Christian can I spare all these tedious troublesom employments these complements these applauses this sumptuous provision and retinue and all this stir that they make in the world How easily can I spare their Titles and Obeysances When I look up at them as on the pinacâ—e of a steeple I bless my self that I am below them on saâ—er ground I have more leisure to converse with God in my solitude then they have in a crowd Rejoyce that you neither need nor desire such a sâ—ate but find Christ enough for you in a lower condition and nothing without him enough in the highest That you are above these empty childish honours when those that possess them may be enslaved under them That you have the dignity of a Son of God a Member of Christ and an Heir of Heaven and have an heart that can contentedly let other men take the dignities of the earth It s more to have the world and the Kingdoms and glory of it under your feet by the Spiritual advancement of your souls then to be the Monarch of the world 2. Have you abundance of earthly Riches and provision for your flesh So that you want nothing but have the world at will Glory not in it as the least part of your felicity This will not keep your souls in your bodies nor take away their guilt nor open to you the gates of heaven You may want a drop of water in Hell for all your riches on earth If you scape that danger no thanks to your riches If ever you get to heaven you must be beholden to Christ to save you from your riches And when all 's done you will have a harder journey and a greater load to burden you then others and will be saved with very much ado Glory not then in these but rather glory that you have a taste of higher and sweeter things which take off your minds and make you look on these as chips To have an heart that cares not for wealth or honours but can rejoyce in poverty and daily reproaches is a thousand times greater mercy then to have all the wealth and honour of the world 3. Have you convenient habitations for buildings and rooms and walks and lands and neighbourhood Glory not in them as any of your felicity They are baits to tice your hearts from God But rather rejoyce that you have a building not made with hands eternall in the heavens and that you can be contented till you come thither with any thing in the way and make shift with inconveniences for a little while Heaven wants no furniture nor hath any encumbrances nor inconveniences If a winding sheet and Coffin be room enough when we are dead we can endure sure to be somewhat straitened while we are alive seeing we are dead to the world while we live in it O what is the most sumptuous Palace to the meanest room in our Fathers house The green and flourishing earth in Summer covered with the more glorious spangled Firmament is a goodly structure but far short of that which the poorest Saint shall have with God 4. Have you comelyness of body have you beauty or strength Glory not in it It is but warm well coloured earth The pox or other sickness can quickly turn your beauty to deformity If age do not wrinkle it death will dissolve it The comelyest and strongest body will shortly be as homely and loathsom a thing as the dirt in the streets and as the carry on in a ditch The stoutest youth and the neatest dâ—mes must come to this there 's no remedy And is such a body a thing to be Gloried in No but glory rather in your assurance of a Resurrection when your mortalâ— bodies shall put on immortality and your corruptible incorruption and and death shall be swallowed up in victory and when you shall shine as Stars in the Firmament of your Father and be subject to heat and cold hunger and thirst and weariness no more And that in the meanâ—time you can tame this flesh and use it as a servant and instead of caring for its inordinate provision can lay out your care for a more during substance 5. Have you comely apparel for the adorning of your bodies Glory not in it This is so childish that it s below a man and therefore so sinâ—ull as to be unbeseeming a Christian The emptyest person may have the best attire It is not your out-side that shews your worth The Philosopher asks the Question Why women are more addicted to look after neat attire then men and he answereth Because nature is conscious of their want of inward worth it seeks to make it up with somewhat that is borrowed It may make a man suspect that somewhat is amiss within when there needs all this ado without They are not alway the best horses that have the neatest trappings A fool may be as bravely drest as a wise man and few but fools and children do admire you or think you ever the better but many an one will envy you and many take you to be the worse A graceless soul will be but sorrily covered with neat attire And whatever you hang without we all know that there 's dung and filth within Pauls shop hath comlyer Ornaments then these 1 Tim. 2. 9. Let women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefastness and sobriety not with broidered hair or gold or pearls or costly array but which becometh women professing godliness with good works learning in silence with all subjection Glory in the whole rayment of the Saints even the righteousness of Christ lest when you go naked out of the world as you come naked in your souls should be found naked before an holy jealous God 6. Have you health of body and feel no sickness Glory not in it It will last you but a while Your oyl will be spent ere long and your candle will go out You must know what pains and death are as well as others A little cold or heat or a thousand accidents may quickly change the case with you Many that were young and lusty go to their graves when some that were more likely to have gone before them are left behind But first or last we must all away Rather glory in a healthfull frame of soul that Christ hath cured you of your worldliness and pride of your self-seeking and passion and fleshly lusts For this will be a more durable health then the other 7. Have you Nobility of birth are you descended of worshipfull or honourable Ancestors Glory not in it We are all made of one common earth There is as good blood in the veins of a beggar as of a Lord. This is but a remnant of your Ancestors honour Perhaps the favour of some great men might bestow it on them at first without desert Or it might be the Consequent of a little riches though ill got However the merit descendeth not to you and therefore its little honour that comes
not yet gasping under the pangs of death nor laid in the dust as still as stones You see their beauty and glittering attire but you see not the pale and ghastly face that death will give them nor the skulls that are stript of all those ornaments you smell their perfumes but you smell not their putrefaction you see their lands and spacious houses and sumptuous furniture but you see not how narrow a room will serve them in the grave nor how little there they differ from the most contemptible of men Nay more you see them with Ahab going forth to battle and leaving the Prophets with the bread and water of affliction but you see them not yet returning with the mortal blow you see them in their honours and abundance but see them not on Christs left hand in judgement you see them cloathed richly and faâ—ing deliciously every day but you see them not in bell torments wishing in vain for a drop of water to abate their flames you hear them honoured and hear their words of pride and ostentation but you hear them not yet crying out of their folly and bewailing their loss of present time and lamenting in vain the unhappy choice that now they make Sirs believe it future things are as sure as present These things are no fables because they are not visible yet You see not God and yet he is the Principal Intelligible object you see not your own Intellectual souls and yet you know you have them by the Intellection of other things You see not your own eye-sight and yet you know that an eye-sight you have by the seeing of other things If there were not an Invisible God there would have been no visible creatures Visibles are more vile and are for I visibles that are more noble Our visible Bodies are for our Invisible Souls This visible life is the womb of everlasting life that is Invisible we are hatched by the Spirit in this shell till we are ready to pass forth into that glorious light that here we see not I beseech you Gentlemen awake and be not so lamentably deceived as to think that your honourable Pleasant Dreams are the only Realities O no! it is the last awaking hour that will shew you the now unconceivable Realities You are now but as in jest in your pomp and pleasure but you shall then be in good sadness in your pains and loss if Sanctifying Grace do not prevent it by putting you out of your feasting vein and making you in good sadness to be men of Real Faith and Holiness and lay about you for the Real Ioies Believe it Sirs the life of Christianity is not a bare Opinion It is a living by faith upon a life invisible and so serious resolving a Belief of the Truth of the everlasting blessedness as purchased and given bâ— Iesus Christ to persevering Saints as effectually turneth the affections and endeavours of the man to the Loving and seeking it above all this world It s one thing to take God and heaven for your portion as Believers do and another thing to be desirous of it as a reservè when you can keep the world no longer It s one thing to submit to Heaven as a Lesser evil then hell and another thing to desire it as a greater Good then earth It s one thing to lay up your Treasure and Hopes in heaven and to seek it first and another thing to be contented with it in your Necessity and to seek the world before it and give God that the flesh can spare Thus differeth the Religion of serious Christians and of Carnal worldly hypocrites But I shall break off my Admonition and end with some Advice Direct 1. Look upon this world and all things in it with the fore-seeing eye of Faith and Reason and vallue it but as it deserves And then you will neither be eager after it nor too much delighted in it nor puft up by it nor will it so prevalently entice you to venture or neglect eternal things Did you know and well consider but what an empty fading thing it is you could never be satisfied with so poor a portion nor quiet your souls till you had assurance or sound hopes of better things Nor would you take such pleasure in childish trifles nor debase your selves to be so inordinately imployed about such low and sordid matters while God and your eternal happiness are laid by You take not your selves for the basest of men much less for bruits or ideots O then do not make your selves the basest and do not unman your selves and brutifie your immortal souls A heathen could say Nemo alius est Deo dignus nisi qui opes contempsit If you would be Rich choose that which will make you Rich indeed make sure of his favour that is the absolute Lord of all and then you can want nothing whatever you may be without And if yet you thirst for worldly Riches or inordinately Love them and tenaciously keep them from your Masters use remember that this discovereth your disease and therefore should mind you rather to cure it then to feed it It is not money nor any thing in this world that will cure such an empty depraved soul. As Seneca saith If a sick man be carried about whether in a bed of gold or a bed of wood his disease is carried with him It is not a golden bed that will cure a diseased man Nor is it all the gold or honour in the world that will help such a deluded soul as thinks this world will make him happy Get but the cure of your Carnal minds and a little will serve you For it is your sinful fancy that would have much and not your nature that needs much Saith Seneca Si ad naturam vives nunquam eris pauper si ad opinionem nunquam eris dives Exiguum natura desiderat Opinio immensum He is not the poor man that hath but little but he that would have more Nor is he the Rich man that hath much but he that is content with what he hath If you pray but for your daily bread be not such hypocrites as by the bent of your desires to cross your prayers The nearest way to Riches saith the Moralist is the contempt of Riches and saith the Christian to be Rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which God hath promised all that Love him Jam. 2. 5. The greatest Riches are got proportionably on the easiest terms Loving the world will not procure it but Loving God will procure the everlasting fruition of his Love Millions love the world that miss of it but no man misseth of God that Loveth him above the world Buy not these gawds then at a dearer rate then you may have the Kingdom If you have not enough make sure of heaven and that will be enough for you and get a cure for your diseased minds which is easier and more profitable then to fulfill them No man saith Seneca
can have all the world but he may have a mind that can contemn all the world No man can have all that he will but he may be content to be without it The disease is within you and there must be the Cure Direct 2. Be sure to fix with a serious faith upon the Inivsible glory as your portion and then look at all things in this world as good or bad as they respect your end and judge of them as they help or hinder you in the main Nothing but a truly heavenly mind is the saving cure of an earthly mind No man will rightly let go earth till he have the powerful Light that hath shewed him the greater good and given him a taste of the world to come Had you not been strangers to God and heaven in heart whatever you were in tongue and fancy you could never have so fallen in love with earth None are so much disposed to travail into other Countries as they that are fallen out with their own Remember that you have not one penny or pennies worth in the world but what you had from God and must be accountable to God for and must employ with an eye upon his will and your salvation I do not call you to cast away your Riches but to see that you use all that ever you have as will be most comfortable to you in your last review I know as Seneca saith He is a wise man that can make use of earthen vessels as if they were all silver and he is wise too that can make use of silver vessels as if they were but earth Infirmi est animi pati non posse divitias but it s one thing to Bear Riches and Use them for God and another thing to Enjoy them with delight I neither take the Monasticks to be the only or the highest in perfection nor yet do I condemn necessitated retirements For I know it is hard to most to converse with God in tumults and to hear the still voice of his Spirit in the murmuring noise of a crowd I know that the commons are usually more barren and fruitless then inclosures and that the fruit-tree that groweth by the high-way side shall have many a stone and cudgel thrown at it which those that are in your Orchard scape But still look to your end and secure the main Dream not that you have any full Propriety Remember that you are Gods Stewards Set therefore your Masters name and not your own upon every penny-worth you possess Let Holiness to the Lord be written upon all Possess nothing but what is Devoted to him to be used as he would have you Put him not off with scraps and leavings that gave you all So much as you save from him you lose and worse then lose and so much as you lose for him and surrender to him and improve for him you save and more then save For Godliness with content is great gain And he that is faithful in a little shall be made ruler over much It s thus that all things are sanctified with the Saints Direct 3. Think not that your Riches are given you to fulfill the least inordinate desire of the flesh Or that you may take ever the more sensual ease or pleasure if you had all the world But remember that better wages obligeth you to more work And therefore rise as early and labour as hard in your own employment the more for the common good the better yea and deny your flesh a◠much as if you had but food and rayment If you have much give the more and use the more but enjoy never the more and let not your sensual desires find ever the more provision A rich man that is wise and a faithful Steward may live in as much self-denyal and labour as hard and humble his flesh as much as he hat hath but his daily bread God sent you not in provision for his enemy All that is made the food of sin or that doth not help you up to God is employed contrary to the end that you received it for Direct 4. Be sure that you deal with the world as a Deceiver Be very suspicious of all your Riches and Honours and Delights Feed not on these luscious summer-fruits too boldly or without fear Remember how many millions the world hath deceived before you None come to Hell but those that are cheated thither by the flesh and the world With what exceeding vigilancy then have you need to deal with such a dangerous deceiver when all your happiness and all your hopes is at the stake and if you be deceived you are undone Its force is nothing so perillous as its fraud Ubi vincere aperte Non datur insidias armaque recta parat They that have to do with such a cheater in a case of such everlasting consequence should be suspicious of every thing and trust the world as little as is possible when Qui cavet ne decipiatur vix cavet cum etiam cavet Et cum cavisse ratus est saepè is cautor captus est ut Plaut As Bucholcer was went to say when his friends extolled him terreri se etiam laudationibus illis ut fulminibus So should you possess your Honours and Riches in the world And as the same Bucholcer said to Hubner when he went to be a Courtier Fidem diabolorum tibi commendo credere contremiscere viz. promissionibus aulicis credere sed cautè sed timidè So should you be affected to the world Trust and tremble or rather Trust it not all Nay have you not been deceived by it already And will you be more foolish then the silly fish that will scarcely take the hook that he was once pricked by or then the silly fowls that will be afraid of the net that once they have escaped from and of the Kite that once hath had them in her claws Tranquillas etiam naufragus horret aquas Nay at the present if you take any heed of your souls you may easily perceive what a clog the world is We are commonly better when we have least of it or are leaving it then when we have it at our will A man may see the utmost visible part of the earth and the Horizon at once but if he look on the earth that is near him he cannot see the heavens at that time much less the Zenith Our Own Riches our Present Riches our Nearest and Dearest temporal good is the greatest averter of the mind from heaven We are commonly like Antigonus sick souldier that fought well because he lookt to die but grew a Coward as soon as he was cured So that most of us have need of the counsel which the Bishop of Colen gave the Emperour Sigismund that askt him What he should do to be happy Live saith he as you promised to do when you were last sick of the stone and gowt Even the most notorious sinners seem Saints when they see the world is
then undo you for ever and that it should buffet you then befool you out of your felicity The blows which the world giveth you do light upon it self As it Crucified it self in Crucifying Christ so doth it in Crucifying his people It killeth it self by your calamities And if it deprive you of your lives you will then begin to Live but the death which it bringeth on it self is such as hath no Resurrection If it kill you you shall live again yea live by that death but thereby it will so kill it self as never to live again in you The Cross is an happy Teacher of many excellent truths But of nothing more effectually then of the contemptibleness of the world If it turn our breath into groans we shall groan against it and groan to be delivered desiring to be cloathed upon with our house which is from heaven 2 Cor. 5. 2. We shall cry to heaven against this Task-master and our cryes will come before God and procure our deliverance The world gets nothing by its hard usage of the Saints It maketh a Cross for the Crucifying of it self and turneth their hearts more effectually against it 2. And as it thus declareth it self contemptible and crucifyeth it self to us so doth it exercise us in Patience and awaken us to deeper considerations of its own Vanity and drive us to look after better things It forceth us also to seek out to God and to see that all our dependance is on him and draweth forth our holy desires and other graces And thus it doth Crucifie us also to the world It makes us go into the Sanctuary and consider of the End how the wicked are set in slippery places and that at last it will go well with the just It teacheth us to consider that while the Lord is our Portion we have ground enough of hope For he is good to them that wait for him to the soul that seeketh him It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord It is good for a man that he bear the yoak in his youth He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath born it upon him he putteth his mouth in the dust if so be there may be Hope He giveth his check to him that smiteth him he is filled full with reproach For the Lord will not cast off for ever but though he cause grief yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his Mercies Lam. 3. 24. to 33. And not only so but we glory in tribulations also knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope and hope maketh not ashamed Rom. 5. 3 4 5. For if we suffer with Christ we shall also be glorified together and the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us And we our selves do groan within our selves waiting for the adoption the redemption of our body Rom. 8. 17 18 23. When Paul suffered for Christ the loss of all things he accounted them dung that he might win Christ. That he might know the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings and be made conformable to his death Phil. 3. 8 10. He rejoyced in his sufferings and filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church Col. 1. 24. And thus was he Crucified with Christ and yet lived yet not he but Christ lived in him and the life which he lived in the flesh he lived by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him Gal. 2. 20. SECT IX III. HAving thus shewed you how the Cross of Christ doth Crucifie the world to us and us to the world I am next to give you the Proofs of the point that thus it is with true Believers But because the Text it self is so plain and it is so fully proved on the by in what is said already and I have been somewhat long on the Explication I shall refer the rest of the Scripture-proofs to the Application where we shall have further occasion to produce it And I shall now only add the Argument from experience To the Saints themselves I need not prove it for they feel it in their own hearts In their several measures they feel in themselves a low esteem of all things in this world and an high esteem of God in Christ. They would count it an happy exchange to become more poor and afflicted in the world and to have more of Christ and his Spirit and of the hopes of a better world To have more of Gods savour though more of mans displeasure It is God that they secretly long for and groan after from day to day It is God that they must have or nothing will content them They can spare you all things else if they might have him And for those that never felt such a thing in themselves they may yet perceive that it is in others 1. You see that there are a people that seek more diligently after Heaven then Earth that are hearing the Word of God which instructeth them in the matters of salvation and are praying for the things of Eternal Life when you are labouring for the world You see that there are a people that seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and labour most for the food that perisheth not and are about the one thing Necessary which sheweth that they have chosen the better part 2. And you see that there is a people that can let go the things of the world when God calls for them That can be liberall according to their power to any pious or charitable uses That will rather suffer in body or estate even the loss of all then they will wilfully sin against God and hazard his favour 3. You have read or heard of multitudes that have suffered Martyrdom for Christ undergoing many kind of torments and death it self because they would not sin against him All these examples together with the frequent affirmations of the Scriptures may assure you that thus it is with true Christians The world is Crucified to them and they to the world SECT X. IV. I Am next to give you the Reasons of the Necessity of this Crucifixion the most of which also for brevity sake I shall reserve to the Application and at present only lay down these two or three briefly 1. The world is every carnal mans Idol and God cannot endure Idolatry To see his creature set up in his stead and rob him of his Esteem and Interest and be loved honoured and served before him and to see such contemptible things be taken as Gods while God himself stands by neglected he will not he cannot endure this Either Grace shall take down the Idol or Judgement and Hell shall plague the Idolator for he hath Resolved that he will not give his glory to another
Isa. 42. 8. 48. 11. All sin is hateful to God and none but the cleansed perfect soul shall stand before him in the presence of his glory nor any in whom iniquity hath dominion shall stand accepted in the presence of his Grace But yet no particular sin is so hatefull to him as Idolatry is For this is not only a trespassing against his Laws but a disclaiming or rejecting his very Soveraignty it self To give a Prince unreverent language and to break his Laws is punishable but to pull him out of his throne and set up a scullion in it and give him the honour and obedience of a King this is another kind of matter and much more intollerable The first Commandment is not like the rest which require only obedience to particular Laws in a particular action but it establisheth the very Relations of Soveraign and Subject and requires a constant acknowledgment of these relations and makes it high Treason against the God of heaven in any that shall violate that command Every Crime is not Treason It s one thing to miscarry in a particular case and another thing to have other Gods before and besides the Lord the only God Now this is the sin of every worldling He hath taken down God from the throne in his own soul and set up the flesh and the world in his stead These he valueth and magnifieth and delighteth in These have his very heart while God that made it and redeemed him is set light by And do you think that this is a sin to be endured It is a more horrid thing to wish that God were not God then to wish that Heaven and Earth were destroyed or turned again to Nothing He that would kill a man deserveth death What then deserveth he that would destroy all the world that would pull the Sun out of the firmament or set all the world on fire if it were in his power Yet is not all this so bad as to wish that God should lose his God-head And what less doth that man do that would have his prerogative given to the creature and so would have the creature to be God If God be not the chief Good he is not God And if he be not chiefly to be esteemed and loved he is not the chief Good What then doth that man do but deny God to be God that denyeth him his highest esteem and love And certainly he that giveth it to any creature denyeth it to God For there can be but one Chief and but one God They take him down therefore as much as in them lyeth that set up another So also if God be not the Soveraign Ruler of all he is not God And there can be but one Soveraign What less then do they do that deny him his soveraignty then deny him to be God And he that maketh the flesh or world his soveraign denyeth God to be his soveraign because there can be but one especially seeing also that their commands are contrary I beseech you therefore Sirs be not so unwise as to think that this Mortification or Crucifying of the world is only the perfection or higher pitch of some Believers and not the common state of all Do not imagine that your selves or any other can be true Christians without it You may as well think that that man should be saved that is a flat Atheist and denyeth God and renounceth him as that a worldling should be saved And he that is not dead to the world is a worldling If any one piece of Reformation be essential to a true Christian it is this It is as possible for a Turk or an Insidel to be saved as one that is not dead to the world Yea the case of these is more desperate if more can be for they have not the like means of information ordinarily as our worldly Professors have what can any Persecutor or Idolater do more then set against God and set up his enemies And so doth every worldling while he denyeth God his esteem and chiefest Love and giveth it to the pleasures and profits of this life I beseech you be not so weak as to dream that God is nothing but a bare name or title or that you deny not God if you refuse not to call him God or that none are Atheists that speak God fair and give him all his titles Or that none are impious that give him good words It is the thing and not the bare words the description of God such as we are capable of and not bare names that we must enquire of If you will call your Prince by all his Royal Titles but will set another in the throne and give him the rule over you and obey him alone which of these is it that you take indeed for your Prince If I be a Father saith God where is mine honour If I be a Master where is my fear Mal. 1. 6. Many profess that they know God that in works deny him being abominable and disobedient Tit. 1. 16. God is not taken indeed for your God if he be not taken for your chief Good and Happiness and have not the chief of your desire and Love and if he be not taken for your absolute Soveraign and have not the subjection and obedience of your souls You may easily see then that it is not meet it is not possible that an unmortified person or a worldling can be saved For if they shall be saved that would have God to be no God then no man should be damned for there cannot be a worser man then these Nay if he be not God how should he save them or how should he make them happy if he be not their chiefest Good If God should cease to be God the world and all things would cease to be For if the first cause cease the effects must all cease And if the ultimate end cease the means and all use of means must cease And as the cessation of God as the first efficient would destroy all Natural Being so the cessation of God as the ultimate end would destroy all Moral Good whatsoever Other sins destroy some part or branch of Moral Good but the sin of Idolatry the violation of the first Commandment the taking to our selves some other God this doth at once subvert all goodness and destroy the very being of morality it self Sirs I am afraid many yea most among us have not well considered the nature of worldly mindedness or the greatness of the sin of valuing and loving the Creature before God If they did it would not be a sin of so good repute among us but would have contracted more odium before this time then it hath done There are many sins far smaller then this that men are shamed for and that men are hanged for But we must not judge by outward appearances nor make the judgement of the sinner himself to be the rule by which to discern the greatness or smalness of the sin A
worldling a fleshly minded man an unmortified man that is not dead to the world all these are terms that are proper to men in a state of damnation under the curse and wrath of God and are equipollent terms with a Childe of the Devil Oh how the Devil hath deluded multitudes by making them think that this mortification is some higher pitch of grace then ordinary but not essential to the life of grace it self and therefore that a man may be saved without it when they may as well think to be saved if they defie the God of heaven if they despise the Lord that bought them and if they renounce salvation it self for indeed so they do It must needs be that God must look first and chiefly to his own interest in all his works even in the collation of his â—reest grace And therefore he will be glorified in all his Saints and no man shall have salvation dividedly from his honour He doth not bring men to heaven to hate and contemn him but to love and praise him and he will fit them for that work before they come thither and make them love and praise him initially on earth before they come to do it in heaven And therefore he will make them contemn all those things that stand in competition with him and hate all that stands against him SECT XI I Have shewed the necessity of crucifying the world as from Gods interest which the world doth contradict I shall next shew it you from your own interest And in these conjunct considerations it will appear 1. The world is not your happiness 2. The world is occasionally through the corruption of our nature a great enemy to your happiness 3. God only is your happiness 4. God is not fully to be enjoyed in this world 5. It is by knowing loving and delighting in him as God that he is to be enjoyed to make us happy 6. As therefore it is impossible to have two ultimate ends two chief goods and to enjoy them both so is it impossible that God and the world should both have our chiefest estimation and affection All this set together doth demonstrate the necessity of being crucified to the world unless we will renounce our own felicity 1. For the first Proposition that the world is not your Happiness I think all your tongues will readily confess it I would your hearts would do so too Do you think that God doth envy you your happiness or that he would take the world from you because he esteemeth it too good for you No it is because he pittieth your self-deceit when he seeth you take that for your happiness that is not and because he hath far better things to bestow If the world were as good for you as you take it to be and had that in it to satisfie you as you imagine it to have you might keep it and much good might it do you for God would not be about to take it from you He that made you to be Happy doth not grudge you that which should procure it Doubtless if he did not see that it is vanity and that you have made a wrong choice and do mistake your mark he would never trouble you in a worldly course nor call you off But it is because he seeth your folly and deceit and wisheth you much better Wo to you that ever you were born if you have no better Happiness then the world can afford you Is it not Necessary then that you discern your errour and be brought into your right way and spend not your time and pains for nothing If God should let you alone to catch at this shadow and play your selves with worldly toyes till the time of grace were past and then let you see that you were befooled when it is too late you would then be leâ—t to a fruitless repentance and to the sense of that unhappiness which you chose to your selves 2. And that the world is an enemy to your Happiness may appear two waies First in that it deceitfully pretendeth to be your Happiness when it is not and so would turn away your hearts from that which is Secondly in that by allurements or discouragements it is alwaies hindring you in the way to life and is a snare to you continually in all that you do And is it not Necessary to your salvation that you be delivered from the enemies of your salvation and freed from such perilous snares Can you conquer while you are conquered And if the world be not Crucified to you it doth conquer you For its victory is upon your will and affections And if it conquer you it will condemn you To be servants to the world is to be servants to sin And the servants of sin are free from righteousness Rom. 6. 20. and free from Christ and free from salvation A miserable freedom 3. The following Propositions I shall speak of together That God only is our happiness and Chief Good I need not prove to any that indeed believeth him to be God That salvation consilleth in the â—ruition of this Happiness is past doubt And as sure is it that God is not fully enjoyed in this world much less in the creature when it is loved for it self and not esteemed as a Means to him All that believe a life after this do sure believe that there is our felicity And lastly that the soul doth enjoy its own felicity by Knowing and Loving and Delighting in its object is also past doubt So that you may see that a worldly state of mind is in it self inconsistent with a state of salvation To be saved is to have the blessed vision of God and to Love him and Delight in him perfectly to everlasting And can you do this when you love and delight in the world above him or in opposition to him Would you have God to save you and yet not to take off your affections from the world to himself That were to save you and not to save you to feed you by that which is not food to comfort you by that which cannot comfort If a worldling would be saved and not be mortified either he speaks he knows not what but plain non-sense or contradiction or else he meaneth one of these two things Either that he would have an Heaven of worldly Riches or Honours or fleshly Pleasures there is no such to be had Or else that he would have the world as long as he can and have heaven when he can keep the world no longer and so would have the world Crucified to him when there is no such world or when he is taken from it But as 1. No man can truly desire future Grace and Holiness that doth not desire it at the present this being rather an unwilling submission to it as a tolerable Evil then a true desire of it as a certain Good So 2. God hath determined that this life only shall be the Way and that the End Here only must we
be for Earth or Heaven 〈◊〉 this and you may resolve the case A worldling may speak contemptuously of the world and speak most honourably of God and the Life to come But speculative knowledge and practical are frequently contradictory in the same man Still it is this world that hath his chief Intentions and is the End of his designs and life and the world to come is regarded but as a reserve because of their unavoidable separation from this world The main End of every upright Christian is to please and enjoy God and the main End of all the rest of the world is how to Please their carnal minds in the enjoyment of some earthly things If you could but discern which of these is your chiefest End you might discern whether it be Christ or the world that Liveth in you For Christ liveth in you when he is your End and the world Liveth in you when it is your End But because some are such strangers to themselves that they do not know their own Ends the rest of the signs shall be for the discovery of the former that you may discern whether the world or God be your ultimate End 1. That which is your Principal End is highlyest esteemed by your Practicall judgement Not only by the speculative but by that which moveth and disposeth of the man Is God or the world Heaven or earth thus highlyest esteemed by you Let your Practise shew it 2. It is your Principal End that hath the Principal Interest in you That can do most with you and prevail most in a contest Can God or the world do more with you Which of them doth prevail when an opposition doth arise I speak not of God in his efficiency for so I know he can do what his list and will do it whether you will or no and will not ask your consent to do it But its God as your End that I now speak of as he worketh Morally by your own consent and upon your wills Honours and Profits and Pleasures are before you and these would draw you to something that he forbids And God and Glory are propounded to you to take you off turn your hearts another way which of these can do more with you which is it that can nullifie the perswasions of the other 3. It is your Principal End that hath the principal ruling and disposal of your whole life â—…do purposely conâ—rive the maâ—… part of your life in order to it If you are indeed Christians and God be your End the main drift of your Life is a contrived Means for the obtaining of that End that is to Please God and to enjoy him in everlasting glory If you were such as you should be you should have no other End at all nor should you ever do one work or receive or use one creature or speak one word or behold one object but as a means to God intendâ—ng the pleasing and enjoying him in all As a traveller should not go one step of his journey but in order to his End But while we are Imperfect in our Love and other graces this will not be But yet the main bent and drift of our Lives must needs be for God and the Life to come and thus it is with every true Believer and you are none if it be not thus with you I say it again left you should slightly pass it over though you may through infirmity sometimes step out of the way yet if God be your End and Happiness that is if he be your God and you be Christians the main scope and bent and drift of your lives is for to please God and enjoy him in glory But if the main scope and drift of your life be for the flesh and the world and God and Religion comes in but upon the by you are then no better then unsanctified worldlings Though you may do much in Religion and be zealous about it and seem the devoutest and most resolved professors in all the Countrey where you live yet if all this be but in subordination to the flesh and the world or if co-ordinate it have the smaller Interest in your hearts and when you have done or suffered most for Christ you will do and suffer more for the flesh and world you are carnal wretches and no true Christians O that you would let conscience do its office and Judge you as we go along according to Evidence It is not by one or two Actions that you can judge of your estate but by the main scope and bent and drift of your life What is your very heart set upon What is your care and your chief contrivances Are they for Heaven or Earth Speak out and take the comfort of your sincerity if you are Christians and if you are not know it while there is remedy and do not wilfully deceive your selves Have you been so far illuminated by the Word and Spirit as to see the Amiableness of the Lord by faith and have you so firm a Belief of the Everlasting Glory where we shall see his face immediately or more nearly and praise him among his Angels for ever I say have you so firm a 〈◊〉 of this that you are unfeignedly resolved upon it as your Happiness that you take it for your Portion and there have laid up your Hopes Can you truly say that God hath more of your Heart then all the world and Heaven is dearer to your thoughts then earth Can you say that whatever you are tempted to on the by that the main care design and bent of your life is for God and the Glory to come and that this is your daily Work and Business If so you are Christians indeed you have Crucified the world by the Cross of Christ The world is dead and down where God raigneth and is exalted and no where else But if all this be clean contrary with you and if the flesh and the world have the prevalent Interest and these cut out your work and form your thoughts and choose your imployments if these choose the calling that you live upon and the manner of managing it and your very Religion or set limits to it if it be these that rule your tongue and hands and they can make a cause seem good or bad to youâ— and that seemeth best which most conduceth to your fleshly worldly interests and that seemeth worst which destroyeth it or is against it if God be loved and worshipped but as a Necessary Mâ—ans to your carnal Happiness or if he have but the second place in your hearts and the leavings of the flesh and world be they never so much and if your Religion and Endeavours for salvation for pleasing God and for the invisible Glory be but on the by and the flesh and the world hath the main scope and bent and drift of your life flatter not your selves then most certainly you are but carnal wretches and drudges of the world and slaves to him that
is stiled by Christ the Prince of this world Me thinks Sirs you might be able by this time to be somewhat acquainted with your own condition and either to Condemn your selves as Worldlings and Carnall men or to see Christ by his Spirit and Interest reigning in your souls and give him the glory and take to your selves the joy of your Sanctification Can you tell me but what it is that you would have if you had your wish and what it is that is predominant in your heart What! know you not your own minds and thoughts and desires Can you tell me what it is that is your very Business in the world even the great Business that you live for and that you study and care and labour for and what is the Design that you are daily carrying on Know but this and the Question is resolved If you see any man at work and ask him what he is doing and why he doth it it is like he is not so sottish but he can tell If you meet a man upon the way and ask him whether he is going it is like he will not be so foolish but he can tell you He that hath no end hath no way and therefore is never in his way nor out of it nor will he care which way he goes so he be going and a circular motion is as good to him as a progressive You are doing somewhat all you are going somewhither every day whither is it and what is it for Is it for heaven or earth The Texts which I before cited to you fully give you the ground of the tâ—yal and Judgement that I am urging you upon Mat. 6. 21. Where your treasure is there will your hearts be also Mat. 6. 33. Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things shall be added to you Psal. 73. 25. Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee Luk. 14 â—6 If any man come to me and hate not all even his own life he cannot be my Dâ—sâ—â—pâ—e So verse 33. He that for saketh not all that he hath But let us proceed yet a little further in the tryal 4. As that which is a mans End if satisfactory will content him when he can attain it so without it nothing will content him No man wil be content without that which is the Principal end of his life though he may without some inferiour end If God be your end nothing else will content you If you had all the honours and prosperity of the world and this secured to you it would not content you These are not the things that you live for or that the predominant inclination of your souls are suted to and therefore it is not these that will please you and serve your turn But if the world be your end you could be content with it if you could get it Let who will take the world to come if the carnal wretch were but sure of this he would think himself a happy man and could spare the other He would not change his worldly happiness for the hopes of that which he never saw nor doth not firmly and heartily believe 5. It is a mans End that puts the estimate upon all things else All other things are counted Good or Evil so far as they help to it or hinder it If Heaven be your End you will account of all things as they respect that end Those will be the best Companions to you and that the best calling and condition of Life the best speech the best actions the best way of disposing what you have what you think will most promote your Heavenly end suffering will be better in your eye then prosperity if it do but help you best to heaven To give your money will seem better to you then to keep it to lose it then to gain it when it apparently conduceth more to the pleasing of God and your salvation That will be the best Ministry and means that tendeth most to this And so you will estimate all things else for its most evident that it is the end that prizeth the means according as they are suted to the attainment of that end But if flesh-pleasing and worldly prosperity be your end that will seem the best calling to you and that the best employment and course of life which â—ends most to advance and please your flesh that will be the best company to them and those their most beloved friends that further this prosperity that will seem the best way of disposing of what they have as to the main what ever they may do on the by Their practical judgement esteemeth this most eligible 6. It is only a mans end and the inseparable necessary means thereto that he can by no means spare Other things he can spare and be without but not without this If God be your end your heart is so upon him that you cannot be without him you can be without honour or riches or life it self but not without God But if the world be your end then its clean contrary and that 's the thing that you cannot be without Hence is it that men plead necessity of that which is their end and the necessary means One thing seems necessary to the Christian he must have God in and by Christ I must use his means saith he I must avoid the contrary How shall I do this evil and sin against God But the carnal mans necessity is on the other side I must raise my Family if I can at least I must keep my estate I must not be undone I must preserve my name my life 7. A man will hazard or part with any thing to secure or attain his principal End Nothing can be too good or too dear to purchase it nothing can stand in competition with it If God and glory be your End away goes all that is inconsistent with it You 'l part with a right hand or eye as thinking it better to have Heaven with one then Hell with both You can part with house and land and country because you seek for a City that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God Heb. 11. 9 10. You can live as Strangers and Pilgrims on earth and minde not to return to the world which you have renounced because you desire a better even a Heavenly Countrey Heb. 11. 13 14 15. 16. You will rather choose to sâ—ffer afflictions with the people of God then to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season esteeming the very reproach of Christ greater riches then the treasures of the world because you have respect to the recompence of the reward Heb. 11. 24 25 26. The fear of man even of the Princes of the earth will not prevail against your hopes because you see him that is invisible Heb. 11. 27. You can endure to be made a gazing stock by reproaches and afflictions and become the Companions of them that are
they are animated by God then it is to ride a dead horse where you may spur long enough before you are one mile further on your way While your friend is living you may delightfully converse with him but when he is dead you will have little pleasure in his company the corpse of the most learned man will actively teach you no more then a block Were it the wiâ—e of your bosom who through prudence and beauty were never so lovely to you when her carkaise is left without a soul you will hasten to bury it out of your sight and would be loath so much as to keep it in your house much less in your bed and bosom as heretosore He that knoweth not that God is the Life and Soul of all our Blessings doth neither know what God is nor what a Blessing is They are but the empty casks and shells and not the Blessings themselves without him You have the Burden and not the Benefit You must carry them but they can do nothing to the supporting of you It s the absence of God that denominateth them Vanity and Vexation and it is he only that can make them strengthening and consolatory That must have some life in it that must be pabulum vitae and must sustain our lives Souls cannot feed upon meer terrene corporeal things any more then the body upon meer spirituals As we have both a soul and a body to be sustained so have we a sustenance suitable to them both even the creature animated by God or God in and by the creature How great then is your sin that destroy your blessings by depriving them of their Life and that in a sort destroy the world to your selves by separating it from its soul and so most â—ainously injure God and rob your selves of the comfort of all and turn your blessings into burdens and your helps into hinderances and snares to your souls Have you lived so long in the School of the world yea and of the Church too where you have not only the Library of Nature but supernatural Revelations to teach you to understand it and yet do you not know a word or letter You do but lose and abuse the creatures of God if you see him not in them and if you be not in the use of them led up to himself The heavens declare the Glory of God and the â—irmament sheweth his handy work Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world Psal. 19. 1 2 3. and yet poor carnal wretches will not understand them All the works of God do praise him for he is righteous in all his waies and holy in all his works Psal. 145. 10 17. and yet the wicked will not understand O how many talents must the ungodly be accountable for as having neglected them and perverted them from the prescribed use Every creature that you see is a Teacher of Divine things to you and you shall answer for your not learning by them Every creature is an Herald sent from heaven to proclaim the will of your Maker and your Duty and you gaze upon the Messenger and note his garb and hear his voice and never understand or regard his Message I would you did but consider what you lose by this your folly and what life and sweetness there is in creatures which the heavenly believer draweth forth and you have no taste of And till the Spirit of Sanctification have fitted you to such a work you are never like effectually to taste it For it is not every flie that can suck honey from the sweetest flower though the Bee can do it from that which we call a stinking weed An ignorant Country-man hath a Meadow that aboundeth with variety of herbs he can make no other use of them then to feed his cattle with them Or if he walk into his garden he can only smell the sweetness of a flower but a skilful Physitian that knows their use can thence fetch a medicine that may be a means to save his life But the Believing soul can yet go further and there find that which may further his salvation If you have a Lease of your Lands or a pardon for your life that 's written in an excellent character There 's a great deal of difference between another mans delight in viewing the character and yours in considering of the security you have by it for estate or life But the difference is much greater in our present case between those that have only the superficial sweetness and beauty of the creature to the pleasing of the flesh and those that have God in it to the spiritual refreshing of their souls Believe it Sirs it is not a small sin to pervert the whole creature that 's within our reach to a use so contrary to that which it was appointed to as foolish worldlings do not only to lose that use and benefit of the creatures which we might have but to turn all into poison and death to our selves Not only to rob God of that Love and Honour and Service which they should procure him but also to turn all this upon themselves I tell you this will prove no venial sin 5. And your Guilt herein is further aggravated in that you do hereby as much as in you lyeth frustrate the works of Creation and Redemption For God made all things for himself and you use nothing for him The Redeemer hath reprieved and restored the creature for its primitive use that God might yet have the Glory of his works and yet you will not give it him but when you pretend to know God you Glorifie him not as God but become vain in your imagination your foolish hearts being darkned as Paul tells them Rom. 1. 21. And what doth that man deserve that would as to the use destroy all the world and frustrate all Gods works both of Creation and Redempion 6. Herein also you are guilty of Enmity against God For this is the greatest wrong that an enemy can do him to rob him of the glory of his Goodness and Power and to preser his creatures as if they were more amiable then himself You cannot dethrone him from his glory but you may possibly deny him the preheminence in your hearts You may deny him the Kingdom within you but you cannot dispossess him of his Eternal Power or Kingdom without you The worst enemy that God hath can do him no harm but this is no thanks to you he will not be beholden to you for it You may as truly shew your Enmity by wronging as by hurting And what greater injury can you offer to the Almighty then to set up the silly creature in his stead and give it that Love and Service which is his due 7. Moreover you are guilty of wilfull self murder you choak your selves
with that which should be your food you turn your daily blessings to your bane by dropping your Poyson into the cup of Mercies which bountiful providence putteth into your hands There is not a surer way in the world to undo you then by Turning to the creature and forsaking God You cry for more of the world and you are unsatisfied till you have it and when you have it you do but destroy your souls with it by giving it your hearts which must be given only unto God What a stir do men make for temptation and destruction What cost and pains are men at to purchase them an Idol and to make provision for the flesh to satisfie its desires when they confess it to be the greatest enemy of their souls Like a man that would give all that he hath for a coal of fire to put into the thatch even such is your desires after the world and the use you make of it 8. What abundance of precious time and labour do you lose which might and should be better spent Doth not this world take up the most of your care and strength and time You are about it early and late It is first and last and almost alwaies in your thoughts It findeth you so much to do that you have scarce any time so much as to mind the God that made you or to seek to escape the everlasting misery which is near at hand It hath taken up so much of your hearts that when God should have them in any holy duty or service for his Church you are heartless When you shall see your accounts cast up to your hands as shortly you shall see it though you will not now be perswaded to do it your selves and when you shall there see how many thoughts the world had in comparison of God and how many hours were laid out upon the world when Gods service was cast by for want of time and how near the creature was to your heart while God as a stranger stood at the door And in a word how the world was your daily business while the matters of God stept in but now and then upon the by you will then confess that you laboured in vain and that your life and labour should have been better employed Hath God given you but a short uncertain life and laid your everlasting life upon it and will you cast all away upon these transitory delights How short a time have you for so great a work and shall the world have all Oh that you did but know to how much greater advantage you might have spent this time and labour in seeking God and an endless Glory One thing is needful make sure of that and waste not the rest of your daies in vanity What wise man would spend so precious a thing as Time is upon that which he knows will leave him in Repentings that ever it was so spent The world doth rob poor sinners of their time but when they see it is gone and they would fain have a little of that time again to make preparation for their everlasting state it is not all the world then that can bring them back one hour of it again Certainly such a loss of time and labour is no small aggravation of a worldlings sin 9. You are also guilty of the high contempt of the Kingdom of Glory while you prefer these transitory things before it Your hearts and lives speak that which you are ashamed to speak with your tongues You are ashamed to say that Earth is better for you then Heaven or that your sin is better for you then the favour of God but your lives speak it out If you think not your present condition better for you then heaven why do you choose and prefer it and why do you more carefully and laboriously seek the things of earth then the Heavenly Glory If your child would sell his inheritance for a cup of Ale you would think he set light by it And if he would part with father and mother for the company of a beggar or a thief you would say he had no great love to you And if you will venture your part in heaven for the pleasures of sin and will part with God for the matters of this world would you have him think that you set much by his Kingdom or his love O the unreasonableness of sin the madness of worldly fleshly men Is it indeed more desirable to prosper in their shops their fields and their pleasures for a few daies or years then everlastingly to live in the presence of the Lord Shall Christ purchase a Kingdom at the price of his blood and offer it us freely and shall we prefer the life of a bruit before it Shall God offer to advance so mean a creature to an heavenly station among his Angels and shall we choose rather to wallow in the dung of our Transgressions Take heed lest as you are guilty of Esau's folly you also meet with Esau's misery and the time should come that you shall find no place for Repentance that is for Recovery by Repentance though you seek it with tears Contempt of kindness is a provoking thing For it is the height of ingratitude And especially when it is the greatest kindness that is contemned As it will be the everlasting imployment of the Saints to enjoy that felicity and to admire and praise that infinite Love which caused them to enjoy it So will it be the everlasting misery of the damned to be deprived of that felicity and to think of their solly in the unthankful contempt of it and of the excellency of that Kingdom which thus they did contemn God sets before you Earth and Heaven If you choose earth expect no more And hereafter Remember that you had your choice 10. To make short of the rest of the aggravation of your sin and sum it up in a word Your Love of the world is the sum of all iniquity It virtually or actually containeth in it the breach of every command in the Decalogue The first Commandment which is the foundation of the Law and especially of the first Table is broken by it while you make it your Idol and give it the Esteem and Love and Service that is due to God The second third and fourth Commandments it disposeth you to break While your hearts and ends are carnal and worldly the manner of your service will be so and you will suit your Religion to the will of men and your carnal Interest and not to the will and word of God The name and holy nature of God is habitually contemned by you while you more set by your worldly matters then by him His holy daies you ordinarily violate and his Ordinances you do hypocritically abuse while your hearts are upon your covetousness or sensual delights and are far from him while you draw near him with your lips Worldlinys will make you even break the bonds of natural obligations and be
can expect in the world would you be contented with this as your portion What is that you would have and which you make such a stir for Would you have larger possessions more delightful dwellings repute with men the satisfying of your lusts c. Dare you take all this for your portion if you had it Dare you quit your hopes of the life to come for such a portion You dare not say so nor do it expresly though you do it implyedly and in effect O do not that which is so horrid that your own hearts dare not own without trembling and astonishment I pray you tell me do you think that a sufficient Portion which the Devil himself would give you if he could or is willing you should have He is content that you enjoy your lusts and pleasures he is willing to let you have the honours and fulness of the world while you are on earth He knows that he can this way best deal with your consciences and please you in his service and quiet you awhile till he hath you where he would have have you He that told Christ of all the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them would doubtless have given him them if it had been in his power to have obtained his desire Though you think it too dear to part with your wealth or pleasures for heaven and to be at the labour of an holy life to obtain it the Devil would not think it too dear to give you all England nor all the world if it were in his power that thereby he might keep you out of Heaven And he is willing night and day to go about such kind of work that may but attain his ends in devouring you If he were able he would make you all Kings so that he could but keep you thereby from the Heavenly Kingdom Alas he that tempteth you to set light by heaven and prefer this world before it doth better know himself to his sorrow the worth of that everlasting glory which he would deprive you of and the vanity of that which he thrusteth into your hands As our Merchants that trade with the silly Indians when they have perswaded them to take glass and pieces of broken Iron and brass and knives for Gold or Merchandize of great value they do but laugh at their folly when they have deceived them and say What silly fools be these to make such an exchange For the Merchants know the worth of things which the Indians do not And so is it between the Deceiver of souls and the souls that he deceiveth When he hath got you to exchange the love of God and the Crown of Glory for a little earthly dung and lust he knows that he hath made fools of you and undone you by it for ever Do you not think your selves that it is abominable madness in those Witches that make a Covenant with the Devil and sell their souls to him for ever on condition they may have their wills for a time I know you will say it is abominable folly And yet most of the world do in effect the very same God hath assured them that they must for sake him or the world and that they must not love the world if they will have his love nor look for a portion in this life if they will have any part in the inheritance of the Saints He offers them their choice to take the pleasures of Earth or Heaven And Satan prevaileth with them to make choice of Earth though they are told by God himself that they lose their salvation by it And here you may see what advantage Satan gets by playing his game in the dark and doing his work by other hands and keeping out of sight himself and deceiving men by plausible pretences Should he but appear himself in his own likeness and offer poor worldlings to make such a match with them how much would the most of you tremble at it and abhort it And yet now he doth the same thing in the dark you greedily embrace it If you should but see or hear him desiring you to put your hands to such a Covenant as this is I do consent to part with the love of God and all my hopes of salvation so I may have my pleasures and wealth and honour till I die Sure if you be not besides your selves you would not you durst not put your hands to it Why then will you now put both hand and heart to it when he plaies his game underboard and implicitly by his temptations doth draw you to the same consent What do the most of the world but prefer earth before heaven through the course of their lives They prefer it in their thoughts and words and deeds It hath their sweetest and freest thoughts and words and their greatest care and diligence and delight And what then do these men do but sell their salvation for the vanities of the world Believe it Sirs if you understood the Word of God and understood Satans temptations and understood your own doings you would see that you do no less then thus make sale of your precious souls And it is not your false Hopes that for all this you shall be saved when you can keep the world no longer that will undo the bargain If the Law of the Land do punish Murder and Theft with death he that ticeth you to commit the crime doth tice you to cast away your life and it will not save you to say I had hoped that I might have plaid the thief or murderer and yet be saved O Sirs if you knew but half as well what you sell and cast away as the Devil doth that tempts you to it sure you durst never make such a match nor pass away such an inheritance for a little earthly smoak and dust SECT XVIII Use of Exhortation MEN Fathers and Brethren hearken to the word of Exhortation which I have to deliver to you from the Lord. I know that this world is near you and the world to come is out of sight I know the flesh which imprisoneth those souls is so much inclined to these sensual things that it will be pleased with nothing else But yet I am to tell you from the word of the Lord that this world must be forsaken before it forsake you and that you must vilifie and set light by it and your heart and hopes must be turned quite another way and you must live as men of another world or you will undo your selves and be lost for ever If you have thought that you might serve God and Mammon and Heaven and Earth might both be your End and Portion and God and the world might both have your hearts I must acquaint you that you are dangerously mistaken Unless you have two hearts One for God and one for the world and two souls One to save and one to lose But I doubt when one soul is condemned you will not find another to be saved I
insist on that which you dare not stand to And be of that mind which then you must condemn your selves Do you think that this is a reasonable course to be ventured on in so great a matter Quest. 9. MY next Question is this Do you ever mean to Repent of your fleshly and worldly-mindedness or not If you do not it seems you are far from a Recovery Many an one perisheth with bare uneffectuall purposes of Repenting but those that have not so much as such a purpose are graceless indeed But if you do purpose to Repent I would further ask you Do you think that is a right mind or a wise course which must be Repented of If it be right and wise what need you to Repent of it If it be not wise and right why will you now retain it yea and wilfully maintain it against the perswasions of God and man Doth not this proclaim that you are wilful sinners and that you know you sin and yet will do it even against your own knowledge and conscience that you know the world to be a deceitfull vanity and yet for all that you will stick to it as long as you can with the neglect of God and the true felicity And can you expect mercy and salvation that wilfully and knowingly do set your selves against it and reject it Quest. 10. MY next Question which I desire you to answer is this Do you in good sadness take the world for your enemy or for a hindrance to you in the way to heaven If you do not why did you in your Baptism renounce it and promise to fight against it And why have you professed since to stand to that Covenant And how then can you believe the word of God which so often telleth you what a hinderance Riches and Honours are to mens salvation But if indeed you believe that the world is your enemy and hinderance why then will you love it and be impatient if you want it and take such pleasure in it and desire to have more of it Do you love to have your salvation hindered or hazarded and will you love and long for that which is an enemy to it I think the way to heaven is hard enough to the best They need not make it harder then it is and be at so much labour all their lives to make themselves more enemies and more work and to block up the way while they pretend to walk in it O the hypocrisie of a carnall heart How notoriously do mens lives contradict their tongues When they will call the world their enemy and vow to fight against it to the death and at the same time will labour for it and greedily desire it as if they could never have enough That they will make so much of it as to neglect God himself and their salvation for it and make it the greatest care and business of their lives to get and keep it and all the while profess that they take it for their enemy This is dissembling beyond all bounds of shame Remember this when you are impatient of your low estate or contriving further accommodations to your flesh or hunting after a full estate Are these the signs of enmity to the world Do you hate your salvation that you so love the hinderers of it Either live as you profess or profess as you live Quest. 11. YET further I demand Whether indeed you do intend to Renounce your Christianity and all your hopes of heaven or not If you do you know whom to blame when you are deprived of it And I could wish you would first find out some better way or something that may be of valuable consideration to repair your loss But if you say you have no such intent I further ask Why then do you do it and do it after so much warning Do you disclaim your Christianity in the open light and yet say that you intend no such thing You cannot do it against your will And that it is in effect a Renouncing or Denying your Christianity yea and your salvation is plain For your Christianity containeth a Renouncing of the world and therefore it is part of our Baptismal Covenant If then you return to the world which you renounced you forsake your Christianity Had you rather forsake the world or Christ One of them you must forsake For he hath told you that Except you forsake all that you have you cannot be his Disciples Luke 14. and that you cannot serve God and Mammon Had you rather renounce the world or your salvation One of them you must let go For God hath said that the love of the world is enmity against God â—nd that if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him If therefore you will still say You hope you may keep both What do you less then give God the lye If you will still adhere to the world and yet say that you do not renounce your Christianity or Salvation you may as well say that though you joyn in Arms with open Rebels yet do you not forsake your Loyalty to your Prince Or though you live in Adultery yet you do not forsake your conjugal fidelity and chastity and that you do not cast away your life though you take poyson when you know it to be such or though you commit those crimes which must be punished with death I beseech you consider well Why you forsake Christ and why you will destroy your selves before you do it past remedy Quest. 12. MY last Question which I desire your answer to is this Do you indeed think that God is not better then the world and that Heaven is not more desiarble then earth and an endless glory then a transitory shadow Or is there any comparison to be made between them Have you considered what a sad exchange you make O unthankful souls Hath not God done more for you then ever the world did He made you and so did not the world He Redeemed you when none else could do it He preserveth you and provideth for you and all that you have is from his bounty He can give health to your bodies peace to your consciences salvation to your souls when the world cannot do it If the world be better then God in prosperity what makes you call upon God in adversity When any torment seizeth on your bodies or death draws near and looks you in the face then you do not cry O Riches help us O Pleasures or Honours have mercy upon us But O God have mercy upon us and help us Can none else help you in your distress and yet will you prefer the creature in your prosperity Ah poor deluded souls that follow the world which will cast you off in your greatest need and neglect him that would be faithful to you for ever The time is coming when you shall cry out The world hath deceived me I have laboured for nought but if you had been as true to God
world do set as light by such in inconsiderable vanities And if the dead in sin can bear so easily the greatest misery that man on earth is ordinarily capable of as the slavery of the Devil the guilt of sin the curse of the Law the danger of damnation c. what wonder then if they that are Crucified to the world can bear a little poverty or sickness or reproach which is to the other but as the prick of a pin or the scratch of a thorn to a deadly poyson or a stab at the very heart 3. But yet this is not all Your inordinate love of any thing in the world will not only embitter your lives but it will be the horrour of your souls at death and judgement And therefore as ever you would leave the world in peace and as ever you would appear before the Lord your Judge with comfort and as ever you desire that the creatures should not be your Tormentors take heed that you do not over-love them now but see that they be Crucified to â—ou You cannot possibly be sensible now what a pang of horrour it will cast you into at the last when you shall see the world leaving you and see what it was that you ventured your souls and their everlasting welfare for O with what grief and tearing of heart do earthly minded persons part with the world When you are dying that one thing that had your heart will more torment your hearts to remember it then all things else will do Nothing is such a terrour to the thoughts of a a dying covetous man as his money and lands and worldly wealth Nothing so vexeth the ambitious as to think on that shadow of honour which he did pursue Nothing doth so torment the filthy fornicator as the remembrance of that person with whom he committed the beastly sin All other persons or things in the world will not then be so bitter to you as those that stole your hearts from God but at judgement and in hell the remembrance of them will be a thousand fold more bitter And who would now prepare such misery for themselves and glut themselves with that which they can no better digest or bear What wise man would not rather be without the drunkards cups then be fain to spue it up again and part with it with so much sickness and disgrace And why should you desire to be drunk with the profits or pleasures of the world when you know before hand with how much shame and trouble of conscience you must cast it up again at last 4. But yet this is not the worst but if you will needs live to the world you must take it for your portion and look not for any more And therefore as ever you would not be deprived of your hopes of eternal life and be put off with the earthly portion of the wicked see that the world be Crucified to you and you to the world How poor a portion is it that worldlings do possess Even like Nebucadnezar that had his portion with the beasts Daâ— 4. 15. How soon will all their portion be spent and then they will feed with swine yea and be denyed these very husks For they are set in slâ—ppery places and are brought to desolation in a moment Psal. 73. 18 19 20. O how much better a portion might you have had if you had not refused or neglected it when you had your choice Me thinks in your greatest pleasures and abundance it should astonish your souls to think This is my portion I shall have no more When you are past this life and entring into Eternity then where is your â—ortion Alas saith Conscience I have had it already I cannot spend it and have it too You know what you have now but what shall you have hereafter to all eternity Your Portion is almost spent already and what will you do then Oh then to think that the Eternal glory of the Saints might have been yours it was offered as freely to you as to them but you have lost it by preferring the world before it and that after a thousand convictions of your folly O what a cutting thought will this be Luke 16. 25. To remember that you chose your good things in this life will be a sad Remembrance when all is gone The Lord is the protion of his Saints inheritance Psalm 16. 5. even their portion for ever Psalm 73. 26. their portion in the Land of the living Psal. 142. 5. and this was it that encouraged them to labour patience and hope Psalm 119. 52. Lam. 3. 24 25 26. But for the worldling The heaven shall reveal his iniquity and the earth shall rise up against him the increase of his house shall depart and his goods shall slow away in the day of wrath This is the portion of a wicked man from God and the heritage appointed to him by God Iob 20. 37 38 39. If you can be content with such a Portion make much of the world and take your fleshly pleasures while you may But if you hope for the everlasting portion of Believers away with the world and Crucifie it without any more ado and set your hearts on the portion which you hope for SECT XX. HAving said as much as is suitable to the other parts of this discourse to perswade you to be willing to Crucifie the world I shall next give some Directions to those that are perswaded and tell you by what means the work may be done And I beseech you mark them and resolve to practise them Direct 1. OBserve and Practise the Direction intimated in the Text. It is the Cross of Christ that must Crucifie the world to you It s thither therefore that you must repair for help An Infidel may fetch such weapons from reason and experience as shall wound the world and diminish his esteem of it and make it less delightful to him But it is only the Cross of Christ that can furnish us with those weapons that must pierce it to the very heart Or if the Unbeliever were deprived of all earthly delight and brought into despair of ever receiving more comfort from the world as it is with many of them in some extremity and with all at death yet he himself is not Crucified to the world Though his delight in it be gone yet his love to it is not gone Though he be out of Hope of ever having content in it yet his desires after it are the same If he call it vanity and vexation as the Believer doth it is because it denyeth him his desires Not because he takes it heartily for an Enemy but for an unkind Lover that dealeth hardly with him that hath given it his heart If he look upon it as Dead and unable to help him yet doth he behold it as the carkaise of a friend with grief and lamentation It is his greatest trouble that the world cannot give him that which he would have And therefore he
is trying what it will do for him as long as he hath any hope As the poor Infants in Ireland lay sucking at the breasts of the corpse of their mothers when the Irish Papists had slain them so will these poor worldlings still hang upon the world even when they find that it cannot help them and when it will scarce afford them a miserable life but with much labour and suffering they hardly get a little food and cloathing So that their affections are still alive to the world even when to their sorrow they look on the world as dead or almost dead to them But the Cross of Christ will teach you to Crucifie the world in another manner As Christ did voluntari'y contemn it and shew that he set so little by it that he could be content to be the most despicable Object upon earth in the eyes of men so will he teach you also voluntarily to contemn it and set up your selves as the Butt which all the arrows of malice and despight shall be shot at So that though you have naturally a desire of the preservation of your lives and from that may say Father if it be thy will let this cup pass from me Yet shall you have a far greater desire of Pleasing Enjoying and Glorifying God which shall cause you from a comparative Judgement to say Yet not as I will but as thou wilt Much more shall you be enabled to despise the unnecessary matters of the world and to mortifie your inordinate and distempered affections The Cross of Christ will shew you Reason though such as the worldly wise call foolishness even such Reason as none but a Teacher come from God could have revealed for the leading up your affections from the world and it will point you to the higher things that do deserve them This Cross is the truest Ladder by which you may ascend from earth to heaven When in this wilderness and as without the gate you are lifted up with Christ on the Cross of worldly desertion and reproach you are then in the highest road to Glory and if you faint not shall be lifted up with him into the throne For if you suffer with him ye shall also reign with him Rom. 8. 17. And to him that overcometh he will grant to sit with him in his throne even as he also overcame and is set down with his Father in his throne Rev. 3. 21. And as the Cross of Christ is Teaching so also is it Strengthning As the touch of his garment stayed the poor womans issue of blood so will a touch of the Cross by faith even dry up the stream of your inordinate affections that have run out after the world so long When a worldling mourneth over the Dead world as having lost his chiefest friend the Cross of Christ will cause you to rejoyce over it as a conquered enemy and to insult over the carkaise of its vain glory and delights For its one thing to have an angry God by providence to kill the world to them and another thing to have a gracious Father by his Spirit to Crucifie us to the world and the world to us by the changing of our â—â—â—imation and affections Set therefore a Crucified Christ continually before the eye of your souls See what he suffered for your adhering to the creature and what it cost him to loose you from it and bring up your souls again to God Can you still dote upon the world intangle your affections in its painted allurements when you consider that this is the very sin that killed your Saviour and which the blood of his heart was shed to cure Look up to that Cross and see the fruits of worldly love If you see a man that hath surfeited on unwholsom fruits lie groaning and gasping and trembling in pain and at last must die for it you will take heed of such a surfeit your selves It was we that took a surfeit of the creature and the Lord that saw there was no other remedy to save our lives did by a Miracle of mercy and wisdom derive upon himself the pain and trouble and groaned and sweat and bled and dyed for our Recovery And will you feed and surfeit again upon the creature Look up to that Cross of Christ and see the enmity of the world unto your Head And will you take it for your friend See how it used him and will you expect that it should deal contrarily with you Did it hang him up among Malefactors and will it set you on a throne or dandle you in its lap Did it pierce his side and will it heal your wounds Did it reach him Gall and Vinegar and will it reach you milk and honey If it do yet trust it not For the milk is but to prepare you for that sleep in which it may destroy you without resistance for you must next expect the hammer and the nail as Iael used Sisera Iudg. 4. 19 21. There is not so clear a glass in all the world in which you may see the world in its just complexion and proportion as the Cross of Christ. There you may see what its worth and how to be esteemed by the estimate of one that never was deceived by it but had a perfect knowledge of its use and value When you have so long beheld that Cross by faith as that you can be contented to be hanged between heaven and earth and become the most forlorn and despicable creature in the eyes of men and to be stript of all the comforts of life and life it self for the sake of Christ and for the Invisible Kingdom which by his Cross was purchased for you then are you throughly Crucified to the world and the world to you by the Cross of Christ. Direct 2. BE sure that you receive nâ—t a false picture of the world into your minds or if you have received such an one see that you blot it out and think of the creature truly as it is The most are deceived and undone by mis-apprehensions As if a man should dote on an ugly harlot because of a painted face or because he seeth a beautiful picture which is falsly pretended to be hers The world in it self is vanity and insufficiency As opposite to God it is poyson and enmity to us But most men conceive of it as if it were the very seat of their felicity and so are enamoured of they know not what If men did not entertain false apprehensions of God and his holy waies as being against them or hurtful to them or needless and uncomfortable they could not be so much against them as they are And so if they did not entertain false apprehensions of the creature and the waies of sin they could not be so much for them nor embrace them with so much delight For they draw in their fancies some odious picture of the blessed God and his waies and therefore they are averse to them And so they draw in
of sensual things and so must be drowned in unprofitable cares What he shall eat or drink and wherewith he shall be cloathed What matter is it to a wise man Whether his meat be sweet or bitter or whether his drink be strong or small or whether his cloaths be fine or homely or whether he be honoured or derided or past by save only as these things may have relation to greater things and as the body must be kept in a serviceable plight and we must value that capacity most in which we may best do our Masters work Keep under the flesh and you will easily overcome the world Otherwise you strive against the the stream While you have unmortified raging appetites and corrupted fancies and sensual minds you are byassed to the world and if the rub of a Sermon or sickness may turn you out of your way awhile the byass will prevail and you will quickly be on it again If you dam up the stream of these unmortified affections they will rage the more and if you stop them for a while by good company or some restraint yet will they shortly break over all and be more violent then before All your striving by waies of meer restraint are to little purpose till the flesh it self be subdued It is but as if you should strive with a greedy dog for his bone and with an hungry Lyon to bereave him of his prey be sure they will not easily part with it It s the case of many deluded people that have some knowledge of Scripture enough to convince them and tip their tongues and strive to restrain them from their sensual waies but not enough to mortifie the flesh and change their souls O what a combate is there in their lives The flesh will have its prey and pleased it must be Their conscience tells them It will cost thee dear Their flesh like an hungry dog is ready to seize upon that which it desires And conscience doth as it were stand over it with a staff and saith Meddle with it if thou dare And sometime the poor sinner is restrained and sometime again he ventureth upon the prey and he that had condemned himself for his sin doth turn to his former vomit and once more he must have his whore or his cups and then conscience takes him by the throat and terrifieth him and makes him forbear a little while again And thus the poor sinner is tost up and down and Satan leads him captive at his will And because he findeth a combate within him he thinks it is the combate between the flesh and the sanctifying Spirit when alas it s no more but the combate between the flesh and an inlightened conscience assisted with the motions of common grace which because they resist and trample underfoot their condemnation will be the greater Would you then have the boiling of your corruptions abated Put out the fire that causeth them to boil or else you trouble your selves in vain Mortifie the flesh once and get it under and scorn to be a slave to a sensual appetite but let it be all one to you to displease it as to please it and leave such trifles as pleasant meats and drinks and dwellings and fine cloathes to children and fools that have no greater things to mind and use the flesh as a servant to the soul supplying it with necessaries but correcting it if it do but crave superfluities Do this and you will easily Crucifie the world For the world is only for the flesh For saith Iohn 1 Iohn 2. 16. All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and pride of life which are not of the Father but of the world And the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever Remember that he that saith in my text that he is Crucified to the world doth say also Gal. 5. 24. that They that are Christs have Crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts This is to kill the world at the Root for it is Rooted in the fleshly Interest When otherwise you will but lop off the branches and they will quickly grow again Direct 4. BE sure to keep your minds intent upon the Greater matters of Everlasting life and all your Affections imployed thereupon Diversion must be your cure Especially to so powerful and transcendent an object Be once acquainted with Heaven by a life of faith and it will so powerfully draw you to it self that you will be ready to forget earth and take it as a kind of Nothing Get up to God and fix the eye of your soul on him and his glory will darken all the world and rescue you from the mis-leadings of that false fire that did delude you Come near him daily and taste how good he is and the sweetness of his love will make you marvail at them that think the world so sweet and marvail at your selves that you were ever of such a mind You cannot think that the world will be cast out of your Love but by the appearance of somewhat better then it self You must go to Heaven therefore for a Writ of ejectment You must fetch a beauty a pleasure from above that shall abase it and silence it and shame its competition O what is earth and all things in it to him that hath had a believing lively thought of Heaven Nothing below this will serve the turn You may think long enough of the troubles of the world and long enough confess its vanity before you can Crucifie it if you see not where you may have something that is better The poorest life will seem better then none and a little in hand will be preferred before uncertain hopes Till faith have opened Heaven to you as being the Evidence of the things invisible and have shewed you that they are not shadows but substances which the promise revealeth and Believers do expect you will be still holding fast that little that you have and you will say in your hearts as some do with their tongues I know what I have in this world but I know not what I shall have in another But the knowledge of God will soon make you of another mind Let in God into the soul and he will fill it with himself and leave no room for earth and flesh Learn what it is to walk with him and to have a conversation in heaven and it will cure you of your earthly mindedness Phil. 3. 18 19. There is no consistence between Earth and Heaven All men are either Earthly or Heavenly minded None therefore but the truly Heavenly Believer hath Crucified the world But because I have said more of this elsewhere I now forbear Direct 5. VNderstand well the right use and end of all creatures and make it your business accordingly to improve them I have told you before that they are all for God and glasses wherein we may see his face and
that goeth believingly into the Sanctuary may see their end Surely they are set in slippery places and cast down into destruction How are they brought to desolation as in a moment and consumed with terrours Psalm 73. 12 17 18 19. And in that very day do all his thoughts perish Psalm 146. 4. Then shall they eat the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices for the turning away of the simple shall slay them and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them Prov. 31. 32. See then that you be not eager for prosperity and if God cast it on you use it with fear And if ever you feel the creature begin to grow too sweet and delightful to you then spit it out as the poyson of the soul and presently take a mortifying antidote before you are past remedy As you feel the working of poyson by its burning or griping or other effects agreeable to its nature by which it seeketh the extingushing of life so you may feel when the world is poyson to your souls by its creeping into your affections and insinuating into your hearts with present delight or future hopes by seeming more Lovely and more Necessary then it is As soon as ever you feel it thus creep into your hearâ—s its time to rise up against it with holy fear and to cast it out if you love your souls And that which I would advise you to at present when the world hath got too deep into your hearts before you are aware is this Do something extraordinary in such a necessity for its crucifixion and your recovery Though a careful diet may serve to preserve health while you have it yet if you have lost it and sickness be upon you you must have recourse to Physick for your cure If honour or preferment or house or land or friends or gain or recreations begin to seem too sweet and dear to you and your hearts begin to hug them with delight or make out after them with keen desires you must now have recourse to extraordinary helps and in particular try these following 1. Withdraw your selves to some more frequent and serious meditation of the brevity and vanity of the world then you have been used to steep your thoughts longer in mortifying considerations till the bent of your hearts begin to change 2. Be ofter with God in secret and publick prayer and give up a larger portion of your time to holy things then ordinarily you have done that acquaintance with heaven may wean your mind from earth and the Love of God may drown your worldly Love When you have taken any extraordinary cold you will get nearer the fire then ordinary and be longer at it and drive it out by heating things And when the world hath insinuated into your affections and chilled and cooled them to God and heaven its time to draw nearer God then before and to be longer with him and to strive harder in every duty then you did till spiritual life do work more vigorously and expell that earthly distemper which had possessed you 3. And at such a season let prayer be furthered by fasting and extraordinary humiliation which may help down the flesh which causeth you so much to over-value the world Even an Aâ—ab found some ease by a common humiliation when he had taken a mortal surfeit of Naboths Vineyard and his Blood Much more may a true Christian find much help by special humiliation when he hath surfeited on any creature whatsoever 4. And I think it would be a very good course at such a time as that to be at some more cost for God then you were before When you feel your love to the world increase Give somewhat extraordinary then to the poor or to pious uses according to your ability Yea what if it were so far as might a little pinch your selves This were a real opposition to the world and you might turn a very temptation to a gain and get much good by occasion of a sin It might do much to dis-hearten and repell the tempter when he seeth that you over-shoot him in his own bow and make such use as this of his temptations as to do the more good and use your wealth the more for God and deny your selves more then you did before If you would but faithfully practise these few directions you would find it the surest way of recovery when you begin to be infected with this earthly disease Direct 10. THE last Direction that I shall give you for the Crucifying of the world is this Be sure to keep off the means of its livelihood and keep it still under the mortifying means Lay siege to it and stop up all the passages by which the worlds provision would come in and keep it still under the strokes of enmity and the influence of that which is contrary to it Some particulars I will but briefly mention 1. Keep a constant guard upon your senses for this way the world creeps in to your hearts It is by gazing on alluring objects or hearing or tasting or the like that the flames of concupiscence are kindled in the heart By gazing upon beauty or comliness of perâ—â—n the heart of the wanton is infected with lust and so incited to the damnable practises of uncleanness The sight of the cup doth set an edge on the desires of the drunkard and the sight of enticing meats doth awaken and enrage the appetite of the gluttonous and by the presence of the bait their disease is set awork as worms in the body are by some kind of food Clemens Alexandr saith of these men that their disease is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is A madness about the throat And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is A madness in the belly And saith of them that are given to fulness or fineness of diet for the pleasing of their bellies that they are ruled by a Belly-Devil which saith he is the worst and most pernicious of all Devils Lay siege then to this belly-Devil and starve him out It is by the sight of gawdy fashions and curious apparel that the minds of vain effeminate persons are provoked to desire the like And the sight of pomp and honours doth kindle the fire of ambition and the sight of buildings and money and lands doth help to provoke the desires of the Covetous See therefore that you alwaies keep a watch upon your eyes Let them not run up and down like a master-less dog nor roul as the eyes of the lascivious that are hunting after the prey of lust If you have cause to pray as David Psal. 119. 37. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity You must practise according to your prayers and endeavour your selves to turn them away Have not the best of us as much reason as Iob to make a Covenant with our eyes Iob 31. 1. What wonder if the Garrison surrender not where the besieged have free passage and continual supplies And what
of heaven in it The stones and earth are useful for you to tread upon though they are unfit for you to feed on or too hard to rest upon So though the world be unfit to Rest or feed your souls it may be made a convenient way for you to travail in It is unmeet to be Loved but it is meet to be Used when you have learned so to use it as not abusing it When self is throughly down and denyed and God is exalted and your souls brought over so clearly to him that you are nothing but in him and would have nothing but in and with him and do nothing but for him then you shall be able to see that glory and amiableness in the creature that now you cannot see I or you shall see the Creator himself in the creature Benefit 10. WHEN once you are truly Crucified to the world You will have the honour and the comfort of an heavenly life Your thoughts will be daily steeped in the Coelestial delights when other mens are steept in Gall and Vinegar You will be above with God when your carnal neighbours converse only with the world Your thoughts will be higher then their thoughts and your waies then their waies as the heaven where you converse is higher then the earth When you take flight from earth in holy Devotions they may look at you and wonder at you but cannot follow you for whither you go they cannot come till they are such as you You leave them groveling here on earth and feeding on the dust and striving like children or rather like swine or dogs about their meat When you are above in the Spirit on the speedy wings of Faith and Love beholding that face that perfecteth all that perfectly behold it and tasting that Joy which fully reconcileth all that fully do enjoy it which we must here contend for but none do there contend about it What a noble employment have you in comparison of the highest servants of the world How sweet are your delights in comparison of the Epicures O happy souls that can see so much of your eternal happiness and reach so near it Were I but more in your condition I would not envy Princes their glory nor any sensualists and worldlings their contents nor desire to be their partner I could spare them their troublesom dignities and their burdensom Riches and the unwholsom pleasures which they so often surfet on and the wind of popular applause which so swelleth them Yea what could I not spare them if I might be more with you O happy poverty sickness or imprisonment or whatever is called misery by the world if it be nearer Heaven then a sensual life and if it will but advantage my soul for those contemplations which are the imployment of mortified heavenly men Yea if it do but remove the impediments of so sweet a life I know by some little too little experience I know that one hours time of that blessed life will easily pay for all the cost and one believing view of God will easily blast the beauty of the world and shame all those thoughts as the issues of my dotage that ever gave it a lovely name or turned mine eye upon it with desire or caused me once with complacency to behold it or ever brought it near my heart O Sirs what a noble life may you live and how much more excellent work might you be employed in if the world were but dead to you and the stream of your souls were turned upon God Had you but one draught of the Heavenly consolations you would thirst no more for the pleasures of the world Yea did you but taste of it as Ionathan of the honey from the end of his rod 1 Sam. 14. 27. your eyes would be enlightened and your hearts revived and your hands would be so strengthened in your spiritual warfare that your enemies would quickly perceive it in your more resolute prevailing opposition of their assaults And experience will tell you that you will no further reach this heavenly life then you are Crucified to earth and flesh God useth to shew himself to the Coelestial inhabitants and not to the Terrestrial And therefore you will see no more of God then you get above and converse in Heaven And if faith had not this elevating power and could not see further then sense can do we might talk long enough of God before we had any saving knowledge of him or relish of his Goodness And doubtless if we must get by faith into Heaven if we will have the reviving sight of God then we must needs away from earth For our hearts cannot at once converse in both Believe it Sirs God useth to give his heavenly Cordials upon an empty stomack and not to drown them in the mud and dirt of sensuality When you are emptyest of creature-delights and love you are most capable of God And fasting from the world doth best prepare you for this heavenly Feast Let Abstinence and Temperance be imposed upon your senses but command a totall Fast to your Affections And try then whether your souls be not fitter to ascend and whether God will not reveal himself more clearly then before It may seem a paradox that the vallies should be nearer Heaven then the Hills But doubtless Stephen saw more of it then the high Priests And Lazarus had a fairer prospect thither from among the dogs at the Rich mans gate then the Master of the house had at his plentiful table And who would not rather have Lazarus's sores with a fore-sight of Heaven then the Rich mans fulness without it yea with the fears of after misery A Heavenly life is proper to the mortified Benefit 11. MOreover those that are Crucified to the world are most fruitfull unto others and blessings to all within their reach They can part with any thing to do good with They are rich to God and their Brethren if they be rich and not to themselves If a mortified man have hundreds or thousands by the year he hath no more of it for himself then if he had a meaner estate He takes but necessary food and rayment he shunneth intemperance and excess Nay he often pincheth his body if needfull that he may tame it and bring it into subjection to the Spirit and the rest he layes out for the service of God so far as he is acquainted with his will Yea his necessary food and rayment which he receiveth himself is ultimately not for himself but for God Even that he may be sustained by his daily bread for his daily duty and fitted to please his Master that maintaineth him If they have much they give plenteously If they have but little they are faithfull in that little And if they have not silver and gold they will give such as they have where God requireth it But the unmortified worldling is like some spreading trees that by drawing all the nutriment to themselves and by dropping on the rest
will it do any man to know that heaven is promised to Believers if it cannot be known whether we are Believers or not But if you confess that it may be known why should we so despise the comfort of the promise as not to search after and observe the qualification which must evidence that it is ours Will you apply this promise to all or to some or to none If to none then it s made in vain If to all you will deceive the most I mean if you absolutely promise them the benefit For it is not all that are Believers nor all that shall have everlasting life You dare not absolutely tell all men in the world that they shall not perish It must needs therefore be the proper benefit of some and how will you know but by the Text who those are There is no way of applying it that the Text or common reason will allow of but by discerning that we are Believers to conclude thereupon that we shall not perish If you say that all are bound to believe that they shall not perish I answer then most should be bound to believe a falshood which cannot be They are only bound to believe the truth of the Gospel and accept of Christ as offered therein and then discerning this faith in themselves to conclude that they shall be glorified 8. Should we not observe the lower mâ—râ—iâ—s that we possess it were great unthankfulness much more to overlook the special mercies that accompany salvation We must bless God for the very health and strength of body that is within us for our understandings and memories How much more for the graces that are within us 9. Our Mortification is part of our Salvation and our Holiness is a beginning of our Happiness and when we come to heaven we shall be perfected herein If therefore we may not take comfort in this we may not take comfort in heaven it self which is the perfection of it 10. Lastly consider that Sanctification is that mercy that makes us capable of glorifying God for the rest of his mercies and receiving the comfort of them An unsanctified man cannot give any honour sincerely to Christ. And may we not observe and glory in that mercy that enableth us to give God the glory of all mercies Can it be a wrong to Christ to rejoyce in that without which we can do nothing but wrong him and to take comfort in that without which we are uncapable of true comfort By this time I hope it is evident to you that it is an injurious dealing against Christ and his Saints for any to reproach them for Glorying in Gods graces even that they are Crucified to the world and the world to them SECT XXV Use 2. FRom hence also many disconsolate Christians may see their errour who cannot Glory in a Mortified state They can see matter of comfort in a state of exaltation when they perceive themselves prosper in all that they undertake and find a present answer of their prayers and enjoy the sense of the Love of God but to be Crucified to the world and the world to them doth seem to them but an uncomfortable state and they cannot see the greatness of the mercy It is easie to perceive the excellency of those mercies that participate of the ultimate End and are known by proper fruition and have nothing in them but pure sweetness and delight And therefore a state of Joy declareth it self But as for those mercies that have the Nature of a Means whose excellency is in order to their end and those that have some wholsom bitterness mixt because they are less grateful to sense and valued only by faith therefore we are too prone to overlook their worth and to neglect the comforts which the consideration of them might afford us and so to deny God the thanks that is his due Every sensual man can rejoyce in the having and enjoying of outward prosperity And every Christian can rejoyce in the fruition of God whether in foretaste here or in fulness hereafter But to rejoyce in the absence of worldly prosperity in that we are dead to it and have learned to set light by it and to Rejoyce in the absence of God in that we have hearts that are set upon him and cannot be satisfied without him and are desiring after him and in progress towards him and hope ere long that we shall be with him this is the joy that must be expected by believers here on earth Though an Enjoying foretaste may now and then afford them a feast yet is it this Believing desiring seeking Joy that must be their ordinary sustentation And if in this world they have no other they have cause to be abundantly thankful for this To Rejoyce in the fruition of God especially when it is full is the part of the Glorified Saints in heaven To Rejoyce in the creature as accommodating their flesh is the Joy of the Carnal Unsanctisied here on earth A remnant of which is in the imperfect Saints To rejoyce in meer outward Ordinances and the false conceits of special Grace is the Joy of hypocrites and common prosessors To be without Ioy is the part of some of the ungodly under the terrours of their consciences and of true Christians that know not their own sincerity or are under some great desertions of God To be out of all hope and possibility of Ioy is the part of the Devil and damned men But to Rejoyce in the true mortification of the flesh and in the holy contempt of worldly things and in the desires and hopes of the glory to come this is the part of the Saints on the earth and the present joy that cometh by believing And this kind of joy is most suitable to our present condition as Fruition is suitable to our Heavenly End The comforts of travailers is not of the same kind with those of a man that is at home He that is at home would have his wealth about him But you would not carry your houses with you in your journey nor would you drive your cattle with you or carry all your goods and riches with you A travailer would have as fair a way as he can get and as good a guiâ—e and necessaries for his journey and no more but all the rest he would have at home that he may find it when he comes thither It is his benefit in the way to want no more and to have no more For the more he needeth and hath the more he must be burdened and troubled Mark the descriptions of our present blessedness that you find in the Scriptures and you may see that they consist in our present Mortification to things below and desires and hopes of things to come rather then in a state of enjoyment here whether it be of the world or of God Though still the reason of our Blessedness in a mortified estate is the tendency that it hath to a glorified estate because it is
and to proceed and persevere in an enmity to the world and a Believing Crucifixion of it if you will be saved from it and restore it to its proper use and captivate it that captivateth so many As some help hereunto I crave your Perusal of this Treatise And that it may do you good and the many Blessings promised to the charitable may rest upon you and on your Yoak-fellow that hath learned this Crucifying of the world and upon your posterity shall be the prayers of Feb. 20. 165â— â— Your fellow soldiour against the flesh and world Rich. Baxter The Preface To the Nobilty and Gentry and all that have the Riches of this world Honourable Worshipfull c. HAving written here of a subject that nearly concerneth you I have thought it my duty to give you a place and according to your Dignity the first place in the Application of it Of which I shall first tender you my Reasons and then set before you the matter of this address 1. You are among us the most eminent and honoured persons and therefore not to be neglected and past by you are first and therefore should first be served You hold your selves most worthy of any temporal honour that 's to be had and therefore I shall honour you so much more as to judge you fit to be first spoken to by the Ministers of Christ in a case that doth much more concern you As you have and would have the precedency in worldly matters here also you shall have the precedency Its pitty that you shall be first in Hell that are first in a Christian State on earth or that you should be least in the Kingdom of Heaven that are Greatest in that which is esteemed in the world 2. You are Pillars in the Common-wealth and the stakes that bear up the rest of the hedge Your influence is great in lower bodies You sin not to your selves only nor are you Gracious only to your selves The spots in the Moon are seen by more and its Ecclipses felt by more then the blemishes or changes of many of us inferiour wights You are our first figures that stand for more in matters of publick concernment then all that follow You are the Copies that the rest write after and they are more prone to Copy out your vices then your graces You are the first sheets in the Press you are the Stewards of God who are entrusted with his talents for the use of many You are the noble members of the Body Politick whose health or sickness is communicated to the rest If you be ungodly the whole body languisheth If you live and prosper it will go the better with us all For your Wisdom and Holiness and Iustice will be operative and your station alloweth them great advantage to work upon many and to emulate a kind of universal Causality Interest is the worlds byas and all Power hath respect to use You that have possession of the Treasure that is so commonly and highly esteemed may do much to lead the sensual world by it which way you please Be it better or be it worse they will follow him that bears the purse If money can do wonders you may do wonders As money can perswade the blind to part with God and life everlasting and to renounce Religion and Reason it self so no doubt but it might do something were it faithfully used though not directly to sanctifie the heart yet somewhat to incline it to the means by which it may be sanctified You that have Power to Help or Hurt to make it Summer or Winter to your subjects and to promote or cross the interest of the flesh are hereby become a kind of Gods in the eyes of them that mind this Interest as in higher respects you are unto Believers Especially seeing they want that eye of faith by which they should know the Soveraign Majesty who at his pleasure doth dispose both of you and them these purblind sinners can reach no further but are contented to be Ruled by you as terrestrial Deities They see you but they see not God they know you and perceive the effects of your favour and displeasure but being dead to God and savouring only fleshly things they scarce observe his smiles or frowns They see that which is visible to the eye which they have the use of but the Objects of faith are to them as Nothing because they have no eye to see them And seeing you have such publick interest and influence it is our duty first to look after your souls and to see that you receive the heavenly impress 3. To which I may add that no men have usually more need of advice and help then you For your temptations are the strongest The world killeth by its flatteries It is not the having it but the Loving it that undoes men And he is much liker to over-love it that hath what he would have and liveth in plentiful provisions for his flesh then he that hath nothing from it but trouble and vexation It is not poverty and prisons and sickness that are the flattering pandors of the world but prosperity and content to the flesh Though I know that many of the poor do most of all over-value the world because they never tryed so much of its vanity but standing at a distance from prosperity do think it a greater felicity then it is For those are most in Love with the world that least know it as those that least know him are least in Love with God and eternal glory But yet it is pleasing and not displeasing flattering rather then buffeting that is the means of deceiving filly souls and stealing their hearts from God to the world Your mountains lie open to stronger winds then our vallies do And your gulfs and greater streams are not so foordable as our more shallow waters He never studyed God and Heaven nor his own heart that knoweth not that it is a very difficult thing to have an heavenly mind in earthly prosperity and to live in the desires of another world while we feel all seem to go well with us in this How hard to be weaned from the world till we suffer in it yea till we are plunged into an utter despair of ever receiving here the satisfaction of our desires 4. And truly we have too much sad experience of the sensuality and ungodliness of most of the Rich to suffer us to think that you have least need of our admonitions Which leadeth me up to the Matter of my Address which is first to complain of you to your selves and then to Admonish you and lastly to Direct you 1. I know I speak to those for the most part that profess to believe a Life to come but O that you had the honesty to live as you do profess You durst not put it into your Creed that you believe that earth is more desirable then Heaven and that its better seek first after Carnal prosperity and delight then for
the Kingdom of God and the Righteousness thereof You would be ashamed to say that it is the wisest course first to make provision for the flesh and to put off God and your salvation with the leavings of the world And do you think it is not as bad and as dangerous to do so as to say so Would it bring you to your journeys end to be of the Opinion that you should be up and going as long as you sit still Right Opinions in Religion are so unlikely to save a man that crosseth them in his practise that such shall be beaten with many stripes I had rather be in the case of many a Popish Fryer that renounceth the world though in a way that hath many errours then in the case of many an Orthodox Gentleman that is drowned in the cares and pleasures of this life Yea I think it will be easier for a Socrates a Plato in the day of Iudgement then for such Christianity is a practical Religion It is a devoted seeking for another life by the improvement and contempt of this Put not that into your Life that you are ashamed to put into your Profession or Belief If you Do as Infidels you will be as miserable as if you Believed but as Infidels And Practising a while against your Conscience may cause God to for sake your judgement also and give you over to Believe as you Live because you would not Live as you Believed And I fear that this is the case of some of you Nay I have too much reason to know it that some of our Gentry even persons of note and honour among us have for saken Christ and are turned Infidels and by the Love of this world have carnally adhered to it so long till they are so far forsaken of God as to think that there is no other Life for them hereafter God hath an eye on these wretches and men have an eye on some of them I shall now leave them in their slippery station till a fitter opportunity Some we have of our Nobility and Gentry that are Learned Studious and Pious and an honour and blessing to this unworthy Land or else it were not like to be so well with us as it is But Oh how numerous are the sensual and prophane which provoked that heavenly Poet of Noble extract Mr. G. Herbet Ch. porch to say O England full of sin but most of sloth Spit out thy flegm and fill thy brest with glory Thy Gentry bleats as if thy native cloth Transfused a sheepiness into thy story Not that they all are so but that the most Are gone to grass and in the pasture lost Gentlemen I have no mind to dishonour you but compassion on your souls and on the Nation commands me to complain in order to reform you And yet if you sinned and perished alone we were the less unexcusable if we let you alone What abundance of you are fitter to swill in a buttery or gorge your selves at a feast orride over poor mens corn in hawking and hunting then to govern the Common-wealth and by Iudgement and Example to lead the people in the waies of life What abundance of you waste your precious hours in feasting and sports and idleness and complementing and things impertinent to your great business in the world as if you had no greater things to mind Had you been by another commanded to a Dung-cart or like a Carryer to follow pack-horses an honester and more honourable life then yours you would think your selves enslaved and dishonoured And yet when God hath set before you an Eternal Glory you debase your own souls by wilful drenching them in the pleasures and cares and vanities of the world and have no mind of that high and noble work which God appointed you So that when many poor men are â—nnobled by an Heavenly Disposition and an Heavenly Conversation you enslave your selves to that which they tread under-feet and refuse the only noble life That which they account as loss and dross and dung that they may win Christ and be found in him Phil. 3. 7 8. that do you delight in and live upon as your treasure When once you know whether God or your money be better whether heaven or earth whether eternity or time be better you will then know which is the noblest life Nay what abandance are there among you that make a very trade of sensuality and turn your sumptuous houses into sties and your gorgeous apparel into hansom trappings if the appurtenances may receive their names from the possessors That never knew what it was to spend one day or hour of your lives in a diligent search of your hearts and waies and heart-breaking lamentation of your sin and misery and in serious thoughts of the life to come but go on from feast to feast and company to company and from one pleasure to another as if you must never hear of this again and as if you were so drunken and besotted with the world that you had forgotten that you are men or that you have a God to please and a soul to save or lose for ever Nay how many of you hate a faithful Preacher and an holy life and make them the ordinary matter of your scorn and cheat your souls with a few ceremonies and formalities as if by such a Carnal Religiousnes you could make all whole when you have lived to the flesh and loathed the Spiritual worship of God that is a Spirit and the heavenly lives of his sanctified ones and consequently the Law that commandeth such a life and the God that is the Maker of that Law I call not your Civil Controversies your Malignity but it is the proper title of your Enmity to Holiness And is it not enough that man in Honour will be without understanding and make himself like the beasts that perish Psal. 44. 20. but you must also take up the Serpentine nature and hissing and stinging must be the requital that you return to Christ for all your Honours Think if you have yet a thinking faculty whether this be kindly or honestly or wisely done and what its like to be to your selves in the end Your Riches and Honours do now hide a great deal of your shame but will it not appear when these raggs are torn from your backs and your souls are left in naked guilt Saith Chrysostom If it were possible to do Justice on the Rich as commonly on the poor we should have all the Prisons filled with them but Riches with their other evils have also this evil that they save men from the punishment of their evil O but how long will they do so This was plain dealing of an Holy Father and is it not such as is as needful now as then Is it not Greatness more then Innocency that saves abundance of you from shame and punishment Nay many of you think that because you are rich it is Lawful for you to be Idle and Lawful voluptuously
to give up your selves to pleasures and recreations and you think that you may do with your own as you list as if it had been given you to gratifie the flesh The words that converted Austin never suâ—k yet into your hearts Rom. 13. 13 14. Let us walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambering and wantonness not in strife and envying but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof You never felt the meaning of those words Rom. 8. 13. If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if by the Spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live But to turn my Complaint into an Admonition I beseech you consider what you are and what you do 1. How unlike are you to Iesus Christ your pattern that denyed himself all the Honours and Riches and Carnal delights of the world Read over his Life and Read your own and judge whether any man on earth be more unlike to Christ then a voluptuous worldly Gentleman Especially if Malignity be added to his sensuality 2. How unlike are you to the holy Laws of Christ. Are his precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal imprinted in your hearts and predominant in your lives Is a beast any more unlike a man then your hearts and lives are unlike Christs Laws 3. How unlike are you to the Antient Christians that forsook all and followed Christ and lived in a Community of Charity And how unlike to every gracious soul that is dead to the world and hath mortified his members upon earth and hath his conversation in another world Are you not such as Paul wept over Phil. 3. 18. Whose God is their belly who glory in their shame and who mind earthly things and that are enemies to the Cross of Christ. though perhaps you are no enemies to his Name Believe it Gentlemen whatever your thoughts of your selves may be you will find that no Religion will save you that stoopeth to the world and is but an underling to your fleshly interest 4. How unlike are you to your Profession and your Covenant with God and to your Confessions and Prayers to him Did you not renounce the flesh the world and the Devil in your Baptism Do you not still Profess that heaven is best and God is to be preferred and yet will you not do it but let your own Professions condemn you Do you not ordinarily confess that the world is vain and yet will you shew your selves such Dissemblers as to love and seek it more then God As if there were no more Power in the Spirit of Christianity then in the Opinion of Zeno the Philosopher who having oft said that Poverty and Riches were neitheâ— good nor bad but things indifferent was yet dismaye when he heard that his farms were seized on by the enemies the Prince having sent one with the report to try him telling him when he had done that Now Riches and Poverty were not things indifferent How oft have you prayed to be saved from Temptation and yet will you still date upon your snares and fetters and shew your selves such hypocrites as to love the temptations which you pray against 5. You are guilty of a double injury to God in that you are obliged to him as his Created subjects and yet more obliged by your Riches and Honours which he hath given you for your Masters use To whom men give much from them will they expect the more Luke 12. 48. For a servant that hath double wages to abuse you for a friend that hath received double kindness to prove false to you for a Commander in the Army to betray his General is sure an aggravation of the crime Must God advance you highest and will you thrust him lowest in your heart Must he feed you with the best and cloath you with the best and will you put him off with the worst Have you ten times or an hundred times more wealth from him then many an honest heavenly Believer and yet will you Love and Serve him less 6. Is it not pitty and shame that you should thus turn Mercies themselves into sin and draw your bane from that which might have been a blessing Will you be the worse because God is so good to you Must he give you health and time for his service and give you such plentiful provision and assistance and will you be worse in health then others are in sickness and worse in Plenty then others are in want Is not this the way to dry up the streams of Mercy when the more you have the worse you are 7. You exceedingly wrong the Church and Common-wealth For it is for the publick good that you are advanced and you should be a blessing to the Land And will you cast away that time and wealth upon the flesh which you have received for such noble ends Rob not the Church and Common wealth of what you owe it by engrossing it to your selves or consuming it on your lusts 8. Great men have a great account to make You shall shortly hear Give account of thy Steward-ship for thou shalt be no longer Stewarâ— If God have entrusted you you with a thousand pound a year it is not the same reckoning that must serve your turn as would serve his turn that had but an hundred Your improvement must be somewhat answerable to your receivings Do you need to be told how sad a reckoning it will then be to say Lord I imployed most of it in maintaining the Pomp and Pleasure of my self and family even that Pomp of the world and those sinful lusts of the flesh which in my Baptism I forswore and the rest I left to my children to maintain them in the same pomp and pleasure except a few scraps of my Revenews which I gave to the Church or poor 9. Your wealth and greatness do afford you great opportunities to do good and to further the salvation of your selves and others and worldliness and sensuality will rob you of these opportunities O how many good works might you have done to the honour of your Lord and the benefit of others and your selves if you had made the best of your Interest and Estates The loss of the Reward will shortly appear to you a greater loss then that which you now account the loss of your estates 10. Your worldliness and sensuality is a sin against your own experience and the experience of all the world You have long tryed the world and what hath it done for you that you should so over-value it You know that it is the common vote of all that ever tryed it sooner or later that it is vanity and vexation And have you not the wit or grace to learn from so plain a teacher as Experience yea your own experience yea and all the worlds experience 11. You sin also against your very Reason it self and against your certain knowledge You
know most certainly that the world will serve you but a little while You know the day is hard at hand when it will turn you off and you shall say I have now had all that the world can do for me Naked you came into it and naked you must go out of it Haud ullas portabis opes Acherontis ad undas And then you shall more sensibly know what you now so overvalued and what you preferred before God and your salvation then now I am able to make you know O what low thoughts will every one of you have of all your pomp and pleasure your vain-glory and all your fleshly accommodations when you perceive that they are gone and leave your souls to the â—ustice of that God whom for the love of them you wilfully neglected If poor men of mean and low education were so soâ—â—ish as not to know these things me thinks it should not be â—…ith you that are bred to more understanding then they 12. Lastly you sin against the most plain and terrible passages of Scripture seconded with dreadful judgements of God inflicted either upon your selves or at least on others of your rank before your eyes You have read or heard the words of Christ Luk 9. 25. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself and be cast away And Luke 12. 33 34. Sell all that you have and give alms provide your selves baggs which wax not â—ld a treasure in the heavens that faileth not where no thief approacheth neither moth corrupteth For where your treasure is there will your hearts be also You have heard there the terrible Parable of the Rich man Luke 12. 16 17 18 19 20. which endeth with Thou fool this night thy soul shall be required of thee and then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided with this general application So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not Rich towards God And you have heard that more dreadful Parable Luke 16. of the Rich man that was cloathed in purple and fared sumptuously and what was his endless end You have heard the difficulty of the salvation of the Rich. Luke 18. 24 25. How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God Because they are so hardly kept from loving them inordinately and trusting in them You have heard how fully Christ is resolved that no man can be his Disciple that forsaketh not all that he hath for him Luke 14. 33 26 27. And if you go never so far in your Obedience and yet lack this one thing to part with all in affection and resolution and practise when he requireth it and follow Christ in sufferings and wants in hope of a treasure in heaven its certain that Christ and you must part Luke 18. 22. You have heard the terrible passages in Jam. 5. 1 2 c. and abundance such in the word of God And yet are you not afraid of worldliness or sensuality You have seen in England the Riches of abundance quickly scattered that were long in gathering and God knows how many lost their souls to build that which a few years wars pull'd down And yet when you have but a little breathing time you are at it again as eagerly as ever as men that knew no greater good and are acquainted with no better and more gainful an employment Gentlemen do you know indeed what it is that you make so great a stir for which you value at so high a rate which you hold so fast which you enjoy so delightfully You do not know I dare say by your using of it that you do not know it Or else you would soon have other thoughts of it and use it in another manner Come nearer and see it through and look into the inside Consult not with blind and partial sense but put on a while the spectacles of faith go into the Sanctuary and see the end Nay Reason it self may tâ—ll you much of it When you must part with it you 'l wish it hang'd loose from you and not been so glued to you as to tear your hearts You feel not what the Devils lime-twigs have done till you are about to take wing either by an heavenly contemplation or by death and then youâ—l find your selves entangled The world is like to bad Physitians quoâ—um successus Sol intuetur errores autem Tellus operit The earth beareth yet all the good it doth you but Hell hath hidden from you the mischief that it hath done to millions of your Ancestors and therefore though this their way was their folly yet do their posterity approve their sayings Psal. 19. 13. Dic miâ—i saith Bernard ubi sunt amatores mundi qui ante pauâ—a tâ—n pâ—…nobiscum fuerunt Nihil ex ejâ— remaâ—sit nisi cinâ—â—â—s vermes Attende diligenter qui sunt suerunt siâ—…ru commederunt biberunt riserunt duxerunt in bonis dies suos in puncto ad inferna descenderunt Hic caro eorum vermibus illic anima eorum slammis deputatur donec rursus infelici collegio colligati sempiternis ignibus in volvantur Who would so value that which he must eternally complain of and not only say It hath done me no good but also say It hath deceived me and undone me I would not thank you to make me the Owner of all your Lands and Honours to day and take it from me all to morrow What the better now are your Grand fathers and great Grandfathers for living in those houses and possessing those lands and honours and pleasures that you possess Vnless they used them spiritually and holily for God and heaven and the common good they are now in hell for their sensuality upon earth and are reaping as they have sown Gal. 6 7 8. and paying dear for all their pleasures Their bones and dust do give you no notice of any remnants of their honours or delights and if you saw their souls you would be further satisfied It may be there stands agilded Monument over their rottenness and dust and it may be they have left an honourable name with those that follow them in their deceit and so might the tormented Rich man with his Brethren Luke 16. who were following him towards that place of torment A just judgement of God it is to to give up men that choose deceit to be thus befooled That they should not only despise the durable Riches and choose a dream of honour wealth and pleasure here but also that their end may answer their beginning they should also take up with a picture of honour and felicity when they are dead That their deceived posterity may see a guilded Image bearing an honourable mention of their names and hear them named with applause and so may be allured thee more boldly to go after them And so a shadow of wisdom and vertue hath a shadow of surviving Honour for its Reward which alas neither soul nor body
obstinately unreformed And is the case so altered think you now as that you are bound to make such children rich that parents then were bound to put to death 3. I am not bound to give unnecessary provisions to an enemy of God to mis-employ it and strengthen him to do mischief and be more able to oppress Gods servants or oppose his Truth or serve the Devil I for bear to mention the proportions of mens estates that I think they are ordinarily bound to alineate but shall leave you to Prudence and the General Rules lest I seem to you to go beyond my line But in general I must say that it is a selfish and an hainous errour to think that men should lay up all that they can gather for their posterity and all to leave them rich and honourable and put off God and all charitable uses with the crums that fall from their Tables or with some inconsiderable driblets If the Rich man in Luke 18. might have followed Christ on such terms as these he would hardly have gone sorrowfully from him 1. By this men shew that they prefer their children before God 2. And that they prefer them before the Church and Gospel and the Common-wealth When an herâ—ick Heathen would have confessed that his estate and children and his life were not too good to be sacrificed to his Countrey as the case of the Decii and many other Romans that gave their lives for their Countrey witnesseth 3. These men prefer the worldly riches of their children before the souls of men When they have so many Calls to employ their wealth to the furthering of mens salvation and put by all that their children may be rich 4. They prefer their childrens Riches before their own everlasting good Or else they would not deny themselves the Reward of an holy improvement of their talents and cast themselves upon the terrible sentence that is past upon unprofitable servants and all to leave their children wealthy 5. They prefer the bodily prosperity of their children before their spiritual Or else they would not be so eager to leave them that Riches which Christ hath told them is such a snare and hindrance to mens salvation 6. They would teach all the world the easie art of never doing good in life or death For if all must follow their principles then the Parents must keep almost all for their children and the children must do the like by their children and so it must run on to all generations that their posterity may be kept as rich as their predecessors 7. How unlike is this to the antient Saints and how unlike to the general precepts of self-denyal and doing good to all while we have time c. which Christ hath left us in the Gospel Enable your children to be serviceable in the Church and Common-wealth as far as you may but prefer them not before the Church or Common-wealth Wrong not God nor your own souls nor the souls or bodies of other men to procure your children to be rich It will not ease your pains in hell to think that you have left your children Rich on earth It s few of the great and noble that are Called They will have an easier way to heaven in a mean estate Their Nurses milk contented them when first they lived in the world and will nothing but Lands and Lordships and superlative matters now content them when they have a shorter time to use it Poor men can sing as merily as the Rich and sleep as quietly and live as comfortably and die as easily Cantabit vacuus They are free from abundance of your cares and fears The Philosopher that had received a great gift of Gold from a Prince sent it back to him the next morning and told him that he loved no such gifts as would not let him take his sleep for thinking what to do with it Direct 7. Lastly Study the Art of doing Good and making your selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when you go hence you may be received into the everlasting habitations Remember how much of your Religion doth consist in the Devoting of your selves and all to God and improving his stock and being Rich in good works ready to distribute and communicate 1 Tim. 6. 18. And how much will be laid upon this at Iudgement Matth. 25. God doth not call upon you for your charity as if he would be beholden to you or needed any thing that you can give him but because he will thus difference his hearty followers from complementing hypocrites The poor you shall have alwayes with you and the Church shall alwayes want your help and Christ will be still distressed in his members to try the reality of mens professions whether they love him above all or else dissemble with him and wheeher they have any thing that they think too good for him It is a certain mark of an hypocrite to have any thing in this world so dear to you that you cannot spare it for Christ. Remember then that it is your own concernment If you would be ever the better for all your wealth nay if you would not be undone by it study how you may be most serviceable to God with it Cicero could say that to be Rich is not to possess much but to use much And Seneca could rebuke them that so study to encrease their wealth that they forget to use it If really you be Christians heaven is your portion and your end And if so you can love nothing else nor use any thing else rationally but as a means to attain that end See therefore in all your expences how you attain or promote your end Alas men are so busily building in their way that they shew us that they take not themselves for travellers They are so familiar with the world that they shew us they are not strangers but at home They make their garments so fine and lay such mountains on their backs that we see they mean not to be serious Runners in the Christian race The thorny cares that choak Christs seed do shew that they are barren and nigh to burning If you gather Riches for your selves Luke 12. 21. you are standing pits If you are Rich to God you will be running springs or cisterns There is a blessed Art of sending all your Riches to Heaven before you if you could learn it and were willing to be happy at those rates It is not for your Riches that God will either condemn or save you but for the Abasing or improving them Though Lazarus was a beggar yet Abraham had been rich whose bosom he was in Rich men must know saith Ambrose that the fault is not in Riches but in them that know not how to use them Nam divitiae ut impedimenta sunt improbis ita bonis sunt adjumenta virtutum O that you could but be sensible of the difference betwixt them that can say at last We have used our stock for the
greater things require it but not to be destroyed and made unserviceable Infidâ— huic corp ri quomodo conjunctus sim haud equidem scio quoque pacto simul imago Dei sim cum coeno voluter quod cum pulchra valetudine est bello me lacessit cum bello premitur maerore me afficit quod ut conservum amo ut inâ—micum odi atque aversor quod ut vinculum fugio ut cohaeres vereor Si debilitare illud conficere studeo jam non habeo quo socio opitulatore ad res praeclarissimas utâ—r nimirum haud ignorans quam ob causam procreatus sim quodque me per actiones ad Deum ascendere oporteat Sin contra ut cum socio adjutore mâ—tius agam nulla jam ratio occurrit qua rebellantis impetum fugiam atque à Deo non excidam compedibus degravatus vel in terram detrahentibus vel in ea detinentibus Hostis est blandus placidus invidiosus amicus O miram conjunctionem alienationem Quod metuo amplector quod amo pertimesco Antequam bellum gesserim in gratiam redeo Antequam pace fruar ab eo dissideo Greg. Naz. ubi sup And for Delight at least learn of an Heathen how to esteem of it Sen. de vita beata Tu voluptatem complecteris ego compesco Tu voluptate frueris ego utor Tu illam summum bonum putas ego nec bonum Tu omnia voluptatis causâ facis ego nihil What remains now Gentlemen but that you be up and doing and look about you where you may have the best bargain to lay out your money on for God and for your souls Stay not till the Market is over till thieves have rob'd you till God in judgement have impoverished you till meer necessity do constrain you to part with that which you cannot keep or till the souls or bodies that need your help are removed from your sight Seek after an object for your Alms as diligently as beggars seek the Alms you have more cause for you get more by Giving then they do by Receiving If you believe not this you believe not Christ and so are Infidels The summe of my Advice is that as men that are drawing near to their account and love Christ in his members and believe the promise of Reward you would Devote your selves and your estates to Christ and study to do good and make it your daily trade and business as men that are zealous of Good works and created to walk in them Tit. 2. 14. Eph. 2. 10. and not as dropping a little upon the by Say not that you have not wealth or interest or opportunity The Rich have full opportunities The poor have their two mites or their cup of cold water to give to a Disciple And he that hath neither may have a Will to give thousands a year And this is our comfort that have but little that if there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath and not according to that he hath not 2 Cor. 8. 12. But where there is a readiness to will there will also be a performance out of that which you have if you be sincere Vers. 11. Et Nunquam usque eo interclusa sunt omnia ut nulli actioni honestae locus sit Nunquam inutilis est opera civis boni Auâ—itu enim visu vultu nutu obstinatione tacita incessuque ipso prodest Ut salutaria quaedam citra gustum tactumque odore proficiunt ita virtus utilitatem etiam ex longinquo latens fundit sive spargitur se utitur suo jure sive precarios habet excessus cogiturque vela contrahere sive otiosa mutaque est angusto circumscripta sive adaperta in quocunque habitu est prodest Seneca de Tranq I give you not these passages of strangers to Christ as if his Doctrine needed any such patches but as imagining that the temper of those I speak to may need such a double testimony and to see the Book of Nature as well as of Grace and to let you understand how unexcusable a Professed Christian is that is worse then an Infidel I have been long and yet I would I had done I have taught you and yet I fear lest you have not learned I have told you what you knew before unless it be because you will not know it and yet have more need to hear it then a thousand things that you never knew I have set you an easie Lesson hard to be Learned Were but your senses Rational or were your Will but dis-engaged and morally Free the work were done and that would be learnt in an hour that the Church Common-wealth might rejoyce in till the Sun shall be no more O had we but such Princes Nobles and Gentlemen as were thus Zealous and Studious of Good works and wholly Devoted and Dedicated unto God what a Resemblance should we have of Heaven or Earth How then would our Princes and Nobles be both Loved and Honoured when their Addictedness to God did make them so Divine How Honourable then would our Parliaments be and how chearfully should we flock together for their Election How dear would our Iudges and countrey Magistrates be to all that have any thing of piety or humanity in them Kings then would reign in Righteousness and Princes Rule in judgement and a man should be as an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest as rivers of water in a dry place as the shadow of a great Rock in a weary Land And the eyes of them that see should not be dim and the ears of them that hear should hearken the heart also of the rash should understand knowledge and the tongue of the stammerers should be ready to speak elegantly Isa. 32. 1 2 3 4 5. what help then should Ministers have in their work and the souls of all the people for their happiness and what a shaking would Satans Kingdom feel Then neither seducers should have this pretence nor the seduced this temptation as now they have to call their various Modells of Republicks by such splendid names and to think Christ Reigns when they Reign or that it is the only Government to have all to be Governors or to have the greatest Liberty to be bad No forms will reform us and heal our maladies till we are healed and reformed within Lead will not be Gold what form soever you mold it into And though some waies may be more effectual to restrain the evil and improve the good that is among them yet still the wicked will do wickedly The The Swordfish and the Thresher would be the Tormentors of Leviathan and God himself would be impatient of his Tyrannie And his Brother would mend the matter who by giving the Power to the vast tumultuous Ocean it self may find that his Republick is not only inconsistent with a Clergy an high
he was very Rich. And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful he said How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God Luke 18. 21 22 23 24. Read and consider Luke 12. 15. to 49. And Luke 16. 19 to the end Luke 14. 33 26 27 28. So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be my Disciple Eph. 2. 10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to Good Works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them Jam. 2. 14. What profiteth it my brethren if a man say he hath faith and have not works Can faith save him Tit. 2. 14 Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and sanctifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of Good Works 1 Tim. 6 17 18 19. Charge them that are Rich in this world that they be not high minded nor trust in uncertainty of Riches but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy that they do Good that they be rich in Good Works ready to distribute willing to communicate Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life Heb. 13. 16. But to do Good and to Communicate forget not for with such sacrifice God is well pleased Luke 16. 9 13. I say unto you Make you friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon who will commit to your trust the true Riches ye cannot serve God and Mammon Psal. 41. 1 2 c. Blessed is he that considereth the poor the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble c. Read Deut. 15. 7 8 9 c. 2 Cor. 9. 8 9 c. Dan. 4. 27. Lev. 23. 22. Prov. 22. 9. Prov. 28. 27. He that giveth to the poor shall not lack but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse Read Isa. 58. throughout Jam. 1. 27. Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted of the world Jam. 5. 1 2 3 5. Go to now ye Rich men weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you your Riches are corrupted and your Garments moath-eaten your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire Ye have heaped treasure together for the last daies Ye have lived in pleasure on earth and been wanton you have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter 1 Joh. 3. 16 17 18. We ought to lay down our lives for the Brethren but whoso hath this worlds good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels from him how dwelleth the Love of God in him My little children let us not love in word nor in tongue but in deed and in truth Gal. 6. 6 7 9 10. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all his goods or good things Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap Let us not be weâ—…y in well-doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not As we have therefore Opportunity let us do Good unto all men especially to them who are of the houshold of faith Eph. 4. 28. Let him Labour working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth Mat. 10. 41 42. He that Receiveth a Prophet in the name of a Prophet shall receive a Prophets reward and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous mans reward And whoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a Disciple verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward Read 1 Cor. 9. 4 5. to 16. Mat. 25. 40 45. Verily I say unto you in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of those my Brethren ye have done it unto me Verily I say unto you in as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it not to me Mat. 6. 3 4. But when thou dost alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth That thy alms may be in secret And thy father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly But this I say Brethren the time is short it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. THE CONTENTS THe Text opened Doctrines deduced and Method propounded pag. 1. to 5 What is not this Crucifying of the world by way of Caution to avoid extreams Sect. 2. p. 5 In what respects the world must be Crucified to us 1. As the creature would be mans felicity or any part of it Sect. 3. p. 10 2. As it is set in competition with God or in the least degree of co-ordination with him p. 11. 3. As it standeth at enmity to God and his waies 4. As it is the matter of our flesh pleasing and fuel of conscupiscence 5. As an Independant or separated good without its due Relations to God p. 14. 15 Eph. 2. 12. Psal. 39. 6. 73. 20. considered p. 18 19 The different successes of sanctified and unsanctified studies and knowledge p. 17 21 The creatures Aptitude to tempt us is inseparable p. 22 Wherein the world's Crucifixion consisteth as to our acts We must use the world as it 〈◊〉 Christ Sect. 4. p. 24 More particularly 1. To esteem the world as an enemy to God and us Sect. 5. p. 31 How this enmity may be apprehended p. 32 2. A deep habituate apprehension of its worthlesness and insufficiency p. 33 3. A kind of Annihilation of it to our selves p. 35 How we must be Crucified to it The difference between this and Natural Death Sect. 6. p. 36 1. Our undue Estimation of the world must be Crucified p. 37 2. And our inordinate cogitations 3. And affections p. 39 1. Our Love 2. Desire 3. Expectations 4. Our Delight p. 43. So in the Irascible 1. Displacency and hatred c. p. 43 4. Our inordinate Seeking and Labour p. 47 Divers Objections and Questions answered Sect. 7. p. 48 How the Cross of Christ doth Crucifie the world And 1. How it is done by the Cross as suffered by Christ Sect. 8. p. 50 2. How by the same Cross believed in and considered p. 54 3. How by the Cross which we suffer in Obedience and Conformity to Christ p. 57 The point proved by experience Sect. 9.
to all spiritual improvement No so far is this from being any part of our duty that it is none of the least of our sins The creature was the first book that ever God did make for us in which we might read his blessed perfections And the perverting it to another use with the neglect of this was mans first sin As it was the great work of the Redeemer to bring us back to God that made us and restore us to his favour so also to restore us to a capacity of serving him even in that imployment which he appointed to us in our innocency which was to see God in the face of his creatures and then to love and honour him and by them to serve him Though this be not our highest felicity yet is it the way thereto Till we come to see face to face we must be glad to see the face of God in the glass of his works But of this we have more to say anon in the application 4. Our Crucifying of or to the world requireth not any secession from the world nor a withdrawing our selves from the society of men nor the casting away the propriety or possession of the necessaries which we possess It is an easier thing to throw away our Masters Talents then faithfully to improve them The Papists glory in the holiness of their Church because they have many among them that have vowed never to marry and have no propriety in Lands or Houses and have separated themselves into a Monasticall society Aâ—â—high commendation to their Church when men must be Sainted with them if they will do no mischief though they make themselves useless to the rest of the world The servant that hid his Talent in a Napkin was condemned by Christ as wicked and sloathful and shall he be commended by us for extraordinarily devout Will you reward that servant that will lock up himself in his chamber or hide his head in a hole when he should be busie at your work Or will you reward that souldier that will withdraw from the Army into a corner when he should be fighting The world swarms on every side with multitudes of ignorant and impenitent sinners whose miserable condition cryeth loud for some relief to all that are any way able to relieve them And these Religious Monks make haste from among them and leave them to themselves to sink or swim and they think this cruelty to be the top of piety Unworthy is that man to live on the earth that liveth only to himself and communicateth not the gifts of God to others And yet do these idle unprofitable droans esteem their course the life of perfection When we must charge through the thickest of our enemies and bear all the unthankfull requitals of the world and undergo their scorns and persecutions these wary souldiers can look to their skin and get out of the reach of such encounters and when they have done imagine that they have got the victory To live to our selves were it never so spiritually is far unlike the life of a Christian A good man is a common good and compassionate to the miserable and desirous to bring others to the participation of his felicity To withdraw from the world to do God service is to get out of the Vineyard or Shop that we may do our Masters work If you have riches it is not casting them away that shall excuse you instead of an holy improving them for God If you have possessions it is not a renouncing of propriety that shall excuse you from the prudent and charitable use of them The same I say also of Relations of Offices in the Church and Common-wealth God calleth you not to renounce them To crucifie the world is not to disclaim all the relations possessions or honours of the world These are not yours but Gods And as he put them into your hands and commanded you faithfully to use them as his Stewards so you must do it and not think it a good account of your Stewardship â—o tell God that you threw away the talents that he trusted you with because they were temptations to you or because he was austere I should have no great need to speak of this were there not such a multitude of deluded souls that have lately received the Popish dotages herein It s one thing to creep into a Monks Cell or an Anchorets Cave or an Hermits Wilderness or Diogenes Tub and another thing truly to be Crucified to the world and in the midst of the creatures to live above them unto God as we are anon to shew 5. To be Crucified to the world is not to forbear our lawfull trades and labours in the world He that bids us eat our bread in the sweat of our brows and would not have him eat that will not labour Gen. 3. 19. 2 Thes. 3. 6 10 12. did never call men to be begging Fryers nor licentious Prodigals nor idle Gentlemen nor lazy unprofitable burdens of the earth All idleness that 's wilfull is sinful but that which is cloaked with the pretence of Religion is a double sin When some servants grow lazy they will pretend piety for it and accuse their Masters of worldliness for setting them to work And some that have families will neglect their duty for them and all upon pretences of a contempt of the world But he that bid us use the world as not abusing it 1 Cor. 7. 31. did never mean to forbid us the use of it While such Hypocrites will needs be more then Christians they become in Pauls judgement worse then Infidels 1 Tim. 5. 8. They should not labour with a desire to be rich yet must they labour to give to him that needeth Eph. 4. 28. Idleness is not Mortification 6. To be crucified to the world or the world to us containeth not an unthankfull undervaluing of our Mercies It will not warrant us to say Health and Riches and Honours are contemptible and therefore I owe God but little thanks for them nor will it excuse any ingratefull insensibility of our deliverances 7. To Crucifie the world is not to take away the lives of the men of the world nor actually to use them as they used Christ. Though the Magistrate must bring a false Prophet to Capital Punishment that sought to turn the People from God yet every one might not do so nor is that any part of the sense of this Text nor was it thus that Paul did crucifie the world 8. Much less may it encourage any poor Melancholly tempted souls to be weary of their lives and to seek to make away themselves This horrid sin is far from the duty here required To be crucified to the world is not to rid our selves out of the world nor to do that to our selves which were so hainous a sin if we did it to another as not here to be lightlyer punished then with death And thus I have shewed you Negatively What it is not to have the
and their living without God in the world But when faith hath opened a mans eyes and shewed him God in every creature who was hid from him before then is the creature who was before his All annihilated to him in that separated sense and God becomes his All again and this annihilation of the creature is indeed its restauration objectively to its primitive nature and use and it was not indeed known or respected as a creature till now So that sensual men by making the creature an imaginary God or chiefest Good or All do make it indeed objectively to become Nothing and so their All their God their felicity is Nothing and so all their life is a Nothing When as the faithfull by Crucifying or Annihilating the creature as it would appear a felicity to us or any Good as separated from God do restore it to its true objective being and use by returning to God who is truly All and in whom the creature is a Derived Imperfect something and out of whom it is indeed a Nothing I will further illustrate it by one other similitude God gave the Ceremonial Law by Moses to the Israelites to be an obscure Gospell and to lead them unto Christ. The sacrifices and other typicall Ceremonies were the Letters of the Law and Christ was the sense The true Believers thus understood and used them but the Carnal Jews lookt only on the letter and lost the sense and thus separating the bare Letter from the sense that is the Legall works from Christ they thought to be justified by those works and by the Law in that separated sense But the Apostle Paul doth plead against thiâ— errour and tells them that Christ is the end of the Law to all Believers and that he is the fulfilling of it and that through him it is fulfilled in those that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and that by the deeâ—s of the Law in this separated sense no flesh can be justified and that the Letter separated from the sense of it killeth but Christ by his Spirit who is the sense of it giveth life If these Jews had taken and used the Law as God intended it and had taken the sense and spirit with the letter and had understood that Christ was the very life and end and all of the Law Paul would never have cryed down the Law nor Justification by it in this sense for that had been to cry down Justification by Christ. But it was Justification by the Letter or the Law as separated from Christ who was the meaning of it So is it in our present case The creature is the letter and God the sense and Carnal men do understand only the Letter of the creature and fall in love with it and thus God cryeth down the world and vilifieth and speaketh contemptuously of the world When as if it had not been for the separation he would never have cryed it down nor spoken an hard word of it As the Law had never been so hardly spoken of if the mis-understanding Jew had not separated it from Christ. So the world had never been so often called Vanity and a Lie and Nothing and a Dream and that which is not bread and that which profiteth not a Shadow a Deceiver with abundance of the like contemptuous terms if carnal sinners had not in their minds and affections separated it from God And thus I have shewed you in what Respects the World must be Crucified AND let me add in the Conclusion as most necessary for your observation that there is in the world an inseparable aptitude to tempt us dangerously to the foresaid abuse and therefore when we have done all that we can in Crucifying and sublimating it we must never imagine that we can make it so wholsom or harmless a thing as that we may feed upon it without great caution and suspition or ever return to friendship with it again till fire have refined it and grace hath perfectly refined us And yet this is not long of the creature without us but of us and the tempter The world is in it self Good as being the work of God and it cannot be the proper efficient culpable cause of our sin For it hath no sin in it self I mean the world as distinct from the men of the world and therefore cannot be the direct cause of sin But yet there is that in it which is apt to be the Matter of our temptation and so apt as that all that perish do perish by the world As there is no salvation but by the whole Trinity Conjunct who have each person his several office for our recovery so there is no damnation but by the whole Infernal Trinity the flesh the world and the Devil Even to Innocent Adam the world must be the bait and Satan found somewhat in it that made it apt for such an office though nothing but what was very good But now that the flesh is become the Predominant part and power in us as it is in all till the Spirit overcome it the case is much worse and the world is incomparably a more dangerous enemy then to Adam it could be For though still the creature is good in it self yet we are so bad that the better the creature is the worse it becomes to us For we are naturally propense to it in its separated capacity and all men till regeneration are fond of it as their felicity and hug it as their dearest good and Sacrifice to it as their Idol So that an enemy it is and an enemy it will be when we have done our best as long as we are on earth For while we have a flesh that would fain be pleased by that which God forbiddeth and there is a Devil to offer us the bait and tempt us to this flesh-pleasing the world which is the bait will still be the matter and occasion of our danger The consideration of this may cut the throat of licentious principles and hence we may answer the most of their vain pretended reasons who under the Cloak of Christian liberty would again indulge the flesh and be reconciled to the world But certainly it will never lay by its enmity till we lay by our flesh and therefore there is no thoughts to be entertained of closing with it any more but we must be killing it and dying to it to the last SECT IV. HAving thus shewed you in what Respect the world must be Crucified and so resolved the question as to the Object I am next to resolve it as to the Act and shew you wherein the Crucifying it doth consist The Apostle followeth on the Allegory which he took occasion of from the mention of the Cross of Christ. From thence therefore we must also fetch the proper sense As the world did use Christ or would have used him so we must use the world Not actually murder the sons of death as they did murder the Lord of Life but what Christ
was on the Cross in their eye that must the world be esteemed in our eyes To take it in order 1. The predictions of the Prophets before Christs coming were not regarded by the unbelieving Jews but the Prophets themselves persecuted So those that would perswade us of the felicity of any worldly enjoyments by extolling sensual pleasures or profits or honors would draw our hearts to them should be despised esteemed as deceivers by us No man is more serviceable to the Devil for our destruction then they that applaud any sensual vanity and would make us believe what great matters are to be expected from the world and so would be the Pandors of it to entice us to its unchast embracements Remember this when any would perswade you what a fine thing it is to be rich and great and somebody in the world what a merry life it is to drink and sport away your time These are the Prophets and Apostles of the Devil and the world and let them be regarded by you accordingly 2. As soon as Christ was born into the world his best place of entertainment was a common Inn and there he could have room but in a stable and in a manger the world would allow him no better accomodation and this was the welcome that it first afforded him Here you have two notable directions for your usage of the world 1. Begin to renounce it betime as it did Christ. As the world rejected Christ an Infant so we in our Infancy must reject the world This is to be solemnly performed in Baptism where as we are engaged to the saving Trinity and Baptized into the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost so must we solemnly Renounce the damning Trinity even the flesh the world and the Devil For so the Church hath ever done and the nature of the thing doth manifestly require it for the motus must have its Terminus à quo as well as ad quem It s a sad thing that so many well-meaning men should deny our Infant-capacity of this engagement but much sadder that they should do it with such violent Church dividing zeal as if the Kingdom of God lay in the exclusion of the seed of Believers out of it If it be true that all our Infant-seed are excluded from the Church I am sure it is so sad a truth that me thinks men should not so eagerly lay hold of it before they have better evidence to evince it It was once a mercy for Infants to be in Covenant with God and members of his Church and I do not think that it is now a mercy to be out or that the Kingdom of the Devil is the more desirable state and all men are in one of these Sure I am they were once members of the Church by Gods appointment and they that say they are cast out must prove it and better then any that yet have attempted it if they would have judicious considerate impartial men believe them Whoever cast them out sure Christ would not that did so much to enlarge the Church and better its state and manifest more abundant mercy and chide his Disciples that kept such from him and proclaimed that his Kingdom was of such I am not easily perswaded to believe that the Head and King of the Church hath actually gathered a Society of a false Constitution so long and that he that is so tender of his Church and hath bought it so dearly and ruled it so faithfully had never a true constituted visible Church till about two hundred years ago among a few such as I have no mind to describe and that we must now have a new and true Church-frame to begin when the world is almost at an end and that this glory reserved for our last daies consisteth in casting out our Infant-seed and leaving them in the visible Kingdom of the Devil till they come to age I am more out of doubt then ever I was that God would have our Infants renounce the world and be Dedicated unto him as the world did renounce Christ an Infant If an Infant-Christ must be the Head of the Church I know not why an Infant-sinner may not be a member of it And as the world without reason through malice rejected our Infant Head so God will find both Reason and Love to receive and entertain his Infant-members And as long as we have Gods express approbation in his Word for parents entring their children into his Covenant and have the examples of all Nations by the Law of Nature allowing parents to enter their children into Covenants which are apparently for their good and to put their names into their Leases with their own we shall not think our Infants uncapable of Covenanting with God nor of making this early Abrenunciation of the world 2. From hence also you may learn what room it is that the world should be allowed by you even the stable and the manger as it allowed Christ. This is a point of most necessary consideration The soul of man hath its several faculties As vegitative it hath its natural parts and spirits and powers and a naturall Appetite after the creature This is the stable and the manger where the creature as a natural good may be entertained It hath also as sensitive its power of sensation and sensitive Appetite This also may entertain the creature but not for it self nor by its own conduct but under the guidance of Reason to an higher end But the high and noble faculty of Reason and the Rationall Appetite may not allow it the least entertainment in its separated capacity as we are now discoursing of it It belongeth not to the Naturall or sensitive Powers to see and Love God in the creature and therefore it cannot be required of them and therefore they may receive their objects moderated by reason upon lower terms But it s the office of Reason as to moderate the senses so to behold God in all the objects of sense and no otherwise should it have to do with sensual objects of which more anon 3. It was not long that Christ had been in the world before Herod sought his Life and caused him to flie into AEgypt And as soon as we are capable of assaulting the world we must actually fall upon it and seek the extirpation of all its Interest from our hearts where Christ sets up his throne It was for fear of losing his Crown that Herod sought the death of Christ. It must be for fear lest Christ should be dethroned in our hearts and lose his regal Interest and lest we should lose the Crown of glory that we must endeavour the crucifying of the world When Angels and wise men did worship Christ yet Herod did seek his death and the more seek it because of their acclamations as being brought into jealousies of him by the Titles which they gave him So when the Princes and great ones of the earth do extoll the world and magnifie its
glory we must be raised hereby into the greater suspition of it and the more resolvedly set against it As Herod did put to death even the innocent children lest Christ should escape that so he might make sure work for his Crown So must we subdue our sensuall desires by denying them sometimes even in lawful things lest we should be carryed to that which is unlawful before we are aware and we must avoid the very occasions and appearances of evil and restrain our selves in the liberty that we might take and not go as near the brink of danger as we dare For it concerneth us to make sure work where the Reign of Christ and our own salvation is so much concerned as in our victory over the world it is 4. The whole life of Christ on earth was one continued conflict with the world They believed not on him even when they saw his Miracles They hated him even while he did them good They afforded him not a settled habitation So in the height of its Glory the world must not be trusted by us Though it afford us sustenance for our outward man yet must we hate it and we must allow it no settled entertainment in our hearts Christ was in the world and the world was made by him and yet it knew him not Iohn 1. 10. We converse in the world and our outward man must live by it as in it we received our life and yet we must not know it in its separated capacity The world could not hate them that were of the world but Christ it hated because he was not of it Iohn 7. 7. and 15. 18 19. and 17. 14. So must we hate the world because it is not of that nature nor for that Interest as the New creature is though worldlings that are of it cannot hate it The nearer Christ was to the end of his life the more cruelly and maliciously did the world use him And the nearer we are to our parting with the world the more must we contemn and hate it 5. The world did arraign and condemn Christ as a Malefactor they charged him to be a Deceiver and one that did his mighty works by the power of Beelzebub So must we justly charge the world to be a Deceiver and work its strange stupendious delusions by the power of Satan the great deceiver and as a Malefactor must we attach arraign and condemn it They came out against Christ as a thief with swords and staves Mat. 26. 55. we must come out against the world as that great thief that would rob God of his honour and interest Christ of his Kingdom and us of our salvation and by the sword of the Spirit must disarm and conquer it The world judged Christ to be a blasphemer and guilty of death because he said that he was the Son of God and should sit at his right hand We must condemn the world of Blasphemous usurpation that would needs become our God and usurp the Divine prerogatives and honours They spit upon Christ in token of hatred and contempt And we must as it were spit at the pleasures and profits and honours of the world and manifest our defiance and hatred and contempt of them They buffeted Christ in manifestation of their malicious enmity And the world and our flesh must not scape our hands though our war be but defensive yet must we offend that we may defend So fight I saith Paul 1 Cor. 9. 26 27. not at one that beateth the air that maketh a shew of enmity when there is none as children in sport or sencers that have not intent to kill but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when I have preached to others I my self should be a cast-away 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first verb signifieth to buffet and beat black and blew as we say Et valid is ictibus subjicere reluctantem as Beza speaks and the second verb signifieth to bring into servitude or into the state of a servant which is indeed the very work that we have to do with the flesh and the world They reproached Christ when they had smote him and tauntingly bid him Prophesie who smote him And the world and all the Idols of it deserve no better of us when they will usurp the place of God and we may well scorn such a God as Elias did Baal and as God useth to do by the Idols of the heathen Fine gods indeed that can neither save themselves nor us The world did strip Christ and put on him a robe and a Crown of thorns and a reed into his hand and again spit upon him and mocked him And this contempt in our apprehensions must we cast upon the arrogant world we must strip it of its vain shew and give it the honour of a reed for levity and of thorns for unprofitableness and vexation for as thorns it vexeth when it promiseth felicity and as thorns it choaketh that word of truth and as a reed it is shaken with every wind No backwardness of the Judge and no intercession of his wife could rescue Christ from the malice of the Jews but the more is said for him the more they cry Crucifie him And as resolvedly-must we persecute the world No intercession of our flesh or backwardness of carnal Reason must take us off but we must be content with nothing but its Crucifying When Pilate drew back they knockt all dead with this malicious voice Iohn 19. 12. If thou let this man go thou art not Caesars friend whosoever maketh himself a King speaketh against Caesar So must we quicken and provoke our Reason by arguments drawn from our fidelity to Christ and say If we favour this world we are not â—lse friend of Christ for whatsoever would make it self our King and our felicity and would steal away our hearts is not Christs friend When Pilate saith Shall I crucifie your King they cry out we have no King but Caesar. And when the flesh or carnal Reason saith Will you cast away your comforts your peace your happiness your lives We must say We have no comfort but Christ no peace but Christ no happiness no life but what 's in Christ. The world crucified Christ between two thieves And we must crucifie the world between two thieves viz. the flesh on the one hand and the Devil on the other which would both have robbed God and us Though through the power of a Crucified Christ the one of these even the flesh may be so refined as to be admitted into Paradise The world vvritt over the head of Christ as the cause of his death King of the Iews And vve must write this over the Crucified vvorld This is it that would have been our King and God and Happiness so let all thine enmies perish O Lord. We must pierce the very sides of it and let out its heart-blood We must nail its hands and feet the very instruments or means by vvhich
be apprehensive of the enmity of the world For as he that Loveth God and waiteth for the sight of his face in Glory must needs take all that to be against him and naught for him that would keep him from God and deprive him of that beatificall vision so he that knoweth what it is to love God must needs know by constant sad experience that the world is the great with-drawer or hinderer of that love When he sets himself in any holy imployment to mount his soul into a more heavenly frame and to get a little nearer God he feeleth himself too much entangled with inferiour objects these are the weight that presseth down and the water that quencheth the sacred â—lames and were it not for these O how much higher might our souls attain and how much freer might we be for God For it is a thing most certain to us by our constant experience that the more of the world is upon our hearts the less is there of God and the more of God the less of the world So that these two means alone The sincere Intending of God and Glory as our End and daily observation of our own hearts will easily convince us that the world is our great enemy And when we throughly apprehend it to be our enemy we have begun to crucifie it 2. The next act by which the world is crucified is A deep habituated apprehension of its worthlesness and insufficiency As the opposing world must be taken for an enemy so the Promising alluring world must be taken as it is for an empty thing The Life and Reign of the world in the unsanctified lieth first in their too high estimation of it They think of it as Good and Good to them and as a matter of some considerable worth and though they will say with their tongues that heaven is better yet all things considered they take the world to be more suitable to them and therefore they desire it more For Heaven is out of sight and beyond their apprehension and affection and as they imagine it is not so certain as the things which they see and feel and possess And therefore they resolve to grasp as much of the creature as they can and take that which they can get in hand and then if there be an heaven they hope they may have their part in it as well as others But saving Illumination doth put men into another mind It makes them see that the Invisible things are of greater Certainty then the visible and that a promise without possession is better security then possession without a promise and that for the Worth and Goodness between Eternal things and Temporal there can be no comparison If the world would have been content to have kept its place and to have borrowed all its honour and esteem from God and Glory as the end for which it must be used and regarded it might then have had the honour of being serviceable to our salvation and to our Masters work But seeing it will needs be a competitor with heaven it thereby disâ—obeth it self of its glory and becometh a vile contemptible thing And so must it be esteemed by all the friends of God A sound Believer looks on the world as the world lookt on Christ when he hanged on the Cross not only as a Malefactor but as a contemptible thing And as the world esteemeth the Saints themselves to be hypocrites deceivers fools weak despised a spectacle to the world yea as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things So must the Believer esteem of the world as seeming to be what it is not as a weak and insufficient thing as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. 4. 11 12 13. the very filth of the streets that is swept away or cast upon the dung-hill or as a thing devoted to death for the averting of an imminent judgement Pauls judgement is in a prevalent degree the judgement of every gracious soul Phil. 3. 7 8. What things were gain to me those I counted loss for Christ Yea doubtless and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Iesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may win Christ. Were the world but thus conceived of by a practical judgement it were half crucified already If men did verily think that the world is their Loss they would love it less and less greedily seek after it then now most do Gehezi would not have run after Naaman for his money if he had thought that it had been his loss Achan would not have hid the forbidden gold as a treasure if he had thought it had been his loss Who would be at so much care and pains for their loss as worldlings and sensualists are for their delights And if the judgement did once esteem the world as dung they would not be so greedy for it nor put it into their bosoms Who would fall in love with dung or dote upon filth or dogs-meat As the judgement doth esteem it the affections will be towards it And they that know not of a better condition will value this as the best though common reason will call it vanity But they that by faith have found out the true felicity have low and contemptuous thoughts of the world O what a carkaise what a shadow is it in their eyes What a poor low thing is it which the sons of men do tire themselves in seeking after What a dung-hill do they wallow in as if it were a bed of Roses What deformities do they dote upon as if they were the most real beauties A toad abhorreth not the company of a toad but shall not a man abhor it But we shall have occasion of saying more to this in the Application 3. The third act by which we Crucifie the world is a kind of Annihilation of it to our selves in our conceptions taking it as a very Nothing so far as it would be something separated from God or co-ordinate with him How oft doth the Scripture call it vanity a dream a vain shew a shadow yea nothing yea and less then nothing before God and lighter then vanity it self Isa. 40. 17. Psal. 62. 9. Iob 6. 21. The Princes of the earth who are something in the eyes of themselves and others appear as Nothing when God lets out his wrath upon them Isa. 34. 12. Even as the straw when the fire hath consumed it or the fairest buildings when it hath turned them to ashes For though the world be really something yet 1. In regard of the effects which it promiseth to seduced worldlings it may be called Nothing For that which can do Nothing for us in our extremity which hath no Power to relieve or satisfie us which leaveth the soul empty and deceiveth them that trust it may well be called Nothing in effect In genere boni that which can do us no
14. 12. So is it said of our conquest In all these things we are supervictors or more then Conquerors through him that hath loved us Rom. 8. 37. 2. Another wound that the world hath received by the Cross of Christ by him suffered is this By it satisfaction is made to God for the sin that the world had enticed man to commit and so quoad pretium the victory which the world had formerly obtained over us is nulled and its Captives rescued and we are cured of the deadly wounds which it had given us For he healeth all our diseases Psal. 103. 3. and his stripes are the remedy by which we are healed Isa. 53 5. So that it is a vanquishing of the world when Christ doth thus nullisie its former victories For thus he began to lead captivity it self captive which at his Resurrection and Ascension he did more fully accomplish Psalm 68. 18. Eph. 4. 8. 3. Another most mortal wound which the world received by the Cross of Christ was this By his Cross did Christ purchase that Glorious Kingdom which being revealed and propounded to the sons of men doth abundantly disgrace the world as a Competitor If there had been no greater good revealed to us or the revelation had been obscure and insufficient or no Assurance of it given us then might the world have easily prevailed For he that hath no hopes of greater will take up with this And he that looketh not for another life will make as much of the present as he can When the will of a man is the fort that is contended for the assault must be made by Allurement and not by force The competition therefore is between Good and Good and that which appeareth the Greater Good to us will carry it and have admittance If God had not set a Greater Good against the world it would have been every mans wisdom and duty to have been worldlings But when he revealeth to us another world of infinite value yea when he offereth us the fruition of himself this turneth the scales with wise men in a moment and shameth all competitors whatsoever Now it is the Cross of Christ that opened the Kingdom of heaven to all true Believers which sin had before shut up against all mankind This marrs the markets of the world It s nothing worth to them that have tasted of the blessedness of this Kingdom Were it not for this the temptations of the world and flesh might prevail What should we say to them or how should we repulse them Reason would say It s better have a small and unsatisfactory Good then none But now we have enough to say against any such temptation One argument from the everlasting Kingdom is sufficient where grace causeth a right apprehension of it to confound all the temptations by which the enemies of our happiness can assault us What I Shall we prefer a mole-hill before a Kingdom a shadow before the substance an hour before eternity Nothing before all things Vanity and Vexation before Felicity The world is now silenced It hath nothing to say which may take with right Reason It must now creep in at the back door of sense and bribe our bruitish part to befriend it and to entertain it first and so to betray our reason and lead it into the inner rooms The Cross of Christ hath set up such a Sun as quite darkeneth the light of worldly glory Who will now play so low a game that hath an Immortal Crown propounded to him Though earth were Something if there were no better to be had yet it is Nothing when Heaven stands by This therefore is the deadly blow by which the world is Crucified by the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. Another mortall wound that the Cross of Christ hath given it is this The Cross hath purchased for us that Spirit of Power and all those Ordinances and Helps of Grace by which we our selves in our own persons may Actually Conquer and Crucifie the world as Christ did before us His Cross is the meritorious cause of his following Grace And as he hath there procured our Justification so also our Sanctification by which the world is renounced by us and contemned There shall a vertue flow from the Cross of Christ that shall give strength to all his chosen ones to go on and conquer and tread the world and all its glory under their feet and by the leaves of this Tree which seemeth dead to a carnal eye the Nations shall be healed And thus by it the world is Crucified 5. Lastly by the Cross of Christ a Pattern is given us for our Imitation by which we may learn how to contemn and so Crucifie the world If when ye do well and suffer for it ye take it patiently this is accceptable with God For even hereunto were ye called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth who when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously 1 Pet. 2. 20 21 22 23. Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Iesus that made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and humbled himself and became obedient to death even the death of the Cross Phil. 2. 5 6 7. Let us therefore lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us looking to Iesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God Heb. 12. 2. This leads us to the next 2. HAving shewed you how the Cross as suffered by Christ doth crucifie the world we are next to shew you how that same Cross as Believed in and considered doth Crucisie it to us They that look only to the Merit of the Cross and over-look the Objective use of it to the soul do deceive themselves and deprive themselves of the full efficacy of it and deal like a foolish patient that thinketh to be cured by commending the Medicine or by believing that it hath vertue to cure his disease when in the mean time he lets it lie by him in the box and never taketh it or applyeth it to himself The Believing Meditation of the Cross of Christ doth give the world these deadly wounds 1. It bringeth us under the actual promise of the Spirit For though there be a work of the Spirit which causeth us to Believe before our actual faith in nature yet the further gift of the Spirit for Mortification is promised upon Condition of our faith And upon the performance of that Condition we have right to the thing promised It is by faith that we fetch strength from Christ for the conquest of this and all other
use the means and there must we partake of the success of our Endeavours You may better expect that God should give you a Crop at harvest who refused to plow and â—ow your Land or that your children should be men before they are born then that he should be your Happiness in the life to come if you finally reject him in this life and choose to your selves a secular happiness Such as you now make choice of such and no other shall you have Heaven and Earth were set before you You knew that earthly happiness was short If yet you would choose it think not to have heaven too For if you do you will prove deceived at the last SECT XII The Uses BEloved Hearers I suppose you will give me leave to take it for granted that you are all the rational creatures of God made subject to him and capable of enjoying him and such as must be happy or miserable for ever as also that you are all unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy and that this life is the time for the use of those means on which your everlasting life dependeth and that Judgement will turn the scales at last as Grace or Sin shall turn them now I hope also that I may suppose that you are agreed that Christianity is the only way to happiness and consequently that you are all professed Christians And one would think that where men are so far satisfied of the End and of the Way we might conceive great hopes of their sincerity and salvation But when we see that mens lives do nullifie their professions and that while they look towards God they row towards the world and while they Hope for Heaven their daily travel is towards Hell and while they plead for Christ they work against him our Hopes of them are turned to necessary lamentation But how comes this to pass that reasonable men yea men reputed wise and learned yea many that seem Religious to others and to themselves should be so shamefully over seen in a matter that so concerneth their everlasting state As far as I am able to discover the causes of this Calamity are these two 1. One part of the Professed Christians of the world understand not what Christianity is and so profess but the empty name when indeed the thing it self which is in their conception and which they mean in that profession is nothing like to true Christianity 2. The other part of miscarrying professors though they do conceive of the Christian Religion as it is yet not with an apprehension intensively answerable to the thing which they apprehend Though their conceptions of the Christian verities have a morall Truth in them it being not false but True which they conceive yet there is no â—irmness and solidity in the Act and so they do not effectually appâ—â—â—â—nded them Nothing more easie more common and more dangerous then to make a Religion either of Names and Words which he that useth doth not understand or of meer speculations and superficial conceits which never became practical habituate and predominant nor were the serious effectual apprehensions of the man A right Object and a sincere and serious Act do essentially constitute the Christians faith If either be wanting it is not that faith whatever it may pretend to be Nothing but the Gospel objects will suffice to a mans salvation were it never so firmly apprehended And nothing but a firm and serious Belief of those objects will make them effectuall or saving to the Believer Were we able to cure the two fore-mentioned defects and to help you all to these two requisites we should make no question but you would all be saved We cannot expect that men should let go their sensual delights till they hear of somewhat better to be had for them and till they firmly and heartily give credit to the report And because the matter before us in my Text is sitted to both these needfull works and containeth those very truths which must rectifie you in both these points I shall draw them forth and distinctly apply them hereunto Use 1. AND in the first place you are here informed that the Crosâ— of Christ is the Crucifier of the world Which containeth in it these two parts which make up the point 1. That this is the use of the Cross and one great end of the Doctrine of Christianity to Crucifie the world to us and us to the world 2. That where the Cross of Christ and his Doctrine are effectuall this work is alwaies actually done In all true Christians the world is thus crucified O that these truths were as plainly or truly transcribed upon your hearts as they are plainly and truly contained in my Textâ— 1. For the first that This is the End of Christ Crucified and of his Doctrine I shall briefly shew 1. The Necessity of this Information And 2. the certain â—â—â—â—h of it 1. Both the Commonne's and the Dangerousness of erring in this point do shew the Necessity of this Information It is not only the contemners of Religion but also too many that go among us for very godly men that know not where their happiness lyeth nor what the Christian Religion is Almost all the apprehensions which they have of Happiness are sensual as if it were but a freedom from sensible punishments and the possession of some delights of which they have meerly sensual concerts And so they think of Christ as one that came to free them from such punishments and help them to such an happiness as this And as for the true knowledge and fruition of God in Love and Heavenly delights they look upon these either as insignificant means or as certain appurtenances and fruits of Religion which we ought to have but may possibly be without though we be true Believers A confidence that Christ hath freed them from torments and made them righteous by imputation of his obedience unto them they take to be all that is essentiall to their Christianity And the rest they call by the name of Good works which if it be not with them a term of as low importance as the name of Works alone or Works of the Law is taken to be in Paulâ— Epistles yet at least they take it for that which doth not constitute their Religion So that true Sanctification is either not understood or taken to be of less Necessity then it is A man that makes a great deal of talk and stir about Religion and is zealous for his opinions and pious complements goes currant with many for a true Believer though the Interest of his flesh and of the world be as near and dear to him in this way of Religiousness as other mens is to them in a way of more open professed sensuality And is it possible for a man to be a Christian indeed that so far mistaketh the very Nature and Ends of Christianity it self It is not possible By what is said already and will be by and
according to his Laws Know therefore whom the Law condemneth or justifieth and you may know whom Christ will condemn or justifie And seeing all this is so doth it not concern us all to make a speedy tryal of our selves in preparation to this final tryal I shall for your own sakes therefore take the boldness as the Officer of Christ to summon you to appear before your selves and keep an Assize this day in your own souls and answer at the Barr of Conscience to what shall be charged upon you Fear not the tryal for it is not conclusive final nor a peremptory irreversible sentence that must now pass Yet slight it not for it is a necessary preparative to that which is final and irreversible Consequentially it may prove a justifying Accusation an Absolving Condemnation and if you proceed to Execution a saving quickning death which I am now perswading you to undergo The whole world is divided into two sorts of men One that Love God above all and live to him and the other that Love the flesh and world above all and live to them One that lay up a treasure in earth and have their heart there The other that lay up a treasure in heaven and have their heart there One that seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness another that seek first the things of this life One that mind and savour the things of the flesh and of man the other that mind and savour most the things of the Spirit and of God One that account all things dung and dross that they may win Christ another that make light of Christ in comparison of their business and riches and pleasures in the world One that live by sight and sense upon present things Another that live by faith upon things invisible One that have their conversation in Heaven and live as strangers upon earth Another that mind earthly things and are strangers to heaven One that have in resolution forsaken aâ— for Christ and the hopes of a treasure in heaven Another that resolve to keep somewhat here though they venture and forsake the heavenly reward and will go away sorrowful that they cannot have both One that being born of the flesh is but flesh The other that being born of the Spirit is Spirit One that live as without God in the world The other that live as without the seducing world in God and in and by the subservient world to God One that have Ordinances and Means of Grace as if they had none The other that have houses lands wives as if they had none One that believe as if they believed not and love God as if they loved him not and pray as if they prayed not as if the fruit of these were but a shadow The other that weep as if they wept not for worldly things and rejoyce as if they rejoyced not One that have Christ as not possessing him and use him and his name as but abusing them The other that buy as if they possessed not and use the world as not abusing it One that draw near to God with their lips when their hearts are far from him The other that Corporally converse with the world when their hearts are far from it One that serve God who is a Spirit with Carnall service and not in Spirit and Truth The other that use the world it self spiritually and not in a carnall worldly manner In a word One sort are children of this world and the other are the children of the world to come and heirs of the heavenly Kingdom One sort have their Portion in this life And the other have God for their Portion One sort have their Good things in this life time and their Reward here The other have their Evil things in this life and live in Hope of the Everlasting Reward I suppose you know that all this is from the word of God and therefore I need not cite the Texts which do contain it But lest any doubt I will lay them all together that you may peruse them at leisure Matth. 22. 37. 10. 37. 6. 19 20 21. 6. 33. Iohn 6. 27. Isa. 55. 1 2 3. Rom. 8. 5 6 7 13. Phil. 3. 9 10 11. Mat. 22. 5. 2 Cor. 4. 18. Heb. 11. 1. throughout Phil. 3. 19 20 21. Psalm 119 19. Heb. 11. 13. Luke 14. 33. 18. 22. Iohn 3. 6. Ephis 2. 12. 1 Cor. 10. 31. Psalm 16. 8. Ezek. 33. 31 32. 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. Iohn 2. 23 24. Psalm 78. 35 36 37. Iohn 15. 2. 1. 9 10 11. Mat. 15. 8. Psalm 73. 23 24 25. 1 Thes. 5. 17 18. Phil. 3. 21 Matth. 15. 9. Iohn 4. 22 23. 1 Gor. 10. 31. Luke 10. 8. 20. 34. Rom. 8. 16 17. Psalm 17. 14. 16. 5. 73. 26. Luke 16 25. Mat. 6. 5. 5. 12. Luke 18. 22. In these Texts is plainly contained all that I have here said to you Well then Beloved Hearers seeing you that sit here present are all of one of these two sorts let conscience speak which is it that you are of These are the two sorts that shall stand on the right and left hand of Christ in Judgement They that gave Christ his own with advantage and lived to him and studiously devoted their Riches and other Talents to his use as men that unfeignedly made God their End these are they that are set on the right hand and adjudged as Blessed to the Kingdom which they so esteemed And those that hid their talents by keeping or expending them to their private use denying them to Christ and living to themselves these are they that are set on the left hand and adjudged to the everlasting fire with the Devils whom they served It is a desperate mistake of self-deceiving men to think that a state of Holiness consisteth only in external worship or that a state of wickedness consisteth only in some gross sins I tell you from the word of God the difference is greater and lyeth deeper then so If you would know whether you are Christians indeed and shall be saved the first and great question is What is your End What take you for your portion And what is it that hath the prevalent stream of your desires and endeavours As it is not every step that we set out of the way to heaven that will prove us ungodly so is it not any Religiousness whatsoever that standeth in a subserviency to the world that will prove you godly Would you know then what you are And whether you are in the way to Heaven or Hell And what God will judge of you if you so continue Why then deal faithfully with your selves and answer this question without deceit What is it that hath your Hearts your very Hearts What is it that is the matter of your dearest Love And what the matter of your chiefest care What is it that is the very bent and scope of your life Is it for this world or
stand in the way of their affected exaltation Yea soul and all shall be ventured in this game Rise they must and rise they will if they can procure it Whatever become of Heaven they must have Earth Seeing it is their God their End perfas aut nefas it must be had As the Common-wealths man saith Salus populi suprema Lex esto and the Christian saith The pleasing of God is the supream Law so the worldlings maxime is that the Interest of the flesh is the supream Law And are these men Crucified to the world 3. If the world were a Crucified thing in your eyes you would not so much overvalue the Rich and vilifie or neglect the Poor as you do An humble Godly man that walks the streets in a thred bare coat may pass by you without the least respect but if a shining gallant were in the place how observantly do you behave your selves If a poor man though never so wise or pious have any business with you how cold is his entertainment how strange is your deportment towards him and how slightly do you shake him off But if they be rich and honourable in the world you are their servants and no respect is too much for them nor no entertainment too good Wisdom and Piety cloathed in raggs may pass by you unobserved when a silken sot is bowed to like an Idol As reverently as you now speak of Peter and Paul and Christ himself now you hear them magnified and see not their outward appearances as they did that conversed with them on earth I make no doubt but if you had lived in those daies and seen them of so low a presence and walk up and down in so mean a gâ—rb attended or regarded by few but the poor you would have set as light by them as others and looked at them as poor contemptible fellows if not as the filth and the off-scouring of all things and if you had not laid hands on them as too sawcy reprovers of you at least you would have given them one of Iulian's jeers or Hobbs his scorns It was this worldly Spirit that caused the Jews to be such obstinate unbelievers and to persecute Christ and his servants Men reverence not the face of the poor And this is it that continueth them in their unbelief to this very day We have many of their own writings and disputations against Christ published by themselves and we find this the very sum of all their reasonings Shew us a Messiah that fetcheth us from captivity that gathereth the whole Nation of the Iews to Judaeâ— and restoreth them to their antient possessions and dignities with much more and makes the Nations stoop to them and serve them and sets up again the Temple and the Law and we will believe in him as the true Messiah but in no other will we believe For though they cannot deny but the prophesied time of the Messiahs coming is past yet taking it for granted that this only is his true description they say they must look more at the description then the time and to salve the Prophesies they do believe that the Messiah did come about Christs incarnation but is somewhere â—id with Henoch and Elias and will appear when the Jews do mend their lives and are worthy of him Thus a worldly carnal mind that blindly admireth worldly things and favoureth not the things of the Spirit nor discerneth the excellency of the Hevenly riches doth make them to be open Infidels and make the Turks adore their Mahomet and makes the nominall bastard Christian to set so light by the true Riches of the Gospel and only to honour the name of Christ for they cannot receive the things of God because they are Spiritually discerned 1 Cor. 2. 14. Were not you worldlings you would discern more matter for your admiration reverence and love in the poorest heavenly minded man then in the greatest Prince on earth that is ungodly But you have the Faith of Jesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of persons For if there come into your Assembly a man with a gold ring in goodly apparrel and there come in also a poor man in vile rayment you have respect to him that weareth the gay cloathing and say to him sit thou here in a good place and say to the poor stand thou there despising the poor and committing sin by respect of persons as if you believed not that God had chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him Iam. 2. 1. to the 10. Obj. But must we not honour the gifts of God Riches are his gifts Answ. Yes according to their nature and use Riches are a gift which he giveth even to his enemies and to those that must perish for ever and few that have them come to heaven But Holiness is a gift which he giveth to none but his beloved and is the beginning of eternal life Which then should be most honoured Obj. But would you draw men to despise Dignities and Authority Answ. Authority is one thing and worldly Riches is another We reverence Authority more then you do We look on it as a beam from God as participating of somewhat that is Divine I look on a Magistrate as Gods officer and one that deriveth his Authority from him and I no more acknowledge any Power which is not efficiently from God as the supream Rector of the universe then I acknowledge any naturall Being which is not efficiently from God as the author of nature and the first Being I look at a Magistrate as ultimately for God as a man authorized to do his work and none but what is ultimately his So that as his office is so humane as to be also participatively Divine and he is so an humane creature as to be by participation Divine so the Reverence and Obedience which I owe to a Magistrate is by participation Divine And therefore though I judge not peremptorily that those Antients were in the right that made the fifth Commandment to be the last of the first Table yet I doubt not but our Moderns are less likely to be in the right that confine it only to the second Table And as I think it standeth so between the two as in several respects to belong to each so I rather think that it more principally belongeth to the first You see then the difference between a true Christians honouring of Magistrates and yours You honour them but for your worldly Ends and because they are able to do you good or hurt But we honour them as Gods officers speaking and acting for him and from him by his Commission and we obey their Power as participatively Divine but as they can do us good or hurt we less regard them And this honour and obedience we owe them not for their wealth but their Authority and if the meanest man have this Authority he shall be honoured and
he that dasheth the brats of worldly concupiscence against the stones Psalm 137. 7 8 9. Mortifie your members that are on earth Crucifie this your pâ—â—â—ended King Away with the world out of your hearts it is not fit that it should there live Honourable Worshipfull and all Well-Beloved I beseech you hear me not as if I speak but words of course to you or read you but a formal Lecture I mean as I speak and I prosess to the faces of you all that either the world and flesh or you shall die Kill it or it will kill you and Christ will destroy both it and you Think not any more of a fleshly earthly minded man that hath his affections on this world as a tollerable sinner of the smaller size I tell you the Devil may as soon be saved as a man that liveth and dyeth a sensualist I mean not only the notorious Misers or the infamous Drunkards Gamesters or idle Gallants but all men even the most Civil or seemingly Religious in whose hearts a worldly fleshly interest is predominant If you are such your Honours and Riches will not keep you from being fire-brands of hell Down therefore with the world and set up God alone in your souls I cannot but understand that I am like to be an unwelcome Messenger to you that come on such an ungratefull errand If I came as the Levellers or Quakers to cry down your pride and worldliness with such mixtures of destraction as might make you laugh at me as a self-conceited fantasticall person perhaps it would trouble you less to hear me For you look on them as histrionicall actors Quakers do but jest with you or harden you by their vanity But we are in good sadness and God himself is in good sadness with you We must have your worldly Interest out of the very hearts of you Christ will have your heart blood for it if he shall not have it And here you may see that it is no wonder if the serious faithfull Ministers of Christ be men detested by most of the world even of professed Christians themselves For alas what an errand is it that God doth send uâ—on If I should take the Crown from the Princes head and tread it in the dirt what must I expect If I came to take away your honours or your estates your houses lands or moneys What must I expect Do you not prosecute and hang Thieves for robbing you of some of these Why though I do less in some respects it is more that I am sent to do in other respects Though we take not the Princes Crown from his head we must take it from his heart Though we take not your money out of youâ— purses nor your goods out of your houses nor your houses out of your possessions we must attempt to take them all out of your hearts No wonder then if we be hated of all such For at the heart it is that the world is sweetest to you there it is nearest and dearest to you and there is your carnal Interest deepest rooted To be let blood in the very heart will be more grievous to you then in the hand And yet so it must be that the heart blood of worldly Interest may be let out in the Crucifying of it as the world did let out the heart-blood of Christ. What are all your suits at this Assize about but against one man that robbed you of your money against another that took your cattle against another that would deprive you of your estate and against another that hath wounded your Honour and Reputation and another that some how provoked you to revenge by contradicting your will What wonder then if you should all turn your spleen against me that would take not one of these but all and that from you all and that from your very hearts The flesh would be all and have all or else it were not the chiefest Idol No marvel then if it storm when we would take all from it And yet let me tell you to abate your indgnation that though we talk of casting down your Temple we add withall that it shall be built again in three daies and the casting of it down will tend to its greater glory The world will be more honourable and usefull to you when it is Crucified and the flesh when it is subjected then now they be But of that more anon Obj. Oh but saith the Carnal Heart Have my honours and dignities cost me so dear have I been so long in getting my Riches and shall I now part with all for your speeches and do you think I am such a fool as to be worded out of them Soft and fair I came not by them so easily nor will I so easily part with them nor with the content and comfort that my heart hath in them Answ. Because that worldlings think themselves so wise and put such a face of confidence on their dotage I shall yet draw nearer you and reason the â—ase a little further with you and to that end I shall propound these following Questions desiring your serious answer Quest. 1. BEcause you presume to call it folly to part with all at Christs command tell me Whether is God or you the wiser and whose judgement is fittest to determine which is the wisest way Who are like to be the fools indeed those that you call so or that God calleth so Sure you should easily be resolved of this For if you be wiser then God then you are Gods and God is no longer God For he that is wisest and best is God And me thinks as bad and as mad as you are you should not be so mad yet as to say or think that you are Gods or that you are wiser then God Well then â—old but there and then let us consider Whether God and you be both of a mind about the matters of the world Psalm 49. 13. When he hath described the life of a prosperous worldling he saith This their way is their folly yet do their posterity approve their sayings And in Luke 12. 20. we find Christs censure on such an one as you that said within himself Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years take tâ—iâ—e ease eat drink and be merry To whom God saith Thou â—ool this night thy soul shall be required of thee then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided And that you may learn to make a due application of this and not think it is nothing to you Christ addeth So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God Where you may note the exact description of a graceless worldling such as throughout this discourse we mean He is one that layeth up treasure for himself and is not Rich towards God as all the sanctified are The difference lyeth in the matter and end or use of his riches The worldling layeth up earthly treasure the sanctified man layeth up a treasure in
as you were to it he would never have deceived you He would havâ— received your departed souls and made you like Angels and raised your bodies to glory at the last and perpetuated that Glory Will your Riches or Pleasures or Honours do this He would have rescued you from the devouring flames which your inordinate love of the world will bring you to O miserable change to change God for the world it is to change a Crown of Glory for a Crown of thorns the love of our only friend for the smiles of deceitful enemies Life for death and Heaven for Hell O what thoughts will arise in your hearts when you are past the deceit and under the sad effects of it and shall review your folly in another world It will fill your consciences with everlasting horrour and make you your own accusers and tormentors to think what you lost and what you had for it To think that you sold God and your souls and everlasting hopes for a thing of nought More foolishly then Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottagâ— If the Sun and Moon and Stars were yours would you exchange them for a lump of clay Well sinners if God and Glory seem no more worth to you then to be slighted for a little fleshly pleasures you cannot marvail if you have no part in them SECT XIX IF Reason and Scripture-Evidence would serve turn I dare say you would by this time be convinced of the necessity of being Crucified to the world and the world to you But sensuality is unreasonable and no saying will serve with it like a child that will not let go his apple for a piece of gold But yet I shall not cease my Exhortation till I have tryed you a little further and if you will not yield to forsake the world you shall keep it to your greater cost as you keep it against the clearer light that would convince you of your duty 1. As you love God or would be thought to love him love not the world For so far as you Love it you Love not him 1 Ioh. 2. 15. As ever you would be found the friends of God see that you be enemies and not friends to the world For the friendship of the world is enmity to him Iam. 4. 4. You are used to boast that you Love God above all If you do so you will not Love the world above him And then you will not labour and care more for it then for him Your love will be seen in the bent of your lives That which you Love best you will â—eek most and be most careful and diligent to obtain As they that love money are most careful to get it so they that Love heaven will be more careful to make sure of that As they that love their drink and lust will be much in the Ale-house and among those that are the baits and fewel of their lust So they that Love the fruition of God will be much in seeking him and enquiring after him and much among those that are acquainted with such Love and can further them any way in the accomplishment of their desires If you Love God then let it be seen in the Holy Endeavours of your lives and set your affections on things above and not on the things that are on earth For that which you most look after we must think that you most Love Can you for shame commit Adultery with the world and live with it in your bosoms and yet say that you love God 2. As you Love your present peace and comfort see that you love not but Câ—ucifie the world It doth but delude you first and disquiet you afterward Like wind in your bowels which can tear and torment you but cannot nourish you And if God do love you with a special Love he will be sure to wean you from the world though to your sorrow If you do provoke him to lay wormwood on the breasts and to hedge up your forbidden way with thorns when you find the smart and bitterness you may thank your selves It is the remnant of our folly and our backsliding nature that is still looking back to the world which we have forsaken that is the cause of those successive afflictions which we undergo Did you Love the creature less it would vex you less but if you will needs set your minds upon them and be pleasing your worldly sensual desires God will turn loose those very creatures upon you and make them his scourges for the recovery of your wits the reducing of your mis-led revolting souls Are you taken up with the hopes of a more plentifull estate and think you are got into a thriving way How soon can God blast and break your expectations By the death of your cattle the decay of trading the false-dealing of those you trust the breaking and impoverishing of them by contentious neighbours vexing you with Law suits by corrupted witnesses or Lawyers that will sell you for a little gain by ill servants by unthrifty children by thieves or souldiers or the raging flames by restraining the dew of heaven and causing your land to deny its increase and make you complain that you have laboured in vain How many waies hath he in a day or an hour to scatter all the heap of wealth that you have been gathering and to shew you that by sad experience which you might have known before at easier rates At the least if he meddle not with any thing that you have yet how quickly can he lay his hand upon your selves and lay you in sickness to groan under your pain and sin together and then what comfort will you have in the world when head ake's and back ake's and nothing can ease you When pain and languishing make you weary of day and of night and weary of every place and weary of your best diet your finest cloathes your merriest companions Where then is the sweetness and beauty of the world Then if you look on house or goods or lands how little pleasure find you in any of them Especially when you know that your departure is at hand and you must stay here no longer but presently must away Oh then what a carkaise will all the glory of the world appear and how sensibly then will you read or hear or think of these things that now in your prosperity are very little moved by the hearing of them Is it your children that you set your hearts upon in inordinate Love or Care Why alas how quickly can God call them from you by death and then you will follow them to the Church-yard and lay them in the grave with so much the sadder heart by how much the more inordinately you loved them And perhaps God may leave them to be Graceless and unnatural and make that child by rebellion or unkindness to be the breaking of your heart whom you most excessively affected If it be a wife that you over-love you know not but they
censure them because they cannot prove them to be such Deceivers When yet the very bent and course of their lives proclaimeth them worldlings to almost all men but themselves who by the just but heavy judgement of God are given over to that blindness as not to see that damnable sin in themselves that the enemies of Religion see with scorn and their most impartial friends do see with lamentation but seeing it are not able to remedy for worldliness is the commonest badge of an Hypocrite and where there is a false heart at the bottom and but an hypocriticall faith and an hypocriticall love to God and the life to come there will be no effectual resistance of the world but all exhortations do come upon so great disadvantage with such souls that usually they are lost and leave them as they find them If any covetous scraping earth-worm whether he be Gentleman Tradesman or Husbandman do feel his conscience at the reading of this begin to stir I beseech him if there be any hope of such hypocrites to hearken to it in time and regard a little more the warnings of his friends and not to be so stiffly confident of his innocency nor yet to think himself free from hainous gross and scandalous sin as long as he is a covetous worldling If covetousness be idolatry and the sin of those with whom we may not so much as eat and if the covetous shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven and be such as the Holy Ghost doth joyn with thieves and the vilest sinners who then but an Infidel can think that it is not a scandalous sin and such as will be the damnation of all that be not throughly cured of it See Eph. 5. 5 6 7. 1 Cor. 5. 10 11. Psal. 10. 3. 2 Tim. 3. 2. 2 Pet. 2. 14. Luke 16. 14. Mark 7. 22. 2 Tim. 3. 2. Ier. 8. 10. 6. 13. David prayeth God to encline his heart to his testimonies and not to covetousness Psal. 119. 36. and now men think they may be enclined to both and that they have found out the terms of reconciling heaven with earth and hell I marvail these men will not see their own faces when the Prophets and Christ himself do hold them so clear a glass Ezek. 33. 31. They come unto thee as the people cometh and they sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words but they will not do them for with their mouth they shew much love but their heart goeth after their covetousness Mat. 13. 22. He that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choak the word and he becometh unfruitful I know the men that I am now speaking of have many excellent gifts and in other respects do seem the forwardest for godliness in the Countrey but the more is the pitty that men of such parts should be rotten-hearted hypocrites and damned for worldliness after so much pains in duties For an heathen may as soon be saved as a worldling When they have prayed and preached and cryed down prophanness let them hear what the Lord saith to them Luke 18. 22 23 24. and there see again their faces in that glass Yet lackest thou one thing even such an one as none can be saved without even a Love to God and Heaven above earth sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come follow me And when he heard this he was very sorrowful for he was very rich And when Iesus saw that he was sorrowful he said How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God Set not then so high a value on a full estate Let your conversation be without covetousness and be contint with such things as ye have and trust your selves on the security of his promise who hath said I will never fail thee nor forsake thee Heb. 13. 5. It is not for nothing that Christ himself hath given you so many and so terrible warnings to take heed of this sin As Luke 12. 15. Take heed and beware of covetousness for a mans life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth As if he should say While you think you are securing your well-being you do not secure your Being it self When you have done all to provide for the delights of your life you are never the surer of life it self Read the following passages in the Text and let them warn you or condemn you If such admonitions as these will not take from the mouth of him whom you call your Lord and from whom you profess to expect your Judgement What have we then further to say to you or how should our warnings expect entertainment with you Yet I shall do that which is my duty and leave the success to God I do therefore again in the name of God advise and warn you to Take heed of having too pleasant thoughts on a prosperous state Long not after fulness and plenty in the world Be not too eager for accomodations to your flesh A Coffin of two yards long will shortly hold it and be room enough for it And will nothing but well built houses adorned rooms the neatest cloathing and plentiful possessions serve you now How sad a mark is this of a soul that never had a saving taste of the everlasting riches Away foolish children and stand not building houses with sticks and sand Home with you to God and remember where you must dwell for ever When you have feathered your nests and made them as you would have them you must leave them before you are well settled and warm in them And if it comfort you to think that you leave them to your children remember that you leave them the fruit of your sins and bequeath to them the snares that undid your souls that so they may become the heirs of your wickedness and be deceived and destroyed by the world as you have been This is your great care for them and this is your kindness to them I have told you once already from God that this your way is your folly though your posterity be like to approve your sayings because you do so much to make them of your mind Psalm 49. 13. For though your inward thoughts be that your houses shall continue and you hope to leave a name behind you yet man being in honour abideth not but is like the beasts that perish When he dyeth he shall carry nothing away his glory shall not descend after him though whiles he lived he blessed his soul and men praise them that thus do well to themselves yet shall they go to the generation of their fathers and shall never see Light Man that is in honour and understandeth not is like the beasts that perish Vers. 11 12 17 18 19 20. Though the ungodly prosper in the world and encrease in riches yet he
whose discourse and prayers and daily examples will help to draw up your minds to God and to affect them with things that nearlyer concern you then all the profits or pleasures of the world I Have now told you how you should Crucifie the world and be Crucified to it but which of you will be so happy as to practise these Directions I cannot tell I have brought you the armour and weapons by which this mortal enemy must be conquered but it is not in my power to give you couragious hearts to use them I can certainly tell you what a safe and comfortable life you might live if you had but this enemy under your feet and what an easie and happy death you might die if you were first dead to the world But to make you so happy is not in my power I can foresee the certain damnation of all unconverted sensualists and worldlings and how sad a farewell they must shortly take of all their felicity But to prevent it is not in my power For I cannot make you willing to prevent it It s a greater work then bare information that is here to be done If it were but to give the world a few contemptuous words and to call it vanity and a worthless thing I should make no doubt of prevailing with the most But to kill it in your hearts is an harder work And with some kind of men it prospers most when it is hardlyest spoken of It s easie to tell a man why and how he should lay down his life for Christ if he be called to it But there 's more to be done before it will be practised Till an heavenly light possess your minds and shew you the better things to come and assure you of more to be had in Christ then the world can afford you I cannot look you should lose your hold nor that an hundred Sermons should make you willing to seek the death of that which hath your heart Sense is tenacious and unreasonable When you have knockâ— it off an hundred times yet still it will be sense and will be eager after its delights again Some will be still thinking that Mortification and heavenly mindedness is so rare a thing that God will be more merciful then to condemn all that are without them And some will be inconsiderate and sensless when the clearest reason is set before them and will venture their salvation rather then become dead to all their worldly lusts and hopes So that with sorrow I must say that now I have said all and delivered my Message I fear the most will still be the same and reject the counsel of God to their perdition For this is a grace that accompanieth salvation and therefore will be the portion only of the heirs of salvation Though our hearts dâ—e â—ire and prayer and endeavour must be that the professed Is ' raelites may be saved yet we must take up our comfort shorter that the Elect shall obtain it though the rest are hardened For its Gods will and not ours that must be done If Christ be satisfied in the salvation of his little flock as seeing in them the travail of his soul even so must we and though as Samuel did over Saul so we may mourn over the rest that God hath forsaken yet that sorrow must know its season and its measure For my part I must needs say to you that though it may seem an high extraordinary thing to some of you for a man to be thus Crucified to the world I have no more hope of the salvation of any of you except it shall be thus with you then I have of the salvation of Cain or Iudas And as great and wonderful a work as this is if ever God mean to save your souls it will be done on you I shall therefore according to my duty beseech you to review and practise the Directions which are given you and to use the world as the heirs of Heaven that have laid up their hope and treasure there But if you will not hear and take warning it is because the Lord will destroy you and because you are not the sheep of Christ 2. Chron. 25. 16. 1 Sam. 2. 25. Iohn 10. 26 27. SECT XXI Use last I Have been all this while Perswading and Directing you to be Crucified to the world and the world to you I doubt not but God hath done this work already upon the souls of many of you even upon all that truly believe in a Crucified Christ. To such therefore I shall next address my speech and in general this is my earnest request to you That you would use the world as a Crucified thing and as men that are Crucified to it should do I will not lengthen this discourse in using many motives to you One would think that which way ever you look you should have forcible motives before your eyes If you look downward on earth you may see enough to wean you from it and if seeing will not serve your most wise and gracious Father will make you feel and put the case beyond dispute If you look upwards you may perceive a better and more enduring substance and an inheritance so much more glorious and enduring as should suffice to take your minds from earth If you look within you what foot-steps of the Spirit may you there trace what graces in act and habit may you find which are all at mortal enmity with the world You may read there a Law engraven upon your hearts which condemneth the world to subjection and contempt And many an obligation you may there find wherein you are deeply bound against it For I hope you have not cancelled them all and forgot all the promises which you made to God All your Professions and all your blessed Priviledges and Hopes do engage you to another world and to the hearty renouncing and forsaking of this You say you are Crucified and Risen with Christ If you be then seek the things that are above set your affections on the things that are above and not on the things that are on earth For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God When Christ who is your life shall appear then shall you also appear with him in glory Mortifie therefore your members which are on earth fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which is idolatry For which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience Col. 3. 1. to 7. It doth not beseem the members of a Crucified Christ to be earthly minded nor the members of a Glorified Christ to set their minds oâ— things so low It ill bâ—seems the Heirs of an incorruptible rown of Glory to make too great a matter of these trifles It is the Enemies of the Cross of Christ and not those that are Crucified with him whose God is their belly and who glory in their shame and who mind earthly things but the Saints conversation must
the way to that Mat. 5. 3. Blessed are the poor in Spirit It is not Blessed are the worldly rich Nor Blessed are the Glorified only But the reason is For theirs is the Kingdom of heaven that is in title but not in possession ver 2. Blessed are they that mourn And why are mourners blessed For they shall be comforted Luk. 6. 24 25. Wo unto you that are Rich for ye have received your consolation Wo unto you that are full for you shall hunger Wo unto you that laugh now for you shall mourn and weep Wo unto you when all men speak well of you c. that is Wo to you that place your comfort and felicity in Riches and Fulness and Mirth and the Applause of men Yea though you possess the things you desire yet wo to you because you shall miss of the true and durable felicity Thus also run all the rest of the blessings in Matth. 5. Blessed are the meek Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the peace-makers Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsly for my sake that is When you are so firm in the faith and so far in love with me and the heavenly reward that you can bear all these revilings and slanders and persecutions you are Blessed even when the troubles are upon you So that you see here that our present Blessedness consisteth in Mortification to present things and Hope of future And from the future the Reason of our present blessedness is fetcht They which hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled The merciful shall obtain mercy The pure in heart shall see God The peace makers shall be called the children of God The persecuted shall have the Kingdom of heaven Indeed to the meek it is promised in present that they shall inherit the earth as Psal. 37. 11. had before said that is It shall afford them accommodations for a travailer which is all that is desirable in it or can be expected from it For godliness hath the promise of this life and of that to come 1 Tim. 4. 8. Yea moreover there is a special promise to the meek above those godly persons that are most wanting herein For their passage through this world to heaven shall ordinarily be more peaceable and quiet to them then other mens They do not so molest their own minds and vex themselves nor make themselves troubles nor provoke others against them as the passionate do and commonly they are either loved or pittyed or easilyer dealt with by all So that you may see throughout the Gospel that our present blessedness is in Mortification and Hope as the way to our future blessedness which consisteth in fruition And therefore it is a a very great errour in Believers when they overlook the blessedness of a Mortified state and can see little in any thing but sensible fruition and rejoycings When you are low in afflictions and grieved for your corruptions and fill the ears of God and men with your complaints though you have not then the joyful sense of the Love of God yet me thinks you might easily perceive your Mortification And will that afford you no refreshing Do you not feel that you are Crucified to the world and your desires after it are languid and life-less Can you not truly say that the world is Crucified to you and that you look on it but as a Carkass as an empty lifeless and unsatisfactory thing Would you not gladly part with it for more of Christ Could you not let go credit and wealth and friends so that the Kingdom of God might be more advanced within you and you might live more in the Spirit by a life of faith Could you not be content to be poor in the world so that you might but be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him Why do you not then consider what a blessed condition you are in and that your Mortification is a Mercy that leadeth to salvation and as sure a token of the Love of God as your most sensible joyes Did you ever mark and conscionably practise that command of Christ Mat. 5. 12. to the persecuted reviled slandered Believers Rejoyce and be exceeding glad mark what a frame your Saviour would have you live in for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you So when you are poor and afflicted and have hearts that set light by earthly things in comparison of God and Glory you have cause to Rejoyce and be exceeding glad though you live under sufferings for thus it hath been with the true Believers that have gone before you SECT XXVI I Come now to the second Branch of the Observation which is that When Believers Glory in their own Mortification it must be as it is the fruit of the Cross of Christ that so all their Glorying may be principally and ultimately in Christ and not in themselves They must take heed of ascribing the honour to themselves or of resting in themselves but all their observation of the graces that are in them must be in pure respect to him that is the fountain and the end that we may thankfully acknowledge our receivings and admire the eternall Love which did bestow them and the compassions and merits of our Crucified Redeemer and the powerfull operations of his Spirit in our souls and so may be carried out to Love and Duty in the sense of our receivings and may live to the praises of him that hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light And that you may see how great reason there is for this and so may be kept from glorying in your selves I shall open the cause to you as it lyeth both on Christs part and on ours What he is to us and what we are to our selves Consider 1. It was Christ and not we that wrought our deliverance by the wonderfull work of our Redemption Long enough might we have layen in prison before we could have paid the utmost farthing and long might we have born the wrath which we deserved before we could have done any thing to merit or any way procure our deliverance Had we wept out our eyes and prayed our hearts out and never committed sin again this would not have made satisfaction to God for the sin that was past Long enough might we have lain in our blood if this compassionate Redeemer had not taken us up and undertaken the cure Had he turned us off to any creature we had been left helpless Had we looked on the right hand for some to deliver us or on the left we should have found none Besides him there is no Saviour Isaiah 43. 11. Acts 4. 12. And moreover the way he hath
taken is wonderful There are unsearchable wonders of Love and wonders of Iustice wonders of Wisdom and wonders of Power It s the admiration of Angels the study of all Saints to know the height and breadth and length and depth and when they have all done they find that the Love of Christ surpasseth knowledge As all other knowledge of arts creatures languages is nothing in comparison of the knowledge of a Crucified Christ so our own knowledge is too narrow to comprehend the greatness and too dull to reach to the bottom of the mysterie of this design of the heavenly Love Eph. 3. 17 18 19. When Christ hath posed men and Angels with wonders in our Redemption And when we have done nothing in it our selves its easie to perceive in whom we should Glory 2. Consider also that it is Christ that God hath advanced to this Glory and it is the magnifying of him that is designed by God and not of such as you It s true that he intendeth to Glorifie us with Christ and that in some participation of his Glory But that is not by ascribing merit and power and wisdom to us nor by praising us for that which indeed we have not but it is by communicating some of the Spirit of Christ unto us and letting us see the glory of our head Though we may see the brightness of the Sun and have the comfort of its raies yet that doth not make us Suns our selves So though we shall be where Christ is and behold his Glory 1 Iohn 17. 24. and exercise our selves in his eternal praise yet all this is but a derived dignity communicated to us by the aspect of our Lord and therefore it will not be our work to praise our selves but him Rev. 5. 9. Him hath God advanced to be a Prince and a Saviour Acts 5. 31. and made him head over all things to the Church Eph. 1. 22. and delivered all things into his hand 1 Joh. 13. and given him all power in heaven and earth Mat 28. 18. a name above every name that at the name of Iesus every knee shall bow Phil. 2. 9 10. and to this end he dyed rose and revived that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living Rom. 14. 9. So that the exalting of the Redeemer is a more principall end in the work of Redemption then our exaltation and in ours we are passive receiving the dignity which from him is communicated to us but Christ with his Father is the fountain and end of his own glory 3. Consider also your Debasement in condemnation and humiliation is the designed way to the glory of your Redeemer and in it your own glory This is his honour that when the Law had condemned you he absolved you by his Ransom and when you were dead in trespasses and sins he quickned you through the riches of mercy and the great Love wherewith he loved you Eph. 2. 4 5. you must be sick before he can have the honour of curing you He will â—ay you at the feet of God in shame crying out Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called a son make me one of thy hired servants You shall call your selves foolish disobedient even mad and the greatest of sinners Tit. 3. 3. Acts 26. 11. 1 Tim. 1. 15. If therefore you begin to glory in your selves you contradict the glory of Christ and consequently hinder the glory you should receive from him You have but the benefit of receiving his alms and therefore must stand in the posture of beggars but it is he and not you that must have the honour of giving it You must be Nothing that he may be All or else you will be Nothing indeed You must not Live but Christ in you or else you will not Live indeed Gal. 2. 20. You must be found in him not having your own Righteousness which is of the Law or works but the Righteousness which is of Christ by faith or else you will lose your selves and your righteousness Phil. 3. 9. And thus the just being dead in themselves must live by faith but if any be lifted up his soul is not upright in him Heb. 2. 4. Christianity therefore teacheth you to glory in Christ and not in your selves 4. Consider it is Christ and not you that revived your souls when you were dead in sin and Crucified you to the world to which you were alive You might have rotted and stunck in the grave of sin if he had not called you out You saw the spectacles of Mortality before your eyes and you could say The world is vain before But yet it lived in your hearts till power came from Christ to kill it Words were but wind you would never have let go your bone of present worldly pleasure if Christ had not taken it out of your jaws by shewing you the hopes of greater things Long might you have heard Sermons and yet have been carnal still if his Spirit had not entered into your hearts Seeing then it is he that hath done the cure so far as it â—is done it is in him that you must glory and not in your selves 5. Consider if yet he should deal with you according to your deservings the remnants of your sin would bring you to damnation If yet he did not hide your nakedness and by his intercession procure you a daily pardon you would every day be your own distroyers nay you would not be an hour longer out of hell If he did not bring you before his Father you could have no access to him in any of your addresses Your sacrifices would be cast back into your faces as dung if the merit of his sacrifice made them not accepted So that by this you may see in whom you must still glory 6. Now you have a little grace you cannot keep it of your selves Now you are made alive you cannot keep your selves alive If you be not preserved by him that did revive you and kept by his mighty power to salvation and if he be not the finisher of your faith who was the author of it how speedily how certainly would you prove apostates and undo all that hath been so long a doing If then you stand not on your own legs but are carryed in his arms you may see in whom it is that you should glory 7. Nay more if you were left to your selves but to resist one temptation it would bear you down You now think of many sins with an holy scorn But the filthyest of those sins would become your pleasure if you were forsaken by Christ. You now look on whoredom and gluttony and drunkenness and ambition as dirt and dung But if Christ should forsake you this dung would you feed upon and as dogs you would eat up the filthyest vomit that ever you did disgorge your selves of and as swine you would choose that mire for your bed and rest in it till hell awaked