would fill mens ears with the constant lamentations of their miserable state and despairing accusations against themselves as if they had been the most humble people in the world and yet be as passionate in the maintaining their innocency when another accuseth them and as intolerably peevish and tender of their own reputation in any thing they are blamed for as if they were the proudest persons on earth still denying or extenuating every disgraceful fault that they are charged with This cherishing of sin doth hinder Assurance these four ways 1. It doth abate the degree of our Graces and so makes them more undiscernable 2. It obscureth that which it destroyeth not for it beareth such sway that Grace is not in Action nor seen to stir nor scarce heard speak for the noise of this Corruption 3. It puteth out or dimmeth the eye of the Soul that it cannot see its own condition and it benummeth and stupifieth that he cannot feel its own case 4. But especially it provoketh God to withdraw himself his Comforts and the Assistance of the Spirit without which we may search long enough before we have Assurance God hath made a separation betwixt Sin and Peace Though they may consist together in remiss degrees yet so much as Sin prevaileth in the Soul so much will the Peace of that Soul be defective As long as thou dost favour or cherish thy Pride and Self-esteem thy aspiring projects and love of the world thy secret lusts and pleasing the desires of the flesh or any the like unchristian practise thou expectest Assurance and Comfort in Vain God will not encourage thee by his precious gifts in a course of sinning This worm will be crawling and gnawing upon thy Conscience It will be a freting devouring canker to thy Consolations Thou mayst steal a spark of false comfort from thy worldly prosperity or delights or thou mayst have it from some false Opinions or from the delusions of Satan But from God thou wilt have no more Comfort then thou makest Conscience of sinning However an Antinomian may tell thee That thy Comforts have no such dependance upon thy Obedience nor thy discomforts upon thy disobedience and therefore may speak as much Peace to thee in the course of thy sinning as in thy most conscionable walking yet thou shalt find by experience that God will not do so If any man set up his Idols in his Heart and put the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face and cometh to a Minister or to God to enquire for Assurance and Comfort God will Answer that man by himself and in stead of comforting him he will set his Face against him he will Answer him According to the multitude of his Idols Read Ezek. 14.3 4 5 6 7 8 9. SECT XVIII 9. ANother very great and common Cause of want of Assurance and Comfort is When men grow Lazy in the spiritual part of duty and keep not up their Graces in constant and lively Action As Dr Sibbs saith truly It is the lazy Christian commonly that lacketh Assurance The way of painful duty is the way of fullest Comfort Christ carryeth all our Comforts in his hand If we are out of that way where Christ is to be met we are out of the way where Comfort is to be had These three ways doth this Laziness debar us of our Comforts 1. By stopping the Fountain and causing Christ to withhold this blessing from us Parents use not to smile upon children in their neglects and disobedience So far as the Spirit is Grieved he will suspend his Consolations Assurance and Peace are Christ's great Encouragements to faithfulness and obedience And therefore though our Obedience do not Merit them yet they usually rise and fall with our Diligence in duty They that have entertained the Antinomian dotages to cover their Idleness and Viciousness may talk their non-sence against this at pleasure but the laborious Christian knows it by experience As prayer must have Faith and Fervency to procure its success besides the Bloodshed and Intercession of Christ Jam. 5.15 16. so must all other parts of our Obedience He that will say to us in that Triumphing day Well Done Good and Faithful Servant c. Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord Will also clap his Servants upon the back in their most Affectionate and Spiritual Duties and say Well Done Good and Faithful Servant take this Fore-taste of thy Everlasting Joy If thou grow seldom and customary and cold in Duty especially in thy secret Prayers to God and yet findest no abatement in thy Joys I cannot but fear that thy Joys are either Carnal or Diabolical 2. Grace is never apparent and sensible to the Soul but while it is in Action Therefore want of Action must needs cause want of Assurance Habits are not felt immediately but by the freeness and facility of their Acts Of the very Being of the Soul it self nothing is felt or perceived if any more Be but only its Acts. The fire that lyeth still in the flint is neither seen nor felt but when you smite it and force it into Act it is easily discerned The greatest Action doth force the greatest Observation whereas the dead or unactive are not remembred or taken notice of Those that have long lain still in their graves are out of mens thoughts as well as their sight but those that walk their streets and bear Rule among them are noted by all It is so with our Graces That you have a Habit of Love or Faith you can no otherwise know but as a consequence by reasoning but that you may have the Acts you may know by Feeling If you see a man lie still in the way what will you do to know whether he be drunk or in a swoun or dead Will you not stir him or speak to him to see whether he can go Or feel his pulse or observe his breath Knowing that where there is life their is some kind of motion I earnestly beseech thee Christian observe and practise this excellent Rule Thou now knowest not whether thou have Repentance or Faith or Love or joy Why be more in the Acting of these and thou wilt easily know it Draw forth an Object for Godly sorrow or Faith or Love or Joy and lay thy heart flat unto it and take pains to provoke it into suitable action and then see whether thou have these Graces or no. As Doctor Sibbs observeth There is somtimes Griefe for sin in us when we think there is none it wants but stirâ—ing up by some quickening word The like he saith of Love and may be said of every other Grace You may go seeking for the Hare or Partridge many hours and never find them while they lie close and stir not but when once the Hare betakes him self to his legges and the bird to her wings then you see them presently So long as a Christian hath his Graces in lively Action so long for the most
drink with Publicans and sinners but it was only to be their Physitian and not their companion Who knows but God gave you interest in them to this end that you might be means of their recovery They that will not regard the words of another will regard a brother or sister or husband or wife or neer friend Besides that the bond of friendship doth engage you to more kindness and compassion then ordinary SECT IV. 3. PHysitians that are much about dying men should in a special maner make conscience of this duty They have a treble advantage First They are at hand Secondly They are with men in sickness and dangers when the ear is more open and the heart less stubborn then in time of health He that made a scorn of godliness before well then be of another minde and hear counsel then if ever he will hear it Thirdly Besides they look upon their Physitian as a man in whose hand is their life or at least may do much to save them and therefore they will the more regardfully hear his advice O therefore you that are of this honourable profession do not think this a work besides your calling as if it belonged to none but Ministers except you think it besides your calling to be compassionate or to be Christians O help therefore to fit your patients for heaven and whether you see they are for Life or for Death teach them both how to live and to dye and give them some Physick for their souls as you do for their bodies Blessed be God that very many of the chief Physitians of this Age have by their eminent piety vindicated their profession from the common imputation of Atheism and prophaness SECT V. 4. ANother sort that have excellent advantages for this duty is men that have wealth and authority and are of great place and command in the world especially that have many that live in dependance on them O what a world of good might Gentlemen and Knights and Lords do that have a great many of Tenants and that are the leaders of the Country if they had but hearts to improve their interest and advantage Little do you that are such think of the duty that lies upon you in this Have you not all your honor and riches from God and is it not evident then that you must employ them for the best advantage of his service Do you not know who hath said that to whom men commit much from them they will expect the more You have the greatest opportunities to do good of most men in the world Your Tenants dare not contradict you lest you dispossess them or their children of their habitations They fear you more then they do God himself Your frown will do more with them then the threatnings of the Scripture They will sooner obey you then God If you speak to them for God and their souls you may be regarded when even a Minister that they fear not shall be despised If they do but see you favor the way of Godliness they will lightly counterfeit it at least to please you especially if they live within the reach of your observation O therefore as you value the honor of God your own comfort and the Salvation of souls improve your interest to the utmost for God Go visit your Tenants and neighbors houses and see whether they worship God in their families and take all opportunities to press them to their duties Do not despise them because they are poor or simple Remember God is no respecter of persons your flesh is of no better mettal then theirs nor wil the worms spare your faces or hearts any more then theirs nor will your bones or dust bear the badge of your Gentility you must all be equals when you stand in Judgment And therefore help the soul of a poor man as well as if he were a Gentleman And let men see that you excell others as much in piety heavenliness compassion and diligence in Gods work as you do in riches and honor in the world I confesse you are like to be singular if you take this course but then remember you shall be singular in glory for few great and mighty and noble are called SECT VI. 5. ANother sort that have special opportunity to this work of helping others to heaven is The Ministers of the Gospel As they have or should have more ability then others so it is the very work of their calling and every one expecteth it at their hands and will better submit to their teaching then to other mens I intend not these instructions so much to teachers as to others and therefore I shall say but little to them and if all or most Ministers among us were as faithfull and diligent as some I would say nothing But because it is otherwise let me give these two or three words of advice to my Brethren in this office 1. Be sure that the recovering and saving of souls be the main end of your studies preaching O do not propound any low and base ends to your selves This is the end of your calling let it be also the end of your endeavors God forbid that you should spend a weeks study to please the people or to seek the advancing of you own reputations Dare you appear in the Pulpit on such a business and speak for your selves when you are sent and pretend to speak for Christ Dare you spend that time and wit and parts for your selves And wast the Lords day in seeking applause which God hath set apart for himself O what notorious sacriledge is this Set out the work of God as skilfully and adornedly as you can But still let the winning of souls be your end and let all your studies and labors be serviceable thereto Let not the window be so painted as to keep out the light but alwayes Judg that the best means that most conduceth to the end Do not think that God is best served by a neat starched laced Oration But that he is the able skilful Minister that is best skilled in the art of instructing convincing perswading and so winning of souls and that is the best Sermon that is best in these When you once grow otherwise minded and seek not God but your selves God will make you the basest and most contemptible of men as you make your selves the most sinfull and wretched Hath not this brought down the Ministery of England once already It is true of your reputation as Christ saith of your lives They that will save them shall lose them O let the vigor also of your perswasions shew that you are sensible on how weighty a business you are sent O Preach with that seriousness and fervor as men that believe their own doctrine and that know their hearers must either be prevailed with or be damned What you would do to save them from Everlasting burning that do while you have the opportunity and price in your hand that
fruit perhaps we should be sooner drawn unto them and we should itch as the Bethshemites to be looking into this Ark. Sure I am where God hath forbidden us to place our thoughts and our delights thither it is easâ—y enough to draw them If he say Love not the World nor the things of the World we dote upon it never the less We have love enough if the world require it and thoughts enough to pursue our profits How delightfully and unweariedly can we think of vanity and day after day imploy our mindes about the Creature And have we no thoughts of this our Rest How freely and how frequently can we think of our pleasures our friends our labors our flesh our lusts our common studies or news yea our very miseries our wrongs our sufferings and our seats But vvhere is the Christian vvhose heart is on his Rest Why Sirs vvhat is the matter vvhy are vve not taken up vvith the vievvs of Glory and our souls more accustomed to these delightful Meditations Are vve so full of joy that vve need no more or is there no matter in Heaven for our joyous thoughts or rather are not our hearts carnal and blockish Earth vvill to Earth Had vve more Spirit it vvould be othervvise with us As the Jews use to cast to the ground the Book of Esther before they read it because the Name of God is not in it And as Austin cast by Ciceroes writings because they contained not the Name of Jesus So let us humble and cast dovvn these sensual hearts that have in them no more of Christ and Glory As we should not own our duties any further then somewhat of Christ is in them so should we no further own our hearts And as we should delight in the creatures no further then they have reference to Christ and Eternity so should we no further approve of our own hearts If there were little of Christ and Heaven in our mouths but the world were the onely subject of our speeches then all would account us to be ungodly why then may we not call our hearts ungodly that have so little delight in Christ and Heaven A holy tongue will not excuse or secure a profane heart Why did Christ pronounce his Disciples eyes and eares so blessed but as they were the doors to let in Christ by his Works and Words into their hearts O blessed are the eyes that so see and the ears that so hear that the heart is thereby raised to this blessed heavenly frame Sirs so much of your hearts as is empty of Christ and heaven let it befilled with shame and sorrow and not with ease SECT II. BUt let me turn my Reprehension to Exhortation That you would turn this Conviction into Reformation And I have the more hope because I here address my self to men of Conscience that dare not wilfully disobey God and to men whose Relations to God are many and neer and therefore methinks there should need the fewer words to perswade their hearts to him Yea because I speak to no other men but onely them whose portion is there whose hopes are there and who have forsaken all that they may enjoy this glory and shall I be discouraged from perswading such to be heavenly-minded why fellow Christians if you will not hear and obey who will well may we be discouraged to exhort the poor blinde ungodly world and may say as Moses Exod. 6.12 Behold the Children of Israel have not hearkned unto me how then shall Pharoah hear me Who ever thou art therefore that readest these lines I require thee as thou tendrest thine Allegiance to the God of Heaven as ever thou hopest for a part in this glory that thou presently take thy heart to task chide it for its wilful strangeness to God turn thy thoughts from the pursuit of Vanity bend thy soul to study Eternity busie it about the life to come habituate thy self to such contemplations and let not those thoughts be seldom and cursory but settle upon them dwell here bathe thy soul in heavens Delights drench thine affections in these rivers of pleasure or rather in this sea of Consolation and if thy backward soul begin to flag and thy loose thoughts to fly abroad call them back hold them to their work put them on bear not with their lasiness do not connive at one neglect and when thou hast once in obedience to God tried this work and followed on till thou hast got acquainted with it and kept a close guard upon thy thoughts till they are accustomed to obey and till thou hast got some mastery over them thou wilt then finde thy self in the suburbs of Heaven and as it were in a new world thou wilt then finde indeed that there is sweetness in the work and way of God and that the life of Christianity is a life of Joy Thou wilt meet with those abundant consolations which thou hast prayed and panted and groaned after and which so few Christians do ever here obtain because they know not this way to them or else make not conscience of walking in it You see the work now before you This this is it that I would fain perswade your souls to practise Beloved friends and Christian neighbors who hear me this day let me bespeak your consciences in the name of Christ and command you by the Authority I have received from Christ that you faithfully set upon this weighty duty and fix your eye more stedfastly on your Rest and daily delight in the fore-thoughts thereof I have perswaded you to many other duties and I bless God many of you have obeyed and I hope never to finde you at that pass as to say when you perceive the command of the Lord that you will not be perswaded nor obey if I should it were high time to bewail your misery Why you may almost as well say we will not obey as sit still and not obey Christians I beseech you as you take me for your Teacher and have called me thereto so hearken to this Doctrine if ever I shall prevail with you in any thing let me prevail with you in this to set your heart where you expect a Rest and Treasure Do you not remember that when you called me to be your Teacher you promised me under your hands that you would faithfully and conscionably endeavor the receiving every truth and obeying every command which I should from the Word of God manifest to you I now charge your promise upon you I never delivered to you a more apparent Truth nor prest upon you a more apparent duty then this If I knew you would not obey what should I do here preaching Not that I desire you to receive it chiefly as from me but as from Christ on whose Message I come Me thinks if a childe should shew you Scripture and speak to you the Word of God you should not dare to disobey it Do not wonder that I perswade you so earnestly though
carriage what exclaiming against pride what moanful self-accusing may stand with this divelish sin of pride O Christian if thou wouldest live continually in the presence of thy Lord lie in the dust and he will thence take thee up descend first with him into the grave and thence thou maist ascend with him to glory Learn of him to be meek and lowly and then thou maist taste of this Rest to thy soul. Thy soul else will be as the troubled Sea still casting out mire and dirt which cannot rest And in stead of these sweet delights in God thy pride will fill thee with perpetual disquietness It is the humble soul that forgets not God and God will not forget the humble Psal. 10.12 and 9.12 As he that humbleth himself as a little childe shall hereafter be greatest in the Kingdom of God Matth. 18.4 So shall he now be greatest in the forecastes of the Kingdom For as whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased so he that humbleth himself shall be in both these respects exalted Matth. 23.12 God therefore dwelleth with him that is humble and contrite to revive the Spirit of such with his presence Isai. 57.15 I conclude with that counsel of James and Peter Humble your selves therefore in the sight of the Lord and he shall now in the Spirit lift you up Jam. 4 10. and in due time shall perfectly exalt you 1 Pet. 5.6 And when others are cast down then shalt thou say There is lifting up and he shall save the humble person Job 22.29 SECT VI. 6. ANother impediment to this Heavenly Life is Wilful laziness and slothfulness of Spirit And I verily think for knowing men there is nothing hinders more then this O if it were onely the exercise of the Body the moving of the Lips the bending of the Knee then it were an easie work indeed and men would as commonly step to Heaven as they go a few miles to visit a friend yea if it were to spend most of our days in numbering Beads and repeating certain words and Prayers in voluntary humility and neglecting the body after the commandments and doctrines of men Col. 2.21 22 23. yea or in the outward part of duties commanded by God yet it were comparatively easie Further if it were onely in the exercise of parts and gifts though we made such performance our daily trade yet it were easie to be heavenly-minded But it is a work more difficult then all this To separate thoughts and affections from the world to force them to a work of so high a nature to draw forth all our graces in their order and exercise each on its proper object to hold them to this till they perceive success and till the work doth thrive and prosper in their hands This this is the difficult task Reader Heaven is above thee the way is upwards Dost thou think who art a feeble short-winded sinner to travel daily this steep ascent without a great deal of labor and resolution Canst thou get that earthly heart to Heaven and bring that backward minde to God while thou liest still and takest thine ease If lying down at the foot of the Hill and looking toward the top and wishing we were there would serve the turn then we should have daily travellers for Heaven But the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force There must be violence used to get these first fruits as well as to get the full possession Dost thou not feel it so though I should not tell thee Will thy heart get upwards except thou drive it Is it not like a dull and jadish horse that will go no longer then he feels the spur Dost thou finde it easie to dwell in the delights above It s true the work is exceeding sweet and no condition on Earth so desireable but therefore it is that our hearts are so backward especially in the beginning till we are acquainted with it O how many hundred Professors of Religion who can easily bring their hearts to ordinary duties as Reading Hearing Praying Conferring could never yet in all their lives bring them and keep them to a heavenly contemplation one half hour together Consider here Reader as before the Lord whether this be not thine own case Thou hast known that Heaven is all thy hopes thou knowest thou must shortly be turned hence and that nothing below can yield thee rest thou knowest also that a strange heart a seldom and careless thinking of Heaven can fetch but little comfort thence and dost thou not yet for all this let slip thy opportunities and lie below in dust or meer duties when thou shouldst walk above and live with God Dost thou not commend the sweetness of heavenly life and judg those the excellentest Christians that use it and yet didst never once try it thy self But as the sluggard that stretched himself on his bed and cryed O that this were working So dost thou talk and trifle and live at thy ease and say O that I could get my heart to Heaven This is to lie a bed and wish when thou shouldst be up and doing How many a hundred do read Books and hear Sermons in expectation to hear of some easie course or to meet with a shorter cut to comforts then ever they are like to finde in the Word And if they can hear of none from the Preachers of Truth they will snatch it with rejoycing from the Teachers of Falshood and presently applaud the excellency of the doctrine because it hath fitted their lazy temper and think there is no other doctrine will comfort the soul because it will not comfort it with hearing and looking on They think their Venison is best though accompanied with a lie because it is the easiest catched and next at hand and they think will procure the chiefest blessing and so it may if God be as subject to mistake as blinde Isaac And while they pretend enmity onely to the impossibilities of the Law they oppose the easier conditions of the Gospel and cast off the burden that is light also and which all must bear that will finde rest to their souls and in my judgment may as fitly be stiled enemies to the Gospel as enemies to the Law from whence they receive their common title The Lord of light and Spirit of comfort shew these men in time a surer way for lasting comfort The delusions of many of them are strong and ungrounded comforts they seem to have store I can judg it to be of no better a kinde because it comes not in the Scripture way They will some of them profess That when they meditate and labor for comfort themselves they either have none or at least but humane and of a lower kinde but all the comforts that they own and value are immediatly injected without their pains So do I expect my comforts to come in in Heaven but till then I am glad if they will come with labor
abuse their bodies and neglect their health did wrong the flesh onely the matter were small but they wrong the soul also As he that spoils the house doth wrong the inhabitant When the body is sick and the spirits do languish how heavily move we in these Meditations and Joyes Yet where God denieth this mercy we may the better bear it because he oft occasioneth our benefit by the denial CHAP. VI. Containing the Description of the great Duty of Heavenly Contemplation SECT I. THough I hope what is already spoken be not unuseful and that it will not by the Reader be cast aside yet I must tell you that the main thing intended is yet behinde and that which I aimed at when I set upon this Work I have observed the Maxime that my principal end be last in execution though it was first in my intention All that I have said is but for the preparation to this The Doctrinal part is but to instruct you for this the rest of the Uses are but introductions to this The Motives I have laid down are but to make you willing for this The Hinderances I mentioned were but so many blocks in the way to this The general Helps which I last delivered are but the necessary Attendants of this So that Reader If thou neglect this that follows thou dost frustrate the main end of my design and makest me lose as to thee the chief of my labor I once more intreat thee therefore as thou art a man that makest conscience of a revealed duty and that darest not wilfully resist the Spirit as thou valuest the high delights of a Saint and the soul ravishing exercise of heavenly Contemplation as all my former moving Considerations seem reasonable to thee and as thou art faithful to the peace and prosperity of thine own soul that thou diligently study these Directions following and that thou speedily and faithfully put them into practice Practice is the end of all sound Doctrine and all right Faith doth end in duty I pray thee therefore rosolve before thou readest any further and 〈…〉 here as before the Lord that if the following Advice be wholsome to thy soul thou wilt conscionably follow it and seriously set thy self to the Work and that no laziness of spirit shall take thee off nor lesser business interrupt thy course but that thou wilt approve thy self a Doer of this Word and not an idle hearer onely Is this thy promise and wilt thou stand to it Resolve man and then I shall be encouraged to give thee my Advice if I spread not before thee a delicious feast if I set thee not upon as gainful a trade and put not into thy hand as delightful an imployment as ever thou dealt'st with in all thy life then cast it away and tell me I have deceived thee onely try it throughly and then judg I say again if in the faithful following of this prescribed course thou dost not finde an increase of all thy graces and dost not grow beyond the stature of common Christians and art not made more serviceable in thy place and more pretious in the eyes of all that are discerning if thy soul enjoy not more fellowship with God and thy life be not fuller of pleasure and solace and thou have not comfort readier by thee at a dying hour when thou hast greatest need then throw these Directions back in my face and exclaim against me as a deceiver for ever Except God should leave thee uncomfortable for a little season for the more glorious manifestation of his Attributes and thy integrity and single thee out as he did Job for an example and mirror of constancy and patience which would be but a preparative for thy fuller comfort Certainly God will not forsake this his own Ordinance thus conscionably performed but will be found of those that thus diligently seek him God hath as it were appointed to meet thee in this way Do not thou fail to give him the meeting and thou shalt finde by experience that he will not fail SECT II. THe duty which I press upon thee so earnestly I shall now deâ—scribe and open to thee for I suppose by this time thou art ready to enquire What is this so highly extolled work Why it is The set and solemn acting of all the powers of thy soul upon this most perfect object Rest by Meditation I will a little more fully explain the meaning of this description that so the duty may lye plaine before thee 1. The general title that I give to this duty is Meditation Not as it is precisely distinguished from Cogitation Consideration and Contemplation but as it is taken in the larger and usual sense for Cogitation on things spiritual and so comprehending consideration and contemplation That Meditation is a duty of Gods ordaining not only in his written Law but also in nature it self I never met with the man that would deny But that it is a duty constantly and conscionably practised even by the godly so far as my acquaintance extends I must with sorrow deny it It is in word confessed to be a Duty by all but by the constant neglect denyed by most And I know not by what fatal customary security it comes to passe that men that are very tender conscienc't towards most other duties yet do as easily overslip this as if they knew it not to be a duty at all They that are presently troubled in minde if they omit but a Sermon a Fast a Prayer in publique or private yet were never troubled that they have omitted Meditation perhaps all their life time to this very day Though it be that duty by which all other duties are improved and by which the soul digesteth Truths and draweth forth their strength for its nourishment and refreshing Certainly I think that as a man is but half an hour in chewing and taking into his stomack that meat which he must have seven or eight hours at least to digest so a man may take into his understanding and memory more Truth in one hour then he is able well to digest in many A man may eat too much but he cannot digest too well Therefore God commandeth Joshua That the book of the Law depart not out of his mouth but that he Meditate therein day and night that he may observe to do according to that which is written therein Josh. 1.8 As Digestion is the turning of the raw food into chyle and blood and spirits and flesh So Meditation rightly mannaged turneth the Truths received and remembred into warm affection raised resolution and holy and upright conversation Therefore what good those men are like to get by Sermons or providences who are unacquainted with and unaccustomed to this work of Meditation you may easily judge And why so much preaching is lost among us and professors can run from Sermon to Sermon and are never weary of hearing or reading and yet have such languishing starved souls I know
I fear he will not know my soul But especially when we come to die and must immediately appear before this God and expect to enter into this Eternal Rest then the difference will plainly appear Then what a joy will it be to think I am going to the place that I daily conversed in to the place from whence I tasted so frequent delights to that God whom I have met in my Meditations so oft My heart hath been at Heaven before now and tasted the sweetness that hath oft revived it and as Jonathan by his honey if mine eyes were so illightened and my minde refreshed when I tasted but a little of that sweetness what will it be when I shall feed on it freely On the other side what a terror must it be to think I must die and go I know not whither from a place where I am acquainted to a place where I have no familiarity or knowledg O Sirs it is an unexpressible horror to a dying man to have strange thoughts of God and Heaven I am perswaded there is no cause so common that makes death even to godly men unwelcome and uncomfortable Therefore I perswade thee to frequency in this duty That seldomness breed not estrangedness from God 2. And besides that seldomness will make thee unskilful in the work and strange to the duty as well as to God How unhandsomly and clumsily do men set their hands to a work that they are seldom imployed in Whereas frequency will habituate thy heart to the work and thou wilt better know the way which thou daily walkest yea and it will be more easie and delightful also The Hill which made thee pant and blow at the first going up thou maist run up easily when thou art once accustomed to it The heart which of it self is naturally backward will contract a greater unwillingness through disuse And as an untamed Colt not used to the hand it will hardly come to hand when thou shouldst use it 3. And lastly Thou wilt lose that heat and life by long intermissions which with much ado thou didst obtain in duty If thou eat but a meal in two or three days thou wilt lose thy strength as fast as thou gettest it if in holy Meditation thou get neer to Christ and warm thy heart with the fire of Love if thou then turn away and come but seldom thou wilt soon return to thy former coldness If thou walk or labor till thou hast got thee heat and then sit idle all day after wilt thou not surely lose thy heat again especially it being so spiritual a work and so against the bent of nature we shall be still inclining to our natural temper If water that is heated be long from the fire it will return to its coldness because that is its natural temper I advise thee therefore that thou be as oft as may be in this soul-raising duty least when thou hast long rowed hard against the stream or tide and winde the boat should go further down by thy intermission then it was got up by all thy labor And least when thou hast been long rolling thy stony heart towards the top of the hill it should go faster down when thou dost slack thy diligence It s true the intermixed use of other duties may do much to the keeping thy heart above especially secret prayer but Meditation is the life of most other duties and the veiws of heaven is the Life of Meditation SECT III. 3. COncerning the Time of this duty I advise thee that thou chuse the most seasonable Time All things are beautiful and excellent in their season Unseasonableness may lose thee the fruit of thy labor It may rise up disturbances and difficulties in the work Yea it may turn a duty to a sin when the seasonableness of a duty doth make it easie doth remove impediments doth embolden us to the undertaking and doth ripen its fruit The seasons of this duty are either first extraordinary or secondly ordinary 1. The ordinary season for your daily performance cannot be particularly determined by man Otherwise God would have determined it in his word But mens conditions of imployment and freedom and bodily temper are so various that the same may be a seasonable hour to one which may be unseasonable to another If thou be a servant or a hard laborer that thou hast not thy self nor thy time at command thou must take that season which thy business will best afford thee Either as thou sittest in the shop at thy work or as thou travellest on the way or as thou lyest waking in the night Every man best knows his own time even when he hath least to hinder him of his business in the world But for those whose necessities tye them not so close but that they may well lay aside their earthly affaires and chuse what time of the day they will My advice to such is that they carefully observe the temper of their body and minde and mark when they finde their spirits most active and fit for contemplation and pitch upon that as the stated time Some men are freest for all duties when they are fasting and some are then unfittest of all Some are fit for duties of humiliation at one season and for duties of exaltation at another Every man is the meetest judg for himself Only give me leave to tender you my observation which time I have alway found fittest for my self and that is The evening from Sun setting to the twilight and sometime in the night when it is warm and clear Whether it be any thing from the temperature of my body I know not But I conjecture that the same time would be seasonable to most tempers for several natural reasons which I will not now stand to mention Neither would I have mentioned my own experience in this but that I was encouraged hereunto by finding it suit with the experience of a better and wiser man then my self and that is Isaac for it is said in Gen. 24.63 That he went to Meditate in the field at the eventide and his experience I dare more boldly recommend unto you then my own And as I remember Doctor Hall in his excellent Treatise of Meditation gives you the like account of his own experience SECT IIII. 2. THe Lords day is a time exceeding seasonable for this exercise When should we more seasonably contemplate on Rest then on that day of Rest which doth typâ—fie it to us Neither do I think that typifying use is ceased because the Antitype is not fully yet come However it being a day appropriated to Worship and spiritual duties me thinks we should never exclude this duty which is so eminently spiritual I think verily this is the chiefest work of a Christian Sabbath and most agreeable to the intent of its positive institution What fitter time to converse with our Lord then on that day which he hath appropriated to such imployment and therefore called
it The Lords Day What fitter day to ascend to heaven then that on which our Lord did arise from earth and fully triumph over death and hell and take possession of Heaven before us The fittest temper for a true believer is to be in the spirit on the Lords Day This was Saint Johns temper on that day And what can bring us to this ravishment in the spirit but the spiritual beholding of our ravishing glory Surely though an outward ordinance may delight the ear or tickle the fancy yet it is the viewes of God that must ravish the soul. There is a great deal of difference betwixt the receiving of the word with joy Mat. 13.20 and being in the spirit on the Lords Day Rev. 1 10. Two sorts of Christians I would entreat to take notice of this especially 1. Those that spend the Lords day only in publique worship either through the neglect of this spiritual duty of Meditation or else by their overmuch exercise of the publique allowing no time to private duty Though there be few that offend in this last kinde yet some there are and a hurtful mistake to the soul it is They will grow but in gifts and common accomplishments if they exercise but their gifts in outward performances 2. Those that have time on the Lords day for idleness and vain discourse and finde the day longer then they know how well to spend Were these but acquainted with this duty of contemplation they would need no other recreation nor pastime they would think the longest day short enough and be sorry that the night hath shortned their pleasure Whether this day be of positive Divine Institution and so to us Christians of necessary observation is out of my way to handle here I refer those that doubt to what is in Print on that subject especially Master George Abbot against Broad and above all Master Cawdrey and Master Palmer their Sabbatum Redivivum It s an encouragment to the doubtful to finde the generality of its rational opposers to acknowledg the usefulness yea necessity of a stated day and the fitness of this above all other days I would I could perswade those that are convinced of its morality to spend a greater part of it in this true spirituality But we do in this as in most things else think it enough that we believe our duty as we do the articles of our faith and let who will put it in practice VVe will dispute for duty and let others perform it As I have known some drunkards upon the Ale bench will plead for godly men while themselves are ungodly So do too many for the observation of the Lords day who themselves are unacquainted with this spiritual part of its observation Christians let heaven have some more share in your Sabbaths where you must shortly keep your everlasting Sabbath As you go from stair to stair till you come to the top so use your Sabbaths as steps to glory till you have passsed them all and are there arived Especially you that are poor men and servants that cannot take time in the week as you desire see that you well improve this day Now your labor lies not â—o much upon you now you are unyoaked from your common business Be sure as your bodyes Rest from their labors that your spirits seek after Rest with God I admonish also those that are possessed with the censorious divel that if they see a poor Christian walking privately in the fields on the Lords Day they would not Pharisaically conclude him a Sabbath breaker till they know more It may be he takes it as the opportunest place to withdraw himself from the world to God Thou seest where his body walkes but thou seest not where he is walking in the spirit Hannah was censured for a woman drunk till Eli heard her speak for her self and when he knew the truth he was ashamed of his censure The silent spiritual worshipper is most lyable to their censure because he gives not the world an account of his worship Thus I have directed thee to the fittest season for the ordinary performance of this heavenly work SECT V. 2. FOr the extraordinary performance these following are seasonable times 1. When God doth extraordinarily revive and enable thy spirit When God hath kindled thy spirit with fire from above it is that it may mount aloft more freely It is a choice part of a Christians skill to observe the temper of his own spirit and to observe the gales of grace and how the spirit of Christ doth move upon his VVithout Christ we can do nothing Therefore let us be doing when he is doing and be sure not to be out of the way nor asleep when he comes The sails of the wind-mill stir not without the wind therefore they must set them a going when the wind blowes Be sure that thou watch this wind and tide if thou wouldst have a speedy voyage to Heaven A little labor will set thy heart a going at such a time as this when another time thou mayest study and take pains to little purpose Most Christians do sometime finde a more then ordinary reviving and activeness of spirit take this as sent from heaven to â—alse thee thither And when the spirit is lifting thy heart from the earth be sure thou then lift at it thy self As when the Angel came to Peter in his prison and Irons and smoâ—e him on the side and raised him up saying Arise up quickly gird thy self â—inde on thy sandals and cast thy garment about thee and follow me And Peter arose and followed till he was delivered Act. 12.7.8 c. So when the spirit finds thy heart in prison and Irons and smites it and bids thee Arise quickly and follow me be sure thou then arise and follow and thou shalâ— finde thy chains fall off and all doors will open and thou wilt be at Heaven before thou art aware SECT VI. 2. WHen thou art cast into perplexing troubles of minde through suffering or fear or care or temptations then is it seasonable to address thy self to this duty VVhen should we take our cordials but in our times of fainting When is it more seasonable to walk to heaven then when we know not in what corner on earth to live with comfort or when should our thoughts converse above but when they have nothing but grief to converse with below Where should Noahs Dove be but in the Arke when the waters do cover all the earth and she cannot finde Rest for the sole of her foot What should we think on but our fathers house when we want even the husks of the world to feed on Surely God sends thee thy afflictions to this very purpose Happy thou poor man if thou make this use of thy poverty and thou that art sick if thou so improve thy sickness It is seasonable to go to the Promised Land when our burdens and taskes are increased in Egypt and when we endure
Truth and saved you from the spirit of Giddiness Levity and Apostacy of this age who hath preserved you from those scandals whereby others have so hainously wounded their profession and hath given you to see the mischief of Separation and Divisions and made you eminent for Vnity and Peace when almost all the Land is in a flame of contention and so many that we thought godly are busily demolishing the Church and striving in a zealous ignorance against the Lord. Beloved though few of you are rich or great in the world yet for this riches of mercy towards you I must say Ye are my Glory my Crown and my Joy And for all these rare favors to my self and you as I have oft promised to publish the praises of our Lord so do I here set up this stone of remembrance and write upon it Glory to God in the highest Hitherto hath the Lord helped us My flesh and my heart failed but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever But have all these Deliverances brought us to our Rest No We are as far yet from it as we are from Heaven You are yet under oppression and troubles and I am yet under consuming sickness And feeling that I am like to be among you but a little while and that my pained body is hastening to the dust I shall here leave you my best advice for your immortal souls and bequeath you this counsel as the legacy of a dying man that you may here read it and practise it when I am taken from you And I beseech you receive it as from one that you know doth unfainedly love you and that regardeth no honors or happiness in this world in comparison of the welfare and salvation of your souls yea receive it from me as if I offered it you upon my knees beseeching you for your souls sake that you would not reject it and beseeching the Lord to bless it to you yea as one that hath received authority from Christ to command you I charge you in his name as ever you will answer it when we shall meet at judgment and as you would not have me there be a witness against you nor all my labors be charged against you to your condemnation and the Lord Jesus your Judg to sentence you as rebellious that you faithfully and constantly practise these ten directions 1. Labor to be men of knowledg and sound understandings A sound judgment is a most precious mercy and much conduceth to the soundness of heart and life A weak judgment is easily corrupted and if it be once corrupt the will and conversation will quickly follow Your understandings are the in-let or entrance to the whole soul and if you be weak there your souls are like a Garison that hath open or il-guarded Gates and if the enemy be once let in there the whole City will quickly be his own Ignorance is virtually every error therefore let the Bible be much in your hands and hearts Remember what I taught you on Deut. 6.6 7. Read much the writings of our old solid Divines such as Perkins Bolton Dod Sibbs especially Doctor Preston You may read an able Divine when you cannot hear one especially be sure you learn well the Principles of Religion Begin with the Assemblies lesser Catechism and then learn the greater and next Master Balls with the Exposition and then Doctor Ames his Marrow of Divinity now Englished or Ushers If you see men fall on Controversies before they understand these never wonder if they are drowned in errors I know your povertie and labors will not give you leave to read so much as others may do but yet a willing minde will finde some time if it be when they should sleep and especially it will spend the Lords day wholly in these things O be not ignorant of God in the midst of such light as if the matters of your salvation were less worth your study then your trading in the world 2. Do the utmost you can to get a faithful Minister when I am taken from you and be sure you acknowledg him your Teacher Overseer and Ruler 1 Thess. 5.12 13. Acts 20.28 Heb. 13.7 17. and learn of him obey him and submit to his doctrine except he teach you any singular points and then take the advice of other Ministers in trying it Expect not that he should humor you and please your fancies and say and do as you would have him that is meer Independencie for the people to rule themselves and their Rulers If he be unable to Teach and Guide you do not chuse him at first if he be able be ruled by him even in things that to you are doubtful except it be clear that â—e would turn you from the truth if you know more then he become Preachers your selves if you do not then quarrel not when you should learn especially submit to his private over-sight as well as publike Teaching It is but the least part of a Ministers work which is done in the Pulpit Paul taught them also from house to house day and night with tears Acts 20.20 31. To go daily from one house to another and see how you live and examine how you profit and direct you in the duties of your families and in your preparation for death is the great work Had not weakness confined me and publike labors forbidden me I should judg my self hainously guiltie in neglecting this In the Primitive times every Church of so many souls as this Parish had many Ministers whereof the ablest speakers did preach most impublike and the rest did the more of the less publike work which some mistake for meer Ruling Elders But now Sacriledg and Covetousness will scarce leave maintenance for one in a Church which is it that hath brought us to a loss in the nature of Government 3. Let all your Knowledg turn into Affection and Practice keep open the passage between your heads and your hearts that every Truth may go to the quick Spare not for any pains in working out your salvation Take heed of loitering when your souls lie at the stake Favor not your selves in any slothful distemper Laziness is the damnation of most that perish among us God forbid you should be of the mad opinion of the world That like not serving God so much nor making so much ado to be saved All these men will shortly be of another minde Live now as you would wish you had done at death and judgment Let no scorns dishearten you nor differences of opinion be an offence to you God and Scripture and Heaven and the Way thither are still the same It will do you no good to be of the right Religion if you be not zealous in the exercise of the Duties of that Religion Read oft the fifth and sixt Chapters of the third part of this Book 4. Be sure you make conscience of the great Duties that you are to perform in your families Teach your
children and servants the knowledg and fear of God do it early and late in season and out of season Pray with them daily and fervently remember Daniels example Dan. 6. and the command 1 Thes. 5.17 Read the Scripture and good Books to them restrain them from sin keep not a servant that will not learn and be ruled Neighbors I charge you as you will shortly answer the contrary before the Lord your Judg That there be never a family among you that shall neglect these great Duties If you cannot do what you should yet do what you can especially see that the Lords day be wholly spent in these exercises To spend it in idleness or sports is to consecrate it to your flesh and not to God and far worse then to spend it in your Trades 5. Beware of extreams in the controverted points of Religion When you avoid one Error take heed you run not into another specially if you be in heat of disputation or passion As I have shewed you I think the true mean in the doctrine of Justification and Redemption so I had intended to have writ a peculiar Treatise with three Columns shewing both extreams and the truth in the middle through the body of Divinitie but God takes me off Especially beware of the Errors of these times Antinomianism comes from gross ignorance and leads to gross wickedness Socinians are scarce Christians Arminianism is quite above your reach and therefore not fit for your study in most points The middle way which Camero Ludov. Crocius Amâ—raldus Davenant c. go I think is neerest the Truth Separation comes from Pride and Ignorance and directly leads to the dissolution of all Churches That Independency which gives the people to govern by vote is the same thing in another name Anabaptists play the Divels part in accusing their own children and disputing them out of the Church and Covenant of Christ and affirming them to be no Disciples no Servants of God nor holy as separated to him when God saith the contrary Levit. 25.41 42. Deut. 29.10 11 12 c. Acts 15.10 1 Cor. 7.14 I cannot digress to fortifie you against these Sects You have seen God speak against them by Judgments from Heaven What were the two Monsters in New England but miracles Christ hath told you By their fruits ye shall know them We mis-interpret when we say he means by fruit their false doctrine that were but idem per idem Heretikes may seem holy for a little while but at last all false doctrines likely end in wicked lives Where hath there been known a society of Anabaptists since the world first knew them that proved not wicked How many of these or Antinomists c. have you known who have not proved palpably guiltie of lying perfidiousness covetousness malice contempt of their godly Brethren licenciousness or seared Consciences They have confident expressions to shake poor ignorant souls whom God will have discovered in the day of trial But when they meet with any that can search out their fallacies how little have they to say You know I have had as much opportunitie to try their strength as most And I never yet met with any in Garison or Army that could say any thing which might stagger a solid man You heard in my late publike dispute at Bewdley January 1. with Mr. Tombs who is taken to be the ablest of them in the Land and one of the most moderate how little they can say even in the hardest point of Baptism what gross absurdities they are driven to and how little tender Consciencious fear of erring is left among the best 6. Above all see that you be followers of Peace and Vnitie both in the Church and among your selves Remember what I taught you on Heb. 12.14 He that is not a son of Peace is not a son of God All other sins destroy the Church consequentially but Division and Separation demolish it directly Building the Church is but an orderly joyning of the materials and what then is disjoyning but pulling down Many Doctrinal differences must be tolerated in a Church And why but for Vnitie and Peace Therefore Disunion and Separation is utterly intolerable Beleeve not those to be the Churches Friends that would cure and reform her by cutting her throat Those that say No Truth must be concealed for Peace have usually as little of the one as the other Study Gal. 2.2 Rom. 14.1 c. Acts 21.24 26. 1 Tim 1.4 and 6.4 Tit. 3.8 9. I hope sad experience speaks this lesson to your very hearts if I should say nothing Do not your hearts bleed to look upon the state of England and to think how few Towns or Cities there be where is any forwardness in Religion that are not cut into shreds and crumbled as to dust by Separations and Divisions To think what a wound we have hereby given to the very Christian name How we have hardened the ignorant Confirmed the Papists And are our selves become the scorn of our enemies and the grief of our friends And how many of our dearest best esteemed Friends are faln to notorious Pride or Impietie yea some to be worse then open Infidels These are Pillars of Salt see that you remember them You are yet eminent for your Vnitie Stedfastness and Godliness hold fast that you have that no man take your Crown from you Temptations are now come neer your doors yet many of you have gone through greater and therefore I hope will scape through these Yet least your temptations should grow stronger let me warn you That though of your own selves men should arise speaking perverse things to draw disciples after them Acts 20.30 yea though an Angel from Heaven should draw you to divisions see that you follow him not If there be erronious practises in the Church keep your selves innocent with moderation and peace Do your best to reform them and rather remove your dwellings if you cannot live innocently then rend the Church It must be no small Error that must force a Separation Justin a holy learned Martyr In Dialog cum Tryphone who was converted within thirtie one yeers of Johns death and wrote his first Apologie within fiftie one and therefore it is like saw Johns days professeth That if a Jew should keep the Ceremonial Law so he did not perswade the Gentiles to it as necessary yet if he acknowledg Christ he judgeth that he may be saved and he would embrace him and have communion with him as a Brother And Paul would have him received that is weak in the faith and not unchurch whole Parishes of those that we know not nor were ever brought to a just trial You know I never conformed to the use of Mystical Symbolical Rites my self but onely to the determination of Circumstantials necessary in genere and yet I ever loved a godly peaceable Conformist better then a turbulent Non-Conformist I yet differ from many in several Doctrines of greater moment then Baptism c. As
work too He hath paid all the price and left us none to pay yet he never intended his purchase should put us into absolute immediate personal title to glory in point of Law much less into immediate possession What title we may have from his own and his Fathers secret counsel is nothing to the Question He hath purchased the Crown to bestow only on Condition of beleeving denying all for him suffering with him persevering and overcoming He hath purchased Justification to bestow only on condition of our beleeving yea repenting and beleeving That the first Grace hath any such Condition I will not Affirm but all following mercies have Though 't is Christ that enableth also to perform the Condition It is not a Saviour offered but received also that must save It is not the blood of Christ shed only but applyed also that must fully deliver Nor is it applyed to the Justification or Salvation of a sleepy Soul Nor doth Christ carry us to heaven in a chair of security Where he will pardon he will make you pray Forgive us our trespasses and where he will give Righteousness he will give hungering and thirsting It is not through any imperfection in Christ that the Righteous are scarcely saved no nor that the wicked perish as they shall be convinced one day In the same sence as the prayer of the faithful if fervent availeth for outward mercies in the same sence it prevaileth for Salvation also For Christ hath purchased both And as Baptism is said to save us so other duties too Therefore say not It is not duty but Christ For it is Christ in a way of duty As duty cannot do it without Christ so Christ will not without duty But of this enough before And as this motion must be strong so constant or it will fall short of Rest. To begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh will not bring to the end of the Saints The certainty of the Saints perseverance doth not make admonition to constancy unuseful Men as seemingly holy as the best of us have fallen off He that knew it unpossible in the foundation to deceive the Elect yet saw it necessary to warn us that he only that endureth to the end shall be saved Read but the promises Rev. 2. 3. to him that overcometh SECT XI 11. THere is presupposed also to the obtaining of this Rest a strong desire after it The Souls motion is not that which we call violent or constrained none can force it but natural viz. according to our new nature As every thing inclines to its proper Center so the Rational Creature is carryed on in all its motion with desires after its end This end is the first thing intended and chiefest desired though last obtained Observe it and beleeve it who ever thou art there was never Soul that made Christ and glory the principal end nor that obtained Rest with God whose desire was not set upon him and that above all things else in the world whatsoever Christ brings the heart to heaven first and then the person His own mouth spoke it Where your treasure is there will your heart be also Mat. 6.21 A sad conclusion to thousands of professed Christians He that had truly rather have the enjoyment of God in Christ then any thing in the world shall have it and he that had rather have any thing else shall not have this except God change him It 's true the Remainder of our old nature will much weaken and interrupt these desires but never overcome them SECT XII 12. LAstly here is presupposed painfulness and weariness in our motion This ariseth not from any evil in the work or way for Christs yoke is easie his burden light and his commands not grievous But 1. From the opposition we meet with 2. The contrary principles still remaining in our nature which will make us cry out O wretched men Rom. 7.24 3. The weakness of our graces and so of our motion Great labour where there is a suitable strength is a pleasure but to the weak how painful With what panting and weariness doth a feeble man ascend that hill which the sound man runs up with ease We are all even the best but feeble An easie dull profession of Religion that never encountereth with these difficulties and pains is a sad sign of an unsound heart Christ indeed hath freed us from the Impossibilities of the Covenant of Works and from the burden and yoke of Legal Ceremonies but not from the difficulties and pains of Gospel duties 4. Our continued distance from the End will raise some grief also for desire and hope implying the absence of the thing desired and hoped for do ever imply also some grief for that absence which all vanish when we come to possession All these twelve things are implyed in a Christians Motion and so presupposed to his Rest. CHAP. IV. What this Rest containeth SECT I. BUt all this is onely the outward Court or at least not the holiest of all Now we have ascended these steps may we look within the vail May we shew what this Rest containeth as well as what it presupposeth But alass how little know I of that whereof I am about to speak Shall I speak before I know But if I stay till I clearly know I shall not come again to speak That glimpse which Paul saw contained that which could not or must not be uttered or both And if Paul had had a tongue to have uttered it it would have done no good except his hearers had ears to hear it If Paul had spoke the things of Heaven in the language of Heaven and none understood that language what the better Therefore I 'l speak while I may that little very little which I do know of it rather then be wholy silent The Lord reveal it to me that I may reveal it to you and the Lord open some light and shew both you and me his Inheritance Not as to Balaam onely whose eyes the vision of God opened to see the goodliness of Jacobs tents and Israels tabernacles where he had no portion but from whence must come his own destruction Nor as to Moses who had onely a discovery in stead of possession and saw the Land which he never entered But as the pearl was revealed to the Merchant in the Gospel who rested not till he had sold all he had and bought it and as Heaven was opened to blessed Stephen which he was shortly to enter and the glory shewed him which should be his own possession SECT I. THere is Contained in this Rest. 1. A Cessation from Motion or Action not of all action but of that which hath the nature of a Means and implies the absence of the End When we have obtained the Haven we have done sailing When the workman hath his wages it is implyed he hath done his work When we are at our journeys end we have done
not be like Joseph and his Brethren who lay upon one anothers necks weeping It will break forth into a pure Joy and not such a mixture of joy and sorrow as their weeping argued It will be Loving and rejoycing not loving and sorrowing Yet will it make Pharoahs Satans court to ring with the News that Josephs Brethren are come that the Saints are arrived safe at the bosom of Christ out of the reach of hell for ever Neither is there any such love as Davids and Jonathans shutting up in sorrows and breathing out its last into sad lamentations for a forced separation No Christ is the powerful attractive the effectual Loadstone who draws to it all like it self All that the Father hath given him shall come unto him even the Lover as well as the Love doth he draw and they that come unto him he will in no wise cast out John chap. 6. vers 37 39. For know this Beleever to thy everlasting comfort that if these Arms have once embraced thee neither sin nor hell can get thee thence for ever The Sanctuary is inviolable and the Rock impregnable whither thou art fled and thou art safe lockt up to all Eternity Thou hast not now to deal with an unconstant creature but with him with whom is no varying nor shadow of change even the Immutable God If thy happiness were in thine own hand as Adams there were yet fear But it 's in the keeping of a faithful Creator Christ hath not bought thee so dear to trust thee with thy self any more His Love to thee will not be as thine was on earth to him seldom and cold up and down mixed as Aguish bodies with burning and quaking with a Good day and a bad No Christian he that would not be discouraged by thine enmity by thy loathsom hateful nature by all thy unwillingness unkinde Neglects and churlish resistances he that would neither cease nor abate his Love for all these Can he cease to love thee when he hath made thee truly Lovely He that keepeth thee so constant in thy love to him that thou canst challenge tribulation distress persecution famine nakedness peril or sword to separate thy Love from Christ if they can Rom. 8.35 How much more will himself be constant Indeed he that produced these mutual embracing Affections will also produce such a mutual constancy in both that thou mayst confidently be perswaded as Paul was before thee That neither Death nor Life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor things present nor things to come nor heighth nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord Vers. 38 39. And now are we not left in the Apostles admiration What shall we say to these things Infinite Love must needs be a mystery to a finite capacity No wonder if Angels desire to pry into this mystery And if it be the study of the Saints here to know the heighth and bredth and length and depth of this Love though it passeth knowledg This is the Saints Rest in the Fruition of God by Love SECT IX LAstly The Affection of Joy hath not the least share in this Fruition It 's that which all the rest lead to and conclude in even the unconceiveable Complacency which the Blessed feel in their seeing knowing loving and being beloved of God The delight of the Senses Here cannot be known by expressions as they are felt How much less this Joy This is the white stone which none knoweth but he that receiveth And if there be any Joy which the stranger medleth not with then surely this above all is it All Christs ways of mercy tend to and end in the Saints Joys He wept sorrowed suffered that they might rejoyce He sendeth the Spirit to be their Comforter He multiplieth promises he discovers their future happiness that their Joy may be full He aboundeth to them in mercies of all sorts he maketh them lie down in green pastures and leadeth them by the still waters yea openeth to them the fountain of Living Waters That their Joy may be full That they may thirst no more and that it may spring up in them to everlasting life Yea he causeth them to suffer that he may cause them to rejoyce and chasteneth them that he may give them Rest and maketh them as he did himself to drink of the brook in the way that they may lift up the head Psal. 110.7 And lest after all this they should neglect their own comforts he maketh it their duty and presseth it on them commanding them to rejoyce in him alway and again to rejoyce And he never brings them into so low a condition wherein he leaves them not more cause of Joy then of Sorrow And hath the Lord such a care of our comfort Here where the Bridegroom being from us we must mourn Oh what will that Joy be where the Soul being perfectly prepared for Joy and Joy prepared by Christ for the Soul it shall be our work our business eternally to rejoyce And it seems the Saints Joy shall be greater then the Damneds torment for their Torment is the torment of creatures prepared for the Devil and his Angels But our Joy is the Joy of our Lord even our Lords own Joy shall we enter And the same Glory which the Father giveth him doth the Son give to them Joh. 17.22 And to sit with him in his Throne even as he is sit down in his Fathers Throne Revel 3.21 What sayst thou to all this Oh thou sad and drooping Soul Thou that now spendest thy days in sorrow and thy breath in sighings and turnest all thy voyce into groanings who knowest no garments but sackcloth no food but the bread and water of Affliction who minglest thy bread with tears and drinkest the tears which thou weepest what sayest thou to this great change From All Sorrow to more then All Joy Thou poor Soul who prayest for Joy waitest for Joy complainest for want of Joy longest for Joy why then thou shalt have full Joy as much as thou canst hold and more then ever thou thoughtest on or thy heart desired And in the mean time walk carefully watch constantly and then let God measure out thy times and degrees of Joy It may be he keeps them till thou have more need Thou mayst better lose thy comfort then thy safety If thou shouldst dye full of fears and sorrows it will be but a moment and they are all gone and concluded in Joy unconceiveable As the Joy of the Hypocrite so the fears of the upright are but for a moment And as their hopes are but golden dreams which when death awakes them do all perish and their hopes dye with them so the Saints doubts and fears are but terrible dreams which when they dye do all vanish and they awake in Joyful Glory For Gods Anger endureth but a moment but in his favor is Life
living is not contemptible As every one of them now knows his own sore and his own grief so shall every one then feel his own Joy and if they can now call Christ their own and call God their own God how much more then upon their full possession of him For as he takes his people for his inheritance so will he himself be the inheritance of his people of ever SECT IV. A Fourth comfortable adjunct of this Rest is that it is in the fellowship of the Blessed Saints and Angels of God Not so singular will the Christian be as to be solitary Though it be proper to the Saints only yet is it common to all the Saints For what is it but an Association of Blessed spirits in God A corporation of perfected Saints whereof Christ is the head the communion of Saints compleated Nor doth this make those joyes to be therefore mediate derived by creatures to us as here For all the lines may be drawn from the center and not from each other and yet their collocation make them more comely then one alone could be Though the strings receive not their sound and sweetnes from each other yet their concurrence causeth that harmony which could not be by one alone For those that have prayed and fasted and wept and watcht and waited together now to joy and enjoy and praise together methinks should much advance their pleasure Whatsoever it will be upon the great change that will be wrought in our natures perfected sure I am according to the present temperature of the most sanctified humane affections it would affect exceedingly And he who mentioneth the qualifications of our happiness of purpose that our joy may be full and maketh so oft mention of our consociation and conjunction in his praises sure doth hereby intimate to us that this will be some advantage to our joyes Certain I am of this Fellow-Christians that as we have been together in the labour duty danger and distress so shall we be in the great recompence and deliverance and as we have been scorned and despised so shall we be crowned and honored together and we who have gone through the day of sadness shall enjoy together that day of Gladness and those who have been with us in persecution and prison shall be with us also in that palace of consolation Can the willful world say If our forefathers and friends be all in Hell why we will venture there too and may not the Christian say on better grounds seeing my faithful friends are gone before me to Heaven I am much the more willing to be there too Oh the Blessed day Dear friends when we that were wont to enquire together and hear of heaven and talk of heaven together shall then live in Heaven together When we who are wont to complain to one another and open our doubts to one another and our feares whether ever we should come there or no shall then rejoyce with one another and triumph over those doubts and feares when we who were wont formerly in private to meet together for mutual edification shall now most publikely be conioyned in the same consolation Those same disciples who were wont to meet in a private house for fear of the Jews are now met in the Celestial habitations without fear and as their fear then did cause them to shut the door against their enemies so will Gods Justice shut it now Oh when I look in the faces of the pretious people of God and believingly think of this day what a refreshing thought is it shall we not there remember think you the pikes which we passed together here our fellowship in duty and in sufferings how oft our groanes made as it were one sound our conjunct teares but one stream and our conjunct desires but one prayer and now all our prayses shall make up one melody and all our Churches one Church and all our selves but one body for we shall be one in Christ even as he and the father are one It s true we must be very carefull in this case that in our thoughts we look not for that in the Saints which is alone in Christ and that we give them not his own prerogative nor expect too great a part of our comfort in the fruition of them we are prone enough to this kinde of Idolatry But yet he who Commands us so to love them now will give us leave in the same subordination to himself to love them then when himself hath made them much more lovely And if we may love them we shall surely reioyce in them for love and enjoyment cannot stand without an answerable Joy If the forethoughts of sitting down with Abraham Isaac Jacob and all the Prophets in the Kingdom of God may be our lawful Joy then how much more that real fight and actual possession It cannot chuse but be comfortable to me to think of that day when I shall joyn with Moses in his song with David in his Psalms of praise and with all the redeemed in the song of the Lamb for ever When we shall see Henoch walking with God Noah enjoying the end of his singularity Joseph of his Integrity Job of his patience Hezekiah of his uprightness and all the Saints the end of their faith Will it be nothing conducible to the compleating of our comforts to live eternally with Peter Paul Austin Chrysostom Jerome Wickliffe Luther Zuinglius Calvin Beza Bullinger Zanchius Pareus Piscator with Hooper Bradford Latimer Glover Saunders Philpot with Reignolds Whitaker Cartwright Brightman Bayne Bradshaw Bolton Ball Hildersham Pemble Twisse Ames Preston Sibbes O faelicem diem said old Grynoeus quum ad illud animorum concilium proficiscar ex hac turba Colluione discedam O happy day when I shall depart out of this crown and sink and go to that same counsell of soules I know that Christ is all in all and that it is the presence of God that maketh Heaven to be Heaven But yet it much sweeteneth the thoughts of that place to me to remember that there are such a multitude of my most dear and pretious friends in Christ with whom I took sweet counsell and with whom I went up to the house of God who walked with me in the fear of God and in integrity of their hearts in the face of whose conversations there was written the name of Christ whose sweet and sensible mention of his Excellencies hath made my heart to burn within me To think of such a friend died at such a time and such a one at another time such a pretious Christian slain at such a fight and such a one at such a fight oh what a number of them could I name and that all these are entered into rest and we shall surely go to them but they shall not return to us It s a Question with some Whether we shall know each other in Heaven or no Surely there shall no knowledg cease which now
every passage of the Blessed Gospel Enough one would think to enter and force the dullest Soul and wholly possess its thoughts and affections and yet how oft doth it fall as water upon a stone And how easily can our hearers sleep out a Sermon time â— and much because these words of Life do die in the delivery and the Fruit of our Conception is almost Still-born Our peoples Spirits remain congealed while we who are entrusted with the Word that should melt them do suffer it to freez between our Lips We speak indeed of Soul-concerning Truths and set before them Life and Death But it is with such Self-seeking affectation and in such a lazy formal customary strain like the pace the Spaniard rides that the people little think we are in good sadness or that our Hearts do mean as our Tongues do speak I have heard of some Tongues that can lick a coâ—l of fire till it be cold I fear these Tongues are in most of our Mouths and that the Breath that is given us to blow up this fire till it flame in our Peoples Souls is rather used to blow it out Such Preaching is it that hath brought the most to hear Sermons as they say their Creed and Pater Nosters even as a few good words of course How many a cold and mean Sermon that yet contains most precious Truths The things of God which we handle are Divine but our maner of handling too Humane And there 's little or none that ever we touch but we leave the print of our fingers behinde us but if God should speak this Word himself it would be a piercing melting Word indeed How full of comfort are the Gospel Promises yet do we oft so heartlesly declare them that the broken bleeding-hearted Saints are much deprived of their Joyes Christ is indeed a precious Pearl but oft held forth in Leprous hands And thus do we disgrace the Riches of the Gospel when it is the Work of our Calling to make it honorable in the eyes of men and we dim the glory of that Jewel by our dull and low expressions and dunghil conversations whose lustre we do pretend to discover while the hearers judg of it by our expressions and not its proper genuine worth The truth is the best of men do apprehend but little of what God in his Word expresseth and what they do apprehend they are unable to utter Humane language is not so copious as the hearts conceivings are and what we possibly might declare yet through our own unbelief stupidity laziness and other corruptions we usually fail in and what we do declare yet the darkness of our peoples understandings and the sad senslesness of their hearts doth usually shut out and make voyd So that as all the Works of God are perfect in their season as he is perfect so are all the works of man as himself imperfect And those which God performeth by the hand of man will too much savor of the instrument If an Angel from Heaven should preach the Gospel yet could he not deliver it according to its glory muchless we who never saw what they have seen and keep this Treasure in Earthen Vessels The comforts that flow through Sermons through Sacraments through Reading and Company and Conference and Creatures are but half comforts and the Life that comes by these is but a half life in comparison of those which the Almighty shall speak with his own mouth and reach forth to us with his own hand The Christian knows by experience now that his most immediate Joyes are his sweetest Joyes which have least of man and are most directly from the Spirit That 's one reason as I conceive why Christians who are much in secret prayer and in meditation and contemplation rather then they who are more in hearing reading and conference are men of greatest life and joy because they are nearer the Well-head and have all more immediately from God himself And that I conceive the reason also Why we are more undisposed to those secret duties and can easilier bring our hearts to hear and read and confer then to secret Prayer Self-examination and Meditation because in the former is more of man and in these we approach the Lord alone and our Natures draw back from the most spiritual and fruitful Duties Not that we should therefore cast off the other and neglect any Ordinance of God To live above them while we use them is the way of a Christian But so to live above Ordinances as to live without them is to live without the compass of the Gospel Lines and so without the Government of Christ. Let such beware least while they would be higher then Christians they prove in the end lower then men We are not yet come to the time and state where we shall have all from Gods immediate hand As God hath made all Creatures and instituted all Ordinances for us so will he continue our need of all We must yet be contented with Love-tokens from him till we come to receive our All in him We must be thankful if Joseph sustain our lives by relieving us in our Famine with his Provisions till we come to see his own face There 's joy in these remote receivings but the fulness is in his own presence O Christians you will then know the difference betwixt the Creature and Creator and the content that each of them affords We shall then have Light without a Candle and a perpetual day without the Sun For the City hath no need of the Sun neither of the Moon to shine in it for the glory of God doth lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof Revel 21.23 Nay There shall be no night there and they need no candle nor light of the Sun for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for ever and ever Revel 22.5 We shall then have rest without sleep and be kept from cold without our cloathing and need no Fig-leaves to hide our shame For God will be our Rest and Christ our cloathing and shame and sin will cease together We shall then have health without Physick and strength without the use of food for the Lord God will be our strength and the light of his countenance will be health to our souls and marrow to our bones We shall then and never till then have enlightened understandings without Scriptures and be governed without a written Law For the Lord will perfect his Law in our hearts and we shall be all perfectly taught of God his own will shall be our Law and his own face shall be our light for ever Then shall we have joy which we drew not from the promises nor was fetcht us home by Faith or Hope Beholding and possessing will exclude the most of these We shall then have Communion without Sacraments when Christ shall drink with us of the fruit of the Vine new that is Refresh us with the comforting Wine of immediate fruition in the
rule No Government but that of Christ All things are established Jure Divino No bitter Invectives nor voluminous reproaches The Language of Martin is there a stranger and the sound of his eccho is not heard No Recording our Brethrens infirmities nor raking into the sores which Christ died to heal How many Sermons zealously Preached how many Books studiously compiled will then by the Authors be all disclaimed How many back-biting slanderous speeches How many secret dividing contrivances must then be laid on the score of Christ against whom and his Saints they were committed The zealous Authors dare not own them They would then with the Athenians burn their books Acts 19.19 and rather lose their labor then stand to it There 's no ploting to strengthen our party nor deep designing against our Brethren And is it not shame and pity that our course is now so contrary Surely if there be sorrow or shame in Heaven we shall then be both sorry and ashamed to look one another there in the face and to remember all this carriage on earth Even as the Brethren of Joseph were to behold him when they remembred their former unkinde usage Is it not enough that all the world is against us but we must also be against one another Did I ever think to have heard Christians so to reproach and scorn Christians and men professing the fear of God to make so little conscience of censuring vilifying slandering and disgracing one another Could I have believed him that would have told me five years ago that when the scorners of Godliness were subdued and the bitter prosecutors of the Church overthrown that such should succeed them who suffered with us who were our intimate friends with whom we took sweet counsel and went up together to the house of God Did I think it had been in the hearts of men professing such zeal to Religion and the ways of Christ to draw their swords against each other and to seek each others blood so fiercely Alas if the Judgment be once perverted and error have possessed the supream faculty whither will men go and what they will do Nay what will they not do O what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided Conscience It will make a man kill his dearest friend yea father or mother yea the holiest Saint and think he doth God service by it And to facilitate the work it will first blot out the reputation of their holiness and make them take a Saint for a Devil that so they may vilifie or destroy him without remorse O what hellish things are Ignorance and Pride that can bring mens souls to such a case as this Paul knew what he said when he commanded that a Novice should not be a Teacher lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the Condemnation of the Devil 1 Tim 3.6 He discerned that such young Christians that have got but a little smattering knowledg in Religion do lie in greatest danger of this Pride and Condemnation Who but a Paul could have foreseen that among the very Teachers and Governors of so choice a Church as Ephesus that came to see and hear him that pray and weep with him there were some that afterwards should be notorious Sect-masters That of their own selves men should arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them Acts 20.30 VVho then can expect better from any Society now how knowing and holy soever To day they may be Orthodox unanimous and joyned in Love and perhaps within a few weeks be divided and at bitter enmity through their doting about Questions that tend not to edifie VVho that had seen how loving the godly in England did live together when they were hated and scorned of all would have believed that ever they would have been so bitter against one another That when those who derided us for Preaching for Hearing for constant Praying in our Families for singing Psalms for sanctifying the Lords day for repeating Sermons for taking Notes for desiring Discipline c. had their mouthes stopped we should fall upon one another for the very same duties and that Professors of Religion should oppose and deride almost all that worship of God out of Conscience which others did before them through prophaneness Did I not think that of all other the scorning at the worshippers of Christ had been a sure sign of a wicked wretch But I see now we must distinguish between scorners and scorners or else I fear we shall exclude almost all I read indeed in Pagan VVriters That these Christians were as cruel as Bears and Tygers against one another Ammianus Marcellinus gives it as the Reason of Julians policy in proclaiming Liberty for every party to Profess and Preach their own Opinions because he knew the cruel Christians would then most fiercely fall upon one another and so by Liberty of Conscience and by keeping their Children from the Schools of Learning he thought to have rooted out Christianity from the Earth But I had hoped this accusation had come from the malice of the Pagan VVriter Little did I think to have seen it so far verified Lord what Divels are we unsanctified when there is yet such a Nature remaining in the sanctified Such a Nature hath God in these days suffered to discover it self in the very Godly that if he did not graciously and powerfully restrain they would shed the blood of one another and no thanks to us if it be not done But I hope his design is but to humble and shame us by the discovery and then to prevent the breaking forth Object But is it possible such should be truly Godly Then what sin will denominate a man ungodly Answ. Or else I must believe the doctrine of the Saints Apostasie or believe there are scarce any godly in the world O what a wound of dishonor hath this given not onely to the stricter profession of holines but even to the very Christian name Were there a possibility of hiding it I durst not thus mention it O Christian If thou who readest this be guilty I charge thee before the living God That thou sadly consider how far is this unlike thy Copy Suppose thou hadst seen the Lord Jesus girded to the service stooping to the Earth washing his Disciples dirty feet and wiping them and saying to them This I have done to give you an example That if I your Lord and Master have washed your feet you also ought to wash one anothers Would not this make thee ashamed and tremble Shall the Lord wipe the feet and the fellow-servant be ready to cut the throat would not thy proud heart scorn to stoop to thy Masters work Look to thy self it is not the name of a professor nor the zeal for thy opinions that will prove thee a Christian or secure thee from the heat of the consuming fire If thou love not thine enemy much more thy Christian friend thou canst
that there was a fight at York c. to be of God though wicked men were the chief witnesses For I take it for an undeniable Maxime That there is no Truth but of God onely it is derived unto us by various means SECT V. 2. ANd as I have evideently discovered the full certainty of this Testimony of man concerning the forementioned matter of Fact So I will shew you why I chuse this for my first and main Argument and also that no man can believe without the foresaid Humane Testimony First then I demanded with my self By what Argument did Moses and Christ evince to the world the verity of their Doctrine And I finde it was chiefly by this of Miracles and sure Christ knew the best Argument to prove the divine Authority of his Doctrine and that which was the best then is the best still If our selves had lived in the dayes of Christ should we have believed a poor man to have been God the Saviour the Judg of the world without Miracles to prove this to us Nay would it have been our duty to have believed Doth not Christ say If I had not done the Works that no man else could do ye had not had sin That is Your not believing me to be the Messias had been no sin For no man is bound to believe that which was never convincingly revealed And to tell you my thoughts If you will but pardon the novelty of the Interpretation I think that this is it which is called the sin against the Holy Ghost when men will not be convinced by Miracles that Jesus is the Christ. That which some Divines judg to be the sin against the Holy Ghost an opposing the known Truth onely out of malice against it It s a Question whether Humane Nature be capable of it And whether all Humane opposition to Truth be not through ignorance or prevalency of the sensual lusts And so all malice against Truth is onely against it as conceived to be Falshood or else as it appeareth an enemy to our sensual desires Else how doth mans Understanding as it is an Understanding naturally chuse Truth either real or appearing for its object So that I think none can be guilty of malice against Truth as Truth And to be at emnity with Truth for opposing our sensuality is a sin that every man in the world hath been in some measure guilty of And indeed our Divines do so define the sin against the Holy Ghost that I could never yet understand by their definition what it might be some placing it in an Act incompatible with the Rational soul and others making it but gradually to differ from other sins which hath cast so many into terror of soul because they could never finde out that graduall difference The sense of the place which the whole context if you view it deliberately will shew you seems to me to be this As if Christ had said While you believed not the Testimony of the Prophets yet there was hope The Testimony of John Baptist might have convinced you yea when you believed not John yet you might have been convinced by my own Doctrine Yea though you did not believe my Doctrine yet there was hope you might have been convinced by my Miracles But when you accuse them to be the works of Beelzebub and ascribe the work of the Divine Power or Spirit to the Prince of Devils what more hope I will after my Ascention send the Holy Ghost upon my Disciples that they may work Miracles to convince the world that they who will believe no other Testimony may yet through this believe But if you sin against this Holy Ghost that is if they will not believe for all these Miracles for the Scripture frequently calls Faith by the name of Obedience and Unbelief by the name of sin there is no other more convincing Testimony left and so their sin of unbelief is incurable and consequently unpardonable And therefore he that speaketh against the son of Man that is denieth his Testimony of himself it shall be forgiven him if he yet believe by this Testimony of the Spirit but they that continue unbelievers for all this and so reproach the Testimony that should convince them as you do shall never be forgiven because they cannot perform the condition of forgiveness This I think to be the sense of the Text And the rather when I consider what sin it was that these Pharisees committed for sure that which is commonly judged to be the sin against the Holy Ghost I no where finde that Christ doth accuse them of but the Scripture seemeth to speak on the contrary that through ignorance they did it for had they known they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory And indeed it is a thing to me altogether incredible that these Pharisees should know Christ to be the Messiah whom they so desirously expected and to be the Son of God and judg of all men and yet to crucifie him through meer malice charge them not with this till you can shew some Scripture that chargeth them with it Obiect Why then there is no sin against the Holy Ghost now Miracles are ceased Answ. Yes though the Miracles are ceased yet their Testimony doth still live The death and Resurrection of Christ are past and yet men may sin against that death and Resurrection So that I think when men will not believe that Jesus is the Christ though they are convinced by undeniable Arguments of the Miracles which both himself and his disciples wrought this is now the sin against the Holy Ghost And therefore take heed of slighting this argument SECT VI. SEcondly And here I would have those men who cannot endure this resting upon humane Testimony to consider of what necessity it is for the producing of our Faith Something must be taken upon trust from man whether they will or no and yet no uncertainty in our Faith neither First The meer illiterate man must take it upon trust that the book is a Bible which he heares read for els he knows not but it may be some other book Secondly That those words are in it which the Reader pronounceth Thirdly That it is translated truly out of the originall languages Fourthly That the Hebrew and Greek Copies out of which it was translated are true Authentick Copies Fifthly That it was originally written in these languages Sixthly Yea and the meaning of divers Scripture passages which cannot be understood without the knowledg of Jewish customes of Chronologie of Geography c. though the words were never so exactly translated All these with many more the vulgar must take upon the word of their Teachers And indeed a faith meerly humane is a necessary preparative to a faith Divine in respect of some means and Praecognita necessary thereto If a Scholar will not take his masters word that such letters have such or such a power or do spell so or so or
the Gospel or our disobeying it upon the Painfulness or the Slothfulness of our present Endeavors I think it is time for us to bestir our selves and to leave our trifling and complementing with God SECT III. 2. COnsider Our diligence should be somewhat answerable to the Greatness of the work which we have to do as well as to the Ends of it Now the Works of a Christian here are very Many and very Great The Soul must be renewed Many and great Corruptions must be mortified Custom and Temptations and worldly Interests must be conquered Flesh must be mastered Self must be denyed Life and friends and credit and all must be slighted Conscience must be upon good grounds quieted Assurance of Pardon and Salvation must be attained And though it is God that must give us these and that freely without our own merit yet will he not give them so freely as without our earnest Seeking and Labour Besides there is a deal of knowledg to be got for the guiding of our selves for the defending of the Truth for the direction of others and a deal of skill for the right managing of our parts Many Ordinances are to be used and duties performed ordinary and extraordinary Every Age and year and day doth require fresh succession of duty Every place we come in every person that we have to deal with every change of our own Condition doth still require the renewing of our labour and bringeth duty along with it Wives Children Servants Neighbours Friends Enemies all of them call for duty from us And all this of great importance too so that for the most of it if we miscarry in it it would prove our undoing Judg then your selves whether men that have so much business lying upon their hands should not bestir them and whether it be their Wisdom either to Delay or to Loiter SECT IV. 3. COnsider Our diligence should be somewhat quickned because of the shortness and uncertainty of the Time allotted us for the performing of all this work and the many and great impediments which we meet with Yet a few days and we shall be here no more Time passeth on Many hundred diseases are ready to assault us We that now are preaching and hearing and talking and walking must very shortly be carryed on mens backs and laid in the dust and there left to the worms in darkness and corruption we are almost there already It is but a few days or moneths or years and what is that when once they are past We know not whether we shall have another Sermon or Sabbath or hour How then should those men bestir them for their Everlasting Rest who know they have so short a space for so great a work Besides every step in the way hath its difficulties the gate is straight and the way narrow The righteous themselves are scarcely saved Scandals and discouragements will be still cast before us And can all these be overcome by slothful Endeavors SECT V. 4. MOreover Our diligence should be somewhat answerable to the diligence of our Enemies in seeking our destruction For if we sit still while they are plotting and labouring or if we be lazy in our defence while they are diligent in assaulting us you may easily conceive how we are likely to speed How diligent is Satan in all kind of temptations Therefore be sober and vigilant saith 1 Pet. 5.8 because your adversary the Devil as a roaring Lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour Whom resist stedfast in the Faith How diligent are all the Ministers of Satan False Teachers scorners at godliness malicious persecutors all unwearied And our inward Corruption the most busie and diligent of all Whatever we are about it is still resisting us depraving our duties perverting our thoughts dulling our Affections to good exciting them to evil And will a feeble resistance then serve our turn Should not we be more active for our own preservation then our Enemies for our ruine SECT VI. 5. OUr Affections and Endeavors should bear some proportion with the Talents which we have received and means which we have enjoyed It may well be expected that a horseman should go faster then a footman and he that hath a swift horse faster then he that hath a slow one More work will be expected from a sound man then from the sick and from a man at age then from a Child And to whom men commit much from them they will expect the more Now the Talents which we have received are many and great The means which we have enjoyed are very much and very precious What people breathing on earth have had plainer Instructions or more forcible Perswasions or more constant Admonitions in season and out of season Sermons till we have been weary of them and Sabbaths till we prophaned them Excellent Books in such plenty that we knew not which to read but loathing them through abundance have thrown by all What people have had God so near them as we have had or have seen Christ as it were crucified before their eyes as we have done What people have had Heaven and Hell as it were opened unto them as we Scarce a day wherein we have not had some spur to put us on What speed then should such a people make for Heaven And how should they fly that are thus winged and how swiftly should they sail that have wind and tyde to help them Believe it Brethren God looks for more from England then from most Nations in the World and for more from you that enjoy these helps then from the dark untaught Congregations of the Land A small measure of grace beseems not such a people nor will an ordinary diligence in the work of God excuse them SECT VII 6. THe Vigour of our Affections and Actions should be somewhat answerable to the great cost bestowed upon us and to the deep engaging mercies which we have received from God Surely we owe more service to our Master from whom we have our maintenance then we do to a stranger to whom we never were beholden Oh the cost that God hath been at for our sakes The riches of Sea and Land of Heaven and Earth hath he powred out unto us All our lives have been filled up with Mercies We cannot look back upon one hour of it or one passage in it but we may behold Mercy We feed upon Mercy we wear Mercy on our backs we tread upon Mercy Mercy within us common and special Mercy without us for this life and for that to come Oh the rare Deliverances that we have partaked of both national and personal How oft how seasonably how fully have our prayers been heard and our fears removed What large Catalogues of particular Mercies can every Christian draw forth and reherse To offer to number them would be an endless task as to number the stars or the sands of the shore If there be any difference betwixt Hell where we should have been
to do too much Ah if the world were not mad with malice they could never be so blind in this point as they are to think that faithful diligence in serving Christ is folly and singularity and that they who set themselves wholy to seek eternal life are but precise Puritans The time is near when they will easily confess that God could not be loved or served too much and that no man can be too busie to save his Soul For the world you may easily do too much but here in Gods way you cannot SECT XIII 12. IT is the nature of every Grace to put on the Soul to diligence and speed If you Loved God you would make haste and not delay or trifle you would think nothing too much that you could possibly do you would be ambitious to serve him and please him still more Love is quick and impatient it is active and observant If you Loved Christ you would keep his Commandments and not accuse them of too much strictness So also if you had Faith it would quicken and encourage you If you had the Hope of Glory it would as the spring in the watch set all the wheels of your Souls agoing If you had the Fear of God it would rouze you out of your slothfulness If you had Zeal it would inflame you and eat you up God hath put all his Graces in the Soul on purpose to be oyl to the wheels to be life to the dead to mind men of their duty and dispose them to it and to carry them to himself So that in what degree soever thou art sanctified in the same degree thou wilt be serious and laborious in the work of God SECT XIV 13. COnsider They that trifle in the way to Heaven do but lose all their Labour when serious endeavors do obtain their End The Proverb is As good never a whit as never the better If two be running in a race he that runs slowest had as good never have run at all for now he loseth the prize and his labour both Many like Agrippa are but Almost Christians will find in the end they shall be but Almost Saved God hath set the rate at which the Pearl must be bought if you bid a peny less then that rate you had as good bid nothing As a man that is lifting at some weighty thing if he put too almost strength enough but yet not sufficient it is as good he had put too none at all for he doth but lose all his labour Oh how many Professors of Christianity will find this true to their sorrow Who have had a mind to the ways of God and have kept up a dull task of duty and plodded on in a formal liveless profession but never came to serious Christianity How many a duty have they lost for want of doing them throughly and to the purpose Perhaps their place in Hell may be the easier and so their labour is not lost but as to the obtaining of Salvation it is all lost Many shall seek to enter and not be able who if they had striven might have been able Oh therefore put to a little more diligence and strength that all be not in vain that you have done already SECT XV. 14. FUrthermore We have lost a great deal of precious Time already and therefore it is reason that we labor so much the harder If a traveller do sleep or trifle out the most of the day he must travel so much the faster in the Evening or else he is like to fall short of his Journeys end With some of us our child-hood and youth is gone with some also their middle age is past and the time before us is very uncertain and short What a deal of Time have we slept away and talkt away and plaid away What a deal have we spent in worldly thoughts and labours or in meer Idleness Though in likelihood the most of our time is spent yet how little of our work is done And is it not time now to bestir our selves in the evening of our days The time which we have lost can never be recalled Should we not then Redeem it by improving the little which remaineth You may receive indeed an equal recompence with those that have born the burden and heat of the day though you came not in till the last hour but then you must be sure to labour soundly that hour It is enough sure that we have lost so much of our lives let us not now be so foolish as to lose the rest 1 Pet. 4.2 3 4. SECT XVI 15. COnsider The greater are your layings out the greater will be your comings in Though you may seem to lose your labour at the present yet the time cometh when you shall find it with advantage The Seed which is buried and dead will bring forth a plentiful increase at the Harvest Whatever you do and whatever you suffer this Everlasting Rest will pay for all There is no repenting of Labours or Sufferings in Heaven None says Would I had spared my pains and prayed less or been less strict and precise and done as the rest of my neighbors did There is never a such a thought in Heaven as these But on the contrary it will be their Joy to look back upon their labours and tribulations and to consider how the mighty Power of God did bring them through all Who ever complained that he came to Heaven at too dear a Rate or that his Salvation cost him more labour then it was worth We may say of all our labours as Paul of our sufferings Rom. 8.18 For I reckon that the sufferings and labours of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the Glory which shall be revealed in us We labour but for a moment but we shall Rest for ever Who would not put forth all his strength for one hour when he may be a Prince while he lives for that hours work Oh what is the duty and sufferings of a short frail life which is almost at an end as soon as it begins in respect of the endless Joys with God Will not all our tears be then wip'd away and all the sorrow of our duties forgotten But yet the Lord will not forget them for he is not unjust to forget our work and labour of Love Heb. 6.10 SECT XVII 16. COnsider Violence and laborious Striving for Salvation is the way that the Wisdom of God hath directed us to as best and his Soveraign Authority appointed us as necessary Who knows the way to Heaven better then the God of Heaven When men tell us that we are too strict and precise whom do they accuse God or us If we do no more then what we are commanded nor so much neither they may as well say God hath made Laws which are too strict and precise Sure if it were a fault it would lie in him that commands it and not in us
If the Law of the Land did punish every breach of the Sabbath or every omission of family duties or secret duties or every cold and heartless prayer with Death If it were Felony or Treason to be ungodly and negligent in Worship and loose in your lives What manner of persons would you then be and what lives would you lead And is not Eternal death more terrible then temporal 3 Quest. If it were Gods ordinary course to punish every sin with some present Judgment so that every time a man swears or is drunk or speaks a lye or back-biteth his neighbor he should be struck dead or blind or lame in the place If God did punish every cold prayer or neglect of duty with some remarkable plague what manner of persons would you then be If you should suddenly fall down dead like Ananias and Saphira with the sin in your hands or the plague of God should seize upon you as upon the Israelites while their sweet morsels were yet in their mouths If but a Mark should be set in the forehead of every one that neglected a duty or committed a sin What kind of lives would you then lead And is not Eternal Wrath more terrible then all this Give but Reason leave to speak 4 Quest. If one of your old acquaintance and companions in sin should come from the dead and tell you that he suffereth the Torments of Hell for those sins that you are guilty of and for neglecting those duties which you neglect and for living such a careless worldly ungodly life as you now live should therfore advise you to take another course If you should meet such a one in your Chamber when you are going to bed and he should say to you Oh take heed of this carnal unholy life Set your self to seek the Lord with all your might neglect not your Soul Prepare for Eternity that you come not to the place of Torment that I am in How would this take with you and what manner of persons would you afterwards be It is written in the life of Bruno that a Doctor of great note for learning and godliness being dead and being brought to the Church to be buried while they were in their Popish Devotions and came to the words Responde mihi the Corps arose in the Beir and with a terrible voyce cryed out Justo Dei Judicio accusatus sum I am accused at the Just Judgment of God At which voyce the people run all out of Church affrighted On the morrow when they came again to perform the Obsequies at the same words as before the Corps arose again and cryed with a hideous voyce Justo Dei Judicio Judicatus sum I am Judged at the righteous Judgment of God Whereupon the people run away again amazed The third day almost all the City came together and when they came to the same words as before the Corps rose again and cryed with a more doleful voyce then before Justo Dei Judicio Condemnatus sum I am Condemned at the Just Judgment of God The consideration whereof that a man reputed so upright should yet by his own confession be damned caused Bruno and the rest of his companions to enter into that strict order of the Carthusians If the voyce of the dead man could affright them into Superstition should not the warnings of God affright thee into true Devotion 5 Quest. If you knew that this were the last day you had to live in the world how would you spend this day If you were sure when you go to bed that you should never rise again would not your thoughts of another life be more serious that night If you knew when you are praying that you should never pray more would you not be more earnest and importunate in that prayer Or if you knew when you are preaching or hearing or exhorting your sinful acquaintance that this were the last opportunity you should have would you not ply it more closely then usually you do Why you do not know but it may be the last and you are sure your last is near at hand 6 Quest. If you had seen the general dissolution of the world and all the pomp and glory of it consumed to ashes If you saw all on a fire about you sumptuous buildings Cities Kingdoms Land Water Earth Heaven all flaming about your ears If you had seen all that men labored for and sold their Souls for gone friends gone the place of your former abode gone the history ended and all come down what would such a sight as this perswade you to do Why such a sight thou shalt certainly see I put my Question to thee in the words of the Apostle 2 Pet. 3.11 Seeing all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the elements shall melt with fervent heat As if he should say We cannot possibly conceive or express what manner of persons we should be in all holiness and godliness when we do but think of the sudden and certain and terrible dissolution of all things below 7 Quest. What if you had seen the process of the Judgment of the great day If you had seen the Judgment set and the Books opened and the most stand trembling on the left hand of the Judg and Christ himself accusing them of their rebellions and neglects and remembring them of all their former slightings of his grace and at last condemning them to perpetual perdition If you had seen the godly standing on the right hand and Jesus Christ acknowledging their faithful obedience and adjudging them to the possession of the Joy of their Lord What manner of persons would you have been after such a sight as this Why this sight thou shalt one day see as sure as thou livest And why then should not the fore-knowledg of such a day awake thee to thy duty 8 Quest. What if you had once seen Hell open and all the damned there in their easeless Torments and had heard them crying out of their sloathfulness in the day of their visitation and wishing that they had but another life to live and that God would but try them once again One crying out of his neglect of duty and another of his loitering and trifling when he should have been labouring for his life What manner of persons would you have been after such a sight as this What if you had seen Heaven opened as Stephen did and all the Saints there triumphing in Glory and enjoying the End of their labours and sufferings What a life would you lead after such a sight as this Why you will see this with your eyes before it be long 9 Quest. What if you had lien in Hell but one year or one day or hour and there felt all those Torments that now you do but hear of
part he is assured of them How can you doubt whether you love God in the Act of Loving Or whether you believe in the very Act of Believing If therefore you would be assured whether this Sacred Fire be kindled in your hearts blow it up get it into a flâ—me and then you will know Believe till you feel that you do believe and Love till you feel that you love 3. The Action of the Soul upon such excellent Objects doth naturally bring Consolation with it The very Act of Loving God in Christ doth bring unexpressible sweetness with it into the Soul The Soul that is best furnished with Grace when it is not in Action is like a Lute well string'd and tun'd which while it lieth still doth make no more Musick then a common piece of wood but when it is taken up and handled by a skilful Lutist the melody is most delightful Some degree of comfort saith that comfortable Doctor followes every good Action as heat accompanies fire and as beams and influences issue from the Sun which is so true that very heathens upon the discharge of a good Conscience have found comfort and peace answerable This is Praemium ante Praemium a Reward before the Reward As a man therefore that is cold should not stand still and say I am so cold that I have no minde to Labour but labour till â—is coldness be gone and heat excited So he that wants assurance of the truth of his graces and the comfort of Assurance must not stand still and say I am so doubtful and uncomfortable that I have no minde to duty but ply his duty and exercise his Graces till he finde his Doubts and Discomforts to vanish SECT XIX 10. LAstly another ordinary Nurse of Doubtings and Discomfort is The prevailing of Melancholly in the body whereby the brain is continually troubled and darkened the Fancy hindered and Reason perverted by the distempering of its instruments and the Soul is still clad in mourning weeds It is no more wonder for a Consciencious man that is overcome with Melancholly to doubt and fear and despair then it is for a sick man to groan or a child to cry when he is beater This is the case with most that I have known lie long in doubting and distress of Spirit With some their Melancholly being raised by Crosses or distemper of body or some other occasion doth afterwards bring in trouble of Conscience as its companion With others trouble of mind is their first trouble which long hanging on them at last doth bring the body also into a Melancholly habit And then trouble increaseth Melancholly and Melancholly again increaseth trouble and so round This is a most sad and pitiful state For as the disease of the body is chronical and obstinate and physick doth seldom succeed where it hath far prevailed so without the Physician the labours of the Divine are usually in vain You may silence them but you cannot comâ—fort them You may make them confess that they have some Grace and yet cannot bring them to the comfortable Conclusiâ—ons Or if you convince them of some work of the Spirit upon their souls and a little at present abate their sadness yet as soon as they are gone home and look again upon their souls through this perturbing humour all your convincing Arguments are forgotten and they are as far from comfort as ever they were All the good thoughts of their estate which you can possibly help them to are seldom above a day or two old As a man that looks through a black or blew or red glass doth think things which he sees to be of the same colour and if you would perswade him to the contrary he will not believe you but wonder that you should offer to perswade him against his eye-sight So a Melancholly man sees all things in a sad and fearful plight because his Reason looketh on them through this black humour with which his brain is darkened and distempered And as a mans eyes which can see all things about them yet cannot see any imperfection in themselves so is it almost impossible to make many of these men to know that they are Melancholly But as those who are troubled with the Ephialtes do cry out of some body that lyeth heavy upon them when the disease is in their own blood and humors so these poor men cry out of sin and the wrath of God when the main cause is in this bodily distemper The chief part of the cure of these men must be upon the body because there is the chief part of the disease And thus I have shewed you the chief causes why so many Christians do injoy so little Assurance and Consolation CHAP. VIII Containing an Exhortation and Motives to Examine SECT I. HAving thus discoverd the Impediments to Examination I would presently proceed to direct you to the performance of it but that I am yeâ— jealous whether I have fully prevailed with you wills and whether you are indeed Resolved to set upon the Duty I have found by long experience as well as from Scripture That the main difficulty lieth in bringing men to be willing and to set themselves in good earnest to the searching of their hearts Many love to hear and read of Marks and signs by which they may Try but few will be brought to spend an hour in using them when they have them They think they should have their Doubts resolved as soon as they do but hear a minister name some of these Signes and if that would do the work then Assurance would be more common But when they are informed that the work lies most upon their own hands and what pains it must cost them to search their hearts faithfully then they give up and will go no further This is not only the case of the ungodly who commonly perish through this neglect but multitudes of the godly themselves are like Idle Beggars who will rather make a practice of begging and bewailing their misery then they will set themselves to labour painfully for their relief So do many spend days and years in sad complaints and doubtings that will not be brought to spend a few hours in Examination I intreat all these persons what condition soever they are of to consider the weight of these following Arguments which I have propounded in hope to perswade them to this duty SECT II. 1. TO be deceived about your Title to Heaven is exceeding easie and not to be deceived is exceeding difficult This I make manifest to you thus 1. Multitudes that never suspected any falshood in their hearts have yet proved unsound in the day of Tryal and they that never feared any danger toward them have perished for ever Yea many that have been confident of their integrity and safety I shall adjoyn the proofes of what I say in the Margin for brevity sake How many poor souls are now in Hell that little thought of comming
Damnation is in Question and to be determined every mistake is insufferable and inexcusable which might have been prevented by any cost or pains Therefore men will chuse the most able Lawyers and Physicians because the mistakes of one may lose them their Estates and the mistakes of the other may lose them their lives But mistakes about their Souls are of a higher nature 5. If you should continue your mistakes till death there will be no time after to correct them for your recovery Mistake now and you are undone for ever Men think to see a man dye quietly or comfortably is to see him dye happily But if his comfort proceed from this mistake of his condition it is the most unhappy case and pittiful sight in the world To live mistaken in such a case is lamentable but to dye mistaken is desperate Seeing then that the case is so dangerous what wise man would not follow the search of his heart both night and day till he were assured of his safety SECT V. 4. COnsider how small the labour of this duty is in comparison of the sorrow which followeth its neglect A few hours or days work if it be closely followed and with good direction may do much to resolve the Question There is no such trouble in searching our hearts nor any such danger as may deter men from it what harm can it do to you to Try or to know It will take up no very long time Or if it did yet you have your time given you for that end One hour so spent will comfort you more then many otherwise If you cannot have while to make sure of heaven how can you have while to eat or drink or live You can endure to follow your callings at Plow and Cart and Shop to toil and sweat from day to day and year to year in the hardest labours And cannot you endure to spend a little time in inquiring what shall be your everlasting state What a deal of sorrow and after-complaining might this small labour prevent How many miles travel besides the vexation may a Traveller save by inquiring of the way Why what a sad case are you in while you live in such uncertainty You can have no true comfort in any thing you see or hear or possess You are not sure to be an hour out of Hell And if you come thither you will do nothing but bewail the folly of this neglect No excuse will then pervert Justice or quiet your Conscience If you say I little thought of this day and place God and Conscience may reply why did'st thou not think of it Wast thou not warned Had'st thou not time Therefore must thou perish because thou wouldest not think of it As the Commander answered his Souldier in Plutarch when he said non volens erravi I erred against my will he beat him and replied non volens poenas dato Thou shalt be punished also against thy will SECT VI. 5. THou canst scarce do Satan a greater pleasure nor thy self a greater injury It is the main scope of the Devil in all his Temptations to deceive thee and keep the ignorant of thy danger till thou feel the everlasting flames upon thy soul And wilt thou joyn with him to deceive thy self If it were not by this deceiving thee he could not destroy thee And if thou do this for him thou dost the greatest part of his work and art the chief destroyer and Devil to thy self And hath he deserved so well of thee and thy self so ill that thou shouldst assist him in such a design as thy damnation To deceive another is a grievous sin and such as perhaps thou wouldst scorn to be charged with And yet thou thinkest it nothing to deceive thy self Saith Solomon As a mad man who casteth fire-brands arrows and death So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour and saith Am not I in sport Surely then he that maketh but a sport or a matter of nothing to deceive his own soul may well be thought a mad man casting fire-brands and death at himself If any man think himself to be something when he is nothing he deceiveth himself saith Paul Gal. 6.3 Certainly among all the multitudes that perish this is the commonest cause of their undoing that they would not be brought to Try their state in time And is it not pity to think that so many thousands are merrily travelling to destruction and do not know it and all for want of this diligent search SECT VII 6. THE time is neer when God will search you And that will be another kind of Tryal then this If it be but in this life by the fiery tryal of affliction it will make you wish again and again that you had spared God that work and your selves the sorrow and that you had Tryed and Judged your selves that so you might have escaped the Tryal and Judgment of God He will Examine you then as officers do offenders with a word and a blow and as they would have done by Paul Examine him by scourging It was a terrible voyce to Adam when God calls to him Adam where art thou hast thou eaten c and to Cain when God asketh him Where is thy brother To have demanded this of himself had been easier Men think God mindeth their state and ways no more then they do their own They consider not in their hearts saith the Lord Hos. 7.2 that I remember all their wickedness now their own doings have beset them about they are before my face Oh what a happy preparation would it be to that last and great Tryal if men had but throughly Tryed themselves and made sure work before-hand When a man doth but soberly and believing think of that day especially when he shall see the Judgment set what a Joyful preparation is it if he can truly say I know the sentence shall pass on my side I have Examined my self by the same Law of Christ which now must Judg me and I have â—ound that I am quit from all my guilt and am a Justified person in Law already Oh Sirs if you knew but the comfort of such a preparation you would fall close to the work of Self-Examining yet before you slept SECT VIII 7. LAstly I desire thee to Consider What would be the sweet effects of this Examining If thou be upright and Godly it will lead thee straight toward Assurance of Gods Love If thou be not though it will trouble thee at the present yet doth it tend to thy happiness and will lead thee to Assurance of that happiness at length 1. The very Knowledg it self is naturally desireable Every man would fain know things to come especially concerning themselves If there were a book written which would tell every man his destiny what shall befall him to his last breath how desirous would people be to procure it and read it How did Nebuchadnezzars thoughts run on things that after should come
rich 14. Consider also the happy consequences of this work where it is faithfully done To name some 1. You may be instrumental in that blessed work of saving souls a work that Christ came down and died for a work that the Angels of God rejoyce in for saith the holy Ghost If any of you do erre from the truth and one convert him let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins Jam. 5 19 20. And how can God more highly honor you then to make you instruments in so great a work 2. Such souls will bless you here and hereafter They may be angry with you at first but if your words prevail and succeed they will bless the day that ever they knew you and bless God that sent you to speak to them 3. If you succeed God will have much glory by it He will have one more to value and accept of his Son on whom Christs bloud hath attained its ends He will have one more to love him and daily worship and fear him and to do him service in his Church 4. The Church also will have gain by it There will be one less provoker of wrath and one more to strive with God against Sin and Judgment and to engage against the Sinners of the Times and to win others by Doctrine and Example If thou couldest but convert one persecuting Saul he might become a Paul and do the Church more service then ever thou didst thy self however the healing of Sinners is the surest method for preventing or removing of Judgments 5. It is the way also to the purity and flourishing of the Church and to the right erecting and executing the Discipline of Christ if men would but do what they ought with their neighbours in private what a help would it be to the success of the Publike endeavors of the Ministry and what hope might we have that daily some would be added to the Church and if any be obstinate yet this is the first course that must be taken to reclaim them who dare separate from them or excommunicate them before they have been first throughly admonished and instructed in private according to Christs Rule Matth. 18.15 16. 6. It bringeth much advantage to your selves First It will increase your graces both as it is a course that God will bless and as it is an acting of them in this perswading of others He that will not let you lose a cup of water which is given for him will not let you lose these greater works of Charity Besides those that have practised this duty most conscionably do finde by experience that they never go on more speedily and prosperously towards heaven then when they do most to help others thither with them It is not here as with worldly treasure the more you give away the less you have but here the more you give the more you have The setting forth Christ in his fulness to others will warm your own hearts and stir up your love The opening of the evil and danger of sin to others will increase your hatred of it and much engage your selves against it Secondly And it seemeth that it will increase your Glory as well as your Grace both as a duty which God will so reward For those that convert many to Righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever Dan. 12.3 and also as we shall there behold them in heaven and be their associates in blessedness whom God made us here the instruments to convert Thirdly However it will give us much peace of Conscience whether we succeed or not to think that we vvere faithful and did our best to save them and that vve are clear from the bloud of all men and their perishing shall not lye upon us Fourthly Besides that is a vvork that if it succeed doth exceedingly rejoyce an honest heart He that hath any sense of Gods Honor or the least affection to the soul of his brother must needs rejoyce much at his conversion vvhosoever be the Instrument but especially vvhen God maketh our selves the means of so blessed a vvork If God make us the Instuments of any temporal good it is very comfortable but much more of eternal good There is naturally a rejoycing followeth every good work answerable to the degree of its goodness â—e that doth most good hath usually the most happy and comfortable life If men knew the pleasure that there is in doing good they vvould not seek after their pleasure so much in evil for my own part it is an unspeakable comfort to me that God hath made me an instrument for the recovering of so many from bodily diseases and saving their natural lives but all this is yet nothing to the comfort I have in the success of my labors in the conversion and confirmation of souls it is so great a joy to me that it drowneth the painfulness of my daily duties and the trouble of my daily languishing and bodily griefs and maketh all these with all oppositions and difficulties in my work to be easie and as nothing and of all the personal mercies that ever I received next to his love in Christ and to my soul I must most joyfully bless him for the plenteous success of my endeavors upon others O what fruits then might I have seen if I had been more faithful and plied the work in private and publike as I ought I know we have need to be very jealous of our deceitful hearts in this point lest our rejoycing should come from our pride and self-ascribing Naturally we would every man be in the place of God and have the praise of every good work ascribed to our selves but yet to imitate our Father in goodness and mercy and to rejoyce in that degree we attain to is the part of every childe of God I tell you therefore to perswade you from my own experience that if you did but know what a joyful thing it is to be an instrument for the converting and saving of souls you would set upon it presently and follow it night and day through the greatest discouragements and resistance Fifthly I might also tell you of the honorableness of this work but I will pass by that lest I excite your pride instead of your zeal And thus I have shewed you what should move and perswade you to this duty Let me now conclude with a word of Intreaty First to all the godly in general Secondly To some above others in particular to set upon the conscionable performance of this most excellent Work CHAP. XII An advice to some more specially to help others to this Rest prest largely on Ministers and Parents SECT I. UP then every man that hath a tongue and is a Servant of Christ and do something of this your Masters Work Why hath he given you a tongue but to speak in his Service And how can you serve
him more eminently then in the saving of Souls He that will pronounce you blessed at the last day and sentence you to the Kingdom prepared for you because you fed him and clothed him and visited him c. in his Members will sure pronounce you blessed for so great a work as is the bringing over of souls to his Kingdom and helping to drive the match betwixt them and him He that saith The poor you have always with you hath left the ungodly always with you that you might still have matter to exercise your Charity upon O if you have the hearts of Christians 〈◊〉 or of men in you let them yearn towards your poor ignorant ungodly neighbors Alas there is but a step betwixt them and death and hell many hundred diseases are waiting ready to seise on them and if they dye unregenerate they are lost for ever Have you hearts of Rock that cannot pitty men in such a case as this If you believe not the Word of God and the danger of Sinners why are you Christians your selves If you do believe it why do you not bestir you to the helping of others Do you not care who is damned so you be saved If so you have as much cause to pitty your selves for it is a frame of spirit utterly inconsistent with Grace should you not rather say as the Leapers of Samaria Is it not a day of glad tidings and do we sit still and hold your peace Hath God had so much mercy on you and will you have no mercy on your poor neighbours You need not go far to finde objects for your pitty Look but into your streets or into the next house to you and you will probably finde some Have you never an ignorant unregenerate neighbor that sets his heart below and neglecteth Eternity O what blessed place do you live in where there there is none such If there be not some of them in thine own Family it is well and yet art thou silent Dost thou live close by them or meet them in the streets or labor with them or travel with them or sit and talk with them and say nothing to them of their souls or the life to come If their houses were on fire thou wouldest run and help them and wilt thou not help them when their souls are almost at the fire of Hell If thou knewest but a Remedy for their Diseases thou wouldest tell it them or else thou wouldest judge thy self guilty of their death Cardan speaks of one that had a Receipt that would suddenly and certainly dissolve the stone in the Bladder and he concludes of him that he makes no doubt but that man is in hell because he never revealed it to any before he dyed What shall we say then of them that know of the remedy for curing souls and do not reveal it nor perswade men to make use of it Is it not Hypocrisie to pray daily for their Conversion and Salvation and never once endeavor to procure it And is it not Hypocrisie to pray That Gods Name may be Hallowed and never to endeavor to bring men to Hallow it nor hinder them from prophaning it And can you pray Let thy Kingdom come and yet never labor for the coming or increase of that Kingdom Is it no grief to your hearts to see the Kingdom of Satan so to flourish and to see him lead captive such a multitude of souls You take on you that you are Souldiers in Christs Army and will you do nothing against his prevailing enemies You pray also daily That his Will may be done and should you not daily then perswade men to do it and disswade them from sinning against it You pray That God would forgive them their sins and that he would not lead them into Temptation but deliver them from evil And yet will you not help them against Temptations nor help to deliver them from the greatest evil nor help them to Repent and Believe that they may be forgiven Alas that your Prayers and your Practice should so much disagree Look about you therefore Christians with an eye of compassion on the ignorant ungodly sinners about you be not like the Priest or Levite that saw the man wounded and passed by God did not so pass by you when it was your own case Are not the souls of your neighbors faln into the hands of Satan Doth not their misery cry out unto you Help help As you have any compassion towards men in the greatest misery Help As you have the hearts of men and not of Tygers in you Help Alas how forward are Hypocrites in their Sacrifice and how backward to shew mercy How much in Praying and duties of worship and how little in plain Reproof and Exhortation and other duties of compassion And yet God hath told them That he will have mercy and not sacrifice that is mercy before sacrifice And how forward are these Hypocrites to censure Ministers for neglecting their duties yea to expect more duty from one Minister then ten can perform and yet they make no conscience of neglecting their own Nay how forward are they to separate from those about them and how censorious against those that admit them to the Lords Supper or that joyn with them and yet will they not be brought to deale with them in Christs way for their recovery As if other men were to work and they only to sit by and Judge Because they know it is a work of trouble and will many times set men against them therefore no perswasion will bring them to it They are like men that see their neighbors sick of the plague or drowning in the water or taken captive by the enemy and they dare not venture to relieve him themselves but none so forward to put on others So are these men the greatest expecters of duty and the lest performers SECT II. BUt as this duty lyeth upon all in general so upon some more especially according as God hath called or qualified them thereto To them therefore more particularly I will address my exhortation Whether they be such as have more opportunity and advantages for this work or such as have better abilities to perform it or such as have both And these are of severall sorts 1. All you that God hath given more learning and knowledg to and endued with better parts for utterance then your neighbors God expecteth his duty especially at your hand The strong are made to help the weak and those that see must direct the blind God looketh for this faithfull improvement of your parts and gifts which if you neglect it were better for you that you never had received them for they will but further your condemnation and be as useless to your own Salvation as they were to others SECT III. 2. ALl those that have special familiarity with some ungodly men and that have interest in them God looks for this duty at their hands Christ himself did eat and
indeed if we were truly reasonable in spiritual things as we are in common it would be a real wonder that men should need so much perswasion to so sweet and plain a duty but I know the emplyment is high the heart is earthly and will still draw back the temptations and hinderances will be many and great and therefore I fear before we have done and laid open more fully the nature of the Duty that you will confess all these perswasions little enough The Lord grant they prove not so too little as to fail of success and leave you as they finde you Say not we are unable to set our own hearts on heaven this must be the work of God onely and therefore all your Exhortation is in vain for I tell you though God be the chief disposer of your hearts yet next under him you have the greatest command of them your selves and a great power in the ordering of your own thoughts and for determining your own wills in their choice though without Christ you can do nothing yet under him you may do much and must do much or else it will be undone and you undone through your neglect Do your own parts and you have no cause to distrust whether Christ will do his Do not your own consciences tell you when your thoughts fly abroad that you might do more then you do to restrain them and when your hearts lye flat and neglect Eternity and seldom minde the Joys before you that most of this neglect is wilful If you be to study a set Speech you can force your thoughts to the intended Subject if a Minister be to study a Sermon he can force his thoughts to the most saving Truths and that without any speciall grace might not a true Christian ther minde more the things of the life to come if he did not neglect to exerciâ—e that authority over his own thoughts which God hath given him especially in such a work as this where he may more confidently expect the assistance of Christ who useth not to forsake his people in the work he sets them on If a carnal Minister can make it his work to study about Christ and heaven through all his life time and all because it is the trade he lives by and knows not how to subsist without it why then me thinks a spiritual Christian should study as constantly the Joys of heaven because it is the very business he lives for and that the place he must be in for ever If the Cook can finde in his heart to labor and sweat about your meat because it is the trade that maintains him though perhaps he taste it not himself Me thinks then you for whom it is prepared should willingly bestow that daily pains to taste its sweetness and feed upon it and if it were about your bodily food you would think it no great pains neither a good stomack takes it for no great labor to eat and drink of the best till it be satisfied nor needs it any great invitation thereto Christians if your souls were sound and right they would perceive incomparably more delight and sweetness in Knowing Thinking Believing Loving and Rejoycing in your future Blessedness in the fruition of God then the soundest stomack findes in its food or the strongest senses in the enjoyment of their objects so little painful would this work be to you and so little should I need to press you to it it s no great pains to you to think of a friend or any thing else that you dearly love and as little would it be to think of Glory if your love and delight were truly there if you do but see some Jewel or Treasure you need not long exhortations to stir up your desires the very sight of it is motive enough if you see the fire when you are cold or see a house in a stormy day or see a safe harbor from the tempestuous seas you need not be told what use to make of it the sight doth presently direct your thoughts you think you look you long till you do obtain it Why should it not be so in the present case Sirs one would think to shew you this Crown and Glory of the Saints should be motive enough to make you desire it to shew you that Harbor where you may be safe from all dangers should soon teach you what use to make of it and should bend your daily studies towards it but because I know while we have flâ—sh about us and any remnants of that carnal minde which is enmity to God and to this noble work that all motives are little enough And because my own and others sad experiences tell me how hardly the best are drawn to a constancy and faithfulness in this duty I vvill here lay down some moving Considerations vvhich if you vvill but vouchsafe to ponder throughly and deliberately vveigh vvith an impartial judgment I doubt not but they vvill prove effectuall vvith your hearts and make you resolve upon this excellent duty I pray you friends let them not fall to the ground but take them up and try them and if you finde they concern you make much of them and obey them accordingly SECT III. 1. COnsider a heart set upon heaven will be one of the most unquestionable evidences of thy sincerity and a clear discovery of a true work of saving grace upon thy soul. You are much in enquiring after Marks of sincerity and I blame you not its dangerous mistaking when a mans salvation lies upon it You are oft asking How shall I know that I am truly sanctified Why here is a mark that will not deceive you if you can truly say that you are possessed of it Even a heart set upon Heaven Would you have a sign infallâ—ble not from me or from the mouth of any man but from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself which all the enemies of the use of Marks can lay no exception against Why here is such a one Mat. 6.21 Where your treasure is there will your hearts be also Know once assuredly where your heart is and you may easily know that your treasure is there God is the Saints Treasure and happiness Heaven is the place where they must fully enjoy him A heart therefore set upon heaven is no more but a heart set upon God desiring after this full enjoyment And surely a heart set upon God through Christ is the truest evidence of saving grace External actions are easiest discovered but those of the heart are the surest evidences When thy learning will be no good proof of thy grace when thy knowledg thy duties and thy gifts will fail thee when Arguments from thy tongue and thy hand may be confuted yet then will this Argument from the bent of thy heart prove thee sincere Take a poor Christian that can scarce speak true English about Religion that hath a weak understanding a failing memory a stammering tongue yet his heart is set on God
he hath chosen him for his Portion his thoughts are on Eternity his desires there his dwelling there he cryes out O that I were there he takes that day for a time of imprisonment wherein he hath not taken one refreshing view of Eternity I had rather dye in this mans condition and have my soul in his souls case then in the case of him that hath the most eminent gifts and is most admired for parts and dutie whose heart is not thus taken up with God The man that Christ will finde out at the last day and condemn for want of a wedding Garment will be he that wants this frame of heart The question will not then be How much you have known or professed or talked but How much have you loved and where was your heart Why then Christians as you would have a sure testimony of the love of God and a sure proof of your title to Glory labor to get your hearts above God will acknowledg that you really love him and take you for faithful friends indeed when he sees your hearts are set upon him Get but your hearts once truly in Heaven and without all question your selves will follow If sin and Satan keep not thence your affections they will never be able to keep away your persons SECT IIII. 2. COnsider A heart in Heaven is the highest excellency of your spirits here and the noblest part of your Christian disposition As there is not only a difference between men and beasts but also among men between the Noble and the Base so there is not only a common excellency whereby a Christian differs from the world but also a peculiar nobleness of spirit whereby the more excellent differ from the rest And this lyes especially in a higher and more heavenly frame of spirit Only man of all inferior creatures is made with a face directed heaven-ward but other creatures have their faces to the earth As the Noblest of Creatures so the Noblest of Christians are they that are set most direct for Heaven As Saul is called a choice and goodly man higher by the head then all the company so is he the most choice and goodly Christian whose head and heart is thus the highest Men of noble birth and spirits do mind high and great affairs and not the smaller things of low poverty Their discourse is of the councels and matters of State of the Government of the Common-wealth and publike things and not of the Countrey-mans petty imployments O to hear such an heavenly Saint who hath fetcht a journey into heaven by faith and hath been wrapt up to God in his contemplations and is newly come down from the veiws of Christ what discoveries he will make of those Superior regions What ravishing expressions drop from his lips How high and sacred is his discourse Enough to make the ignorant world astonished and say Much study hath made them mad And enough to convince an understanding hearer that have seen the Lord and to make one say No man could speak such words as these except he had been with God this This is the noble Christian. As Bucholcers hearers concluded when he had preached his last Sermon being carried between two into the Church because of his weakness and there most admirably discoursed of the Blessedness of souls departed this life Caeteros concio naetores a Bucholcero semper omnes illo autem die etiam ipsum a sese superatum That Bucholcer did ever excel other preachers but that day he excelled himself so may I conclude of the heavenly Christian He ever excelleth the Rest of men but when he is neerest Heaven he excelleth himself As those are the most famous mountains that are highest and those the fairest trees that are talest and those the most glorious Pyramides and buildings whose tops do reach neerest to Heaven so is he the choisest Christian whose heart is most frequently and most delightfully there If a man have lived neer the King or have travelled to see the Sultan of Persia or the great Turk he will make this a matter of boasting and thinks himself one step higher then his private neighbors that live at home What shall we then judg of him that daily travels as far as Heaven and there hath seen the King of Kings That hath frequent admittance into the Divine presence and feasteth his soul upon the tree of life For my part I value this man before the ablest the richest the most learned in the world SECT V. 3. COnsider A heavenly minde is a joyful minde This is the neerest and the truest way to live a life of comfort And without this you must needs be uncomfortable Can a man be at the fire and not be warm or in the Sun-shine and not have light Can your heart be in Heaven and not have comfort The countreys of Norway Island and all the Northward are cold and frozen because they are farther from the power of the Sun But in Egypt Arabia and the Southern parts it is far otherwise where they live more neer its powerful rayes What could make such frozen uncomfortable Christians but living so far as they do from heaven And what makes some few others so warm in comforts but their living higher then others do and their frequent access so neer to God When the Sun in the Spring draws neer our part of the earth how do all things congratulate its approach The earth looks green casteth off her mourning habit the trees shoot forth the plants revive the pretty birds how sweetly sing they the face of all things smile upon us and all the creatures below reioyce Beloved friends if we would but try this life with God and would but keep these hearts above what a Spring of joy would be within us and all our graces be fresh and green How would the face of our souls be changed and all that is within us rejoyce How should we forget our winter sorrows and withdraw our souls from our sad retirements How early should we rise as those birds in the spring to sing the praise of our Great Creator O Christian get above Believe it that Region is warmer then this below Those that have been there have found it so and those that have come thence have told us so And I doubt not but that thou hast sometime tryed it thy self I dare appeal to thy own experience or to the experience of any soul that knows what the true Joys of a Christian are When is it that you have largest comforts Is it not after such an exercise as this when thou hast got up thy heart and converst with God and talkt with the inhabitants of the higher world and veiwed the mansions of the Saints and Angels and filled thy soul with the forethoughts of Glory If thou know by experience what this practice is I dare say thou knowest what spiritual Joy is David professeth that the light of Gods countenance would make his
the knowledg of whom They esteemed it sweet to live but to die far more sweet And I cannot tell whether this very thing will not prove more glorious to Bucholcer before God then if he had consecrated to the memory of posterity many Myriads of contentious writings And as the study of controversies is not the most pleasant nor the most profitable so much less the publike handling of them For do it with the greatest meekness and ingenuity yet shall we meet with such unreasonable men as the said Bucholcer did Qui arrepta ex aliquibus voculis calumniandi materia haereseos insimulare traducere optimum virum non erubescerent Frustra obtestante ipso dextrè data dextrè acciperent i. e. Who taking occasion of reproach from some small words were not ashamed to traduce the good man and accuse him of Heresie while he in vain obtested with them that they should take in good part what was delivered with a good intention Siracides saith in Ecclesiasticus Chapter 26. That a scolding woman shall be sought oâ—t for to drive away the enemies but experience of all ages tells us to our sorrow That the wrangling Divine is their chiefest in let and no such Scarcrow to them at all So then its clear to me That there is nothing worth our minding but Heaven and the way to Heaven All the Question will be about the affairs of Church and State Is not this worth our minding to see what things will come to and how God will conclude our differences Answ. So far as they are considered as the providences of God and as they tend to the setling of the Gospel and Government of Christ and so to the saving of our own and our posterities souls they are well worth our diligent observation but these are onely their relations to eternity Otherwise I should look up on all the stirs and commotions in the world but as the busie gading of a heap of Ants or the swarming of a nest of Wasps or Bees The spurn of a mans foot destroyes all their labor or as an Enterlude or Tragedy of a few hours long They first quarrel and then fight and let out one anothers blood and bring themselves more speedily and violently to their graves which however they could not long have delayed and so come down and the Play is ended And the next generation succeeds them in their madness and make the like bustle in the world for a time and so they also come down and lie in the dust Like the Roman Gladiatores that would kill one another by the hundreds to make the beholders a solemn shew or as the young men of Joab and Abner that must play before them by stabbing one another to the heart and fall down and dye and there is an end of the sport And is this worth a wise mans observance Surely our very bodies themselves for which we make all this ado in the world are very silly pieces Look upon them not as they are set out in a borrowed bravery but as they lie rotting in a ditch or a grave and you will say they are silly things indeed Why then sure all our dealings in the world our buyings and sellings and eating and drinking our building and marrying our wealth and honors our peace and our war so far as they relate not to the life to come but tend onely to the support and pleasing of this silly flesh must needs themselves be silly things and not worthy the frequent thoughts of a Christian For the Means as such is meaner then their end And now doth not thy Conscience say as I say That there is nothing but Heaven and the way to it that is worth thy minding SECT XV. THus I have given thee these twelve Arguments to consider of and if it may be to perswade thee to a heavenly minde I now desire thee to view them over read them deliberately and read them again and then tell me Are they Reason or are they not Reader stop here while thou answerest my Question Are these Considerations weighty or not are these Arguments convincing or not Have I proved it thy duty and of flat necessity to keep thy heart on things above or have I not Say Yea or Nay man If thou say Nay I am confident thou contradictest thine own Conscience and speakest against the light that is in thee and thy Reason tells thee thou speakest falsly If thou say Yea and acknowledg thy self convinced of the duty bear witness then that I have thine own confession That very tongue of thine shall condemn thee and that confession be pleaded against thee if thou now go home and cast this off and wilfully neglect such a confessed duty and these twelve Considerations shall be as a Jury to convict thee which I propounded hoping they might be effectual to perswade thee I have not yet fully laid open to you the nature and particular way of that duty which I am all this while perswading you to that is the next thing to be done All that I have said hitherto is but to make you willing to perform it I know the whole work of mans salvation doth stick most at his own will If we could once get over this block well I see not what could stand before us Be soundly willing and the work is more then half done I have now a few plain Directions to give you for to help you in doing this great work but alas it s in vain to mention them except you be willing to put them in practice What sayeth thou Reader Art thou willing or art thou not wilt thou obey if I shew thee the way of thy Duty However I will set them down and tender them to thee and the Lord perswade thy heart to the Work CHAP. IV. Containing some Hinderances of a Heavenly Life SECT I. THe first task that I must here set thee consists in the avoiding of some dangerous hinderances which otherwise will keep thee off from this work as they have done many a thousand souls before thee If I shew thee briefly where the Rocks and Gulf do lie I hope thou wilt beware If I stick up a mark at every quicksand I hope I need to say no more to put thee by it Therefore as thou valuest the comforts of a Heavenly conversation I here charge thee from God to beware most carefully of these impediments 1. The first is The living in a known unmortified sin Observe this O what havock this will make in thy soul O the joyes that this hath destroyed The blessed Communion with God that this hath interrupted The ruines it hath made amongst mens graces The soul-strengthning duties that this hath hindred And above all others it is especially an enemy to this great duty Christian Reader I desire thee in the fear of God stay here a little and search thy heart Art thou one that hast used violence with thy conscience Art thou a wilful neglecter of
thou risest off thy knees when thou openest thy Bible or other Books let it be with this hope to meet with some passage of Divine truth and some such blessing of the Spirit with it as may raise thine affections neerer Heaven and give thee a fuller taste thereof when thou art setting thy foot out at thy door to go to the publike Ordinance and Worship say I hope to meet with somewhat from God that may raise my affections before I returne I hope the Spirit will give me the meeting and sweeten my heart with those celestial delights I hope that Christ will appear to me in that way and shine about me with light from heaven and let me hear his instructing and reviving voyce and causa the scales to fall from mine eyes that I may see more of that glory then I ever yet saw I hope before I return to my house my Lord will take my heart in hand and bring it within the view of Rest and set it before his Fathers presence that I may return as the Shepherds from the heavenly Vision glorifying and praising God for all the things that I have heard and seen Luke 2.20 and say as those that behold his Miracles We have seen strange things to day Luke 5.26 Remember also to pray for thy Teacher that God would put some Divine Message into his mouth which may leave a heavenly relish on thy spirit If these were our ends and this our course when we set to duty we should not be so strange as we are to heaven When the Indian first saw the use of Letters by our English they thought there was sure some spirit in them that men could so converse together by a paper If Christians would take this course in their duties they might come to such holy fellowship with God and see so much of the Mysteries of the Kingdom that it would make the standers by admire what is in those Lines what is in that Sermon what is in this praying that fils his heart so full of joy and that so transports him above himself Certainly God would not fail us in our duties if we did not fail our selves and then experience would make them sweeter to us SECT VI. 6. ANother help is this Make an advantage of every object thou seest and of every passage of Divine providence and of every thing that befals in thy labor and calling to minde thy soul of its approaching Rest. As all providences and creatures are means to our Rest so do they point us to that as their end Every creature hath the name of God and of our final Rest written upon it which a considerate believer may as truly discern as he can read upon a post or hand in a cross way the name of the Town or City which it points to This spiritual use of creatures and providences is Gods great End in bestowing them on man And he that overlooks this End must needs rob God of his chiefest praise and deny him the greatest part of his thanks The Relation that our present mercies have to our great Eternal mercies is the very quintessence and spirits of all these mercies Therefore do they loose the very spirits of their mercies and take nothing but the huskes and bran who do overlook this Relation and draw not forth the sweetness of it in their contemplations Gods sweetest dealings with us at the present would not be half so sweet as they are if they did not intimate some further sweetness As our selves have a fleshly and a spiritual substance so have our mercies a fleshly and spiritual use and are fitted to the nourishing of both our parts He that receives the carnal part and no more may have his body comforted by them but not his soul. It is not all one to receive six pence meerly as six pence and to receive it in earnest of a thousand pound though the sum be the same yet I trow the relation makes a wide difference Thou takest but the bear earnest and overlookest the maine sum when thou receivest thy mercies and forgettest thy crown O therefore that Christians were skilled in this Art You can open your Bibles and read there of God and of Glory O learn to open the creatures and to open the several passages of providence and to read of God and Glory there Certainly by such a skilful industrious improvement we might have a fuller tast of Christ and Heaven in every bit of bread that we eat and in every draught of Beer that we drink then most men have in the use of the Sacrament If thou prosper in the world and thy labor succeed let it make thee more sensible of thy perpetual prosperity If thou be weary of thy labors let it make thy thoughts of Rest more sweet If things go cross hard with thee in the world let it make thee the more earnestly desire that day when all thy sorrows and sufferings shall cease Is thy body refreshed with food or sleep Remember thy unconceivable refreshings with Christ. Dost thou hear any news that makes the glad Remember what glad tydings it will be to hear the sound of the trump of God and the absolving sentence of Christ our Judg. Art thou delighting thy self in the society of the Saints Remember the Everlasting amiable fraternity thou shalt have with perfected Saints in Rest. Is God communicating himself to thy spirit Why remember that time of thy highest advancement when thy Joy shall be full as thy communion is full Dost thou hear the raging noise of the wicked and the disorders of the vulgar and the confusions in the world like the noise in a crowd or the roaring of the waters Why think of the blessed agreement in Heaven and the melodious harmony in that Quire of God Dost thou hear or feel the tempest of wars or see any cloud of blood arising Remember the day when thou shalt be housed with Christ where there is nothing but calmness and amiable union and where we shall solace our selves in perfect Peace under the wings of the Prince of Peace for ever Thus you may see what advantages to a Heavenly Life every condition and creature doth afford us if we had but hearts to apprehend and improve them As it s said of the Turkes that they 'l make bridges of the dead bodyes of their men to passe over the trenches or ditches in their way So might Christians of the very ruines and calamities of the times and of every dead body or misery that they see make a bridge for the passage of their thoughts to their Rest. And as they have taught their Pigeons which they call carriers in divers places to bear letters of entercourse from friend to friend at a very great distance so might a wise industrious Christian get his thoughts carried into Heaven and receive as it were returns from thence again by creatures of slower wing then Doves by the assistance of the Spirit the Dove of God
This is the right Daedalian flight and thus we may take from each bird a feather and make us wings and fly to Christ. SECT VII 7. ANother singular help is this Be much in that Angelical work of Praise As the most heavenly Spirits will have the most heavenly imployment so the more heavenly the imployment the more will it make the Spirit heavenly Though the heart be the Fountain of all our actions and the actions will be usually of the quality of the heart yet do those actions by a kinde of reflexion work much on the heart from whence they spring The like also may be said of our speeches So that the work of praising God being the most heavenly work is likely to raise us to the most heavenly temper This is the work of those Saints and Angels and this will be our own everlasting work if we were more taken up in this imployment now we should be liker to what we shall be then When Aristotle was asked what he thought of Musick he answers Jovem neque canere neque citharam pulsare That Jupiter did neither sing nor play on the Harp thinking it an unprofitable art to men which was no more delightful to God But Christians may better argue from the like ground that singing of praise is a most profitable duty because it is so delightful as it were to God himself that he hath made it his peoples Eternal work for they shall sing the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb. As Desire and Faith and Hope are of shorter continuance then Love and Joy so also Preaching and Prayer and Sacraments and all means for confirmation and expression of Faith and Hope shall cease when our Thanks and Praise and triumphant expressions of Love and Joy shall abide for ever The liveliest embleme of Heaven that I know upon Earth is When the people of God in the deep sense of his excellency and bounty from hearts abounding with Love and Joy do joyn together both in heart and voice in the cheerful and melodious singing of his praises Those that deny the lawful use of singing the Scripture Psalms in our times do disclose their unheavenly unexperienced hearts I think as well as their ignorant understandings Had they felt the heavenly delights that many of their Brethren in such duties have felt I think they would have been of another minde And whereas they are wont to question whether such delights be genuine or any better then carnal or delusive Surely the very rellish of Christ and Heaven that is in them the example of the Saints in Scripture whose spirits have been raised by the same duty and the command of Scripture for the use of this means one would think should quickly decide the controversie And a man may as truly say of these delights as they use to say of the testimony of the Spirit That they witness-themselves to be of God and bring the evidence of their heavenly parentage along with them And whereas they allow onely extemporate Psalms immediately dictated to them by the Spirit When I am convinced that the gift of extemporate singing is so common to the Church that any man who is spiritually merry can use it Jam. 5.13 And when I am convinced that the use of Scripture Psalms is abolished or prohibited then I shall more regard their judgment Certainly as large as mine acquaintance hath been with men of this Spirit I never yet heard any one of them sing a Psalm ex tempore that was better then Davids yea or that was tolerable to a judicious hearer and not rather a shame to himself and his opinion But sweet experience will be a powerful Argument and will teach the sincere Christian to hold fast his exercise of this soul-raising duty Little do we know how we wrong our selves by shutting out of our prayers the praises of God or allowing them so narrow a room as we usually do while we are copious enough in our Confessions and Petitions Reader I entreat thee remember this Let praises have a larger room in thy duties Keep ready at hand matter to feed thy praise as well as matter for Confession and Petition To this end study the excellencies and goodness of the Lord as frequently as thy own necessities and vileness study the mercies which thou hast received and which are promised both their own proper worth and their aggravating circumstances as often as thou studiest the sins thou hast committed O let Gods praise be much in your mouths for in the mouths of the upright his praise is comely Psal. 33.1 Seven times a day did David praise him Psal. 119.164 Yea his praise was continually of him Psal. 71.6 As he that offereth praise glorifieth God Psal. 50.23 So doth he most rejoyce and glad his own soul. Psal. 98.4 Offer therefore the sacrifice of praise continually Heb. 13.15 In the midst of the Church let us sing his praise Heb. 2.12 Praise our God for he is good sing praises unto his Name for it is pleasant Psal. 135.3 and 147.1 Yea let us rejoyce and triumph in his praise Psal. 106.47 Do you think that David had not a most heavenly Spirit who was so much imployed in this heavenly work Doth it not sometime very much raise your hearts when you do but seriously read that divine Song of Moses Deut. 32. And those heavenly iterated praises of David having almost nothing sometime but praise in his mouth How much more would it raise and refresh us to be skilled and accustomed in the work our selves I confess to a man of a languishing body where the heart doth faint and the spirits are feeble the cheerful praising of God is more difficult because the body is the souls instrument and when it lies unstringed or untuned the musick is likely to be accordingly but dull Yet a spiritual cheerfulness there may be within and the heart may praise if not the voice But where the body is strong the spirits lively the heart cheerful and the voice at command what advantage have such for this heavenly work with what alacrity and vivacity may they sing forth praises O the madness of healthful youth that lay out this vigor of body and minde upon vain delights and fleshly lusts which is so fit for the noblest work of man And O the sinful folly of many of the Saints who drench their spirits in continual sadness and wast their days in complaints and groans and fill their bodies with wasting diseases and so make themselves both in body and minde unfit for this sweet and heavenly work That when they should joyn with the people of God in his praises and delight their souls in singing to his Name they are questioning their worthiness and studying their miseries or raising scruples about the lawfulness of the duty and so rob God of his praise and themselves of their solace But the greatest destroyer of our comfort in this duty is our sticking in the carnal
therefore the best digestion is there While Truth is but a speculation swimming in the Brain the Soul hath not half received it nor taken fast hold of it Christ and Heaven hath various Excellencies and therefore God hath formed the soul with a power of divers wayes of apprehending that so we might be capable of enjoying those divers Excellencies in Christ even as the creatures having their severall uses God hath given us several senses that so we might enjoy the delights of them all What the better had we been for the pleasant oderiferous flowers and perfumes if we had not possessed the sense of Smelling or what good would Language or Musick have done us if God had not given us the sense of hearing or what delight should we have found in meats or drinks or sweetest things if we had been deprived of the sense of tasting Why so what good could all the glory of Heaven have done us or what pleasure should we have had even in the goodness and perfection of God himself if we had been without the affections of Love and Joy whereby we are capable of being delighted in that Goodness so also what benefit of strength or sweetness canst thou possible receive by thy Meditations on Eternity while thou dost not exercise those Affections which are the senses of the soul by which it must receive this sweetness and strength This is it that hath deceived Christians in this business They have thought that Meditation is nothing but the bare thinking on Truths and the rolling of them in the Understanding and Memory when every School-Boy can do this or persons that hate the things which they think on Therefore this is the great task in hand and this is the work that I would set thee on to get these Truths from thy head to thy heart and that all the Sermons which thou hast heard of Heaven and all the notions that thou hast conceived of this Rest may be turned into the blood and spirits of Affection and thou maist feel them revive thee and warm thee at the heart and maist so think of heaven as heaven should be thought on There are two accesses of Contemplation saith Bernard one in Intellection the other in Affection one in Light the other in Heat one in Acquisition the other in Devotion If thou shouldst study of nothing but Heaven while thou livest and shouldst have thy thoughts at command to turn them hither on every occasion and yet shouldst proceed no further then this this were not the Meditation that I intend nor would it much advantage or better thy soul as it is thy whole soul that must possess God hereafter so must the whole in a lower measure possess him here I have shewed you in the beginning of this Treatise how the soul must enjoy the Lord in Glory to wit by knowing by loving and joying in him why the very same way must thou begin thy enjoyment here So much as thy Understanding and Affections are sincerely acted upon God so much dost thou enjoy him And this is the happy Work of this Meditation So that you see here is somewhat more to be done then barely to remember and think of Heaven as Running and Ringing and Moving and such like labors do not onely stir a hand or a foot but do strain and exercise the whole body so doth Meditation the whole soul. As the Affections of Sinners are set on the world and turned to Idols and faln from God as well as the Understanding so must the Affections of men be reduced to God and taken up with him as well as the Understanding and as the whole was filled with sin before so the whole must be filled with God now as St. Paul saith of Knowledg and Gifts and Faith to remove mountains that if thou have all these without Love Thou art but as sounding Brass or as a tinkling Cymbal so I may say of the exercise of these If in this work of Meditation thou do exercise Knowledg and Gifts and Faith of Miracles and not exercise Love and Joy thou dost nothing thou playest the childe and not the man the Sinners part and not the Saints for so will Sinners do also If thy Meditation tends to fill thy Note-Book with notions and good sayings concerning God and not thy heart with longings after him and delight in him for ought I know thy Book is as much a Christian as thou Mark but Davids description of the blessed man Psal. 1.3 His delight is in the Law of the Lord and therein doth he meditate day and night SECT VI. 4. I Call this Meditation Set and Solemn to difference it from that which is Occasional and Cursory As there is Prayer which is solemn when we set our selves wholly to the duty and Prayer which is sudden and short commonly called Ejaculations when a man in the midst of other business doth send up some brief request to God so also there is Meditation solemn when we apply our selves onely to that work and there is Meditation which is short and cursory when in the midst of our business we have some good thoughts of God in our mindes And as solemn Prayer is either First See when a Christian observing it as a standing duty doth resolvedly practise it in a constant course or secondly Occasional when some unusual occasion doth put us upon it at a season extraordinary so also Meditation admits of the like distinction Now though I would perswade you to that Meditation which is mixt with your common labors in your callings and to that which special occasions do direct you to yet these are not the main thing which I here intend But that you would make it a constant standing duty as you do by Hearing and Praying and Reading the Scripture and that you would solemnly set your selves about it and make it for that time your whole work and intermix other matters no more with it then you would do with prayer or other duties Thus you see as it is differenced by its act what kinde of Meditation it is that we speak of viz. It is the set and solemn acting of all the powers of the Soul SECT VII THe second part of the Difference is drawn from its object which is Rest or the most blessed estate of man in his everlasting enjoyment of God in Heaven Meditation hath a large field to walk in and hath as many objects to work upon as there are matters and lines and words in the Scripture as there are known Creatures in the whole Creation and as there are particular discernable passages of Providence in the Government of the persons and actions through the world But the Meditation that I now direct you in is onely of the end of all these and of these as they refer to that end It is not a walk from Mountains to Valleys from Sea to Land from Kingdom to Kingdom from Planet to Planet But it is a walk from Mountains
and Valleys to the Holy Mount Zion from Sea and Land to the Land of the Living from the Kingdoms of this world to the Kingdom of Saints from Earth to Heaven from Time to Eternity It is a walking upon Sun and Moon and Stars it is a walk in the Garden and Paradise of God It may seem far off but spirits are quick whether in the body or out of the body their motion is swift They are not so heavy or dull as these earthly lumps nor so slow of motion as these clods of flesh I would not have you cast off your other Meditations but surely as Heaven hath the preheminence in perfection so should it have the preheminence also in our Meditation That which will make us most happy when we possess it will make us most joyful when we meditate upon it especially when that Meditation is a degree of Possession if it be such affecting Meditation as I here describe You need not here be troubled with the fears of the world lest studying so much on these high matters should craze your brains and make you mad unless you will go mad with delight and joy and that of the purest and most solid kinde If I set you to meditate as much on Sin and Wrath and to study nothing but Judgment and Damnation then you might justly fear such an issue But its Heaven and not Hell that I would perswade you to walk in its Joy and not Sorrow that I perswade you to exercise I would urge you to look upon no deformed object but onely upon the ravishing glory of Saints and the unspeakable excellencies of the God of glory and the beams that stream from the face of his Son Are these such sadding and madding thoughts will it distract a man to think of his onely happiness will it distract the miserable to think of mercy or the captive and prisoner to fore-sâ—â— deliverance or the poor to think of riches and honor approaching Neither do I perswade your thoughts to matters of great difficulty or to study thorny and knotty controversies of Heaven or to search out things beyond your reach If you should thus set your wit and invention upon the Tenters you might be quickly distracted or distempered indeed But it is your Affections more then your wits and inventions that must be used in this heavenly employment we speak of They are Truths which are commonly known and professed which your souls must draw forth and feed upon The Resurrection of the body and the Life everlasting are Articles of your Creed and not nicer controversies Me thinks it should be liker to make a man mad to think of living in a world of wo to think of abiding in poverty and sickness among the rage of wicked men then to think of living with Christ in bliss Me thinks if we be not mad already it should sooner distract us to hear the Tempests and roaring Waves to see the Billows and Rocks and Sands and Gulfs then to think of arriving safe at Rest. But Wisdom is justified of all her children Knowledg hath no enemy but the ignorant This heavenly course was never spoke against by any but those that never either knew it or used it I more fear the neglect of men that do approve it then the opposition or Arguments of any against it Truth looseth more by loose friends then by sharpest enemies CHAP. VII Concerning the fittest time and place for this contemplation and the preparation of the heart unto it SECT I. THus I have opened to you the nature of this duty and by this time I suppose you paâ—tly apprehend what it is that I so press upon you which when it is opened more particularly you will more fully discern I now proceed to direct you in the work where I shall first shew you how you must set upon it and secondly how you must behave your self in it and thirdly how you shall shut it up And here I suppose thee to be a man that dost conscionably avoyd the forementioned hinderances and conscionably use the forementioned helps or else it is in vain to set thee a higher lesson till thou hast first learned that Which if thou have done I then further advise thee First Somewhat concerning the time and season secondly somewhat concerning the place and thirdly somewhat concerning the frame of thy Spirit And first for the time I advise thee that as much as may be it may be set and constant Proportion out such a part of thy time to the work Stick not at their scruple who question the stating of times as superstitious If thou suit out thy time to the advantage of the work and place no more Religion in the time it self thou needest not to fear lest this be superstition As a workman in his shop will have a set place for every one of his Tools and Wares or else when he should use it it may be to seek So a Christian should have a set time for every ordinary duty or else when he should practise it it s ten to one but he will be put by it Stated time is a hedg to duty and defends it against many temptations to omission God hath stated none but the Lords day himself but he hath left it to be stated and determined by our selves according to every mans condition and occasions least otherwise his Law should have been a burden or a snare Yet hath he left us general rules which by the use of Reason and Christian Prudence may help us to determine of the fittest times It s as ridiculous a question of them that ask us Where Scripture commands us to pray so oft or at such hours privately or in families as if they askt Where the Scripture commands that the Church-House or Temple stand in such a place or the Pulpit in such a place or my seat in such a place or where it commands a man to read the Scriptures with a pair of Spectacles c. Most that I have known to break this bond of duty and to argue against a stated time have at last grown careless of the duty it self and shewed more dislike against the work then the time If God give me so much money or wealth and tell me not in Scripture how much such a poor man must have nor how much my family nor how much in cloaths and how much in expences is it not lawful yea and necessary that I make the division my self and allow to each the due proportion So if God do bestow on me a day or a week of time and give me such and such work to do in this time and tell me not how much I shal allot to each work Certainly I must make the division my self and cut my coat according to my cloth and proportion it wisely and carefully too or else I am like to leave something undone Though God hath not told you at what hour you shall rise in the morning or what hours you shall eat
and drink yet your own Reason and experience will tell you that ordinarily you should observe a stated time Neither let the fear of customariness and formality deter you from this That Argument hath brought the Lords Supper from once a week to once a quarter or once a yeer and it hath brought family-duties with too many of late from twice a day to once a week or once a moneth and if it were not that man being proud is naturally of a Teaching humor and addicted to works of popularity and ostentation I beleeve it would diminish Preaching as much And will it deal any better with secret duties especially this of Holy Meditation I advise thee therefore if well thou maist to allow this duty a stated time and be as constant in it as in Hearing and Praying Yet be cautious in understanding this I know this will not prove every mans duty some have not themselves and their time at command and therefore cannot set their hours such are most servants and many children of poor or carnal parents and many are so poor that the necessity of their Families wil deny them this freedom I do not think it the duty of such to leave their labors for this work at certain set times no nor for Prayer or other necessary worship No such duty is at all times a duty Affirmatives specially Positives binde not semper ad semper When two duties come together and cannot both be performed it were then a sin to perform the lesser Of two duties we must chuse the greater though of two sins we must chuse neither I think such persons were best to be watchful to redeem time as much as they can and take their vacant opportunities as they fall and especially to joyn Meditation and Prayer as much as they can with the very labors of their callings There is no such enmity between laboring and meditating or praying in the Spirit but that both may conveniently be done together Yet I say as Paul in another case if thou canst be free use it rather Those that have more time a spare from worldly necessaries and are Masters to dispose of themselves and their time I still advise That they keep this duty to a stated time And indeed it were no ill husbandry nor point of folly if we did so by all other duties If we considered of the ordinary works of the day and â—â—ited out a fit season and proportion of time to every work and fixed this in our memory and resolution or wrote it in a Table and kept in our Closets and never brake it but upon unexpected or extraordinary cause If every work of the day had thus its appointed time we should be better skilled both in redeeming time and performing duty SECT II. 2. I Advise thee also concerning thy time for this duty That as it be stated so it be frequent Just how oft it should be I cannot determine because mens several conditions may vary it But in general that it be frequent the Scripture requireth when it mentioneth meditating continually and day and night Circumstances of our condition may much vary the circumstances of our duties It may be one mans duty to hear or pray oftner then anothers and so it may be in this Meditation But for those that can conveniently omit other business I advise That it be once a day at least Though Scripture tell us not how oft in a day we should eat or drink yet prudence and experience will direct us to twice or thrice a day according to the temper and necessities of our bodies Those that think they should not tie themselves to order or number of duties but should then onely meditate or pray when they finde the Spirit provoking them to it do go upon uncertain and unchristian grounds I am sure the Scripture provokes us to frequency and our necessity secondeth the voice of Scripture and if through my own neglect or resistance of the Spirit I do not finde it so to excite and quicken me I dare not therefore disobey the Scripture nor neglect the necessities of my own soul I should suspect that Spirit which would turn my soul from constancy in duty if the Spirit in Scripture bid me meditate or pray I dare not forbear it because I finde not the Spirit within me to second the command if I finde not incitation to duty before yet I may finde assistance while I wait in performance I am afraid of laying my corruptions upon the Spirit or blaming the want of the Spirits assistance when I should blame the backwardness of my own heart nor dare I make one corruption a plea for another nor urge the inward rebellion of my Nature as a Reason for the outward disobedience of my life And for the healing of my natures backwardness I more expect that the Spirit of Christ should do it in a way of duty which I still finde to be his ordinary season of working then in a way of disobedience and neglect of duty Men that fall on duty according to the frame of their spirits onely are like our ignorant vulgar or if you will like the Swine who think their appetite should be the onely rule of their eating When a wise man judgeth both of quantitie and qualitie by Reason and Experience least when his appetite is depraved he should either surfet or famish Our Appetite is no sure rule for our times of duty but the Word of God in general and our Spiritual Reason Experience Necessitie and convenience in particular may truly direct us Three Reasons especially should perswade thee to frequency in this Meditation on Heaven 1. Because seldom conversing with him will breed a strangeness betwixt thy soul and God Frequent society breeds familiarity and familiarity increaseth love and delight and maketh us bold and confident in our addresses This is the main end of this duty that thou maist have acquaintance and fellowship with God therein Therefore if thou come but seldom to it thou wilt keep thy self a stranger still and so miss of the end of the work O when a man feels his need of God and must seek his help in a time of necessity when nothing else can do him any good you would little think what an encouragement it is to go to a God that we know and are acquainted with O saith the heavenly Christian I know both whither I go and to whom I have gone this way many a time before now It is the same God that I daily conversed with it is the same way that was my daily walk God knows me well enough and I have some knowledg of him On the other side What a horror and discouragement to the soul it will be when it is forced to flie to God in streights to think Alas I know not whither to go I never went the way before I have no acquaintance at the Court of Heaven My soul knows not that God that I must speak to and
Glory VVhy think then with thy self If this grain of Mustard seed be so precious what is the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise of God If a spark of life which will but strive against corruptions and flame out a few desires and groans be so much worth how glorious then is the Fountain and End of this life If we be said to be like God and to bear his Image and to be holy as he is holy when alas we are pressed down with a body of sin Sure we shall then be much liker God when we are perfectly holy and without blemish and have no such thing as sin within us Is the desire after Heaven so precious a thing what then is the thing it self which is desired Is the love so excellent what then is the beloved Is our joy in foreseeing and believing so sweet what will be the joy in the full possessing O the delight that a Christian hath in the lively exercise of some of these affections VVhat good do's it to his very heart when he can feelingly say He loves his Lord what sweetness is there in the very act of loving yea even those troubling Passions of Sorrow and Fear are yet delightful when they are rightly exercised How glad is a poor Christian when he feeleth his heart begin to melt and when the thoughts of sinful unkindness will dissolve it Even this Sorrow doth yield him matter of Joy O what will it then be when we shall do nothing but know God and love and rejoyce and praise and all this in the highest perfection what a comfort is it to my doubting soul when I have a little assurance of the sincerity of my graces when upon examination I can but trace the Spirit in his sanctifying works How much more will it comfort me to finde that this Spirit hath safely conducted me and left me in the arms of Jesus Christ what a change was it that the Spirit made upon my soul when he first turned me from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God To be taken from that horrid state of nature wherein my self and my actions were loathsom to God and the sentence of death was past upon me and the Almighty took me for his utter enemy and to be presently numbred among his Saints and called his Friend his Servant his Son and the sentence revoked which was gone forth O what a change was this To be taken from that state wherein I was born and had lived delightfully so many yeers and was rivetted in it by custom and engagements when thousands of sins did lie upon my score and if I had so died I had been damned for ever and to be justified from all these enormous crimes and freed from all these fearful plagues and put into the title of an Heir of Heaven O what an astonishing change was this Why then consider how much greater will that glorious change then be Beyond expressing beyond conceiving How oft when I have thought of this change in my Regeneration have I cryed out O blessed day and blessed be the Lord that I ever saw it why how then shall I cry out in Heaven O blessed Eternity and blessed be the Lord that brought me to it Was the mercy of my conversion so exceeding great that the Angels of God did rejoyce to see it Sure then the mercy of my salvation will be so great that the same Angels will congratulate my felicity This Grace is but a spark that is raked up in the ashes it is covered with flesh from the sight of the world and covered with corruption sometime from mine-own sight But my Everlasting glory will not so be clouded nor my light be under a bushel but upon a hill even upon Sion the Mount of God SECT XIIII 12. LAstly compare the joyes which thou shalt have above with those foretastes of it which the Spirit hath given thee here Judg of the Lyon by the Paw and of the Ocean of Joy by that drop which thou hast tasted Thou hast here thy strongest refreshing comforts but as that man in Hell would have had the water to cool him a little upon the tip of the finger for thy tongue to taste yet by this little thou maist conjecture at the quality of the whole Hath not God sometime revealed himself extraordinarily to thy soul and let a drop of glory fall upon it Hast thou not been ready to say O that it might be thus with my soul continually and that I might always feel what I feel sometimes Didst thou never cry out with the Martyr after thy long and doleful expectations He is come he is come Didst thou never in a lively Sermon of Heaven nor in thy retired contemplations on that blessed State perceive thy drooping spirits revive and thy dejected heart to lift up the head and the light of Heaven to break forth to thy soul as a morning Star or as the dawning of the day Didst thou never perceive thy heart in these duties to be as the childe that Elisha revived to wax warm within thee and to recover life VVhy think with thy self then what is this earnest to the full Inheritance Alas all this light that so amazeth and rejoyceth me is but a Candle lighted from Heaven to lead me thither through this world of darkness If the light of a Star in the night be such or the little glimmering at the break of the day what then is the light of the Sun at noontide If some godly men that we read of have been overwhelmed with joy till they have cryed out Hold Lord stay thy hand I can bear no more like weak eyes that cannot endure too great a light O what will then be my joyes in Heaven when as the object of my joy shall be the most glorious God so my soul shall be made capable of seeing and enjoying him and though the light be ten thousand times greater then the Suns yet my eyes shall be able for ever to behold it Or if thou be one that hast not felt yet these sweet foretastes for every beleever hath not felt them then make use of the former delights which thou hast felt that thou maist the better discern what hereafter thou shalt feel And thus I have done with the fifth part of this Directory and shewed you on what grounds to advance your Meditations and how to get them to quicken your affections by comparing the unseen delights of Heaven with those smaller which you have seen and felt in the flesh CHAP. XII How to manage and watch over the Heart through the whole Work SECT 1. SIxthly The sixt and last part of this Directory is To guide you in the managing of your hearts through this work and to shew you wherein you have need to be exceeding watchful I have shewed before what must be done with your hearts in your preparations to the work and in your setting upon it I shall now shew