BUt it may be the objector will be ready to think that If it be indeed our duty to walk with God yet Thoughts are no considerable part of it what more uncertain or mutable then our Thoughts It is Deeds and not Thoughts that God regardeth To do no harm to any but to do good to all this is indeed to walk with God You set a man upon a troublesome and impossible work while you set him upon so strict a guard and so much exercise of his thoughts what cares the Almighty for my thoughts Answ. 1 If God know better then you and be to be believed then Thoughts are not so inconsiderable as you suppose Doth he not say that the Toughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord Prov. 15. 26. It is the work of the Gospel by its power to pull down strong holds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth it self against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10. 4 5. The unrighteous mans forsaking his thoughts is part of his necessary conversion Isa. 55. 7. It was the description of the deplorate state of the old world Gen. 6. 5. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart Judge by this whether Thoughts be so little regarded by God as you imagine David saith of himself I hate vain thoughts Psal. 119. 113. Solomon saith The thoughts of the righteous are right Prov. 12. 5. Paul saith that Charity thinketh not evil 1 Cor. 13. 5. 2. Thoughts are the issue of a rational soul. And if its operations be contemptible its essence is contemptible If its essence be noble its operations are considerable If the soul be more excellent then the body its operations must be more excellent To neglect our Thoughts and not employ them upon God and for God is to vilisie our noblest faculties and deny God who is a spirit that spiritual service which he requireth 3. Our Thoughts are commonly our most cordial voluntary acts and shew the temper and inclination of the heart And therefore are regardable to God that searcheth the heart and calleth first for the service of the heart 4. Our Thoughts are radical and instrumental acts such as they are such are the actions of our lives Christ telleth us that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts murders adulteries fornications thefts false witness blasphemies which defile the man Matth. 15. 19. 5. Our Thoughts are under a Law as well as words and deeds Prov. 24. 9. The thought of foolishness is sin And Matth. 5. 28 c. Christ extendeth the Law even to the thoughts and desires of the heart And under the Law it is said Deut. 15. 9. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart c. viz. of unmercifulness towards thy brother 6. Thoughts can reach higher much then sense and may be employed upon the most excellent and invisible objects and therefore are fit instruments to elevate the soul that would converse with God Though God be infinitely above us our Thoughts may be exercised on him Our persons never were in Heaven and yet our Conversation must be in Heaven Phil. 3. 20. And how is that but by our thoughts Though we see not Christ yet by the exercise of believing thoughts on him we love him and rejoyce with joy unspeakable and full of glory Though God be invisible yet our Meditation of him may be sweet and we may delight in the Lord Psal. 104. 34. Say not that all this is but fantastical and delusory as long as Thoughts of things unseen are meeter to actuate and elevate the love desires and delights of the soul and to move and guide us in a regular and holy life then the sense of lesser present good The Thoughts are not vain or delusory unless the object of them be false and vain and delusory Where the object is great and sure and excellent the thoughts of such things are excellent operations of the soul. If thoughts of vainglory wealth and pleasure can delight the ambitious covetous and sensual no wonder if the Thoughts of God and life eternal afford us solid high delights 7. The Thoughts are not so lyable to be counterfeit and hypocritical as are the words and outward deeds And therefore they shew more what the man is and what is in his heart For as Solomon saith Prov. 23. 7. as he thinketh in his heart so is he 8. Our Thoughts may exercise the highest graces of God in man and also shew those graces as being their effects How is our Faith and Love and Desire and Trust and Joy and Hope to be exercised but by our cogitations If Grace were not necessary and excellent it would not be wrought by the spirit of God and called the Divine nature and the image of God And if Grace be excellent the use and exercise of it is excellent And therefore our Thoughts by which it is exercised must needs have their excellency too 9. Our Thoughts must be the instruments of our improving all holy Truth in Scripture and all the mercies which we receive and all the afflictions which we undergo What good will Reading a Chapter in the Bible do to any one that never Thinketh on it Our delight in the Law of God must engage us to meditate in it day and night Psal. 1. 2. What good shall he get by hearing a Sermon that exerciseth not his Thoughts for the receiving and digesting it Our considering what is said is the way in which we may expect that God should give us understanding in all things 2 Tim. 2. 7. What the better will he be for any of the merciful providences of God who never bethinks him whence they come or what is the use and end that they are given for what good will he get by any affliction that never bethinks him who it is that chastiseth him and for what and how he must get them removed and sanctified to his good A man is but like one of the pillars in the Church or like the corps which he treadeth on or at best but like the dog that followeth him thither for company if he use not his Thoughts about the work which he hath in hand and cannot say as Psal. 48. 9. We have thought of thy loving kindness O God in the midst of thy Temple He that bideth you Hear doth also bid you Take heed how you hear Luk. 8. 18. And you are commanded to lay up the word in your heart and soul Deut. 11. 18 19. And to set your hearts to all the words which are testified among you for it is not a vain thing for you because it is your life 10. Our Thoughts are so considerable a part of Gods service that they are
oft put for the whole Mal. 3. 16. A book of remembrance was written for them that feared the Lord and that Thought upon his Name Our believing and loving God and trusting in him and desiring him and his grace are the principal parts of his service which are exercised immediately by our thoughts And in praise and prayer it is this inward part that is the soul and life of all He is a foolish hypocrite that thinks to be heard for his much babling Matth. 6. 7. And on the contrary the Thoughts are named as the sum of all iniquity Isa. 59. 7. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity Isa. 65. 2. I have spred out my hands all the day long unto a rebellious people which walketh in a way that was not good after their own thoughts Jer. 4. 14. O Jerusalem wash thy heart from wickedness that thou maist be saved how long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee Psal. 14. 1. The fool hath said in his heart there is no God 11. A mans Thoughts are the appointed orderly way for the Conversion of a sinner and the preventing of his sin and misery David saith Psal. 119. 59 I thought on my wayes and turned my feet unto thy testimonies The prodigal Luk. 15. 17 18. Came to himself and returned to his Father by the success of his own Consideration Thus saith the Lord of Hosts Consider your wayes Hag. 1. 5. is a voice that every sinner should hear Ezek. 18. 14. It is he that Considereth and doth not according to his Fathers sins that shall not die Therefore it is Gods desire O that they were wise and understood this and that they would consider their latter end Deut. 32. 29. It is either mens inconsiderateness or the errour of their thoughts that is the cause of all their wickedness Isa. 1. 3. My people doth not consider Paul verily thought that he ought to do many things against the Name of Jesus Act. 26. 9. Many deceive themselves by thinking themselves something when they are nothing Gal. 6. 3. They think it strange that we run not with them to excess of riot and therefore they speak evil of us 1 Pet. 4. 4. Disobedient formalists Consider not that they do evil when they think they are offering acceptable sacrifices to God Eccles. 5. 1 2. The very murder of Gods holy ones hath proceeded from these erroneous thoughts They that kill you shall think they do God service Joh. 16. 2. All the ambition and covetousness and injustice and cruelty following thereupon which troubleth the world and ruineth mens souls is from their erroneous thoughts overvaluing these deceitful things Psal. 49. 11. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever and their dwelling places to all generations The presumptuous and impenitent are surprized by destruction for want of thinking of it to prevent it In such an hour as you think not the son of man cometh 12. Lastly the Thoughts are the most constant actions of a man and therefore most of the man is in them We are not alwayes reading or hearing or praying or working but we are alwayes Thinking And therefore it doth especially concern us to see that this constant breath of the soul be sweet and that this constant stream be pure and run in the right channel Well therefore did David make this his request Psal. 139. 23 24. Search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting I say therefore to those that insist on this irrational objection that these very Thoughts of theirs concerning the inconsiderableness of Thoughts are so foolish and ungodly that when they understand the evil even of these they will know that Thoughts were more to be regarded If therefore thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thy self or if thou hast thought evil lay thy hand upon thy mouth And though after all this I still confess that it is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts in holy exercise and order that even the best do daily and hourly sin in the omissions the disorder or the vanity of their thoughts yet for all that we must needs conclude that the inclination and design of our Thoughts must be principally for God and that the Thoughts are principal instruments of the soul in acting it in his service and moving it towards him and in all this holy work of our Walking with God And therefore to imagine that Thoughts are inconsiderable and of little use is to unman us and unchristen us The labour of the mind is necessary for the attaining the felicity of the mind â—as the labour of the body is necessary for the things that belong unto the body As bodily idleness bringeth unto beggery when the diligent hand makes rich so the idleness of the soul doth impoverish the soul when the laborious Christian liveth plentifully and comfortably through the blessing of God upon his industry and labour You cannot expect that God appear to you in a bodily shape that you may have immediate converse with him in the body The corporal eating of him in transubstantiate bread supposed common to men and mice or dogs we leave to Papists who have made themselves a singular new Religion in despight of the common sense and reason of mankind as well as of the Scriptures and the judgement of the Church It is in the spirit that you must converse with God who is a spirit The mind seeth him by faith who is invisible to the bodily eyes Nay if you will have a true and saving knowledge of God you must not liken him to any thing that is visible nor have any corporal conceivings of him Earthly things may be the glass in which we may behold him while we are here in the flesh But our conceivings of him must be spiritual and Minds that are immerst in flesh and earth are unmeet to hold communion with him The natural man knoweth him not and the carnal mind is enmity to him aend they that are in the flesh cannot please him Rom. 8. It is the pure abstracted elevated soul that understandeth by experience what it is to Walk with God CHAP. VI. § 1. HAving in the foregoing Uses reproved the Atheism and contempt of God which ungodly men are continually guilty of and endeavoured to convince them of the necessity and desirableness of Walking with God and in particular of improving our Thoughts for holy converse with him and answered the objections of the impious and Atheists I shall next endeavour to cure the remnants of this disease in those that are sincerely holy who live too strangely to God their Father in the World In the performance of this I shall first shew you what are the benefits of this holy life which should make it appear desirable and delightful 2. I shall shew you why Believers should addict themselves to it as doubly obliged and how it
and erroneous disposition of our own hearts The will hath a very great power upon the understanding And therefore ungodly fleshly men will very hardly receive any truth which crosseth the carnal interest or disposition And will hardly let go any errour that feedeth them because their corrupted wills are a byas to their understandings and make them desperately partial in all their reading and hearing and hypocritical in their prayers and enquiries after truth Interest and corruption locketh up their hearts from their own observation Whereas a man that walketh with God that is jealous and holy and just and a searcher of the heart is driven from hypocrisie and forced to behave himself as in the open light and to do all as in the sight of all the world as knowing that the sight of God is of far greater concernment and regard The partiality corruption and byas of the heart is detected and shamed by the presence of God Therefore to walk with God is to walk in the light and as children of the light and not in darkness And he that doth Truth cometh to the light that his deeds might be manifest that they are wrought in God when every one that doth evil hateth the light neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved And this is their condemnation that light is come into the world and men love the darkness rather then the light because their deeds are evil Joh. 3. 19 20 21. It tendeth therefore exceedingly to make men wise to Walk with God because it is a walking in the light and in such a presence as most powerfully prevaileth against that hypocrisie deceitfulness and partiality of the heart which is the common cause of damning errour 10. Lastly they that walk with God are entitled by many promises to the guidance and direction of his spirit And blessed are those that have such a guide at once a light in the world without them and a light immediately from God within them For so far as he is received and worketh in them he will lead them into truth and save them from deceit and folly and having guided them by his counsel will afterward take them unto glory Psal. 73. 24. Whereas the ungodly are led by the flesh and often given up to their own hearts lusts to walk in their own counsels Rom. 8. 1 13. Psal. 81. 12. till at last the fools do say in their hearts there is no God Psal. 14. 1. and they become corrupt and abhominable eating up the people of the Lord as bread and call not on his Name ver 2. c. Deceiving and being deceived sensual having not the spirit Jud. 19. who shall receive the reward of their unrighteousness as accounting it pleasure to riot in the day time 2 Pet. 2. 13. IV. ANother benefit of Walking with God is that it maketh men good as well as wise It is the most excellent means for the advancement of mans soul to the highest degree of holiness attainable in this life If conversing with Good men doth powerfully tend to make men good conversing with God must needs be more effectual which may appear in these particulars 1. The apprehensions of the presence and attributes of God do most effectually check the stirrings of corruption and rebuke all the vicious inclinations and motions of the soul even the most secret sin of the heart is rebuked by his presence as well as the most open transgression of the life For the thoughts of the heart are open to his view All what is done before God is done as in the open light nothing of it can be hid no sin can have the encouragement of secresie to embolden it It is all committed in the presence of the Universal King and Lawgiver of the world who hath forbidden it It is done before him that most abhorreth it and will never be reconciled to it It is done before him that is the Judge of the world and will shortly pass the sentence on us according to what we have done in the body It standeth up in his presence who is of infinite Majesty and perfection and therefore most to be reverenced and honoured And therefore if the presence of a wise and grave and venerable person will restrain men from sin the presence of God apprehended seriously will do it much more It is committed before him that is our dearest friend and tender Father and chiefest benefactor And therefore ingenuity gratitude and love will all rise up against it in those that walk with God There is that in God before the eyes of those that walk with him which is most contrary to sin and most powerful against it of any thing in the world Every one will confess that if mens eyes were opened to see the Lord in Glory standing over them it would be the most powerful means to restrain them from transgressing The drunkard would not then venture upon his cups the fornicator would have a cooling for his lusts the swearer would be afraid to take his Makers name in vain the prophane would scarce presume to scorn or persecute a holy life And he that walketh with God though he see him not corporeally yet seeth him by faith and liveth as in his presence and therefore must needs be restrained from sin as having the means which is next to the sight of God If pride should begin to stir in one that walks with God O what a powerful remedy is at hand How effectually would the presence of the Great and Holy God rebuke it and constrain us to say as Job 42. 5 6. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee wherefore I abhor my self and repent in dust and ashes If worldly love or carnal lust should stir â—n such a one how powerfully would the terrours of the Lord repress it and his Majesty rebuke it and his Love and Goodness overcome it If worldly cares or murmuring discontents begin to trouble such a one how effectually will the Goodness the All sufficiency and the faithfulness of God allay them and quiet and satisfie the soul and cause it to be offended at its own offence and to chide it self for its repinings and distrust If Passion arise and begin to discompose us how powerfully will the presence of God rebuke it and the reverence of his Majesty and the sense of his Authority and pardoning grace will asswage it and shame us into silent quietness who dare let out his passions upon man in the presence of his Maker that apprehendeth his presence The same I might say of all other sins 2. The presence and attributes of God apprehended by those that walk with him is the potent remedy against Temptations Who will once turn an eye to the gold and glory of the world that is offered him to allure him to sin if he see God stand by who would be tempted to lust or any sinful pleasure if he observe the presence of the Lord
Third must be my excuse for all But pardon the Manner and I dare commend the Matter to you as more worthy your serious contemplation and your daily most delightful practice than any other that was ever proposed unto mortal man This is the man-like noble life The life which the Rational soul was made for To which if our faculties be not by sanctifying Grace restored they fall below their proper dignity and use and are worse than lost like a Prince or Learned man that is employed only in sweeping Dog-kennels or tending Swine To walk in Holiness with the most Holy God is the improvement and advancement of the nature of man towards its designed equality with Angels When Earthliness and Sensuality degrade humanity into a voluntary and therefore sinful brutishness This is the Life which affordeth the soul a solid and durable pleasure and content When carnal minds evaporate into Air and bubble into froth and vanity wasted in a dream and the violent busie pursuit of a shadow deceiving themselves with a mixture of some counterfeit Religion playing with God and working for the world living in jeast and dying and despairing and suffering in earnest with unwearied labour building on the Sand and sinking at death for want of a foundation hating the serious practice of their own profest Religion because it is not the profession but the serious practice which hath the greatest enmity to their sensual delights yet wishing to be numbred with those hereafter whom they hated here This Holy Walking with the most Holy God is the only life which is best at last and sweet in the review which the Godly Live in and most of the ungodly could wish to dye in like him that wished to be Caesar in life and Socrates at death Yea this is the Life which hath no end which we are here but learning and beginning to practise and which we must hereafter live in another manner and degree with God for ever O wondrous Mercy which thus ennobleth even the state of mortality and honoureth Earth with so much participation of and communion with Heaven That by God and with God we may walk in holy peace and safety unto God and there be blessed in his perfect Sight and Love for ever Madam the greatest service I can do you for all your favours is to pray that God will more acquaint you with himself and lead you by this blessed way to that more blessed end that when you see all worldly glory in the dust you may bless him for ever who taught you to make a wiser choice Which are the prayers of Dec. 24. 1663. MADAM Your very much obliged Servant RICHARD BAXTER TO THE READER Reader THE Embryo of this Book was but one Sermon preached a little before the ending of my publick Ministry upon the Text of the third Treatise upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honour able Lady Being obliged to communicate the Notes and unavoidably gullty of some delays I made a compensation by enlargement and having reasons for the publication of them with which I shall not trouble you to make them more suitable to the designed end I prefixed the two former Treatises The first I had preached to my ancient flock Of the second I had preached but one Sermon If many of the materials in the second be the same as in the first you must understand that my design required that it should be so They being the same Attributes of God which the first Part endeavoureth to imprint upon the mind and which the second and third endeavour to improve into a constant course of holy affection and conversation As it is the same food which the first concoction chylifieth which the perfecting concoctions do work over again and turn into blood and spirits and flesh so far am I in such points from gratifying thy sickly desire of variety and avoiding the displeasing of thee by the rehearsals of the same that it is my very business with thee to perswade thee to live continually upon these same Attributes and Relations of God as upon thy daily air and bread and to forsake that lean consuming company who feed on the shels of hard and barren controversies or on the froth of complements and affected shews and run after novelty instead of substantial solid nutriment And to tell thee that the primitive pure simple Christianity consisted in the daily serious use of the great materials of the Creed Lords Prayer and ten Commandements contracted in the words of our Baptismal Covenant Do thus and thou will be like those examples of the succeeding Church in uprightness purity simplicity charity peaceableness and holy communion with God when the pretended subtilties and sublimities of wanton uncharitable contentious wits will serve but to strangle or delude their souls I have purposely been very brief on the several Attributes and Relations of God in the first Treatise because the copious handling of them would have made a very great volume of it self and because it is my great design in that first part to give you a sight of all Gods Attributes and Relations conjunct and in their order that looking on them not one by one but all together in their proper places the whole Image of God may by them be rightly imprinted on your minds The Method being the first thing and the necessary Impressions on the soul the second which I there desire you to observe and employ your minds about if you desire to profit and receive what I intend you Decem. 24. 1663. THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE Text explained The Doctrine The Knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ the Mediatour is the life of grace and the necessary way to the life of glory What is contained in the Knowledge of God as to the Act what as to the Object A short Scheme of the Divine properties and Attributes to be known Page 1 CHAP. II. Of the Knowledge of Gods Being and the necessary effects of it on the heart p. 14 CHAP. III. Of the Knowledge of Gods Unity and Indivisibility and its necessary effects p. 17 CHAP. IV. Of the Knowledge of Gods Immensity and so of his Incomprehensibleness Omnipresence and the effects p. 21 CHAP. V. Of the Knowledge of Gods Eternity and its due effects A Believer referring all things to Eternity honoureth his very horse or dog or smallest mercy more than Unbelievers honour their King their lives their souls regarding them but for transitory ends Unbelievers denying the End destroy morally all souls all mercies all Divine revelations all Gods ordinances all graces and duties and the whole Creation p. 28 CHAP. VI. The Knowledge of God as he is a Spirit and incorporeal and consequently 1. As he is simple or uncompounded 2. Invisible c. 3. Immortal Incorruptible Immutable The Uses of Gods Simplicity The Uses of his Invisibility The Uses of his Immortality and Immutability p. 44 CHAP. VII Of the Knowledge of Gods Almightiness
distresses Eternity is your Religion and the Life of all your holy motions and as without the Capacity of it you would be but beasts so without the Love and Desire of it and title to it you would be but wicked miserable men Set not your hearts on transitory things while you stand near unto Eternity How can you have room for so many thoughts on fading things when you have an Eternity to think on what light can you see in the Candles or Glow-worms of this world in the Sunshine of Eternity Oh remember when you are tempted to please your eyes your tast and sensual desires that these are not Eternal pleasures Remember when you are tempted for wealth or honour to wrong your souls that these are not the Eternal riches Houses and Lands are not Eternal meats and drinks are not Eternal sports and pastimes and jocund sinful company are not Eternal Alas how short how soon do they vanish into nothing But it is God and our dear Redeemer that are Eternal The flower of beauty withereth with age or by the nipping blast of a short disease the honours of the world are but a dream your graves will bury all its glory Down comes the Prince the Lord the gallant and suddenly takes his lodgings in the dust The corps that was pampered and adorned yesterday is a clod to day The body that was bowed to attended and applauded but the other day is now interred in the vault of darkness with worms and moles To day it is corruption and a most loathsome thing that lately was dreaming of an earthly happiness One day he is striving for riches and preheminences or glorying and rejoycing in them that the next day may be snatcht away to hell O fix not your minds on fading things that perish in the using and by their vanishing mock you that set your hearts upon them You will not fix your eye and mind upon every bird that flyeth by you as you will on the houses that you must dwell in nor will you mind every passenger as you will do your friends that still live with you And shall transitory vanity be minded by you above Eternity 3. It is Eternity that must direct you in your estimate of all things It is this that sheweth you the excellency of man above the beasts It is this that tells you the worth of Grace and the weight of sin the preciousness of holy Ordinances and helps and the evil of hinderances and temptations the wisdome of the choice and diligence of the Saints and the folly of the choice and negligent sinful lives of the ungodly the worth of Gods favour and the vanity of mans and the difference between the godly and the unsanctified world in point of Happiness Were noâ— Grace the egg the seed the earnest of an Eternal glory it were not so glorious a thing But O how precious are all those thoughts desires delights and breathings of the soul that bring us on to sweet Eternity Even those sorrows and groans and tears are precious that lead to an Eternal joy Who would not willingly obey the holy motions of the holy Spirit that is but hatching and preparing us for Eternity This is it that makes a Bible a Sermon a holy Book to be of greater value then Lands and Lordships It is Eternity that makes the illuminated soul so fearful of sinning so diligent in holy duties so chearful and resolved in suffering because he believeth it is all for an Eternity A Christian in the holy Assemblies and in his reading learning prayer conference is laying up for Everlasting when the worldling in the Market in the field or shop is making provision for a few dayes or hours Thou gloriest in thy Riches and preheminence now but how long wilt thou do so To day that house that land is thine but canst thou say it shall be thine to morrow Thou canst not But the Believer can truly say My God my Christ is mine to day and will be mine to all Eternity O Death thou canst take my friends from me and my worldly riches from me and my time and strength and life from me but take my God my Christ my Heaven my Portion from me if thou canst My sin is all thy sting and strength But where is thy sting when sin is gone and where is thy strength when Christ hath conquered thee Is it a great matter that thou deprivest me of my sinful weak and troublous friends when against thy will thou bringest me to my perfect blessed friends with whom I must abide for ever Thou dost indeed bereave me of these Riches but it is that I may possess the unvaluable Eternal riches Thou endest my Time that I may have Eternity Thou castest me down that I may be exalted Thou takest away my strength of life that I may enter into Life Eternal And is this the worst that Death can do And shall I be afraid of this I willingly lay by my cloaths at night that I may take my rest and I am not loth to put off the old when I must put on new The bird that is hatcht is not grieved because he must leave the broken shell Nor is it the grief of man or beast that he hath left the womb Death doth but open the womb of Time and let us into Eternity and is the second birth day of the soul. Regeneration brings us into the Kingdom of Grace and Death into the Kingdom of Glory Blessed are they that have their part in the New birth of Grace and the first Resurrection from the death of sin for to such the Natural Death will be Gain and they shall have their part in the second Resurrection and on them the everlasting Death shall have no power O sirs it is Eternity that telleth you what you should mind and be and do and that turneth the seales in all things where it is concerned Can you slâ—ep in sin so neer Eternity Can you play and laugh before you are prepared for Eternity Can you think him wise that selleth his eternal Joy for the ease the mirth the pleasure of a moment and trifleth away the time in which he must win or lose Eternity If these men be wise there are nâ— fools nor any but wise men in Bedlam Dare thy tongue report or thy heart imagine that any holy work is needless or a heavenly life too much adoe or any suffering too dear that is for an Eternity O happy souls that win Eternity with the loss of all the world O bless that Christ that spirit that light that word that messenger of God that drew thy heart to choose Eternity before all transitory things That was the day when thou beganst to be wise and indeed to shew thy self a man Thy wealth thy honour thy pleasure will be thine when the sensual world hath nothing to shew but sin and Hell of all they laboured for Their pleasures honours and all die when they die But thine will
This they preferred or ventured on before a holy heavenly life And this is it that Believers are labouring to escape in all their holy care and diligence It is an Infinite value that is put upon the blood of Christ the promises of God the ordinances and means of Grace and grace it self and the poorest duties of the poorest Saints because they are for an Infinite Eternal glory No Mercy is small that tasts of Heaven as all doth or should do to the Believer No action is low that aims at Heaven And O how lively should the Resolutions and courage of those men be that are travelling sighting and watching for Eternity How full should be their Comforts that are fetcht from the foresight of Infinite Eternal Comforts As all things will presently be swallowed up in Eternity so methinks the present apprehension of Eternity should now swallow up all things else in the soul. Object But saith the Unbeliever if God have made man for Eternity it is a wonder that there are no more lively Impressions of so Infinite a thing upon the souls of all Our sense of it is so small that it makes me doubt whether we are made for it Answ. Consider 1. That benummedness and sleep and death is the very state of an unholy soul Hast thou cast thy self into a sleepy senseless disease and wilt thou argue thence against Eternity This is as if the blind should conclude that there is no Sun or that the eye of man was not made to see it because he hath no sight himself Or as if you should think that man hath not any life or feeling because your palsie limbs do not feel Or that the stomack was not made for meat because the stomacks of the sick abhor it 2. And for believers 1. You may see by their lives that they have some apprehensions of Eternity why else do they differ from you and deny themselves and displease the world and the flesh it self why do they set their hearts above if they have not lively thoughts of an Eternity 2. But if you aske me Why their apprehensions are not a thousand times more lively about so Infinite a thing I answer 1. Their Apprehensions must be suitable to their State Our state here is a state of Imperfection and so will our apprehensions be But a perfect state will have perfect apprehensions It is no proof that the Infant in the womb is not made to come into this world and see the Sun and converse with men because he hath no apprehensions of it Our state here is a conjunction of the soul to a frail distempered body and so neer a conjunction that the actions of the soul must have great dependance on the Body And therefore our Apprehensions are limited by its frailty and the soul can go no higher then the capacity of the Body will allow 2. And our Apprehensions now are fitted to our Use and benefit We are now Believers and must live by faith And therefore must not be Beholders and live by sense If Eternity were open to mens Natural sight or we had here as clear and lively apprehensions of it as those have that are there then it were not thanks no praise to us to be believers or to obey and live as Saints And then God should not Govern man as man here in the way by a Law but as a beast by sense or as the glorified that have possession Where there are perfect Apprehensions of God and Glory there will be also perfect Love and Joy and Praise and consequently perfect Happiness and this were to make Earth and Heaven the way and the end to be all one Perfect apprehensions are kept for a perfect state of Happiness But here it is well if we have such Apprehensions as are fitted to the use of travellers and soldiers as will carry us on and prevail against the difficulties of our course If you had never been at London you could not have any such clear Apprehensions of the place as those that see it have And yet your imperfect Apprehensions might be sufficient to make you take a journey thither and you may come as safely and certainly to it as if you had seen it Moreover the body the brain which the soul in Apprehending now makes use of cannot bear such Apprehensions as are suitable to the thousandth part of the greatness of the object without distraction The smallest eye may see the sun but the greatest cannot endure to gaze upon its Glory much less if it were at the neerest approach It s a mercy oâ— mercies to give us such Apprehensions of Eternity as are meet for passengers to bring us thither and it is part of our Mercy that those Apprehensions are not so great as to distract and over whelm us 4. Lastly The Eternity of God must teach the soul contentedness and patience under all labours changes sufferings and dangers that are here below Believing Soul draw neer look seriously on Eternity and try whether it will not make such Impressions as these upon thee Art thou weary of Labours either of the mind or body Is not Eternity long enough for thy Rest Canst thou not afford to work out the day light of this life when thou must Rest with Christ to all Eternity Canst thou not run with patience so short a race when thou lookest to so long a Rest Canst thou not watch one hour with Christ that must Reign with him to all Eternity Dost thou begin to shrinke at sufferings for Christ when thou must be in Glory with him for ever How short is the suffering how long is the Reward Dost thou begin to think hatdly of the dealing of the Lord because his people are here afflicted and made the scorn and by-word of the world why is not Eternity long enough for God to shew his Love and bounty to his people in Is not the day at hand when Lazarus and the Rich worldling both must hear But now he is comforted and thâ—n art tormented Luk. 16. 25. Did not that Now câ—me â—â—me enough which was the entrance of Eternity Even Jesus the Author and perfecter of our saith for the Joy that was â—â—t before him endured the Cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God! consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lâ—st yâ—â— be wâ—â—â—ied and saint in your minds Heb. 12. 2 3. Dâ—st 〈…〉 the prosperity of the wicked and prevalency of the Churches Enemies Look then unto Eternity and 〈…〉 e whether that be not long enough for the 〈…〉 aâ—d the wicked to be tormented Wouldst 〈…〉 their time Dost thou begin to 〈…〉 of Christ oâ— the truth of his promises because he doth 〈…〉 O what is a thousand years to Eternity is there not yet time enough before thee for Christ to make good all his promises in Were not those Disciples sharply but justly rebuked as Fools and slow of heart to believe that when
and dead to morrow They are our delight to day and our sorrow or horrour to morrow But our God is Immortal Our houses may be burned Our goods may be consumed or stolne our cloaths will be worn out our treasure here may be corrupted But our God is unchangeable the same for ever Our Laws and Customes may be changed our Governours and Priviledges changed our company and employments and habitation changed but our God is never changed Our estates may change from Riches to poverty and our names that were honoured may incur disgrace Our health may quickly turn to sickness and our ease to pain But still our God is unchangeable for ever Our friends are unconstant and may turn our enemies Our Peace may be changed into war and our liberty into slavery but our God doth never change Time will change customes families and all things here but it changeth not our God The Creatures are all but earthen mettal and quickly dasht in peices our comforts are changeable our selves are changeable and mortal but so is not our God 3. And it should teach us to draw as near to God as we are capable by unchangeable fixed Resolutions and constancy of endeavours and to be still the same as we are at the best 4. It should move us also to be more desirous of passing into the state of immortality and to long for our unchangeable habitation and our immortal incorruptible Bodies and to possess the Kingdom that cannot be moved Heb. 12. 28. And let not the mutability of things below much trouble us while our Rock our Portion is unmoveable God waxeth not old Heaven doth not decay by duration the Glory of the blessed shall not wither nor their sun set upon them nor their day have any night nor any mutations or commotions disturb their quiet possessions O Love and Long for Immortality and Incorruption CHAP. VII 6. HAving spoken of the effects of the Attributes of Gods Essence as such we must next speak of the Effects of his three great Attributes which some call Subsistential that is his Omnipotency Understanding and Will or his Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness By which it hath been the way of the Schoolmen and other Divines to denominate the three Persons not without some countenance from Scripture Phrase The Father they call the Infinite Power of the God head and the Son the Wisdom and Word of God and of the Father and the Holy Ghost the Love and Goodness of God of the Father and Son But that these Attributes of Power Understanding and Will or Power Wisdome and Goodness are of the same importance with the termes of Personality Father Son and Holy Ghost we presume not to affirm It sufficeth us 1. That God hath assumed these Attributes to himself in Scripture 2. And that man who beareth the Natural Image of God hath Power Understanding and Will and as he beareth the Holy Moral Image of God he hath a Power to execute that which is Good and Wisdome to direct and Goodness of Will to determine for the execution And so while God is seen of us in this Glass of Man we must conceive of him after the Image that in man appeareth to us and speak of him in the language of man as he doth of himself And first The Almightiness of God must make these impressions on our souls 1. It must possess the soul with very awful Reverent thoughts of God and fill us continually with his holy Fear Infinite Greatness and Power must have no common careless thoughts lest we Blaspheme him in our Minds and be guilty of Contempt The Dread of the Heavenly Majesty should be still upon us and we must be in his fear all the day long Prov. 23. 17. Not under that slavish Fear that is void of Love as men fear an Enemy or hurtful Creature or that which is Evil For we have not such a spirit from the Lord nor stand in a Relation of enmity and bondage to him But Reverence is necessary and from thence a Fear of sinning and displeasing so Great a God The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdome Prov. 1. 7. and 9. 10. Psal. 111. 10. By it men depart from evil Prov. 16. 6. Sin is for want of the Fear of God Luk. 23. 40. Pro. 3. 7. Jer. 5. 24. I. ev 25. 36. The Fear of God is often put for the whole new man or all the work of Grace within us even the Principle of new life Jer. 2. 19. and 32. 40. And it is often put for the whole work of Religion or Service of God Psal. 34. 11. Prov. 1. 29. Psal. 130. 4. and 34. 9. And therefore the Godly are usually denominated such as Fear God Psal. 15. 4. and 22. 23. and 115. 11 13. and 135. 20. and 34. 7 9. c. The godly are devoted to the Fear of God Psal. 119. 38. It is our Sanctifying the Lord in our hearts that he be our fear and dread Isa. 8. 13. If we Fear him not we take him not for our Master Mal. 1. 6. Evangelical Grace excludeth not this Fear Luk. 12. 5. Though we receive a Kingdom that cannot be moved yet must our acceptable service of God be with Reverence and godly fear Heb. 12. 28. With fear and trembling we must work out our salvation Phil. 2. 12. In fear we must pass the time of â—â—journing here 1 Pet. 1. 17. In it we must converse together Eph. 5. 4. Yea Holiness is to be perfected in the fear of God 2 Cor. 7. 1. and that because we have the Promises The most prosperous Churches walk in this fear Acts 9. 31. It s a necessary means of preventing destruction Heb. 11. 7. and of attaining salvation when we have the promises Heb. 4. 1. God puts this fear in the hearts of those that shall not depart from him Jer. 32. 40. See therefore that the Greatness of the Almighty God possess thy soul continually with his Fear 2. Gods Almightiness should also possess us with holy Admiration of him and cause us in heart and voice to Magnifie him Oh what a Power is that which made the world of nothing which upholdeth the earth without any foundation but his Will which placed and maintaineth all things in their Order in Heaven and Earth which causeth so great and glorious a creature as the Sun that is so much bigger then all the earth to move so many thousand miles in a few moments and constantly to keep its time and course that giveth its instinct to every brute and causeth every part of nature to do its office By his Power it is that every motion of the Creature is performed and that order is kept in the Kingdoms of the world Jer. 32. 17 18 19. He made the Heaven and the Earth by his Great Power and stretched out arm and nothing is too hard for him The Great the Mighty God the Lord of Hosts is his Name great in counsel and mighty in works Neh. 9.
to come and follow him was there no prevailing inward power that made them leave all and follow him And was it not the power of the Holy Ghost that Converted three thousand Jewes at a Sermon of them that by wicked hands had Crucified and slain the Lord Jesus Act. 2. 23 41. When the Preaching and Miracles of Christ Converted so few his Brethren and they that saw his Miracles believed not on him Joh. 12. 37. 5. 38. 6. 36. 7. 5. but when the Holy Ghost was given after his Ascension in that plenty which answered the Gospel and promise his words were fulfilled Joh. 12. 32. And I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me I pass by abundance more such evidence Quest. 9. Doth it not tend to bring sin into credit which holiness is contrary to and to bring the love of God into discredit and to hinder mens Conversion and keep them from a holy life when holiness is taken for so low and natural or common a thing Quest. 10. And consequently doth it not tend to the vilifying of the Attribute of Holiness in God when the Image and effect of it is so extenuated Quest. 11. And doth it not tend to the contempt of Heaven it self whose state of felicity consisteth much in perfect Holiness And if Sanctification be but some common motion which Cain and Judas had as well as Paul sure it is less Divine and more inconsiderable then we thought Quest. 12. Doth it not speak very dangerous suspicion of a soul that never felt the special work of grace that can make light of it and ascribe it most to his own will And would not sound Humiliation do more then Arguments to cure this great mistake I never yet came neer a throughly-humbled soul but I found them too low and vile in their own eyes to have such undervaluing thoughts of grace or to think it best for them to leave all the efficacy of grace to their own wills A broken heart abhors such thoughts Quest. 13. Dare any wise and sober man desire such a thing of God or dare you say that you will expect no other Grace but what shall leave it to your selves to make it effectual or frustrate it I think he is no friend to his soul that would take up with this Quest. 14. Do not the constant Prayers of all that have but a shew of godliness contradict the doctrine which I am contradicting Do you not beg of God to melt and soften and bow your hearts and to make them more holy and fill them with light and faith and Love and hold you close to God and duty In a word do you not daily pray for effectual grace that shall infallibly procure your desired ends I scarce ever heard a prayer from a sober man but was orthodox in such points though their speeches would be heterodox Quest. 15. Do you not know that there is an enmity in every unrenewed heart against sanctification till God remove it Are we not greater enemies to our selves and greater resisters of the Holy Ghost and of our own conversion and sanctification and salvation then all the world besides is woe to him that feeleth not this by himself And is it likely that we that are enemies to holiness should do more to our own Sanctification then the Holy Ghost Woe to us if he conquer not our enmity Quest. 16. Is it probable that so great a work as the destroying of our dearest sins the setting our hearts and all our hopes on an Invisible glory and delighting in the Lord and forsaking all for him c. should come rather from the choice of a will that loveth those sins and hateth that holy heavenly life then from the spirit of Christ sure this is much above us Quest. 17. Whence is it that so often one man that hath been a notorious sinner is Converted by a Sermon when a civiler man of better nature and life is never changed though he have that and ten times more perswasions Quest. 18. Doth not experience tell impartial observers that the high esteemers of the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost are ordinarily of more holy heavenly lives then they that use to ascribe the differencing work to their free wills In my observation it is so Quest. 19. Should not every gracious humble soul be more enclined to magnifie God then himself and to give him the Glory then to give it to our selves especially in a case where Scripture and experience telleth us that we are more unlikely then God to deserve the praise Our destruction is of our selves but in him is our help Hos. 13. 9. When we see an effect and know it and the causes that are in question it is easie to conjecture from the quality which is the true cause If I see a Serpent brought forth I will sooner think that it was generated by a Serpent then a Dove If I see sin in the world I shall easily believe it is the spawn of this corrupted will that is so prone to it But if I find a divine nature in me or see a holy heavenly life in any I must needs think that this is liker to be the work of the blessed God then of such a naughty heart as mans that hath already been a self-destroyer Quest. 20. What motive hath any man to exalt himself and sin again the Holy Ghost by such an extenuation of his saving grace It is a causeless fruitless sin The only reason that ever I could hear for it was lest the doctrine of differencing grace should make God a respecter of persons or the author of sin of which there is no reason of a suspicion We all agree that no man perisheth or is denyed Grace but such as deserve it And when all deserve it it is no more respect of persons in God to sanctifie some only of those ill deservers then it is that he makes not all men Kings nor every dog or toad a man nor every star a Sun or every man or Angel To clear all objections concerning this would be but to digress 3. Lastly Our knowledge of the Holy Ghost must raise us to an high estimation of his works and a ready reception of his graces and cheerful obedience to his motions He Sanctified our Head that had no sin by preventing sin in his conception and he annointed him to his office and came upon him at his Baptism He Sanctified and anointed the Prophets and Apostles to their offices and by them endited the holy Scripture He illuminateth converteth sanctifieth and guideth all that are to be the heirs of life This is his work Honour that part of it that is done on Christ on the Prophets Apostles and the Scriptures and value and seek after that which belongeth to your selves Think not to be Holy without the Sanctifier nor to do any thing well without the spirit of Jesus Christ who is Christs internal invisible Agent here on earth as
say I will condemn thee to everlasting punishment if thou wilt not keep my Laws And if men say We will condemn thee to imprisonment or death if thou keep them the believer more feareth God than man The Law of the King doth condemn Daniel to the Lyons den if he forbear not to pray for a certain time But he more feareth God that will deny those that deny him and forsake those that forsake him Therefore the forementioned witnesses ventured on the fiery furnace because God threatned a more dreadful fire Therefore a true believer dare not live when an unbeliever dare not die He dare not save his life from God lest he lose it but loseth it that he may save it But unbelievers that walk not with God but after the flesh do most fear them that they observe most powerful in the world and will more be moved with the penalty of some worldly loss or suffering then with Gods most dreadful threats of Hell For that which they see not is to them as nothing while they want that faith by which it is foreknown and must be escaped 6. Moreover he that walks with God doth from God expect his full reward He ceaseth not his holy course though no man observe him or none commend him or approve him though all about him hate him and condemn him though he be so far from gaining by it with men that it cost him all that he hath or hoped for in the world For he knoweth that Godliness is of it self great gain and that it hath the promise of this life and that to come and none can make Gods promise void He knoweth that his Father which seeth in secret will reward him openly Matth. 6. and that he shall have a treasure in heaven that parteth with all on earth for Christ Luk. 18. 22. And he hath such respect to this promised recompence of reward that for it he can suffer with the people of God and account the very reproach of Christ a greater treasure then Court or Country can afford him in a way of sin Heb. 11. 26. He accounteth them blessed that are persecuted for righteousness sake because the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs He judgeth it a cause of exceeding joy to be reviled and persecuted and to have all manner of evil falsly spoken of us for the sake of Christ because our reward in Heaven is great Matth. 5. 10 11 12. For he verily believeth that as sure as these transitory pleasures will have an end and everlastingly forsake those miserable souls that were deluded by them so certainly is there a life of endless joyes to be possessed in Heaven with God and all the Holy ones and this he will trust to as that which will fully repair his losses and repay his cost and not deceive him Let others trust to what they will it is this that he is resolved to trust to and venture all to make it sure when he is sure that All is Nothing which he ventureth and that by the adventure he can never be a loser nor never save by choosing that which it self must perish Thus he that truly walks with God expecteth his Reward from God and with God and thence is encouraged in all his duty and thence is emboldned in all his conflicts and thence is upheld and comforted in his sufferings When Man is the Rewarder as well as the chief Ruler of the Hypocrite and earthly things are the poise and motives to his earthly mind 7. Our walking with God importeth that as we expect our Reward from him so also that we take his Promise for our security for that Reward Believing his Word and trusting his fidelity to the quieting and emboldening of the soul is part of our holy walking with him A promise of God is greater satisfaction and encouragement to a true believer than all the visible things on earth A promise of God can do more and prevail further with an upright soul than all the sensible objects in the world He will do more and go further upon such a promise then he will for all that man can give him Peruse the life of Christs Apostles and see what a promise of Christ can do How it made them forsake all earthly pleasures possessions and hopes and part with friends and houses and Country and travail up and down the world in dangers and sufferings and unwearied labours despised and abused by great and small and all this to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom which they had never seen and to attain that Everlasting Happiness and help others to attain it for which they had nothing but the promise of their Lord. See what a promise well believed will make a Christian do and suffer Believers did those noble acts and the Martyrs under went those torments which are mentioned Heb. 11. because they judged him faithful that had promised Heb. 11. 11. They considered not difficulties and defect of means and improbabilities as to second causes nor staggered at the promise of God through unbelief but being strong in faith gave glory to God being fully perswaded that what he had promised he was also able to perform As it is said of Abraham Rom. 4. 19 20 21. 8. To walk with God is to live as in his presence and that with desire and delight When we believe and apprehend that whereever we are we are before the Lord who seeth our hearts and all our waies who knoweth every thought we think and every word we speak and every secret thing which we do As verily to believe that God is here present and observeth all as we do that we our selves are here To compose our minds our thoughts our affections to that Holy reverence and seriousness as beseemeth man before his Maker To order our words with that care and gravity as beseems those that speak in the hearing of the Lord. That no mans presence do seem more considerable to us then his presence As we are not moved at the presence of a fly or worm or dog when persons of honour and reverence are present so should we not comparatively be moved at the presence of man how great or rich or terrible soever when we know that God himself is present to whom the greatest of the sons of men is more inconsiderable then a fly or worm is unto them As the presence of the King makes ordinary standers by to be unobserved and the discourses of the learned make us disregard the bablings of children so the presence of God should make the greatest to be scarce observed or regarded in comparison of him God who is still with us should so much take up our regard that all others in his presence should be but as a candle in the presence of the sun Therefore it is that a believer composeth himself to that behaviour which he knoweth God doth most expect and beseemeth those that stand before him when others accommodate themselves to the persons that are present observing
be alwaies actually upon God but he that doth manage his calling in Holiness doth all in obedience to Gods commands and sees that his work be the work of God and he intendeth all to the glory of God or the pleasing of his blessed will and he oft reneweth these actual intentions and oft interposeth thoughts of the presence or power or love or interest of him whom he is serving He often lifteth up his soul in some holy desire or ejaculatory request to God He oft taketh occasion from what he seeth or heareth or is doing for some more spiritual meditation or discourse so that still it is God that his mind is principally employed on or for even in his ordinary work while he liveth as a Christian And it is not enough to think of God but we must think of him as God with such respect and reverence and love and trust and submission in our measure as is due from the Creature to his Creator For as some kind of speaking of him is but a taking his Name in vain so some kind of thinking of him is but a dishonouring of him by contemptuous or false unworthy thoughts Most of our walking with God consisteth in such affectionate apprehensions of him as are suitable to his blessed Attributes and Relations All the day long our thoughts should be working either on God or for God either upon some work of obedience which he hath imposed on us and in which we desire to please and honour him or else directly upon himself Our hearts must be taken up in contemplating and admiring him in magnifying his Name his Word and Works and in pleasant contentful thoughts of his benignity and of his Glory and the Glory which he conferreth on his Saints He that is unskilful or unable to manage his own thoughts with some activity seriousness and order will be a stranger to much of the holy converse which believers have with God They that have given up the Government of their thoughts and turned them loose to go which way phantasie pleaseth and present sensitive objects do invite them and to run up and down the world as masterless unruly vagrants can hardly expect to keep them in any constant attendance upon God or readiness for any sacred work And the sudden thoughts which they have of God will be rude and stupid savouring more of prophane contempt than of holiness when they should be reverent serious affectionate and practical and such as conduce to a holy composure of their hearts and lives And as we must walk with God 1. In our communion with his servants 2. And in our affectionate Meditations so also 3 In all the ordinances which he hath appointed for our Edification and his Worship 1. The Reading of the Word of God and the explication and application of it in good Books is a means to possess the mind with sound and orderly and working apprehensions of God and of his holy Truths So that in such Reading our understandings are oft illustrated with a heavenly Light and our hearts are touched with a special delightful rellish of that truth and they are secretly attracted and engaged unto God and all the powers of our souls are excited and animated to a holy obedient life 2. The same Word preached with a lively voice with clearness and affection hath a greater advantage for the same illumination and excitation of the soul. When a Minister of Christ that is truly a Divine being filled with the Knowledge and Love of God shall copiously and affectionately open to his hearers the excellencies which he hath seen and the happiness which he hath foreseen and tasted of himself it frequently through the co-operation of the Spirit of Christ doth wrap up the hearers hearts to God and bring them into a more lively knowledge of him actuating their graces and enflaming their hearts with a heavenly Love and such desires as God hath promised to satisfie Christ doth not only send his Ministers furnished with Authority from him but also furnished with his Spirit to speak of spiritual things in a spiritual manner so that in both respects he might say He that heareth you heareth mee and also by the same Spirit doth open and excite the hearts of the hearers so that it is God himself that a serious Christian is principally employed with in the hearing of his heavenly transforming Word And therefore he is affected with reverence and holy fear with some taste of heavenly delight with obediential subjection and resignation of himself to God The Word of God is powerful not only in pulling down all high exalting thoughts that rise up against God but also in lifting up depressed souls that are unable to rise unto heavenly knowledge or communion with God If some Christians could but alwaies finde as much of God upon their hearts at other times as they finde sometimes under a spiritual powerful Ministry they would not so complain that they seem forsaken and strangers to all communion with God as many of them do While God by his Messengers and Spirit is speaking and man is hearing him while God is treating with man about his reconciliation and everlasting happiness and man is seriously attending to the treaty and motions of his Lord surely this is a very considerable part of our walking and converse with God 3. Also in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ we are called to a familiar converse with God He there appeareth to us by a wonderful condescension in the representing communicating signs of the flesh and blood of his Son in which he hath most conspicuously revealed his Love and Goodness to Believers There Christ himself with his Covenant-gifts are all delivered to us by these Investing signs of his own institution even as Knighthood is given by a sword and as a House is delivered by a Key or Land by a Twig and Turf Nowhere is God so near to man as in Jesus Christ and nowhere is Christ so familiarly represented to us as in this holy Sacrament Here we are called to sit with him at his Table as his invited welcome guests to commemorate his sacrifice to feed upon his very flesh and blood that is with our mouths upon his Representative flesh and blood and with our applying Faith upon his real flesh and blood by such a feeding as belongs to Faith The Marriage-Covenant betwixt God â—ncarnate and his espoused ones is there publickly sealed celebrated and solemnized There we are entertained by God as friends and not as servants only and that at the most precious costly feast If ever a believer may on earth expect his kindest entertainment and near access and a humble intimacy with his Lord it is in the participation of this sacrifice-feast which is called The Communion because it is appointed as well for our special Communion with Christ as with one another It is here that we have the fullest intimation expression and communication of the wondrous Love of God
talents and must make it our daily study and business to do him the greatest service we are able whatever it may cost us through the malice of the enemies being sure our labour shall not be in vain and that we cannot serve him at too dear a rate It is not as idle companions but as servants as souldiers as those that put forth all their strength to do his work and reach the Crown that we are called to walk with God And all this is done though not in the same degree by all yet according to the measure of their Holiness by every one that lives by faith Having told you what it is to Walk with God as to the Matter of it I shall more briefly tell you as to the Manner The nature of God of man and of the work will tell it you 1. That our walk with God must be with the greatest reverence were we never so much assured of his special love to us and never so full of faith and joy our reverence must be never the less for this Though Love cast out that guilty fear which discourageth the sinner from hoping and seeking for the mercy which would save him and which disposeth him to hate and fly from God yet doth it not cast out that Reverence of God which we owe him as his creatures so infinitely below him as we are It cannot be that God should be known and remembred as God without some admiring and awful apprehensions of him Infiniteness Omnipotency and inaccessible Majesty and Glory must needs affect the soul that knoweth them with reverence and selfe-abasement Though we receive a Kingdome that cannot be moved yet if we will serve God acceptably we must serve him with reverence and godly fear as knowing that as he is our God so he is also a consuming fire Heb. 12. 28 29. We must so worship him as those that remember that we are worms and guilty sinners and that he is most High and Holy and will be sanctified in them that come nigh him and before all the people he will be glorified Lev. 10. 3. Unreverence sheweth a kind of Atheistical contempt of God or else a sleepiness and inconsiderateness of the soul. The sense of the Goodness and Love of God must consist with the sense of his Holiness and Omnipotency It is presumption pride or blockish stupidity which excludeth Reverence which Faith doth cause and not oppose 2. Our walking with God must be a work of humble boldness and familiarity The Reverence of his Holiness and Greatness must not overcome or exclude the sense of his Goodness and compassion nor the full assurance of faith and hope Though by sin we are enemies and strange to God and stand a far off yet in Christ we are reconciled to him and brought near Eph. 2. 13. For he is our Peace who hath taken down the partition and abolished the enmity and reconciled Jew and Gentile unto God Ver. 14 15 16. And through him we have all an access to the Father by one spirit we are now no more strangers and forraigners but fellow-Citizens of the Saints and of the houshold of God ver 18 19. In him we have boldness and access with confidence by the belief of him Eph. 3. 12. Though of our selves we are unworthy to be called his children and may well stand a far off with the Publican and not dare to lift up our faces towards heaven but smite our breasts and say O Lord be merciful to me a sinner Yet have we boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the vail that is to say his flesh And having an high Priest over the house of God we may draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith Heb. 10. 19 20 21 22. Therefore whensoever we are afraid at the sight of sin and Justice let us remember that we have a great high Priest that is passed into the heavens even Jesus the Son of God and therefore let us come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need Heb. 4. 14 15 16. He that alloweth us to walk with him doth allow us such humble familiarity as beseemeth those that walk together with him 3. Our walking with God must be a work of some holy pleasure and delight We may unwillingly be drag'd into the presence of an enemy and serve as drudges upon meer necessity or fear But walking together is the loving and delightful converse of friends When we take sweet counsel of the Lord and set him alwaies as at our right hand and are glad to hear from him and glad to speak to him and glad to withdraw our thoughts from all the things and persons in the world that we may solace our selves in the contemplations of his excellency and the admirations of his Love and Glory this is indeed to walk with God You converse with him as with a stranger an enemy or your destroyer and not as with God while you had rather be far from him and only tremble in his presence and are glad when you have done and are got away but have no delight or pleasure in him If we can take delight in our walking with a friend a friend that is truly loving and constant a friend that is learned wise and holy if their wise and heavenly discourse be better to us then our recreations meat or drink or clothes what delight then should we find in our secret converse with the most high most wise and gracious God! How glad should we be to find him willing and ready to entertain us How glad should we be that we may employ our thoughts on so high and excellent an object what cause have we to say My meditation of him shall be sweet and I will be glad in the Lord Ps. 104. 34. In the multitude of my thoughts within me my sorrowful troublesome weary thoughts thy comforts do delight my soul Ps. 94. 19. Let others take pleasure in childish vanity or sensuality but say thou as David Ps. 119. 14 15 16. I have rejoyced in the wayes of thy Commandements as much as in all riches I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy waies I will delight my self in thy statutes and will not forget thy Word Ver. 47. I will delight my self in thy commandements which I have loved Let scorners delight in scorning and fools hate knowledge Prov. 1. 22. but make me to go in the path of thy commandements for therein do I delight Psal. 119. 35. If thou wouldst experimentally know the safety and glory of a holy life delight thy self in the Lord and he shall give thee the desire of thy heart Ps. 37. 4. Especially when we draw near him in his solemn worship and when we separate our selves on his holy dayes from all our common worldly thoughts to be conversant as in
what it is to be Godly and to walk with God and what it is to be an Atheist or Ungodly you may easily see that Godliness is more rare and Atheism more common than many that themselves are Atheists will believe It is not that which a man calls his God that is taken by him for his God indeed It is not the Tongue but the Heart that is the man Pilate called Christ the King of the Jews when he crucified him The Jews called God their Father when Christ telleth them they were of their father the Devil and proveth it because what ever they said they would do his lusts Joh. 8. 44. The same Jews pretended to honour the name of the Messiah and expect him while they killed him The question is not what men call themselves but what they are Not whether you say you take God for your God but whether you do so indeed Not whether you profess your selves to be Atheists but whether you are Atheists indeed or not If you are not look over what I have here said and tell your consciences Do you walk with God who is it that you submit your selves willingly to be disposed of by To whom are you most subject and whose commands have the most effectual authority with you who is the Chief Governour of your hearts and lives whom is it that you principally desire to please whom do you most fear and whose displeasure do you principally avoid from whom is it that you expect your greaetest reward and in whom and with whom do you place and expect your happiness whose work is it that you do as the greatest business of your lives Is it the goodness of God in himself and unto you that draweth up your hearts to him in Love Is he the ultimate End of the main intentions design and industry of your lives Do you trust upon his Word as your security for your everlasting hopes and happiness Do you study and observe him in his works Do you really live as in his presence Do you delight in his Word and meditate on it Do you love the Communion of Saints and to be most frequent and familiar with them that are most frequent and familiar with Christ Do you favour more the particular affectionate discourse about his Nature Will and Kingdom than the frothy talk of empty wits or the common discourse of carnal worldlings Do you love to be employed in thanking him for his Mercies and in praising him and declaring the glory of his attributes and works Is your dependence on him as your great benefactor and do you receive your mercies as his gifts If thus your principal observation be of God and your chief desire after God and your chiefest confidence in God and your chiefest business in the world be with God and for God and your chifest joy be in the favour of God when you can apprehend it and in the prosperity of his Church and your hopes of glory and your chiefest grief and trouble be your sinful distance from him and your backwardness and disability in his love and service and the fear of his displeasure and the injuries done to his Gospel and honour in the world then I must needs say you are savingly delivered from your Atheism and Ungodliness you do not only talk of God but walk with God you are then acquainted with that spiritual life and work which the sensual world is unacquainted with and with those invisible everlasting excellencies which if worldlings knew they would change their minds and choice and pleasures You are then acquainted with that rational manly saintly life which ungodly men are strangers to and you are in the way of that well grounded Hope and Peace to which all the Pleasures and Crowns on earth if compared are but cheats and misery But if you were never yet brought to walk with God do not think that you have a sound belief in God nor that you acknowledge him sincerely nor that you are saved from heart atheism Nor is it Piety in the Opinion and the Tongue that will save him that is an Atheist or ungodly in heart and life Divinity is an affective-practical science Knowing is not the ultimate or perfective act of man but a means to holy Love and Joy and service Nor is it clear and solid knowledge if it do not somewhat affect the heart and engage and actuate the life according to the nature and use of the thing known The soundness of Knowledge and Belief is not best discerned in the intellectual acts themselves but in their powerful free and pleasant efficacy upon our choice and practice By these therefore you must judge whether you are Godly or Atheistical The question is not what your Tongues say of God nor what complemental ceremonious observances you allow him but what your Hearts and your endeavours say of him and whether you glorifie him as God when you say you know him Otherwise you will find that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who held the truth in unrighteousness Rom. 1. 18 21. And now alas what matter of lamentation is here before us To see how seriously men converse with one another and how God is overlookt or neglected by the most How men live together as if there were more that is considerable and regardable in these particles of animated dust then in the Lord Almighty and in all his graces service and rewards To see how God is cast aside and his interest made to give place to the interest of the flesh and his services must stay till men have done their service to their lusts or to worldly men that can do them hurt or shew them favour And his will must not be done when it crosseth the will of sinful man How little do all the commands and promises and threatnings of God signifie with these Atheistical men in comparison of their lusts or the laws of men or any thing that concerneth their temporal prosperity O how is the world revolted from their Maker How have they lost the knowledge of themselves and forgotten their natures capacities and obligations and what it is to be indeed a man O hearken sinners to the call of your Redeemer Return O seduced wandering souls and know at last your resting place why is not God in all your thoughts or why is he thought on with so much remisness unwillingness and contempt and with so little pleasure seriousness or regard Do you understand your selves in this Do you deal worthily with God Or wisely for your selves Do you take more pleasure with the Prodigal to feed swine and to feed with swine then to dwell at home with your heavenly Father and to walk before him and serve him in the world Did you but know how dangerous a way you have been in and how unreasonably you have dealt to forsake God in your hearts and follow that which cannot profit you what haste would you make
to leave the crowd and come home to God and try a more noble and gainful conversation If Reasons may have room and leave to work upon you I will set a few before you more distinctly to call you off from your barren inordinate creature converse to a believing serious converse with God 1. The higher and more excellent the object is especially when it is also of most concernment to our selves the more excellent is the converse Therefore as nothing dare compare it self with God so no employment may be compared with thâ—s of holy walking with him How vile a contempt is it of the Almighty and of our Celestial joyes for the heart to neglect them and turn away and dwell upon vanity and trouble and let these highest pleasures go Is not God and Glory worthy of thy thoughts and all thy service 2. What are those things that take thee up Are they better then God Or fitter to supply thy wants If thou think and trust in them accordingly ere long thou shalt know better what they are and have enough of thy cursed choice and confidence Tell those that stand by thee at the parting hour whether thou didst choose aright and make a gaining or a saving match O poor sinners have you not yet warning enough to satisfie you that all things below are Vanity and Vexation and that all your hope of happiness is above Will not the testimony of God satisfie you will not the experience of the world for so many thousand years together satisfie you will not the ill success of all the damned satisfie you will nothing but your own experience convince you If so consider well the experience you have already made and seasonably retire and try no further and trust not so dangerous a deceiver to the last least you buy your knowledge at a dearer rate then you will now believe 3. You have daily more to do with God than with all the world whether you will or no And therefore seeing you cannot avoid him if you would prefer that voluntary obediential converse which hath a reward before that necessitated converse which hath none You are alwaies in his hands he made you for his service and he will dispose of you and all that you have according to his will It shall not go with you as your selves would have it nor as your friends would have it nor as Princes and great ones of the world would have it unless as their wills comply with Gods but as God would have it who will infallibly accomplish all his will If a sparrow fall not to the ground without him and all the hairs of our heads are numbered then certainly he overruleth all your interests and affairs and they are absolutely at his dispose To whom then in reason should you so much apply your selves as unto him If you will not take notice of him he will take notice of you He will remember you whether you remember him or not but it may be with so strict and severe a remembrance as may make you wish he did quite forget you You are alwaies in his presence and can you then forget him and hold no voluntary converse with him when you stand before him If it be but mean inferiour persons that we dwell with and are still in company with yet we mind them more and speak more to them then we do to greater persons that we seldom see But in God there is both Greatness and Nearness to invite you Should not all the worms on earth stand by while the Glorious God doth call you to him and offer you the honour and happiness of his converse shall the Lord of Heaven and Earth stand by and be shut out while you are chatting or trifling with his creatures Nay shall he be neglected that is alwaies with you You cannot remove your selves a moment from his sight and therefore you should not shut your eyes and turn away your face and refuse to observe him who is still observing you Moreover your dependence both for soul and body is all on him You can have nothing desirable but by his gift He feeds you he cloatheth you he maintaineth you he gives you life and breath and all things and yet can you overlook him or forget him Do not all his mercies require your acknowledgement A Dog will follow him that feedeth him his eye will be upon his Master And shall we live upon God and yet forget and disregard him We are taught a better use of his Mercies by the Holy Prophet Psal. 66. 8 9. O bless our God ye people and make the voice of his praise to be heard which holdeth our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved Nay it is not your selves alone but all the world that depends on God It is his power that supporteth them and his will that disposeth of them and his bounty that provideth for them And therefore he must be the observation and admiration of the world It is less unreasonable to take no notice of the Earth that beareth us and yieldeth us fruit and of the Sun that yields us heat and light than to disregard the Lord that is more to us than Sun and Earth and all things The eyes of all things wait on him and he giveth them their meat in season He openeth his hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing Psal. 145. 15 16. The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works All his works therefore shall praise him and his Saints shall bless him They shall speak of the glory of his Kingdom and talk of his power vers 10 11. Moreover God is so abundantly and wonderfully represented to us in all his works as will leave us under the guilt of most unexcusable contempt if we overlook him and live as without him in the world The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy work Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge Psa. 19. 1 2. Thus that which may be known of God is manifest for the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that the ungodly are without excuse Rom. 1. 19 20. Cannot you see that which all the world revealeth nor hear that which all the world proclaimeth O sing ye forth the honour of his name make his praise glorious Say to the Lord How terrible art thou in thy works through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee they shall sing unto thy name come and see the works of God he is tertible in his doings towards the children of men Psal. 66. 2 3 4 5. Can we pass him by that is everywhere present and by every Creature represented to us Can we forget him when all the world are our
right his kindness and sollicitations of you and you have so little to say for any pretence of right or merit in the creature Why are not men ashamed of the greatest dishonesty against God when all that have any humanity left them do take adultery theft and other dishonesty against creatures for a shame The time will come when God and his interest shall be better understood that this dishonesty against Him will be the matter of the most confounding shame that ever did or could befall men Prevent this by the juster exercise of your thoughts and keeping them pure and chast to God 10. If God be not in your thoughts and the chiefest in them there will be no matter in them of solid comfort or content Trouble and deceit will be all their work when they have fled about the earth and taken a tast of every flower they will come loaden home with nothing better then Vanity and Vexation Such thoughts may excite the laughter of a fool and cause that mirth that is called madness Eccles. 7. 4 6. and 2. 2. But they will never conduce to setled Peace and durable content And therefore they are alwaies repented of themselves and are troublesome to our review as being the shame of the sinner which he would fain be cleared of or disown Though you may approach the creature with passionate fondness and the most delightful promises and hopes be sure of it you will come off at last with grief and disappointment if not with the loathing of that which you chose for your delight Your thoughts are in a wilderness among thorns and bryars when God is not in them as their guide and end They are lost and torn among the creatures but rest and satisfaction they will find none It may be at the present it is pleasanter to you to think of recreation or business or worldly wealth then to think of God But the pleasure of these thoughts is as delusory and short-lived as are the things themselves on which you think How long will you think with pleasure on such fading transitory things And the pleasure cannot be great at the present which reacheth but the flesh and fantasie and which the possessed knoweth will be but short Nay you will shortly find by sad experience that of all the creatures under heaven there will none be so bitter to your thoughts as those which you now find greatest carnal sweetness in O how bitter will the thought of idolized honour and abused wealth and greatness be to a dying or a damned Dives The thoughts of that Alehouse or Playhouse where thou hadst thy greatest pleasure will trouble thee more then the thoughts of all the houses in the town besides The thoughts of that one woman with whom thou didst commit thy pleasant sin will wound and vex thee more then the thoughts of all the women in the town besides The thoughts of that beloved sport which thou couldst not be weaned from will be more troublesome to thee then the thoughts of a thousand other things in which thou hadst no inordinate delight For the end of sinful mirth is sorrow when Solomon had tryed to please himself to the full in mirth in buildings vineyards woods waters in servants and possessions silver and gold and cattel and singers and instruments of musick of all sorts in greatness and all that the eye or appetite or heart desired he findeth when he awaked from this pleasant dream that he had all this while been taken up with Vanity and Vexation in so much that he saith on the review Therefore I hated life because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous to me for all is vanity and vexation of spirit Yea I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun Eccles. 2. 1 2 3 c. 17. 18. You may toil out and tire your selves among these bryars in this barren wilderness but if ever you would feel any solid ground of quietness and rest it must be by coming off from vanity and seeking your felicity in God and living sincerely for Him and upon Him as the worldling doth upon the world His pardoning mercy must begin your Peace forgiving you your former thoughts and â—is healing quickening mercy must increase it by teaching you better to employ your thoughts and drawing up your hearts â—nto himself and his glorifying mercy must perfect it by giving you the full intuition and fruition of himself in heaven and employing you in his perfect Love and Praise not leaving any room for creatures nor suffering a thought to be employed on vanity for ever CHAP. IV. BY this time I hope you may see reason to call your selves to a strict account what converse you have been taken up with in the world and upon what you have exercised your thoughts surely you must needs be conscious that the thoughts which have been denyed God have brought you home but little satisfaction and have not answered the ends of your creation redemption or preservation and that they are now much fitter matter for your penitential tears then for your comfort in the review I do not think you dare own and stand to those thoughts which have been spent for fleshly pleasures or in unnecessary worldly cares or that were wasted in impertinent vagaries upon any thing or nothing when you should have been seeking God! I do not think you have now any great pleasure in the review of those thoughts which once were taken up with pleasure when your most pleasant thoughts should have been of God Dare you approve of your rejecting your Creatour and the great concernments of your soul out of your thoughts and wasting them upon things unprofitable and vain Did not God and Heaven deserve more of your serious thoughts then any thing else that ever they were employed on Have you laid them out on any thing that more concerned you or on any thing more excellent more honourable more durable or that could claim precedency upon any just account Did you not shut heaven it self out of your thoughts when you shut out God And is it not just that God and Heaven should shut out you If Heaven be not the principal matter of your thoughts its plain that you do not principally love it And if so judge you whether those that Love it not are fit to be made possessors of it O poor distracted senseless world Is not God Great enough to command and take up your chiefest cogitations Is not Heaven enough to find them work and afford them satisfaction and delight And yet is the dung and dotage of the world enough Is your honour and wealth and fleshly delights aed sports enough God will shortly make you know whether this were wise and equal dealing Is God so low so little so undeserving to be so oft and easily forgotten and so hardly and so sleightly remembred I tell you ere long he will make you think of him to your sorrow whether you will or
no if grace do not now set open your hearts and procure him better entertainment But perhaps you will think that you walk with God because you think of him sometimes ineffectually and as on the by But is he esteemed as your God if he have not the Command and if he have not the precedency of his creatures Can you dream that indeed you walk with God when your hearts were never grieved for offending him nor never much solicitous how to be reconciled to him nor much inquisitive whether your state or way be pleasing or displeasing to him when all the business of an unspeakable importance which you have to do with God before you pass to judgement is forgotten and undone as if you knew not of any such work that you had to do when you make no serious preparation for death when you call not upon God in secret or in your families unless with a little heartless lip labour and when you love not the spirituality of his worship but only delude your souls with the mockage of hypocritical outside complement Do you walk with God while you are plotting for preferment and gaping after worldly greatness while you are gratifying all the desires of your flesh and making provision for the future satisfying of its lusts Rom. 13. 13. Are you walking with God when you are hating him in his Holiness his Justice his Word and Waies and hating all that seriously love and seek him when you are doing your worst to dispatch the work of your damnation and put your salvation past all hope and draw as many to Hell with you as you can If this be a walking with God you may take further comfort that you shall also dwell with God according to the sense of such a walk you shall dwell with him as a devouring fire and as just whom you thus walked with in the contempt oâ— his mercies and the provocation of his Justice I tell you if you walkt with God indeed his authority would rule you his Greatness would much take up your minds and leave less room for little things You would trust his promises and fear his threatnings and be awed by his presence and the Idols of your hearts would fall before him He would over power your lusts and call you off from your ambitious and covetous designs and obscure all the creatures Glory Believing serious effectual thoughts of God are very much different from the common doubtful dreaming uneffectual cogitations of the ungodly world Object But perhaps some will say This seemeth to be the work of Preachers and not of every Christian to be alwaies meditating of God Poor people must think of other matters They have their business to do and their families to provide for And ignorant people are weak-headed and are not able either to manage or endure a contemplative life so much thinking of God will make them melancholy and mad as experience tells us it hath done by many and therefore this is no exercise for them To this I answer 1. Every Christian hath a God to serve and a Soul to save and a Christ to believe in and obey and an endless happiness to secure and enjoy as well as Preachers Pastors must study to instruct their flock and to save themselves and those that hear them The people must study to understand and receive the mercy offered them and to make their own calling and election sure It is not said of Pastors only but of every blessed man that His delight is in the Law of the Lord and therein doth he meditate day and night Psal. 1. 2. 2. And the due meditation of the soul upon God is so far from taking you off from your necessary business in the world that it is the only way to your orderly and successful management of it 3. And it is not a distracting thoughtfulness that I perswade you to or which is included in a Christians walk with God but it is a directing quickening exalting comforting course of meditation Many a hundred have grown melancholy and mad with careful discontentful thoughts of the world it doth not follow therefore that no man must think of the world at all for fear of being mad or melancholy but only that they should think of it more regularly and correct the errour of their thoughts and passions so is it about God and heavenly things Our thoughts are to be well ordered and the errour of them cured and not the use of them forborn Atheism and Impiety and forgetting God are unhappy means to prevent melancholy There are wiser means for avoiding madness than by renouncing all our Reason and living by sense like the beasts that perish and forgetting that we have an everlasting life to live But yet because I am sensible that some do here mistake on the other hand and I would not lead you into any extream I shall fully remove the scruple contained in this Objection by shewing you in those following Propositions in what sense and how far your thoughts must be taken up with God supposing what was said in the beginning where I described to you the duty of Walking with God Prop. 1. When we tell you that your Thoughts must be on God it is not a course of idle musing or meer thinking that we call you to but it is a necessary practical thinking of that which you have to do and of him that you must love obey and enjoy You will not forget your Parents or Husband or Wife or Friend and yet you will not spend your time in sitting still and thinking of them with a musing unprofitable thoughtfulness But you will have such thoughts of them and so many as are necessary to the Ends even to the Love and Service which you owe them and to the Delight that your hearts should have in the fruition of them You cannot love or obey or take pleasure in those that you will not think of You will follow your trades or your Masters service but unhappily if you will not think on them Thinking is not the work that we must take up with It is but a subservient instrumental duty to promote some greater higher duty Therefore we must Think of God that we may Love him and do his Service and Trust him and Fear him and Hope in him and make him our Delight And all this is it that we call you to when we are perswading you to Think on God 2. An hypocrite or a wicked enemy of God may Think of him speculatively and perhaps be more frequent in such thoughts than many practical believers A Learned man may study about God as he doth about other matters and names and notions and propositions and decisions concerning God may be a principal part of his Learning A Preacher may study about God and the matters of God as a Physician or a Lawyer do about the matters of their own profession either for the pleasure which knowledge as knowledge brings to humane nature or for
the credit of being esteemed wise and learned or because their gain and maintenance comes in this way They that fill many Volumes with Controversies concerning God and fill the Church with contentions and troubles by them and their own hearts with malice and uncharitableness against those that are not of their opinions have many and many a thought of God which yet will do nothing to the saving of their souls no more than they do to the sanctifying of them And such learned men may think more Orthodoxly and Methodically concerning God than many an honest serious Christian who yet thinks of him more effectually and savingly Even as they can discourse more orderly and copiously of God when yet they have no saving knowledge of him 3. All men must not bestow so much time in Meditation as some must do It is the Calling of Ministers to study so as to furnish thrir minds with all those truths concerning God which are needful to the Edification of the Church and so to meditate on these things as to give themselves wholly to them 1 Tim. 4. 15 16. It is both the work of their common and their special Calling The study necessary to Christians as such belongeth as well to others as to them But other men have another special or particular Calling which also they must think of so far as the nature and ends of their daily labours do require It is a hurtful errour to imagine that men must either lay by their Callings to meditate on God or that they must do them negligently or to be taken up in the midst of their employments with such studies of God as Ministers are that are separated to that work 4. No man is bound to be continually taken up with actual distinct cogitations about God For in duty we have many many other things to think on which must have their time And as we have Callings to follow and must eat our bread in the sweat of our brows so we must manage them with prudence A good man will guide his affairs with discretion Psal. 112. 5. It is both necessary as duty and necessary as a means to the preservation of our very faculties that both body and mind have their times of employment about our lawful business in the world The understandings of many cannot bear it to be alwaies employed on the greatest and most serious things Like Lute strings they will break if they be raised too high and be not let down and relaxed when the lesson is plaid To think of nothing else but God is to break the Law of God and to confound the mind and to disable it to think aright of God or any thing As he that bid us pray continually did not mean that we should do nothing else or that actual prayer should have no interruptions but that habitual desires should on all meet occasion be actuated and exprest so he that would be chief in all our thoughts did never mean that we should have no thoughts of any thing else or that our serious meditation on him should be continual without interruption but that the final intending of God and our dependence on him should be so constant as to be the spring or mover of the rest of the thoughts and actions of our lives 5. An habitual intending God as our End and depending on his support and subjection to his Government will carry on the soul in a sincere and constant course of Godliness though the actual most observed thoughts of the soul be fewer in number about God than about the means that lead unto him and the occurrences in our way The soul of man is very active and comprehensive and can think of several things at once and when it is once clear and resolved in any case it can act according to that knowledge and resolution without any present sensible cogitation nay while its actual most observed thoughts are upon something else A Musician that hath an habitual skill can keep time and tune while he is thinking of some other matter A Weaver can cast his shuttle right and work truly while he is thinking or talking of other things A man can eat and drink with discretion while he talks of other things Some men can dictate to two or three Scribes at once upon divers subjects A Traveller can keep on his way though he seldome think distinctly of his Journies end but be thinking or discoursing most of the way upon other matters For before he undertook his Journey he thought both of the end and way and resolved then which way to go and that he would go through all both fair and foul and not turn back till he saw the place And this habitual understanding and resolution may be secretly and unobservedly active so as to keep a man from erring and from turning back though at the same time the Travellers most sensible thoughts and his discourse may be upon something else When a man is once resolved of his End and hath laid his design he is past deliberating of that and therefore hath less use of his cogitations thereabout but is readier to lay them out upon the means which may be still uncertain or may require his frequent deliberation We have usually more thoughts and speeches by the way about our company or our Horses or Innes or other accommodations or the fairness or foulness of the way and other such occurrences than we have about the place that we are going to And yet this secret intention of our end will bring us thither So when a soul hath cast up his accounts and hath renounced a worldly and sensual felicity and hath fixed his hopes and resolutions upon Heaven and is resolved to cast himself upon Christ and take God for his only portion this secret habitual resolution will do much to keep him constant in the way though his thoughts and talk be frequently on other things Yea when we are thinking of the creature and feel no actual thoughts of God it is yet God more than the creature that we think of For we did beforehand look on the creature as Gods work representing him unto the world and as his talents which we must employ for him and as every creature is related to him And this estimation of the creature is still habitually and in some secret less-perceived acts most prevalent in the soul. Though I am not alwaies sensibly thinking of the King when I use his Coin or obey his Law c. yet it is only as his Coin still that I use it and as his Laws that I obey them Weak Habits cannot do their work without great carefulness of thoughts but perfect habits will act a man with little thoughtfulness as coming near the natural way of operation And indeed the imperfection of our Habitual Godliness doth make our serious thoughts and vigilancy and industry to be the more necessary to us 6. There are some thoughts of God that are necessary to the very
Being of a Holy state as that God be so much in our thoughts as to be preferred before all things else and principally beloved and obeyed and to be the end of our lives and the byas of our wills And there are some thoughts of God that are necessary only to acting and increase of grace 7. So great is the weakness of our Habits so many and great are the temptations to be overcome so many difficulties are in our way and the occasions so various for the exercise of each grace that it behoveth a Christian to exercise as much thoughtfulness about his end and work as hath any tendency to promote his work and to attain his end But such a thoughtfulness as hindereth us in our work by stopping or distracting or diverting us is no way pleasing unto God So excellent is our end that we can never encourage and delight the mind too much in the forethoughts of it So sluggish are our hearts and so loose and unconstant are our apprehensions and resolutions that we have need to be most frequently quickening them and lifting at them and renewing our desires and suppressing the contrary desires by the serious thoughts of God and Immortality Our Thoughts are the bellows that must kindle the flames of Love desire hope and zeal Our thoughts are the spur that must put on a sluggish tired heart And so far as they conduce to any such works and ends as these they are desireable and good But what Master loveth to see his servant sit down and Think when he should be at work Or to use his Thoughts only to grieve and vex himself for his faults but not to mend them to sit down lamenting that he is so bad and unprofitable a servant when he should be up and doing his Masters business as well as he is able Such Thoughts are sins as hinder us from duty or discourage or unfit us for it however they may go under a better name 8. The Godly themselves are very much wanting in the holiness of their thoughts and the liveliness of their affections Sense leadeth away the thoughts too easily after these present sensible things while faith being infirm the Thoughts of God and heaven are much disadvantaged by their invisibility Many a gracious soul cryeth out O that I could think as easily and as affectionately and as unweariedly about the Lord and the life to come as I can do about my friends my health my habitation my business and other concernments of this life But alas such thoughts of God and Heaven have far more enemies and resistance then the thoughts of earthly matters have 9. It is not distracting vexatious thoughts of God that the holy Scriptures call us to but it is to such thoughts as tend to the healing and peace and felicity of the soul and therefore it is not to a melancholy but a joyful life If God be better then the world it must needs be better to think of him If he be more beloved then any friend the thoughts of him should be sweeter to us If he be the everlasting hope and happiness of the soul it should be a foretast of happiness to find him nearest to our hearts The nature and use of holy thoughts and of all Religion is but to exalt and sanctifie and delight the soul and bring it up to everlasting Rest And is this the way to melancholy or madness Or is it not liker to make men melancholy to think of nothing but a vain deceitful and vexatious world that hath much to disquiet us but nothing to satisfie us and can give the soul no hopes of any durable delight 10. Yet as God is not equally related unto all so is he not the same to all mens thoughts If a wicked enemy of God and godliness be forced and frightened into some thoughts of God you cannot expect that they should be as sweet and comfortable thoughts as those of his most obedient children are While a man is under the guilt and power of his reigning sin and under the wrath and curse of God unpardoned unjustified a child of the devil it is not this mans duty to think of God as if he were fully reconciled to him and took pleasure in him as in his own Nor is it any wonder if such a man think of God with fear and think of his sin with grief and shame Nor is it any wonder if the justified themselves do think of God with fear and grief when they have provoked him by some sinful and unkind behaviour or are cast into doubts of their sincerity and interest in Christ and when he hides his face or assaulteth them with his terrors To doubt whether a man shall live for ever in Heaven or Hell may rationally trouble the thoughts of the wisest man in the world and it were but sottishness not to be troubled at it David himself could say In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord my sore ran in the night and ceased not my soul refused to be comforted I remembred God and was troubled I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed Thou holdest mine eyes waking I am so troubled that I cannot speak Will the Lord cast off for ever Psal. 77. 2 3 4 5 7. Yet all the sorrowful thoughts of God which are the duty of either the godly or the wicked are but the necessary preparatives of their joy It is not to melancholy distraction or despair that God calleth any even the worst But it is that the wicked would Seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near that he would forsake his way and the unrighteous man his Thoughts and return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God and he will abundantly pardon Isa. 55. 6 7. Despair is sin and the thoughts that tend to it are sinful thoughts even in the wicked If worldly crosses or the sense of danger to the soul had cast any into melancholy or overwhelmed them with fears you can name nothing in the world that in reason should be so powerful a remedy to recover them as the Thoughts of God his Goodness and Mercy and readiness to receive and pardon those that turn unto him his Covenant and Promises and Grace through Christ and the everlasting happiness which all may have that will accept and seek it in the time of grace and prefer it before the deceitful transitory pleasures of the world If the Thoughts of God and of the Heavenly everlasting joyes will not comfort the soul and cure a sad despairing mind I know not what can rationally do it Though yet its true that a presumptuous sinner must needs be in a trembling state till he find himself at peace with God And mistaken Christians that are cast into causeless doubts and fears by the malice of Satan are unlikely to walk comfortably with God till they are resolved and recovered from their mistakes and fears CHAP. V. Obj.
world his God so doth it savour of the same hainous sin to lament our loss of Creatures more than the displeasure of God If God be my enemy or I am fallen under his indignation I have then so much greater matters to lament than the loss or absence or frowns of man as should almost make me forget that there is such a thing as man to be regarded But if God be my Father and my friend in Christ I have then so much to think of with delight and to recreate and content my soul as will proclaim it most incongruous and absurd to lament inordinately the absence of a worm while I have his Love and presence who is All in All. If God cannot content me and be not enough for me how is he then my God or how shall he be my Heaven and everlasting Happiness 2. If God be with me he is with me to whom I am absolutely devoted I am wholly his and have acknowledged his interest in me and long ago disclaimed all usurpers and repented of alienations and unreservedly resigned my self to him And where should I dwell but with him that is my owner and with whom I have made the solemnest Covenant that ever I made â— never gave my self to any other but in subordination to him and with a salvo for his highest inviolable right Where should my goods be but in my own house with whom should a Servant dwell but with his Master and a Wife but with her Husband and Children but with their Father I am nearlier related to my God and to my Saviour than I am to any of my Relations in this world I owe more to him than to all the world I have renounced all the world as they stand in any competition or comparison with him And can I want their company then while I am with him How shall I hate Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister for his sake if I cannot spare them or be without them to enjoy him To hate them is but to use them as men do hated things that is to cast them away with contempt as they would alâ—enate me from Christ and to cleave to him and be satisfied in him alone I am now married to Christ and therefore must chearfully leave Father and Mother and my native place and all to cleave to him And with whom should I now delight to dwell but with him who hath taken me into so near relation to be as it were one flesh with him O my dear Lord hide not thou thy face from an unkind an unworthy sinner Let me but dwell with thee and see thy face and feel the gracious embracements of thy Love and then let me be cast off by all the world if thou see it meetest for me or let all other friends be where they will so that my soul may be with thee I have agreed for thy sake to forsake all even the dearest that shall stand against thee and I resolve by thy grace to stand to this agreement 3. If God be with me I am not alone for he is with me that Loveth me best The Love of all the friends on earth is nothing to his Love O how plainly hath he declared that he loveth me in the strange condescention the sufferings death and intercession of his Son What Love hath he declared in the communications of his Spirit and the operations of his Grace and the near relations into which he brought me What Love hath he declared in in the course of his providences in many and wonderful preservations and deliverances in the conduct of his wisdome and in a life of mercies What Love appeareth in his precious promises and the glorious provisions he hath made for me with himself to all eternity O my Lord I am ashamed that thy Love is so much lost that it hath no better return from an unkind unthankful heart that I am not more delighted in thee and swallowed up in the contemplation of thy Love I can contentedly let go the society and converse of all others for the converse of some one bosome friend that is dearer to me than they all as Jonathan to David And can I not much more be satisfied in thee alone and let go all if I may continue with thee My very Dog will gladly for sake all the Town and all persons in the world to follow me alone And have I not yet found so much Love and Goodness in thee my dear and blessed God as to be willing to converse alone with thee All men delight most in the company of those that Love them best They choose not to converse with the Multitude when they look for solace and content but with their dearest friends And should any be so dear to me as God O were not thy Love unworthily neglected by an unthankful heart I should never be so unsatisfied in thee but should take up or seek my comforts in thee I should then say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee Though not only my friends but my flesh and heart themselves should fail me it is thou that will still be the strength of my heart and my portion for ever it is good therefore for me to draw near to thee how far soever I am from man O let me there dwell where thou wilt not be strange for thy loving kindness is better than life instead of the multitude of my turmoiling thoughts let me be taken up in the believing views of thy reconciled face and in the glad attendance upon thy Grace or at least in the multitude of my thoughts within me let thy celestial comforts delight my soul. Let me dwell as in thy family and when I awake let me be still with thee Let me go no whither but where I am still following thee Let me do nothing but thy work nor serve any other but when I may truly call it a serving thee Let me hear nothing but thy voice and let me know thy voice by whatever instrument thou shalt speak Let me never see any thing but thy self and the glass that representeth thee and the books in which I may read thy name And let me never play with the outside and gaze on words and letters as insignificant and not observe thy name which is the sense Whether it be in company or in solitude let me be continually with thee and do thou vouchsafe to hold me by my right hand And guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me unto thy glory Psal. 73. 23 24 25 26 28. Psal. 63. 3. 4. If God be with me I am not alone for I shall be with him whose Love is of greater use and benefit to me than the Love of all my friends in the world Their Love may perhaps be some little comfort as it floweth from His But it is His Love by which and upon which I Live It is His Love that gives
Righteous Judgement be remembered and all be terminated in the glorious everlasting Kingdom Is it not much better thus to converse with him that I must be with for ever about the place and the company and work and concernments of my perpetual abode then to be taken up with strangers in my way and detained by their impertinencies I have form'd my self so long in these meditations that I will but name the rest and tell you what I had further to have treated on and leave the enlargement to your own meditations 8. I have no reason to be weary of converse with God seeing it is that for which all humane converse is regardable Converse with man is only so far desirable as it tendeth to our Converse with God And therefore the end must be preferred before the means 9. It is the office of Christ and the work of the Holy Ghost and the use of all the means of Grace and of all creatures mercies and afflictions to reduce our straying souls to God that we may converse with him and enjoy him 10. Converse with God is most suitable to those that are so near to death It best prepareth for it It is likest to the work that we are next to do We had rather when death comes be found conversing with God then with Man It is God that a dying man hath principally to do with It is his judgement that he is going to and his mercy that he hath to trust upon And therefore it concerneth us to draw near him now and be no strangers to him lest strangeness then should be our terrour 11. How wonderful a condescension is it that God should be willing to converse with me with such a worm and sinful wretch And therefore how unexcusable is my crime if I refuse his company and so great a mercy 12. Lastly Heaven it self is but our Converse with God and his Glorified ones though in a more perfect manner then we can here conceive And therefore our holy converse with him here is the state that is likest Heaven and that prepareth for it and all the Heaven that is on earth IT remaineth now that I briefly tell you what you should do to attain and manage this Converse with God in the improvement of your solitude For Directions in general for Walking with God I reserve for another place At present let these few suffice Direct 1. If you would comfortably Converse with God make sure that you are Reconciled to him in Christ and that he is indeed your friend and Father Can two walk together except they be agreed Can you take pleasure in dwelling with the consuming fire or conversing with the most dreadful enemy Yet this I must add that every doubting or self-accusing soul may not find a pretence to fly from God 1. That God ceaseth not to be a Father when ever a fearful soul is drawn to question it or deny it 2. That in the Universal Love and Grace of God to miserable sinners and in the universal act of conditional pardon and oblivion and in the offers of Grace and the readiness of God to receive the penitent there is Glad tidings that should exceedingly rejoyce a sinner and there is sufficient encouragement to draw the most guilty miserable sinner to seek to God and sue for mercy But yet the sweetest converse is for children and for those that have some assurance that they are children But perhaps you will say that this is not easily attained How shall we know that he is our friend In brief I answer If you are unfeignedly friends to God it is because he first loved you Prefer him before all other friends and all the wealth and vanity of the world Provoke him not by wilfulness or neglect use him as your best friend and abuse him not by disobedience or ingratitude own him before all at the dearest rates whenever you are called to it Desire his presence Lament his absence Love him from the bottom of your hearts Think not hardly of him Suspect him not Misunderstand him not Hearken not to his enemies Receive not any false reports against him Take him to be really Better for you than all the world Do these and doubt not but you are friends with God and God with you In a word Be but heartily willing to be friends to God and that God should be your chiefest friend and you may be sure that it is so indeed and that you are and have what you desire And then how delightfully may you converse with God! Direct 2. Wholly depend on the Mediation of Christ the great Reconciler Without him there is no coming near to God But in his Beloved you shall be accepted Whatever fear of his displeasure shall surprize you fly presently for safety unto Christ Whatever guilt shall look you in the face commit your self and cause to Christ and desire him to answer for you When the doors of mercy seem to be shut up against you fly to him that bears the keyes and can at any time open to you and let you in Desire him to answer for you to God to your consciences and against all accusers By him alone you may boldly and comfortably converse with God But God will not know you out of him Direct 3. Take heed of bringing particular Guilt into the presence of God if you would have sweet communion with him Christ himself never reconciled God to sin And the sinner and sin are so nearly related that for all the death of Christ you shall feel that iniquity dwelleth not with God but he hateth the works of it and the foolish shall not stand in his sight and that if you will presume to sin because you are his Children be sure your fin will find you out O what fears what shame what self-abhorrence and self-revenge will guilt raise in a penitent soul when it comes into the light of the presence of the Lord it will unavoidably abate your boldness and your comforts When you should be sweetly delighting in his pleased face and promised Glory you will be befooling your selves for your former sin and ready even to tear your flesh to think that ever you should do as you have done and use him as you would not have used a common friend and cast your selves upon his wrath But an innocent soul or pacified conscience doth walk with God in quietness and delight without those frowns and fears which are a taste of Hell to others Direct 4. If you would comfortably converse with God be sure that you bring not Idols in your hearts Take heed of inordinate affection to any Creature Let all things else be nothing to you that you may have none to take up your thoughts but God Let your Minds be further separate from them than your Bodies Bring not into solitude or to contemplation a proud or lustful or covetous mind It much more concerneth thee what Heart thou bringest that what Place thou art in or what work
Hell How chearfully may we go out of this troublesome world and leave the greatest prosperity behind us when we are sure to live in Heaven for ever Even an Infidel will say that he could suffer or dye if he could but be certain to be Glorified in Heaven when he is dead 3. Walking with God doth mortifie the flesh and allay the affections and lusts thereof The soul that is taken up with higher matters and daily seeth things more excellent becometh as dead to the things below And thus it weaneth us from all that is in the world which seemeth most desirable to carnal men And when the flesh is mortified and the world is nothing to us or but as a dead and loathsome carkass what is there left to be very troublesome in any suffering from the world or to make us loth by death to leave it It is men that know not God that overvalue the profits and honours of the world and men that never felt the comforts of Communion with God that set too much by the pleasures of the flesh And it is men that set too much by these that make so great a matter of suffering It is he that basely overvalueth wealth that whineth and repineth when he comes to poverty It is he that set too much by his honour and being befooled by his pride doth greatly esteem the thoughts or applauding words of men that swelleth against those that disesteem him and breaketh his heart when he falleth into disgrace He that is cheated out of his wits by the pomps and splendour of a high and prosperous estate doth think he is undone when he is brought low But it is not so with him that walks with God For being taken up with far higher things he knoweth the vanity of these As he seeth not in them any thing that is worthy of his strong desires so neither any thing that is worthy of much lamentation when they are gone He never thought that a shadow or feather or a blast of wind could make him happy And he cannot think that the loss of these can make him miserable He that is taken up with God hath a higher interest and business and findeth not himself so much concerned in the storms or calms that are here below as others are who know no better and never minded higher things 4. Walking with God doth much overcome the fear of man The fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Hell fire will extinguish the fear of them that can but kill the body Luke 12. 4. The threats or frowns of a worm are inconsiderable to him that daily walketh with the great and dreadful God and hath his power and word for his security As Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt because he had respect to the recompence of reward so he feared not the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11. 27. 5. Walking with God doth much prepare for sufferings and death in that it breedeth quietness in the conscience so that when all is at peace within it will be easie to suffer any thing from without Though there is no proper merit in our works to comfort us yet it is an unspeakable consolation to a slandered persecuted man to be able to say These evil sayings are spoken falsly of me for the sake of Christ and I suffer not as an evil doer but as a Christian And it is matter of very great peace to a man that is hasting unto death to be able to say as Hezekiah 2 King 20. 3. Remember now O Lord how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight And as Paul 2 Tim. 4. 7 8. I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness c. And as 2 Cor. 1. 12. For our rejoycing is this the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly wisdome but by the grace of God we have had our conversation in the world such a testimony of conscience is a precious cordial to a suffering or a dying man The time that we have spent in a holy and heavenly conversation will be exceeding sweet in the last review when time spent in sinful vanity and idleness and in worldly and fleshly designs will be grievous and tormenting The day is coming and is even at hand when those that are now the most hardened Infidels or obstinate presumptuous sinners or scornful malicious enemies of holiness would wish and wish a thousand times that they had spent that life in a serious obedient walking with God which they spent in seeking worldly wealth and saying up a treasure on earth and feeding the inordinate desires of their flesh I tell you it is walking with God that is the only way to have a sound and quiet conscience And he thâ— is healing and setling his conscience upon the Love of God and the Grace of Christ in the time of his prosperity is making the wisest preparation for adversity And the preparation thus made so â—ong before perhaps twenty or forty or threescore years or more is as truly useful and comfortable at a dying hour as that part which is made immediately before I know that besides this general preparation there should be also a particular special properation for sufferings and death But yet this general part is the chiefest and most necessary part A man that hath walked in his life time with God shall certainly be saved though death surprize him unexpectedly without any more particular preparation But a particular preparation without either such a life or such a heart as would cause it if he had recovered is no sufficient preparation at all and will not serve to any mans salvation Alas what a pittiful provisioâ— doth that man make for death and for salvation who neglecteth his soul despiseth the commands of God and disregardeth the promises of eternal life till he is ready to dye and then cryeth out I repent I am sorry for my sin I would I had lived better and this only from the constraint of fear without any such love to God and holiness which would make him walk with God if he should recover what if the Priest absolve this man from all his sins Doth God therefore absolve him Or shall he thus be saved No it is certain that all the Sacraments and Absolution in the world will never serve to save such a soul without that grace which must make it new and truly holy The Absolution of a Minister of Christ which is pronounced in his name is a very great comfort to the truly penitent For such God hath first pardoned by his general Act of Oblivion in the Gospel and it is God that sendeth his Messenger to them in Sacraments and Ministerial Absolution
with that pardon particularized and applied to themselves But where the heart is not truly penitent and converted that person is not pardoned by the Gospel as being not in the Covenant or a child of promise and therefore the pardon of a Minister being upon mistake or tâ— an unqualified person can reach no further than to admit him into the esteem of men and to the Communion and outward priviledges of the Church which is a poor comfort to a soul that must lye in Hell But it can never admit him into the Kingdom of Heaven God indeed may approve the act of his Ministers if they go according to his rule and deal in Church administrations with those that make A CREDIBLE PROFESSION of FAITH and HOLINESSE as if they had true faith and holiness but yet he will not therefore make such Ministerial acts effectual to the saving of unbelieving or unholy souls Nay because I have found many sensual ungodly people inclining to turn Papists because with them they can have a quick and easie pardon of their sins by the Pope or by the Absolution of the Priest let me tell such that if they understand what they do even this cheat is too thin to quiet their defiled consciences For even the Papists School-doctors do conclude that when the Priest absolveth an impenitent sinner or one that is not qualified for pardon such a one is not loosed or pardoned in Heaven Leg. Martin de Ripalda exposit Liber Magist. li. 4. dist 18. p. 654 655. p. 663 664. dist 20. Aquin. Dist. 20. q 1. a. 5. Suar. Tom. 4. in 3. p. disp 52. Greg. Valent. Tom. 4. disp 7. q. 20. p. 5. Tolet. lib. 6. cap. 27 Navar. Notab 17. 18. Cordub de indulg li. 5. q. 23. they deny not the truth of those words of Origen Hom. 14. ad cap. 24. Levit. Exit quis à fide perexit de castris Ecclesiae etiamsi Episcopi Voce non abjiciatur sicut contru interdum fit ut aliquis non recto judicio eorum qui praesunt Ecclesiae for as mittatur sed si non egit ut mereretur exire nihil laeditur interdum enim quod for as mittitur intus est qui foris est intus videtur retineri And what he saith of Excommunication is true of Absolution An erring Key doth neither lock out of Heaven nor let into Heaven A Godly Believer shall be saved though the Priest condemn him and an unbeliever or ungodly person shall be condemned by God though he be absolved by the Priest Nay if you have not walked with God in the spirit but walked after the flesh though your repentance should be sound and true at the last it will yet very hardly serve to comfort you though it may serve to your salvation because you will very hardly get any assurance that it is sincere It is dangerous lest it should prove but the effect of fear which will not save when it cometh not till death do fright you to it As Augustine saith Nullus expectet quando peccare non potest arbitrii enim libertatem quaerit Deus ut deleri possint commissa non necessitatem sed charitatem non tantum timorem quia non in solo timore vivit homo Therefore the same Augustine saith Siquis positus in ultima necessitate voluerit accipere poenitentiam accipit fateor vobis non illi negamus quod petit sed non praesumimus quod bene hinc exit si securus hinc exierit ego nescio Poenitentiam dare possumus securitatem non possumus You see then how much it is needful to the peace of conscience at the hour of death that you walk with God in the time of life 6. Moreover to walk with God is an excellent preparation for sufferings and death because it tendeth to acquaint the soul with God and to embolden it both to go to him in Prayer and to Trust on him and expect salvation from him He that walketh with God is so much used to holy Prayer that he is a man of Prayer and is skilled in it and hath tryed what prayer can do with God so that in the hour of his extremity he is not to seek either for a God to pray to or a Mediator to intercede for him or a Spirit of Adoption to enable him as a child to fly for help to his reconciled Father And having not only been frequently with God but frequently entertained and accepted by him and had his prayers heard and granted it is a great encouragement to an afflicted soul in the hour of distresse to go to such a God for help And it is a dreadful thing when a soul is ready to go out of the world to have â—â— comfortable knowledge of God or skill to pray to him or encouragement to expect acceptance with him To think that he must presently appear before a God whom he never knew nor heartily loved being never acquainted with that communion with him in the way of Grace which is the way to communion in Glory O what a terrible thought is this But how comfortable is it when the soul can say I know whom I have believed The God that afflicteth me is he that loveth me and hath manifested his love to me by his daily attractive assisting and accepting Grace I am going by death to see him intuitively whom I have often seen by the eye of Faith and to live with him in Heaven with whom I lived here on earth From whom and Through whom and To whom was my life I go not to any enemy nor an utter stranger but to that God who was the Spring the Ruler the Guide the Strength and the Comfort of my life He hath heard me so oft that I cannot think he will now reject me He hath so often comforted my soul that I will not believe he will now thrust me into Hell He hath mercifully received me so oft that I cannot believe he will now refuse me Those that come to him in the way of Grace I have found he will in no wise cast out As strangeness to God doth fill the soul with distrustful fears so walking with him doth breed that humble confidence which is a wonderful comfort in the hour of distress and a happy preparations to sufferings and death 7. Lastly to walk with God doth encrease that Love of God in the soul which is the heavenly tincture and inclineth it to loâ—k upward and being weary of a sinful flesh and world to desire to be perfected with God How happy a preparation for death is this when it is but the passage to that God with whom we desire to be and to that place where we fain would dwell for ever To love the state and place that we are going to being made connatural and suitable thereto will much overcome the fears of death But for a soul that is acquainted with nothing but this life and favoureth nothing but Earth and Flesh and hath