be your daily grief and therefore you should desire the state where you may be more serviceable and not be so unwilling of it 20. Lastly I would ask you Are you contented to attain no other end of all your life and labours and sufferings than here you do attain What is it that you pray for and seek and strive for is it for no more than is to be had on earth If you have no higher design intentions or desires I cannot much blame you to be loth to die But if you have me thinks no man should be unwilling to attain his end What have you done and suffered so much for heaven and now would you not go to it Had you rather all your labour were lost Do you desire to be happy or do you not If you do as certainly you do would you not go where happiness it to be had when you are sure that it is not not to be had on earth What say you is there not plain reason in all this that I propound to you It is a sad case when men seek not God and Heaven as their felicity but only as a lesser evil than hell which they would endure rather than enjoy when they can keep no longer this earthly life which they account their felicity where this is the case it 's a sad case And were not this a common case there would not be so much unwillingness to depart And now Christian Reader I beseech thee weigh these foregoing Considerations and judge whether it be not a contradiction to thy profession and unseemly for a believer to be unwilling to die when God shall call him Much more to cast away evelasting life for the saving of his temporal life but a little longer O learn the needful lesson of self-denial especially in this point of denying your lives He that can do this can do all and may be sure that he is mortified indeed And he that can do all the rest and sticks but at this and could part with any thing for Christ save his life doth indeed do nothing nor is it esteemed self-denying It is a lesson therefore that is exceeding necessary to be learn'd and worthy all your time and diligence even to deny your Lives for the love of Christ Perhaps you will say We live in days of peace and liberty and therefore are not like to be called to Martyrdom What need then have we to learn this lesson I answer 1. You are uncertain what changes you may see but if you never suffer yet you must be sure that you have a heart that would suffer if God did call you to it For though you may be saved without suffering where you are not called to it yet you cannot be saved without a heart that would suffer if you were put upon it 2. And if you cannot deny your lives for Christ you will not sincerely deny your pleasures or profits or honours for him If you would not suffer death for him if he called you to it you will not sincerely suffer losses and wrongs and reproaches for him which almost every Christian must expect So that to try your own sincerity you should look after it 3. And it is certain that death will shortly come and then if you have not learnt this lesson to deny your selves even in case of life you will die unwillingly and uncomfortably At least me thinks I might reason thus with any man of you good or bad Either death is indeed terrible or not If it be not why do you so fear it when it comes If it be why do you not as well fear it before it comes even in your youth and health For you are sure then that you must die as if it were upon you A wonderful thing it is that mans heart should be so unreasonably insensible and that there should be so great a difference in the affections of most in regard of death It 's no matter of doubt or controversie whether they shall die He is a block and not a man that knoweth it
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
against Nature to consent to die but when it is for him that is the Lord and end of life it is agreeable to Nature that is though it be against our natural inclination as we are Animate and Sensitive yet is it agreeable to our true nature as reasonable And therefore lay all together it is to be said to be agreeable to Nature simply in such a case because it is agreeable to the Principal part in nature which should be predominant It is agreeable to nature also that Reason should dispose of the inferiour powers of the soul Object But when you have said all that you can as long as you plead against my nature I cannot consent to what you say words are but wind To perswade me to consent to die is as much as to perswade me not to feel when I am hurt or to be hungry or thirsty or sleepy which are not in my power because these things are Natural Answ 1. Though hunger and thirst and other natural and sensitive appetites or passions be not in your power yet a consent of the will to deny these is in your power As natural as it is to hunger and thirst your superiour faculty of Reason can prevail with you to suffer hunger and thirst in a Siege or sickness when the suffering of it will save your life You will be ruled by your Physician to forbear not only many a dish but many a meal which your appetite desireth And your Reason can perswade you to suffer the opening of a vein and the drawing out of your own blood yea or the cutting off a member when it is to save your life for all that feeling and self-love is natural to you And you are not acquainted with the nature of Friendship if you would not suffer much for a friend nor with humane affections if you would not suffer much for parents or children or your Country so that your will is free though your sense be not free nor your natural appetite Though you cannot choose but feel when you are hurt you might consent to that feeling for a greater good 2. And according to the tenour of this Objection you may as wisely and honestly plead for most of the wickedness of the world and say It is natural to me to lust and therefore I may play the Adulterer and fulfil it It is natural to me to desire meat and drink and therefore I may eat and drink as long as I desire it It is natural to me to seek to hurt those that I am much angry with or hate and therefore I may beat or kill them If you must deny the Passions and sensitive appetite and the inferiour faculties of nature in one thing why not in another These lower powers were made to be ruled by reason as beasts are made to be ruled by men and more And therfore seeing this Argument from Nature is but from the bruitish part of Nature it is but a brutish Argument And if yet you say that for all these words Death is so great an enemy to you that you cannot choose it I answer that is because your reason is not illuminated and elevated by faith to see the Necessity of choosing it and to see those higher and better things which by this means you may obtain Had you that heavenly life of faith and love which the spirit worketh in the Saints it would carry you above this present life and take you up with higher matters and shew you that and so shew it you as should procure your own consent to die But because this is the great point that Christ doth purposely here try our self-denial by and a point of such great necessity to be look'd after I shall stay a little longer on it while I give you first some Reasons to move you and 2. Some Directions to assist you to get a self-denying submission to Death when Christ requireth it The many lamentable defects in grace which the inordinate fear of death doth intimate I have already opened in the fourth part of the Saints Rest and therefore may not now repeat them but shall add some few Considerations more CHAP. XXXVIII Twenty Reasons for denying Life 1. COnsider that Our Lives are not our Own but God that doth require them is the Absolute Lord of them More truly than you are owner of any thing that you have in the world is he the Owner of your lives and you And therefore both in Reason and Justice we should be content that he dispose of his own If he may notfreely dispose of you your lives you may as well deny him the dispose of any thing and so deny him to be God for he hath the same right to you as to any thing else and the same power over you And therefore if you consent that he shall be God for which he needs not your consent you must consent that he be the Owner and Disposer of all and of you as well as all things else Otherwise he is not God 2. You can be content that the lives of others yea that all the world be at Gods dispose In reason you cannot wish it should be otherwise You are content that the lives of Emperors and Kings that are greater than you should be at his Dispose And is there not the same Reason that he dispose of your life as of theirs Are you better than they or more your own or hath the world more need of you than them or rather is it not unreasonable selfishness that makes so unreasonable a difference with you If Reason might serve the case is plain 3. You are contented that far greater matters than your lives should be at Gods dispose The Sun in its course the frame of nature Heaven and Earth and all therein are at his dispose and would you wish it otherwise Days and Nights and Summer and Winter and times and seasons are at his dispose and you dare not murmur that all the year is not Summer or day-light and that there is any Night or Winter The Angels of Heaven are at his dispose to do his will and are content to be used on earth for your service and they desire not to be from under his dispose And should you desire it or rather desire that his will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven If you would not have the Crowns and Kingdoms of the world at his Dispose and Heaven and Earth are at his Dispose you would not have him to be God But if you would have these greatest things at his dispose what are you then that your lives should be excepted 4. Whom would you have to be the Disposer of mens Lives but God Is any other fit for the undertaking No other can give life but he And no other can preserve and continue it but he If your life had been in any creatures hand you had been dead long ago For no creature is able to uphold it self much less another also Is
any Creature wise enough to order the world and the affairs thereof Is any Creature powerful enough to dispose of the world and all things in it Is any Creature good enough to do it without the communication of its imperfection which would disorder destroy all I know you make no doubt of any of these things No Creature is fit to be God and therefore none is fit to undertake the work of God And therefore it must be God or none that must have the Disposal of your lives and you But I know what it is that self would have You would have the Disposal of your own lives or else have God to dispose of them as you would have him which comes all to one But how unreasonable is this Would you alone have the Disposal of your own lives or would you have all men else in the world also to have the Disposal of theirs If all should have this Priviledge what a miserable Priviledge would it prove No man then would die and then either you must forbear marriage or what would you do with your posterity when there were no room on earth And then you could not punish a Malefactor with death And what a world would it be if all men were Disposers of themselves when there would be as many different ends and minds as men every man would be for himself and an enemy to others and the world would run every man on his own head and a madder confusion than can be imagined would seize on all If you would have every man have the dispose of his own life you would have as many Gods as Men and so have no God and you would have as many Kings or Rulers as men and so have no Ruler and you would have the world to be no world when God were to them as no God And if you would not have it thus with all what reason have you to desire it for your self What are you more than all the world that you should be exempted from the common state of mortals and be at your own disposal more than they and be instead of God unto your selves 5. You think it neither cruelty or injustice that the lives of bruits should be much at your dispose Your poor fellow-creatures must die when you require it Birds and Beasts and Fishes even multitudes of them must die to feed you yea often for your delight to make you a Feast when you have no necessity The most harmless sheep you will not spare The most laborious Ox the most beautiful Bird must give up their lives to satisfie your pleasure And is not God ten thousand thousand times even infinitely more above you than you are above your fellow-creatures Is one creature fitter to kill another and afterwards devour it and becomes its grave than God to dispose of the Lives of all 6. Where could you wish your Lives to be better than in the hand of the most wise gracious God If you may rest content or have confidence in any it is in him You neednot doubt of his Goodness for he is goodness and Love it self And therefore though you see not the world to come that you are passing to yet as long as you know that you are in the hands of Love it self what cause have you of disquiet or distrust And that you know that he is wise as well as Good and Almighty as well as Wise and therefore as he meaneth you no harm if you are his children so he will not mistake nor fail in the performance You need not fear lest your happiness should miscarry for want of skill in him that is Omniscient or for want of will in him that is your Father or for want of Power in him that is Omnipotent You may far better trust God with your lives than your selves For you have not wisdom enough to know what is best for you nor skill to accomplish it nor Power to go through with it Nay you love not you selves so well as God doth love you Did you but believe this you would better trust him You can trust your selves in a narrow Ship upon â—he wide and raging Seas when you never saw the Country that you are gâ—ing to and all because you believe that the voyage is for your commodity and that you have a skilful Pilot. And cannot you commend your souls into the hand of God to convey you through death to the invisible glory as confidently as you dare commit your lives to the conduct of a man and to a tottering Ship in a hazardous Ocean You can trust your lives on the skill of a Physician And cannot you trust them on the will of God If you had your choice whether your lives should be at your own dispose or Gods you should far rather choose that God might dispose of them than your selves As it is better for an Infant to be guided and disposed of by the Parents than by it self A Good King will not kill his own Subjects needlesly And a natural Father or Mother will not not needlesly kill their own Children yea a very brute will tenderly cherish their young And do you think that God who is infinitely good will causelesly orinjuriously take your lives or that he doth not mean you good even in your death Object But how can I think it for my good to die and to have my nature dissolved Answ Paul did desire to depart or be dissolved and to be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1. 23. And did not he know what was for his good as well as you He was willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord than at home in the body and absent from the Lord and therefore groaned earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven that mortality might be swallowed up of life 2 Cor. 5. 1 2 4 6 8. When the Hen hath sate to hatch her young ones they must leave the shell as good for nothing and must come into a world which they never saw before And what of that Should they murmur at the breaking of tâ—â—â—r former habitation or fear the passagâ— inâ—â— so 〈◊〉 â—â— wide so strange a place in 〈…〉 â—f 〈…〉 which they were in before No more 〈…〉 the breaking of these bodies and 〈…〉 the 〈…〉 of flesh and passing under the conduct of Angels into the presence of our Lord. God is but hatching us here by his spirit that he may bring us out into the light of glory And should we grudge at this 7. And what if God call you to sacrifice your lives to him as he called Abraham to sacrifice his Son What if he call you to come to him by a persecutors hand or at least to be willing of your natural death He calls you but to give up a life which you cannot keep and to do that willingly which else you must do whether you will or not Willing or unwilling die you must
How loth soever you are you are sure to die You may turn you every way and look about you on the right hand and the left to all the friends and means in the world and you will never find a medicine that will here procure immortality nor ever scape the hands of death It is appointed to all men once to die and after that the Judgement Heb. 9. 27. And no man can change the Decrees of Heaven And seeing all your turnings and unwillingness cannot avoid it is it not better to submit to it willingly than unwillingly God doth impose it on you as a necessity Your willingness may make a vertue of Necessity and out of Necessity extract a reward but your unwillingness may turn your suffering into your sin and a Necessary death unto an unnecessary misery now and hereafter if you be not true believers as Paul saith of his Ministerial labours 1 Cor. 9. 16 17. If I do this thing willingly I have a reward but if against my will a dispensation is committed to me for necessity is laid upon me So I may say in the present case If you give up your lives willingly in the love of God you have a Reward but if you do not Necessity is upon you and die you must whether you will or no. You may scape the Reward by your unwillingness but death you cannot escape And me thinks you should see that it 's little thanks to you to give up that life which you cannot keep And yet this is all that God requireth Perhaps you think that though you cannot keep it still yet somewhat longer you may keep it But you be not sure of that The next hour may God deprive you of it And O what a dreadful thing it were if as soon as you have denied God your lives he should snatch them from you in his fury and cast you into Hell and if he should distrain for his own as soon as you have denied it him and you should die as enemies that would not die as Martyrs and as his Friends And in this sence hath my Text been many a time fulfilled He that will save his Life shall lose it 8. Consider also that it is upon terms of the highest advantage imaginable to your selves that God calls you to resign and lay down your lives It is not indeed to lose them but to save them as my Text doth promise you He that loseth his life shall save it No more than you lose your cloaths which you put off at Night and put on again in the Morning Or rather no more than you lose your lousie rotten rags when you put them off at Night and are to have in the Morning a Suit of Princely attire in their stead Will any man say these rags are lost At least they will not say that the man is a loser by the change That is not lost that is committed to God upon the ground of a promise Nor that which is laid out in his Servive at his command Reason will tell us that no man can be a loser by a course of submissive Obedience to God You cannot be at so much cost for him or offer him so dear a service which he is not able and willing to satisfie you for a thousand fold God will not be beholden to any man You cannot bring him in your debt beyond what he doth by his bountiful promise But if you could he would not continue in your debt You 'l make nothing of your death if you do not either undergo it for Christ or bear it submissively by the power of heavenly love constraining you Meerly to die whether you will or no as a fruit of sin is common to the most ungodly men But if the love of God can make you voluntarily submit to death whether natural or violent from persecutors what a glorious advantage may you make of it You will 1. Put your salvation more out of doubt â—han any other course in this world could do For whosoever perisheth it 's most certain that such as these all be saved 2. And therefore you may die with the greatest confidence and joy as having seen the matter of your doubts removed and dying in the very exercise of those graces that have the promise of salvation and in such a 〈…〉 as hath the fullest and most frequent promises in the Gospel 3. And then the Crown of Martyrdom is the most glorious Crown You will not have an ordinary place in heaven These are that part of the Heavenly Host that si and nearest to the Throne of God and that praise him with the highest joys who hath brought them through tribulations and redeemed them by his blood If a man should make a motion to you to exchange your cottage for a Palace and a Kingdom you would not stick at it as if it were against you because you must leave your ancient home And how much less should you be against it when you are but moved to step out of your ruinous cottage into glory when it would shortly fall upon your heads and you must leave it whether you will or no for nothing 9. What reason have you to be so tender of the flesh Is it the greatness of its suffering that you stick at Why you put poor Beasts and Birds to as much and so do the Butchers daily for your use and they must suffer it And why should the body be so dear to you for the matter of it what is it but earth and wherein is it more excellent than the beasts that perish I think God hath purposely clothed your soul with so poor a dress that you should be the less unwilling to be unclothed and might learn to set more by your souls than by your bodies and to make more carefully provision for them It seems he hath purposely lodged you in so poor a cottage that you should not be at too much care for it nor be too loth to leave it You have its daily Necessities and Infirmities and pains and somewhat of its filth and lothsomeness to tell you of its meanness And why should you be so loth that so poor a cottage so frail a body should be turned to dust Dust it is and to dust it is sentenced When the soul hath left it but a week men can scarce endure to see it or smell it And should the breaking of such an earthen Vessel be so unpleasing a thing to you And for its usesulness though so far as it is obedient it was serviceable to your souls and God yet was it so refractory ill disposed and disobedient that it proved no better than your enemy Many a temptation it hath entertained and cherished and many a sin hath it drawn you to commit Those senses have let in a world of vanity Those wandring eyes have called in covetousness and pride and lust Those greedy appetites have been so eager on the bait that they have too oft born down your faith and
Jewels askt What they were good for Whether they would preserve him from calamity sickness or death and sent themhome when he heard they were of no more use You desire not the biggest shooes or cloathes but the meetest So do by your Dignity and Estate Aâ— you must ask but your Daily bread so must you desire no more Neither Poverty nor Riches but convenient food yet so as to learn to abound and to want and in every state to be content bearing Riches and Dignity if cast upon you without seeking but not desiring or gaping after them nor glorying in them Undergoing them as a burden with patience and self-denial and carefully using all for God but neither desiring nor using them for Carnal self They that will be rich or great fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of money is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows 1 Tim. 6. 9 10. Remember where you begun and where you must end Naked you came into the world and naked you must return to dust You brought â—â— Riches bither and none shall you take hence unless you learn the blessed art of making friends of the unrighteous Mammon and laying up a good foundation against the time to come and laying up a treasure in Heaven by the right improvement of your present mercies Though our life be nor circular but progressive the end as to our naturals is liker to the beginning than to the middle If we die not children yet liker to Children than we live It 's sad that the height and perfection of our Age should be the height of our folly And that childhood and retired Age should be least entangled with these vanities And it 's a lamentable stupidity that alloweth self so confidently to play its game so near eternity where one would think the noise of damned souls and the triumphant joyes of blessed Saints that past to rest by the way of self-denial should mar the sport and turn their pride into shame and trembling and the great things of mortality that are even at hand should drown the noise of pomp and pleasure and make the Greatness of this world appear an inconsiderable thing The Lord grant that you be no less humble and heavenly and true to Christ and above this world than when you and I had our first familiar converse and sure by this time you should be much better It 's said of Agathocles King of Sicilie that having been a Potters Son he would alwayes have together Earthen and Golden Vessels at his Table to remember him of his Original You tread on earth and bear about you such evidences of your fâ—â—â—ty as serve to tell you whence your 〈…〉 and whither it 's going and how it should be used now Remember also your spiritual new birth by what seed you were begotten and by what milk you were nourished and see that you degenerate not and do nothing unworthy that noble birth and the heavenly nature then received II. And remember that self-denial is never right unless it be caused by the love of God and as you deny your self so you entirely and unreservedly devote your self to him To this end I crave your observation of these few unquestionable precepts 1. Take heed of Unbelief and dread all temptations tending to it and live by that faith which maketh absent things to be to you as present and things unseen as if they were seen When Heaven once loseth its interest in the soul the world may play Rex and delude and destroy us at its pleasure 2. Take heed of all intrusions of selfishness Especially ☞ overvalue not your own understanding in the things of God Draw not a great picture of a little man Be not easily drawn to contemn the judgements of those that have searched the holy Scriptures with equal diligence and humility and with much more advantages of retirdeness and time and helps than you 3. Take heed of engaging your hand or tongue or secret thoughts against the faithful Ministers of Christ But further the work of Christ in their hands with all your power I am no Prophet but yet presume to say ☞ that if the reproaches of a faithful Ministry in England be purg'd away without some dreadful judgment of God on the Apostate reproachers or else a desertion of the Nation by a removing of our glory I shall wonder at the patience and forbearance of the Lord. It 's a dreadful observation to see so much of the spirit of Malignity possessing those that once said they fought against Malignants And that the Ministers and servants of the Lord are railed at by many of them as formerly they were by the worst of those that their hands destroyed And with this dreadful aggravation that then it was but some that were reviled and now with many it is all then it was under the name of Puritans and Round-heads and now it is openly as Ministers under the name of Priests and Black-coats and Presbyters and Pulpeteers What have these souls done that they are so far forsaken by the Lord The judge of all the world is at the door that will plead his servants cause in righteousness It is hard kicking against the pricks He that despiseth despiseth not men but God Persecution under pretence of Liberty is heightened with hypocrisie and is one of the greatest sins in the world But men are not catcht in Spiders webs though flies are our Lord will make us a way to escape Persecution never conquered Christ And because he lives we shall live also Here is the faith patience of the Saints I know that malice wants not words to cloak their iniquity He that hath will and power to do hurt hath so much wit as to pretend some reason for it Though I think that malice did never walk more nakedly since the Primitive persecutions than it doth in England at this day Their principles and profound contrivances they can hide but their Malignity goes stark naked and is almost grown past shame They talk against Mercenary Ministers as if they had never read 1 Cor. 9. Mal. 3. and such other Scriptures Or as if they envyed food and rayment to them that watch and labour for their souls to whom they are commanded to give double honour 1 Tim. 5. 17. when they envy not Provender to their Horses nor Fodder to their labouring Ox nor the crums to their very Dogs But the matter is that their wit is too scant and narrow for their malice and therefore the Popish and Malignant enemies have no fairer pretence to cast out the Ministry than by this engaging the Covetousness of the ignorant and ungodly sort against them They talk of our want of a just call But what is it in point of Calling that is wanting Abilities say some Succession
very Pleasing of the Appetite doth recreate nature and further strength 2. And sometime the appetite shews what sort of food nature will best close with and concoct so that as to the quality if Reason have nothing against it it hath something for it because it is a sign that it 's like to be best digested which is most desired And so if you thus far follow the appetite as a sign directing your reason what is best and take nothing ultimately to please it but by pleasing it to preserve the health or vigour of your bodies for Gods service thus you may do and yet be self-denying for this is not a sensual serving of your flesh But if you will 1. Take that which reason tells you is unhealthful in quality 2. Or that which reason tells you is either hurtful or but needless and unprofitable in the quantity 3. Or have mastered your reason so far by your appetite that you will not believe that is hurtful or needless which you love but judge what is good for you meerly by your appetite as a beast 4. Or if you make the pleasing of your appetite your chief End in any meat or drink that you take all this is bestiality sensuality carnality gulosity and contrary to true moderation and self-denial Live therefore like men and not like beasts like Christians and not like Atheists and Epicures He hath as base a god as most of the vilest heathen Idolaters that makes his belly his god He that cannot deny himself a delicious cup or morsel would ill deny himself a Kingdom if it were made the bait of sin He that will not displease his appetite in so small a matter would leardly leave his estate or liberty or life if he were put to it either to sin or leave them As he is a faithful servant to God indeed that will not displease him in the smallest matter so he is most fully obedient to the flesh that cannot deny it the least thing that it desireth Though I know that the smalness of the matter doth often so relax the cautelousness even of the godly that they venture on a small thing who would not on a greater yet even with them it is some aggravation of the sin that they cannot bear so small a matter as the displeasing of their appetites in such a trifle and that they cannot deny themselves where they may do it at so cheap a rate and that they have the hearts to displease God and wrong their souls for a cup or a morsel which their appetite hath a mind to He sets little by Heaven or the favor of God that will venture it for so small a thing It hath oft times abated my compassion to dying men when I have known that their death was caused by a wilful obeying their ppetite against the perswasion of their Physitian and be the person never so dear to me I feel that there is somewhat in nature that inclineth us to consent to the sufferings of the willful or abateth our pity of them in their misery It was an aggravation of Adams sin that a forbidden morsel could entice him to venture on the wrath of God and the ruine of himself and his posterity And it will be a double aggravation of your sin if you will take the same course and take no warning by him or by the sinning world that hath followed him to this day when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eye and a tree to be desired to make one wise she took of the fruit thereof and did eat Gen. 26. Thus entred sin and death by sin 2. ANother part of self-interest to be denied is the pleasing of lustful venereous inclinations Not only in avoiding the gross act of adultery and fornication it self but also in avoiding the pleasing of any of the senses by lascivious actions that lead to this especially some men that are naturally prone to lust have need to set a work both faith and reason and sometime call for help from others to quench these dangerous hellish flames For it is a sin that God hath spoken terribly against and that so often that intimateth mans proneness to it and expresseth Gods detestation of it And seldom doth Paul rebuke it but he reckoneth up the several kinds that he may make it odious and noâ—e may escape Gal. 5. 19. Now the works of the flesh are manifest which are adultery fornication uncleanness lasciviousness c. of the which I tell you before as I have also told you in time past that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God The sins which he would not have the Ephesians name are fornication and all uncleanness neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are not convenient because no whoremonger nor unclean person nor covetous man who is an Idolater hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God so Col. 3. 5 6. Mortifie therefore your members which are upon earth fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which is Idolatry for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience 1 Cor. 6 9 10. Be not deceived neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind c. shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Tim. 1. 10. The Law is made for whoremongers for them that defile themselves with mankind c. Heb. 13. 4. Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge Read also 1 Cor. 5. 11. Matth. 15. 19. Heb. 12. 16. 1 Thes 4. 3. Rom. 1. 28 29 c. 1 Cor. 6. 13 18. 10. 8. Jud. 7 8. These filthy dreamers defile the flesh c. 2 Pet. 2. 10 14. But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness Having eyes full of Adultery and that cannot cease from sin Abhor therefore this filthy damnable sin which God abhorreth And to that end please not the flesh by any beginnings of it or any thing that savoureth of it or makes way to it Chambering and wantonness are mentioned by the Apostle among the fullfilling of the fleshly lusts Rom. 13. 13 14. the allurements of the lusts of the flesh and wantonness was the course of the wretched Apostates 2 Pet. 2. 18. 1 Pet. 4. 3. Eph. 4. 19. 2 Cor. 12. 21. Mar. 7. 22. And Christ himself hath told you that he that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery already in his heart Mat. 5. 28. Suffer not therefore your eye to entice your hearts by gazing on beauty or any alluring objects touch them not come not near them without necessity The fire of lust doth need no blowing up but in some it needeth all that ever they can do to quench it Fly therefore from the temptations and occasions if you would escape cast not your selves upon opportunities of sinning Let temptations have as little advantage as you can
Directions for this part of self-denial CHAP. XXII False Stories Romances and other tempting Books 5. ANother point of sensuality to be denied is The reading or hearing of false and tempting Books and those that only tend to please an idle fancy and not to edifie Such as are Romances and other feigned histories of that nature with Books of tales and jests and foolish complements with which the world so much aboundeth that there 's few but may have admittance to this Library of the Devil Abundance of old feigned Stories and new Romances are in the hands especially of Children and idle Gentlemen filthy lustful Gallants or â—…ty persons that savour not greater matters but have spirits sutable to such gawds as these But if they were only toyes I should say the less but having seen by long observation the mischief of them I desire you to note it in these few particulars 1. They ensnare us in a world of guilt by drawing us to the neglect of those many those great and necessary things that all of us have to mind and study O for a man or woman that is under a load of sin unassured of pardon and salvation that is near to death and unready to die to be seen with a story or Romance in their hand what a gross incongruity is this It 's fitter the Book of God should be in your hand It 's that which you must live by and be judged by There 's much that you are yet ignorant of which you have more need to be acquainted with than Fables Are you not ignorant of an hundred truths that you should know that God hath revealed to further your salvation and can you lay them all by to read Romances Are you travelling towards another world with a Play-book in your hand O that you did but know what greater matters you have to mind and to to do Do all that you have to do first that 's of a thousand times more worth and weight and need and then come to me and I will answer your Objections What harm is it to read a Play-book First Quench the fire of sin and wrath that is kindled in your souls and see that you understand the Laws of God and read over those profitable Treatises of Divines that the world aboundeth with and your souls more need and then tell me what mind or time you have for Fables 2. Moreover it dangerously bewitcheth and corrupteth the minds of young and empty people to read these books Nature doth so close with them and delight in them that they presently breed an inordinacy of affection and steal away the heart from God and his holy Word and ways It cannot be that the Love and delights of the heart can be let out on such trash as these and not be taken off from God and the most needful things That is the most dangerous thing to the soul that works it self deepest into the affections and is most delighted in instead of God And therefore I may well conclude that Play-books and History-Fables and Romances and such like are the very poyson of youth the prevention of grace the fuel of wantonness and lust and the food and work of empty vicious graceless persons and it 's great pity that they be not banished out of the Common-wealth 3. Moreover they rob men of much precious time in which much better work might be done much precious knowledge might be got while they are exercised in these Fables Those hours must be answered for And there is not the worst of you but then had rather be able to say I spent those days and hours in prayer and meditating on the life to come and reading the Law and Gospel of Christ and the Books which his Servants wrote for my instruction than to say I spent it in reading Love-books and Tale-books and Play-books All these considered I beseech you throw away these pestilent vanities and take them not in your hands nor suffer them in the hands of your children or in your houses but burn them as you would do a conjuring-book as they did Acts 19. 19. that so they may do no mischief to any others CHAP. XXIII Vain Sports and Pastimes to be denied 6. ANother part of fleshly interest to be denied is vain sports and pastimes and all unnecessary Recreations For this also is one of the harlots that the flesh is defiled with Recreations are lawful and useful if thus qualified 1. If the matter of them be not forbidden For there 's no sporting with sin 2. If we have an holy Christian end in them that is to fit our bodies and minds for the service of God and do not do it principally to please the flesh If without dissembling our hearts can say I would not meddle with this recreation If I thought I could have my body and mind as â—ell strengthned and fitted for Gods service without it 3. If we use not recreations without need as to the said End nor continue them longer than they are useful to that End and so do not cast away any of our precious time on them in vain 4. If they be not uncivil excessively costly cruel or accompanied with the like unlawful accidents 5. If they contain not more probable incentives to vice than to vertue as to Covetousness Lust Passion Prophaneness c. 6. If they are not like to be more hurtful to the souls of others that joyn with us than profitable to us 7. If they be not like to do more hurt by offending any that are weak or dislike them than good to us that use them 8. If they be used seasonably in a time that they hinder not greater duties 9. If we do it not in company unfit for us to joyn with 10. Especially if we make a right choice of Recreations and when divers are before us we take the best that which is least offensive least expensive of time and cost and which best furthereth the health of our bodies with the smallest inconvenience These Rules being observed Recreations are as lawful as sleep or food or Physick But alas they are made another thing by the sensual ungodly world Sometime they must sport themselves with sin it self in the abuse of Gods Name and Servants and Creatures Tipling and prophane Courses are some mens chiefest recreations And though the Law of the Land forbid most of their sports and the Law of God commandeth them to obey all the Laws of men that are not against the Law of God yet this is a matter of nothing to their consciences And let the matter be never so lawful they make all impious by a carnal end It 's none of their intention to strengthen and fit themselves for the service of God and an holy righteous life by their recreations but it 's meerly because their fancy and flesh is pleased in them Even as the Drunkard Glutton or Whoremonger that have no higher end than Pleasure and can give you no better account
remember that Heathens themselves have chosen death First in case of some extream torment or other misery which they had no other hope to prevent or end But this was but a choosing a speedier or easier Death before a more grievous death though remote or before a death that had so great a misery for its fore-runner or at least before such a life as is a continual death And so the conquered Heathens would frequently kill themselves to prevent a more dishonourable cruel death from the hand of the Conqueror And so many a one in uncurable misery wiâ—â—eth rather to die than endure it partly because that the suffering is so great as to overcome all the comforts of life For I yield that some degrees of misery with life are more terrible to nature than death and partly because that they know they must die at last however Secondly in a desire of fame that they may leave behind them an honourable name when they are dead But this is not to desire death but life Fain they would live for ever and because they know that it cannot be obtained on earth they had rather die some honourable death a little sooner that their names may live when they are dead than to die ignominiously shortly after Thirdly And some have chosen to die for the publick good of their Country But as it 's very uncertain whether the desire of a living Name were not their greater motive so it was but a choosing a present death for their Country before a latter unavoidable death without any such advantage In all these cases a natural man may venture on death that knows he cannot scape it long but must shortly die whether he will or no. But if they could avoid it there 's very few would submit to death but believers and none but in one of these cases 1. To end or avoid some extream intolerable uncurable misery 2. To deliver their Country or friends 3. And whether any would do it upon their ungrounded hopes of better things in the life to come I leave to consideration But if it be taken for granted that a natural man may love 1. The comforts of life above it self 2. And the good of his Country or the world or his children above his life 3. Or some carnal felicity falsly conceited to be had in another life yet it is certain that none but a sanctified believer can Love God better than his Life or can prefer those spiritual heavenly joys which consist in the holy Love and Fruition of God before his life And therefore he that for these can deny his Life is indeed a Christian and none but be Though it be an ungrateful word to the ears of some I must say it again and none but he For this is the very point in which Christ for instance doth put our self-denial to the trial He that will save his life shall lose it Whether you Love an immortal holy life with God or this earthly fleshly life better is the great question on which it will be resolved whether you are Christians or Infidels at the heart and whether you are heirs of heaven or hell Some Love to God may be in the unsanctified but not a love to him above their lives and in some cases they may submit to death but not for the Love of God But both these set together that is a submitting to Death for the Love of God or a Loving of God above this life is the most infallible proof of your sincerity I confess flesh and blood must needs think this is a very hard saying and though they might consent to acknowledge it a Duty and a Reasonable thing to die for Christ and a note of excellency and a commendable qualification of some few extrordinary Saints yet it goeth very hardly down with them that it should be the lowest measure of saving grace that the weakest Christian must have it that will be saved For say they What can the strongest do more than die for Christ But to this I answer 1. There is no rom for objections against so plain a Word of God It is the wisdom of God and not our Reason that disposeth of the Crown of life and therefore it is his Wisdom and not our Reason must determine by what we shall attain it And if God say plainly that If any man come to Christ and hate not his own life that is love it not so much less than Christ that for his sake he can use it as a hated thing is used he cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 26. it is too late for the vote of man or all the clamour of foolish reason to recal this resolution The word of God will stand when they have talk'd against it never so long we may destroy our selves by dashing against it but we cannot destroy or frustrate it 2. And whereas men ask What can the strongest do more than die for Christ I answer Abundance more They can die for him with far greater Love and Zeal and Readiness and Joy than the weak can do and so bring much more honour to him by their death Though there be no higher way of outward expressing our Love to Christ than by dying for him yet the inward work of Love may be in very different degrees in persons that use the same expression of it Some may come to the stake with a little Love comparatively and some with fervent hot affections Some have much ado to yield to die and some die so chearfully that they rejoyce in the opportunity of honouring God and passing to him Yea and in the Expressions there is much difference in the manner Some give up themselves with so much readiness as works more on the standers by than their meer patience or the death it self And some are drawn so hardly to it as drowneth much of the honour and fruit of their martyrdom Of this read Mr. Pinks Serm. on Luke 14. 26. Obj. But Nature is of God and Nature teacheth us to Love and save our Lives and is it like that the God of Nature will command and teach us to cast them away and so contradict his own Law of Nature Answ 1. As Nature teacheth you to love your lives so God doth not forbid you But 2. Is it Natural to man to be Reasonable as well as to be sensitive and animate To have a reasonable soul as to have a temporal life 3. And doth not Reason tell us by the light of Nature that God should be loved better than our Lives If it did not yet by the help of supernatural light even Reason clearly tells us this And it is no contradiction for God to bid you Love your lives but love him better And he that bids you seek the preservation of your lives doth plainly except that you resign them to his dispose and that you seek not to save them from him when he commandeth you to lay them down So that it is not simply
reason and drawn you to excess in meats and drinks for matter or manner for quality or quantity or both Many a groan those sins have cost you and many a smarting day they have caused you and a sad uncomfortable life you have had by reason of them in comparison of what you might have had And this flesh hath been the Mother or the Nurse of all You were engaged by your Baptismal Covenant to fight against it when you entred into the Church and if you are Christians this combate hath been your daily work and much of the business of your lives And yet are you loth to have the victory see your enemy under feet Do you fight against it as for the life of your souls yet are you afraid lest death should hurt it or break it down Have you fought your selves friends with it that you are so tender of it when you are the greatest friends to it it will be the most dangerous enemy to you And do not think that it is only sin and not the body that is the flesh that is called your enemy in Scripture For though it be not the body as such or as obedient to the soul yet is it the Body as inclining to creatures from which the sinful soul cannot restrain it it is the body as having an inordinate sensitive appetite and imagination and so distempered as that it rebels against the Spirit and casteth off the rule of Reason and would not be curbed of its desires but have the rule of all it self Was it not the very flesh it self that Paul saith he fought against and kept under and brought into subjection lest he should be a cast a-way 1 Cor. 9. 26 27. Why should sin be called Flesh and Body but that it is the Body of Flesh that is the principal-seat of those sins that are so called If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 13. If ye sow to the flesh of the flesh ye shall reap corruption Gal. 6. 8. That which is first in Being is first in sin But it is the Flesh or Embryo endued with sense that is first in being Be not therefore too tender of that which corruption hath made your prison and your enemy Many a time you have been put to resist it and watch and strive against it and when you have been at the best it hath been hindring you to be better and when the spirit was willing the flesh was weak And quickly hath it caused your cooling declension Many a blessed hours communion between God your souls that flesh hath deprived you of And therfore though still you must love it yet you should the less grieve or be troubled at its sufferings seeing they are but the fruits of its sin and a holy contentedness shold possess your minds that God should thus castigatorily revenge his own quarrel yours upon it 10. But yet consider that were you never so tender of the body it self yet faith and reason should perswade you to be content For God is but preparing even for its felicity His undoing it but to make it up again As in the new birth he broke your hearts and false hopes that he might heal your hearts and give you sounder hopes instead of them so at death he breaketh your flesh and worldly hopes not to undo you and leave it in corruption but to raise it again another manner of body than now it is and give it a part in the blessedness which you hoped for If in good sadness you believe the Resurrection what cause is there for so much fear of death You can be content that your Roses die and your sweetest Flowers fall and perish and the green and beauteous complexion of the earth be turned into a bleak and withered hue because you expect a kind of Resurrection in the Spring You can boldly lie down at night to sleep though sleep be a kind of death to the body and more to the soul and all because you shall rise again in the morning And if every nights sleep or one at least were a gentle death if you were sure to rise again the next morning you would make no great matter of it Were it as common to men to die every night and rise again in the morning as it is to sleep every night and rise in the morning death would not seem such a dreadful thing Those poor men that have the falling-sickness do once in a day or in a few days lie as dead men and have as much pain as many that die And yet because they use to be up and well again in a little time they can go merrily about their business the rest of the day and little fear their approaching fall How much more should the belief of a Resurrection unto life confirm us against the fears of death And why should we not as quietly commit our bodies to the dust when we have the promise of the God of heaven that the Earth shall deliver up her dead and that this body that is sown in corruption shall be raisedin incorruption It is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory it is sown in weakness it is raised in power it is sown a natural body it is raised a spiritual body So great and wonderful the change will be as now is unconceivable we have now a drossie lâ—mp of flesh an aggravation of the Elements to a seed of life which out of them forms it self a body by the Divine influx Like the Silk-worm which in the Winter is but a seed which in the Summer doth move attract that matter from which it gets a larger body by a kind of Resurrection But it is another manner of body I will not say of flesh which at the Resurrection we shall have Not flesh and blood nor a natural body but of a nature so spiritual sublime and pure that it shall be indeed a spiritual body And think not that this is a contradiction and that spirituality and corporeity are inconsistent For There is a Natural Body and there is a Spiritual body The root of the fleshly Natural body was the first man Adam who was made a living soul to be the Root of living souls The root of the spiritual Body is Christ who being a quickning Spirit doth quicken all his members by his Spirit which Spirit of Grace is the seed of Glory as from an holy and gracious Saviour we receive an holy and gracious nature so from a Glorified Saviour we shall receive a glorious nature we are now changed from glory to Glory in the beginning as by the spirit of the Lord But it is another kind of Glory that this doth tend to Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual but the natural and afterwards the spiritual The first man was of the Earth Earthy The second man is the Lord from heaven
earth or from a carrion in a ditch so will our glorified immortal bodies differ from this mortal corruptible flesh If a skilful workman can turn a little earth and ashes into such curious transparent glasses as we daily see and if a little seed that bears no shew of such a thing can produce the more beautiful flowers of the earth and if a little acorn can bring forth the greatest Oak why should we once doubt whether the seed of everlasting life and glory which is now in the blessed souls with Christ can by him communicate a perfection to the flesh that is dissolved into its elements There 's no true beauty but that which is there received from the face of God And if a glympse made Moses face to shine what glory will Gods glory communicate to us when we have the fullest endless intuition of it There only is the strength and there 's the riches and there 's the honour and there 's the pleasure and here are but the shadows and dreams and names and images of these precious things And the perfection of the soul that 's now imperfect will be such as cannot now be known The very nature and manner of Intellection Memory Volition and Affections will be unconceivably altered and elevated even as the soul it self will be and much more because of the change on the corruptible body which in these acts it now makes use of But of these things I have spoke so much in the Saints Rest that I shall say no more of them now but this that in a Believer that expects this blessed change and knows that he shall never till then be perfect there is much unreasonableness in the inordinate unwillingness and fears of death 12. You know that fears and unwillingness can do no good but much increase your suffering and make your death a double death If it be bitter naturally make it not more bitter wilfully I speak this of a violent death for Christ as well as of a natural death For as the one cannot be avoided if we would so the other cannot be avoided when Christ calleth us to it without the loss of our Salvation and therefore it may be called Necessary as well as the other Necessary suffering and death is enough without thâ— addition of unnecessary fears 13. Nay were it but to put an end to the inordinate fears of death even death it self should be the less fearful to us These very fears are troublesome to many an upright soul and should we not desire to be past them As a woman with Child is in fear of the pain danger of her travel but joyful when it 's over so is the true believer himself too oft afraid of the departing hour but death puts an end to all those fears Is it the pain that you fear Why how soon will it be over Is it the strangeness of your souls to God and the place that you are passing to This also will be quickly over and one moment will give you such full acquaintance with the blessed God and the Celestial inhabitants and the world in which you are to live that you will find your self no stranger there but be more joyfully familiar and content than ever you were in the bosom of your dearest friend The Infant in the Womb is a stranger to this lighter open world and all the inhabitants of it and yet it is nor best stay there You can fail for commodity to a Country that you never saw and why cannot you pass with peace and joy to a God a Christ a Heaven that you never saw But yet you are not wholly a stranger there Is it not that God that you have loved and that hath first loved you Have you not been brought into the world by him and lived by him and been preserved and provided for by him and do you not know him Is it not your Father and he that hath given you his Son and his Spirit have you not found an inclination towards him desires after him and some taste of his love and communion with him and yet are you wholly unacquainted with him Know ye not him whom you have loved above all in whom you have trusted and whom you have daily served in the world Who have you lived to but him for whom else have you laid out your time and labour and yet do you not know him And know you not that Christ that hath purposely come down into flesh that you might know him and that hath shewed himself to you in a holy life and bitter death and in abundant precious Gospel mercies and in Sacramental representations that so he might entertain a familiarity with you and infinite distance might not leave you too strange to God Know you not that Spirit that hath made so many a motion to your soul that hath sanctified you and formed the image of God upon you and hath dwelt in you so long and made your hearts his very work-house where he hath been daily doing somewhat for God It is not possible that you should be utterly strange to him that you Live to and Live from and Live in and not know him by whom you know your selves and all things nor see that Light by which you see whatever you see O but you say you never saw him and have no distinct apprehension of his essence Answ What! Would you make a Creature of him that can be limited comprehended or seen with fleshly mortal eyes Take heed of such imaginations It is the understanding that must see him You know that he is most Wise and Good and Great and that he is the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world and that he is your Reconciled Father in Christ and is this no knowledg of him And then the Heaven that you are to go to is it that you are an Heir of where you have laid up your treasure and where your hearts and conversation hath so long been and yet do you not know it You have had many a thought of it and bestowed many a days labour for it and yet do you not know it O but you never saw it for all this Answ It is a spiritual blessedness that flesh and blood can neither enjoy nor see But by the eye of the mind you have often seen at least some glimpse of it You know that it is the present intuition and full fruition of God himself and your glorified Redeemer with his blessed Angels and Saints in perfect Love and Joy and Praise And if you know this you are not altogether strangers to heaven And for the Saints and heavenly Inhabitants you are not wholly strangers to them Some of them you have known in the flesh and others of them you have known in the spirit You are fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and therefore cannot be utterly unacquainted with them But me thinks the stranger you are to God and to Heaven and to the Saints
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
comfort of Christ in his suffering and death so also it must be to us See therefore that in your health you Kill your own wills that when Death comes self may have no will to strive against the Will of God but as your Heaven it self will be your Rest in the Will of God so Rest in it in death that you may have a taste of Heaven in Death and sure that will sweeten it if any thing will II. I Have hitherto shewed you wherein self-denial doth consist first as to the heart and root of it which is the Mortification of the selfish Inclination or Disposition and then as to the first of the three parts of its Objective Interest which is sensitive Pleasure I should now proceed to the other two parts of its objective Interest And the second is Worldly Gain or Profit which the Apostle John calleth the Lust of the Eyes and puts next to the Lust of the Flesh But I have already written a Treatise of this by it self viz. Of our Crucifixion of the World and therefore I may well forbear it here CHAP. XLI Honour and Pride And 1. Climbing high c. III. THe third part of the Objective Interest of Self is that which goes commonly under the name of Honour and is called by the Apostle Pride of Life and put by him in the third place And of this I intend if God will give me time and strength to write also a Treatise by it self and therefore should say nothing of it here but only lest I should not have time to do that which I desire I shall briefly name you ten of the particulars under this head of Honour which you must deny that is Ten ways wherein men exercise their Pride 1. One work of Pride is to climb higher into places of superiority and honour and command Poor men that are out of hope and in no capacity for rising feel not much of this though the Disposition to it be in them as well as others because it is not drawn forth by temptations But where opportunity serveth there is nothing wherein selfishness and Pride doth more constantly and obstinately shew it self than in this It is the Nature of selfishness to aspire after the highest exaltation in the world that can be attained We may easily observe in Kingdoms and Corporations and all Societies of men what Christ observed at their feasts that they choose out the chief rooms and sit with the highest Luke 14. 7 8. What eager desires have they to be above other men If any office or seat of Honour be void there is few that apprehend any possibility of attaining it that want a will to it Yea few that will not seek and strive for it and envy those that carry it before them and hate or bear a grudge to those that were against their rising yea few but venture on the most unlawful means to accomplish their desires yet will scarce believe that they are unlawful because they think them necessary to their ends There is few if they had the choice of a man to any vacant place of honour that would chuse any other but themselves unless their unfitness were likely more to dishonour them or some way to make their honors too burdensom to them No man in their eyes is so fit as themselves or so worthy as themselves Or if it be their Children or Kinsmen that stand for it or any that self hath special interest in they seem the worthiest for the place because they are related to them Especially if it be any eminent Dignity or command that seems to them a prey that 's worth the hunting after O the blinding bewitching befooling power of Pride and Selfishness How commonly doth it rule How few are those holy happy men that have escaped and overcome it How few Societies be there in the world whether Corporations Colledges or the like but Pride and Selfishness makes their Governors How few Nations on the Earth where Pride and Selfishness maketh not their Kings or Soveraigns And is it any wonder if they be all ill-governed then where the Devil doth so much to choose the Governors I know that God over-ruleth all and restraineth the lusts of men and crosseth their designs but yet their lusts and the Devil may Rule to their destruction for all that Object But is it not lawful to seek for dignity and superiority Answ No not for self but for God it is You have warnings enough and plain enough from Christ if warnings would serve turn He hath bid you sit not down in the highest room he hath sharply rebuked them that strive for precedency and who shall be the greatest He hath told you he that will be the greatest must be the servant of all and hath told you of stooping to the feet of the meanest and condescending to men of low degree and hath set little children before you to be your Teachers and assured you that there is no entrance into his Kingdom in any other posture He hath told you that God resisteth and abhorreth the Proud and that he that humbleth himself shall be exalted and he that exalteth himself shall be brought low Object But how shall I know whether I seek preferment for God or my self I hope it's God that I seek it for Answ 1. How shall a man know his own mind you have dark hearts indeed if you cannot know your own Intentions if you are but observant and diligent and willing to know them 2. He that seeketh not Dignities for himself but for God will never seek to put by another that is as able and likely to do God service in the place as he Nor will he seek it at all if he see that God may be served as well without his seeking it but will stay till God call him to it and then he may expect his help and blessing Few do intend God in it that are Exalters of themselves Indeed if you see that an enemy of the Gospel or some unworthy ungodly man is like to come into the place if you seek it not by which the Church or the Common-wealth is like to be much injured then you may seek it by lawful means so that you can truly say I would not do it for my self but it is to serve God for his peoples good 3. Nay he that seeketh not the Dignity for himself will seek first and more to get in another if he know another that is fitter than himself and likely to do God more service and this he will do heartily and not dissemblingly If you had not rather a worthier and more useful man were preferred before you and seek not more for such than for your selves you are plain self-seekers whatever you may pretend If a man should come to almost any of the Rulers of Nations Churches Colledges or Corporations that have scrued themselves into the place of Government and ask them Did you know no man fitter for this place than your self
and that business is troublesome this person is troublesome and that person is abusive and injurious One is false and treacherous or slanderous and another is imprudent and weak and burdensome what between the baits of prosperity and the troubles of affliction the perverseness of adversaries and the weakness of friends and the changes that all States and persons are liable to the multitudes that would be pleased and the labour and the cost that it will stand us in to please them and the multitudes that will be displeased when we have done our best and the murmurings reproaches and false accusations that we shall be sure of from the displeased and which is worst of all the burdensome weaknesses and corruptions of our own souls and the sins of our lives and the daily vexation that our dark and shattered condition doth occasion to our selves I say between all these disquieting perplexities enough to rack and tear in pieces the heart of man I have no way but to shut up the eyes of sense and forget all self-interest and withdraw from the creature as if there were no self or creature for it in the world and to retire into God and satisfie my soul with his Goodness and All-sufficiency and faithfulness and immutability And in him is nothing to disquiet or discontent unless you will call his enmity to our own diseases and unhappiness a discontenting thing And this is not my own experience alone but all that know what Christian Peace and Comfort is do know that they lose it and are torn in pieces while they are caring and contriving for themselves and that Retiring into God and casting all their care on him and satisfying themselves with him alone though all the creatures should turn against them is the way to their content and quietness of mind The Example of David is exceeding observable 1 Sam. 30. 6. When besides the distressed estate that he was before in the City where he left his family and the families of his followers was taken and burnt down and their wives and children carried away all gone so that David and the people that were with him lift up their voice and wept untill they had no more power to weep and to make up his calamity the Souldiers that were with him talkt of stoning him because of the loss of their wives and children in this desolate condition saith the Text but David encouraged or comforted himself in the Lord his God And it is good for us sometime to have nothing in this world left us that will afford us comfort that we may be driven to God for it Till the house be as on fire over our heads and we are as it were fired out of every room of it we will hardly be gone and betake our selves to God our only Rest Try it Christians when you will and you shall find it true that selfish contents do but tice you to straggle away from your true comfort and when you have done all it is in returning unto God that you must find the comfort which you lost by seeking it abroad It is only in the God of Peace that your souls will find peace and therefore away from self and creatures and retire into God CHAP. LXVI Self-seeking is self-losing self-denying our safety 4. MOreover consider that self-seeking is self-destroying and self-denial is the only way to our safety We were well when we were in the hands of God and had no need to care for our selves But we were lost as soon as we left him and turned to our selves If God care for you infinite Wisdom cares for you whom no enemy is able to over-wit or circumvent who can foresee all your dangers and is acquainted with all the ways of your enemies and with all that is necessary to your preservation But if you be at your own care you are at the care of fools and short-witted people that are not acquainted with the depths of Satan the subtilties of men nor the way of your escape but may easily be over-reached to your undoing If you are in your own hands you are in the hands of bad men that though they have self-love yet are so blinded by impiety that they will live like self haters And this experience fully manifesteth in that all sinners are self-destroyers No enemy could do so much against us as the best of us doth against himself Did a man hate himself as bad as the Devil hateth him he could shew it by no worse a way than sin nor do himself a greater mischief than by neglecting God and the life to come and undoing his own soul as the ungodly do Should you sit down of purpose to study how to do all the hurt to your selves that you can and to play the part of your deadliest enemies I know not what you could do more than is ordinary with ungodly men to do except to go a little further in the same way Nothing but sin could alienate you from God or make you liable to his heavy wrath and this no man else could make you guilty of if you did not voluntarily choose to be evil If you could ask any man that is this day in Hell or that will ever be there what brought him thither and who it was long of that he came to such a miserable end he must needs tell you it was himself If you come to any in earthly misery and ask them who brought this upon them If they speak truly they must say it was themselves And this will be a great aggravation of their misery and the fewel that will feed the unquenchable fire to think that all this was their own doing and that they had not been deprived of the heavenly Glory but for their own refusal or neglect It will fill the soul with an everlasting indignation against it self to consider that it hath cast it self wilfully into such misery that when Satan could not and men could not and God would not if he had not done it himself he should be so witless and graceless as to be the chooser of sin the refuser of holiness and his own undoer So that the experience of all the world telleth you how unsafe man is in his own hands the experience of those in Hell may tell us whither it is that self would lead us if we follow its conduct Whither did self lead Adam when he hearkened to it but to sin and death what work hath it made over all the earth Do we not see a whole world of people not one excepted wounded and slain and brought into so low and sad a state and all this by themselves and yet shall we go on in selfishness still Of all the enemies you have in the world pray God to save you from your selves scape your selves and you scape all You will never miscarry by any other hands The Devil and wicked men will do their worst but without you they can do nothing Never will you come
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉