turn them into mortal sins If Princes rule fight for themselves I have told you already what they do but if this were done for God it would have another form and another reward as it had another End What a doleful case is it that such excellent works as alms-deeds and acts of bounty to Church or poor or Commonwealth in buildings lands or any the like works should be all turned into sin and death by such a selfish vain-glorious intent And that their souls should be suffering for those works that others receive much good by What a sad case is it that Historians Lawyers Physicians Philosophers Linguists and the Professors of all the Sciences should undo themselves for ever by those excellent works that edifie the world Nay what can be more lamentable to think of than that able and learned Divines themselves should lose their own souls in the studying and preaching those precious truths that are saving unto others and that such excellent writings as remain a standing blessing to the Church should be the Authors of mortal sin And yet so it is if the renown and immortality of a name on Earth be the End that all this work is done for 12. Lastly Consider that if Honour be good for you it is better attained by minding your duty for the Honour of God and denying your own Honour than by seeking it For Honour is the shadow that will follow you if you fly from it and fly from you if you follow it What Christ here saith of Life is true of Honor He that seeketh and saveth it shall lose it and he that loseth it for Christ shall find it The greatest Honour is to deny our selves and our own honour and to do most for the Honour of God and to be contented to be nothing that God may be all For you have his promise that them that honour him he will honour but they that despise him shall be lightly esteemed THough I have endeavoured by a right limitation and exposition of the foregoing parts of self-denial to prevent mistakes and give you those grounds by which objections may be answered yet the stir that is made in the world about this point by Papists and many other mistaking Sects doth perswade me to give a more distinct Resolution of some of the principal doubts that are before us and therein to shew you that self-denial consisteth not in all things that by some are pretended to be parts of it but that there is a great deal of sin that goes under the name of self-denial among many of these sorts of mistaken persons CHAP. LI. Q. Whether Self-denial lie in renouncing Propriety Quest 1. WHether doth self-denial require us to renounce Propriety and to know nothing as our own as the Monks among the Papists swear to do as part of their state of perfection a book called The way to the Sabbath of Rest dothteach us Answ 1. That there should be no Propriety in goods or estate among men is contrary to the will of God who hath made men his Stewards and trusted several persons with several talents and forbidden stealing and commanded men to labour that they may have to give to him that needeth and he that hath this worlds goods and seeth his brother have need must not shut up the bowels of his compassion It is a standing duty to give to the poor and we shall therefore have the poor always with us for this exercise of our Charity And he that hath nothing can give nothing nor use it for God Why did Paul require them to give to the distressed Saints and maintain the Ministry and gather for such uses every first day of the week if he would have men have nothing to give This therefore is a conceit that needs nothing but Reason and the reading and belief of Scripture to confute it 2. But as no man is a Proprietary or hath any thing of his Own in the strict and Absolute sense because all is Gods and we are but Stewards so no man may retain his humane analogical propriety when God calleth him to give it up No man may retain any thing from Gods Use and service which he hath a propriety in We have so much Propriety as that no man must rob us and so much as our works of charity are rewardable though it be but giving a cup of cold water which could not be without propriety for who will reward him that gives that which is none of his own yea it is made the matter of the last judgement I was hungry and ye fed me I was naked and ye cloathed me c. Which they could not have done if they had not had food and cloathing to bestow So that the denial of propriety would destroy all exercise of charity in such kinds and destroy all Societies and orderly converse and industry in the world But yet when God calls for any thing from us we must presently obey and quit all title to it and resign it freely and gladly to his will And 3. There must be so much vigour of charity and sense of our neighbours wants as that no man must shut up the bowels of compassion but as we must love our neighbours as our selves so must we relieve them as a second self yea and before our selves if Gods service or honour should require it If we must lay down our lives for the brethren much more our estates So that Levelling Community is abominable but Charitable Community is a Christian duty and the great Character of sincere Love to Christ in his members And therefore in the Primitive Church there was no forbidding of Propriety but there was 1. A resignation of all to God to signifie that they were contented to forsake all for him and did prefer Christ and the Kingdom of God before all and 2. There was so great vigor of true Charity as that all men voluntarily supplied the wants of the Church and poor and voluntarily made all things as common that is Common by voluntary Communication for use though not common in primary title And so no man took any thing as his Own when God and his Churches and his Brethrens wants did call for it O that we had more of that Christian Love that should cause a Charitable Community which is the true Mean between the Monkish Community and the selfish tenacious Propriety Levelling hath not destroyed one soul for ten thousand that an inordinate love of Propriety hath destroyed CHAP. LII Q. Whether it lie in renouncing Marriage Quest 2. WHether Self-denial consists in the forswearing or renouncing of Marriage or the natural use of it by those that are marryed Answ. To forbid Marriage simply is called by the holy Ghost a Doctrine of Devils 1 Tim. 4. 1 3 and was one of the Heresies that the Apostles were called out to encounter in their own days But yet a Married state doth ordinarily not always call men off from that free attendance on the
doctrine of Christ and how much it doth to make them like or dislike their teachers or any point or practice in Religion And he is a stranger even among Divines themselves that seeth not the sway that self doth bear in their judgements and disputes and course of life and the choice of their party or society to which they joyn themselves CHAP. VI. Mens great aversness to costly or troublesome duties 3. ANother discovering instance of the rarity of self-denyal is this The great aversness of men to any costly or troublesome or self-denying duty how necessary soever how plainly soever revealed in the Scripture and how generally soever acknowledged by the Church As if self had a Negative voice in the making of Laws for the Government of the world and none must be binding without its consent I shall come down to some more particular instances 1. The great duty of charitable relieving our brethren in necessity to the utmost of our power is commonly made almost nothing of in the world And men cheat their souls by thinking they are passed from death to life because they love the brethren with such a cold and barren love as will neither lay down estate for them nor venture life for them but think they are sure Christians because they can say as the believers that James mentioneth Depart in peace be you warmed and filled but give them not that which is necessary thereto James 2. 16. Though it be told them plainly by Christ himself that it is not a fruitless uneffectual love but that which causeth them to feed and cloath and visit the Saints that must stand them instead at judgement Matth. 25. and the Apostle asketh them How the love of God can dwell in that man that seeth his brother have need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion from him 1 John 3. 17. Yet do men think that by dropping now and then a penny they have discharged all this great duty And when they see many wayes by which they might promote the Gospel and help the Church and serve God with their estates yet self will not let them see the meaning of the plainest Scriptures that do require it 2. When men should practise the great duty of forgiving injuries trespasses and debts and of loving our enemies and blessing them that curse us and praying for them that hate and persecute us how stubbornly doth selfishness resist these duties What abundance of words may you use in vain with most men to perswade them to any of this work No they must have their right and that which is their own though it be to the undoing of their brother Passion and revenge even boil within them and the thoughts of an injury stick in their minds and if they do take on them dissemblingly to forgive it yet they cannot forget it nor heartily love a brother that displeaseth them much less an enemy And all this is from the dominion of self and shews that it prevaileth above God in the soul and therefore shews a graceless heart 3. When the Ministers of the Gospel themselves should be painful in their great and necessary work and should watch over all the flock Acts 20. 28. warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that they may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1. 28. condescending to men of the lowest sort and teaching them in season and out of season what reasonings and shifts will self bring in to resist so great and excellent a duty and prove it no duty and that God will give them leave to spare their pains and all because of the Powerful interest of self 4. And let the same Ministers have a disordered flock that hath scandalous members especially if they be great ones or many and how rarely will they do their duty to them in plain reproof and in case of impenitency and continuance in sin by Publick Admonition and Rejection what shiftings and cavillings will they find against this displeasing work of Discipline even when they will reproach a man themselves whose Opinion is against Discipline and when they have preacht and written and disputed so much for it and almost all parties are agreed of the necessity of it in the substance yet when it comes to practice it cannot be done without procuring mens hatred and opposition and laying us open to much incommodity and therefore self doth perswade us to forbear and whether God or self have the more servants even yet in a reformed Ministry I leave you to judge as your observation of the congregations through the Land shall direct you But were it not for self I should undertake to do more for discipline and personal Instruction with most Ministers by one Argument than I have done by a volume and you might see an unanimous concurrence in the work and consequently a great alteration in the Churches 5. And whence is it but from selfishness that plain and close Application in our Sermons is taken to be an injury to those that think themselves concerned in it If a Minister will speak alike to all and take heed of medling with their sores they will patiently hear him but if he make them know that he meaneth them in particular and deal closely with them about their miserable state or against any special disgraceful sin they fall a railing at him and reproaching him behind his back and perhaps they will say They 'le hear him no more O saith the selfish ungodly wretch I know he meant me to day had he no body but me to speak against As if a sick man should be angry with the Physitian for giving directions and medicines to him in particular and say Had he no body to give Physick to but me Were there not sick men enough in the Town besides me When Christ told the Despisers of the Gospel of the certain and dreadful destruction that was near them Mat. 21. 41 44 45. its said that When the chief Priests and Pharisees had heard his Parables they perceived that he spake of them A hainous business and therefore they sought to lay hands on him but that they durst not do it for fear of the multitude 6. Nay let a Minister preach but any such doctrine as seems consequentially to be against Self and to conclude hardly of them and they are ready to say as Ahab of Micaiah I hate him for he prophesieth not good of me but evil 1 Kings 22. 8. Let us but tell them how few will be saved what holiness and striving and diligence is necessary though we have the express word of God for it Heb. 12. 14. Mat. 7. 13 14. Luke 13. 24. 2 Pet. 1. 10. yet because they think that it makes against their carnal peace they cannot abide it Plain truth is unwelcome to them because it is rough and grates upon the quick and tells them of that which is troublesome to know Though they must know their sin and danger and misery or
upon the affairs of Nations and the wars of Princes and their confederacies and see who it is that rules in all how little will you see save here and there but carnal self It is self that makes the cause and manageth it It is self that maketh Wars and Peace Come down into our Courts of Justice and whose voice is loudest at the bar but selfs and who is it commonly else that brings in the Verdict at least who is it else that made and followeth on the quarrel How many causes hath self at an Assize for one that God hath Come lower into the Country and who is it that plows and sows who is it that keeeps House or Shop but self I mean what else but carnal self is the Principle what else but carnal self is the End what else but the will of self is the Rule and what else but selfish commodity or pleasure or honour are the matter or some provision that is made for these and consequently what else but self-respect is the form For the End informeth the means as means and therefore all that is done for self is self-service and self-seeking In a word as God is all in all to the sanctified so self is as all in all to the ungodly And alas how great a number are all these 3. Consider that it is a sin that is nearer us objectively than any other sin And the nearer the more dangerous Alas that a man should turn his own substance into poison feed upon it to his own destruction If you have drunk poyson you may cast it up again or nature may do much to work it out but if your own blood and humours and spirits be turned into venom that should nourish and preserve your life what then shall expell this venom and deliver you 4. Moreover it is the most obstinate disease in the world No duty harder except the Love of God than self-denial O how many wounds will self carry away and yet keep life and heal them all How commonly do we convince some carnal Gentlemen that One thing is needful and that its a better part than Earth and honour and sensuality that must be chosen or else they are undone and that the more they have the more they must forsake and the more self-denial is required to their salvation and that all their lands and wealth and honours and all their wit and parts and interest must be at the service of their Maker and Redeemer and that when they have all in the world that they can get that all must become Nothing and God must become all their treasure must become the dross and dung and Christ must become their treasure or they are lost I say how oft do we convince men of all estates of these important evident truths And yet this self is still alive and keeps the garrison of the heart and all that we can have from most of them is as the rich man Luk. 18. 23 24. to be very sorrowful that they cannot have heaven at easier rates and that Christ will not be a servant unto Self or they cannot have two Masters They go away sorrowful but away they go because they are rich which makes Christ say upon this observation How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God But when the Disciples were troubled at his observation he lets them know that it is Self and not Riches that is indeed the deadly enemy It is the selfish that trust in Riches and love and use them for themselves and deny not themselves and devote not all to God that will be kept out of Heaven by them Or in Christs own words Luk. 12. It is he that layeth up treasure for Himself and is not rich towards God Conquer self and Conquer all 5. Moreover self is the most constant malady the sin that doth most constantly attend us Many actual sins may be laid by and we may for the time be free from them But selfishness is at the heart and lives with us continually It parteth not from us sleeping or waking It goes to the worship of God with us it will not stay behind in the holiest ordinance It will not forbear intermixing it self in the purest duties but will defile them all So that above all sins in the world it s this that must have the strictest constantest watch or else we shall never have any peace for it 6. Yea this self doth lamentably survive even in the sanctified soul among the special graces of the Spirit and lamentably distempereth the hearts and lives of too many of the godly themselves Not that any godly man is selfish in a predominant sense or that self is higher or more powerful in his heart than God for that 's a contradiction such a man cannot be a godly man without Conversion But yet the very remnants of conquered Self what a smoak do they make in our Assemblies and what noisom scent in the lives of many godly men what a stir have we sometimes with those that we hope are godly before we can get them to an impartial judgment to lament their own fowl words or other miscarriages and to humble themselves or freely to forgive another that hath wronged them especially to confess disgraceful sins in any self-denying manner How close stick they to their own conceits how lamentably do they improve them to the contempt of Ministers trouble and division of the Church How wise are they in their own eyes and how hardly yield they to any advice that crosseth Self How hardly are they brought to any dear and costly duty How much do they indulge their appetites and passions and how cheap a Religion do many think to come to heaven with we can scarce please some of them they are so selfish either because we cross them in their opinions or in their wayes or because we allow them not so much special countenance and respect as self would have or deny them somewhat which self desires If they have any use for us if we leave not more publick or greater work which god hath set us on and allow them not that part in our time or labours or other helps which God and Conscience will not allow them they are offended take it ill that self is not preferred before God and the publick service Their selves are so dear to themselves that they think we should neglect all to serve them Let the most useful Minister live in a place that hath the plague or other contagious mortal sickness and most that are visited will take it ill if the Minister come not to them though they know that his life is hazarded by it and that his loss to the whole Church is more to be regarded than the content or benefit of particular persons and it is not the pleasing of them nor their benefit by him then that will countervail the Churches loss of him What is this but too much preferring self I
rest 1. That will that is not fetched from God and moved by his will as the lesser wheels in a clock are moved by the first wheel and by the pâ—â—â—â— is no better than self-will A will that is not dependent on Gods will is an Idol usurping the prerogative of God for it is proper to him to be dependent upon none and to have a will that is not ruled by a Superior will Little do the most know how great a sin this is to be self-willed You have a will to something or other continually and it is your will that ruleth the rest of your faculties and actions but what is it that ruleth your will whence do you fetch the rise and reason of your desires Is it from Gods will or is it not You pray to God Thy will be done and do your own wills answer these prayers or are they hypocritical dissembling words If indeed it be Gods will that you would have fulfilled then will the knowledge of that will of God determine your own wills As a servant dependeth on his Masters will for all the work that he is to do and doth not what he will himself but what his Master will have him do and as a Scholar dependeth on his Masters will and learneth only such books and lessons as he sets him so must we depend on the will of God and know what is his will before we give way to any will of our own The reason why you choose any trade or calling or course of life should be the will of God If you are in Poverty and desire to be richer and that to please your own wills and not that you think that it would be any more pleasing to God this is self-willedness If you desire any change in your condition if you undertake any thing in the world know why you do this whether it be principally because you think it is the will of God or because it is your own will I tell you again you should not have one wish or desire in your souls till you can prove or find that God would have it so and if your own wills be made the absolue rulers of your ways you make Gods of your selves and God will deal with you accordingly 2. Yea if you do think the will of God is according to your will and you are moved the more to it on that account yet if your own wills do lead and make the first choice and Gods will be brought in but to follow and incourage yours this is still Self-willedness and Self-idolizing This is the common trick of the ungodly They first give way to their own self-will and then they will go to Scripture for somewhat to bear them out and will needs believe that God's is agreeable to theirs that so they may go on with peace of Conscience They go for counsel to God as Balaam did not sincerely to know the will of God with a resolution to obey it but with a desire that God would conform his will to theirs I tell you if the matter be never so much commanded in the Scriptures and never so agreeable to the will of God yet if you desire and do it from your selves and not for this reason because it is the will of God and do not let Gods will lead your own but let your own will lead and Gods will follow this is no better than self-willedness were the matter never so good in it self 3. If the end that moveth your will be not the service and glory of God but only your own Interest this is but self-will God giveth you leave to look to your selves as his servants in a due subserviency to him But if you will principally look at your own interest and make light of Gods and fetch the reason of your will and desires from your own ends and commodity rather than his Glory this is an ungodly selfish-will And yet alas how many are there that know not any better frame of will than this If they were truly to give an account of the principal reason and motive of every desire of their hearts why they would have this or why they would do that must they not confess it is for themselves because it serveth their own ends or interests and because it pleaseth their own wills and not because it furnisheth them better to serve and please the will of God If you ask men in their buying and selling and marrying and trading and dealing with men why it is that they do this or that can they truly say I do it because I think in this way I can do God the best service and the Church or Commonwealth most good and this is my chief reason Alas I fear they are too few that have any higher principal end and motive than self Self-will is the spring of their whole Conversations that sets them upon all they do Nay doubtless in the very duties of Religion in praying hearing reading and the like they are but serving self while they take on them to serve God and their holiest devotions is but such a serving of God as flatterers will serve their Prince or Landlord meerly that he may do them a good turn and may serve their Ends and be serviceable to them or else as some Indians serve the Devil for fear of him lest he should do them a mischief The will that is moved chiefly by self-interest is a self-will 4. And much more is it self-willedness when men contradict the Will of God when Scripture saith One thing and they another when they disrelish Gods Laws and dislike the work that he sets them on when they have a Will to that which God forbids and would fain be doing with unlawful things yea and it doth not satisfie their corrupt desires to see that the express will of God is against them this is self-will in a high degree 5. So also when mens wills are to that which is against the honour and interest of God which would hinder this Gospel and the saving mens souls and is displeasing to him this is self-willedness in a high degree And thus you see what it is to be self-willed And now do but consider whether this part of self be commonly denied in the world Among the millions of desires that are in mens hearts how few of them are kindled by the commands of God or moved by his Interest and Glory How commonly are the word and ways of God distastful to the world How ill do men like the disposals of his providence And what a striving is there in their wills against him And were it not that God is above them and unconquerable and they know that striving will not help them you should have most of the world in open war against the God of Heaven I speak no more than I am able to prove The Dominion of self is so great in the wills of all that are unsanctified that their wills are utterly against the Will of God and
and have you sought first to get in a fitter man what can they for shame say to it If they say No they proclaim themselves notorious self-seekers For it 's very seldom that an humble man is allowed to judge himself the fittest 4. And he that seeketh Dignities for God and not for himself will use them for God and not for himself For the Intention will command the use He will deny himself in his superiority as well as if he were in the lowest place and will contrive how he may most serve and honour God and this will be easily seen in his endeavours whether it be God or self that he serves and liveth to And now I advise all that love their souls to take heed of this aspiring act of selfishness If you will needs seek your selves and be your own Exalters you must trust to your selves and be your own defenders And then you will find that the lowest condition in the hand of God is more safe and comfortable than the highest in your own hand If God should lift you up to the top of the highest mountains you may expect either a calm or his protection in the storm and to be as safe as those below but if you lift up your selves and Satan carry you to the pinacle of the Temple take heed lest you thence cast down your selves by his temptations that did lift you up Dignities and Honours are not indeed the things that they seem to be to carnal eyes that see not the inside but judge by the outward glittering shew There is most holy Duty and work to be done where is the greatest dignity And certainly the life of greatest work labour is not the life of greatest ease or carnal pleasure especially when it is the work of God that you must do a work which all the world is against and which Satan and all his power will resist and which must meet with enmity and abundance of enmity when ever you set about it Though you are Commanders yet you are Souldiers and you that are Leaders have the hottest standing and must expect the sharpest conflicts Do you think of your Dignities and Offices as places of meer superiority and honour and accommodation to your carnal selves then are you Carnal men and enter upon you know not what and make your selves Traitors and Enemies to God whom he is engaged to bring down and be avenged on at last you debase the sacred coin which bears the stamp and name of God Magistracy is holy and the Image of God and you basely turn it into the Image of the flesh and blot out Gods name from it and stamp upon it the name of self and traiterously make it your own which was eminently his Believe it whoever you are if you seek for places of Rule and Dignity with carnal selfish expectations you must either use them accordingly when you have them which is the readiest way to damnation in the world or else you must find your expectations crost and mifs of all your carnal Ends and find that the greatest toil and burden which you expected should have been your chief content God hath annexed the Honour and outward greatness partly to encourage you to so hard a work lest the burden should be too heavy and partly to enable you to perform it and give you some advantages against opposition But though the cloathing of Authority and Rule be splendid the substance thus covered is extraordinary Labour and duty and suffering It is Honourable but it 's an honourable burden and an honourable painful difficult work So that if men understood what Office and Authority is in Church or Common-wealth and look'd after the substance as well as the ornaments the work as well as the Honour and Greatness it would be an eminent piece of self-denial for a man to submit to the call of God to be a Prince a Judge a Justice or but a Constable and men would as hardly be drawn to take the Office as they are now to do the work of the Office in faithfulness and with courage and zeal for God and that is almost as hard as an offendor is drawn to the stocks Offices and high places are not intended to accommodate the flesh nor are they things to be ambitiously desired and sought for by such as understand the Ends and use of them but they are such laborious hazardous ways of serving God which a wise man knows must cost him more than the honour will repay and which a Good man will not run away from when God calleth him thereto but will so far Deny himself as to submit to them but not thrust himself into them as the Proud and selfish do It is a work of Patience to a Godly man to be thus exalted but it is a work of Pride and self-seeking in others Deny your selves so far as to submit to Government dignity bear it patiently if it be cast upon you as being an excellent opportunity of serving God But wiâ—â— not for it because of the Honour and advantages to the flesh much less contend for it or set your hearts on it He that seeketh an Office or Honour for himself must have another heart before he will use it for God It 's better with Saul to hide our selves from honour than with Absalom to contrive and seek it but best of all with David to stay till God call us and then obey CHAP. XLII The Love and good Word of others denied 2. ANother part of selfish Interest to be Denied is the Love and good Will and Word of others This is a thing that may and must be desired to good ends but not for carnal self When Paul look'd at Gods honour and the good of souls he became all things to all men that he might by all means save some and this he did not for self but for the Gospels sake and yet for himself in subordination to God that he might be partaker of it with them He would give no offence to Jew or Gentile or the Church of God but pleased all men in all things that tended to their good not seeking his own profit but the profit of many that they may be saved 1 Cor. 10. 32 33. And he hath left it as the duty of the strongest Christians not to please themselves but every one to please his neighbour for his good to edification But when Paul look'd at himself and his esteem among men then he saith With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of mans judgment 1 Cor. 4. 3. And Gal. 1. 10. Do I seek to please men For if I yet pleased men I should not be the Servant of Christ Good natures are loth to provoke others to displeasure and Grace moveth us to Please men for the saving of their souls But it 's Pride and Self-seeking to desire to set up our selves in mens esteem and to endear our selves for our selves into their
sentence of your judge will dispel all the unjust reproaches that were on you and wash off all the blots that were falsly laid on your good name and he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noon-day for there is nothing hid that shall not be then revealed 8. In the mean time God will take care of your name He will make the very tongues that slander you to honour you in the blindness of their reproaches crossing themselves As the Papists by the poor Waldenses saying they were the more dangerous hereticks because they held all the Articles of faith and lived godly and honestly and were reputed holy but only that they were against the Church of Rome As you trust God with your health and wealth so must you do with your Reputation even in point of Honesty and be satisfied that he can clear you when he pleases 9. And it is not Gods ordinary way to leave the Reputation of his servants wholly uncleared even in this world If one condemn them another shall Justifie them and commonly the wisest and best men Justifie them and the most foolish and ungodly are they that condemn them And cannot you bear the words of fools and children The proudest man can pass by a contempt or slander from a drunken man an ideot or a mad man as being no dishonour to him and cannot you bear the censures of the distracted world Or if they are better men that slander you it 's two to one but it is the more foolish or passionate sort of them and that the judgment of the more wise and sober is against them and vindicateth your Reputation Or if at the present they do not it 's ten to one but Providence shall work to the clearing of your Reputation either in your life-time or when you are dead Most of the Servants of God that were most hated and slandered while they lived on earth are cleared and honoured now they are dead God is not dis-regardful of his Servants names 10. But however it go you are secured of the main that which you expected or covenanted for with God you shall be sure of If you have the Thing you may easily bear the want of the name Hath the Spirit of God renewed and sanctified you are you made the living members of Christ and the Sons of God and the heirs of Heaven I hope you may well spare then the applause of men and easily bear it if you be reputed to be destitute of what you have If you are in health it will not much trouble you if it be reported that you are sick And if you are alive you can bear it if the report go that you are dead For as long as you have the thing you can spare the name And if you have Christ and Grace and Pardon and Justification and Title to eternal life cannot you endure to have men think that you are without them How basely do you undervalue thâ—se inestimable things when the thoughts of a mans mind or the words of a mans mouth can blast the comforts of them all As if you said to the world It is not Christ and Grace and Pardon and Salvation that will serve me without the applause of men How basely think you of God and how highly of men if this be your mind It is more excusable for a Haman to say of all his honour and wealth that they satisfie him not or do him no good as long as he wants but Mordecai's obeysance than for a Christian to say of God of Christ of Glory All this will not serve my turn as long as men take me for an hypocrite or ungodly For there is not a satisfying sufficiency in Honors and wealth as there is in God and glory As long as you have the precious treasure methinks you may give losers leave to talk It was not for the good words of men that you became Christians and Covenanted with God but for pardon and salvation and these you shall have God will perform his Covenant to you and give you both his Kingdom and so much of worldly things as overplus as is truly good for you and what would you have more You shall have the Inheritance and Crown of blessedness and will not that serve your turn without a few good words from silly man I hope you would be loth to change Rewards with the Hypocrite Why then do you so much desire his Reward and so much undervalue your own Though his be present and yours be future I hope you think it but a doleful hearing to have Christ say Verily they have their Reward in comparison of his promise to his reproached servants Verily great is your Reward in Heaven Mat. 6. 2. Mat. 5. 12. And now I hope in all these ten particular considerations you may see reason enough for self-denial in the very Reputation of your Godliness and Honesty and why you should endure joyfully to be esteemed ungodly and dishonest rather than to be so CHAP. L. A Renowned and Perpetuated Name to be denied 10. THe last point of Honour which self must be denied in is A Renowed and Perpetuated Name For to that height doth Pride aspire that no less will satisfie where there is any apparent hope of this though in those that sit so low that they see no ground to hope for such a thing the desires after it are not so kindled as they be in others that think the prey is within their reach Fain men would be famous and talk'd of through the world They would have their real and supposed worth made known as far as may be And when they die they would fain have their names survive that they may be great in the estimation of posterity and magnified by all that mention them And so deeply are men possessed with this dangerous sin that they account this perpetuated fame for their felicity And there was nothing that most of the Heathens did prefer before it but when they seemed to be most vertuous heroical and patient it was but to be thus esteemed of after they were dead If you ask me How far a surviving reputation may be regarded I answer 1. So far as the interest of God or his Gospel Church or Cause or the publick good or the good of our posterity is concerned in it and may be promoted by it thus far it is lawful and a duty to value it desire it and seek it For if we have throughly searched our hearts and can say unfeignedly that it is God and his cause and honour that we principally intend and desire our own honour but as a Means to his and therefore desire it no further than it is such a means then we may justly desire both the extension and surviving of our reputation if we are groundedly perswaded that it 's like to conduce to these happy ends As for example A Prince that owns the cause of God and makes such Laws for the
service of God without distraction which is very desirable And therefore those that are capable of doing God any notable service which Marriage is like to hinder them from should avoid it if they can without a greater evil And therefore the Church did think it for many ages so fit for Ministers to be single that they might have the less of worldly affairs and cares to call them off from the work of God and their carnal relations might not hinder them from more publick duties or charitable works The Papists therefore mistakingly take the Vow of Chastity to be an entring into a state of Perfection and sinfully condemn the Marriage of Priests when the Apostle expresly saith A Bishop must be blameless the Husband of one Wife having his children in subjection 1 Tim. 3. 24. And so of Deacons vers 12. And others run into the other extream But the true Mean is this 1. Ordinarily Marriage is more distracting and hindering to us in the service of God than a single life Especially to Ministers and such as should wholly addict themselves to the publick service of the Church 2. But yet all men are not alike obliged to it or from it Some may be necessitated to it by the temper of their bodies to avoid a greater evil even sin it self and some may have no such necessity some may have their worldly estate and affairs in such a plight that they can far better manage them with freedom for Gods service in a married than a single state but with others it is not so and especially with very few Ministers So that a single or married life is in it self indifferent but as a means to Gods service that is a Duty to one that is a sin to another but because that a single life is more commonly free and fittest for this great end therefore the Apostle preferreth it as better because more sutable to the state of the most at least in those times though to some marriage may be a duty So that every one should impartially enquire in which state they may do God the greatest service and that they should choose not on Popish ground as if it were Commended to that particular person to whom it is not Commanded and were an Evangelical counsel of perfection and to be vowed but in a prudent ordering of our lives applying the general rules of Scripture to our several estates And thus according to the command of Christ He that can receive this saying let him CHAP. LIII Q. Or in solitude and renouncing secular affairs Quest 3. WHether Self-denial consist in solitude and avaiding secular affairs as trades merchandise labour c Answ 1. It is the standing Rule of the Apostle of all that are able That if any man will not work neither should he eat 2 Thes 3. 10. and he calls those disorderly walkers that work not at all 2 Thes 3. 11. and requireth us to have no company with such commanding men with quietness to work and eat their own bread ver 12. 14. But yet there are several sorts of Labour some labour with the body which is usually more private as to the extent if not the intent of the benefit and some labour with the mind which is usually more for publick good as Princes Judges Magistrates of all sorts Lawyers Physicians Ministers c. Now men are to consider whether by the Labour of the mind or of the body they are like to be more serviceable to God and which they are fittest for and called to and that they ought to set themselves to and that in true self-denial and for God To be Idle is so far from being a part of self-denial that it is a sinful part of flesh-pleasing And so is it to choose any calling or imployment principally for fleshly case and accommodation The Apostles were some Fishermen and some of other callings and none of them renounced worldly labour or affairs save only so far as they hindered them from the work of God to which they and all Ministers were wholly to addict themselves as appears 1 Tim. 4. 15. 2 Tim. 2. 4. To do therefore as many Monks do to be employed in no calling for the publick good under pretence of being Religious for themselves is to be burdens to the Earth and gross violators of the Laws of God CHAP. LIV. Or in renouncing Publick Offices and Honours Quest 4. WHether Self-denial require men to renounce all publick offices and honours and not to be Magistrates Ministers or the like Answ It requireth us not to have such carnal thoughts of these offices as to look on them only as places of honour and power and ease nor yet to desire them for such carnal ends Nor yet to thrust our selves upon them without a call as being the Judges of our own sufficiency But self-denial is so far from forbidding the offices and imployments themselves as that it is a great point of self-denial for a man that understandeth them well to undertake them if he mean to manage them sincerely and faithfully For were it not that the sweetness of Gods interest and his acceptance and the benefits of the Church our brethren and our souls did ingratiate these offices and employments to an honest mind they would be so very burdensom that flesh and blood would either make them carnal by abuse or never endure them And therefore hath God given them an addition of honour to encourage them and to put an honour on their work for the furthering of its success Experience certifieth me that the work of the Ministry is far more troublesome to the flesh than the bodily labour of a poor artificer or plowman is so that without great self-denial no man will be a Minister that doth not carnally mistake the function for another thing than indeed it is And I think I may say the like in its degree by the Magistracy Especially by them in highest Power who have the greatest work Certain I am if they faithfully do their duties they will find more burden to the flesh and mind than poor men that have only a Family to provide for Though many ignorant ungodly poor people that sit at home in peace and little know the care and grief and trouble of their Rulers do wickedly murmur at their very calling as if they had nothing but honour and idleness and excess yet if they had tryed and tasted their care and trouble a few moneths they would think a private life the easier and confess that there is need of much self-denial for a man to accept of Magistracy or Ministry that understandeth them and resolveth to use them accordingly Moreover these Offices are of necessity to the Common good and established to that End by God himself And the fifth Commandment requires us to pay our Superiors their honour and obedience And therefore â—o imagine that it 's any part of self-denial to refuse the Office of Magistracy or Ministry is to make it self-denial to
in his Leviathan But they do not reverence that beam of Divinity which God hath communicated to them in their Authority nor love their Governors as the Fathers of the Church and Common-wealth for the common good and the honour of God which they are appointed to promote 5. And this selfishness is the deadly enemy of all right Administrations of Justice and the due exercise of Authority in Church or Commonwealth If a Minister be selfish he will be shifting off the troublesome part of his duty and will over-rule his understanding to believe that it is no duty because dis-believing is easier than obeying He will be forward in those duties that are necessary to his maintenance and applause and are imposed on him by the Laws of men but out of the Pulpit it 's little that he will do As if it were the Pulpit only that were Gods Vineyard where he is set to labour Flesh and blood shall be consulted and men shall be pleased and all that the interest of self may be maintained And if the People be selfish they will rebel against their faithfullest Guides and kick against their Doctrine and reproofs and fly from Discipline which seems to their distempered minds to be against them Let but one most notorious lamentable instance suffice The greater part of our Parishioners in most places of the Land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their Salvation and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute Necessity and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their Teachers that if we do not humor them and be not Ruled by them in our Doctrine and Administrations about Sacraments Prayers Burial and the rest yea if we obey them not in gestures and forms they turn their backs upon Officers and Ordinances and the Church it self and pour out their reproach upon their Teachers as if we were ignorant in comparison of them even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight year old should know See here the wonderful bewitched power of a selfish disposition And in matters of the Commonwealth what is it more than this nay what is it besides this that maketh Princes become Tyrants and Rulers keep under the Ordinances and interest of Christ or fearfully neglect them and look after the Church in the last place when they have no business of their own to call them off and to begin to build Gods House when they have first built their own not imitating Nehemiah's labourers that had the sword in one hand and the Trewel in the other and builded in their arms what else makes them give God but their leavings who giveth them all And what else could make them such enemies to Truth as to side with those parties what ever they be that side most with them and promote their interest And alas what work doth selfishness make with inferior Magistrates It is this only that opens the hand to a Reward and the ear to the solicitations of their friends and it s this that perverteth the judgement and this that oppresseth the poor and innocent and this that â—yeth the tongues and hands of Justices so that abundance of them do little more than possess the room and stand like an armed statue or a sign-post which hurteth none Alehouses do what their list for them and drunkards and swearers are bold at their noses and they are no terror to evil doers nor revengers to execute wrath upon them nor Ministers that use their power for much good but bear the Sword almost in vain contrary to the very nature of their Office Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4. And it is selfishness in the people that causeth the trouble of faithful Magistrates Every man would do what his list The worst offendor abhors him that would punish him And those that will commend Justice and cry down vice in the general yet when they fall under Justice themselves they take all that they suffer to be injury and will do all that they can against Justice and the Officers of it when it is to defend themselves or theirs from the execution of it so rare a thing is it to meet with a man that is a friend to Laws and Justice when themselves must suffer by it 6. Selfishness also makes men withdraw from all those necessary burdens and duties that are for the preservation of Church or Commonwealth Such wretches had rather the Gospel were thrust out of doors than it should cost them much and had rather have the unworthiest man that would be their Teacher for a little than allow the best that maintenance that the Gospel doth command or give them what the Law hath made their Own They would venture the ruine of Church and State and let all fall into the hands of the common enemies rather than hazard their persons or lay out their estates for the common preservation So that if the hand of violence did not sometimes squeeze those Spunges and force these leeches to disgorge themselves they would but impoverish the Common-wealth by their Riches and weaken the body like wens or impostumes by drawing to themselves 7. And then the selfish are such causes of Division that if they did no other harm they would break both Church and State into pieces if their humor were predominant and not restrained or purged out And in this regard selfishness is the direct enemy of Societies and is always at work to dissolve them into Independant individuals A Society is a Political Body which must have but one Head and one Interest and one End But when selfishness prevaileth there are as many Heads and Ends and Interests as Persons If they be in a Church every one is the Teacher and Ruler and every one must have his opinion countenanced and his humor satisfied Every one must have his way and will And how is this possible when their minds are so various and contrary to one another and their Interests so inconsistent and there are as many Rulers as persons when every man is drawing to himself and there is no center in which they can unite what work is there like to be in the Church What progress could be made in the building of Babel when no man was ruled by another but every man ran confusedly after his single imagination what an Army will it be and how are they like to speed in fight where every Souldier is instead of a Captain and General to himself and one runs this way and another that way and one will have one course taken and another another course and every one fighteth on his own head such work doth selfishness make in the Church It is this that hath broken it into so many parcels and would crumble it all to dust if it should prevail And it is this also that causeth the Divisions of the Commonwealth Faction rising up against Faction
the interest of their opinions and parties have cherished dissension and fled from concord and have had a hand in the resisting and pulling down Authority and embroiling the Nations in wars and miseries And whence is it but for want of self-denial for our own faults must be confessed that the Ministers of Christ are so much silent in the midst of such heinous miscarriages as the times abound with I know we receive not our Commission as Prophets did by immediate extraordinary inspiration But what of that The Priests that were called by an ordinary way were bound to be plain and faithful in their Office as well as the Prophets And so are we How plainly spoke the Prophets even to Kings and how patiently did they bear indignities and persecutions But now we are grown carnally wise and cautelous for holy wisdom and caution I allow and if duty be like to cost us dear we can think that we are excused from it If Great men would set up Popery in the Land by a Toleration alas how many Ministers think they may be silent for fear lest the contrivers should call them seditious or turbulent or disobedient or should set men to rail at them and call them Lyers and Calumniators or for fear lest they should be persecuted and â—uined in their estates or names If they do but foresee that men in power or honour in the world will charge them with Lies or unchristian dealing for speaking the words of Truth and Soberness against the Introduction of Popery and impiety and that they shall be made as the scorn and off-scouring of all the world and have all manner of evil saying falsly spoken of them for the sake of Christ his Church and truth they presently consult with flesh and blood and think themselves discharged of their duty when God saith Ezek. 33. 6. c. If the watchman see the sword come and blow not the Trumpet aud the people be not warned if the sword come and take any person from among them he is taken away in his iniquity but his blood will I require at the watchmans hand And were we no watchmen yet we have this command Lev. 19. 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour and not suffer sin upon him Yet now many Ministers will be cruelly silent lest they should be charged with malice and hating those whom they are commanded to rebuke The sword of violence I perswade them not to meddle with but were it not for want of self-denial the sword of the spirit would be more faithfully managed against the sins of the greatest enemies of Christ and of the Gospel than it is by most though it should cost us more than scorns and slanders and though we know that bonds and afflictions did abide us And verily I cannot yet understand that the contempt and scorn of the Ministry in England is fed by any thing so much as selfishness Could we be for all mens Opinions and Carnal interests O what experience have I had of this all men for ought I see would be for us Is it a crime to be a Minister Doubtless it 's then a crime to be a Christian And he that rails at us as Ministers to day it 's like will rail at us as Christians to morrow But if such will vouchsafe to come to me before they venture their souls and soberly debate the case I undertake to prove the truth of Christianity The world may see in Clem. Writers exceptions against my Treatise of Infidelity what thin transparent Sophisms and silly Cavils they use against the Christian cause When they have well answered not only that Treatise but Du Plessis Grotius Vives Ficinus Micraelius the ancient apologies of the Christian writers of the Church let them boast then that they have confuted Christianity The Devil hath told me long ago in his secret temptations as much against the Christian Faith as ever I yet read in any of our Apostates But God hath told me of much more that 's for it and enabled me to see the folly of their Reasonings that think the mysteries of the Gospel to be foolishness But if it be not as Ministers and Christiâ—nâ— that we are hated what is it then If because we are ingnorant insufficient negligent or scandalous why do they not by a legal trial cast us out and put those in our places that are more able diligent and godly when we have provok'd them to it and beg'd it of them so often as we have done If it be because we are not Papists it is because we cannot renounce all our senses our Reason the Scripture the Unity Judgment and Tradidion of the far greatest part of the Universal Church If I have not already proved that Poperty fighteth against all these and am not able to make it good against any Jesuit on earth let them go on to number me with Hereticks and let them use me as they do such when I am in their power If we are hated because we are not of the Opinions of those that hate us it seems those Opinions are enemies to Charity and then we have little reason to embrace them And if this be it we are under an unavoidable necessity of being hated For among such diversity of Opinions it is impossible for us to comply with all if we durst be false to the known truth and durst become the servants of men and make every self-conceited Brother the Master of our Faith If we are so reviled because me are against an Universal Liberty of speaking or writing against the truths and wayes of Christ and of labouring in Satans harvest to the dividing of the Churches and the damnation of souls it is then in the up-shot because we are of any Religion and are not despisers of the Gospel and of the Church and of mens salvation and because we believe in Jesus Christ I have lately found by their exclamations and common defamations and threatnings and by the Volumes of reproaches that come forth against me and by the swarms of lyes that have been sent forth against me through the Land that even the present Contrivers of Englands Misery Liberty I would say and of Toleration for Popery and more are themselves unable to bear contradiction from one such an inconsiderable person as my self and they have got it into the mouths of souldiers that my writings are the cause of wars and that till I give over writing they shall not give over fighting though I do all that I am able to do for Peace And if this be so what a case would they bring the Nation into by giving far greater Liberty to all than ever I made use of Unless they still except a Liberty of contradicting themselves they must look for other kind of usage when Libertinism is set up Yea if they will seek the ruine of the Church and Cause of Christ they must look that
salvation or of the want of a necessary Love to our selves For the higher containeth the lower and perfection containeth those degrees that are found in the imperfect This neglect of our selves through the Love of God is consequentially the most provident securing of our selves This carelesness is the wisest care This ignorance of good and evil for our selves while we know the Lord and know our duty is the wisest way to prevent the evil To be something in our selves is to be Nothing But if we be Nothing in our selves and God be All to us in him we shall be something Be not wanting to God and I am sure you cannot be wanting to your selves He will Reward if you 'l Obey I have shewed you hitherto the Nature and Necessity of Self-denial O that I could next shew you the Nations the Churches that are such indeed as I have described But when I look into the world when I look into the Churches of all sorts and consider men of all degrees my soul is even amazed and melted into grief to think how far the forwardest professors are swerved from their holy Rule and pattern O grievous case how rare are self-denying men Nothing in the world doth more assure me that the number that shall be saved are very few When nothing is more evident in Scripture than that none but the self-denying shall be saved and nothing more evident in the world than that self-denying men are very few Would God but excuse men in this one point and take up with preaching and praying and numbring our selves with the strictest party then I should hope that many comparatively would be saved Would he give men leave to seek themselves in a Religious way and to be zealous only from a selfish principle and would he but abate men this self-denial and the superlative Love of God I should hope true godliness were not rare But if self-denial be the mark the nature of a Saint and this as effected by the Love of God then alas how thin are they in the world and how weak is grace even in those few It is the daily grief of my soul to observe how the world is captivated to it SELF and what sway this odious sin doth bear among the forwardest professors of Religion and how blind men are that will not see it and that it hath so far prevailed that few men lament it or strive against it or will bear the most suitable remedy Alas when we have prevailed with careless souls to mind their salvation to read and pray and hold communion with the godly and seem well qualified Christians how few are brought to self-denial and how strong is Self still in those few What a multitude that seem of the highest form in zeal and opinions and duties delude themselves with a selfish kind of Religiousness And it grieveth my soul to think how little the most excellent means prevail even with Professors themselves against this sin What abundance of labour seemeth to be lost that we bestow against i When I have preached over all these following Sermons against it though grace hath made them effectual with some yet selfishness still too much bears sway in many that heard them O what a rooted sin is this How powerful and obstinate Men that seem diligently to hear and like the Sermon and write it and repeat it when they come home and commend â—â— do yet continue selfish And they that walk evenly and charitably among us in all appearance as long as they are smoothly dealt with when once they are but toucht and crost in their self-interest do presently shew that there is that within them which we or they before perceived not It was doubtless from too much experience of the selfishness even of Professors of Religion and of the successfulness of temptations in this kind that Satan did tell God so boldly that Job would sin if he were but touched in his self-interest Job 1. 9 10 11. 2. 4 5. Doth Job saith he fear God for nothing hast not thou made an hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side Thou hast blessed the work of his hand and his substance is increased in the Land But put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath and he will curse thee to thy face As if he should have said Glory not of Job or any of thy servants It is not thee but themselves that they seek They serve thee but for their own commodity It is Self and not God that ruleth them and that they do all this for Seem but to be their enemy and touch their self-interest and cross them in their commodity that they may serve thee for nothing and then see who will serve thee This was the boast of Satan against the Saints of the most high which hypocrites that encouraged him hereto would have fulfilled and which God doth glory in confuting and therefore he gives the Devil leave to try Job in this point and putteth all that he had into his power ver 12. And when Satan by this succeeded noâ— he yet boasteth that if he might but touch him more nearly in his self-interest he doubted not to prevail c. 2. 4 5. Skin for skin yea all that a man hath will he give for his life Put but forth thy hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse thee to thy face This confidence had Satan even against such a servant of the Lord That there was none like him in the earth a perfect and upright man that feared God and eschewed evil c. 1. 8. And though the power of grace in Job did shame the boasts of Satan yet how frequently doth he prevail with men that seem Religious How truly may he say of many among us Now they seem godly but let the times turn and godliness undo them in the world and then see whether they will be godly Now they seem faithful to their Pastors and Brethren but give them a sufficient reward and see whether they will not play the Judas Now they seem peaceable humble men but touch them in their self-interest cross them in their commodity or reputation by an injury yea or by justice or necessary reproof and then see what they will prove O that the Devil could not truly boast of thousands that by a few foul words or by crossing their self-willedness he can make them speak evil of their neighbours and fill them with malice and bitterness against their truest friends Oh where are the men that maintain their Love and Meekness and Concord any longer than they are pleased and their wills and interests are complyed with or not much contradicted Besides what I have more largely spoken of this master common sin in the following Discourse take notice here of a few of the discoveries of it 1. Observe but the striving that there is for Command and Dignity and Riches and this even among Professors
of many things unnecessary and vexatious or tempring may be part of a mans infelicity and misery And so he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow Eccl. 1. 18. As man that foreknoweth his own death is through the fear of it all his life time subject to bondage Heb. 2. 15. and the fear is more grievous than the death it self when a beast that knoweth not his death is freed from those fears Indeed in our faln estate there is some use for more of this kind of knowledge than before But in innocency man needed only to know his maker and his will and works and the Creature as his utensils and the glass in which he was to be seen and to fear with moderation the death which he had threatned meerly as threatned by him But by the temptation of Satan man grew desirous to be past a child at his Fathers finding and under his care and would take care and thought for himself and know what was good or evil for himself as to the natural man and so far turned his eye to the Creature to study it for himself when he should have studied God in it and to search after good and evil to himself in it which he should have searched after the attributes of God in it and daily gazed with holy love and admiration upon his blessed face that shined in this glass and so he would use the Creature directly for himself which he should have used only for Gods service And thus I conceive man did indeed by his fall attain to much more actual knowledge as to the number of objects than he had before which knowledge was indeed in it self considered Physically good but not Good to him as any part of his felicity or his vertue but rather by participation his sin and misery as being unsuitable to his condition It was better with him when he knew One God and all things in God as they conduced to the Love and Service of God and were suitable to his state than when he turned his mind from God and fell to study the Creature in it self and for himself as Good or Evil to himself and so lost himself and his understanding in a crowd of unnecessary and misused objects Like a foolish Patient that having a most judicious and faithful Physitian that will take care of his health and provide him the best and safest remedies doth grow to an eager desire to be acquainted himself with the nature of each medicine and to be skilful in the cure of his own disease that he may trust his Physitian no longer but may be his own Physitian and therefore hearkneth to a seducer that tells him The Physitian doth but keep thee in ignorance lest thou shouldst be as wise as he and able to cure or preserve thy self hearken to me and I will teach thee to known all these things thy self and so thou maist take care of thy self So man was seduced by Satan to withdraw himself from the fatherly care of God by a desire himself to be wise for himself in the knowledge of all that in the Creature which might be directly good or evil to himself so taking on himself the work of God and casting off the work that God had set him and withdrawing himself from his necessary dependence on his Maker And accordingly much of this selfishness knowledge of the Creature he did attain but with the woful loss of the Divine knowledge of the Creature and of the filial soul-contenting knowledge of God yea and of himself as in his due subordination to God This seems the sence of this text and this is the case of faln mankind Naturally now every man would fain have his safety and Comforts in his own hand He thinks them not so sure and well in the hand of God O what would a carnal man give that he had but his life and health in his own hand and might keep them as long as he saw good When he is poor he had rather it were in his hand to supply his wants than in Gods for he thinks it would go better with him When he is sick he had far rather it were in his own hand to cure him than in Gods for then he should be sure of it If he be in any strait he cannot be content with a bare promise for his deliverance but unless he see some probability in the means and work and unless he be acquainted with the particular way by which he must be delivered he is not satisfied for he cannot trust God so well as himself Is not this the case of all you that are carnal Would you not think your case much safer and better if it were in your own hands than you do now it is in Gods What would you not give that you were but as able to give ease and heath and wealth and honour and life to your selves as God is Hence it is that you so anxiously contrive for your selves and trouble your selves with needless cares because you dare not trust God but think you are faln to your own care and finding You think your selves quite undone when you have nothing left you but God and his Promise to trust upon and when you see nothing in your selves and the Creature to support you And thus are all men faln from God to themselves But Sanctification teacheth men that self-denyal which according to its measure doth heal them of this disease Though some actual knowledge of good and evil and some care of our natural selves be now become a necessary duty as suited to our lapsed state which yet had never been but through sin Yet that which is sinful self-denyal doth destroy It sheweth man that he is every way insufficient for himself and that he is not the fountain of his own felicity nor doth it belong to him but to God to preserve him and secure his welfare He seeth what a folly it is to depart from the tuition of his Heavenly Father and as the Prodigal Son to desire to have his portion in his own hands Experience tells him with smart and sorrow that he hath not been so good a preserver of himself nor used himself so well as to desire to be in the same hands any longer that have so abused him Yea he knoweth that it was God that indeed preserved him while he was over Solicitous about it himself and would needs have the managing of his own affairs He now believes that he can be no where safe but in the hands of God and no way sufficiently provided for but by his wisdom love and power Nor dare he trust himself hereafter with himself or any Creature He finds that he hath but turmoiled and distracted his mind by undertaking the management of his own preservation and that he hath brought himself into a wilderness and lost himself and ravelled his own affairs when if he had committed himself to God and been satisfied in his Wisdom Love and Power all had been
else they can never scape it yet they had rather venture on Hell than hear the danger And as a sortish Patient they love that Physitian better that will tell them there is no danger and let them dye than he that will tell them your discase is dangerous you must bleed or vomit or purge or you will dye O what a wrong they take it to be told thus If a Minister tell one of them that hath the death marks of ungodliness in the face of his Conversation Neighbour I must deal plainly with you your state is sad you are unsanctified and unjustified and in the slavery of the Devil and will be lost for ever if you dye before you are converted and made a new creature and therefore turn presently as you love your soul its ten to one but he should have a reproachful answer instead of thanks and obedience And all this shews that self bears the rule I will give one instance from the Gospel that will tell you plainly the power of self In Luke 4. 20. c. you read of an excellent Sermon preached by Jesus Christ himself so that all did wonder at his gracious words yet few were converted by it but they fell on cavilling against him because of his supposed Parentage and Breeding Whereupon Christ telleth them that Elias and Elisha though most excellent Prophets were sent but for the sake of a few and therefore it was no wonder if of all that multitude it was but a few that should be converted and saved by him This very doctrine so netled these wretches that the Text saith ver 28 29. that all they in the Synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the City and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their City was built that they might cast him down headlong See what entertainment such doctrine had even from Christ himself As if they should have said what are we all unconverted and ungodly shall none be saved but a few such as you Self was not able to bear this doctrine they would have had his life for it 7. Again let but a Minister or private Christian deal closely with ungodly men or Hypocrites about their particular sins by private reproof and see whether Self be not Lord and King in them O how scurvily they will look at you and their hearts do presently rise against you with displeasure and they meet you with distaste and passion and plead for their sins or at least excuse or extenuate them or bethink themselves what they may hit you in the teeth with of your own Or if malice it self can fasten nothing on you they let fly at professors or those that they think are of your mind and way in a word they shew you that they take it not well that you meddle with them and let not their sin alone and look to your selves for all that God hath expresly commanded us Lev. 19. 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour and not suffer sin upon him And Heb. 3. 13. Exhort one another daily while it is called to day lest any be hardned by the deceitfulness of sin So Mat. 18. 15 16. Try but plain dealing with your neighbours one twelve moneth with as much prudence and love and lenity as will stand with faithfulness and when you have done I dare leave it to your selves to judge whether God or self have the more servants in the world and whether self-denyal and Sanctification be not very rare 8. Yet further you see it is the duty of Christians to admonish and faithfully reprove one another but because most men take it ill and plain dealing will displease and lose a friend how few even of professors will be brought to perform it yea of those that expect a Minister should reject the offendor when it cannot be done till after admonition and impenitency thereupon No this is a troublesome duty and self will not give them leave to do it 9. Moreover You know that Church-Government and Discipline is an undoubted Ordinance of Christ which the Church hath owned in every age though in the execution some have been negligent and some injurious and that open scandalous sins must have open confession and repentance that the ill effects may be hindered or healed and the Church see that the person is capable of their communion and that the absolution may be open and well grounded And yet let any man except the truly penitent and godly be called after a scandal to such a necessary confession and how hardly are they brought to it What cavilling shall you have against the duty They will not believe that it is their duty not they And why so is it because it is not plainly required by God No but because it tends they think to their disgrace and self is against it and when you have shewed them such reasons for it that they cannot answer yet the sum is they will not believe it or if they believe it they will not do it What! will they make themselves the laughing stock and talk of the Countrey No they will never do it and it is an injury they think for God or man to put them upon it God commands and self forbids God bids them yield lest they perish in impenitency self bids them not to yield lest they shame themselves before men God perswadeth and self disswadeth and which is it that most commonly prevails Though to avoid the shame of excommunication self also will some time make them yield Did but the Magistrate by a penalty of ten or twenty pound upon refusers perswade them to this not one of a hundred would then refuse but when God urgeth them with the threatning of Hell the wages of impenitency they make little or nothing of it as if they could escape it by not believing it or some way or other could deal well enough with him Judge by the performance of this one duty Whether God or Self have more Disciples 10. Lastly let me instance in one duty more Suppose a deceitful Tradesman or oppressing Land-lord or any one that gets unlawfully from another is told from the word of God that it is his duty to make Restitution either to the person or to his posterity or to God by the poor if neither can be done and to give back all that ever he thus unjustly came by though he have been possessed of it without disgrace never so long See what entertainment this doctrine will have with the most Self will not lose the prey that it hath got hold off till death shall wring it out of its jaws and Hell make them wish they had never medled with it or else had penitently and voluntarily restored it O what abundance of objections hath self against it and no answer will satisfie from God or man Of a thousand unjust getters how many do restore
it is the best and wiâ—est course and approve of it in others and wish they might but dye in such mens case And yet they will not themselves be brought to practise it They will commend Peter and Paul and the Fathers and the Martyrs for a holy life and as I said keep holy-daâ—es for them and yet they will not be perswaded to imitate them And why so why it costs them nothing to commend Holiness in others but to practise it themselves must cost them self-denyal 6. If another man be so ingenuous as to forsake an old self-espoused opinion which their reputation seems to lye upon and this upon their arguing or in conformity to their minds they will commend his great self-denyal and sincerity But yet they will not do so themselves where the case is perhaps more clear and necessary 7. Take a man that is never so worldly and unmerciful that gives not to the poor any considerable part of his estate nor doth nothing worth the mentioning for the Church and yet this man will consent that another shall be as bountiful and charitable as he will when you can hardly scrue a groat out of his purse he will be content if another will give an hundred And he will commend the liberal and speak well of them when he will not imitate them And why is this why it costeth him nothing for another to be liberal and therefore he can advise it or consent to it without self-denyal but self is against it when he should do it himself 8. Take the most selfish unsanctified man that cannot love an enemy nor forgive a debt or a wrong and he will yet commend it in another and advise them to it and speak well of those that will do so by him And why is this why it costeth him nothing to have another man love an enemy or forgive a debt or wrong but he cannot himself do it without self-denyal 9. Those men that love not to be toucht themselves by the Ministers application can yet endure well enough that others be dealt as sharply with as may be And they are glad to hear any sharply reproved whose sins they do dislike The Covetous man loves to hear us reprove the drunkard and the drunkard is content to have the Covetous reprehended Erroneous professors dividers and hypocrites do hate the Minister that reprehendeth their own sin and can scarce endure to hear him but say he is bitter or a presecutor or raileth at the godly alas that wickedness should have so impudent a plea But they can freely give us leave to deal as plainly as we will with the openly prophane scarce any sect can endure you to speak against their own mistakes but you may speak as freely against the contrary minded as you please How easily can Papists endure one to speak against Protestants or Anabaptists endure one to speak against Infant-baptism And the openly prophane can well enough endure to have Sects and Schismaticks and Hereticks reproved And why is all this but from the Dominion of self and the scarcity of self-denyal in the world To have another rebuked toucheth not Self and therefore may be born The poor man loves to hear us preach against the Vices of the rich and to reprehend the luxury of Gentlemen and the cruelty of oppressors The subject too often loves to hear the Rulers faults laid open The Countryman loves to hear the Courtiers the Ministers but specially the Lawyers faults laid open Here you may speak freely but Self must be let alone upon pain of their displeasure and many a reproach 10. So also in case of personal close reproof those that cannot endure it themselves do think it the duty of others to endure it and expect that others should submit to them and if any will say Neighbour I thank you for your plain and friendly dealing and having so much compassion on my soul as to help to save me from my sins I confess I am a vile unworthy sinner but by the grace of God I will do so no more or if I be any more overtaken I pray you tell me of it and let me not alone in it I say if another should answer them thus and thank them for their reproof they would think the better of him and take it well But yet they will not do so themselves for it costeth Self nothing to have another submit and humble himself So those that are most backward to the admonishing of others lest they lose their love can like to have a a Minister or another do it For that doth not put them to deny themselves 12. Nay take a scandalous professor that is drawn to publick Confession as a Bear to the Stake and if it were another mans case he would think it but reasonable and meet and would perswade him to it If another had committed the same sin against God as he hath done or had slandered or wronged him and would freely without urging confess in the Congregation with tears in his eyes that he hath sinfully provoked God and offended the Church and wronged his Brother and laid a stumbling block in the way of the ungodly and the weak and dishonoured his holy profession and is never able to make satisfaction for such heinous sins and is unworthy any more to be a member of the Church and to have any communion with Christ or them and should earnestly intreat them to pardon him and pray for him and retain him in their Communion and intreat God to pardon him Would not the stander by think this were well done and a better way to his recovery than to refuse it And all is because that self is not touched in another mans case unless he apprehend it like to become his own and then he may be against it and scorn at this as too precise a Course 13. Take also the extortioner or any man that hath defrauded or injured another and that will not be perswaded to make Restitution of all that he hath got amiss and let this man hear of the case of Zacheus and he will say It was well done Or let anothers case be propounded to him and he can tell them that Restitution is the safest way whatever it cost you its fit that every man should have his own Self will give him free leave to consent to another mans Restititution but not to his own 14. Moreover Suppose that persecution were afoot and a man must either knowingly sin against God or lose his Estate and part with all that he hath in the world and burn at a Stake for the cause of Christ The selfish unsanctified person will not be perswaded that this is his duty or at least he will not be perswaded to submit to it He cannot suffer nor burn He will trust God with his soul rather than men with his body as such speak that despise God and reject him and prefer the world before him and call this trusting him But if this were
How shall he cloath you with his righteousness while self keeps on your own defiled rotten rags Down therefore with self that Christ may be exalted Away with your own conceited righteousness that he may be your righteousness down with your Selfish foolish wisdom that the supposed foolishness of God may be your wisdom Level this mountain which Satan hath built up in enmity against the holy mountain of the Lord. 5. Moreover Self must be denyed as it is the great resister of the Holy Ghost The sanctifying spirit hath no greater enemy at least except the Devil himself One half of the work of sanctification is to destroy this Carnal self And therefore no wonder if hence it find the chief resistance Not an holy motion can be made to the soul but self is against it No work hath the spirit to do upon us but self is ready to gainsay it and contradict it and work against it when ever therefore this mortal Principle is contending against the spirit of God dishonouring holiness disswading you from duty perswading you to sin down with it and deny it as you would be true to the spirit and your selves 6. Moreover self must be denyed as it traiterously complyeth with the enemies of Christ and your own salvation when it takes part with Satan and pleads for sin and saith as wicked men say and entreth a conspiracy with all that would undo you and all this under pretence of your own good When ever it speaks for sin you may be sure it speaks against God and you and therefore it 's reason you should deny it Self also must be denied when it riseth up against the supposed tediousness or difficulty of duty when it grudgeth at an holy life saith What a stir is here what a weary life is this what do I get by serving God Now self is playing the traitor against God and you and therefore deny it 7. Moreover when self doth rise up against sufferings and make you believe that they are intolerable and that it is unreasonable for a man to forsake all that he hath for fear of a sinful word or deed when we sin every day when we have done our best it 's time now to stop the mouth of self for it plays the Devils game against God and you and would perswade you to prefer a short uncertain miserable life before eternal life and to give up your self to wilful sin because God beareth with the sins of mens infirmity It 's reason that you should deny so unreasonable an enemy to God you 8. Moreover self must be denyed when it stands up against the Ordinances of God When it pleadeth against the arguments of the word and findeth fault with the Law that it should obey and quarrelleth with prayer and all holy duties and would make all instituted means uneffectual for your saving good it 's time now that you deny it 9. When self doth rise up against the Officers of Christ and would make you believe your teachers fools and you are wise that they are beside the truth and you are in the right or that they speak against you out of malice or singularity or some such distemper and so would deprive you of the saving benefit of their Doctrine and Office it 's time now to deny self if you know but what belongeth to your peace And though I grant that you must not follow a Teacher into a certain sin and error yet when it is not God but self that riseth up against your Teachers and possesseth you with a spirit of bitterness disobedience contradiction and malignity this self must be denyed 10. Lastly as self is against the good of our neighbour or humane Societies it must be denyed For we must love our Neighbour as our selves that is both self and neighbour must be loved in a due subordination to God as means to his Glory and in this notion of a means the Love should be equal though there is also a Natural Love in order to self-preservation put into us by the Creator which our Love to every Neighbour is not to equal in degree yet our love to Societies should exceed it and our Love to a Neighbour should come so near it that we should diligere proximum proxima delictione love him as a second self and so study his welfare as to promote it to our power and not to covet or draw from him for our selves nor do him any wrong This is the sense of the tenth Commandement and sum of the second Table CHAP. XIII 1. Selfish Dispositions must be denyed and 1. Self-love HAving seen in what respects and upon what accounts it is that self must be denyed I am next to tell you the particulars of that selfish interest that must be denyed and the parts that are contained in this needful work And here you must remember what saving faith is that seeing how self opposeth it you may know wherein it must be denyed Saving faith is such a Belief in Christ for Reconciliation with God and the everlasting fruition of him in Glory as makes us for sake all the things of this world and give up our selves to the conduct of the word and spirit for the obtaining of it When a man can strip himself of all the pleasures and profits and honours of this world first in his estimation and love and resolution and then in the actual forsaking of them at the Call of God because of the firm belief and hope that he hath of the fruition of God in Glory as purchased and promised by Jesus Christ this is a Christian a Disciple of Christ a true believer and none but this And as I have told you as God in Unity and Father Son and Holy Ghost in Trinity is the Object of our saving faith so Carnal Self in unity and Pleasure Profits and Honours in trinity must be renounced and denied by all true Christians as being that which we turn from when we turn to God So that in brief to deny your selves doth generally consist in denying all your own Dispositions and Interests whatsoever as they are against God the Father Son or Spirit or stand not in a due subserviency to him And this Interest which you must deny consisteth in your Pleasures Profits and Honour Of these therefore I shall speak distinctly though but briefly I. You must begin at the denial and mortification of your Corrupt and selfish Disposition or else you can never well deny your selfish interest It is not enough to keep under this selfishness by denying it somewhat that it would have but the selfish Inclination or Nature it self must be so far mortified and destroyed that it shall not reign as formerly it did For this which we call selfishness is not your very Persons nor any spiritual or right natural desire of your owngood But it is the inordinate adhering of the soul to your selves by departing from God to whom you should adhere and so a carrying over Gods
the man in Joh. 9. 25. One thing I know that whereas I was blind now I see It 's no self-conceitedness for a man that is brought from the blind distracted state of sin into the light of the sanctified to know that he is wiser than he was before and that he was formerly besides himself but now is come to his understanding again Nor is it any self-conceitedness for the meanest Christian to know that a wicked man is more foolish than he or for a Minister or any man that God hath caused to excel in knowledge to hold fast the truth he knows and to see and modestly oppose the errors of another and to know that in that he is wiser than they God doth not require that we shall turn to every mans opinion and reel up and down from sect to sect and be of the opinion of every party that we come among and all for fear of thinking our selves wiser than they David knew he had more Understanding than his Teachers Psal 119. 98 99. and true believers fear not to say We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in wickedness 1 Joh. 5. 19. 3. 19. 2. 3. And Paul would not forbear the reproving of Peter for fear of being thought to be self-conceited Gal. 2. some men are so desperately self-conceited that they take every man to be self-conceited that is not of their conceits But when self is mens instructor and chooseth their Text and furnisheth them with matter and nothing is savoury but what is either suited to the common interest of self or which it hath not a special interest in when men are absolutely wise in their own eyes and comparatively wiser than those that know much more than they when self-interest serves instead of evidence to the receiving retaining or contending for a point when men think they know that which indeed they do not know and observe the little which they do know more than an hundred fold more that they are ignorant of doubtless here 's self-conceitedness with a witness and they that will not see it in a lower degree methinks should see it in such a case as this He that will not believe that a man is drunk when he reels and stammereth may know it when he lieth spewing in the streets Well Sirs I beseech you see that self in the understanding be mortified and pulled down It 's the throne of God the Lanthorn of holy truth the temple of the Spirit and shall self Rule there The understanding is it that guideth the soul and all the actions of your lives and if self rule there what a Ruler will you have and what a case will heart and life be in If your eye be dark your Light be dark how great will be your darkness and if it be selfish it is certainly so far dark O believe the Holy Ghost Prov. 26. 12. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit there is more hope of a fool than of him For a meer fool that is ignorant only for want of teaching hath no such prejudice against the truth as the self-conceited have Nor is it so hard to make him know that he is ignorant nor yet to make him willing to Learn He that knoweth himself to be blind is willing to be led Moreover the self-conceited have much to unlearn before they can be fit to receive the truth in a saving maner O how many thousands are undone by self-conceitedness It is this that keeps out Knowledge and every Grace and consequently all true peace and comfort and this it is that defendeth and cherisheth all sin Let us shew men the plainest word of God for duty and against sin and shew them the clearest reasons and yet self-conceitedness bolts the door against all Yea so wonderfully doth this sin prevail that the ignorant silly people that know almost nothing are as proudly self-conceited as if they were the wisest men They that will not learn and cannot give an account of their knowledge in the very Catechism or Principles of Christian Religion nor cannot pray nor scarce speak a word of sense about the matters of Salvation but excuse themselves that they are no Scholars yet these very people will proudly resist their Teachers though they were the wisest and learned'st men in the Land Let us but cross their conceits of Doctrine or Practice in Religion about their own title to Church-priviledges or fitness for them and they are confident and furious against their Ministers as if we were as ignorant as they and they were the wisest men in the world so that pride and self-conceitedness makes people mad or deal like mad men We cannot humble men for sin nor reclaim them from it till they know the sin and the danger of it and self-conceitedness will not let them know it no nor let them come to us to be taught but they are wise enough already and if we tell them of the sin and danger they are wiser than to believe the Word of God or us They will tell us to our faces they will never believe such and such things which we shew them in the Scripture O the precious light that shineth round about you all and would make you wise if self-conceitedness did not keep it out by making you seem wise already 1 Cor. 3. 18. These men that thus deceive themselves by seeming wise to themselves must become fools in their own eyes if ever they will be truly wise and confess themselves as Paul himself did that they were foolish and deceived when they served their lusts and pleasures Tit. 3. 3. This Pride and Self-conceitedness is like the barm in the drink that seems to fill up the vessel but indeed works it all over This is the Knowledge that puffeth up 1 Cor. 13. like the pot that by boiling seemeth to be filled that was half empty before but it 's empty in the bottom and presently boils over and is emptier than before So is it with the self-conceited that have a superficial knowledge while they are empty at the bottom and by the heat of pride that little they have boileth over to their loss It is the humble that God reveals his secrets to and the hungry that he filleth with good things and the full that he sendeth empty away He will have no Disciples that come not to his School as little Children teachable and tractable not thinking themselves too old or too wise or too good to be taught If you would see the mysteries of the Gospel savingly you must even creep to Christ on your knees and cry Lord be merciful to me a sinner He will not lift up your minds and hearts to heaven till you think your selves unworthy to lift up your very eyes to heaven because you have sinned against heaven And if you were even lifted to heaven should you there but be lifted up with pride or self-conceitedness you should soon have a â—rick in the flesh to
sometime all is comprehended in the term world and selfishness in the word flesh the world being that harlot with which the flesh commits adultery So 1 Joh. 2. 15 16. Love not the world nor the things that are in the world If any man Love the world the Love of the Father is not in him For all that is in the world the Lust of the flesh the Lust of the eyes and the Pride of Life is not of the Father but is of the world and the world passeth away and the Lust thereof but he that doth th will of God abideth for ever To these three heads therefore we shall reduce all that we have to say of this matter I. The selfish fleshy Pleasure that must be denied consisteth in these particulars following which I shall but briefly touch because they are so many 1. One Principal part of Sensuality or Self-interest consisteth in meats and drinks to please the Appetite So far as these are taken to fit us for Gods service and used to his Glory so far they are sanctified as before was said but when they are meerly to please the appetite they are offered to an enemy and are the fuel of lust Do you see any thing that your Appetite desireth whether meats or drinks whether for quality or quantity Take it not touch it not meerly upon that account but enquire whether it tend to the strengthning and fitting your bodies or minds for the service of God and if so take it if not let alone If your appetite had rather have Wine than Beer or strong Beer than small take it not meerly upon that account If your appetite would fain have one cup more when nature hath as much as is profitable deny that appetite If your appetite would fain be tasting of any thing that is not for your health deny that appetite If it would fain have one bit more when you have as much before as is wholesom or useful to you deny that appetite Or else you are guilty of flesh pleasing and plain Gluttony Quest But is it not lawful at a feast to taste of another dish or eat another bit when I think that nature needs no more what perplexities then will you cast men into to know just how many morsels they may eat Answ It is gluttony and no beter to take the creatures of God in vain and sacrifice them to a devouring throat which should be used only for his service That which is a mans ultimate end is his God What would you have plainer than express words of Scripture that tell you that whether you eat or drink it must be all to the glory of God 1 Cor. 10. 31. and that the fleshly do make their bellies their Gods Phil. 3. 18. And therefore when you have taken as much as suiteth with your end the service and glory of God you must not take more for another end the pleasing of your fleshly desires But for the scruples that you mention about the just proportion we need not be disquieted with them For God hath given us sufficient means to direct us to know what is for our good and what is superfluous and it is our duty in an even and constant way to use our Reason and keep as near the due proportion as we can and when we know that this is our desire and endeavour it were a sin against God to trouble our selves with continual or causless scruples or fears lest we do exceed or miss the rule For what can we do more than go according to the best skill we have and if for want of skill we should a little mistake it is pardoned with the rest of our daily infirmities and to trouble and distract our selves with causeless fears would more unfit us for Gods service than some degree of mistake in the proportion would do and so would be as great a sin as that which we feared And therefore our way is quietly and comfortably without distracting fears or scruples to do our best and use our prudence with self-denial and remember that we have to do with a Father that knows the flesh is weak when the spirit is willing But yet wilfully to cast away one cup or one morsel on the pleasing of our appetites when it no way fits us for the service of God and will do us no other good this is not self-denial but sensuality Quest But nature knows best what 's good for it self and therefore that which it desireth is to be judged best A Beast liveth as healthfully as a man that obeyeth his appetite only Is it not lawful to take either meat or drink on this account that the Appetite is pleased with it Answ 1. Some Beasts would presently kill themselves in pleasing their appetites if man that is Rational did not rule restrain and moderate them A Swine will burst himself with whey in half an hour A Beast in new after-grass will surfeit if he be suffered No Beast knows poyson from food but would soon perish by it in obeying his appetite 2. And yet as a Bâ—â—st hath no Reason so he is better provided to live without Reason than man is His appetite is not so corrupted by sin as ours is Original sin hath depraved and enraged our appetites And if man had not more use for his reason than a Beast even in ordering his natural actions God would not have given him reason to rule his appetite and commanded him to use it herein And who knows not that if a man did follow his appetite alone as Beasts do he were like to murder himself the next day or week or at least in a very little space The appetite would presently carry us to that for quality or quantity or both that would cast us into mortal diseases and soon make an end of us And in those diseases the pleasing it usually would be certain death And indeed this is a beastly doctrine that man that hath reason to rule his sensual inclinations should lay it by and please his appetite without it like a brute what more do all Gluttons Drunkards and Whoremongers but follow ther fleshly desires And if the desires of the flesh might be followed who would not be such as they in some measure That which is no sin in a Beast is a hainous sin in a man because man hath reason to rule his appetite and a Beast hath none and therefore is not capable of sin And for the body it 's certain that most of the diseases in the world are bred and fed by the pleasing of the appetite and I think that there 's few that are laid in their graves but this was the cause of it though the ignorant know it not and the sensual are loth to believe it And for the question whether we may not take any meat or drink purposely to please the appetite I answer yes as a means to fit us for duty but not as your chief end 1. Sometimes especially in weak bodies the
possession of these things doth not so much delight as the Hopes and successes of our endeavours to attain them The very thoughts of Prospering in our undertakings and of being in a thriving course and likely to reach some higher things which are in our eye and hope is the greatest part of the content of Worldlings Men think that the world can do no more for them than it can and is sweeter than it is and therefore they are very eager in seeking it and please themselves much with the thoughts of their supposed felicity But when they have reach'd the matter of their desires they find it is not the thing they took it for But in the mean time they feed themselves with fancies and expectations and think that though this doth not content them which they have attained yet such or such a thing more would do it and when they have that yet somewhat more would do and still though they come short of the felicity they expect yet it pleaseth them that they think they are in the way to it and see their endeavours seem to prosper The poor man that hath a desire but to reach to a competency doth please himself much when he perceiveth that he is fair for it Much more do the rich in the prospering of their designs for the encrease oâ— their â—iches And thus the turning away of the simpl◠〈…〉 and the prosperity of fools doth dâ—st◠〈…〉 If thâ—ir Prosperity be such an eye 〈…〉 godly in temptation when they judge according to the flesh no wonder if it be a great matter in their own eyes Psal 73. 3. If the best are in danger of puffing up with carnal delight and confidence in their attainments and saying in their prosperity we shall never be moved Psal 30. 6. no wonder if it be much more so with others Prosperity is as strong a trial to many as suffering for Christ O how eager is the flesh upon this bait and how close doth it cleave to what it doth attain See then that in this you Deny your selves Not in refusing Prosperity when God bestows it on you but in refusing the sensual Delights which it affordeth the fleâ—â— to satisfie its lust Not in pulling down your houses or casting away your estates or hindring your increase but 1. See that you do not promise your selves too much in the creature feed not your carnal fancies with vain hopes Think not too highly of a prosperous state Judge not of it as it accommodateth the flesh but as it either helps or hinders you for God and heaven And then you 'l perceive that it is an heavy charge and burden to the best if not a dangerous temptation O if you knew but how dear the most do pay for their prosperity you would pity them and have lower thoughts of prosperity 2. Seek not after prosperity too eagerly Seek first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness and then if other things be cast in or added to you take them thankfully but with self-suspicion and holy fear but run not after them Labour not for the meat that perisheth but for that which endureth to everlasting life Joh. 6. 27. and then take your daily bread as from your Fathers provision Labour about the world in obedience to God but not for the world as your ultimate end 3. When Prosperity is given you by God then above all take heed how you use it Let carnal self and corrupt desires fare never the better for it if you had all the country or were Princes in the earth But as you have it from God remember you have it for God and use it for him When the flesh would be pleased and lifted up whether with delicious meats and drinks or carnal pomp applause or ostentation or by sports or idleness or any other sensual delight deny it these desires as much as if you had no riches and use nothing but for health and the service of God and tell the flesh It was not for thee to the pleasing of thy desires that God hath prospered me but it was for his own more blessed ends and therefore I will not serve or please thee by my prosperity but him that gave it me Do not think you have ever the more liberty to gratifie your appetites in eating or drinking because you are rich or to gratifie your flesh in inordinate sleep or ease or sports or idleness but let the flesh have as little as if you had the meanest estate in which necessity did not deny you that which might fit you for the work of God Quest But may not a Gentleman fare better than a poor man and may he not spend more time in ease or recreations or may he not wear more sumptuous apparel Answ 1. A rich man that hath a greater family must have a greater quantity of provision than a poor man that hath but few and so must the poorest too that hath the like number And for the Quality many poor are deprived of that which is most healthful through their necessity and therefore here it 's lawful for the rich to go beyond them and to use so much of the creature as is most healthful and useful to their duties But for all this the Râ—chest man in England hath no more allowance to eat or drink one bit or cup for the meer pleasing of his carnal appetite without any higher end than the poorest man that is It is a sin to both It was a Rich man that was tormented in Hell for taking up his good things in this life in being clothed in purple and fine lâ—nnen and faring deliciously or sumptuously every day Luke 16. 2. And the same answer I must give to the rest of the question if a poor man want that ease or sleep or recreation that would sit him for Gods service a Rich may take it but not a jot more He may not lie one hour in bed nor spend one hour in talk or sports or long dinners beyond what is useful to his Christian ends let him be never so Rich. Rich men have as much work to do as the poor and as much need to watch pray and fast and study to prepare for death and judgement which will not spare them because they are rich If it be far hardest for a Rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God by Christ's own testimony then it 's clear that Rich men have ar greatest need to be painful to overcome thâ—â—r dangers make sure work for their imortal state 3. And as for Apparel I grant that rich men that are Magistrates or in any Office or Calling that requires it may lawfully go in richer apparel than the poor But this should not be one jot to please their carnal proud fancies or gratifie inordinate fleshly desires but meerly for health and for such ornament as tendeth to the honour of their office so that God and not self must be the end of all Take warning therefore by the ruines
to God by sanctification doth with himself devote all that he hath and virtually all that ever he shall have And if he understand himself he will do it actually And hence it is that the Seed of Believers yea of one Believer are said to be Holy Not only or chiefly because they are yours born of your bodies nor meerly from a promise of God that hath no presupposed reason from the subject But because they are the children of one that hath devoted himself and all that he hath to God and if he understand himself doth actually offer devote and dedicate his child to God in the solemn Baptism Ordinance and Covenant And God will sure accept all that upon his own invitation is consecrated and offered to him 5. See that you submit them heartily to the dispose of God So that whatever he do with them for sickness or health for poverty or riches for honour or dishonour for life or death you can patiently bear it and say as Eli It is the Lord let him do as seemeth him good 1 Sam. 3. 18. Murmur not if God afflict and take them away even at once as he did the sons of Job or if he should afflict you in them as he did David in Amnon and Absalom Remember that as the Resignation of Life it self is the point by which Christ under the Gospel doth try mens faith so it was the resignation of an only son which was next to life by which he would try Abraham the Father of the faithful before the Incarnation of Christ If therefore you will be children of Abraham you must walk in the steps of faithful Abraham and remember that your children are not your own and be content that God do with his own as he pleases 6. Make God their portion as much as in you lieth and seek more for a spiritual than temporal felicity for them and acquaint them with their Creator in the days of their youth as believing that those of them that are the Holiest are the Happiest 7. Devote your children to such callings and imployments in which they are likeliest to be most serviceable to God Consider their dispositions and parts and then never ask what kind of life is the most honourable or gainful for them but in what way and course of life they may most serve God and be most useful to his Church And to that let them be devoted 8. Favour them not in sin and suffer them not to dishonour God that they are devoted to Remember Eli's example Gentle reproofs instead of necessary severe correction is called by God A despising him and preferring his sons before him 1 Sam. 2. 29 30. even because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not 1 Sam. 3. 13. Take heed as you love your selves or them of taking their parts against God or against correction and excusing the sins by which they do dishonour him 9. Give them not for their carnal advancement in the world that part of your estate which is due to God You owe it all to him and in the disposing of it he hath limited you to begin at home provide so for your children that they may have their daily bread and so much more as they are in likelyhood the fittest stewards to improve for God But if you see the publick state of the Church or Commonweal to stand in need of your assistance and you shall then give almost all to your children to make them rich and great in the world and put off the works of greater moment with some poor inconsiderable alms or Legacy this is to prefer self before the Lord even as it is imagined to survive in your progeny even when natural self can no longer enjoy it It 's a wonder how so many men seeming holy and devoted to God can quiet their consciences in such a palpable sin as this If one of them have two hundred or three hundred pound a year it 's a wonder if he leave an hundred a year of it to any pious or charitable use but if he leave forty or fifty pound to the poor or build some small Almes-house he thinks he hath done well all the rest must go to leave his son in equal dignity and riches in the world as himself But of this I spoke before 10. Lastly be sure that you be very suspicious of self when the case of your children or any dear Relation is before you For self is near you and will stick close and will not easily be thrust out of your Counsels nor â—â—aken off And therefore in your own case and your Childrens case or the case of your near friends you will have much ado to overcome the cunning and strong temptations to Partiality if you were the holiest Saint on earth though overcome them you will in the main if you have true grace But if you are dead professors it 's twenty to one but they will overcome you and you will shew the world that you are selfish hypocrites and more for your Children and Friends than God Let me here give a few instances in this warning 1. How oft have we seen it here and elsewhere that people that make some shew of Religion and are forward to have vice punished and discipline exercised yet when it falls on any children or near relations of their own they are as much against it as they are for it on others yea rise up with passion and bitter reproaches of Officers Ministers or others that are the causes of it As one Hypocrite is tried when he denieth to suffer for Christ himself so others shew themselves Hypocrites sooner by preferring their children yea their sinful children yea the present ease or profit or credit of their children before their duty and the honour of God And they will rather have God provoked sin unpunished and their childrens own salvation hazarded than they will have them justly and regularly chastised yea some of them rise up as malignant enemies against them that do it 2. Again When God hath convinced you of duty if a carnal friend a husband or a parent do but contradict it and perswade you from a known duty or a holy life how commonly do men obey because forsooth they are their friends that do perswade them 3. Moreover When the case falls out that a man cannot follow God and his duty and be true to his soul but he is like to lose his friends how commonly is God denied that friends may not be denied and conscience wounded and duty bawk'd that the favour of friends may not be lost O saith one they are the friends that I live by my livelihood is in their hands I am undone if they cast me off Well! take them and make thy best of them and keep them as long as thou canst if thou canst live better without God than them or canst spare Gods favour better than theirs and they are better friends to thee than Christ is and would be take
state of the world and of the Church through the world doth scarce know how to order his affections or compose his prayers even in those greatest petitions about the honour Kingdom will of God They cannot grieve with the Church in grief nor mourn with it when it mourns so that it is a great duty of a Christian to labour to understand by History the former and present state of the Church And it is a great mark of a gracious soul that longs to hear of the prosperity of the Saints and free progress of the Gospel and a mark of a graceless person that careth not for these things But when History is not used to acquaint us with the matters of God or to surnish us with useful knowledge but to please a ranging carnal mind then it is but sinful sensuality or vanity Many persons have no such delight to read the useful History of Church-affairs as they have to read the curiously penned though less useful History of other matters Though I know that the History of the whole world is very serviceable to the knowledge of Divine things yet they that use it to holy ends will make choice accordingly and be no more in it than may suit with those ends It is the most humane with the most light ridiculous passages that are most pleasing to vain unsanctified wits but the godly delight in it so far as it shews them something of God and leadeth them to him In the very reading of Scripture a carnal reader may be much pleased with the History that hath no savour in the Doctrine but is weary to read it and yet I must add this caution by the way If we find a carnal kind of delight in Scripture-history or any other that is profitable we must not therefore cast off the History but seek after the cure of our disease that we may spiritually take pleasure in all for God and he may be the beginning end the life the All of our studies and delights And though our carnal delight in News and History be a sin in us yet God doth sometime make it an occasion of Good by leading us to that holy truth which after may be the means of our sanctification though at first we received it but as a Novelty And so the carnal pleasure that many have in hearing News and sitting with folks that will talk of other mens matters or things that concern them not is nothing but a sinful pleasing of the fancy and loss of time and neglect of greater matters which call for all our time and care It was the voice of the Athenians Act. 17. 21. for all the Athenians and strangers that were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing yea novelty of Doctrine and Religion and Teachers is a snare and bait to carnal fancies which many are taken by that are forsaken of God having first forsaken him and proved false to the truth received CHAP. XXXII Unnecessary Knowledge and Deligh therein 15. ANother part of Carnal Pleasure which self must be denied in is A desire after unnecessary Knowledge and Delight therein This is the common sin of man but not of all alike Even they that can live without the Knowledge of the saving Principles of Religion do yet itch to know unprofitable things and many a foolish question they will be asking about matters unrevealed or that concern them not when they overlook that which their salvation lieth on but the learneder sort and especially more prying wits and those that are bred up among disputes are the pronest to this sin and though it be an odious vice yet it so befooleth many that they reckon it confidently among their vertues God cannot be known too much nor can any man be too much in love with the true knowledge of God in Jesus Christ without this knowledge the mind is not good nor can the heart be sanctified or the man be saved Nor can any man know too much of the will and word of God nor yet of his works in which he revealeth himself to the world But the Carnal knowledge which is to be denied is of another nature than the sanctified knowledge of believers I shall shew you the difference in certain particular respects 1. This desire to know which is in the unsanctified is partly from meer nature and partly from a distempered fantasie which is like a crorupt enraged appetite that chooseth that which is unwholsom and yet is over-greedy after it But the desire after knowledge in the sanctified is kindled by the love of God and the love of those holy and heavenly things which they are inquiring after It is not the Love of God that sets ungodly men upon their studies but a common and carnal desire to know and this appears in the end which is next 2. This carnal knowledge is but to feed and furnish and please a carnal fancy because it is some adding to our understandings and because it is naturally pleasant to know and because it brings in some novelty and variety and because it makes us seem wiser than other men and furnisheth us with matter of discourse and ostentation and rids the mind of some troublesom doubts therefore even the worst have a mind to know But this is the knowledge that must be denied that which must be valued and sought after is To know God that we may love and reverence and trust and admire and honour him and enjoy him To know Christ that we may have more Communion with him To know the word and works of God that in them we may know his nature and his will and knowing his will may serve him and please him These must be the ends of Christian knowledge There is nothing in the world that God hath revealed but in its place we may be willing to know so that we stick not in the creature or sense of the words or common verities but use every thing as a book or looking-glass we love not a book so much for the letters as for the matter which they contain we love not a Glass for it self so much as for its use to shew us the face which we would see in it so if we go to the creatures but as a book in which we may read the mind of God and see his nature and as a glass in which his glory doth shine forth our study and knowledge will be sanctified and divine And thus as Paul would know nothing but Christ Crucified so every Christian should be able to say that he would know nothing but God in Christ for though we know a thousand matters and that of the lowest nature in themselves yet as long as we study them not for themselves but for God it is not them that we know so much as God in them and so all is but the knowing of God even as in our duty though the works may be many and
holiness more abound If so be not too hasty to censure their Zeal But usually all these dividing ways are the diseases of the Church which cause its languishing decay and dissolution 7. Lastly This selfish zeal is commonly censorious and uncharitable and diminisheth Christian Love and sets those a reproaching and despising each other that should have lived in the Union and Communion of Saints Where you find these properties of your zeal and desire for the promoting of your Opinions or parties in Religion you have great reason to make it presently your business to find out that insinuating self which maketh your Religion Carnal and to deny and mortifie it CHAP. XXXIV Carnal Liberty to be denied What. 17. ANother selfish interest to be denied is Carnal Liberty A thing that selfishness hath strangely brought of late into so much credit that abundance among us think they are doing some special service to God their Country the Church and their own souls when they are but deeply engaged for the Devil by a self-seeking spirit in a Carnal Course For the discovery of this dangerous common disease I must first tell you that there is a threefold Liberty which must carefully be differenced 1. There is an Holy Blessed Liberty which no man must deny 2. There is a wicked Liberty which no man should desire 3. And between these two there is a Common Natural and Civil Liberty which is good in its place as other worldly matters are but must be denied when it stands in competition with higher and better things and as all other worldly matters is Holy when it is Holily esteemed and used that is for God but sinful when it is sinfully esteemed and used and that is for Carnal self I. The first of these is not to be denied but all other Liberty to be denied for it This Holy Liberty consisteth in these following Particulars 1. To be freed from the Power of sin which is the disability the deformity the death of the soul 2. From the Guilt of sin and the wrath of God and the Curse of the Law 3. To be restored to God by Christ in Union Reconciliation and Sanctification and our enthralled spirits set free to know and love and serve him and delight in him Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Libert y 2 Cor. 3. 17. God is the souls freedom who is its Lord and life and end and all 4. To be delivered from Satan as a Deceiver and enemy and executioner of the wrath of God 5. To be freed from that Law or Covenant of Works which requireth that which to us is become impossible 6. To be freed from the burdensome task of useless Ceremonies imposed on the Church in the times of infancy and darkness 7. To be freed from the accusations of a guilty conscience those self-tormentings which in the wicked are the fore-tastes of hell 8. To be freed from such temporal judgments here as might hinder our salvation or our service of God 9. To be free from the condemning sentence at the last day and the everlasting Torments which the wicked must endure 10. And to be delivered into the blessed sight of God and the perfect fruition and pleasing of him in Perfect Love and Joy and Praise to all eternity This is the Liberty which you must not deny which I therefore name that by the way you may see that it is not for nothing that the other sorts of Liberty are to be denied II. The second sort of Liberty is that which is wicked directly evil which all men should deny And this is a freedom from Righteousness as the Apostle calls it Rom. 6. 20. To be free from a voluntary subjection to God and free from his severe and holy Laws and free from the thoughts of holiness and of the life to come and free from those sighs and groans for sin and that godly sorrow which the sanctified undergo and to be free from all those spiritual motions and changing works upon their hearts which the Spirit doth work on all the Saints to be free from holy speeches and holy prayer and other duties and from that strict and holy manner of living which God commandeth to be at liberty to sin against God and to please the flesh and follow their own imaginations and wills let God say what he will to the contrary to be free to eat and drink what we love and have a mind of and to be merry and wanton and lustful and worldly and take our course without being curbed by so precise a Law as God hath given us to be free from an heavenly conversation and those preparations for death and that Communion with God which the Saints partake of This is the wicked Liberty of the world which the worst of carnal men desire And the next beyond this is a Liberty to lie in the fire of hell and a freedom from salvation and from the everlasting Joy and Praises of the Saints If freedom from Grace and Holiness deserve the name of Freedom then you may next call Damnation a Freedom And it is part also of this sinful miserable Liberty to be free from the Government and Officers and good Laws which rule the Church and Commonwealth And such wretches there are in the world that seriously judge it a desirable Liberty to be free from these They think that their Country is Free when every man may do what he list and they have no King or other Governors or none that will look after them and punish their miscarriages And they think the Church is free when they have no Pastors or when Pastors have least power over them and they may do what they list And indeed if they were rid of Magistrates and Ministers they were free As a School is free that hath shut out the Master or have rejected him and teach and rule one another And as a Ship is free when the Master and Pilot are thrown over-board and as an Army is free when they have cast off or lost their commanders or to speak more fitly as an Hospital is free when they are delivered from their Physician and as the madmen in Bedlam are free when they have killed or escaped from their Keepers As Infidels keep their Freedom by refusing Christ in himself so carnal Dividers and Hereticks keep their Freedom by refusing his Officers and Christ in those Officers For he that heareth them heareth him and he that despiseth them despiseth him and he that despiseth despiseth not man but God Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes 4. 8. And another part of this ungodly Liberty is to be free from the exercise at least of this power of Magistrates and Ministers so far as not to be restrained from sin though they be not free from the state of subjects To swear and be drunk and live as most Ale-sellers on the damning sins of others and make a trade of selling men their damnation and to have no Magistrate punish them no
or within them as to see that which may take them down from being proud of any comeliness of the flesh One would think this should be so easie a part of self-denial as any graceless one might reach by a little use of the Reason that is left them CHAP. XLV Strength and Valour to be denied 5. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be Denied is in the Reputation of strength and valour The witless part of men especially in their procacious humours do use to be carried away with this as witless women with the former Hence commonly are their matches of Running and Wrestling and many exercises of activity and strength yea and hence commonly are their duels and murders It seems such a dishonourable thing to them to be thought a Coward or unable to defend themselves and to be crow'd over by their enemy that they will venture body and soul upon it rather than they will put up such indignities or lie under the dishonour of being Cowards Yea and would one think it some Jesuits are such Carnal Doctors that they teâ—ch men that if they be challenged and their honour lie upon it they may meet the challenger there in a defensive posture and fight with him to defend their honour yea and in many other cases they may kill another for their Honour seeing their honour is more to them than their lives O miserable Teachers and miserable souls that do obey them Christ hath taught you another lesson even to despise the shame Heb. 12. 2 3. â—nd to humble your selves intimateth that such cannot be believers which receive honour of one another and seek not the honour that cometh from God only Joh. 5. 44. It 's more Honor to obey God in suffering than be so valiant as to murder another man The day is near when he will appear the Honourable man that was likest to Jesus Christ that when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously 1 Pet. 2. 23. Blind sinners do you think it more honourable to do hurt than to suffer hurt yea to be like the Devil who is a murderer than to Christ that was a sufferer and came not to destroy mens lives but to save them and lay down his own Can any thing be more Honourable than to be the children of the heavenly Father and if you be such you must Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you Mat. 5. 44. What a Case are those mens understandings in that think it their Honour to revenge themselves when God hath so forbidden it Rom. 12. 19. CHAP. XLVI Wisdom and Learning to be denied 6. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be denied is in the Reputation of Wisdom and Learning The things themselves are very excellent and to be desired and much sought after but not for our own Honour but the Service and Honour of the Lord. And the greater is the worth of the thing the greater is the temptation to vain-glory in them that have it and the harder it is to deny themselves herein This part of self-denial consisteth not in a contempt of Learning or Wisdom nor a neglect of it for this were a sin but in a neglect of self that would make an advantage of it for its own carnal exaltation and in a contempt of the Honour and vain-glory which may redound by it to our selves further than such honour is serviceable to God O how sinful and miserable a liâ—e do abundance of Learned men live in the world Their whole life is but one continued vice and that a sin of a most hainous nature even the exercise of Pride and Self-seeking when yet they take themselves for Saints because they are not such as are accounted scandalous sinners in the world They sacrifice their precious time and studies to their Pride Phansies and not to God Too many hours and years are spent to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Too many disputations are managed yea odious sacriledge too many Sermons are preached and too many learned Books are written to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Ah miserable low unworthy studies Prophane Sermons ungodly labours and poor reward O how it netleth some Proud spirits if they hear that they are taken to be no Scholars And how many take their University Degrees to be meerly the wings of this part of their vain-glory Learning and Degrees and the Reputation of it are all good if they be valued and used but for God But they are so much the worse when they are sacrificed to self and and made the food and fuel of Pride Learn therefore this part of self-denial CHAP. XLVII Reputation of Gifts and spiritual Abilities c. 7. ANother piece of vain-glory to be denied is The Reputation of our Gifts and spiritual Abilities I mean such as Praying and Preaching and Disputing and good Conference to have readiness for words and liveliness of expression and exactness of method to be esteemed in all these a very able man by others is an high part of self-interest to be denied The duties themselves must be denied by none for they are the service of God commanded us by his word But it is the Honour that self presumeth to hunt after in these holy things And it is a double sin here to seek our selves when we are specially commanded to seek God! and where the work is instituted for that end and when we pretend to seek God and to deny our selves The greater are our abilities to do God service the more resolutely and thankfully we should improve them in his service But we must remember that they are given us to save others by our improvement and not to destroy our selves by our Pride Get as great abilities as you can and when you have them thank God for them and use them for him to the uttermost of your Power but take heed lest Pride should sacrifice them to your selves and pervert them from your Masters service The persons that have most need of this advice are especially these following 1. Young unexperienced Professors that are but lately turned to a Profession of a Godly life that have so much illumination as sheweth them much that before they knew not and raiseth them above the vulgar measure but yet hath made them but smatterers and half-knowing men These are they that the Apostle requireth should not be made Bishops or Pastors of the Church because of their pronenefs to this very sin that now we are speaking of 1 Tim. 3. 6. Not a Novice lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil the spirit of God here intimateth to us that Novices are the likest to be lifted up with Pride and that this Pride is the way to the Condemnation of the Devil 2. And men of great abilities natural or acquired that have
withall unsanctified hearts are ordinarily transported with this odious vice A strong wit and a voluble tongue and learning to furnish it with matter are notable servants to Pride of heart where that spiritual illumination and holiness is wanting that should abase the Proud and turn mens Parts a better way To all that are apt to be tainted with this odious vice I would recommend these following considerations 1. Consider what a dangerous sign it is of a graceless hypocritical heart where Pride of Gifts doth much prevail It is as inseparable from a child of God to be humble and little in his own esteem as from a new-born Child to be really lesser than men at age No more sincerity than humility in any 2. Consider what cause of deep humiliation you carry about you in every duty Besides all the wants and loathsom corruptions of your souls which follow you wherever you go the very sins of your duties one would think should humble you Oh to have such low conceptions such dull apprehensions such heartless unreverent poor expressions of such a God such a Christ such a glory and such holy truth should make us ashamed to open our Lips before the Lord and wonder that he doth not tread us into hell instead of regarding us or our services and that fire doth not come forth from his jealousie and consume us It should make us so far from glorying in our performances that it should drive us to Christ in every duty to take him with us to shelter us from the flames of holy jealousie so that we should not dare to go any further than he goes before us and stands between us and the wrath of God nor to speak a word but in his name nor to expect any welcome but on his account Shall a wretch be Proud of that performance whose failings deserve everlasting torments Must you be beholden to Christ to save you from the Hell that the sins of your performances deserve and yet dare you be proud of them Let a Papist run that desperate path that rails at us for saying that our best duties are mix'd with sin and that this sin deserves the wrath of God Let them refuse a Physician that think not themselves sick and let them tell Christ they will not be beholden to him for a pardon for the sins of their prayers and other duties but for shame let not us be guilty of this who profess to be better acquainted with our infirmities 3. Consider also that you have to do with so Holy and Glorious a God that to be Proud before Him and that in and of our very service of him is a sin whose greatness surpasseth our apprehensions Had you to do with a man like your selves you might better lift up your selves against him There is nothing comparatively in the presence of the greatest Prince to humble and abase you But to be Proud before the God of heaven and that in and of our lamentably weak addresses to him O what an horridly impious unreasonable thing is this O man if thy eyes were opened to see a little a very little of the glory of that blessed God thou speakest to how flat wouldst thou fall down how wouldst thou fear and tremble and cry out as the Prophet Isa 6. 5. Wo is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts Or as Job 40. 4. Behold I am vile what shall I answer thee I will lay my hand upon my mouth And Chap. 42. 5 6. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee wherefore I abhor my self and repent in dust and ashes One glimpse of Gods Majesty would take down thy self-exalting thoughts and humble thee with a witness 4. Consider the examples of the holiest of Gods servants The example of Job and Isaiah I have now mentioned Moses himself did think himself unmeet to speak in Gods message Exod. 4. 10. He said unto the Lord I am not eloquent neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken to thy servant but I am of slow speech and of a slow tongue And ver 13. He said O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send When God sent Jer. 1. 6. he said Ah Lord God behold I cannot speak for I am a child And Paul cries out Who is sufficient for these things 2 Cor. 2. 16. So that it hath been the course of the most Seraphical Prophets and holy Apostles to have low thoughts of their own abilities for duty And yet have you enough to be Proud of 5. And consider that the Nature of the holy employment that you are upon one would think should be enough to humble you It is a confessing of sin unworthiness and guilt and will you be Proud of this It is a confessing that you deserve everlasting torment And will you be Proud of such a confession as this The Lord be merciful to us and save us from this unreasonable vice who would think that it should be thus with a man in his wits To confess that he deserveth Hell-fire And to be Proud of that Confession your Petitions are all humbling if they be according to the word you are beggars for your lives for pardon of many and hainous sins and should come as with the rope about your necks you beg for deliverance from eternal misery and should you be proud of such requests should beggars be Proud yea such needy miserable beggars and be proud of their very begging Nay your very thanksgiving it self is humbling For what do you give thanks for but for salvation from these odious sins and the damnation which you have deserved And shall a thief be proud that he is pardoned and taken from the gallows Pride is contrary to the very Nature and meaning of all those holy duties that you are Proud of 6. Yea the Gifts themselves that you are Proud of should humble you For 1. They are from God and not your selves 1 Cor. 4. 7. For who maketh thee to differ and what hast thou that thou didst not receive Now if thou didst receive it why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it 2. You received them not for your selves but for God and therefore have no reason your selves to be lifted up by them 3. All Gifts are for labour and duty and must be once accounted for and therefore should keep you in humility and fear To be Proud of Gods Gifts is to be Proud of that which is given you to destroy Pride in your selves and others For this is the End of them 7. And it is a sign that you want exceeding much of that which you are Proud of You are Proud of Knowledge when as if it were not for want of Knowledge of that which should humble you you would not be so Proud You are Proud
So that they were fain to live and die under a Reputation as contrary to the truth as darkness is contrary to light And this usage hath still been the attendant of true Godliness When the Papists burn Gods servants at the stake it is for supposed Heresie and impiety they put a painted cap and coat upon them made of paper on which the Images of Devils are pictur d to make the people believe that they are ungodly persons the servants of the Devil and possessed by him already and unworthy to live any longer among men When they butchered the poor Waldenses and Albigenses by thousands it was under the name of ungodly hereticks The ignorant ungodly rabble among us now that hate and revile those that seek after God more diligently than themselves have yet more devilish wit than to oppose them directly under the name of honest godly men but they first make the world believe that they are Hypocrites and Proud and Self-conceited and Covetous and secretly are as bad as others and these are the things if you will believe them that they hate and speak against them for But then how comes it to pass that it is their Praying and Preciseness that is so much in the scorners mouths Doth that signifie Hypocrisie or Pride Why do they not commend the good while they speak against the evil and joyn with them in the holy Worship and ways of God while they oppose their supposed viciousness Doth the name Puritan signifie a covetous man or a vicious person or rather one that will not be content to venture his soul in the common impure ungodly courses of the world And how comes it to pass that a man may quietly enough follow such vices if he will but forbear the profession of Godliness But to leave these wretches in the dirt where we find them by this you may see the common measure that is to be expected from the world If you will be truly godly you must be taken for ungodly or for hypocrites that seem to be godly when you are not But it 's easie to bear this charge when it falls upon a whole society and takes us but in the crowd among the rest and when we have so much honourable company to suffer with us But it goes nearer us when we are singled out by name and noted and talk'd of all about as Hypocrites or Proud or worse than others But that also must be born by those that will be Christians But the greatest trial of all is when the Servants of God that should help us in our suffering have got a hard report of us and by misinformation we have lost our credit even with them Under all these false and injurious reports direct and stablish your own minds by the help of these Considerations following 1. It may be there is some special cause that you should try and judge your selves and so God doth suffer other men to judge you to awaken you to self-judging However make this use of it and you are sure to be no losers by the reproach Enter into your hearts and search them throughly as before the Lord and see if there be any way of wickedness in them which hitherto you have not discovered Try whether there be Hypocrisie and Pride or not Especially when it is the servants of God that think hardly of you and above all if it be wise impartial men that are acquainted with you it 's then your duty to be very jealous of your hearts and ways and to fear lest you are guilty and to search the more diligently and not be quiet till you either find out your sin or be sure that you are clear And if you be clear in that point yet suspect and search lest there be some other secret or allowed sin which God would detect to you or excite you against by the injurious censures of those that have reproached you 2. When you have search'd and cleared your own Consciences then consider further that though you are not such as you are censured to be yet sinners you are and you know your sins in other kinds are so many and so great that you should bear the more patiently to be hardly thought of when you know your selves to be so bad If indeed you are godly you have seen a sink of uncleanness in your selves and have condemned your selves oft and loathed your selves for your abominations and bewailed them before the Lord. And is it suitable for such a spirit to be eager after the Reputation of sincerity and to be much troubled that you are taken by others to be naught 3. And consider also that your Case may be as Davids was and God may possibly make this reproach a chastisement for some former sin and a means to humble you for it more throughly and to reclaim you from it Perhaps he bids by permissive providence some Shimei curse you It may be the voice of a slanderer must do that which the voice of a Preacher could not do And then it is your work to look behind you and within you more than without you and to hearken more to the voice of God and Conscience than of the slanderer and to take it as the rod of God and a call to a more serious Repentance 4. And consider that when you are under the false Censures of the world you may have the inward peace of a good conscience which is better than all the applause of men And this being a continual feast they cannot do much against your quietness as long as they cannot deprive you of this 5. Yea moreover you have the Approbation of God himself and that should satisfie against the censure of all the world Even a Proud man if he have any wit can bear the Contempt of the ignorant vulgar if he have but the applause of great and wise and learned men As that Orator that valued the judgement of Socrates above all the rest of his auditory But all the wisest men in the world are fools in comparison of God Having his Approbation you have the Greatest the Best and the Wisest on your side and a Judgement for you that will weigh down the judgement of ten thousand worlds 7. And if you value not Gods approbation above mans it 's a sign that you are hypocrites indeed and so the censure is not unjust But if you do then you will acquiesce in it though man condemn you and say as the Apostle Rom. 8. 33 34. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect It is God that Justifieth who is he that condemneth And as 1 Cor. 4. 3 4. With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of mans judgment but he that judgeth me is the Lord. And remember that the great day of Judgment is near at hand that will set all straight which the slanderous tongues of men made crooked Stay but a while and the Glory of Christ and the
exhorted them Stand back This one fellow came in to sojourn and he will needs be a Judge now will we deal worse with thee than with them what say they can he not preach and let me alone hath he none to rebuke before the Congregation but me And thus will every ungodly person reject the Word as they are selfish and self must be let alone in all But why must you be let alone will you be ever the safer or better for that will God let you alone if we should let you alone No he will not be frightened from dealing with you as you are whatever his word hath said against you he will certainly make good though you should never more be told of it by Ministers You have not silenced your Judge when you have silenced his Messengers He will handle you in another manner than Ministers do O how easie is it to hear a Preacher threatning the everlasting wrath in comparison of hearing the sentence of the Judge and feeling the execution If we should yield to your desires and let you alone God would neither let you nor us alone you would but go the quietlier to hell and your blood will be required also at our hands Ezek. 33. 6 7 8 9. and then what would become both of us and you O were it not for the Powerful resistance of this selfishness what work would every Sermon make that we preach to you O what abundance would be converted at a Sermon for what should hinder it I should make no doubt of perswading you all to close with the Lord upon his reasonable terms and to become a holy and heavenly people and presently to forsake your former sin even this hour Nay some ordinances there are that selfishness hath almost shut out of the Church as most of the exercise of the antient Discipline in open and personal admonitions and publick confessions and lamentation of sin with rejection of the impenitent and the Absolution of the penitent Besides most of that private address to Pastors for their advice in case of falls and spiritual decays or weaknesses and difficulties that meet them in doctrine or duty Self will not suffer men to stoop to most of these What will they be brought to open confessions and lamentations of sin and to follow the guidance and perswasions of a Priest no all the Priests in England shall not make such fools of them so wise are these selfish men for a little while But how long will this hold and how long will madness go for wisdom when they are dying then they will send for the Minister and confess and when some of them come to the Gallows they will confess And every one of them shall confess at last whether they will or no and God will indite their confession for them and open their shame to all the world in another manner than Ministers required them to open it But then Confession will do nothing for Remission and the preventing of execution as now it might have done So also the duty of brotherly reproof and admonition of offendors is almost quite cast out by selfishness and especially the patient and thankful receiving of it And those ordinances that are continued are very much frustrated by the opposition of selfishness It is a very hard task that Scripture and good books and preachers have to do when we speak every word to enemies of the Doctrine which we preach and we can do them no good but by their own consent And who will consent to that which he is an enemy to Our work is to subdue their Flesh and Carnal wills to Christ and this flesh is so dear to them that it is themselves so that they take all that Doctrine to be against them which should save them And we have as many Enemies as unconverted hearers in our Assemblies No wonder therefore if they carp and quarrel and strive when the self-denying humbly submit and obey Self-denial openeth the heart to Christ and giveth the Ordinances leave to work It taketh down all opposition and contradiction so that though the soul may stay to search the Scripture and see whether the things that are taught be so yet it searcheth with a childlike charitableness and willingness to learn and know and obey It hath no mind to quarrel with God how easily will a self-denying man submit to those duties which another man abhors How easily will he be perswaded to forgive a wrong to part with his right for a greater good to others to let go a gainful Trade that is unlawful or any sinful way of thriving How easily is he brought to ask forgiveness of those that he hath wronged to make a publick confession of his sins if the greatness of them or his duty to God or the good of others do require it to make restitution of all that he hath gotten wrongfully to bear a plain and sharp reproof to part with his own for the relief of the poor to lay out his estate to the best advantage of the Cause and Church of God and the common good to let go any unlawful vanity any excess in meat and drink or sport or sleep or any vanity in apparel or other work of Pride How easily can he bear all rebukes reproaches and neglects and undervaluing ingratitude from others But what ado shall we have with carnal unsanctified wretches to perswade them to all or any of this From them a Preacher hath such a work to pull their beloved profitable sins they seem profitable to them till the reckoning comes as a man hath to pull the prey from the jaws of a hungry Wolf or meat from the mouth of a greedy Dog But when we require the self-denying to do the same thing it is but as to bid a child obey his Father whom he loveth and honoureth The doing of these duties and forsaking these sins is to an ungodly man as the parting with a right hand or a right eye or the skin from his back or the flesh from his bones as we see by the rarity and the unsuccessfulness of the plainest reasons and great Authority of God himself and the few works of Piety charity or self-denyal that are done by such at any great cost But to the self-denying it is but as the casting away a handful of earth or casting off an upper garment for the doing of their work CHAP. LXVIII Enemy of all Society Relations and Common good 6. MOreover this selfishness is the enemy to all Societies and Relations and consequently to the common good And it is not only indirectly and consequentially but directly that it strikes at the very foundation of all For the manifesting of this consider in what respects this selfishness is at enmity with Societies 1. The End of Societies is essential to them and this End is the Common good of the Society and therefore a Republick hath its name from hence because it is constituted and to be administred for the
one sin were but rooted out of the hears of the Ministers themselves that are the Preachers of self-denial it would make so sudden and wonderful a change in the Church as would be the glory of our Profession the Joy of the godly and the admiration of all O happy and honourable Magistrates at Court and Country if self were but throughly conquered and denyed O happy and Reverend Ministry the pillars of Religion the honour of the Church if it were not for the shameful prevalency of self O happy Churches happy Cities Corporations Societies and Countrys were it not for self But alas this is it that saddeth our hearts and makes us look for more and more sad tidings concerning the affairs of the Church from all parts of the world or frustrates our hopes when we look for better For we know on the one side that without self-denial there will never be true Reformation or Unity neither sin nor division will ever be overcome and on the other side we see that selfishness is so natural and common and obstinate that so many men as are born into the world so many enemies are there to Holiness and Peace till grace â—â— all change them and that all endeavours perswasions convictions do little prevail against this deadly rooted sin so that men will preach against it and yet most shamefully live in it and after all rebukes chastisements and heavy judgements of God the Church is still bleeding and Princes Pastors and People are self-conceited self-willed and self-seekers still Alas for the cause and Church of Christ Must we give it up to the lusts of self Must we sit down and look on its miserable torn condition with lamentation and despair and shall we deliver down this despair to our Posterity Were not our hope only in the Omnipotent God it must be so When we look at men at Magistrates or Ministers we see no hope What higher professions can be made by those in succeeding Ages than have now been made And yet what negligence of Magistrates and what contentiousness of Ministers destroy all hopes So that we look at the Restauration of the Church as at the Resurrection that must be done by Omnipotency God must raise up another Generation of more self-denying prudent zealous Magistrates and of more self-studying peaceable Humble Zealous Industristous Ministers before the Healing work be done The selfish spirit that prevaileth now in the most is neither fit to be the Matter or Instrument of the Reformed Peaceable state which we expect While the enemies are destroying us by secret fraud and open force we stand at a distance and unite not against them yea we are calling each other Heretick and Deceivers and teaching them how to revile us and putting such words into their mouth against us as may help our people to despise us and reject us and warrant them from our own mouths or pens to rail at us and forsake us One part of us being Hereticks or Deceivers by the testimony of the other part and the other part by the testimony of too many of them Dear Brethren if selfishness shall not now be left when we are in the sight of the havock it hath made and stand in the field among those that it hath slain and see the Church of God so horribly abused by it when then shall it be forsaken I here intreat every man that loveth his present or everlasting Peace and the Peace of the Church or Commonwealth that he will resolve upon a deadly enmity with this selfishness in himself and others And that you will suspect it and watch against it in every work you have to do Are you upon any imployment spiritual or secular Presently enquire when you set upon it Is there no self-interest and selfish disposition lurking here How far is my own worldly fleshly ends or prosperity concerned in it And if you discover that self is any way concerned in it I beseech you suspect it and follow self with an exceeding watchful eye and when you have done your best it is ten to one but it will over-reach you O look to it that you be not ensnared before you are aware Take heed of it especially you that are great and honourable and have so much self-interest to tempt you in the world How hardly will you escape When all other enemies are conquered you have yet self the greatest enemy to overcome Take heed of it you that have any rising thriving project little know you on what a precipice you stand Take heed of it you that are in deep and pinching wants lest self make them seem more grievous than they are and provoke you to venture upon sin for your relief Take heed all you that have raging appetites or passions or lustful inclinations and remember your enemy is now discovered and you have him to deal with before your face and therefore see that you be resolute and vigilant Take heed all you that have Learning Parts or fame and honour or any thing that self hath to glory in and to abuse lest the noblest gifts should by this deadly principle be turned into a plague to the Church and to your souls Suspect self in the choice of your parties and opinions Suspect it in your publick labours yea and in your private duties and greatest diligence in Religious Works lest when your eyes are open'd at last it should appear that you preached or prayed or professed or wrote or lived for self and not for God I do but transcribe the counsel to you that God is daily giving in to my own soul as I feel exceeding great use of it to my self so I am sure there is to others and wo to me and you if we take it not and be not found among the self-denying Doubtless God will put you to the tryal and find you frequent use for this grace Let me take the boldness to tell you from my own though alas too small experience that as it is meer selfishness that is the perplexer and disquieter of the mind without which nothing that befalls us could discompose it so it is God only that quiets it and gives it rest And I bless the Lord I can truly say that I have found that content in loving and closing with the will of God and endeavouring to know no interest but his to disquiet or quiet me which I never could find in any other way When God is enough for us and his will is in our eyes the will of a Father infinitely good it may satisfie the soul in the darkest condition when we understand not the particular meaning of his providence nor what he is doing with us yet still we may be sure that he is doing us good And therefore a child may not only submit to the will of God because it cannot be resisted as enemies must be forced to do but he may Rest in that will as the Center of his desires and the very felicity and Heaven of