Third must be my excuse for all But pardon the Manner and I dare commend the Matter to you as more worthy your serious contemplation and your daily most delightful practice than any other that was ever proposed unto mortal man This is the man-like noble life The life which the Rational soul was made for To which if our faculties be not by sanctifying Grace restored they fall below their proper dignity and use and are worse than lost like a Prince or Learned man that is employed only in sweeping Dog-kennels or tending Swine To walk in Holiness with the most Holy God is the improvement and advancement of the nature of man towards its designed equality with Angels When Earthliness and Sensuality degrade humanity into a voluntary and therefore sinful brutishness This is the Life which affordeth the soul a solid and durable pleasure and content When carnal minds evaporate into Air and bubble into froth and vanity wasted in a dream and the violent busie pursuit of a shadow deceiving themselves with a mixture of some counterfeit Religion playing with God and working for the world living in jeast and dying and despairing and suffering in earnest with unwearied labour building on the Sand and sinking at death for want of a foundation hating the serious practice of their own profest Religion because it is not the profession but the serious practice which hath the greatest enmity to their sensual delights yet wishing to be numbred with those hereafter whom they hated here This Holy Walking with the most Holy God is the only life which is best at last and sweet in the review which the Godly Live in and most of the ungodly could wish to dye in like him that wished to be Caesar in life and Socrates at death Yea this is the Life which hath no end which we are here but learning and beginning to practise and which we must hereafter live in another manner and degree with God for ever O wondrous Mercy which thus ennobleth even the state of mortality and honoureth Earth with so much participation of and communion with Heaven That by God and with God we may walk in holy peace and safety unto God and there be blessed in his perfect Sight and Love for ever Madam the greatest service I can do you for all your favours is to pray that God will more acquaint you with himself and lead you by this blessed way to that more blessed end that when you see all worldly glory in the dust you may bless him for ever who taught you to make a wiser choice Which are the prayers of Dec. 24. 1663. MADAM Your very much obliged Servant RICHARD BAXTER TO THE READER Reader THE Embryo of this Book was but one Sermon preached a little before the ending of my publick Ministry upon the Text of the third Treatise upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honour able Lady Being obliged to communicate the Notes and unavoidably gullty of some delays I made a compensation by enlargement and having reasons for the publication of them with which I shall not trouble you to make them more suitable to the designed end I prefixed the two former Treatises The first I had preached to my ancient flock Of the second I had preached but one Sermon If many of the materials in the second be the same as in the first you must understand that my design required that it should be so They being the same Attributes of God which the first Part endeavoureth to imprint upon the mind and which the second and third endeavour to improve into a constant course of holy affection and conversation As it is the same food which the first concoction chylifieth which the perfecting concoctions do work over again and turn into blood and spirits and flesh so far am I in such points from gratifying thy sickly desire of variety and avoiding the displeasing of thee by the rehearsals of the same that it is my very business with thee to perswade thee to live continually upon these same Attributes and Relations of God as upon thy daily air and bread and to forsake that lean consuming company who feed on the shels of hard and barren controversies or on the froth of complements and affected shews and run after novelty instead of substantial solid nutriment And to tell thee that the primitive pure simple Christianity consisted in the daily serious use of the great materials of the Creed Lords Prayer and ten Commandements contracted in the words of our Baptismal Covenant Do thus and thou will be like those examples of the succeeding Church in uprightness purity simplicity charity peaceableness and holy communion with God when the pretended subtilties and sublimities of wanton uncharitable contentious wits will serve but to strangle or delude their souls I have purposely been very brief on the several Attributes and Relations of God in the first Treatise because the copious handling of them would have made a very great volume of it self and because it is my great design in that first part to give you a sight of all Gods Attributes and Relations conjunct and in their order that looking on them not one by one but all together in their proper places the whole Image of God may by them be rightly imprinted on your minds The Method being the first thing and the necessary Impressions on the soul the second which I there desire you to observe and employ your minds about if you desire to profit and receive what I intend you Decem. 24. 1663. THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE Text explained The Doctrine The Knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ the Mediatour is the life of grace and the necessary way to the life of glory What is contained in the Knowledge of God as to the Act what as to the Object A short Scheme of the Divine properties and Attributes to be known Page 1 CHAP. II. Of the Knowledge of Gods Being and the necessary effects of it on the heart p. 14 CHAP. III. Of the Knowledge of Gods Unity and Indivisibility and its necessary effects p. 17 CHAP. IV. Of the Knowledge of Gods Immensity and so of his Incomprehensibleness Omnipresence and the effects p. 21 CHAP. V. Of the Knowledge of Gods Eternity and its due effects A Believer referring all things to Eternity honoureth his very horse or dog or smallest mercy more than Unbelievers honour their King their lives their souls regarding them but for transitory ends Unbelievers denying the End destroy morally all souls all mercies all Divine revelations all Gods ordinances all graces and duties and the whole Creation p. 28 CHAP. VI. The Knowledge of God as he is a Spirit and incorporeal and consequently 1. As he is simple or uncompounded 2. Invisible c. 3. Immortal Incorruptible Immutable The Uses of Gods Simplicity The Uses of his Invisibility The Uses of his Immortality and Immutability p. 44 CHAP. VII Of the Knowledge of Gods Almightiness
distresses Eternity is your Religion and the Life of all your holy motions and as without the Capacity of it you would be but beasts so without the Love and Desire of it and title to it you would be but wicked miserable men Set not your hearts on transitory things while you stand near unto Eternity How can you have room for so many thoughts on fading things when you have an Eternity to think on what light can you see in the Candles or Glow-worms of this world in the Sunshine of Eternity Oh remember when you are tempted to please your eyes your tast and sensual desires that these are not Eternal pleasures Remember when you are tempted for wealth or honour to wrong your souls that these are not the Eternal riches Houses and Lands are not Eternal meats and drinks are not Eternal sports and pastimes and jocund sinful company are not Eternal Alas how short how soon do they vanish into nothing But it is God and our dear Redeemer that are Eternal The flower of beauty withereth with age or by the nipping blast of a short disease the honours of the world are but a dream your graves will bury all its glory Down comes the Prince the Lord the gallant and suddenly takes his lodgings in the dust The corps that was pampered and adorned yesterday is a clod to day The body that was bowed to attended and applauded but the other day is now interred in the vault of darkness with worms and moles To day it is corruption and a most loathsome thing that lately was dreaming of an earthly happiness One day he is striving for riches and preheminences or glorying and rejoycing in them that the next day may be snatcht away to hell O fix not your minds on fading things that perish in the using and by their vanishing mock you that set your hearts upon them You will not fix your eye and mind upon every bird that flyeth by you as you will on the houses that you must dwell in nor will you mind every passenger as you will do your friends that still live with you And shall transitory vanity be minded by you above Eternity 3. It is Eternity that must direct you in your estimate of all things It is this that sheweth you the excellency of man above the beasts It is this that tells you the worth of Grace and the weight of sin the preciousness of holy Ordinances and helps and the evil of hinderances and temptations the wisdome of the choice and diligence of the Saints and the folly of the choice and negligent sinful lives of the ungodly the worth of Gods favour and the vanity of mans and the difference between the godly and the unsanctified world in point of Happiness Were noâ— Grace the egg the seed the earnest of an Eternal glory it were not so glorious a thing But O how precious are all those thoughts desires delights and breathings of the soul that bring us on to sweet Eternity Even those sorrows and groans and tears are precious that lead to an Eternal joy Who would not willingly obey the holy motions of the holy Spirit that is but hatching and preparing us for Eternity This is it that makes a Bible a Sermon a holy Book to be of greater value then Lands and Lordships It is Eternity that makes the illuminated soul so fearful of sinning so diligent in holy duties so chearful and resolved in suffering because he believeth it is all for an Eternity A Christian in the holy Assemblies and in his reading learning prayer conference is laying up for Everlasting when the worldling in the Market in the field or shop is making provision for a few dayes or hours Thou gloriest in thy Riches and preheminence now but how long wilt thou do so To day that house that land is thine but canst thou say it shall be thine to morrow Thou canst not But the Believer can truly say My God my Christ is mine to day and will be mine to all Eternity O Death thou canst take my friends from me and my worldly riches from me and my time and strength and life from me but take my God my Christ my Heaven my Portion from me if thou canst My sin is all thy sting and strength But where is thy sting when sin is gone and where is thy strength when Christ hath conquered thee Is it a great matter that thou deprivest me of my sinful weak and troublous friends when against thy will thou bringest me to my perfect blessed friends with whom I must abide for ever Thou dost indeed bereave me of these Riches but it is that I may possess the unvaluable Eternal riches Thou endest my Time that I may have Eternity Thou castest me down that I may be exalted Thou takest away my strength of life that I may enter into Life Eternal And is this the worst that Death can do And shall I be afraid of this I willingly lay by my cloaths at night that I may take my rest and I am not loth to put off the old when I must put on new The bird that is hatcht is not grieved because he must leave the broken shell Nor is it the grief of man or beast that he hath left the womb Death doth but open the womb of Time and let us into Eternity and is the second birth day of the soul. Regeneration brings us into the Kingdom of Grace and Death into the Kingdom of Glory Blessed are they that have their part in the New birth of Grace and the first Resurrection from the death of sin for to such the Natural Death will be Gain and they shall have their part in the second Resurrection and on them the everlasting Death shall have no power O sirs it is Eternity that telleth you what you should mind and be and do and that turneth the seales in all things where it is concerned Can you slâ—ep in sin so neer Eternity Can you play and laugh before you are prepared for Eternity Can you think him wise that selleth his eternal Joy for the ease the mirth the pleasure of a moment and trifleth away the time in which he must win or lose Eternity If these men be wise there are nâ— fools nor any but wise men in Bedlam Dare thy tongue report or thy heart imagine that any holy work is needless or a heavenly life too much adoe or any suffering too dear that is for an Eternity O happy souls that win Eternity with the loss of all the world O bless that Christ that spirit that light that word that messenger of God that drew thy heart to choose Eternity before all transitory things That was the day when thou beganst to be wise and indeed to shew thy self a man Thy wealth thy honour thy pleasure will be thine when the sensual world hath nothing to shew but sin and Hell of all they laboured for Their pleasures honours and all die when they die But thine will
all that he saith and doth will be more acceptable to you and all that you say or do in Love will be more acceptable unto him Love him and you will be loth to offend him you will be desirous to please him you will be satisfied in his Love Love him and you may be sure that he Loveth you Love is the fulfilling of his Law Rom. 13. 10. And that you may Love him this must be your work to Believe and Contemplate his goodness Consider daily of the Infinite goodness or Amiableness of his Nature and of his excellency appearing in his works and of the perfect Holiness of his Laws But especially see him in the face of Christ and behold his Love in the design of our Redemption in the person of the Redeemer and in the promises of Grace and in all the benefits of Redemption Yea look by Faith to Heaven it self and think how you must for ever live in the perfect blessed Love of infinite enjoyed goodness As it is the knowledge and sight of gold or beauty or any other earthly vanity that kindleth the Love of them in the minds of men so is it the knowledge and serious contemplation of the goodness of God that must make us Love him if ever we will Love him 2. The goodness of God must also encourage the soul to trust him For Infinite good will not deceive us Nor can we fear any hurt from him but what we wilfully bring upon our selves If I knew but which were the best and most Loving man in the world I could trust him above all men and I should not fear any injury from him How many friends have I that I dare trust with my estate and life because I know that they have Love and goodness in their low degree And shall I not trust the Blessed God that is Love it self and Infinitely good what ever he will be in Justice to the ungodly I am sure he delighteth not in the death of sinners but rather that they turn and live and that he will not cast off the soul that Loveth him and would fain be fully conformed to his will It cannot be that he should spurn at them that are humbled at his feet and long and pray and seek and mourn after nothing more then his grace and love Think not of God as if he were scanter of love and goodness then the Creature is If you have high and confident thoughts of the goodness and fidelity of any man on earth and dare quietly trust him with your life and all see that you have much higher thoughts of God and trust him with greater confidence left you set him below the silly creature in the Attributes of his goodness which his Glory and your Happiness require you to know 3. The Infinite goodness of God must call off our hearts from the inordinate Love of all created good whatever Who would stoop so low as earth that may converse with God And who would feed on such poor delights that hath tasted the graciousness of the Lord Nothing more sure then that the Love of God doth not reign in that soul where the Love of the world or of fleshly lust or pleasure reigneth 1 John 2. 15. Had worldlings or sensual or ambitious men but truly known the goodness of the Lord they could never have so fallen in Love with those deceitful vanities If we could but open their eyes to see the Loveliness of their Redeemer they would soon be weaned from other Loves Would you conquer the Love of Riches or Honour or any thing else that corrupteth your affections O try this sure and powerful way Draw nigh to God and take the fullest view thou canst in thy most serious Meditation of his Infinite goodness and all things else will be vile in thy esteem and thy heart will soon contemn them and forget them and thou wilt never dote upon them more 4. The Infinite goodness of God should increase Repentance and win the soul to a more resolute chearful service of the Lord. O what a heart is that which can offend and wilfully offend so good a God! This is the odiousness of sin that it is an abuse of an Infinite good This is the most hainous damning aggravation of it that Infinite goodness could not prevail with wretched souls against the empty flattering world but that they suffered a dream and shadow to weigh down Infinite goodness in their esteem And is it possible for worse then this to be found in man He that had rather the sun were out of the firmament then a hair were taken off his head were unworthy to see the light of the Sun And surely he that will turn away from God himself to enjoy the pleasures of his flesh is unworthy to enjoy the Lord. It s bad enough that Augustine in one of his Epistles saith of sottish worldly men that they had rather there were two stars fewer in the firmament then one Cow fewer in their Pastures or one tree fewer in their woods or grounds But it is ten thousand times a greater evil that every wicked man is guilty of that will rather forsake the Living God and lose his part in Infinite goodness then he will let go his filthy and unprofitable sins O Sinners as you love your souls despise not the riches of the goodness and forbearance and long suffering of the Lord but know that his goodness should lead you to Repentance Rom. 2. 4. Would you spit at the Sun Would you revile the stars Would you curse the holy Angels If not O do not ten thousand fold worse by your wilful sinning against the Infinite Goodness it self But for you Christians that have seen the Amiableness of the Lord and tasted of his perfect Goodness let this be enough to melt your hearts that ever you have wilfully sin'd against him O what a Good did you contemn in the dayes of your unregeneracy and in the hour of your sin Be not so ingrateful and disingenuous as to do so again Remember when ever a Temptation comes that it would entice you from the Infinite Good Ask the tempter man or Devil Whether he hath more then an Infinite Good to offer you and whether he can outbid the Lord for your affection And now for the time that is before you how cheerfully should you address your selves unto his service and how delightfully should you follow it on from day to day What manner of persons should the servants of this God be that are called to nothing but what is Good How Good a Master how good a work and how good company encouragements and helps and how good an End All is good because it is the Infinite Good that we serve and seek And shall we be loitering unprofitable servants 5. Moreover this Infinite Goodness should be the matter of our daily Praises He that cannot cheerfully magnifie this Attribute of God so suitable to the nature of the Will is surely a stranger to the
innocent therefore by the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the Redemption that is in Jesus Christ Isa. 53. 6. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all Rom. 5. 15. Through the offence of one many are dead 16. And the judgement was by One to condemnation 17. By the offence of one death reigned by one 18. By the offence of one judgement came on all men to condemnation 19. By one mans disobedience many were made sinners Psal. 51. 4. We were shapen in iniquity and in sin did our mothers conceive us Eph. 2. 1 3. We were by nature the Children of wrath and dead in trespasses and sin 1 Cor. 15. 22. In Adam all die 2 Cor. 5. 14 We thus judge that if one dyed for all then were all dead Eph 5. 23. Christ is the Saviour of the Body v. 25 26 27. Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word that he might present it to himself a glorious Church If Infants have no sin and misery then they are none of the Body the Church which Christ loved and gave himself for that he might cleanse it But what need we further proof when we have the common experience of all the world Would every man that is born of a woman without exception so early manifest sin in the life if there were no corrupt disposition at the heart And should all mankind without exception tast of the punishment of sin if they had no participation of the guilt Death is the wages of sin and by sin death entred into the world and it passeth upon all men for that all have sinned Rom. 5. 12. Infants have sickness and torments and death which are the fruits of sin And were they not presented to Christ as a Saviour when he took them in his arms and blessed them and said Of such is the Kingdom of God Certainly none that never were guilty or miserable are capable of a place in the Kingdom of the Mediator For to what end should he mediate for them or how can he Redeem them that need not a Redemption or how should he reconcile them to God that never were at enmity with him Or how can he wash them that were never unclean Or how can he be a Physicion to them that never were sick when the whole have no need of the Physicion Mat. 9. 12. He came to seek and to save that which was lost Luk. 19. 10. and to save his people from their sins Mat. 1. 21. They are none of his saved people therefore that had no sin He came to redeem those that were under the Law Gal. 4. 5. But it is most certain that Infants were under the Law as well as the adult And 〈…〉 a paâ—â— of his people Israel whom he visited and Re 〈…〉 1. 68. If ever they be admitted into Glory they 〈…〉 him that Redeemed 〈…〉 God doth first justifie those whom he Glorifieth Rom. 8. 30. And they must be born again that will enter into his Kingdom Jâ—h 3. 3 5. And there is no Regeneration or renovation but from sin Col. 3. 10. Eph. 4. 22. Nor any Justification but from sin and from what we could not be Justified from by the Law of Moses Act. 13. 30. Nor any Justification but what containeth a Remission of sin Rom. 3. 25. And where there is no sin there is none to be Remitted Nor is there any Justification but what is through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus and his propitiation Rom. 3. 24 25. He is made of God Redemption to us 1 Cor. 1. 30. And the Redemption that we have by him is Remission of sins by his blood Col. 1. 14. Eph. 1. 7. By his own blood entered he once into the holy place having obtained eternal Redemption for us The eternal inheritance is received by means of death for the Redemption of transgressions Heb. 9. 12 15. so that all Scripture speaks this truth aloud to us that there is now no salvation promised but to the Church the Justified the Regenerate the Redeemed and that none can be capable of these but sinners and such as are lost and miserable in themselves And till our necessity be understood Redemption cannot be well understood They that believe that Christ dyed not only for this or that man in particular but for the world methinks should believe that the world are sinners and need his death He is called the Saviour of the world Joh. 4. 42. and the Saviour of all men especially of believers 1 Tim. 4. 10. 1 Joh. 4. 14. We have seen and do testifie that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world And from what doth he save them From their sins Mat. 1. 21. and from the wrath to come 1 Thes. 1. 10. For this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners Infants then are sinners or none of those that he came to save Christ hath made no man Righteous by his Obedience but such as Adam made sinners by his disobedience Rom. 5. 19. For as by one mans disobedience many were made sinners so by the obedience of one many shall be made Righteous Infants are not made Righteous by Christ if they were not sinners And sinners they cannot be by any but Original sin Rom. 5. 8 9 10. God commended his Love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ dyed for us Much more being now Justified by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him When we were enemies we were Reconciled to God by the death of his Son so that it is sinners that Christ dyed for and sinners that are justified by his blood and sinners that are reconciled to God Infants therefore are sinners or they are none of the Redeemed Justified or reconciled And when Jesus Christ by the grace of God did taste death for every man Heb. 2. 9. Infants are sure included There is one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus who gave himself a Ransom for all 1 Tim. 2. 5 6. therefore all had sin and misery and needed that ransome He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world And is it not plain then that the whole world are sinners I speak all this for the evincing of Original sin only because that only is denyed by such as yet pretend to Christianity For actual sin is commonly confessed and shews it self And truly so doth Original sin in our proneness to actual and in the earliness and commonness of such evil inclinations and in the remnants of it which the sanctified
for the Head yet we are more for Christ as a means to his glory then he for us I mean he is the more excellent principal end For to this end Christ both dyed rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and living Rom. 14. 9. who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow both of things in heaven and things in earth and under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father Phil. 2. 6. to 12. Rev. 5. 8 9 10 11 12. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many Angels round about the Throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing And every creature which is in Heaven and on Earth and under the Earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them heard I saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sitteth on the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever So Rev. 15. 3 4. 20. 6. Rev. 21. 23. The City had no need of the Sun neither of the Moon to shine in it for the glory of God doth lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof Rev. 22. 3 4. The Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it and his servants shall serve him And they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads These and many other Scriptures shew us that God will be for ever Glorified in the person of the Redeemer more then in either men or Angels and consequently that it was the principal part of his Intention in the design of mans Redemption 2. I will be briefer in the rest In the way of Redemption man will be saved with greater humiliation and self-denyal then he should have been in the way of Creation If we had been saved in a way of Innocency we should have had more to ascribe to our selves And it is meet that all Creatures be humbled and abased and nothing in themselves before the Lord. 3. By the way of Redemption sin will be more dishonoured and Holiness more advanced then if sin had never been known in the world Contraries illustrate one another Health would not be so much valued if there were no sickness nor Life if there were no Death nor Day if there were no Night nor Knowledge if there were no Ignorance nor Good if man had not known Evil. The Holiness of God would never have appeared in execution of vindictive Justice against sin if there had never been any sin and therefore he hath permitted it and will recover us from it when he could have prevented our falling into it 4. By this way also Holiness and Recovering Grace shall be more triumphant against the Devil and all its enemies By the many conquests that Christ will make over Satan the World and the Flesh and Death there will very much of God be seen to us that innocency would not thus have manifested 5. Redemption brings God nearer unto man The mysterie of Incarnation giveth us wonderful advantages to have more familiar thoughts of God and to see him in a clearer glass then ever we should else have seen him in on earth and to have access with boldness to the throne of grace The pure Deity is at so vast a distance from us while we are here in flesh that if it had not appeared in the flesh unto us we should have been at a greater loss But now without controversie great is the mysterie of godliness God was manifested in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the world and received up into glory 1 Tim. 3. 16. 6. In the way of Redemption man is brought to more earnest and frequent addresses unto God and dependance on him Necessity driveth him And he hath use for more of God or for God in more of the wayes of his mercy then else he would have had 7. Principally in this way of saving miserable man by a Redeemer there is opportunity for the more abundant exercise of Gods mercy and consequently for the more glorious discovery of his Love and Goodness to the sons of men then if they had fallen into no such Necessities Misery prepareth men for the sense of mercy In the Redeemer there is so wonderful a discovery of Love and Mercy as is the astonishment of men and Angels 1 Joh. 3. 1. Behold what manner of Love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God! Eph. 2. 4 5. God who is rich in Mercy for his great Love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ by grace yee are saved and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us by Christ Jesus for by grace yee are saved through faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God Not of works lest any man should boast Tit. 3 3 4. For we our selves were sometimes foolish disobedient deceived serving divers lusts and pleasures c. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his Mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost Never was there such a discovery of God as he is Love in a way of Mercy to man on earth as in the Redeemer and his benefits 8. In the way of Redemption the soul of man is formed to the most sweet and excellent temper and his obedience cast into the happiest mold The glorious demonstration of Love doth animate us with Love to God and the shedding abroad of his Love in our hearts by the spirit of the Redeemer doth draw out our hearts in Love to him again And the sense of his wonderful Love and Mercy filleth us with Thankfulness so that Love is hereby made the nature of the new man and Thankfulness is the life of all our obedience For all floweth from these principles and expresseth them so that Love is the compendium of all Holiness in one word and Thankfulness of all Evangelical obedience And
wisdom that knows best how to use his own If he take our friends from us he taketh but his own If he deny his saving grace to our ungodly children a heavy judgement of which we must be sensible yet when we have devoted them to God and done our own part we must be silent as Aaron was when his sons were destroyed Lev. 10. 3. and confess that the Potter hath power over his own clay to make of the same lump ae vessel to honour and another to dishonour Rom. 9. 21. All his disposals shall work to that end which is the most universal perfect good and most denominateth all the means But those that are his own by consent and Covenant may be sure that all shall work to their own good Let us die with Christ and be buried to the world and know no Lord or Owner but our great Creatour and Redeemer except in a limited subservient sense and then we may boldly argue with him to the quiet of our souls from this Relation I am thine help me Psal. 35. 23. Stir up thy self and awake to my judgement even to my cause my Lord and my God when faith and love have first said as Thomas my Lord and my God Joh. 20. 28. CHAP. XIV 13. THE next Relation to be spoken of is Gods soveraignty both by Creation and Redemption he hath the Right of Governing us as our Soveraign King and we are obliged to be his willing subjects and as such to obey his holy laws He is the Lord or Owner of all the world even of Brutes as properly as of Man But he is the Soveraign King or Governour only of the Reasonable Creature because no other are capable of that proper Moral Government which now we speak of Vulgarly indeed his Physical motions and dispositions are called his Rule or Government and so God is said to Govern Brutes and inanimate creatures but that is but a Metaphorical expression as an Artificer Metaphorically Governeth his clock or engine or a Shepheard his sheep But we now speak of proper moral Government God having made man a Rational and free agent having an immortal soul and capable of everlasting happiness his very nature and the end of his creation required that he should be conducted to that end and happiness by means agreeable to his nature that is by the Revelation of the Reward before he seeth it that he may seek it and be fitted for it and by prescribed duties that are necessary to obtain it and to his living here according to his nature and by threatned penalties to quicken him to his duty so that he is naturally a creature to be Governed both as sociable and as one to be conducted to his end He therefore that created him having alone both sufficiency and Right doth by this very Creation become his Governour His Government hath two parts the world being thus constituted the Kingdom of God The first is by Legislation or making Laws and Officers for execution The second is by the procuring the execution of these Laws To which end he doth exhort and perswade the subjects to obedience and judge them according to their works and execute his judgement His first Law was to Adam the Law of Nature obliging him to adhere to his Creator and to love him trust him fear him honour him and obey him with all his might in order to the pleasing of his Creator and the attainment of everlasting life To which was added a positive Law against the eating of the tree of Knowledge and Death was the penalty due to the sinner This Law was quickly broken by man and God delayed not his judgement but sentenced the Tempter the Woman and the Man but not according to their merits but graciously providing a Redeemer he presently stopt the execution of the far greatest part of the penalty the Son of God undertaking as our surety to become a sacrifice and ransome for us Hereupon the Covenant of Grace was made and the Law of Grace enacted with mankind but more obscurely in the beginning being cleared up by degrees in the several Promises to the Fathers the types of the Law and the Prophecies of the Prophets of several ages the Law being interposed because of transgression In the fulness of time the Messiah was incarnate and the first promises concerning him fulfilled and after his holy life and preachings and conquests of the Tempter and the world he gave himself a Ransome for us and conquering Death he Rose again ascended into Heaven being possessed in his manhood of the fulness of his power and all things being delivered into his hands so that he was made the General Administrator and Lord of all And thus he more clearly revealing his Covenant of Grace and bringing life and immortality to light commissioned his Ministers to preach this Gospel to all the world And thus the Primitive Soveraign is God and the Soveraign by Derivation is Jesus the Mediator in his manhood united to the second person in the Godhead and the Laws that we are governed by are the Law of Nature with the superadded Covenant of Grace the subordinate officers are Angels Magistrates and Pastors of the Church having works distinct the society it self is called the Church and Kingdom of God the Reward is everlasting glory with the mercies of this life in order to it and the Punishment is everlasting misery with the preparatory judgements especially on the soul which are here inflicted Subjection is due upon our first being and is consented to or vowed in Baptisme and is to be manifested in holy obedience to the death This is the Soveraignty and Government of God And now let us see how God as our Soveraign must be known 1. The Princes and all the Rulers of the world must understand their Place and Duty They are first Gods subjects and then his officers and can have no power but from God Rom. 13. 3 4. nor hold any but in dependance on him and subordination to him Their power extendeth no further then the Heavenly Soveraign hath signified his pleasure and by commission to them or command to us conferred it on them As they have no strength or natural power but from the Omnipotent God so can they have no Authority or Governing Power or Right but from the Absolute King of all the world They can less pretend to a Right of Governing not derived from God then a Justice or Constable may to such Power not derived from the earthly soveraigns Princes and States also must hence understand their End and Work God who is the Beginning must be the End also of their Government Their Laws must be but by Laws subservient to his Laws to further mens obedience to them The Common Good which is their lower nearer End must be measured by his Interest in the Nations and mens Relations unto him The Common possession of his favour blessing and protection is the greatest Common Good His Interest in us
is most unreasonable of all O Sirs when you read and hear of the wonderful weighty matters of the Scripture of an Endless Life and the way thereto bethink you if these things be True what manner of persons you should be in all Holy Conversation and Godliness 2 Pet. 3. 11. If the Word be True that telleth us of Death and Judgement and Heaven and Hell is it time for us to sin to trifle and live unready 2. The Truth of God is the Terror of his Enemies O happymen if their Unbelief could make void the Threatnings of God and doubting of them would make them false and if their misery were as easily remedied as denied and ended as easily as now forgotten or forgotten hereafter as easily as now But true and righteous is the Lord and from the beginning his Word is true Psal. 119. 16. Not a word shall fall to the ground nor a jot or tittle pass unfufilled 3. The Truth of God is the Ground of Faith and the stay of our souls and the Rock of all our confidence and comfort A Christian did not differ from another man unless in being somewhat more deluded if God were not True But this is the foundation of all our hopes and the life of our Religion and all that we are as Christians proceeds from this Faith is animated by Gods Veracity and from thence all other Graces flow or are excited in us O Christians what a treasure is before your eyes when you open the Blessed Book of God! what life should it put into your confidence and comforts to think that all these words are true All those descriptions of the Everlasting Kingdome and all those exceeding precious Promises of this life and that which is to come and all the expressions of that exceeding Love of God unto his servants all these are the True sayings of God A faithful witness will not Lye Prov. 14. 5. much less will the faithful God Eternal Life is promised by God that cannot Lye Tit. 1. 2. Wherein God willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of Promise the immutability of his Counsels confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to Lye we might have a strong Consolation who have fled for Refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us Heb. 6. 17 18. Let Faith therefore live upon the Truth of God and let us be strengthned and rejoyce therein 4. Abhor all doctrines which deny the Truth and Faithfulness of God For they destroy the ground of Christian Faith of all Divine Faith and all Religion The Veracity of God is the formal Object of all Divine Faith We believe God because he cannot Lye If he can Lye and do Lye he is not credible But you will say Is there any that hold such odious doctrines Answ. I like not the charging of Persons with the consequences of their opinions which they discern not but disclaim God will not charge them with such consequences who do their best to know the truth and why should we All men have some errours whose consequences contradict some Articles of Faith It is not the persons that I perswade you to dislike but the Doctrine And the Doctrine is never the less to be abhorred because a wise or good man may hold that which doth infer it I shall now instance only in the Dominicans predetermination They that hold that it is necessary to the being of every circumstantiated act natural and free that God be the principal immediate Physical efficient predetermining cause of it do hold that he so causeth all the false speeches and writings as well as other sins that ever were spoken or written in the world not only as they are acts in genere but as these words in particular as that he so predetermined the tongues of Ananias and Saphira to say those very words which they said rather than others Now seeing it is apparent 1. That God hath not a voice but speaketh to us by a Created Voice even by Prophets and Apostles and that the Scripture was written by men 2. And that Gods Veracity which is the formal object of our Faith consisteth in his not using lying instruments nor sending a lying messenger to us it is Veracitas revelantis per alium 3. And that no way of Inspiration can make God to be any more the cause of the words or writings of an Apostle than his Immediate Physical efficient specifying predetermination doth for it can do no more than irresistibly as the first cause Physically to premove the agent to this Thought Will Word or Deed considered with all its circumstances It followeth that we have no certainty when God premoveth an Apostle or Prophet to speak true and when to speak falsly and that no words or writings are o certain truth upon any account of Gods inspiration or premotion because God not only can but doth cause all the untruths that are spoken or written in the world Therefore no Faith in Gods Revelations hath any sure foundation nor any formal object at all And so all Religion is dasht out at a stroke To say that God causeth not the falsity of the word nor the word as false but the word which is false might well be the justification of them that affirm God to be but the Universal Cause of the Word oâ— Act in genere as a Word or Act and that the specification is only from the sinner But in them that say he is the particular Cause of this word comparatively rather than another it is but a contradiction 1. For there is no other cause of the falsity which is a meer Relation but that which causeth the Rule and the Word or Writing which is false and so layeth the foundation 2. It overthroweth all certainty of Faith if God speak to us by his Instruments those words that are false The Quod falsum as well as the Qua falsum leaveth us no ground of certainty The Dominicans therefore have but one task in which their hope is placed to excuse their opinion from plain obliterating all Divine Belief and Religion and that is to prove that there is so great a difference between Inspiration and their Physical Predetermination that God cannot by Inspiration premove to an untruth though by Physical Predetermination he may This is their task which I see not the least possibility that ever they should perform If God premove and predeterminate every Will and Tongue and Pen to every lye that is spoken or written more potently and irresistibly than I move my Pen in writing it is past my power to understand what more he can do by inspiration to interest him in the Creatures Act or at least how the difference can be so great as that one of the waies he can predetermine all men to their falsities and none the other way But of this I have written a large Disputation yet think it not needless even in a practical Treatise to
prevent the sinner with his Judgement but with his Grace he often doth He never punisheth before we are sinners nor never Decreed so to do as all will grant He punisheth none where his foregoing commands and warnings have had their due effect for the prevention And therefore because the Precept is the first part of his Law and the Threatning is but subservient to that and the first intent of a Governour is to procure Obedience and Punishing is but upon supposition that he misseth of the first therefore is God said not to afflict willingly because he doth it not ex voluntate antecedente but ex voluntate consequente that is for so the distinction is sound not as a Law-giver and Ruler by those Laws considered before the violation but only as a Judge of the Law-breakers But yet Gods Mercy is no security to the abusers of his Mercy Bot rather will sink them into deeper misery as the aggravation of their sin As God Afflicts not willingly and yet we feel that he afflicteth so if he do not condemn you willingly you shall finde iâ— you are impenitent that yet he will condemn you If you say God can be forced to do nothing against his will I answer you that it is not simply against his will for then it should never come to pass But it is against the Principal act of his will which floweth from him as a Law-giver or Ruler by Laws in which respect it may be said that he had rather that the wicked turn and live but yet if they will not turn they shall not live A merciful Judge had rather the Thief had saved his life by forbearing to steal but yet he had not rather that Thieves go unpunished than he should condemn them But you 'l say If God had rather men did not sin why doth he not hinder it I answer 1. He had not absolutely and simply rather that is so far as to do all that he can to prevent it nor all that without which he foreknoweth it will not be prevented But he doth much against sin as a Law-giver and nothing for it he causeth us not but perswades us from it and therefore as a Ruler he may be said to have rather that men did not sin or rather that they would turn and live 1. The Mercy of God therefore should lead sinners to Repentance and shame them from their sin and lead them up to God in Love 2. Mercy should encourage sinners to Repent as well as engage them to it For we have to do with a Merciful God that hath not shut up any among us in despair nor forbid them to come in but continueth to invite when we have oft refused and will undoubtedly pardon and welcome all that do return 3. Mercy being specially the portion of the Saints must keep them in Thankfulness Love and Comfort and all Mercies must be improved for their proper ends When a Merciful God is pleased to fill up his servants lives with such Great and Various Mercies as he doth it should breed a continual sweetness upon their hearts and cause them to study the most grateful retribution He should breath forth nothing but Thankfulness Obedience and Praise who breaths nothing but Mercies from God As the food that men live upon will be seen in their temperature 〈…〉 and strength so they that live continually upon Mâ—rcâ—â—s â—â—ould be wholly turned into Love and Thankfulness 〈…〉 ould become as it were their nature temperature 〈…〉 O how unspeakable is the Love of God that 〈…〉 eet a life for his servants even in their warfare 〈…〉 ge in this world that Mercy must be as it were 〈…〉 Air that they breath in the food which they must live upon and the remembrance improvement and thankful mention of it must be the business and imployment of their lives O with what sweet affections meditations and expressions should we live if we lived but according to the rate of those Mercies upon which we live Love and Joy and Thanks and Praise would be our very lives What sweet thoughts would Mercy breed and feed in our minds when we are alone what sweet apprehensions of the Love of God and Life Eternal should we have in Prayer Reading Saoraments and other holy ordinances Sickness and Health Poverty and Wealth Death as well as Life would be comfortable to us for all is full of Mercy to the Vessels of Mercy O Christians what a shame is it that God is so much wronged and our selves so much defrauded of our peace and joy by passing over such abundance of great unvaluable mercies without tasting their sweetness or well considering what we do receive Had we Davids heart what songs of Praise would Mercy teach us to indite How affectionately should we recount the mercies of our youth and riper age of every place and state that we have lived in to the honour of our Gracious Lord and the encouragement of those that know not how Good and Merciful he is But withall see that you contemn not or abuse not Mercy Use it well for it is Mercy that you must trust to in the hour of your distresses O do not trample upon Mercy now lest you be confounded when you should cry for Mercy in your extremity 4. The Mercifulness of God must cause his servants to imitate him in a Love of mercy Be merciful for your heavenly Father is merciful Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy Matth. 5. 7. Be merciful in your Censures Be merciful in your retributions You are none of Gods Children if you Love not your Enemies and pray not for them that curse you and do not good to them that hate and persecute you according to your power Matth. 5. 44 45. If you forgive not men their trespasses but take your Brother by the throat neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your Trespasses Matth. 6. 14 15. Mark that even while he is called your heavenly Father yet he will not forgive if you forgive not Unmerciful men are too unlike to God to claim any interest in his saving mercy in the hour of their extremest misery Men of cruelty blood and violence he abhorreth And usually they do not live out half their daies But they that bite and devour one another are devoured one of another Gal. 5. 15. The last judgement will pass much according to mens works of mercy to the members of Christ Matth. 25. He shall have judgement without mercy that hath shewed no mercy and mercy rejoyceth against judgement James 2. 13. Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the Fatherless and Widdows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted in the world James 1. 27. He that having this worlds goods seeth his Brother in need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion from him how dwelleth the Love of God in him But above all cruelty there is none more devilish than cruelty to souls And
Tell them that death and judgement are at hand and that when they laugh or sport or scorn and jeast at the Displeasure of the Dreadful God it is posting toward them and will be upon them before they are aware and when they slumber their damnation slumbereth not but while unbelieving sinners say Peace Peace sudden destruction will come upon them as unexpected travail on a woman with child and they shall not escape O tell them how dreadful a thing it is for a soul that is unregenerate and unsanctified to go from that body which it pampered and sold its salvation to pleasure and to appear at the tribunal of God and how dreadful it is for such a soul to fall into the hands of the living God At least save your own souls by the faithful discharge of so great a duty and if they will take no warning let them at last remember when it is too late that they were told in time what they should see and feel at last and what the later end would prove and that God and man did warn them in compassion though they perish because they would have no compassion or mercy upon themselves Thus let the Terribleness of God provoke you to do your duty with speed and zeal for the converting and saving of miserable souls AND thus I have briefly set before you the Glass in which you may see the Lord and told you how he must be known and how he must be conceived of in our apprehensions and how the knowledge of God must be improved and what impressions it must make upon the heart and what effect it must have upon our lives Blessed and for ever blessed are those souls that have the truly and lively Image of this God and all these his Attributes imprinted on them as to the Creature they are communicable And O that the veil were taken from our hearts that we all with open face beholding as in a glass the Glory of the Loord may be changed into the same Image from Glory to Glory as by the spirit of the Lord 2 Cor. 3. 18. and may increase and live in the knowledge of the true and only God and of Jesus Christ which is Eternal Life Amen THE DESCRIPTION Reasons Reward OF THE BELIEVERS Walking with God On Gen. 5. 24. By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleet-street and Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster 1664. THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE Text explained what it is to Walk with God what it containeth both for Matter and Manner Page 159 CHAP. II. The first Use A Lamentation of the practical Atheisme of the world Motives to change your inordinate creature-converse into converse with God How much sinners have to do with God more than with all the world besides shewedin 14 instances p. 185 CHAP. III. An answer to them that think God doth us good by necessity of Nature as the sun doth illuminate and warm us and therefore though he have much to do for us yet much is not required from us towards him And to them that think he is above our converse and unsuitable to us Ten Quere's to evince the necessity of our own holy diligence in godliness Especially of exercising our Thoughts upon God Ten mischiefs that befall them who have not God in all their Thoughts p. 205 CHAP. IV. Practical Atheism further detected An answer to them that think it unfit for ignorant men or poor men to think so much of God and that it will make men melancholy and mad Ten propositions shewing how far it is our duty to Think of God by way of explication p. 220 CHAP. V. An answer to them that say God regardeth not Thoughts but Deeds Twelve evidences of the regardableness of our Thoughts p. 230 CHAP. VI. The application to the Godly The Benefits of walking with God I. It is suitable to humane Nature Hoâ— it is Natural No middle life between the sensual and the Holy Of them that delight in Knowledge and moral vertue Nature in its first constitution was not only Innocent but Holy Proved II. To walk with God is the highest and noblest life III. It is the only course to prove and make men truly wise Proved by ten evidences IV. It maketh men good as well as wise and advanceth to the greatest holiness and rectitude Proved by five evidences V. It is the best preparation for sufferings and death shewed by seven advantages to that end p. 235 CHAP. VII Five special obligations on true believers to walk with God and to avoid inordinate Creature-converse p. 277 CHAP. I. Gen. 5. 24. And Henoch walked with God and he was not for God took him BEeing to speak of our Converse with God in Solitude I think it will not be unsuitable nor unserviceable to the Ends of that Discourse if I here premise a short description of the General Duty of practical godliness as it is called in Scripture a Walking with God It is here commended to us in the example of Holy Henoch whose excellency is recorded in this signal character that he walked with God and his special Reward expressed in the words following and he was not for God took him I shall speak most of his Character and then somewhat of his Reward The Samaritan and vulgar-Latine versions do strictly translate the Hebrew as we read it but the interpretation of the Septuagint the Syriack the Chaldee and the Arabick are rather good expositions all set together of the meaning of the word than strict translations The Septuagint and Syriack read it Henoch pleased God The Chaldee hath Henoch walked in the fear of God And the Arabick he walked in obedience to God And indeed to walk in the fear and obedience of God and thereby to please him is the principal thing in our Walking with God The same Character is given of Noah in Gen. 6. 19. and the extraordinary Reward annexed He and his family were saved in the Deluge And the holy life which God commanded Abraham is called a walking before God Gen. 17. 1. Walk before me and be thou perfect And in the New Testament the Christian Conversation is ordinarily called by the name of Walking Sometime a Walking in Christ as Col. 2. 6. Sometime a Walking in the spirit in which we live Gal. 5. 25. And a Walking after the spirit Rom. 8. 1. Sometime a Walking in the Light as God is in the Light 1 Joh. 1. 7. Those that abide in Christ must so walk even as he hath walked 1 Joh. 2. 6. These phrases set together tell us what it is to Walk with God But I think it not unprofitable somewhat more particularly to shew you what this Walking with God doth contain As Atheism is the sum of wickedness so all true Religiousness is called by the name of Godliness or Holiness which is nothing else but our Devotedness to God and Living to Him and our Relation to Him as thus Devoted in Heart and Life
remembrancers Can we stop our ears against the voice of Heaven and Earth Can we be ignorant of him when the whole Creation is our Teacher Can we overlook that holy glorious Name which is written so legibly upon all things that ever our eyes beheld that nothing but blindness sleepiness or distraction could possibly keep us from discerning it I have many a time wondred that as the eye is dazzled so with the beholding of the greatest Light that it can scarce perceive the shining of a lesser so the Glorious transcendent Majesty of the Lord doth not even overwhelm our understandings and so transport and take us up as that we can scarce observe or remember any thing else For naturally the greatest objects of our sense are apt to make us at that time insensible of the smaller And our exceeding great business is apt to make us utterly neglect and forget those that are exceeding small And O what Nothings are the Best and Greatest of the Creatures in comparison of God! And what toyes and trifles are all our other businesses in the world in comparison of the business which we have with Him But I have been stopped in these admirations by considering that the wise Creator hath fitted and ordered all his Creatures according to the use which he designeth them to And therefore as the eye must be receptive only of so much light as is proportioned to its use and pleasure and must be so distant from the Sun that its Light may rather guide than blind us and its Heat may rather quicken than consume us so God hath made our understandings capable of no other knowledge of Him here than what is suited to the work of holiness And while we have Flesh and fleshly works to do and lawful necessary business in the world in which Gods own commands employ us our souls in this Lanthorn of the body must see him through so thick a glass as shall so far allay our apprehension as not to distract us and take us off the works which he enjoyneth us And God and our souls shall be at such a distance as that the proportionable Light of his countenance may conduct us and not overwhelm us and his Love may be so revealed as to quicken our desires and draw us on to a better state but not so as to make us utterly impatient of this world and utterly weary of our lives or to swallow us up or possess us of our most desired happiness before we arrive at the state of happiness While the soul is in the body it maketh so much use of the body the brain and spirits in all is operations that our wise and merciful Creator and Governour doth respect the body as well as the soul in his ordering disposing and representing of the objects of those operations so that when I consider that certainly all men would be distracted if their apprehensions of God were anywhit answerable to the Greatness of his Majesty and Glory the Brain being not able to bear such high operations of the soul nor the greatness of the passions which would necessarily follow it much reconcileth my wondring mind to the wise and gracious providence of God even in setting innocent nature it self at such a distance from his Glory allowing us the presence of such Grace as is necessary to bring us up to Glory Though it reconcile me not to that doleful distance which is introduced by sin and which is furthered by Satan the world and the flesh and which our Redeemer by his Spirit and Intercession must heal And it further reconcileth me to this disposure and will of the blessed God and this necessary natural distance and darkness of our minds when I consider that if God and Heaven and Hell were as near and open to our apprehensions as the things are which we see and feel this life would not be what God intended it to be a life of Tryal and preparation to another a work a race a pilgrimage a warfare what Tryal would there be of any mans Faith or Love or Obedience or Constancy or Self-denial If we saw God stand by or apprehended him as if we saw him in degree it would be no more praise-worthy or rewardable for a man to abhor all temptations to worldliness ambition gluttony drunkenness lust cruelty c. than it is for a man to be kept from sleeping that is pierced with thorns or for a man to forbear to drink a cup of melted Gold which he knoweth will burn out his bowels or to forbear to burn his flesh in the fire It were no great commendation to his Chastity that would forbear his filthiness if he saw or had the fullest apprehensions of God when he will forbear it in the presence of a mortal man It were no great commendations to the intemperate and voluptuous to have no mind of sensual delights if they had but such a knowledge of God as were equal to sight It were no thanks to the persecutor to forbear his cruelty against the servants of the Lord if he saw Christ coming with his glorious Angels to take vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel and to be admired in his Saints and glorified in them that now believe 2 Thes. 1. 7 8 9 10. I deny not but this happily necessitated Holiness is best in it self and therefore will be our state in Heaven but what is there of Tryal in it or how can it be suitable to the state of man that must have Good and Evil set before him and Life and Death left to his choice and that must conquer if he will be crowned and approve his fidelity to his Creator against competitors and must live a rewardable life before he have the reward But though in this life we may neither hope for nor desire such overwhelming sensible apprehensions of God as the rest of our faculties cannot answer nor our bodies bear yet that our apprehensions of him should be so base and small and dull and unconstant as to by born down by the noise of worldly business or by the presence of any creature or by the tempting baits of sensuality this is the more odious by how much God is more Great and Glorious than the creature and even because the use of the creature it self is but to reveal the Glory of the Lord. To have such sleight and stupid thoughts of him as will not carry us on in uprightness of obedience nor keep us in his fear nor draw out our hearts in sincere desires to please him and enjoy him and as will not raise us to a contempt of the pleasures and profits and honours of this world this is to be despisers of the Lord and to live as in a sleep and to be dead to God and alive only to the world and flesh It is no unjust dishonour or injury to â—e Creature to be accounted as Nothing in comparison of God that it may be able to do Nothing
sensuality but in the way of holy obedience and of believing contemplations of the Divine everlasting objects of delight For lo they that are far from him shall perish he destroyeth them that go a whoring from him but it is good for us to draw nigh to God Psal. 73. 27 28. III. VVAlking with God is the only course that can prove and make men truly wise It proves them wise that make so wise and good a choice and are disposed and skilled in any measure for so high a work Practical Wisdome is the solid useful profitable wisdome And Practical Wisdome is seen in our Choice of Good and Refusal of Evil as its most immediate and excellent effect And no Choosing or Refusing doth shew the Wisdome or Folly of man so much as that which is about the Greatest matters and which everlasting life or death depends on He is not thought so wise among men that can write a Volume about the Orthography or Etymology of a word or that can guess what wood the Trojane Horse was made of or that can make a chain to tye a Flea in as he that can bring home Gold and Pearls or he that can obtain and manage Governments or he that can cure mortal maladies For as in lading we difference Bulk and Value and take not that for the best commodity which is of greatest quantity or weight but that which in most precious and of greatest use so there is a bulky knowledge extended far to a multitude of words and things which are all of no great use or value and therefore the Knowledge of them is such as they And there is a precious sort of Knowledge which fixeth upon the most precious things which being of greatest Use and Value do accordingly prove the Knowledge such Nothing will prove a man simply and properly wise but that which will prove or make him Happy He is wise indeed that is wise to his own and others good And that is indeed his Good which saveth his soul and maketh him for ever blessed Though we may admire the Cunning of those that can make the most curious engines or by deceiving others advance themselves or that can subtilly dispute the most curious niceties or criticize upon the words of several languages yet I will never call them Wise that are all that while the Devils slaves the enemies of God the refusers of Grace and are making haste to endless misery And I think there is not one of those in Hell who were once the subtile men on earth that now take themselves to have been truly wise or glory much in the remembrance of such Wisdome And as this Choice doth prove men wise so the practice of this Holy walking with God doth make them much wiser than they were As there must be some work of the Spirit to draw men to believe in Christ and yet the Spirit is promised and given in a special sort or measure to them that do Believe so must there be some special Wisdome to make men Choose to walk with God but much more is given to them in this holy course As Solomon was wiser than most of the world before he asked wisdome of God or else he would not have made so wise a Choice and preferred wisdome before the riches and honours of the world And yet it was a more notable Degree of wisdome that was afterwards given him in answer to his prayer so it is in this case There are many undenyable Evidences to prove that walking with God doth do more to make men truly wise than all other learning or policy in the world 1. He that walketh with God doth begin aright and settle upon a sure foundation And we use to say that a work is half finished that is well begun He hath engaged himself to the best and wisest Teacher He is a Disciple to Him that knoweth all things He hath taken in infallible principles and taken them in their proper place and order He hath learnt those Truths which will every one become a Teacher to him and help him to that which is yet unlearnt Whereas many that thought they were Doctors in Israel if ever they they will be wise and happy must become fools that is such as they have esteemed fools if ever they will be wise 1 Cor. 3. 18. and must be called back with Nicodemus to learn Christs Cross and to be taught that that which is born of the flesh is but flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit and that therefore they must be born again not only of water but also of the spirit if ever they will enter into the Kingdome of Heaven Joh. 3. 3 5 6. O miserable beginning and miserable progress when men that never soundly learnt the mysteries of Regeneration and Faith and Love and Self-denyal and Mortification do proceed to study names and words and to turn over a multitude of Books to fill their brains with airy notions and their Common-places with such sayings as may be provision and furniture for their pride and ostentation and ornament to their style and language and know not yet what they must do to be saved and indeed know nothing as they ought to know 1 Cor. 8. 2. As every Science hath its principles which are supposed in all the consequential verities so hath Religion as Doctrinal and Practical those Truths which must be first received before any other can be received as it ought and those things which must be first done before any other can be done so as to attain their ends And these Truths and Duties are principally about God himself and are known and done effectually by those and only those that walk with God or are devoted to him It is a lamentable thing to see men immerst in serious studies even till they grow aged and to hear them seriously disputing and discoursing about the controversies or difficulties in Theology or inferiour Sciences before ever they had any saving knowledge of God or of the work of the Holy Ghost in the converting and sanctifying of the soul or how to escape everlasting misery 2. He that walketh with God hath fixed upon a right end and is renewing his estimation and intention of it and daily prosecuting it And this is the first and greatest part of Practical Wisdome When a man once knoweth his End aright he may the better judge of the aptitude and seasonableness of all the means When we know once that Heaven containeth the only felicity of man it will direct us to Heavenly cogitations and to such spiritual means as are fitted to that End If we have the right mark in our eye we are liker to level at it than if we mistake our mark He is the wise man and only he that hath steadily fixed his eye upon that blessedness which he was created and redeemed for and maketh strait towards it and bends the powers of soul and body by faithful constant diligence to obtain it He
make him sin against his knowledge And when Conscience hath frighted him into some kind of Penitence and made him cry out I have sinned and done foolishly and caused him to promise to do so no more yet doth the Devil prevail with him to go on and to break his promises as if he had never been convinced of his sins or confessed them or seen any reason or necessity to amend He doth but imprison the truth in unrighteousness and bury it in a senseless heart whereas if you could but awaken all the powers of his soul to give this same truth its due entertainment and take it deeper into his heart it would make him even scorn the baits of sin and see that the ungodly are beside themselves and make him presently resolve and set upon a holy life And hence it is that sickness which causeth men to receive the sentence of death doth usually make men bewail their former sinful lives and marvail that they could be before so sottish as to resist such known and weighty truths and it makes them purpose and promise reformation and wish themselves in the case of those that they were wont before to deride and scorn Because now the Truth is deeplier received and digested by their awakened souls and appeareth in its proper evidence and strength There is no man but must acknowledge that the same truth doth at one time command his soul which at another time seems of little force It is a wonder to observe how differently the same consideration worketh with a man when he is awakened and when he is in a secure stupid case Now this is his advantage that walks with God He is much more frequently then others awakened to a serious apprehension of the things which he understandeth The thoughts of the presence of the most Holy God will not suffer him to be as secure and senseless as others are or as he is himself when he turneth aside from this Heavenly conversation He hath in God such exceeding transcendent excellencies such Greatness such Goodness continually to behold that it keepeth his soul in a much more serious lively state than any other means could keep it in so that when ever any truth or duty is presented to him all his saculties are awake and ready to observe it and improve it A Sermon or a good book or godly conference or a mercy when a man hath been with God in prayer or contemplation will relish better with him and sink much deeper then at another time Nay one serious thought of God himself will do more to make a man truly and solidly wise then all the reading and learning in the world which shuts him out 6. Walking with God doth fix the mind and keep it from diversions and vagaries and consequently much helpeth to make men wise A stragling mind is empty and unfurnished He that hath no dwelling for the most part hath no wealth Wandering is the beggars life Men do but bewilder and lose themselves and not grow wise whose thoughts are ranging in the corners of the earth and are like masterlesse dogs that run up and down according to their fansie and may go any whether but have business nowhere The creature will not fix the soul But God is the center of all our cogitations In him only they may unite and fix and rest He is the only loadstone that can effectually attract and hold it steadfast to himself Therefore he that walks with God is the most constant and unmoveable of men Let prosperity or adversity come let the world be turned upside-down and the mountains be hurled into the sea yet he changeth not Let men allure or threat let them scorn or rage let laws and customs and governments and interest change he is still the same For he knoweth that God is still the same and that his Word changeth not Let that be death one year which was the way to reputation another and let the giddy world turn about as the seasons of the year this changeth not his mind and life though in things lawful he is of a yeilding temper For he knoweth that the interest of his soul doth not change with the humours or interests of men He still feareth sinning for he knoweth that Judgement is still drawing on in all changes and seasons whatsoever He is still set upon the pleasing of the most Holy God whoever be uppermost among men as knowing that the God whom he serveth is able to deliver him from man but man is not able to deliver him from God He still goeth on in the Holy path as knowing that Heaven is as sure and as desirable as ever it was Psal. 112. 6 7. Surely he shall not be moved for ever the Righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance He shall not be afraid of evil tydings His heart is fixed trusting in the Lord His heart is established he shall not be afraid 7. He that walketh with God hath the great master-truths upon his heart which are the standard of the rest and the stock as it were out of which they spring The great truths about God and Grace and Glory have a greater power then many hundred truths of an inferiour nature And moreover such a one is sure that he shall be wise in the greatest and most necessary points He is guilty of no ignorance or errour that shall keep him out of heaven or hinder his acceptance with his God And if he be wise enough to please God and to be saved he is wise indeed as before was â—inted 8. Walking with God doth take off the vizar of deluding things and keepeth us out of the reach and power of those objects and arguments which are the instruments of deceit When a man hath been believingly and seriously with God how easily can he see through the sophistry of the tempting world How easily can he practically consute the reasonings of the flesh and discern the dotage of the seeming subtilties of wicked men that will needs think they have reason for that which is displeasing to their Maker and tends to the damning of their souls so far as a man is conversant with God so far he is sensible that all things are nothing which can be offered as a price to hire him to sin and that the name of preferment and honour and wealth or of disgrace and imprisonment and death are words almost of no signification as to the tempters ends to draw the soul from God and duty It is men that know not God and know not what it is to walk with him that think these words so big and powerful to whom wealth and honour signifie more then God and Heaven and poverty disgrace and death do signifie more then Gods displeasure and everlasting punishment in hell As it is easie to cheat a man that is far from the light so is it easie to deceive the learnedst man that is far from God 9. Walking with God doth greatly help us against the deceitfulness
Hell How chearfully may we go out of this troublesome world and leave the greatest prosperity behind us when we are sure to live in Heaven for ever Even an Infidel will say that he could suffer or dye if he could but be certain to be Glorified in Heaven when he is dead 3. Walking with God doth mortifie the flesh and allay the affections and lusts thereof The soul that is taken up with higher matters and daily seeth things more excellent becometh as dead to the things below And thus it weaneth us from all that is in the world which seemeth most desirable to carnal men And when the flesh is mortified and the world is nothing to us or but as a dead and loathsome carkass what is there left to be very troublesome in any suffering from the world or to make us loth by death to leave it It is men that know not God that overvalue the profits and honours of the world and men that never felt the comforts of Communion with God that set too much by the pleasures of the flesh And it is men that set too much by these that make so great a matter of suffering It is he that basely overvalueth wealth that whineth and repineth when he comes to poverty It is he that set too much by his honour and being befooled by his pride doth greatly esteem the thoughts or applauding words of men that swelleth against those that disesteem him and breaketh his heart when he falleth into disgrace He that is cheated out of his wits by the pomps and splendour of a high and prosperous estate doth think he is undone when he is brought low But it is not so with him that walks with God For being taken up with far higher things he knoweth the vanity of these As he seeth not in them any thing that is worthy of his strong desires so neither any thing that is worthy of much lamentation when they are gone He never thought that a shadow or feather or a blast of wind could make him happy And he cannot think that the loss of these can make him miserable He that is taken up with God hath a higher interest and business and findeth not himself so much concerned in the storms or calms that are here below as others are who know no better and never minded higher things 4. Walking with God doth much overcome the fear of man The fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Hell fire will extinguish the fear of them that can but kill the body Luke 12. 4. The threats or frowns of a worm are inconsiderable to him that daily walketh with the great and dreadful God and hath his power and word for his security As Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt because he had respect to the recompence of reward so he feared not the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11. 27. 5. Walking with God doth much prepare for sufferings and death in that it breedeth quietness in the conscience so that when all is at peace within it will be easie to suffer any thing from without Though there is no proper merit in our works to comfort us yet it is an unspeakable consolation to a slandered persecuted man to be able to say These evil sayings are spoken falsly of me for the sake of Christ and I suffer not as an evil doer but as a Christian And it is matter of very great peace to a man that is hasting unto death to be able to say as Hezekiah 2 King 20. 3. Remember now O Lord how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight And as Paul 2 Tim. 4. 7 8. I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness c. And as 2 Cor. 1. 12. For our rejoycing is this the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly wisdome but by the grace of God we have had our conversation in the world such a testimony of conscience is a precious cordial to a suffering or a dying man The time that we have spent in a holy and heavenly conversation will be exceeding sweet in the last review when time spent in sinful vanity and idleness and in worldly and fleshly designs will be grievous and tormenting The day is coming and is even at hand when those that are now the most hardened Infidels or obstinate presumptuous sinners or scornful malicious enemies of holiness would wish and wish a thousand times that they had spent that life in a serious obedient walking with God which they spent in seeking worldly wealth and saying up a treasure on earth and feeding the inordinate desires of their flesh I tell you it is walking with God that is the only way to have a sound and quiet conscience And he thâ— is healing and setling his conscience upon the Love of God and the Grace of Christ in the time of his prosperity is making the wisest preparation for adversity And the preparation thus made so â—ong before perhaps twenty or forty or threescore years or more is as truly useful and comfortable at a dying hour as that part which is made immediately before I know that besides this general preparation there should be also a particular special properation for sufferings and death But yet this general part is the chiefest and most necessary part A man that hath walked in his life time with God shall certainly be saved though death surprize him unexpectedly without any more particular preparation But a particular preparation without either such a life or such a heart as would cause it if he had recovered is no sufficient preparation at all and will not serve to any mans salvation Alas what a pittiful provisioâ— doth that man make for death and for salvation who neglecteth his soul despiseth the commands of God and disregardeth the promises of eternal life till he is ready to dye and then cryeth out I repent I am sorry for my sin I would I had lived better and this only from the constraint of fear without any such love to God and holiness which would make him walk with God if he should recover what if the Priest absolve this man from all his sins Doth God therefore absolve him Or shall he thus be saved No it is certain that all the Sacraments and Absolution in the world will never serve to save such a soul without that grace which must make it new and truly holy The Absolution of a Minister of Christ which is pronounced in his name is a very great comfort to the truly penitent For such God hath first pardoned by his general Act of Oblivion in the Gospel and it is God that sendeth his Messenger to them in Sacraments and Ministerial Absolution
with that pardon particularized and applied to themselves But where the heart is not truly penitent and converted that person is not pardoned by the Gospel as being not in the Covenant or a child of promise and therefore the pardon of a Minister being upon mistake or tâ— an unqualified person can reach no further than to admit him into the esteem of men and to the Communion and outward priviledges of the Church which is a poor comfort to a soul that must lye in Hell But it can never admit him into the Kingdom of Heaven God indeed may approve the act of his Ministers if they go according to his rule and deal in Church administrations with those that make A CREDIBLE PROFESSION of FAITH and HOLINESSE as if they had true faith and holiness but yet he will not therefore make such Ministerial acts effectual to the saving of unbelieving or unholy souls Nay because I have found many sensual ungodly people inclining to turn Papists because with them they can have a quick and easie pardon of their sins by the Pope or by the Absolution of the Priest let me tell such that if they understand what they do even this cheat is too thin to quiet their defiled consciences For even the Papists School-doctors do conclude that when the Priest absolveth an impenitent sinner or one that is not qualified for pardon such a one is not loosed or pardoned in Heaven Leg. Martin de Ripalda exposit Liber Magist. li. 4. dist 18. p. 654 655. p. 663 664. dist 20. Aquin. Dist. 20. q 1. a. 5. Suar. Tom. 4. in 3. p. disp 52. Greg. Valent. Tom. 4. disp 7. q. 20. p. 5. Tolet. lib. 6. cap. 27 Navar. Notab 17. 18. Cordub de indulg li. 5. q. 23. they deny not the truth of those words of Origen Hom. 14. ad cap. 24. Levit. Exit quis à fide perexit de castris Ecclesiae etiamsi Episcopi Voce non abjiciatur sicut contru interdum fit ut aliquis non recto judicio eorum qui praesunt Ecclesiae for as mittatur sed si non egit ut mereretur exire nihil laeditur interdum enim quod for as mittitur intus est qui foris est intus videtur retineri And what he saith of Excommunication is true of Absolution An erring Key doth neither lock out of Heaven nor let into Heaven A Godly Believer shall be saved though the Priest condemn him and an unbeliever or ungodly person shall be condemned by God though he be absolved by the Priest Nay if you have not walked with God in the spirit but walked after the flesh though your repentance should be sound and true at the last it will yet very hardly serve to comfort you though it may serve to your salvation because you will very hardly get any assurance that it is sincere It is dangerous lest it should prove but the effect of fear which will not save when it cometh not till death do fright you to it As Augustine saith Nullus expectet quando peccare non potest arbitrii enim libertatem quaerit Deus ut deleri possint commissa non necessitatem sed charitatem non tantum timorem quia non in solo timore vivit homo Therefore the same Augustine saith Siquis positus in ultima necessitate voluerit accipere poenitentiam accipit fateor vobis non illi negamus quod petit sed non praesumimus quod bene hinc exit si securus hinc exierit ego nescio Poenitentiam dare possumus securitatem non possumus You see then how much it is needful to the peace of conscience at the hour of death that you walk with God in the time of life 6. Moreover to walk with God is an excellent preparation for sufferings and death because it tendeth to acquaint the soul with God and to embolden it both to go to him in Prayer and to Trust on him and expect salvation from him He that walketh with God is so much used to holy Prayer that he is a man of Prayer and is skilled in it and hath tryed what prayer can do with God so that in the hour of his extremity he is not to seek either for a God to pray to or a Mediator to intercede for him or a Spirit of Adoption to enable him as a child to fly for help to his reconciled Father And having not only been frequently with God but frequently entertained and accepted by him and had his prayers heard and granted it is a great encouragement to an afflicted soul in the hour of distresse to go to such a God for help And it is a dreadful thing when a soul is ready to go out of the world to have â—â— comfortable knowledge of God or skill to pray to him or encouragement to expect acceptance with him To think that he must presently appear before a God whom he never knew nor heartily loved being never acquainted with that communion with him in the way of Grace which is the way to communion in Glory O what a terrible thought is this But how comfortable is it when the soul can say I know whom I have believed The God that afflicteth me is he that loveth me and hath manifested his love to me by his daily attractive assisting and accepting Grace I am going by death to see him intuitively whom I have often seen by the eye of Faith and to live with him in Heaven with whom I lived here on earth From whom and Through whom and To whom was my life I go not to any enemy nor an utter stranger but to that God who was the Spring the Ruler the Guide the Strength and the Comfort of my life He hath heard me so oft that I cannot think he will now reject me He hath so often comforted my soul that I will not believe he will now thrust me into Hell He hath mercifully received me so oft that I cannot believe he will now refuse me Those that come to him in the way of Grace I have found he will in no wise cast out As strangeness to God doth fill the soul with distrustful fears so walking with him doth breed that humble confidence which is a wonderful comfort in the hour of distress and a happy preparations to sufferings and death 7. Lastly to walk with God doth encrease that Love of God in the soul which is the heavenly tincture and inclineth it to loâ—k upward and being weary of a sinful flesh and world to desire to be perfected with God How happy a preparation for death is this when it is but the passage to that God with whom we desire to be and to that place where we fain would dwell for ever To love the state and place that we are going to being made connatural and suitable thereto will much overcome the fears of death But for a soul that is acquainted with nothing but this life and favoureth nothing but Earth and Flesh and hath
my Wife neither am I her Husband Nay more than this if you are Christians you are members of the body of Christ And therefore how can you withdraw your selves from him and not feel the pain and torment of so sore a wound or dislocation you cannot live without a constant dependence on him and communication from him Joh 15. 1 4 5. I am the true Vine and my Father is the Husbandman Abide in me and I in you I am the Vine ye are the Branches He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you So near are you to Christ that he delighteth to acquaint you with his secrets O how many mysteries doth he reveal to those that walk with him which carnal strangers never know Mysteries of Wisdome Mysteries of Love and saving Grace Mysteries of Scripture and Mysteries of Providence Mysteries felt by inward experience and Mysteries revealed foreseen by Faith Not only the strangers that pass by the doors but eveâ—â— the common servants of the family are unacquainted with the secret operations of the Spirit and entertainments of Grace and Joy in believing which those that walk with God either do or may possess Therefore Christ calleth you friends as being more than servants Joh. 15. 14 15. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what the Lord doth but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you It is true for all this that every true Christian hath reason and is apt to complain of his darkness and distance from God Alas they know so little of him and of the Mysteries of his Love and Kingdom that sometimes they are apt to think that they are indeed but utter strangers to him But this is because there is infinitely more still unknown to them than they know what can the silly shallow creature comprehend his infinite Creatour Or shall we know all that is to be known in Heaven before we enjoy all that is to be enjoyed in Heaven It is no more wonder to hear a believer pant and mourn after a fuller knowledge of God and neâ—râ—r access to him than to seek after Heaven where this will be his happiness But yet though his Knowledge of God be small compared with his Ignorance that little Knowledge of God which he hath attained i 〈…〉 ore mysterious sublime and excellent than all the learning of the greatest unsanctified Scholars in the world Walk with him according to the neatness of your Relations to him and you shall have this excellent knowledge of his Mysteries which no Books or Teachers alone can give You shall be effectually touched at the heart with the truths which others do uneffectually hear You shall be powerfully moved when they are but uneffectually exhorted When they only hear the voice without them you shall hear the voice within you and as it were behind you saying This is the way walk in it O that you could duly value such a friend to watch over you and for you and dwell in you and tell you faithfully of every danger and of every duty and teach you to know good and evil and what to choose and what to refuse How closely and delightfully would you converse with such a blessed friend if you rightly valued him 2. MOreover you that are the servants of God have by your Covenant and Profession renounced and forsaken all things else as they stand in any opposition to him or competition with him and have resigned your selves wholly unto him alone And therefore with him must you converse and be employed unless you will forsake your Covenant You knew first that it was your interest to forsake the world and turn to God You knew the world would not serve your turn nor be instead of God to you either in life or at death And upon this Knowledge it was that you changed your Master and changed your minds and changed your way your work your hopes And do you dream now that you were mistaken Do you begin to think that the world is fitter to be your God or Happiness if not you must still confess that both your Interest and your Covenant do oblige you to turn your hearts and minds from the things which you have renounced and to walk with him that you have taken for your God and to obey him whom you have taken for your King and Judge and to keep close to him with purest Love whom you have taken for your everlasting portion Mark what you are minding all the day while you are neglecting God Is it not something that you have renounced And did you not renounce it upon sufficient cause Was it not a work of your most serious deliberation and of as great wisdome as any that ever you performed if it were turn not back in your hearts again from God unto the renounced Creature You have had many a lightning from Heaven into your understandings to bring you to see the difference between them You have had many a teaching and many a warning and many a striving of the spirit before you were prevailed with to renounce the world the flesh and the devil and to give up your self intirely and absolutely to God Nay did it not cost you the smart of some afflictions before you would be made so wise And did it not cost you many a gripe of conscience and many a terrible thought of Hell and of the wrath of God before you would be heartily engaged to him in his Covenant And will you now live as strangely and neglectfully towards him as if those daies were quite forgotten and as if you had never felt such things and as if you had never been so convinced or resolved O Christians take heed of forgetting your former case your former thoughts your former convictions and complaints and covenants God did not work all that upon your hearts to be forgotten He intended not only your present change but your after remembrance of it for your close adhering to him while you live and for your quickning and constant preservance to the end The forgetting of their former miseries and the workings of God upon their hearts in their conversion is a great cause of mutability and revolting and of unspeakable hurt to many a soul. Nay may you not remember also what sorrow you had in the day of your Repentance for your forsaking and neglecting God so long And will you grow again neglective of him Was it then so hainous a sin in your eyes and is it not now grown less Could you then aggravate it so many waies and justly and now do you justifie or extenuate it Were you then ready to sink under the burden of it and were
so hardly perswaded that it would be forgiven you and now do you make so small a matter of it Did you then so much wonder at your folly that could so long let out your thoughts and affections upon the creature while you neglected God and Heaven and do you begin to look that way again Do you now grow familiar with a life so like to that whirh was once your state of death and bear that easily that once was the breaking of your heart O Christians turn not away from that God again who once fetcht you home with so much smart and so much grace with such a twist of Love and Fatherly severity Methinks when you remember how you were once awakened you should not easily fall asleep again And when you remember the thoughts which then were in your hearts and the tears that were in your eyes and the earnest prayers which you then put up that God would receive you and take you for his own you should not now forget him and live as if you could live without him Remember that so far as you withdraw your hearts from God and let them follow inferiour things so far you contradict his works upon your hearts so far you violate your Covenant with him or sin against it so far you are revolters and go against the principal part of your profest Religion Yea so far you are ungodly as you thus withdraw your hearts from God Cleave to him and prosecute your Covenant if you will have the saving benefits of his Love and Covenant 3. MOreover the servants of God are doubly obliged to walk with him because they have had that experience of the goodness the safety and the sweetness of it which strangers have not Do you not remember how glad you were when you first believed that he pardoned and accepted you And how much you rejoyced in his Love and entertainment And how much better you found your Fathers house than ever you had found your sinful state And how much sweeter his service was than you did before believe It 's like you can remember something like that which is described in Luk. 15. 20 22 23 24. And he arose and came to his Father But when he was yet a great way off his Father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him And the Son said unto him Father I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy Son But the Father said to his servants Bring forth the best Robe and put it on him and put a Ring on his hand and Shooes on his feet and bring hither the fatted Calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry for this my Son was dead and is alive again he was lost and is found What would you have thought or said of this Prodigal if after all this he should have been weary of his Fathers house and company and have taken more pleasure in his former company Would you not have said he was a forgetful and unthankful wretch and worthy never more to be received I do not speak to you now as to Apostates that are turned ungodly and have quite forsaken God and Holiness But I beseech you consider what it is after such experiences and obligations as these so much as to abate your love and grow remiss and mindless and indifferent as if you were aweary of God and were inclined to neglect him and look again to the world for your hope and satisfaction and delight As you love your souls and as you would avoid the sorrows which are greater than any that ever you felt take heed of fleighting the Love that hath done such wonders for you and of dealing so unthankfully with the everliving God and of turning thus away from him that hath received you Remember whilst you live the Love of your espousals Was God so good to you at the first and holiness so desirable and is it not so still And I am sure that your own experience will bear witness that since that time in all your lives it never was so well with you as when you walked most faithfully with God If you have received any falls and hurts it hath been when you have stragled from him If ever you had safety peace or joy it hath been when you have been nearest to him your wounds and grief and death hath been the fruit of your own waies and of your forsaking him Your recovery and health and life have been the fruit of his waies and of your adhering to him Many and many a time you have confessed this and have said It is good for me to draw near to God He hath helped you when none else could help you and comforted you when none else could comfort you How far are you above the worldlings happiness when you are nigh to God One lively thought of his Greatness and Excellency and of his Love to you in Jesus Christ will make the name of wealth and honour and favour and preferment and sensual pleasures to seem to you as words of no signification How indifferent will you be as to your prosperity in the world when you feel what it is to walk with God If you are lively experimental Christians you have found this to be true Have you not found that it is the very Health and Ease and proper employment of your souls to walk with God and keep close to him And that all goes well with you while you can do thus however the world doth esteem or use you And that when you grow strange or disobedient to God and mindless of his Goodness his presence and his authority you are like the stomach that is sick and like a bone that is out of joynt that can have no ease till it be healed and restored to its proper place No meats or drinks no company nor recreation no wealth or greatness will serve to make a sick man well or ease the dislocated bones Nothing will serve a faithful holy soul but God This is the cause of the dolour of his heart and of the secret groans and complainings of his life because in this life of distance and imperfection he finds himself so far from God and when he hath done all that he can he is still so dark and strange and cold in his affections when persecution driveth him from the Ordinances and publick Worship or when sin hath set him at a greater distance from his God he bemoaneth his soul as David in his banishment from the Tabernacle Psal. 42. 1 2 c. As the Hart panteth after the water-brooks so panteth my soul after thee O God My soul thirsteth for God for the living God When shall I come and appear before God My tears have been my meat day and night while they continually say unto me Where is thy God And it is no wonder if with his greatest joy he be yet clouded with these sorrows because he yet
of all our lamentable weakness of faith and love and heavenly mindedness and our strangeness to God and backwardness to the matters of eternal life O that I could escape these though I were in the hands of the cruellest enemies O that such a heart could be left behind How gladly would I overrun both house and land and honour and all sensual delights that I might but overrun it O where is the place where there is none of this darkness nor disaffection nor distance nor estrangedness from God! O that I knew it O that I could find it O that I might there dwell though I should never more see the face of mortals nor ever hear a humane voice nor ever tast of the delights of flesh Alas foolish soul such a place there is that hath all this and more than this but it is not in a wilderness but in Paradise not here on earth but above with Christ And yet am I so loth to die yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day when I shall be unclothed of flesh and sin O death what an enemy art thou even to my soul By affrighting me from the presence of my Lord and hindering my desires and willingness to be gone thou wrongest me much more than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness Fain I would know God and fain I would more love him and enjoy him but O this hurtful love of life O this unreasonable fear of dying detaineth my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death this carnal unbelieving heart that sometime can think more delightfully of a Wilderness then of Heaven that can go seek after God in desert solitude among the birds and beasts and trees and yet is so backward to be loosed from flesh that I may find him and enjoy him in the world of glory Can I expect that heaven come down to earth and that the Lord of Glory should remove his Court and either leave the retinue of his celestial Courtiers or bring them all down into this drossy world of flesh and sin and this to satisfie my fleshly foolish mind Or can I expect the translation of Henoch or the Chariot of Elias Is it not enough that my Lord hath conquered Death and sanctified the passage and prepared the place of my perpetual abode Well! for all this though a Wilderness is not Heaven it shall be sweet and wellcome for the sake of Heaven if thence I may but have a clearer prospect of it and if by retiring from the crowd and noise of folly I may but be more composed and better disposed to converse above and to use my faith alas my too weak languid faith untill the beatifical vision and fruition come If there may be but more of God or readier access to him or more heart-quickening flames of Love or more heart-comforting intimations of his favour in a wilderness then in a City in a prison then in a Palace let that wilderness be my City and let that prison be my Palace while I must abide on earth If in solitude I may have Henochs walk with God I shall in due season have such a translation as shall bring me to the same felicity which he enjoyeth and in the mean time as well as after it is no incommodity if by mortal eyes I be seen no more If the Chariot of contemplation will in solitude raise me to more believing affectionate converse with heaven than I could expect in tumults and temptations it shall reconcile me unto solitude and make it my Paradise on earth till Angels instead of the Chariot of Elias shall convey me to the presence of my glorified Head in the Celestial Paradise Object But it is grievous to one that hath been used to much company to be alone Answ. Company may so use you that it may be more grievous to you not to be alone The society of waspes and serpents may be spared and Bees themselves have such stings as make some that have felt them think they bought the honey dear But can you say you are alone while you are with God Is his presence nothing to you Doth it not signifie more then the company of all men in the world saith Hierome Sapiâ—ns nunquam solus esse potest habet enim secum omnes qui sunt qui fuerunt boni si hominum sit inopia loquitur cum Deo viz. A wise man cannot be alone for he hath with him the good men that are or have been And if there be a want of men he speaks with God He should rather have said There can be no want of man when we may speak with God And were it not that God is here revealed to us as in a glass and that we do converse with God in man we should think humane converse little worth Object O but solitude is disconsolate to a sociable mind Answ. But the most desirable society is no solitude saith Hierome Infinita eremi vastitas te terret sed tu Paradisum mente deambula Quotiescunque cogitatione ac mente illuc conscenderis toties in eremo non eris that is Doth the infinite vastness of the wilderness terrifie thee But do thou ascend in mind and walk in Paradise As oft as thou ascendest thither in thought and mind so oft thou shalt not be in the wilderness If God be nothing to thee thou art not a Christian but an Atheist If God be God to thee he is All in all to thee and then should not his presence be instead of all O that I might get one step nearer unto God though I receded many from all the world O that I could find that place on earth where a souâ— may have nearest access unto him and fullest knowledge and enjoyment of him though I never more saw the face of friends I should chearfully say with my blessed Saviour I am not alone for the Father is with me And I should say so for these Reasons following 1. If God be with me the Maker and Ruler and Disposer of all is with me so that all things are virtually with me in him I have that in Gold and Jewels which I seem to want in Silver Lead and Dross I can want no friend if God vouchsafe to be my friend and I can enjoy no benefit by all my friends if God be my enemy I need not fear the greatest enemies if God be reconciled to me I shall not miss the light of the Candle if I have this blessed Sun The Creature is nothing but what it is from God and in God And it is worth nothing or good for nothing but what it's worth in order unto God as it declareth him and helps the soul to know him serve him or draw nearer to him As it is Idolatry in the unhappy worldling to thirst after the Creature with the neglect of God and so to make the
world his God so doth it savour of the same hainous sin to lament our loss of Creatures more than the displeasure of God If God be my enemy or I am fallen under his indignation I have then so much greater matters to lament than the loss or absence or frowns of man as should almost make me forget that there is such a thing as man to be regarded But if God be my Father and my friend in Christ I have then so much to think of with delight and to recreate and content my soul as will proclaim it most incongruous and absurd to lament inordinately the absence of a worm while I have his Love and presence who is All in All. If God cannot content me and be not enough for me how is he then my God or how shall he be my Heaven and everlasting Happiness 2. If God be with me he is with me to whom I am absolutely devoted I am wholly his and have acknowledged his interest in me and long ago disclaimed all usurpers and repented of alienations and unreservedly resigned my self to him And where should I dwell but with him that is my owner and with whom I have made the solemnest Covenant that ever I made â— never gave my self to any other but in subordination to him and with a salvo for his highest inviolable right Where should my goods be but in my own house with whom should a Servant dwell but with his Master and a Wife but with her Husband and Children but with their Father I am nearlier related to my God and to my Saviour than I am to any of my Relations in this world I owe more to him than to all the world I have renounced all the world as they stand in any competition or comparison with him And can I want their company then while I am with him How shall I hate Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister for his sake if I cannot spare them or be without them to enjoy him To hate them is but to use them as men do hated things that is to cast them away with contempt as they would alâ—enate me from Christ and to cleave to him and be satisfied in him alone I am now married to Christ and therefore must chearfully leave Father and Mother and my native place and all to cleave to him And with whom should I now delight to dwell but with him who hath taken me into so near relation to be as it were one flesh with him O my dear Lord hide not thou thy face from an unkind an unworthy sinner Let me but dwell with thee and see thy face and feel the gracious embracements of thy Love and then let me be cast off by all the world if thou see it meetest for me or let all other friends be where they will so that my soul may be with thee I have agreed for thy sake to forsake all even the dearest that shall stand against thee and I resolve by thy grace to stand to this agreement 3. If God be with me I am not alone for he is with me that Loveth me best The Love of all the friends on earth is nothing to his Love O how plainly hath he declared that he loveth me in the strange condescention the sufferings death and intercession of his Son What Love hath he declared in the communications of his Spirit and the operations of his Grace and the near relations into which he brought me What Love hath he declared in in the course of his providences in many and wonderful preservations and deliverances in the conduct of his wisdome and in a life of mercies What Love appeareth in his precious promises and the glorious provisions he hath made for me with himself to all eternity O my Lord I am ashamed that thy Love is so much lost that it hath no better return from an unkind unthankful heart that I am not more delighted in thee and swallowed up in the contemplation of thy Love I can contentedly let go the society and converse of all others for the converse of some one bosome friend that is dearer to me than they all as Jonathan to David And can I not much more be satisfied in thee alone and let go all if I may continue with thee My very Dog will gladly for sake all the Town and all persons in the world to follow me alone And have I not yet found so much Love and Goodness in thee my dear and blessed God as to be willing to converse alone with thee All men delight most in the company of those that Love them best They choose not to converse with the Multitude when they look for solace and content but with their dearest friends And should any be so dear to me as God O were not thy Love unworthily neglected by an unthankful heart I should never be so unsatisfied in thee but should take up or seek my comforts in thee I should then say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee Though not only my friends but my flesh and heart themselves should fail me it is thou that will still be the strength of my heart and my portion for ever it is good therefore for me to draw near to thee how far soever I am from man O let me there dwell where thou wilt not be strange for thy loving kindness is better than life instead of the multitude of my turmoiling thoughts let me be taken up in the believing views of thy reconciled face and in the glad attendance upon thy Grace or at least in the multitude of my thoughts within me let thy celestial comforts delight my soul. Let me dwell as in thy family and when I awake let me be still with thee Let me go no whither but where I am still following thee Let me do nothing but thy work nor serve any other but when I may truly call it a serving thee Let me hear nothing but thy voice and let me know thy voice by whatever instrument thou shalt speak Let me never see any thing but thy self and the glass that representeth thee and the books in which I may read thy name And let me never play with the outside and gaze on words and letters as insignificant and not observe thy name which is the sense Whether it be in company or in solitude let me be continually with thee and do thou vouchsafe to hold me by my right hand And guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me unto thy glory Psal. 73. 23 24 25 26 28. Psal. 63. 3. 4. If God be with me I am not alone for I shall be with him whose Love is of greater use and benefit to me than the Love of all my friends in the world Their Love may perhaps be some little comfort as it floweth from His But it is His Love by which and upon which I Live It is His Love that gives
me Life and Time and health and food and preservation that gives me books and giveth me understanding that giveth me provision and saveth me from turning it to pernicious fleshliness and excess that giveth me even my friends themselves and saveth me from that abuse which might make them to me worse than enemies The Sun the Earth the Air is not so useful or needful to me as his Love The Love of all my friends cannot make me well when I am sick it cannot forgive the smallest of my sins nor yet assure me of Gods forgiveness it cannot heal the maladies of my soul nor give a solid lasting peace to the conscience which is troubled if all my friends stand about me when I am dying they cannot take away the fears of death nor secure my passage to everlasting life Death will be Death still and danger will be danger when all my friends have done their best But my Almighty friend is Allsufficient He can prevent my sickness or rebuke and cure it or make it so good to me that I shall thank him for it He can blot out my transgressions and forgive all my sin and justifie me when the world and my conscience do condemn me He can teach me to believe to repent to pray to hope to suffer and to overcome He can quiet my soul in the midst of trouble and give me a well grounded everlasting peace and a joy which no man can take from me He can deliver me from all the corruptions and distempers of my froward heart and ease me and secure me in the troublesome war which is daily managed in my breast He can make it as easie a thing to dye as to lye down and take my rest when I am weary or to undress me at night and go to bed He can teach Death to lay by its terrible aspect and to speak with a mild and comfortable voice and to bring me the joyfullest rydings that ever came unto my ears and to preach to me the last and sweetest Sermon even the same that our Saviour preached on the Cross Luke 23. 43. Verily I say unto thee To day shalt thou be with Christ in Paradise And is this the difference between the Love of man and of God And yet do I lament the loss of man And yet am I so backward to converse with God and to be satisfied in his Love alone Ah my God how justly mayest thou withhold that Love which I thus undervalue and refuse that converse which I have first refused and turn me over to man to silly man to sinful man whose converse I so much desire till I have learnt by dear experience the difference between man and God and between an Earthly and an Heavenly friend Alas have I not tryed it oft enough to have known it better before this day Have I not oft enough sound what man is in a time of tryal Have I not been told it over and over and told it to the quick by deceitful friends by self-seeking friends by mutable erroneous deceived scandalous backsliding friends by proud and selfconceited friends by passionate quarrelsome vexatious friends by self-grieving troubled friends that have but brought me all their calamities and griefs to be additions to my own by tempting friends that have drawn me to sin more effectually than enemies by tender faithful but unable friends rhat have but fetcht fire from my calamities and sorrows to kindle their own not equally sharing but each one taking all my trouble entirely to himself that have been willing but insufficient to relieve me and therefore the greater was their Love the greater was their own and consequently mine affliction that would have been with me but could not that would fain have eased my pain and strengthened my languishing body but could not that would fain have removed all my troubles and comforted my cast-down mind but could not O how often have I found that humane friendship is a sweet desired addition to our woe a beloved calamity and an affliction which nature will not be without not because it Loveth evil nor because it is wholly deceived in its choice for there is Good in friendship and delight in holy Love but because the Good which is here accompanied with so much evil is the beginning of a more high and durable friendship and pointeth us up to the blessed delightful society and converse which in the heavenly Jerusalem we shall have with Christ But O how much better have I found the friendship of the Allsufficient God! His Love hath not only pittied me but relieved me He hath not only been as it were afflicted with me in my afflictions but he hath delivered me seasonably and powerfully and sweetly hath he delivered me And when he had once told me that my afflictions were his own I had no reason to doubt of a deliverance My burdened mind hath been eased by his Love which was but more burdened by the fruitless Love of all my friends Oft have I come to man for help and ease and comfort and gone away as from an empty Cistern that had no water to cool my thirst but God hath been a present help Could I but get near him I was sure of Light how great soever was my former darkness Could I but get near him I was sure of warming quickning Life how dead soever I had been before But all my misery was that I could not get near him My darkened estranged guilty soul could not get quieting and satisfying acquaintance My lumpish heart lay dead on earth and would not stir or quickly fell down again if by any celestial force it began to be drawn up and move a little towards him My carnal mind was entangled in diverting vanities And thus I have been kept from communion with my God Kept not by force or humane tyranny not by bars or bolts or distance of a place or by the lowness of my condition nor by any misrepresentations or reproach of man but alas by my self by the darkness and deadness aad sluggishness and earthliness and fleshliness and passions of a naughty heart These have been my bars and bolts and jaylors These are they that have kept me from my God Had it not been for these I might have got nearer to him I might have walkt with him and dwelt with him yea dwelt in him and he in me and then I should not have mist any friends nor felt mine enemies And is it my sinful distance from my God that hath been my loss my wilderness my woe And is it a nearer admittance to the presence of his Love that must be my recovery and my joy if ever I attain to joy O then my soul lay hold on Christ the Reconciler and in him and by him draw near to God and cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils Love God in his Saints and delightfully converse with Christ in them while thou hast opportunity But remember thou Livest not upon them or
no connaturality with the things above for such a soul to be surprized with the tydings of death alas how dreadful must it be And thus I have shewed you the Benefits that come by walking with God which if you Love your selves with a rational love me thinks should resolve every impartial considerate Reader to give up himself without delay to so desirable a course of life or if he have begun it to follow it more chearfully and faithfully than he had done CHAP. VII I Am next to shew you that Believers have special obligations to this holy course of life and therefore are doubly faulty if they neglect it Though indeed to neglect it totally or in the main drift of their lives is a thing inconsistent with a living Faith Consider 1 If you are true Christians your Relations engage you to walk with God Is he not your Reconciled Father and you his Children in a special sense And whom should Children dwell with but with their Father You were glad when he received you into his Covenant that he would enter into so near a Relation to you as he expresseth 2 Cor. 6. 17 18. I will receive you and will be a Father to you and ye shall be my Sons and Daughters saith the Lord Almighty And do you draw back as if you repented of your Covenant and were not only weary of the Duty but of the Priviledges and Benefits of your Relation You may have access to God when others are shut out Your Prayers may be heard when the prayers of the wicked are abominable You may be welcome when the worldling and ambitious and carnal are despised He that dwelleth in the highest Heaven is willing to look to you with respect and dwell with you when he beholdeth the proud afar off Isa. 66. 1 2. 57. 15 16. And yet will you not come that may be welcome Doth he put such a difference between you and others as to feed you as his Children at his table while others are called Dogs and are without the doors and have but your crums and leavings and yet will you be so foolish and unthankful as to run out of your Fathers presence and choose to be without among the Dogs How came your Fathers presence to be so grievous to you and the priviledges of his family to seem so vile Is it not some unchild-like carriage the guilt of some disobedience or contempt that hath first caused this Or have you faln again in love with fleshly pleasures and some vanity of the world Or have you had enough of God and Godliness till you begin to grow aweary of him If so you never truly knew him However it be if you grow indifferent as to God do not wonder if shortly you find him set as light by you And believe it the day is not far off in which the Fatherly Relation of God and the priviledges of Children will be more esteemed by you when all things else forsake you in your last distress you will be loth that God should then forsake you or seem as a stranger to hide his face Then you will cry out as the afflicted Church Isa. 63. 15 16. Look down from Heaven and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory Where is thy zeal and thy strength the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me are they restrained Doubtless thou art our Father though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not thou O Lord art our Father our Redeemer thy name is from everlasting Nothing but God and his Fatherly Relation will then support you Attend him therefore and with reverent obedient chearfulness and delight converse with him as with your dearest Father For since the beginning of the world men have not known by sensible evidence either the ear or the eye besides God himself what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him Isa. 64. 4. Though he be wroth with us because we have sinned yet doth he meet him that rejoyceth and worketh rightcousness that remembreth him in his waies vers 5. Say not I have played abroad so long that I dare not now go home I have sinned so greatly that I dare not speak to him or look him in the face Come yet but with a penitent returning heart and thou mayest be accepted through the Prince of Peace Prodigals find better entertainment than they did expect when once they do but resolve for home If he allow us to begin with Our Father which art in Heaven we may boldly proceed to ask forgiveness of our trespasses and whatever else is truly good for us But alas as our iniquities seduce us away from God so the guilt of them affrighteth some from returning to him and the love of them corrupteth the hearts of others and makes them too indifferent as to their communion with him so that too many of his children live as if they did not know their Father or had forgotten him We may say as Isa. 64. 6 7 8 9. But we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away and there is none that calleth upon thy name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee for thou hast hid thy face from us and hast consumed us because of our iniquities But now O Lord thou art our Father we are the Clay and thou our Potter and we are all the work of thy hand Be not wroth very sore O Lord neither remember iniquity for ever Behold see we beseech thee we are all thy people O do not provoke your Father to disown you or to withdraw his help or hide his face or to send the Rod to call you home for if you do you will wish you had known the priviledges of his presence and had kept nearer to him Be not so unnatural so unthankful so unkind as to be weary of your Fathers presence and such a Father 's too and to take more delight in any others Moreover you are related to God in Christ as a Wife unto a Husband as to Covenant union and nearness and dearness of affection and as to his tender care of you for your good And is it seemly is it wisely or gratefully done of you to desire rather the company of others and delight in creatures more than him Isa. 54. 5 6. How affectionately doth thy Maker call himself the Husband of his people And can thy heart commit adultery and forsake him My Covenant they brake though I was an Husband to thee saith the Lord Jer. 31. 32. O put not God to exercise his jealousie It is one of his terrible attributes to be a jealous God And can he be otherwise to thee when thou lovest not his converse or company and carest not how long thou art from him in the world Woe to thee if he once say as Hos. 2. 2. She is not