those acts that have most of Sense in them so is the Rational with those that have most of Reason in them And certainly those have most Reason in them which are terminated upon Objects which most deserve them and what Object can so well deserve to be acted upon by Reasonable Beings as God or what Acts can they so reasonably exert upon him as those of Love and Adoration Homage and Imitation Trust and Dependence But as no Acts of Sense can be very grateful to our Sensitive Nature so long as we exert them either with repugnance or indifferency so neither can any Acts of Reason be to our Rational the Pleasure of all Acts whether Sensitive or Rational consisting as I shew'd before in the Sprightfulness and Vigour of them And this is the cause why men now find so little Felicity in these most Rational Acts of Godliness because by their own bad customs they have rendered themselves averse or at least very cold and indifferent to them which necessarily renders us dead and listless in the exercise of them and consequently causes them to go off with little gust if not with an ungrateful relish But even in this imperfect state we find by experience that the more our corrupted nature discharges and disburdens it self of those vicious indispositions which do so cramp and arrest it in these its Heavenly operations the more it is pleased still and delighted in them Yea and that when it is so far inured to a Godly Life as to be able to practise the several vertues of it but with the same degree of activity and vigour as 't was wont to do its most beloved Lusts it is unspeakably more pleased and satisfied and finds more Sweetness by a thousand degrees in its Love and Adoration Obedience and Imitation of God than ever it did in the highest relishes of Epicurism and Sensuality that the more perfectly we Love and Adore c. the more of Heaven we tast in these Blessed Acts and that when by a long and constant practice of them we have once rendered them natural to us we enjoy such an Heaven upon Earth in the easie free and vigorous exercise of them as we would not exchange for all the Pleasures and Felicities which the World can afford us And yet God knows the most perfect state of Godliness which we attain to here hath so many degrees of imperfection in it and in this we are so disturbed and interrupted by bodily Indispositions and the troubles and necessities of this present Life that from the Joy and Pleasure which results from it here we can hardly guess at those ravishing Felicities which will spring out of it hereafter When we shall be perfectly released from all the encumbrances of flesh and blood and sin when we shall be translated into a free and quiet state wherein we shall have nothing else to do but only to know and love obey and imitate and have no imperfection either natural or vicious to clog or disturb us in this our Beatifical employment Wherein we shall act with all our vigour and might and thrust forth the whole strength of our Souls in every Love and every Obedience so that every motion of our Souls towards God shall have the Vehemence of a Rapture in it without the Violence When I say we shall be eternally fixed in a State of such perfect Freedom and Activity our Happiness must needs be as large as our Desires and as great as our utmost Capacity or Power of Acting upon God For now we shall most lively imitate the most Perfect and adore the most Adorable as much as ever we are able that is we shall perform with all our might and vigour the Acts that are most agreable to our Reasonable Nature and in the utmost vigour of such Acts as I have already shewed consists our utmost Happiness SUPPOSE we then a Society of Rational Beings placed in such a State wherein they have an Object of infinite Perfections always before them and no Evil from without or within to check or divert them from exerting all their Powers upon him in the most reasonable Actions Suppose them now to be moving with unspeakable vigour and agility like so many ever living Orbs about this their everlasting Center to be as full of Love and Duty to him as ever their Hearts can hold to be copying his Perfections and adoring his Excellencies with an uncontrouled Freedom and Alacrity and breathing forth themselves to him in chearful Praises and Rapturous Halelujahs in a word to be exercising themselves about him to their utmost Strength and Power in all those blessed Offices which his Nature and their Relation to him call for Suppose I say all this and you have before ye that which is the very top and flower of the Heaven of a reasonable Creature who in this blessed state is fixed as it were in his own proper Element where without any let or disturbance he freely moves and acts according to his most natural Tendence and Inclination AND now by this time I think it is clear enough that the main and principal Part of the Heaven of a Man considered as a reasonable Creature consists in Knowing and Chusing of God But besides this there are other blessed Ingredients of Heaven the principal whereof is the Knowing and Chusing those that are most like unto God namely the blessed Jesus in his Human Nature and the Holy Angels and Saints who are all in their several Measures and Degrees the express and lively Images of God And therefore if to Know and Chuse God be the supreme Felicity of Heaven then doubtless the next to that is to Know and be Acquainted with these blessed Images of him and freely to chuse their Company and Conversation and be entirely united to them in Affection without which it would be no Felicity to dwell in the same place with them For to co-habit with Jesus and with Saints and Angels and not be acquainted with and united to them in Heart and Affection would be rather a Burden than a Pleasure The Happiness therefore of being in their Society consists in Knowing and Chusing them And this is every where implied where our being with them is mentioned as a part of our Heaven Thus 1 Thes. iv 17 to be ever with the Lord is the same thing with being ever in Heaven but then 't is to be ever with him upon Choice for so those words imply Phil. i. 23 I desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better And accordingly this is mentioned by the Apostle as a dear Priviledge of our being Members of the Christian Church whereby we are entituled to the Society of Holy Myriads of Angels of the general assembly of the Church of the first-born of God the Judge of all of the Spirits of Just men made perfect and of Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant Heb. xii 22 23 24. And indeed this must needs be an inestimable
follow their Example we would at least be so honest as to renounce their Kindred and not to claim a Relation to their Family meerly to shame and disgrace them II. CONSIDER the Honour and Dignity of the heavenly Life For if we may estimate Actions by the Examples from whence they are copied as in other Cases we are wont to do doubtless the most noble and honourable are such as are copied from the Lives of the glorious Inhabitants of Heaven For besides that sublime Rank of Dignity whereunto they are advanced as being the Courtiers and immediate Attendants of the Almighty Sovereign of Heaven and Earth a Dignity which by how much more it excells that of the greatest Potentate of this world by so much more it authorizes the Examples of those that wear it besides this I say their Examples being the most perfect Copies and Imitations of the Life of God are thereby rendred not only more eminent and glorious but also more obliging and authoritative For by following them we follow God who is the Standard of all rational Perfection and who by being the first and best in the whole kind of Rational Entities is the supream Rule and Measure of them all So that in imitating the blessed People above we imitate those who in their Place and Station do live at the same Rate as the great God doth in his and regulate themselves by the same infallible Reason We do what God himself would do if he were in our Place and there is no other difference between his life and ours but what necessarily arises out of our different States and Relations And what more glorious thing can we do than to live by the Pattern of their Lives who live so exactly by the Pattern of God's For the Example of living which those blessed People set us is the Example of God at second-hand 't is his most rational Life transcribed so far as it is rationally imitable that is so far as it is honourable and glorious for a rational creature to transcribe it For in the State of finite Creatures they live in a perfect Conformity to the same immutable Reason whereby God regulates himself in the State of an infinite Creator So that their Example is an Imitation in kind of all those particular Excellencies in him which they may and ought to imitate and 't is an Imitation in general of that eternal Decorum with respect to Conditions and States which he constantly observes in all his transactions with his Creatures And as their Example is a perfect Copy of God's so 't is a Copy fitted in all particulars for our Use and Imitation For it doth not only describe to us all those particular Excellencies in him which are to be imitated by us but all those particular Duties to which that eternal Law of Equity and Goodness by which he governs himself in his State requires of us in ours and shews not only wherein we are to imitate him in kind but also wherein we are to follow him in general in doing what is most fit for us in the State and Relation of Creatures even as he doth what is most fit for him in the State and Relation of a God and Creator So that the Example of those heavenly Inhabitants is the Example of God himself exactly fitted and attempered to the State and Condition of Creatures For just as they live the All-wise and All-good God himself would live if he were in their State and Relation Wherefore by imitating their heavenly Lives and Manners we do our selves the greatest Right and do most effectually consult the Glory and Honour of our own Natures For whilst we tread in theirs we tread in the Footsteps of God and have his glorious Example to warrant and justifie our Actions we behave our selves as it becomes the Children of the King of Heaven and so far as it consists with the condition of Creatures we live like so many Gods in the world which is doubtless the utmost height of Honour and Glory that any rational Ambition can aspire to So that methinks had we any spark of true Gallantry and Bravery of Mind in us we should despise all other kinds of Life but this and pity those gilded Bubbles that have nothing to boast of but their fine Cloaths and great Estates and empty Titles of Honour we should look upon all other Dignities as the trifling Play-games of Children in comparison of this of living like the great Nobility of Heaven that do all live by the pattern of the Life of God III. CONSIDER the great Freedom and Liberty of a heavenly Life So long as we live earthy and sensual Lives our free-born Souls are imprisoned in Sense and all their Motions are circumscribed and bounded within the narrow Sphere of sensitive Goods and Enjoyments So that when we would follow our Reason and do as that prescribes and dictates we find our selves miserably hampered and intangled the Lusts of our Flesh do hang like gyves so heavily upon us that when ever our Reason and Conscience call we cannot move with any Freedom but are fain to labour at every Step and after a few faint Essays are utterly tired under the weight of our reluctant Inclinations So that the good which many times we would we do not the law in our Minds being counter-voted by the law in our Members Our reason and conscience tell us that we ought to love God above all to adore and worship him and surrender up our selves to his Command and Disposal and we are many times strongly inclined to follow its Dictates and Directions but alas when we come to put them in Execution we find so many pull-backs within us â—o many strong and stubborn Aversions to our good Inclinations that we have not the power to do as we would or to dispose of our selves according to our own most reasoable Desires but like miserable Slaves that are chained to the Oar we are fain to row on whithersoever our imperious Lusts do command us though we plainly see we are running on a Rock and invading our own destruction And as we are not free in this ill State of life to follow our Reason so neither are we free to follow our Lusts. For as when we would follow our Reason our Lusts cling about and intangle us so when we would follow our Lusts our Reason clogs and restrains us and by objecting to us the Indecency and Danger the infinite Turpitude and Hazard of our sinful Courses lays so many Rubs in our way that we cannot sin with any Freedom but whithersoever we go we walk like Prisoners with the Shackles of Shame and Fear on our heels So that which way soever we turn our selves we find that our Power to dispose of our selves is under a great Restraint and Confinement and we can neither get leave of our Lusts to follow our Reason nor of our Reason to follow our Lusts. For when we attempt the latter our Reason curbs us with
to and fairly represent to our selves all the Difficulties and Temptations wherewith we must ingage and as much as in us lies render them actual and present to us by supposing our selves already ingaged in our Spiritual Warfare and surrounded with all the Temptations both from within and without that we can reasonably expect will oppose themselves against us and having thus placed our selves in the midst of the Difficulties of Religion we must never cease urging our selves with the great Arguments and Motives of it till we have throughly persuaded our stubborn Wills and obtained of them an explicit Consent to every Duty that calls for our Consent and Resolution III. TO our good Beginning of the Christian Warfare it is also necessary that we be deeply and throughly convinced of our great need of a Mediator to make a Propitiation for our Sins and render us acceptable to God For 't is to convince us of this necessary Truth that the Scripture doth so expresly declare that as there is one God so there is one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus 1 Tim. ii 5 that if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and that he is the Propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world and that 't is for his name sake that our sins are forgiven 1 John ii 1 2 12. that we have redemption through his blood Eph. i. 7 and that without the shedding his blood there is no remission and that 't was by the sacrifice of himself that Christ put away sin Heb. ix 22 26. that we are accepted of God through his beloved Son Eph. i. 6 that Christ is entred into heaven now to appear in the presence of God for us Heb. ix 24 and that there he ever lives to make intercession for us Heb. vii 25 that 't is through him that we have access unto the Father Eph. ii 18 and by him that we have admittance to his grace and favour Rom. v. 2 The design of all which is throughly to convince us of this great truth that by our Apostacy from God and Rebellion against him we have all rendred our selves so very obnoxious to his Vengeance that he would not pardon us upon any less Atonement than the precious Blood nor admit us into favour upon any less Motive than the powerful Intercession of his own Son that by the heinousness of our Guilt we have so highly incensed the Father of Mercies against us that no less consideration than the Death and Advocation of the greatest and dearest Person in the whole world will move him to admit of our Repentance and listen to our Supplications And certainly next to exacting the Punishment due to our sins at our own hands the most dreadful Severity he could have expressed was to resolve not to remit it upon any other consideration than that of his own Sons undergoing it in our stead by which he hath given us the greatest reason that Heaven and Earth could afford to tremble at his Justice even whilst we are inclosed in the Arms of his Mercy THIS therefore we ought to be deeply and throughly convinced of that our Sins have set us at such a distance from God that 't is nothing but the bloud of Christ will reconcile him to us and that though without our Repentance he will never be reconciled to us yet 't is not for the sake of that or any thing else we can do that he will be induced to receive us into favour but only for the sake of that precious Sacrifice which his eternal Son hath offered up for us The firm Persuasion and Consideration of which will mightily over-awe our minds and imprint upon them such gastly and horrible Apprehensions of sin as will scare us from all thoughts of Compliance with it the dreadful demonstration which God hath given us of his righteous severity against it in the very Reason of his pardoning it will effectually antidote us against all our sinful Securities and Confidences For this way of Gods pardoning us upon the Sacrifice of his Son guards his Mercy with such an awful Terror as is sufficient to dishearten the most desperate sinner from presuming upon it For he that dares presume to sin on upon a Mercy that cost the bloud of the Son of God hath courage enough to out-face the Flames of Hell and is not capable of any Mercy that the great God can indulge with safety to his own Authority For what Mercy can be safe from that mans Abuse and Presumption that dares abuse a Mercy so guarded and secured as this is by being founded upon such a dreadful Consideration AND as a through Persuasion of the Necessity of Christs Sacrifice to the Forgiveness of our Sins will fill us with awful Apprehensions of the divine Severity and set before us a most dismal Prospect of the vast demerit of our Sin both which are necessary to ingage us to a through Reformation so a through conviction of the Necessity of his Intercession to render our Duties our Prayers and Persons acceptable to God will effectually humble and abase us in our own eyes which as I shall shew you by and by is highly conducive to a good Beginning of this our Christian Warfare For next to banishing us from his Presence for ever the most effectual course God could take to abase us was to exclude us from all immediate Intercourse with him and not to admit of any more Addresses or Supplications from us but only through the hands of a Mediator which is a plain Demonstration how infinitely pure he is and how base and vile our Sins have rendred us insomuch that he will not suffer a sinful Creature to come near him otherwise than by a Proxy that he will not accept of a Service from a guilty Hand nor listen to a Prayer from a sinful Mouth till 't is first hallowed and presented to him by a pure and holy Mediator So that unless we are strangely inconsiderate we cannot but be touched with a deep sense of our own Vileness when we think at what a distance the pure and holy God keeps us how he stands off at the Stench of our Abominations and notwithstanding all his Benignity towards us will neither hear us nor have any thing to do with us without the powerful Intercession of his own Son AND as our Conviction of the Necessity we have of Christs Sacrifice and Intercession is very apt to affect us with holy Sorrow and Fear both which are very powerful Instruments of our Reformation so our persuasion of the Reality and Excellency of his Mediation is no less apt to inspire us with a mighty Hope and Assurance of Acceptance with God if we reform and amend For it seems that upon propitiatory Sacrifices and interceding Spirits guilty Minds have been always inclined to place their Confidence of Acceptance with God Hence it was a Principle generally
and to be than to be seen His Heavenly-mindedness was such as rendred him neither too sour nor too talkative and his Patience was always equally distant from Stupidity and Effeminacy For so when he endured that miserable Death of the Cross he suffered like a Man that was sensible of Pain and yet very well knew how to undergo it as became him For as on the one hand he did not breath out his Soul like an effeminate Epicure in whining Complaints and wretched Lamentations so neither on the other hand did he give up the Ghost like a flanting Stoick in a huffing Contempt of death or an affected Insensibility of Pain and Misery But from the beginning to the end he acted his Part in that bloody Tragedy as one that was neither insensible of Torment nor conquered by it For the last words which he breathed which were a hearty Prayer for his Murderers manifested his Soul to be calm and serene under all the Agonies of his Body Thus is his great Example intirely composed of those excellent Virtues that are the proper Graces and Ornaments of humane Nature Now though there be some Actions of our Saviours Life which were never intended for our Imitation viz. such wherein he either exercised or proved and asserted his divine Authority yet whatsoever he did of precise Morality and in pursuance to his own Laws he designed and intended for our Imitation So that in all such matters as his Law is to be our Map and Rule so his Practice is to be our Guide and President FOR this is the great End of our Religion to which God hath predestinated us namely to be conformable to the Image of his Son Rom. viii 29 and in this consists our putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ namely in imitating his Manners and following the Garb and Fashion of his Conversation and accordingly our Saviour tells his Disciples John xiii 15 I have given you an example that is of Humility and Charity that you should do as I have done to you and 't is one of his great Commands that we should learn of him who was meek and lowly of heart with a promise that in so doing we should find rest unto our Souls Mat. xi 29 WHEREFORE if we would lead a holy Life pursuant to our holy Resolution we must set holy Examples before our eyes and especially that most holy one of our blessed Saviour We must peruse the History of his sacred Life and diligently observe his Carriage and Demeanour in all those Capacities and Circumstances wherein he was placed and closely apply it all to our selves as a perfect Pattern of Action Thus and thus did my Saviour Sic ille manus sic ora so he demeaned himself when he was in my Circumstances after this manner he acted and thus he suffered and can I follow a more glorious Example nay would it not be a burning Shame for me not to imitate his Manners whilst I profess my self his Disciple Think O my Soul what would he have now done if he were in thy Condition and had thy Temptations before him Would he have pawned his Innocence for such a Trifle or prostituted himself to such a base infamous Action to avoid such an inconsiderable Inconvenience No doubtless he would not and art thou not ashamed to comply with such a Temptation knowing with what Indignation thy Saviour would have rejected it If we would but thus inure our selves to reflect upon our Saviours Example and apply it to and compare it with our own Actions we cannot imagine with what a divine Emulation 't would inspire us how it would animate our Weaknesses and shame our Irregularities and inamour our Souls with true Virtue and Goodness III. TO the Course and Progress of our Christian Warfare it is also necessary that we should frequently apply our selves for Advice and Direction to our spiritual Guides For it is to be considered that men of a secular Life and Conversation are generally so engaged in the Business and Affairs of this World that they very rarely acquire Skill enough in Religion to conduct themselves safely to Heaven through all those Difficulties and Temptations that lie in their way For before they can be capable to guide themselves safely they must in all points of great moment be able to distinguish between Truth and Falshood and to make a difference between good and evil which in many Instances do border so near upon one another that it requires much greater Skill and Knowledge than the Generality of men are Masters of to discern the Point and Boundary that parts them And supposing their Vnderstandings to be so well instructed as to be able to resolve them truly in all those doubtful Cases wherein they are or may be concerned yet still there is generally such a fault in their Wills as renders them incompetent Judges for themselves and that is that through an Excess of Self-love they are prone to be partial in their own Concerns and consequently unless the Case be very plain to vote that true that is most for their Interest and determine on that side they are most inclined to For when a mans Judgment is before in Suspence a very small weight of Interest on the wrong side of the Question usually turns the Scale against the greater probability on the right And whilst Interest fees mens Affections and their Affections bribe their Judgments it will be almost impossible for them to secure their Innocence whilst they determine all Cases of Right and Wrong at the Tribunal of their own Reason For when once they have determined falsly as many times to be sure they will besides the many single Miscarriages in Practice that will be consequent thereunto by practising on upon their false Determinations they will intangle themselves in such evil Customs and Habits as by that time they have discovered the Error of their Judgment will render it very difficult for them to correct the error of their Practice And therefore to secure our selves in our Innocence and Duty it is mighty necessary that in all doubtful Cases we should appeal from our selves to the Judgment of others who having no Interest to biass them one way or t'other will be much more impartial and therefore if they have but equal Understanding more competent Judges of our Case than our selves UPON both which accounts the Christian Religion hath wisely separated an Order of Men from the World to be the Guides and Conducts of Souls to oversee and direct the secular Flock who upon the above-mentioned accounts cannot be supposed to be in all Cases competent Guides of themselves For 't was to this purpose that our Saviour before his Ascension commissioned his Disciples Mat. xxviii 18 19 20. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth Go ye therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
from Virtue to Vice or from Vice to Virtue he will still be ready to face about with it and be always veering like a Weathercock to a contrary Point upon every Change of Wind. Whereas when a mans Intention purely respects God 't will be immovably fixt among all the Changes and Alterations from without For there is no outward Change or Capricio of Fortune can hinder a man from pleasing God whose Love to us depends not upon our being poor or rich pleased or pained depressed or advanced but upon our being truly virtuous and religious And therefore if our Aim be purely to please him we shall be sure to continue so which side soever Fortune smiles upon WHEREFORE to our successful Progress in Religion it is highly necessary that so far as in us lies we should abstract and separate our religious Intentions from all these worldly respects and this must be done by looking frequently up to God and actually referring and dedicating our Actions to him by shutting our eyes when we are entring upon any Duty to all worldly Considerations and determining with our selves this I will do purely because 't is Godlike or because God hath commanded it whether I shall be commended or disgraced for it whether I shall get or lose by it I will not now regard it is sufficient that it is good and that God hath commanded it and therefore for this Reason only I will do it without any other Respect or Consideration By which means we shall by degrees so purifie our Intentions and refine them from worldly Aims that we shall be able to act vigorously in Religion without any other Respect but that of pleasing God and conforming our selves to his Will and Nature And when once we can do thus we are in a great forwardness in Religion For now the Will of God hath got such an Ascendant over ours that as we can cheerfully obey him without external Inducements so we can freely contemn all Inducements to the contrary and it being our great and chief Aim to please and be like him the things that are without us will have very little Power to move us one way or ' tother Because now our great Aim is above them and our eyes are so stedfastly fixt upon God that we are not at leisure to regard them And our Mind being thus indisposed to listen to the restless Importunities of external Goods and Evils our Innocence is safe and we may pass triumphantly through all their Temptations 'T is a noble Saying of Epictetus lib. 2. c. 19. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. there is no other way for a man to eject sorrow and fear and lust from his soul but by looking up to God alone and resigning our selves to him only and devoting our lives to the Obedience of his Commandments And elsewhere he tells his Scholars that the main thing which he drove at was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. to make them free and blessed by persuading them to look up to God in every thing whether it be small or great lib. 2. c. 19. For whilst in our religious Intentions we do too much respect the things that are without us we do in a great measure intrust them with our Virtue and Religion and so far as we make them Inducements to our Duty so far it is in their Power to secure or betray it As for Instance so much as I aim at Profit in any religious Action so much Power Profit hath over my Religion and if the same Profit should invite me to a wicked Action it will have as much Power to betray my Religion as it had to secure it for the same Gain will have the same Influence on me when it tempts me to sin as it hath when it tempts me to obey What a dangerous thing therefore is it for men to intrust such a treasure as their Innocence and Religion in such irresponsible hands and to give those outward things which are the Temptations of Vice a power to dispose of their Virtue What is this but to commit the keeping of our Sheep to a Wolf or of our Chastity to a Goat Wherefore as we would be safe in our religious Progress it highly concerns us to purifie our good Intentions so far as we are able from all worldly Respects and to level them directly and immediately at God And in order hereunto V. To render the Course and Progress of our Christian Warfare successful it is also necessary that we possess our Minds with an awful Apprehension of Gods Presence with and Inspection over us Among the many excellent Rules which the Heathen Moralists have given for the Conduct of mens Lives this is one that in the whole Course of their Lives they should imagin some excellent person for whom they have a great Veneration to be present with 'um as a Witness and Spectator of all their Actions And it was wholesome Advice that one gave his lewd Friend that he should hang the Picture of his grave and serious Father in the Room where he was wont to celebrate his Debauches imagining that the severe eye of the good old Man though but in Effigie would give a mighty check to the wanton Sallies of the intemperate Youth And if the bare Fiction of a Mans being present with us or his being present only in a dead Picture may be rationally supposed to have so strong an Influence on our Actions of how much greater Force must our firm Belief and Sense of Gods Presence with us be to regulate our Lives and Actions And that he is thus present with us we have sufficient reason to conclude not only from the infinite Plenitude of his Essence which being Self-existent could not be bounded or limited by any Cause from without and therefore must necessarily be boundless and immense but also from express Assertions of Scripture which assures us that his eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good Prov. xv 3 That he is a God at hand and not a God afar off and that no man can hide himself in secret places that he shall not see him and that he fills heaven and earth Jer. xxiii 23 24. and that we can go no whither from his presence Psal. cxxxix 7 8. and that all things are naked and open to his eyes Heb. iv 13 that is that the World is surrounded and filled with his Being which is both the Womb that contains and the Soul that pervades the Creation and that being thus present with us wherever we are he must needs be supposed to have a constant Inspection over us and a clear Sense and Perception of whatsoever we do AND he being thus present with us in Reality and not in Fiction or Picture it must doubtless be of mighty avail to the Well-government of our Lives to be continually inspired with an actual and vigorous Sense of it And therefore our Saviour commands us to do good from a
than these worldly things which are continually pressing upon our Senses we should as oft as we have Opportunity withdraw our Thoughts from these sensible Objects and retire into the immaterial World and there entertain our selves with the close View and Contemplation of the Joys and Glories it abounds with For we are a sort of Beings that being compounded of Flesh and Spirit are by these opposite Principles of our Nature ally'd to two opposite Worlds and placed in the middle between Heaven and Earth as the common Center wherein those distant Regions meet By our spiritual Nature we hold Communion with the spiritual World and by our corporeal with this earthly and sensible one whose Objects being always present with us and striking as they do immediately upon our Senses we lye much more bare and open to them than to those of the spiritual World So that unless we now and then withdraw our selves from these sensible things which hang like a Cloud between we can never have a free Prospect into that clear Heaven above them And hence it becomes necessary that we should now and then make a solemn Retirement of our Thoughts from earthly Objects and Enjoyments that so we may approach near enough to Heaven to touch and feel the Joys and Pleasures of it which while we transiently behold in this Croud of worldly Objects is plac'd at such a Distance from us that it looks like a thin blew Landskip next to nothing and hath not apparent Reality enough in it to raise our Desires and Expectations AND hence we are commanded to set our affections upon or as it is in the original to mind those things that are above Col. iii. 2 and that by these things above he means the Enjoyments of Heaven it 's plain from v. 1. where he expresly tells us that by the above in which these things are he means Heaven where Christ sits at the right hand of God So that the Sence of the Precept is this that we should fix in our Minds such lively Representations of the Glory and Reality of the Celestial State as may raise in our Hearts a longing Desire and earnest Expectation of being made partakers of it Which Hope and Expectation he elsewhere injoyns us to put on for an Helmet i. e. for a necessary Piece of defensive Armour against the Difficulties and Discouragements of our Christian Warfare 1 Thes. v. 8 and Heb. vi xix this hope which enters into that within the veil i. e. into Heaven is said to be the Anchor of the soul both sure and stedfast i. e. 't is that which stayes and secures the Soul in the midst of those many Storms of Temptation it meets withall in its Voyage to Heaven and it being so we are bid to look to and imitate our Blessed Lord who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross despising the shame and is now sat down at the right hand of God Heb. xii 2 The meaning of all which is that we should earnestly indeavour to fix in our minds a vigorous Sense and Expectation of that immortal Happiness with which God hath promised to crown all that come off Conquerors from this spiritual Warfare that all along as we march we should keep Heaven in our Eye and incourage our selves with the Hope of it to charge through all those Difficulties and Temptations that oppose us in the way in a word that we should frequently awaken in our minds the glorious Thoughts of a blessed Immortality and possess our selves with a lively Expectation of injoying it if we hold out to the End WHICH is a Duty of a vast Consequence to us in the Course of our spiritual Warfare For Heaven being the End and Reward of our Warfare must needs be the grand Encouragement thereunto and consequently if once we lose Sight of Heaven and suffer earthly things to interpose and eclipse the Glory and Reality of it our Courage will never be able to bear up against those manifold Temptations that do continually assault us But whilst we continue under a lively Sense of that blessed Recompence of Reward that will so spirit and invigorate our Resolution that nothing will be able to withstand it and all the Terrors and Allurements that Sin can propose will be forced to fly before it and to retreat like so many impotent Waves that dash against a Rock of Adamant For while we are under a lively Sense and Expectance of the Happiness above we live as it were in the Mid-way between Heaven and Earth where we have an open Prospect of the Glories of both and do plainly see how faint and dim those below are in comparison with those above how they are forced to sneak and disappear in the presence of those eternal Splendors and to shroud their vanquisht Beauties as the Stars do when the Sun appears And whilst we interchangeably turn our eyes from one to t'other how fruitlesly do the Pleasures Profits and Honours below importune us to abandon the Joys and Glories above and with what Indignation do we listen to the proposals of such a senseless and ridiculous Exchange And could we but always keep our selves at this stand we should be so fortified with the Sight of those happy Regions above that no Temptation from below would ever be able to approach us and the sense that we are going on to that blessed State would carry us through all the weary Stages of our Duty with an indefatigable Vigour For what may a man not do with Heaven in his Eye with that potent I had almost said Omnipotent Encouragement before him To pull out a right Eye to cut off a right hand to tear a darling Lust from his Heart even when 't is wrapt about it and twisted with its Strings what an easie Atchievement is it to a man that hath a Heaven of immortal Glories in his View The Hope of which is enough to recommend even Racks Torments and turn the Flames of martyrdom into a Bed of Roses For 't was this blessed Prospect that inabled the Good old martyrs to triumph so gloriously as they did in the midst of their Sufferings they knew that a few Moments would put an End to their Miseries and that when once they had weather'd those short storms they should arive at a most blessed Harbour and be crowned at their landing and that from thence they should look back with infinite Joy and Delight upon the dangerous Sea they had escaped and for ever bless those Storms and Winds that drave them to that happy Ports for as the Author to the Hebrews tells us they sought a heavenly Countrey Heb. xi 14.16 XI AND lastly To the successful Progress of our Christian Warfare it is also necessary that we should live in the frequent use of the publick Ordinances and Institutions of our Religion namely in the religious Observation of the Lords Day and in frequent Communion with one another in the Holy Sacrament both which
Mind hast strengthened my Resolution and rendred it so successful and victorious 'T is to thy Grace that I owe all the good I have done and 't is by thy Aid that I have escap'd all the evils I have been tempted to wherefore not unto me O Lord not unto my Strength or Endeavours but unto thy Name be all the Glory and Praise of this days Deliverance and Preservation O never let the Remembrance of this thy Goodness towards me depart from my Mind but let it kindle in me such a grateful Sense as may more and more incite me to love and obey thee and depend upon thee for the future And as thou hast been pleased to conduct me safely by thy Grace through all the Dangers and Temptations of the Day so do thou take me into thy Care and Protection this Night and grant that I may awake in the Morning with a Heart so inflamed with the Remembrance of thy Goodness and so incourag'd with this Days success and so indeared to the Practice of Vertue by the growing Delights and Pleasures of it as that I may persist in my religious Course with greater Courage and Alacrity and this I humbly beg for Jesus Christs sake in whose name and words I farther pray Our Father c. If upon Enquiry you find that you have been failing in your Duty or that you have done any evil Action through meer Heedlessness or Surprize indeavour to affect your self with a sorrowful Sense of your own Folly Weakness and Carelesness and then conclude with this Form of Humiliation O Most blessed Lord God who art infinitely glorious in thy own Righteousness and Holiness and doest for ever will and act according to thy own Nature which is the most perfect Law and Pattern of Goodness To thy spotless Nature no Evil can approach who art of purer Eyes than to behold Iniquity with what Confidence then can such a polluted Creature as I am appear in thy Presence how can I lift up my guilty Eyes to thy Throne who to my past Rebellions which have been more in number than the hairs on my Head have this day added so many sinful Failings and Defects that shouldest thou be severe to mark what I do amiss were sufficient to kindle thy Displeasure against me 'T was but this Morning that I ingag'd my self to thee not only to abstain from all wilful and deliberate Sins but also to set a watch upon my Mouth and Actions that I might not offend thee unawares but to my Shame I must acknowledg I have been wofully careless and remiss having this Day suffered my self through my own Inadvertency to be surprized into such Actions as nothing can render pittiable or excusable in thy Sight but the miserable Frailty and Weakness of my Nature What shall I say unto thee O thou Judg of all the Earth I am guilty I am guilty and have nothing to plead for my self but the Blood of Jesus that all-sufficient Propitiation for the Sins of the whole World O Lord I do earnestly repent and am heartily sorry for these my Misdoings the Remembrance of them is grievous unto me the Burthen of them is intolerable have mercy upon me have mercy upon me most merciful Father and for Jesus Christ his sake forgive me all that is past and grant that the Sense of these my Miscarriages may render me more careful and vigilant for the future And let thy blessed Spirit be always present with my Mind to recollect my Distractions and awake my Considerations and warn me of my Dangers that I may no more be surprized by sudden Temptations nor hurried into evil Actions by unexpected Hopes or Fears but do thou so subdue my lower Appetites to my Will my Will to my Vnderstanding and my Vnderstanding to thy Spirit as that under his blessed Conduct I may for the future be prepared against all Temptations and furnish'd to every good work And now O Lord let not the Failings I have been guilty of this Day deprive me of thy gracious Protection this Night but grant that after a safe and comfortable Repose I may awake in the Morning with such a sorrowful Sense of them as may for the future oblige me to be more watchful and resolute against them All which I beg for Jesus Christ his sake with whose Prayer I conclude this my evening Sacrifice Our Father c. If upon Enquiry it appear that you have commited any wilful deliberate Sin indeavour to affect your self with Horror Shame and Compunction for it by representing to your Conscience the monstrous Foulness and Ingratitude the deep Malignity and desperate Madness of your own Action and then conclude with this Form of particular Repentance O Thou most dreadful Majesty of Heaven and Earth who hatest Iniquity and hast proclaimed from Heaven thy fierce Indignation against all Vnrighteousness and Vngodliness of men look down I beseech thee upon me a vile and guilty Wretch who stand here arraigned at thy Tribunal by my own Conscience and am so confounded with the sense of my Sin and of thy just Displeasure against me that I tremble to draw near unto thee and yet I dare not stay from thee I acknowledg my self unworthy infinitely unworthy to come before thee and am prompted by my own Horror and Shame to hide my self from thee but yet I know I must come or I must perish And therefore here O Lord I cast my self at thy Feet and if thou shalt think meet to tread upon me and to spurn me from thy Presence for ever I must own that thou art just and righteous in all thy Ways For thou hast been wonderfully good beyond what I could modestly have wisht or am able to express thou tookest pity upon me when I was all wounded and polluted and weltring in my Blood when I was sleeping securely upon the brink of Perdition and had scarce any Sense or Feeling of my Guilt and Misery in this woful plight didst thou visit my poor Soul and with thy preventing Grace awake me to a sense of my Danger and effectually warn me to flee from the wrath to come And now when thou hadst brought me to my self and to a through Resolution of Amendment and my Soul was in a fair way of Recovery like an ungrateful Wretch as I am I have flown in the Face of my Physitian I have abused his Goodness and baffled his Grace and wilfully and deliberately torn open my Wounds again And this I have done most treacherously as well as ungratefully not only against all the Obligations of thy Goodness but also against my own repeated Vows and Engagements For 't was but this Morning that I solemnly renewed to thee my Promise of Obedience and therein vow'd not to offend thee wilfully upon any Temptation whatsoever but O vile Traytor that I am both to thee and to my own Soul I have by most base basely falsified this my Engagement and this I did with the most unpardonable Circumstance even
Nature but still it hangs upon me and sinks and weighs down my Soul as oft as 't is aspiring towards thee O my God have pity upon me deliver me from this Body of Sin ease my weary and heavy laden Soul of this grievous Burthen under which it labours and groans and suffer not this spark of divine Life which thou hast kindled in me to be opprest and extinguisht by it but so cherish it I beseech thee with the continual Influences of thy Grace as that it may at length it may break through all this Rubbish that suppresses it and finally rise into a glorious Flame Then shall I always approach thee with Joy and breath up my Soul to thee in every Prayer then shall my Heart be firmly united to thee in a devout and chearful Affection and my Prayers shall come up as incense before thee and breathe a sweet-smelling savour into thy Nostrils Hear me therefore O my God I beseech thee and strengthen me with all might in the inward man that for the future I may contend more vigorously and successfully against these vile Inclinations of my Nature which do so miserably hamper and depress my soul that so at last I may be a conqueror and more than a conquerer through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen If through any bodily Infirmity such as Melancholy Weariness Drousiness or Sickness you find your self indisposed to divine Offices indeavour to quicken your sluggish Mind with the Consideration of some one of the most moving Arguments of your Religion such as the Love of God and of your Saviour the Majesty of Gods Presence in which you are or the blessed Immortality you hope for and then address your self to God in this following Prayer O Blessed God thou art a most pure and active Spirit who doest always move with an uncontrolable Freedom and art never hindred or wearied in thy Operations have pity upon me I beseech thee thy poor infirm Creature who am cumbred with this Body of death and so deprest by its manifold Frailties that I cannot lift up my Heart unto thee Thou knowest O Lord my spirit is willing though my flesh is weak my labouring Soul aspires towards thee it stretches forth the Wings of its Desires toward thee and would fain mount up above all earthly things and unite it self with thee in eternal Love but alas its Fervours are dampt and its Endeavours tired by this clog of Flesh that hangs upon it and perpetually sinks and weighs it down again O my God draw near unto me and touch my Mind with such a powerful sense of thee as in despight of these my bodily Indispositions may attract and draw up my Soul unto thee And if it be thy blessed will release me from these fleshly Incumbrances and fit my Body to my Mind that I may serve thee as I desire to do with a fervent and a chearful Spirit But if it shall seem good in thine Eyes to leave me strugling under these bodily Oppressions Lord give me Patience and Submission to thy heavenly Will that so when I cannot approach thee with that Pleasure and Satisfaction I desire I may be heartily content to serve thee upon any Terms and that what I want of Vigour and Chearfulness in my Religion I may make up in Truth and in Reality And O let the Sense of these my present Indispositions cause me more vehemently to long after that free and blessed State wherein with fixt and steady Thoughts with flagrant Love and an entire Devotion of Soul I shall for ever worship praise and glorifie thy name Amen If through present Worldly-mindedness or Vanity of Spirit you find your self cold and apt to be distracted in your Religious Offices indeavour to stir up your Affections by representing to your self the Greatness and Urgency of your spiritual Wants the Vanity of all outward things and the Reality and Fulness of heavenly Enjoyments And do what you can to recollect your wandring Thoughts by setting your self in the Presence of the great God to whose All-seeing Eye every Thought and Motion of your Soul is open and naked And when by thus doing you have composed your Mind into a more serious Frame present this following Prayer O Thou ever blessed Majesty who fillest Heaven and Earth with thy Presence and art always listening to the Supplications of a world of Creatures that hang upon thee open I beseech thee thine Ears of Mercy to me who am unfit and unworthy to approach thee who by setting my Affections upon things below and plunging my self into the Cares and Pleasures of this Life have estrang'd and alienated my Mind from thee and lost that delightful Relish of thee with which I was wont to draw near unto thee And now that I am retired from the World to converse with thee and spread my wants and my desires before thee those worldly Cares and Delights with which I have been too too conversant are importunately thrusting themselves upon me to divert my Thoughts distract my Intentions and carry away my Affections from thee by reason whereof my Mind wanders my Hope droops and my Desires are frozen and whilst I am drawing near thee with my lips my heart is running away from thee O my God have pity upon me pluck my Soul out of this deep mire quicken raise and spiritualize these my groveling Affections Possess this Heart which opens it self to thy gracious Influences with such a strong and vigorous Love to thee as may lift me up above all earthly things and continually carry forth my Soul in vehement Desires after thee that so I may always approach thee with a joyful Heart being glad to leave the company of all other things to go to thee my God my exceeding Joy Give me a sober diligent and collected spirit that is neither choaked with Cares nor scattered with Levity nor discomposed with Passion nor estranged from thee with sinful Prejudice or Inadvertency but fix it fast to thy self with the Indissoluble Bands of an active Love and pregnant Devotion that so when-ever I prostrate my self before thee I may presently be born away far above all these sensible Goods in a high Admiration of thee and a passionate Longing after thee And now O Lord while I am addressing to thee gather in I beseech thee my wandering Thoughts and fix and stay them upon thy self And O do thou touch my cold and earthy Desires with an out-stretched Ray from thy self and cause them to rise and flame up to thee in Fervours answerable to my pressing Wants that I may so ask as that I may receive so seek as that I may find so knock as that it may be opened unto me through Jesus Christ my blessed Lord and Redeemer Amen If after this you find your Heart is very much enlarged and your Mind and Affections vigorously disposed towards God and heavenly things fix your Mind a little while upon the Beauty and Excellency of his Nature or upon some of the most
affecting Instances of his Love or upon the blessed State above and then go on with this following Prayer O Thou most excellent Being thou infinitely amiable and adorable Majesty thou Pattern of Beauty and Standard of Goodness who art glorious beyond all Praise and dost out-reach all Wonder and comprehend all perfection blessed be thy Name thou hast touch'd my soul with a lively sense of thy Glory I feel it shining through me and like an active Flame insinuating into my Heart it fires my Love cherishes my Hope wings my Devotion and diffuses a vital Warmth over all my Faculties it raises me up into a heavenly State and fills me with joy unspeakable and full of glory it captivates every thought into Obedience to thy Will and brings every Power of my soul into Subjection to thee Blessed be thy Name thou hast conquered me by thy Love and I resign my self to thee with a chearful Heart I am intirely thine I am thy Servant truly I am thy Servant and in this Title I glory more than in all the Honours of the World But though I am highly advanc'd and exalted by serving thee yet thou art so infinitely happy in the boundless perfections of thy own Nature that thou canst reap no other Advantage from it but only the pleasure of seeing thy poor Creature blessed and made happy by it What then shall I render unto thee O thou Joy of my Life thou Treasure of my Love thou supream Felicity of my Nature Alas I have nothing but my self to give thee nothing but this poor Heart that burns with Love to thee that pants and breaths after thee and desires above all things in the world to be eternally united to thee in perfect Love If I had ten thousand Hearts to love thee ten thousand Tongues to praise thee I would devote them all to thee as freely and chearfully as I do my self For whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee O God thou art my God and my Portion for ever In thee I am blest and in the Light of thy Countenance I rejoice more than in all the Joys and Pleasures of the World I am ravisht with thy Beauty I admire thy Love and from the bottom of my Soul adore thy Wisdom and Goodness My heart is ready O Lord my Heart is ready I will sing and give praise Awake up my Glory awake all the Powers of my Soul I my self will awake and celebrate thy praises Praised be the God of Glory praised be the God of Love praised be the Father of Mercies praised be the best Friend of Souls for thy Goodness reaches to the heavens thy Glory shines throughout the Creation and thy Mercy is spread over all thy works Who can comprehend thine infinite Beauties who can rehearse thy noble Acts who can shew forth all thy Praise I do confess my Thoughts are infinitely too short my Affections too narrow my Expressions too scanty to comprehend and sufficiently admire and celebrate thy Glory But O my God thou knowest that I love thee and blessed be thy Name I feel infinite reasons so to do O that I could love thee more that I could love thee but as much as Angels and glorified Spirits do who yet cannot love thee as much as thou deservest because thou deservest to be belov'd infinitely But my soul thirsts for thee and longs after thee O when shall I be admitted into thy blessed Presence there to see and admire and love and adore thee for ever when shall I shake off this clog of sinful Mortality that sinks and depresses me and flee to those happy Regions of perfect Love where I shall continually feed upon thee with inexpressible Delight and be filled with a strong and everlasting Sense of thy goodness O thou that art the beginner and finisher of every good work be pleased to assist my holy Endeavours to withdraw my Mind more and more from these sensible things that it may have a clearer sight of its heavenly Country from whence it came and whither it desires to return that so having my Eye always fixt on that blessed recompence of reward I may live above this World and in despight of all its Terrors and Allurements persevere to the end in a steady and even Course of Obedience And now O Lord since thou hast been graciously pleas'd to inspire my Mind with these delightful Thoughts of thee and to enlarge my Heart with such sweet Transports of Love to thee grant I beseech thee that they may not only please but better me that they may lift me up above all the Temptations of this World and revive my Strength and quicken my Endeavours and compose my distrustful Heart into a stedfast Dependence upon thee that so I may be fruitful in all good works and my heart may be establisht unblameable in holiness before thee unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Amen Amen After you have used one or more of the foregoing Prayers according as they suit with the present Temper of your Mind take a short view of your Defects and Imperfections and especially of those that cleave most to your Nature and briefly represent to your Mind the intrinsick Evil and Vileness of them and how they clog your Religion blemish your Nature and obstruct your Happiness and then conclude with the following Prayer for Growth in Grace O God who art the most excellent Nature the Perfection of all Beauty and the Fountain of all Graces who doest infallibly understand what is best to be chosen and invariably chuse by the best and purest Reason look down I beseech thee upon me thy poor defective Creature who am ashamed of my self to see how unlike thee I am how I am laden with Imperfections and how after all my religious Endeavours my Nature is still vitiated with unreasonable Lusts and Affections how much Vanity and Impertinence there yet remains in my Mind how much Perverseness in my Will how much spiritual and carnal Iniquity in my Affections and Appetites Lord I have been long a contending with this corrupt Nature and yet upon all Occasions I find my self too too prone to be Wo is me even my fairest Graces have their Spots and Blemishes my purest Dispositions their sinful Intermixtures and my best Works their Flaws and Imperfections O my God have pity upon me who here lie sighing at thy Feet under a miserable diseased Nature and as thou hast begun the blessed Cure in me so for Christ his sake I beseech thee to compleat it that being intirely recovered and raised up unto newness of Life I may in the perfect Health and Vigour of my Soul serve and glorifie thee for ever For which end I beseech thee confirm me more and more in the Belief of those immortal Pleasures beyond the Grave which thou hast treasur'd up for those that love and obey thee that by the strength of a lively Faith and vigorous Hope my Soul may be rais'd above this World and learn to despise and trample upon all its gilded Vanities whensoever they present themselves either to allure or to terrifie me from pursuing the heavenly Enjoyments Excite in me such a vehement Thirst after those Rivers of Pleasures above as may every day render me more cool and indifferent towards earthly things more contented and satisfied under all the Events and Issues of thy Providence and more active and vigorous in my heavenly Calling And I beseech thee to inspire me with such clear and lively Apprehensions of thy essential Beauties and Perfections and of thy bountiful Love and boundless Benevolence to all thy Creatures as may every day more and more raise and improve my Love to thee that this being the great Spring and Principle of all my Actions may continually excite me to a chearful Obedience to thy Will and a vigorous Imitation of thy Perfections O cause me to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and the Instruments of Religion in order to thy Glory and my own Happiness that so founding my Content upon thee and the blessed Interests of a virtuous Life I may grow in Grace and be rich in good Works and go on with a satisfied and triumphant Spirit from Imperfection to Strength from Acts to Habits and from Habits to Confirmation in Grace and may be still more and more confirmed in all the heavenly Graces till they are finally consummated into everlasting Glory And when by thy Grace and Assistance I have perfectly conquered the corrupt Nature within and the Temptations without me and am arrived into the State of everlasting Triumph I will lay all my Victories at thy Feet and with Palms in my hand and Halelujahs on my lips celebrate thy praises to Eternity Hear me O my God in this and whatever else thou knowest to be needful for me even for Jesus Christ his sake in whose Name and Words I further pray Our Father c. FINIS Plat. Phaed. pag. 398. Ibid. Pag. 386. Paedag. l. 2. c. 1. pag. 141. Ibid. Pag. 139. * Dr. Stillingfleets Origines Dr. Patricks Translation of Grotius Sir Charles Wolsely * Here make a particular Confession of all those sinful Courses you have lived in together with all their aggravating Circumstances of Impudence Obstinacy and Ingratitude c. * When you renew your Vow in the Sacrament add * Here name the sinful Act you have committed * Here name the particular Infirmities that stick closest to your Nature
the Law of Nature which seems to have been nothing else but only Right Reason dictating to us what is necessary to be done in order to an Earthly Happiness And accordingly the Duties of this Law were of a much lower strain than the Duties of Christianity they being intended for the Means and Instruments of a much lower Happiness For in this our Earthly and Animal State Right Reason could require nothing of us but what was subservient to our Earthly and Animal Felicity and nothing could be good for us but what tended thereunto nothing evil but what did obstruct and oppose it But now that our Happiness is placed in another World and in such vastly different Enjoyments from those of a Terrestrial Paradise we must proceed upon other Principles For now every Action is Good or Bad Wise or Foolish as it serves or hinders our Happiness in the World to come And therefore it is highly reasonable that now we should live at a different rate than what we were obliged to in that Animal state wherein we were first Created that we should submit our earthly to our heavenly Interest and renounce the Joyes and Pleasures of this Life whensoever they stand in competition with the spiritual Felicities of the Life to come Now we are no longer to look upon this World as our Native Countrey but as a Foreign Land and so we are to reckon our selves Strangers and Pilgrims upon Earth and accordingly to use the conveniencies of this Life as strangers do their Inns not to abide or take up our habitation in them but only to bait and away and refresh our selves that so we may be the better enabled to perform our Journey to the Eternal World For the scene of our Happiness being shifted from an Earthly Immortality to an Heavenly and consequently the Happiness it self being now much more sublime and pure and spiritual than it would have been had it continued Earthly it 's necessary that our Nature should be exalted with it and that we should be raised as high above the condion of mere Earthly Creatures as that is above the rank and quality of an Earthly Happiness otherwise it will be impossible for us to relish and enjoy it NOW every Agent hath need of more or fewer Means proportionably as he is farther off or nearer to the End he drives at As for instance the Husbandman that hath a fat and fruitful Soil to sow his Seed in is nearer to the attaining of a good Harvest than he that hath a barren or stony Ground to work upon and therefore hath much less to do For whereas the latter before he can plough and sow must manure his Ground and gather out the stones of it the former needs only plough up the fertile Earth and cast his Seed into it Or to come closer to the case in hand a man that is meerly ignorant is in a much nearer capacity of true Knowledge than he whose mind is altogether prejudiced with erroneous Principles and therefore needs much fewer Helps and Means to attain it For his mind being perfectly disengaged is like a fair Paper on which as there is nothing writ so there is nothing to be blotted out So that all that he hath to do is to inquire after and receive the Truth when it is fairly proposed to him But as for the Prejudiced man he hath a great deal to unlearn before he can be capable of Learning a great many false Principles to be expunged before ever the true Notions of Things can be imprinted on his Understanding IF therfore we would take a true account of all those Means that are necessary to our attaining of Heaven we must consider what a vast distance we are from it in this corrupt and degenerate state of our Nature If we were in a state of Indifference between Virtue and Vice we should be much nearer Heaven than we are For then as we should be without those Heavenly virtues in the free Exercise whereof the state of Heaven consists so we should be without all that Repugnance and Aversation to them which renders them so difficultly attainable and our Nature being already in an Aequilibrium would by the least over-weight of Motive be presently inclined to Virtue and Goodness But alas in this corrupt state whereinto we are sunk our Nature runs Evil-wards with a very strong and prevailing Biass and is not only void of virtue but averse to it And this sets us at a far greater distance from the blessed End of our Religion than otherwise we should be For every Degree of vicious Inclination that is in us is a Remove from Heaven a Descent from that Perfection of virtue wherein the Heavenly Blessedness consists And if so how remote from Heaven are the Generality of men in the Beginning of their Progress thither when to their natural Corruption they have superadded by their sinful Courses so many inordinate Inclinations and inveterate sinful Habits when by a long series of wicked Actions they have raised and blown up their Concupiscence into such raging flames of Lust as generally they do And being thus far gone back from our End there are sundry Means which otherwise would have been perfectly needless and superfluous that are now become absolutely necessary thereunto For had we begun our Progress towards Heaven from a state of Indifferency between virtue and vice we had had no more to do but to practise those several virtues of Religion of which the Heavenly Life and state consists to love and to contemplate to adore and to obey God and behave our selves justly and charitably towards one another all which would have been so easie that we should have had no occasion of any Instrumental Duties to facilitate them to us Whereas now starting Heaven-wards as we generally do from a most corrupt and degenerate State there are sundry other Means which we must use as Instruments that are necessary to our acquiring and persevering in the virtues of the Heavenly Life to our conquering the Difficulties of and killing the vicious Aversations of our Natures against them All which would have been needless at least in a great measure had not our Nature been so depraved and corrupt as it is SO that as the case now stands with us there are Two sorts of Means that are necessary to our obtaining of Heaven The first is the Practice of those Heavenly virtues in the Perfection whereof consists the state of Heaven the Second is the Practice of certain Instrumental Duties which are necessary to our acquiring those Heavenly virtues and overcoming the Difficulties of them The first sort of these are the proximate Means those which directly and immediatly respect the Great and Ultimate End The second the more remote Means which immediatly respect those Means that immediatly respect the End The first is like the Art of the Builder which immediatly respects the House The second like the Art of the Smith which immediately respects the Means
by passing out of one world into another And therefore as in this world it is Likeness that does congregate and associate Beings together so doubtless it is in the other too So that if we carry with us thither our wicked and devillish dispositions as we shall doubtless do unless we subdue and mortifie them here there will be no Company fit for us to associate with but only the devillish and damned Ghosts of wicked men with whom our wretched Spirits being already joined by a likeness of Nature will mingle themselves as soon as ever they are excommunicated from the society of Mortals For whither should they flock but to the Birds of their own Feather with whom should they associate but with those malignant Spirits to whom they are already joined by a Community of Nature So that supposing that when they land in Eternity it were left to their own Liberty to go to Heaven or Hell into the society of the Blessed or the Damned it is plain that Heaven would be no Place for them that the Air of that bright Region of eternal Day would never agree with their black and hellish Natures For alas what should they do among those Blessed Beings that inhabit it to whose God-like Natures Divine Contemplations and Heavenly Employments they have so great a Repugnancy and Aversation So that besides the having a Right to Heaven it is necessary to our enjoying it that we shoule be antecedently disposed and qualified for it And it being thus God hath been graciously pleased to to make those very Virtues the Conditions of our Right to Heaven which are the proper Dispositions and Qualifications of our Spirits for it that so with one and the same Labour we might entitle our selves to and qualifie our selves to enjoy it NOW as we shewed you before the Condition of our Right to Heaven is our practising those Heavenly Virtues which are implied in the Religion of the End and as the Religion of the Means no further entitles us to Heaven than as it produces and promotes in us those Heavenly Virtues so it no further qualifies us for it For when the Soul goes into Eternity it leaves the Religion of the Means behind it and carries nothing with it but only those Heavenly Virtues and Dispositions which it here acquired by those Means For as for Faith and Consideration Hearing of Gods Word and Receiving of Sacraments c. they are all but Scaffolds to that Heavenly Building of inward Purity and Goodness and when this is once finished for Eternity then must those Scaffolds all go down as things of no further Use or Necessity But as for the Graces of the Mind they are to stand for ever to be the Receptacles and Habitations of all Heavenly Pleasure And hence the Apostle tells us that of those three Christian Graces Faith Hope and Charity Charity which in the largest sense of it comprehends all Heavenly Virtue is the greatest because the Two former being but Means of Charity shall cease in Heaven and be swallowed up for ever in Vision and Enjoyment but Charity saith he never faileth 1 Cor. xii 13 BY all which it is apparent that the Religion of the Means is no further useful to us than as it is apt to produce and promote in us those Heavenly Virtues the practice of which is the most direct and immediate Means to the ultimate End of a Christian. Wherefore as a man may knock and file and yet be no Mechanick though the Hammer and File with which he does it are very useful Tools to the making of any curious Machine so a man may pray and hear and receive Sacraments c. and yet be a very Bungler in the blessed Trade of a Heavenly Life For though it is true these are excellent Means of Heavenly Living yet as the Art of the Mechanick consists not barely in using his Tools but in using them in such a manner as is necessary to the perfecting and accomplishing his Work So the Art of one that pretends to the Heavenly Life consists not barely in praying and hearing c. but in using these Means with that Religious Skill and Artifice which is necessary to render them effectually subservient to the Ends of Piety and Virtue AND thus I have given a general Account of the Means which are necessary to our obtaining of Heaven and which as I have shewed are either such as tend more directly and immediately to it or such as more remotely respect it The first is the Practice of those Heavenly Virtues in the Perfection whereof the Happiness of Heaven consists the second is the Practising of those Duties which are necessary to our acquiring and perfecting those Heavenly Virtues And of these two Parts consists the whole Christian Life which takes in not only all those Virtues that are to be practised by us in Heaven but also all those Duties by which we are to overcome the Difficulty of those Virtues and to acquire and perfect them The first of these for Distinction sake we will call the Heavenly Part of the Christian Life it being that part of it which we shall lead in Heaven after we have learnt it here upon Earth The second I shall call the Warfaring or Militant Part of the Christian Life which is peculiar to our Earthly State wherein we are to contend and strive with the manifold Difficulties which attend us in the Exercise of those Heavenly Virtues Both which I conceive are implied in those words of the Apostle Phil. i. 27 Only let your Conversation be as becometh the Gospel where the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render Let your Conversation be strictly signifies behaving our selves as Citizens or which if we may have leave to coin a word may be fitly rendered Citizen it as becomes the Gospel For the word implies that those of whom he speaks were Denizens of some Free City for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Phil. iii. 20 is rendered Conversation strictly denotes a Citizenship from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Citizens and is of the same Import with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Acts xxii 28 is translatee a Freedom i. e. of the City of Rome which denotes the State and Condition of those who though they dwelt out of that City and sometimes remote from it had yet the Jus Civitatis Romanae the Privileges of it belonging to them For thus Cicero describes it Omnibus Municipibus duas esse Tatrias unam Naturae alteram Juris Catonis Exemplo qui Tusculi natus in Populi Romani Societaem susceptus est i. e. All such as are made free of the City have two Countries one of Nature the other of Law As Cato for instance who was born at Tusculum and afterwards admitted a Citizen of Rome Which exactly agrees with the Nature of this Heavenly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Citizenship which the Apostle here attributes to Christians who though they belong at present to another
Country and live a great way off from the Heavenly City have as yet no Domicilium in Vrbe no actual Possession of any of its blessed Mansions are notwithstanding Free Denizens of it and have by Covenant a Right to all those blessed Priveledges which its Inhabitants do actually enjoy From whence it is evident that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that Text referrs to their being Citizens of Heaven and as such it earnestly exhorts them to behave themselves to live as those who being now in a remote Country are yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle expresses it Ephes. ii 19 i. e. Fellow-Citizens with the Saints above that are connaturalized with them into that Heavenly Commonwealth And being thus understood the Apostles Advice will comprehend in it both those kind of Means which I have before described For to live as Cittizens of Heaven is First to live like those who are the Inhabitants of Heaven to imitate their blessed Manners and Behaviour in doing the Will of God upon Earth as it is done by them in Heaven and this takes in the Practice of all those Heavenly Virtues of which the Religion of the End consists Secondly To live like those that have a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Citizenship in Heaven that are entitled by Covenant to the Priviledges and Immunities of it but are as yet to win its Possession by a continual Warfare and Contention with those manifold Difficulties and Oppositions which lie in our way to it and this takes in the Practice of all those Duties in which the Religion of the Means consists So that to live like Christians or as becomes the Gospel is to live in the continual Use of both kinds of the Means of Happiness So that the Christian Conversation consisting of these Two is the only full and adequate Means by which Heaven can be obtained BUT that I may make this more fully appear I shall consider these two parts of it distinctly and indeavour to shew how effectually each of them doth contribute in its kind to our obtaining the Happiness of Heaven And First I shall begin with the Proximate Means viz. The Practice of all those Heavenly Virtues which are implied in the Religion of the End and do make the Heavenly Part of the CHRISTIAN LIFE CHAP. III. Concerning the Heavenly Part of the Christian Life which is the Proximate Means of obtaining Heaven shewing what Virtues it consists of and how much every Virtue contributes to the Happiness of Heaven VIRTUE in the general consists in a suitable Behaviour to the State and Capacities in which we are placed Now Man who is the Subject of that Virtue we are here discoursing of is to be considered under a threefold Capacity The First is of a Rational Animal the Second of a Rational Animal related to God the Third of a Rational Animal related to all other Creatures And these are the only capacities of Virtue that are in Humane Nature So that all the Virtues we are obliged to and capable of consist in behaving our selves suitably to the State and Condition of Rational Animals that are related to God and their Fellow Creatures BY which three Capacities of our Nature the Virtue or Suitableness of Behaviour which we stand obliged to is distinguished into three kinds viz. The Humane The Divine and The Social Humane Virtue consists in behaving our selves suitably to the State and Capacity of mere Rational Animals Divine Virtue consists in behaving our selves suitably to the Condition of Rational Animals related to God Social Virtue consists in behaving our selves suitably to the Capacity of Rational Animals related to their Fellow Creatures but especially to Rational Creatures that are of the same Class and Society with us THAT I may therefore proceed more distinctly in this Argument I shall endeavour to shew what those Vertues of the Christian Life are which are proper to a man in each of these Capacities and how much each of those Virtues contributes to the Happines of Heaven SECT I. Concerning those Humane Virtues which belong to a Man as he is a Reasonable Animal shewing that they are all included in the Heavenly Part of the Christian Life and that the Practice of them effectually conduces to our future Happiness FIRST we will consider Man in the Capacity of a meer Rational Animal that is compounded of contrary Principles viz. Spirit and Matter or a Rational Soul and Humane Body by which Composition He is as it were the Buckle of both Worlds in whom the Spiritual and Material World are clasped and united together and partaking as he does of both Extreams of Spirit and Matter Angel and Brute there arise within him from those contrary Natures contrary Propensions viz. Rational and Sensual or Angelical and Brutish And in the due Subordination of these his Sensual to his Rational Propensions consists all Humane Virtue For his Reason being the noblest Principle of his Nature must be supposed to be implanted in him by God to rule and govern him to be an Eye to his blind and bruitish Affections to correct the Errours of his Imagination to bound the Extravagancies of his Appetites and regulate the whole Course of his Actions so as that he may do nothing that is destructive or injurious to this excellent Frame and Structure of his Nature But now in this compounded Nature of a Man there are his Concupiscible and Irascible Affections with the first of which he desires and pursues his Pleasures and with the second he shuns and avoids his Dangers and there are also Bodily Appetites such as Hunger Thirst and Carnal Concupiscence and together with these a Self-Esteem and Valuation all which are the natural Subjects of his Reason and indeed the only Subjects upon which it is to exercise its Dominion So that in the well and ill Government of these consists all Humane Virtue and Vice To the perfect well governing therefore of a mans self there are Five things indispensably necessary 1. That He should impartially consult his Reason what is absolutely best for him and by what means it is best attainable and and then constantly pursue what it proposes and directs him to For so far as he is wanting in this he casts off the Government of his Reason 2. That he should proportion his Concupiscible Affections to the just value which his Reason sets upon those things which he affects For every Degree of Affection which exceeds the merit of Things is irrational and consequently injurious to our Rational Nature 3. That he should not suffer his Irascible Affections to exceed those Evils and Dangers which he would avoid For if he doth they will prove greater Evils to him than those Evils or Dangers are which raise and provoke them 4. That he should not indulge his Bodily Appetites to the Hurt and Prejudice of his Rational Nature For if he does he will violate the nobler for the sake of the viler Part of Himself And 5. That upon the
Satisfaction and necessarily renders us by so many Degrees miserable as it exceeds the real worth and value of Things BESIDES which also it is to be considered that all these lesser Goods which are the Objects of our Extravagant Affections are things which we must ere long be for ever deprived of For the lesser Goods are those which are only good for the worser Part of us that is for our Body and Animal Life the proper Goods whereof are the Outward Sensitive Enjoyments of this World All which when we leave this world we must leave for ever and go away into Eternity with nothing about us but only the Good or Bad Dispositions of our Souls So that if our Soul be carnalized through our immoderate Affection to the things of this World we shall carry that Affection with us but leave the things which we thus vehemently affect behind us for ever For that which is the prevailing Temper of Souls in this Life will doubtless be so in the other too and so far is that of the Poet true Quae gratia currûm Armorúmque fuit vivis quae cura nitentes Pascere equos eadem sequitur tellure repostos For though the coming into the other world will questionless improve those Souls which are really good before yet it is not to be imagined how it should create those good who are habitually bad and if we retain in the other world that Prevailing Affection to these sensitive Goods which we contracted in this it must necessarily render us unspeakably miserable there For every Lust the Soul carries into the other world will by being eternally separated from its Pleasures convert into an Hopeless Desire and upon that account grow more furious and impatient For of all the Torments of the mind I know none that is comparable to that of an outragious Desire joined with Despair of Satisfaction which is just the case of sensual and worldly minded Souls in the other Life where they are full of sharp and unrebated Desires and like starving men that are shut up between two Dead Walls are tormented with a fierce but hopeless Hunger which having nothing else to feed on preys and quarries on themselves and in this desolate condition they are forced to wander to and fro tormented with a restless Rage an Hungry and Unsatisfied Desire craving food but neither finding nor expecting any and so in unexpressible Anguish they pine away a long Eternity And though they might find content and satisfaction could they but divert their Affections another way and reconcile them to the Heavenly Enjoyments yet being irrecoverably preingaged to sensual Goods they have no Savour or Relish of any thing else but are like Feaverish Tongues that disgust and nauseate the most grateful Liquors by reason of their own overflowing Gall. So impossible is it for men to be happy either here or hereafter so long as their Affections to the lesser Goods of this World do so immoderately exceed the worth and value of them ONE Essential Part therefore of the Christian Life which is the Great Means of our Happiness is the Virtue of Moderation the peculiar Office whereof is to bound our Concupiscible Affections and proportion them to the Intrinsic Worth of those outward Goods which we affect and desire For though the word Moderation according to our present Acceptation of it be no where to be found in the New Testament yet the Virtue expressed by it is frequently enjoined as particularly where we are forbid to set our Affections upon the Things of the Earth Col. iii. 2 To love the World or the Things that are in the World 1 John ii 15 Which Phrases are not to be so understood as if we were not to love the Enjoyments of the World at all for they are the Blessings of God and such as he has proposed to us in his Promises as the Rewards and Encouragements of our Obedience and to be sure he would never encourage us to obey him by the Hope of such Rewards as are unlawful for us to desire and love The meaning therefore of these Prohibitions is that we should so moderate our Affections to the world as not to permit them to exceed the Real Worth and Value of its Enjoyments For it is not simply our loving it but our loving it to such a Degree as is inconsistent with our Love of God that is here forbidden For he that loveth the world saith St. John the Love of the Father is not in him i. e. he that loves it to such a Degree as to prefer the Riches Honours and Pleasures of it before God and his Duty to him hath no real Love to God i. e. He loves not God as God as the Chiefest Good and Supream Beauty and Perfection And hence Covetousness which is an immoderate Desire of the world is called Idolatry Col. iii. 5 because it sets the world in the place of God and gives it that supream Degree of Affection which is only due to him And this the Apostle there calls Inordinate Affection because it extravagantly exceeds the Intrinsic Worth and Value of its Objects Wherefore we are strictly enjoined to take heed and beware of Covetousness Luke xii 15 And to let our Conversation be without Covetousness Heb. xiii 5 By all which and sundry other Commands and Prohibitions of the Gospel the Moderation of our Concupiscible Affections is made a necessary part of the Christian Life NOW that this also mightily contributes to our Acquisition of the Heavenly Happiness is evident not only from what hath been already said but also from hence that till our Affections are thus moderated we can have no Savour or Relish of the Heavenly Enjoyments For in this corrupt State of our Nature we generally understand by our Affections which like coloured Glass represent all Objects to us in their own Hue and Complexion When therefore a mans Affections are immoderately carried out towards worldly things they will be sure by Degrees to corrupt and deprave his Judgment and render him as unfit to judge of divine and spiritual Enjoyments as a Plowman is to be a Moderatour in the Schools For when a mans thoughts have been employed another way and the Delights of Sense have for a long while preoccupied his Vnderstanding he will judge things to be Good or Evil according as they disgust or gratifie his lower Appetites And this being the Standard by which he measures things 't is impossible he should have any Savour of those Spiritual Goods in which the Happiness of Heaven consists For though in his Nature there is a Tendency to Rational Pleasures yet this he may and very frequently does stifle and extinguish by addicting himself wholly to the Delights and Gratifications of his Sense which by degrees will so melt down his Rational Inclinations into his Sensual and confound and mingle them with his Carnal Appetites that his Soul will wholly sympathize with his Body and have all Likes and Dislikes in common with
be In a word so far shall we be from repining and murmuring at God for not rewarding us as liberally as others that we shall be thoroughly sensible that he hath been bountiful to us infinitely beyond our Desert or Expectation that 't was not out of a fond Partiality ot blind Respect of Persons that he raised others to higher Degrees of Glory than our selves but out of a Principle of strict Justice that exactly ballances and adjusts its Rewards according to the Degrees of our Desert and Improvement The sense of which will not only compose our Minds into a perfect Satisfaction but also continually excite us to those Beatifical Acts of Love and Praise Thanksgiving and Adoration Thus Humility you see tunes and composes us for Heaven and only casts us down like Balls that we may rebound the higher in Glory and Happiness THUS you see how all those Virtues which appertain to a man considered as a Reasonable Animal conduce to the Great Christian End viz. The Happiness of Heaven 'T is true indeed the immediate product of this sort of Virtues is only at least chiefly priâ—ative Happiness or the Happiness of Rest and Indolence which consists in not being miserable or in a perfect cessation from all such Acts and Motions as are hurtful and injurious to a Rational Spirit For as I have shewed you in the Beginning of this Section the proper office of Humane Virtue consists in so regulating all our Powers of Action as that we do nothing that is hurtful or injurious to our Rational Nature and thus you plainly see these Five aforenamed Virtues do most effectually perform But besides this Priâ—ative there is as I shewed you a Positive Part of Happiness which consists not in Rest but in Motion in the Vigorous Exercise of our Rational Faculties upon such Objects as are most suitable to them And to the obtaining of this Part of our Happiness there are other kinds of Vertues necessary to be practised by us of which I shall discourse in the two following Sections But though the immediate Effect of these Humane Virtues we have been discoursing of be only the Happiness of Rest yet do they tend a great deal farther even to the Happiness of Motion and Exercise For it is impossible so to suppress that Active Principle within us as to make it totally surcease from Motion and therefore as every intermission of its sober and regular Actings does but make way for wild and extravagant ones so every abatement of its hurtful and injurious motions makes way for beatifical ones And so the Humane Virtues by giving us rest from those Motions that are afflictive to our Natures incline and dispose us to such Motions and Exercises as are most pleasant and grateful to it SECT II. Concerning those Divine Virtues which belong to a Man considered as a Reasonable Creature related to God shewing that these also are comprehended in the heavenly part of the Christian Life and that the practice of them effectually conduces to our future happiness I PROCEED now to the second kind of Virtues viz. Divine to which I told you we are obliged in the capacity of reasonable Creatures related to God who being not only endowed with all possible perfections with infinite Truth and Justice Wisdom and Goodness and Power with all that can render any being most highly reverenced admired loved and adored who being not only the Author of our Being and Well-being as he is Creator and Preserver of all things but also our sovereign Lord and King as he is God almighty the supream and over-ruling Power of heaven and earth hath upon all these accounts a just and unalienable claim to sundry duties and homages from his Creatures all which I shall reduce to these six particulars 1. That we should frequently think of and contemplate the beauty and perfection of his nature 2. That upon the account of these perfections we should humbly worship and adore him 3. That we should ardently love and take complacency in him 4. That we should attentively and unweariedly imitate him in all his imitable perfections and actions 5. That we should intirely resign up our selves to his conduct and disposal 6. That we should chearfully rely and depend upon him All which as I shall shew are included in the heavenly part of the Christian Life and do most effectually contribute to our future happiness I. AS we are rational Creatures related to God we are obliged to be often contemplating and thinking upon him For the natural use of our understanding is to contemplate Truth and therefore the more of Truth and Reality there is in any knowable object and the farther it is removed from Falshood and Non-entity the more the Understanding is concerned to contemplate and think upon it God therefore being the most true and real object as he stands removed by the necessity of his existence from all possibility of not-being must needs be the most perfect Theme of our Understanding the best and greatest Subject on which it can employ its Meditations And besides that he is the most true and real of all beings he is also the source and spring of all Truth and Reality his Power conducted by his Wisdom and Goodness being the cause not only of all that is but of all that either shall be or can be And is it fit that our Understanding which was made to contemplate should wholly overlook the fountain of it But besides this too that he is the greatest Truth himself and the cause of every thing else that is true and real he is the Sovereign of Beings and the most amiable and perfect as he includes in his infinite Essence all possible perfections both in kind and degree And what a monstrous Irreverence is it for minds that were framed to the contemplation of Truth to pass by such a great and glorious one without any regard or observance as if he stood for a cypher in the world and were not worthy to be thought upon Nay and besides all this which one would think were enough to oblige our Understandings to the strictest attendance to him he is a Truth in which above all others we are most nearly concerned as he is not only the Father and Prop of our Beings and the Consolation of our lives but the sole Arbiter of our Fate too upon whom our everlasting well or ill being depends And what can we be more concerned to think and meditate upon than this great being from whom we sprang in whom we live and breath and of whom we are to expect all that evil or good that we can fear or hope for All which considered there is no doubt to be made but that our Understanding was chiefly made for God to look up to him and contemplate his Being and Perfections And though in this imperfect State it is too often averted from him by this vast variety of sensual things that surround it and intercept its Prospect yet as our Soul
his and all our powers of action entirely at his Devotion we shall never have the least ground to fear or suspect his Displeasure but be always fully satisfied that he loves us that we are dear and pretious in his Eyes and that to Eternity he will respect and look upon us with the smiles of an unchangeable Complacency The sense of which will ravish our Hearts and for ever fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory So that whereas rebellious Souls are perpetually haunted with two restless Furies viz. the shame of their guilt and the fear of their danger which even here do give them more disturbance than all their sins can pleasure and delight when once we are perfectly subjected to God we shall be for ever discharged of them both and then will our happy minds be always as couragious as Truth and as confident as Innocence it self AND as by our perfect Submission to God we shall be wholly released from the trouble of chusing and sufficiently warranted in our own Choices so we shall be abundantly satisfied both of the Wisdom and Success of them For then we shall be assured even by a sweet and happy Experience that whatsoever God commands us to do he most certainly knows that it is for our good and that that is the Reason why he commands it So that when we are entirely subjected to God our Choices and Actions will be all directed by an infallible Wisdom to our own good For while we chuse what God would have us our Wills are guided by Gods Wisdom and so in every genuine act of Obedience we are as infallible as Omniscience it self When therefore we are perfectly resigned to God we shall always will and act with as much Confidence and Assurance of a happy and prosperous Success as if we our selves were infinitely wise and had a perfect Comprehension of all possible Issues and Events And whilst wretched Rebels grope about under the Conduct of their own blind Wills and for the most part do they know not what and go they know not where themselves but live by chance and act at random our Wills and Actions being wholly steered by an All-wise Will that never fails to measure them by the best Rules and point them to the best Ends we shall be always sure of our hands and know infallibly before hand that every thing we will or do shall conspire to our own good And this will enable us to perform the everlasting Race of our Obedience with an unspeakable Freedom and Alacrity and always render us wondrous light and nimble and expedite in our Operations For whereas when men know not what may happen upon such an Action and are not able to pry out all those hidden Events that lurk in the Womb of their own Designs they always act with Caution and Anxiety and are doubtful and tremulous in their Motions when once we are sure of a good Event we still go on with Courage and Chearfulness and so we shall ever do when we ever perfectly will and act under the command of God For now we shall always see good Issues before us and be firmly assured from that infallible Wisdom which governs his Will and by his ours that every thing we will or do shall be crowned with a happy Effect And this will for ever wing our Souls with an unwearied Vigour and Activity and render each act of our Obedience unspeakably sweet and delightful to us And now O blessed mind what Tongue or Thought can reach thy happiness who living in a most perfect Subjection to an All-good and All-wise Will art never in the least concerned or troubled to debate and deliberate what to chuse but dost everlastingly embrace and follow what an infinite Goodness and an infinite Wisdom hath chosen for thee VI. AS we are reasonable Creatures related to God we are also obliged chearfully to trust in and depend upon him For as he is the Prop and Center of all the mouldering Creation the Almighty Atlas that bears it upon his Shoulders and keeps it from sinking into Ruine we and every Creature in Heaven and Earth do hang upon him and draw our breath from him and if he shake us off but for a moment we presently drop into nothing and perish For could we exist of our selves this present moment we might as well have done so the moment before and may as well do so the moment after and so backward and forward to all Eternity and unless we had such a Fulness of Essence in us as to exist of our selves from all eternity past to all eternity to come it is impossible we should exist so much as one moment without new supplies from the infinite and independent Fountain of Being And what can be more fit or reasonable than that we who are thus born up by him should freely trust in and depend upon him than that we should build our Hope upon the Prop of our Existence and make him the Stay of our Confidence in whom we live and move and have our being Especially considering what a proper Object of Trust and Dependance he is and that not only as he is the sovereign Disposer of all those Issues and Events which concern us but also as he is infinitely Wise and always understands what is good or hurtful to us and as he stands engaged both by his own essential Goodness and free Promise never to fail those that put their Trust in him but to manage all their Affairs to their everlasting Interest and Advantage And in whom can we more rationally confide than in a Being of infinite Wisdom Goodness and Power that always knows what is best for us that always wills what he knows so and always does what he wills All which considered it s certainly incomparably more to our Interest and Advantage that our Concerns should lie in his hands and be managed as he sees best than that every thing should happen to us according to our own Will and Desire For there are innumerable things which in the natural Series and Order of Causes are concomitant and consequent to every Event the greatest part of which are out of the Sphere of our Cognizance by reason of which it is impossible for us to make an infallible Judgment of the good or evil of any Event that befals us because though we may be secure that such an Event singly and apart by it self may be good or evil for us yet for all we know there may be such Concomitants or Consequents inseparable to it as may quite alter its Nature and render that evil which considered singly may be good for us or that good which considered singly may be evil We earnestly wish for such an Event and are very confident it would be mighty advantagious to us but alas if it should befal us according to the Series of things a thousand others must and what they wilâ— prove we are not able to prognosticate but for all we know
to force and extort it when those that are superiour in Might and Power do all rule with a fierce and tyrannical Will and will condescend to nothing that is beneficial for their Subjects and those that are inferiour do obey with a perverse and stubborn Heart and will submit to nothing but what they are forced and compelled to and 't is nothing but meer Power and Dread by which they rule and are ruled in a word when they all mutually hate and abominate each other and those that command are a Company of cruel and imperious Devils that impose nothing but Grievances and Plagues and those that obey are a Company of surly and untractable Slaves that submit to nothing but what they are driven to by Plagues so that Plagues and Grievances are both the Matter and the Motive of all their Obedience and Subjection when this I say is the State of their Society with one another how is it possible but that they should be all of them in a most wretched and miserable Condition For where all is transacted by Force and Compulsion as to be sure all is among such a Company of perverse and self-willed Spirits there every one must be supposed to be so far as he is able a Fury and a Devil to every one and those that do compel are like so many salvage Tyrants continually vexed and enraged with stubborn Oppositions and Resistances and those that are compelled like so many obstinate Gally-Slaves are continually lashed into an unsufferable obedience and forced by one Torment to submit to another and thus all their Society with one another is a perpetual Intercourse of mutual Outrage and Violence THIS being therefore the miserable Fate and Issue of a perverse and stubborn and untractable Temper the Gospel whose great design is to direct us to our Happiness doth industriously endeavour to root it out of our Minds and to plant in its room a gentle obsequious and condescending Disposition For hither tend all those Evangelical Precepts which require us to become weak to the weak that we may gain them 1 Cor. ix 22 to bear with their infirmities Rom. xv 1 and support them and be patient towards them 1 Thess. v. 14 And on the other hand to submit our selves to our Elders 1 Pet. v. 5 and to those that have the rule over us Heb. xiii 17 to obey our Magistrates our Parents and our Masters to be subject to Principalities and not speak evil of Dignities to honour Kings and submit to their laws and Governours 1 Pet. ii 13 14. in a word to honour all men as they deserve 1 Pet. ii 17 and to hold good men in reputation Phil. ii 19 and in honour to prefer one another Rom. xii 10 The sense of all which is to oblige us to treat all men as becomes us in the Rank and Station we are placed in to honour those that are our Superiours whether in Place or Vertue to give that modest Deference to their Judgments that Reverence to their Persons that Respect to their Virtues and Homage to their Desires or Commands which the Degree or Kind of their Superiority requires to condescend to those that are our Inferiours and treat them with all that Candour and Ingenuity Sweetness and Affability that the respective Distances of our State will allow to consult their Conveniencies and do them all good Offices and pity and bear with their Infirmities so far as they are safely and wisely tolerable By the constant Practice of which our minds will be gradually cured of all that Perverseness and Surliness of Temper which indisposes us to the respective Duties of our Relations of all that Contempt and Selfishness which renders us averse to the proper Duty of Superiours and of all that Self-Conceit and Impatience of Command which indisposes us to the duty of Inferiours And our Wills being once wrought into an easie pliableness either to Submission or Condescension we are in a forward Preparation of Mind to live under the Government of of Heaven where doubtless under God the supream Lord and Sovereign there are numberless Degrees of Superiority and Inferiority For so some are said to reap sparingly and some abundantly some to be Rulers of five Cities and some of ten some to be the least and some the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven all which implies that in that blessed State there is a great Variety of Degrees of Glory and Advancement And indeed it cannot be otherwise in the Nature of the thing for our Happiness consisting in the Perfection of our Natures the more or less perfect we are the more or less happy we must necessarily be for every farther Degree of Goodness we attain to is a widening and enlargement of our Souls for farther Degrees of Glory and Beatitude And accordingly when we arrive at Heaven which is the Element of Beatitude we shall all be filled according to the Content and Measure of our Capacities and drink in more or less of its Rivers of Pleasure as we are more or less enlarged to contain them So that according as we do more and more improve our selves in true Goodness we do naturally make more and more Room in our Souls for Heaven which doth always fill the Vessels of Glory of all sizes and pour in happiness upon them till they all overflow and can contain no more Since therefore they are all of them entirely resigned to and guided by right Reason there is no doubt but in these their different Degrees of Glory and Dignity they mutually behave themselves towards one another as is most fit and becoming and that since under God the Head and King of their Society there is from the highest to the lowest a most exact and regular Subordination of Members they do every one perform their Parts and Duties towards every one in all those different Stations of Glory they are placed in and consequently do submit and condescend to each other according as they are of a superiour or inferiour Class and Order So that if when we go from hence into the other world we carry along with us a submissive and condescending Frame of Spirit we shall be trained up and predisposed to live under the blessed Hierarchy of Heaven to yield a chearful Conformity to the Laws and Customs of it and to render all the Honours to those above and all the Condescensions to those beneath us in Glory which the Statutes of that Heavenly Regiment do require in doing whereof we shall all of us enjoy a most unspeakable Content and Felicity For though in the Kingdom of Heaven as well as the Kingdoms of the Earth there are numberless Degrees of Advancement and Dignity and one Star there as well as here differeth from another Star in Glory yet so freely and chearfully do they all condescend and submit to each other in these their respective differences of Rank and Station that in the widest Distances of their State and Degrees of Glory they all
maintain the dearest Intimacies and Familiarities with each other and neither those that are Superiour are either envied for their Height or contemned for their Familiarity nor those that are Inferiour despised for their Meanness or oppressed for their Weakness For in that blessed State every one being best pleased with what best becomes him it is every ones Joy to behave himself towards every one as best becomes the Rank and Degree he is placed in and those that are above do glory in condescending to those that are below them and those that are below do triumph in submitting to those that are above them and thus in all those Differences of Glory and Dignity between them they alternately reverence their Superiours and condescend to their Inferiours with the same unforced Freedom and Alacrity and so do eternally converse with one another notwithstanding all their Distances with the greatest Freedom and most endearing Familiarity AND thus I have endeavoured to give you an account of the first sort of Means by which Heaven the great End of a Christian is to be obtained viz. the proximate and immediate ones which comprehend the Practice of all those Virtues which as Rational Creatures related to God and one another we stand eternally obliged to and shewed how they are all of them essential Parts of the Christian Life and how Heaven it self consists in the Perfection of them SO that upon the whole the best Definition I can give of the State of Heaven is this That it is the everlasting perfect Exercise of all those Humane Divine and Social Virtues which as Rational Animals related to God and all his Rational Creation we are indispensably and everlastingly obliged to And therefore since the only natural way by which we can acquire and perfect these Vertues is Vse and Practice it hence necessarily follows that the Practice of them is the only direct and immediate Means by which that Heavenly State is to be purchased and obtained SECT IV. Wherein for a Conclusion of this Chapter some Motives and Considerations are proposed to persuade men to the Practice of these Heavenly Virtues IT having been largely shewn in the foregoing Sections that the Practice of all those Virtues which are included in the Heavenly Part of the Christian Life tends directly towards the heavenly State and naturally grows up into it I shall now briefly conclude this Argument wth some Motives to persuade men to the Practice of them And these I shall deduce 1. From the Suitableness of them to our present State and Relation 2. From the Dignity 3. From the Freedom 4. From the Pleasure 5. From the Ease and 6. And lastly From the Necessity of them I. Therefore let us consider the Suitableness of these Virtues to our present State and Relation For in our Baptism wherein we gave up our Names to Christ we become Denizens and Freemen of Heaven and were received into a Covenant that upon Performance of our Part of it actually intituled us to all its blessed Priviledges and Immunities So that in that sacred Solemnity of our Initiation into the Christian Covenant we contracted a strict Alliance with the blessed People of Heaven and became their Brethren and Fellow-Citizens For so the Apostle tells us Eph. ii 19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and forraigners but fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and the houshold of God consists of the whole Congregation of the Saints whether militant upon Earth or triumphant in Heaven For so Eph. iii. 15 it is called the whole family of heaven and earth So that we are Confederates with them in the same Covenant even that by which they hold all the Joys and Glories they are possessed of and if we will do as they have done that is perform the Conditions of it we shall be Cohabitants with them in the same Glory We are adopted Children of the same Father with them Members of the same Family Coheirs of the Promise of the same Glory Brethren of the same Confraternity and Corporation and all the difference between them and us is only this that we are abroad and they at home we are on this and they on t'other side Jordan we in the Acquest and they in the Possession of the heavenly Canaan to which we are intitled as well as they and that by the same Grant from the supreme Proprietor So that by calling our selves Christians we do in other words call our selves Brethren Coheirs and Fellow-Citizens with the blessed Inhabitants of Heaven And what can be more suitable to such a Profession than for us to live as they do in the continued Practice of all these heavenly Virtues And what a shame will it be for us that are by Profession their Brethren not to coppy and imitate their Behaviour that we who are below Stairs in the same House and Family should abandon our selves to Sensuality and Devilishness whilst our blessed Kindred above are entertaining themselves with those heavenly Pleasures which result from the perfect Exercise of all heavenly Virtue that we should be neglecting provoking and blaspheming God whilst they are contemplating and admiring loving and praising imitating and obeying him that we should be cheating and defrauding envying and despising maligning and embroiling one another whilst they are conversing together with the greatest Freedom and Integrity with the most obliging Respects and Condescensions and in the strictest Vnity and dearest Friendship What a vile Reproach are our wicked lives to the Conversation of these our Fellow-Citizens above For while we profess our selves their Brethren those who understand no better will be prone to suspect that they live as we do and how would such a Suspicion tempt an honest Heathen to renounce Heaven as the Indian King did when he was told that the bloudy Spaniards went thither and rather chuse to go down to the darkest Hell than to a Heaven that is peopled with such diabolical Company So that by our wicked and unsaint-like Lives we take an effectual Course to bring Heaven it self into Disgrace and to cast such a Slander on its blessed Inhabitants as may justly expose them to the Scorn and Hatred of all those honest Minds that know them no otherwise than by us their unworthy and degenerate Fellow-Citizens and could those blessed Spirits look down from their Thrones of Bliss and see what a Company of wretched Christians there are that claim Kindred with them they would doubtless be ashamed of the Relation and count themselves highly dishonoured and disgraced by it and heartily wish that we would disown our Sins or our Baptism and openly renounce their Alliance or more strictly imitate their Manners And really 't is a burning Shame that we should profess our selves Fellow-Citizens with them for no other purpose but to scandalize and reproach them and it were heartily to be wished even for the Credit of Heaven and of our blessed Brethren that inhabit it that if we will not be so generous as to
received by men of all Nations and Religions however it came to pass I know not that for sinful men to appease the incensed Divinity it was necessary first that some Life should be sacrificed to him by way of Satisfaction for their Sins and that the nobler it was the more propitious it rendred him 2. That some high Favourite of his should be prevailed with to intercede with him in their behalf Whereupon understanding by universal Tradition that there were a sort of middle Beings whom they called Demons between the sovereign God and Men they began to address to these and to bribe them with sacred Honours to interpose with God in their Behalf And if they could make a shift to rely upon Sacrifices the most precious of which were the Lives of sinful Men and to depend upon Intercessors of whose Interest with God they had little or no Security what a mighty ground of Confidence and Assurance have we for whom the Son of God once offered such a meritorious Sacrifice upon Earth and continues to make such a powerful Intercession in Heaven For besides that as he was a spotless and innocent Person his Sacrifice was wholly meritorious for guilty offenders and besides that as he was a Person of infinite Value and Dignity his Sacrifice was meritorious for a World of guilty offenders God upon whose good Pleasure the Admission or Refusal of it intirely depended has openly declared his Acceptation thereof as a Propitiation for the sins of the World and ingaged himself by a publick Grant and Charter of Mercy to indemnifie for the sake of it every sinner in the World that will but return to him by a serious and hearty Repentance neither of which great things could ever be said of any other Sacrifice And in the virtue of this Sacrifice as well as of his own personal Interest with his Father he now intercedes in our behalf and pleading our Cause as he doth with the price of our Souls in his hand even his precious Blood by which he redeemed them we may be sure that with that powerful Oratory he cannot fail of succeeding in our behalf For having purchased for us by his Blood all those favours which he intercedes for he is invested with the Right and Power of bestowing them upon us So that now for our greater Security all those Favours which God hath promised us are actually deposited in the hands of our Mediator and though his bare Promise is in it self as great an Assurance as can be given us yet it is to be considered that guilty Minds are naturally anxious and full of unreasonable Jealousies and consequently whilst they looked upon God as their adverse Party and a Party infinitely offended by them would have been very prone to suspect the worst had they had nothing but his bare Word to depend on And therefore in Condescension to this pitiable Infirmity of his sinful Creatures he hath not only promised them his Acceptance and Favour upon Condition of their Return to him but hath also put the Performance of his Promise into a third Hand even into the Hand of a Mediator who by the Nature of his Office is equally concerned for both Parties as well that God should perform his Promise if we performed our Duty as that we should perform our Duty if we received the Benefit of his Promise And hence Heb. vii 22 our Mediator is called the Sponsor or Surety of a better Covenant So that now we have no longer to do with God immediately as our adverse Party but by a Mediator who by his Office is obliged to be on our side as well as Gods and to take care that neither receive the others Part of the Covenant without performing his own Thus as he hath been sometimes pleased in Complyance with humane Weakness to enforce his Promise with his Oath not that the one is in its own Nature a greater Security from God than the other but because with Men an Oath is more obliging than a Promise so in great Condescension to the unreasonable Diffidence of our guilty Minds he hath not only promised us Pardon and Acceptance upon our Repentance but he hath also given us a collateral Security for the Performance of it even the Security of a Mediator in whose hands he hath deposited whatsoever he hath promised us Not that in it self this is a greater Security than his own bare Word and Promise which he cannot falsifie without renouncing his Being but because this way of giving Security by a third Person is more accommodate to the Method of our Covenants and Agreements with one another and consequently more apt to satisfie our anxious and diffident Minds AND thus the Conviction of our need of a Mediator and the Persuasion of the Reality and Excellency of his Mediation will powerfully work both on our Hope and Fear which are the main Springs of all our religious Endeavours and give us at once the most horrible Prospect of the Evil of Sin and the most comfortable Assurance of Pardon and Acceptance with God upon our Repentance and Amendment both which are absolutely necessary to our successful Entrance into the Christian Warfare IV. TO our Beginning of this Holy Warfare it is also necessary that we should be affected with a deep Sorrow and Shame and Remorse for our past Iniquities For this the Apostle calls sorrowing to repentance and tells us that godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of 2 Cor. vii 9 10. and accordingly it is recorded of St. Peter's Converts that the beginning of their repentance was their being pricked at the heart Acts ii 37 and even Repentance it self is in Scripture called a broken and contrite heart this being the most immediate Preparation to a true Repentance or Change of mind Psal. li. 17 And hence the ancient Penitents are described in Scripture as girding themselves with sackcloth and repenting in dust and ashes in Allusion to the antient manner of great and solemn Mournings which was to put on Sackcloth cover the Head with Ashes and sit in the Dust. And in the primitive and purest Ages of Christianity it is evident that the bitterest Sorrows and Remorses were looked upon as necessary Preparations to Repentance for the Penitents in those days as Tertullian and Nazianzen describes them lay prostrate at the Church Doors in Sackcloth and Ashes supplicating the Prayers of the Presbyters and Widows hanging on the Garments and Knees of those that entred into the Church kissing their Footsteps and with rivers of Tears in their eyes beseeching their Prayers to God for their Pardon Now though we are not under the Severities of such an Ecclesiastical Discipline yet are we equally obliged with those ancient Penitents to exercise it internally in our Hearts For sin is as bad now as it was then and as great an evil in us as it was in them and therefore ought to be lamented by us with an equal Sorrow and Remorse And indeed
if we ever mean to wage War with it with Success it is necessary we should acquire before-hand a through sense and feeling of the Evil of it that we should chastise our souls with some degree of that bitter Sorrow and Regret it deserves and inflict upon our selves some part of that Hell of infinite Horror and Anguish that is ingendring in its Womb that so being the more sensible of its Malignity we may be the more enraged against it and enter the Lists with it with the greater Resolution and Animosity For our Sorrow and Remorse for our Sins if it be serious and hearty will convert into Hatred and Indignation against them and that Hatred will animate us in all our Conflicts with them and render us more obstinate against their Terrors and Alurements So that when in the aftercourse of our Warfare against them we are tempted afresh to yield and comply with them the Remembrance of the past Shame and Sorrow Remorse and Confusion we have undergone for their sakes will render us far more deaf and inexorable than otherwise we should be to their Solicitations IF therefore we would ingage in this spiritual Warfare with Success we must be often reflecting upon our past Sins and representing them to our selves in all their aggravating Circumstances And when we have surveyed them round about and considered them in all their natural Turpitude Disingenuity and Indecency and applied them to our selves with all their appendant Stings shameful Effects and dismal Circumstances so that our hearts begin to feel them and to smart and bleed under the dolorous Sense of them then must we pour them out before God in sad and mournful Confessions For the very Confession of our Sins before so pure and great a Being is in it self an effectual Means to increase our Shame and Sorrow for them and he must have a very hard Heart that can ingenuously and without any Reserve lay open his crimes before the God of Heaven and Earth in all their black Aggravations without being stung with a sensible Regret and Confusion especially if he frequently repeat his Confessions as he ought to do V. TO our successful Beginning of this our Christian Warfare it is also necessary that we earnestly implore the divine Aid and Assistance to enable us to go through with it For God knowing how unable we are of our selves to ingage in this great Enterprize with that good Conduct that is necessary to give us any probability of Success hath promised us his own Presence and Assistance even from the Beginning to the End of it and if in any part of it his Assistance be necessary 't is doubtless in the Entrance which as I shall shew you by and by is by far the most difficult and hazardous If therefore we presume to enter upon it without supplicating God to second us with his Grace and Assistance we shall quickly find our selves shamefully foiled and defeated For though he hath promised to assist us yet 't is upon Condition that we earnestly beg and seek him he will give his Spirit but it is to those that ask it Luke xi 13 he will draw near unto us but first we must draw near unto him James iv 8 and we are assured that we shall have if we ask that we shall find if we seek and that it shall be opened unto us if we knock Mat. vii 7 And therefore we are bid to go boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in the time of need Heb. iv 16 and not only to pray without ceasing 1 Thess. v. 17 but in every thing by prayer and supplication to let our requests be made known unto God Philip. iv 6 and if in every thing we ought to make known our Wants to him then much more in this great and difficult Undertaking in which it will be impossible for us to succeed without his heavenly Aid and Assistance WHEREFORE as we hope for Victory in this our spiritual Warfare we must earnestly implore his Concurrence with us and beseech him to second us in all our weak Efforts and Endeavours We must lay open our woful Case before him and remonstrate to him that we are heartily willing to do what we are able but that without him we are abundantly sensible all will be in vain We must tell him that our Dependance is upon him and that all our Hope of Success is in him and that we dare not stir one step without him and beseech him that he will not stand by and see us spend our selves in ineffectual Struglings but that he will graciously stretch forth his helping Hand to us and not suffer us to miscarry for want of his necessary Assistance Which if we do we may assure our selves that the merciful God who is the Father of our Spirits will never abandon his own off-spring whilst it cries out to him and with pitiful and bemoaning Looks implores his Aid and gracious Co-operation WHILST therefore we are thus endeavouring to prepare our selves for our spiritual Warfare we ought in every act of Preparation to look up to God and earnestly supplicate the Concurrence of his Grace and Spirit While we are endeavouring to believe we must beg him to help our Vnbelief to remove all Prejudices from our minds and present the Evidences of our Religion to our Understandings in a clear and convincing Light When we are setting our selves to a serious Consideration we must beseech him to fix our Thoughts to suggest to and repeat his heavenly Motives and Arguments so fast and thick upon our Minds that no sinful or worldly Thought may be able to crowd in to disturb or divert our Meditations When we are labouring to persuade our selves of our Need and the Reality of our Saviours Mediation we must earnestly intreat him to open our eyes and convince us effectually of the horrible Danger of our sin and of the infallible Efficacy of that blessed Remedy When we are attempting to affect our selves with the bitter Sense of our past Transgressions we must implore him to strike in with us and to inspire our Minds with such piercing and powerful Convictions of the infinite Shame Baseness and Danger of them as may sting our brawny Consciences to the quick and dissolve our frozen Souls into a sorrowful Repentance that so when we enter the lists and proceed to Resolution which is the Beginning of our spiritual Warfare we may be armed against our Sins with such a lively Faith such puissant Considerations such Horror and Animosity against them and such an assured Hope of being rescued from the fatal Issues and Effects of them as that we may be able to promise our selves a happy Success in the ensuing Course of our Warfare against them And having thus fitted and accoutred our selves for this great and momentous Enterprize VI. WE are to enter into a serious and solemn Resolution of Amendment of forsaking and renouncing all our Sins and
are able do you but your Part which is only what you can and then doubt not but God will do his put forth but your honest hearty Endeavour and earnestly implore his Aid and Assistance and if then you miscarry let Heaven answer for it But if upon a Pretence that your Work is too difficult and your Enemies too mighty for you you lay down your Arms and resolve to contend with them no longer let Heaven and Earth judg between God and you which is to be charged with your ruine God that so graciously offer'd you his Help that stretch'd out his Hand to raise ye up tenderd you his spirit to guard and conduct ye through all Oppositions to eternal Happiness or you that would not be persuaded to do any thing for your selves but rather chose to perish with Ease than take any Pains to be saved V. CONSIDER that the Practice of these Duties is not so difficult but that it is fairly consistent with all your other necessary Occasions When men are told how many Duties are necessary to their successful Progress in Religion what Patience and Constancy what frequent Examinations and Tryals of themselves what lively Thoughts and Expectations of Heaven c. they are apt to conclude that if they should ingage to do all this they must resolve to do nothing else but even shake hands with all their secular Business and Diversions and Cloister up themselves from all other Affairs Which is a very great Mistake proceeding either from their not considering or not understanding the nature of these religious Exercises the greatest part of which are such as are to be wholly transacted in the Mind whose Motions and Operations are much more nimble and expedite than those of the Body and so may be very well intermixt with our secular Employments withour any Let or Hindrance to them For what great Time is there required for a man now and then to revolve a few wise and useful Thoughts in his Mind to consider the Nature of an Action when it occurs and reflect upon an Error when it 's past and hath escap'd him I can consider a Temptation when it 's approaching me and with a Thought or two of Heaven or Hell arm my Resolution against it in the twinkling of an eye I can look up to Heaven with an eye of earnest Expectance and send my Soul thither in a short Ejaculation without interrupting my Business and yet these and such as these do make up a great Part of those religious Exercises wherein the proper Duty of our Christian Warfare consists And though to the due performance of these Duties it will be sometimes necessary that our Minds should dwell longer upon them yet it is to be considered that when once we are entered upon the Practice of them our Mind will be much more at Leisure to attend to them for then 't will be in a great measure taken off from its wild and unreasonable Vagaries from its sinful Designs and lewd Contrivances from its Phantastick Complacencies in the Pleasures of Sin and anxious Reflections on the Guilt and Danger of it and when all this Rubbish is thrown out of the Mind there will be Room enough for good Thoughts to dwell in it without interfering with any of our necessary Cares and Diversions For would we but give these our religious Exercises as much Room in our Minds as we did heretofore freely allow to our Sins they would ask no more but leave us as much at Leisure for our other Affairs as ever I confess there are some of these Duties that exact of us their fixt and stated Portions of Time such as our Morning Consideration and Prayer our Evening Examination and Prayer our religious Observation of the Lords Day and our preparing for and receiving the Holy Sacrament but all this may be very well spared without any Prejudice to any of our lawful Occasions For what great matter of Time doth it ask for a man to think over a few good Thoughts in the Morning and fore-arm his Mind with them against the Temptations of the Day to recommend himself to God in a short pithy and affectionate Prayer and repeat his Purpose and Resolution of Obedience what an easie matter were it for you to borrow so many Moments as would suffice for this Purpose from your Bed and your Comb and Looking-glass And as for the Evening when your Business is over it 's a very hard case if you cannot spare so much time either from your Company or Refreshments as to make a short Review of the Actions of the Day to confess and beg Pardon for the Evils you have faln into or to bless God for the Good you have done and the Evils you have avoided and then to recommend your selves to his Grace and Protection for the future And as for your religious Observation of the Lords Day it is only the seventh Part of your Time and can you think much to devote that or at least the greatest Part of that to him who gives you your Being and Duration And lastly as for your receiving the Lords Supper 't is at most but once a Month that you are invited to it and 't is a hard Case if out of so great a proportion of Time you cannot afford a few Hours to examine your Defects and to quicken your Graces and to dress and prePare your selves for that blessed Commemoration Alass how easie were all this to a willing Mind and if we had but half that Concern for our Souls and everlasting Interest that we have for our Bodies we should count such things as these not worth our mentioning How disingenuous therefore is it for men to make such tragical Out-cries as they do of the Hardship and Difficulty of this spiritual Warfare when there is nothing at all in it that intrenches either on their secular Callings or necessary Diversions when they may be going onward to Heaven while they are doing their Business and mortifying their Lusts even in the Enjoyment of their Recreations and so take their Pleasure both here and hereafter VI. CONSIDER that the Difficulty of these Duties is such as will certainly abate and wear off by Degrees if we constantly practise them For in all Undertakings whatsoever it is Vse that makes Perfectness and that which is exceeding hard to us at first either through want of Skill to manage or Inclination to practise it will by degrees grow easier and easier as we are more and more accustomed and familiarized to it And this we shall find by Experience if we constantly exercise our selves in these progressive Duties of our Religion which to a Mind that hath been altogether unacquainted with them will at first be very difficult 'T will go against the grain of a wild and ungoverned Nature to be confined from its extravagant Ranges by the strict Ties of a religious Discipline and to reduce a roving Mind to severe Consideration or a fickle one to Constancy and Resolution
or an unreflecting one to Self-examination to raise up an earthly Mind to heavenly Thoughts and Expectations and confine a listless and regardless one to strict Watchfulness and Circumspection to confine a carnal mind to frequent Sacraments or an indevout and careless one to its daily and weekly periods of Devotion will at the first no doubt be very painful and tedious but after we have persisted in and for a while accustomed our selves to it we shall find it will quickly grow more natural and easie to us and from being grievous it will become tolerable from being tolerable easie and from being easie delightful For when once we come to feel the good Effects of those Duties in our Natures how fast our Lusts do decline our Dispositions mend and all our Graces improve in the Use of them the Sense of this will mightily indear and ingratiate them to us Just as it is with a Scholar when he first enters upon the Methods of Learning they are very tedious and irksome to him the Pains of reading observing and recollecting the Confinement to a Study and the racking his Brains with severe Reasoning and Discourse are things that he cannot easily away with till he hath been inured and accustomed to them a while and then they grow more natural and easie to him but when he comes to be sensible of the great Advantages he reaps by his Labour how it raises and improves his Understanding inlarges its prospect and furnishes its Conception with brave and useful Notions then do his Labours which were formerly so grievous become not only easie but delectable to him And even so it is with these spiritual Exercises of Religion which to unexperienced persons that are yet but newly enter'd upon them will be very painful and troublesome but if they have but Patience and Courage to hold on Custom will quickly render them more tolerable and when they have practised them so long as to find and perceive the blessed Effects of them how much they have contributed to the reforming their Tempers reducing their Inclinations filing and polishing their rough and mishapen Natures with what amiable Graces divine and godlike Dispositions they have adorned and beautified them their Sense and Feeling of this will convert them all into delightful Recreations Thus as the Custom of them will render them easie so the blessed Fruits of them will make them delectable the former will render them facil as Nature the later eligible as Reward And if so why should we be discouraged faint-hearted Creatures that we are at those little present Difficulties which our Diligence will soon wear off and convert into Ease and Pleasure VII CONSIDER that with the Difficulty of them there is a world of present Peace and Satisfaction intermingled If you fall back again to your old Lusts instead of these present Difficulties you start at you must expect to have the Trouble of a guilty Soul to contend with which if you have any sense of God and of Good and Evil will be much more grievous to you than they But if you go on you will carry with you a quiet and a satisfied Mind a Conscience that will entertain you all along with such sweet and calm Reflections as will abundantly compensate you for all the Hardships and Difficulties you encounter on the way that with innumerable Iterations will be always resounding to your honest Endeavours those best and sweetest Ecchoes Well done good and profitable servant how bravely hast thou acquitted thy self how manfully hast thou stood to thy Duty against all Oppositions and with what a Gallant Resolution hast thou repulsed those Temptations that bore up against thee Now for a man to have his own Mind continually applauding him and crowning his Actions with the Approbations of his Conscience is Encouragement enough to ballance a thousand Difficulties and the Sense that he hath done his Duty and that the God above and the Vice-god within him are both satisfied and pleased with him will give him such a grateful Relish of each Action of his Warfare that the Difficulty will only serve to inhance the Pleasure of it AND as he will have great Peace and Satisfaction whilst he is contending with these Difficulties so when he hath so far conquered them as that they are no longer able to curb and with-hold him from the free and vigorous Exercise of the heavenly Vertues but in despight of them he can easily moderate his Passions and Appetites by the Laws of his Reason and freely love adore and imitate submit to and confide in the ever blessed God and chearfully exert an unforced Plainess and Simplicity Good-will and Charity Submission and Condescension Peace and Concord towards all men when I say he hath so far surmounted the Difficulties of his Warfare as that with any Measure of Freedom and Vigor he can put forth all these heavenly Vertues he will find himself not only in a quiet but in a heavenly Condition For these heavenly Graces are the Palat by which the immortal Mind tasts and relishes its Heaven the blessed Organs and Sensories by which it feels and perceives the Joys of the World to come and without which it can no more relish and injoy them than the senseless Hive can the sweetness of the Honey that is in it And consequently the more quick and vivacious these heavenly Organs of the Mind are and the more they are disburthened of those carnal and devilish Lusts that blunt their Sense and Perception the more accurately they will taste the Joys and Pleasures of Heaven So that when by the constant Practice of the warfaring Duties of Religion we have conquered those bad Inclinations of our Natures which render the heavenly Vertues so difficult to us and do so clog and incumber us in the Exercise of them we shall find our selves in a Heaven upon Earth and each Act of Vertue will be Presention and Foretast of the Joys of a celestial Life And being arrived at this blessed State in which all heavenly Vertue is so connaturalized to us the sweet Experience we shall have of the unspeakable Joys and Pleasures it abounds with will cause us to look back with wondrous Content and Satisfaction upon all those Difficulties we contended with in our Way to it and bless those Prayers and Tears and Strivings with our selves those tedious Watchings and Self-exáminations c. by which we have now at last conquered and subdued them WHEREFORE since the Practice of these our warfaring Duties hath so much present Peace going along with it and since by its natural Drift and Tendency it's leading us forward to a State of so much Pleasure and Satisfaction what a Madness is it for a man to be beaten off from it by those present little Difficulties that attend it What man that consults his own Interest would ever desist from the prosecuting such a gainful Warfare in which to make him amends for the present Pains it puts him to he is not only
Delay as soon as we had strayed from our Duty we might have soon recovered the Ground we had lost by it and by a little more Diligence have gotten as far onward as if we had never interrupted our Progress at all by deferring our Repentance we set our selves farther and farther back and shall every day be more and more indisposed to return For in the Course of our Religion there is no standing still but either we are progressive or retrograde going backward or forward as long as we live so that when once we are out of our Way we are still going farther out till such time as we return again and consequently the longer we are out the harder 't will be to return and the farther we shall have to the end of our Way For when I first sin and the Wound of my Innocence is yet green fresh it may easily be cured by the timely Application of a sorrowful Confession and new Resolution of Amendment but if I neglect it 't will rot and putrifie my Sense of it will be hardned and my Inclination to it grow every day more inveterate and then if it be not lanc'd and corroded by a sharp a long and a painful Repentance it will turn into an incureable Gangrene Hence the Apostle bids us exhort one another daily while it is called to day that is to repent while it is called to day lest any of us be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin Heb. iii. 13 So that when we have wilfully sin'd we run a mighty Hazard of our final perseverance if we don't repent immediatly For all the while we delay our Conscience grows more sear'd and our Lust grows more confirm'd and God knows where it will end but 't is fearfully to be suspected that that neglected Bruise which we got by our Fall will grow worse and worse and determine at last in final Impenitency Wherefore as we intend to persevere in wel-doing it concerns us in the first place to take all possible Care not to give way to any wilful Sin nor suffer our selves by any Hopes or Fears to be tempted from our good Resolution but if at any time our wicked Inclinations should prevail against it to betake our selves immediately to a serious Repentance to make a sorrowful Confession of it to our offended God and solemnly renew our Resolution against it that so we may stop the growing evil betime before it 's capable of indangering our final Apostacy III. TO our final perseverance it 's necessary that to prevent the like Falls and Miscarriages for the future we should indeavour to withdraw our Affections from the Temptations of the World but more especially from those Temptations which were the Occasions of our Fall For thus we are strictly prohibited to set our affections upon things on the earth Col. iii. 21 to love the World and the things that are in the World Joh. i ii 15 to lay up for our selves treasures upon earth Mat. vi 19 and 't is the proper Character of a true Christian to be crucified to the World Gal. vi 14 and to converse as a Stranger and a Pilgrim in it Heb. xi 13 As on the contrary to mind earthly things and to be lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God are made the proper Characters of Infidels and Apostates Phil. iii. 19 compared with Tim. ii 3.4 And so inconsistent is an inordinate Affection to the World with our perseverance in the Christian Warfare that St. James expresly tells us that the friendship of the World is enmity with God Jam. iv 4 and 't is to the Excess of our friendship to it that the Scripture frequently attributes our Apostacy Tim. ii 4.10 and the Apostle tells us that they that will be rich that is immoderately covet to be so fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in perdition and destruction and that the love of money is the root of all evil 1 Tim. vi 9 10. From all which it 's apparent how necessary it is in the accounts of Christianity in order to our perseverance that we should indeavour to wean and abstract our selves from the World FOR this world is the Magazine of all those Temptations by which our Vertue and Innocence is importuned and assaulted and 't is either the Hope of some worldly Pleasure Profit or Honour that allures or the Fear of some of the contrary Evils which are incident to us in the Course of Religion that affrights us from our Duty Whilst therefore we immoderately love those Goods and Evils which are the Solicitours of Vice we are in very great danger of being conquered and led captive by it For 't is not for the sake of sinning that men sin but for the sake of those Goods or to avoid those Evils which are appendent to their sinning or not sinning and consequently the more a man loves those Goods which cling and adhere to a sinful Action the more propense he will be to the Commission of it and the more he dreads those Evils which he can most easily avoid by a sinful Action the more prone and inclinable he will be to it Wherefore to secure our perseverance in this Warfare against sin it is absolutely necessary that we rectifie our Opinion of the Goods and Evils of this World and moderate and abate our Affection towards them especially towards those that have been most prevalent with us For the Temptation that prevails upon us discovers the weak Side of our Nature and instructs the Devil what Good or Evil it is that is most apt to allure or affright us and to be sure that subtil Tempter who hath been so many thousand Years studying the Arts of seducing us will not fail to assault us again where he hath been already successful and therefore it concerns us to fortifie our selves there where we have so much reason to expect the Enemy will assault us and to rectifie our Opinions of and mortifie our Affections to those things which have already so much imposed upon our Virtue and Innocence For 't is our Imagination that gives Life and Efficacy to the Charms and Terrors of the World and renders them so successful against us we fancy that to be in them which is not and so are affected not so much with the things themselves as with the false Representations we make of them FOR it's plain the Goods of the World are beholden to our selves for the greatest part of those Beauties with which they tempt and allure us and 't is our Fancy that gives the Paint and Fucus with which they charm and inamour our Affections and so for the Evils of the World 't is our own Imagination that disguises them into such Bugs and Scare-crowes and puts those gastly Vizors on them with which they fright and amaze us If therefore we would but take care to rectifie our Opinions of them both and to strip them out of their imaginary
into Hypocrisie It may be whilst you are contending against those fleshly Inclinations by which you have formerly been captivated your Hearts will begin to swell with an over-weening Conceit of your own Vertue and Godliness and as a Consequence of that to entertain contemptuous and censorious Thoughts of your Brethren beware now that whilst you are struggling with your old fleshly Lusts you do not overlook these little Defects and Indecencies of your Nature lest while you are conquering one Sort of sins you be captivated by another For if you do not take care to nip them in their Buds and to check these little Essays and Beginnings of them they will soon spring up into Habits of Pride and Insolence Rancour and Vncharitableness and so your Warfare against Sin will be only a Transition from one Evil into another from the Pollutions of the Flesh into the Pollutions of the Spirit and from the Nature of Beasts into the Nature of Devils Wherefore if you would be finally successful in the Christian Warfare you must take great Care that while you are contending with the grosser and more inveterate Vices of your Nature you do not neglect its lesser Defects and Irregularities for whilst they are lesser they may be easily corrected but if they are not they will soon grow greater and in the End prove as dangerous as those you are now contending with For every Vice is small in the Beginning and easie to be cured but if it be neglected like a Scratch in the Flesh it will corrupt and rancle into a spreading Gangreen V. TO our Perseverance to the End in this our Christian Warfare it is also necessary that so far as lawfully we can we should live in close Communion with the Church whereof we are Members 'T is true a particular Church may be so corrupted as that its Members may be obliged to disunite themselves from it For every man is obliged by Vertue of his being in any Society not to agree to any thing which tends to the apparent Ruine of it Now the main End of Christian Society being the Honour of God and the Salvation of Souls every man that enters into it is thereby obliged in his own Station to advance this End and consequently as to join in all Acts of the Christian Society he is united to so far as they tend thereunto so to refuse all such Acts of that Society if any such should be injoyned as do apparently oppose and are directly repugnant to it So that if any Act that is apparently sinful be injoyn'd by the particular Church whereof I am a Member as a necessary Condition of my Communion with her I am bound to abstain from it for the sake of the General End of Christian Society As for Instance suppose the Church whereof I am a Member require it as a Condition of my Communion that I should transgress any just Law of the Commonwealth whereof I am a Subject in this Case I am bound rather to desert that Churches Communion than live in wilful Disobedience to the Civil Authority And this is the Case of those men who though they live in a Christian Commonwealth have been Baptized into and bred up in the Communion of particular Congregations that contrary to Law have separated themselves from the Establisht National Church for if in this national Church there be nothing imposed on them by the Laws of the Commonwealth that is apparently contradictory to the Laws of Christ they are bound in Conscience to desert those separate Congregations allowing them to be true Churches and to join themselves with the Church National and if they do not they are wilful Offenders against the Law of Christ which requires us to obey all humane Ordinances for the Lords sake And again supposing one National Church to be subject to another that which is subject is bound to refuse the Communion of that which is superior if it cannot injoy it without complying with Impositions that are apparently sinful Which is evidently the Case between us and the Church of Rome supposing that de jure we were once her Subjects and Members for had we been so we should doubtless never have separated our selves from her could we but have separated her Sins from her Communion could we have profest her Creed without implicitly believing all her Cheats and Impostures or submitted our selves to her Guides without apparent Danger of being misled by them into the pit of Destruction or joyn'd with her publick Services without worshipping of Creatures or received her Sacraments without practising the grossest Superstitions and Idolatries But when she had made it necessary for us either to sin with or separate from her we could have no other honest Remedy but only to withdraw and if in this our Separation there had been a sinful Schism on either side we could have appealed to Heaven and Earth whose the Guilt of it was their 's that forced us upon it or ours that were forced to it But yet the Case of our Separation from the Church of Rome is vastly different from that of the Separation of private Members from their own particular Churches For we affirm that the Church of Rome is but a particular Church whose Authority extends no farther than to its own native Members and consequently hath no more Power to impose Laws of Communion upon us than we have upon her our particular Church being altogether as distinct and independent from her as she is from ours So that though the Terms of Communion she imposes upon her own Members were all of them lawful and innocent yet do they no more oblige us as we are Christians of the Church of England than the lawful Commands of the Great Mogul do as we are Subjects of the Kingdom of England BUT the Case of private members whither of ours or any other particular Church is vastly different For if we will allow particular Churches to be so many formed Societies of Christians as we must do or else degrade them into so many confused multitudes we must necessarily allow them to have a just Authority even as all other formed Societies have over their own Members And that they have so is evident not only from the Nature of the thing but also from Scripture where the Bishops and Pastors of particular Churches are said to be constituted by the Holy Ghost Overseers of their particular Flocks Acts xx 28 which word both in sacred and prophane Writ denotes a ruling Power And accordingly these Overseers are elsewhere call'd ruling-Elders Tim. i. 5.17 and the Subjects and Members of their Churches are required to obey them as those that have the Rule over them Heb. xiii 17 and elsewhere the Apostle exhorts them to know i. e. submissively to own the Authority of those that were over them in the Lord Thes. i. 5.12 By all which it 's evident that the Members of particular Churches are by divine Institution subjected to the Authority of their spiritual
what kinds of Means are necessary to obtain it how naturally all the Vertues of Religion do raise up mens Souls to Heaven and how all the contrary Vices do as naturally sink and press them down to Hell it is to be hop'd he will be fully persuaded of the indispensible Necessity of entering into the Christian Life which if he be I would advise him 2. Seriously to read over and consider the first and second Sections of the fourth Chapter wherein are contained the several Duties which are proper to his State of Entrance into the Christian Life and also proper Arguments and Motives to ingage him to the Practice of them which if he would read to good Effect he must by no means content himself with a single Perusal but read them over at least once a week whilst he continues in that State till he fully comprehends the Meaning and Use of all those Duties and the Force and Cogency of those Arguments which if he do it is to be hop'd he will at last be reduced to a through and wel-weighed Resolution of forsaking his Sins and actually ingaging in the Christian Life Which being done I would advise him 3. With the same Care and Frequency to peruse the third and fourth Sections of the fourth Chapter wherein are contained all the several Duties proper to this second State of actual Engagement in the Christian Life as also sundry Arguments or Motives to press and inforce them and when by the Assistance of these Duties he hath continued for some time faithful and constant to his good Resolution 4. Together with the third and fourth Section let him often peruse and consider the fifth and sixth wherein are contained the Duties appertaining to the third State of Emprovement and Perseverance in the Christian Life together with some Considerations to inforce the Practice of them All which I would earnestly persuade the pious Reader to read and consider over and over again till his Mind is fully instructed in the Nature and Vse of each Duty and hath throughly digested the Force and Evidence of every Argument And this may suffice for the first thing proposed concerning the profitable Method of reading this practical Treatise II. AS for the second Part of it which is that which I mainly design in this Chapter viz. the Rules and Directions for the private Exercise of our Religion in each State of the Christian Life together with the Forms of private Prayer fitted for each take them in their following Order Directions for the more profitable Exercise of our private Religion in the State of our Entrance into the Christian Life In the Morning before you go into the World enter into your Closet and there consider with your self a while the miserable State you have reduc'd your self to by your past sinful Courses the absolute Necessity of your forsaking them and the possibility of your Recovery if your heartily indeavour it and then adress your self to God in this following Prayer O Most glorious and eternal God thou art the fountain of Beings the Father of Angels and Men the righteous and almighty Governour of Heaven and Earth from thy Throne thou beholdest all the Children of men and their most secret Actions are open and naked to thy alseeing Eye and such is the Purity of thy Nature that thou lovest Righteousness and hatest Iniquity wheresoever thou beholdest it with what Face then can I a most miserable polluted Wretch appear in thy presence who by the past course of my Wickedness and Rebellion against thee have not only rendered my self guilty and justly obnoxious to thy eternal Displeasure but have also contracted such obstinate Dispositions and Inclinations to sin on as without thy Grace and Assistance I shall never be able to conquer O desperate vile and ungrateful Wretch that I have been I have renounced the God of my Being and the Fountain of my Mercies I have despised thy Goodness trampled upon thy Authority mock'd and abused thy Patience and long suffering and in Particular I must confess to my own Shame and Confusion I have been wofully guilty of And now by these my manifold Abominations I have utterly undone my self unless thou take pity upon me I confess I have forfeited my soul into thy hands and if thou so pleasest thou mayest justly cast me away from thy Presence and make me a dire Example of thy Vengeance for ever But I know O Lord that thou desirest not the Death of a Sinner but rather that he should repent and live and upon the Propitiation of thine own Sons blood thou hast declared thy self willing to receive returning Prodigals and to be heartily reconciled to them notwithstanding all their past Provocations O that I could return that I could but shake off those corrupt Inclinations which detain my wretched soul in Captivity I am willing to contribute towards it whatsoever I am able but alass without thee all that I can do will be utterly ineffectual Wherefore for thy tender Mercies sake for thy dear Sons and my Saviours sake have pity upon a miserable Wretch that without thy helping hand is lost for ever And since thou hast given me thy Gospel as an outward means to save and recover me O do thou inable me by thy blessed Spirit heartily to believe and throughly to consider it For which end I beseech thee to remove all sinful Prejudices from my Mind that so I may impartially weigh those Evidences thou hast given me of the Truth of it and do thou suggest them to my Mind with such a clear and convincing Light as that they may at last conquer my Infidelity and beget in me a firm and lively Faith And forasmuch as my mind is vain and roving and utterly averse to all serious Considerations O do thou who art the Father of Spirits and canst turn the Hearts of men which way thou pleasest inspire good Thoughts into me and imprint them upon me with such a Power and Efficacy as that my wandring Mind may be reduced by them to a through Consideration and my stubborn Will to a firm Resolution of Amendment Particularly I beseech thee to give me a right understanding of the urgent need I have of a Saviour and of all those things which he hath done and suffered and is still doing at thy right hand in order to the cleansing my guilty and polluted Nature and restoring me to thy Grace and Favour that so hereby I may be fully convinced how odious my Sins are in thy sight how base and vile they have rendered me and at what a mighty Distance they have set me from thee and that being convinced of this I may put on a holy Shame and Confusion and abhor my self in dust and ashes before thee Thou knowest O Lord it is not in my power to soften this hard and unrelenting Heart and affect it with that Godly sorrow which is requisite to work a true Repentance O do thou smite it with such a sharp and
you and lo I am with you alway even unto the end of the world And that he did not intend this meerly for a temporary Commission which was to expire with the first Bishops and Propagators of the Gospel but designed to have it derived from their hands to all the succeeding Ages of Christianity is evident not only from the Promise annexed to it that he would be with them to the end of the world which plainly shews that 't was to continue in force till then but also from hence that they to whom this Commission was immediately given did actually derive it to others 2 Tim. i. 6 with a strict Charge that these also should successively derive it to others Tit. i. 5 AND as by this perpetual Commission Christ hath Established a Succession of men to be the Guides of Souls to the end of the World so he hath obliged all Christian People to attend to and respect them as such For he that heareth you saith he heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me Luk. x. 16 and 1 Cor. iv 1 the Apostle injoins all Christians to account of these spiritual Guides as of the Ministers of Christ and stewards of the Mysteries of God so also 1 Thess. v. 12 13. he earnestly beseeches them as a matter of vast importance that they would know them which labour among them and are over them in the Lord and were to admonish them and esteem them very highly in love for their works sake and Heb. xiii 17 he gives this Injunction obey them which have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief for that is unprofitable for you THERE being therefore an Order of men that are thus sanctified and set apart from the World by the Commission of our Saviour to consult the various Necessities of Souls and administer to them in all their religious Concerns it would doubtless mightily contribute to their successful Progress in the Christian Warfare if in all their streights and difficulties men would apply themselves to them for Counsel and Direction with such Modesty and Sincerity as they ought to do For besides that they might reasonably expect a greater Blessing upon their Counsels than other mens they being commissioned Guides under the great Shepherd of Souls who we must needs suppose will more especially cooperate with the Means of his own Ordination besides this I say they being persons that are wholly devoted to the Study and Ministries of Religion must needs be supposed caeteris paribus to have a farther Insight into the Cases of Souls into their Dangers and Refuges Diseases and Remedies and consequently to be better able to counsel and direct them than men of a secular Life and Conversation If therefore men would be but so kind to themselves as to apply themselves in all their spiritual Exigencies to a holy wise and well-instructed Guide to uncover their Sores lay open their Cases and reveal the Secrets of their Souls to him so far as is necessary to enable him to make proper Applications it is not to be expressed what a vast Advantage they might make of him He would be instead of a good Genius or Tutelar Angel to their Souls to suggest many a good Thought to them and feed their Meditations with many an useful Notion to enable them to extract from the Articles of their Belief their just and proper Inferences and reduce them to practical Principles to rectifie their Wanderings and extricate them from their Doubts to comfort them in their Sorrows and quicken them in their Indispositions to warm their Indifferencies and moderate their Zeal so as that they may neither be becalmed by the one nor over-born by the too violent Gusts of the other and in a word to direct them to the proper Methods of mortifying their bad Inclinations and conducting their Religion so as to render it more easie and delightful to them These and a great many other good Offices a wise and well-experienced Guide would be able to do men if they would but take him along with them in their Journey to Heaven and modestly submit themselves to his Conduct and Direction And in thus doing they would act not only with greater Security to their Innocence but with greater satisfaction to their Consciences because then their Actions would be warranted not only by their own private Sentiments which in many Cases they will have just cause to suspect but also by the better and more impartial Judgment of an authorised Guide For if under his Conduct they should happen in any doubtful Instance to err from the way of Truth or Righteousness they will have this Satisfaction that they have used the best Means to prevent it the Means to which God himself hath remitted them to whom alone they are accountable for their Actions and who as they may well imagine will very much compassionate such Miscarriages as may follow upon their Submission to his own Appointments But if notwithstanding the great Care that he hath taken of their Souls in appointing them Pilots to steer them safely to Heaven they will embark without them and presume so far upon their own Skill as to venture to their eternal Port through all those Rocks and Quicksands that lie in their way they must needs be in great Danger of miscarrying which if they do they may thank themselves for it and can expect no Pity from God whose careful provision for their eternal Safety they have so ungratefully contemned and neglected IV. TO our prosperous Course and Progress in the Christian Warfare it is also necessary that as often as we can we should actually intend and aim at God in the Course of our Lives and Actions For it is of mighty Advantage to the Conduct of a mans Life to have his Intentions united and continually to act with one steady Drift and Aim Because while he intends but one thing he unites the whole Vigour of his Nature in the pursuit of it and is continually driving at it with all the Force and Activity of his Faculties 'T is an Italian Proverb From the man of one Business good Lord deliver me because minding that only he must needs be supposed to be the more expert and sagacious in it and consequently the more able to exceed and over-reach another man who hath only minded it by the by but when a man acts with a multifarious Intention he must needs be distracted in his Operations and the force of his Faculties being divided by the multiplicity of his Aims must needs be so weakned that 't will be impossible for him to pursue any one of them with Vigour and Activity 'T is one of Pythagoras his Maxims 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man ought to be one i. e. so far as he is able to fix all his Aims upon one End