converted He will not alwaies stand over you with Salvation and say O that this sinner would Repent and live O that he would take the Mercies that I have provided for him Do not expect that God should do thus alwaies with you for it will not be 45. Your Delaies do weary the Servants of Christ that are employed for your recovery Ministers will grow weary of preaching to you and perswading you When we come to men that were never warned before we come in hopes that they will hear and obey and this hope puts life and earnestness into our perswasions But when we have perswaded men but a few times in vaine and leave them as we found them our spirits begin to droop and flag Much more when we have preached and perswaded you many years and still you are the same and are but where you were This dulls a Ministers spirit and makes him preach heavily and coldly when he is almost out of heart and hope I do not justifie Ministers in this and say they should do thus I know they should not and if they were perfect they would not but they are but men and imperfect themselves and what man is able to be as lively and fervent in his work when people stir not and he sees no good done on the miserable hearers as if he had the encouragement of success O when we do but see the hearts of hardned stubborn sinners relent and break and melt before the power of the Word and when we hear them cry out for Christ and Mercy and cry out against themselves for their former folly and confess their sinnes and ask us what they shall do to be saved and are but willing to be ruled by Christ the Physician of their Souls this would put life into a Preacher that was cold and dull this would even make a stone to speak But when we tell men of Gods threatnings till they are past believing them and tell you of Gods Anger till they seem to be past fearing it and tell them of the plague of sinne till they are past feeling when in stead of preaching men to Faith and Repentance and fear and tenderness of heart we preach them into greater unbelief and carelesness and dead stupidity this is enough to dull or break the heart of almost any Preacher in the world What man is able to sollow so fruitless a work with liveliness And then it 's you that will have the loss and danger of it When you have dried the brests the child may famish If your Preachers could not awake and change you with all their convincing arguments and fervency how quietly may you sleep on when you have flatted them by discouragements If Satan can either dismount or make useless these Cannons that were wont to batter his garrison he may then possess you Souls in peace You talk against persecutors that silenced Ministers But O Sirs it is you that are our greatest persecutours that refuse and delay to yield to the calls of Christ by our Ministry and make us labour so much in vaine Though it be not in vaine as to our own Souls yet you make it in vaine as to yours When we have studied till we almost break our braines and preached till we have quite broke our strength and we are consumed and worn away with labour and bodily paines that it procureth then you come after and make us requital by breaking our hearts by your delaies and refusing to turn and live Truly Sirs I must tell you for my own part that if it had not been for those that gave me better encouragment by their obedience I should never have held out with you a quarter of this time If all had profited as little as some and all had stuck as fast in an unconverted state as some if the humble penitent obedient ones among you had not been my comfort and encouragment under Christ I had been gone from you many a year ago I could never have held out till now either my corruption would have made me runne away with Jonas or my judgment would have commanded me to shake the dust of my feet as a witness against you and depart But to what end do I speak all this to you To what end Why to let you see how you abuse both God and man by your Delaies and disobedience You cannot possibly do us that are your Teachers a greater injurie or mischief in the world It is not in your power to wrong us more Are our studies and our labours worth nothing think you Are our watchings and waiting worth nothing Are our Praiers and tears and groane to be despised God will not despise them if you do Believe it he will see them all on your score and you will onâ— day have a heavy reconing of them and pay full deare for them Is it equal dealing with us that when we are watching for your Souls as men that know we must give an account you should rob us of our comfort and make us do it with sighes and sorrow Heb. 13. 17. Yea that you should undo all that we are doing and make us lose our labour and our hopes And yet do you not think to pay for this I tell you again unconverted sinners we are wearied with your delaies Many years we have been perswading you but to Turn and live and yet you are unturned You have been convinced long and thinking on it and wishing long and talking of it and promising long and yet it is undone and here is nothing but delaies We see while you delay death takes away one this week and another the next week and you are passing into another world apase and yet those that are left behind will take no warning but still delay We see that Satan delaies not while you delay He is day and night at work against you if he seem to make a truce with you it is that he may be doing secretly while you suspect him not We see that sinne delaieth not while you delay It is working like poyson or infection in your bodies and seazing upon your vital powers it 's every day blinding you more and more it 's hardening your hearts more and searing up your Consciences to bring you past all feeling and hope And must we stand by and see this miserable work with our peoples Souls and all be frustrate and rejected by themselves that we do for their deliverance How long must we stand by with the light in our hands while you are serving the flesh and neglecting that which we are sent to call you to It is not our business to hold you the candle to play by or to sleep by or to sinne by these are works that better agree with the dark But God sent us to you on another message even to Light you out of your sinnes to him that you might be saved Truly beloved hearers I must needs say that the time seems long and very long to me that
the neglect of a Redeemer and recovering Grace which you should never have felt if you had never been Redéemed 2o. And in the Degree of the punishment which will be far sorer Heb. 10. 29. And 3o. in the Remedilesness of it the Sentence being irreversible and peremtory The first Law indeed provided no Remedy but it did not Exclude Remedy nor make it impossible But the Law of Christ doth positively and expresly exclude all Remedy and leave the Soul that goeth unconverted out of the body to utter Desperation and Misery without Help or Hope of End But I shall not stand now to describe to you the terrors of Judgment or of Hell because I have done it already in other Books which I desire you to fetch the rest of this Meditation from that is My Treatise of Judgment and the beginning of my third Part of my Book of Rest. II. Having tould you what should be the Matter of your Consideration I shall next tell you but briefly in what Manner you should performe it And here I shall not stand to prescribe you any long or exact Method for Meditation both because it agreeth not with my present resolved brevity and because the Persons that now I deale with are not capable of observing such Rules and if any desire such Helps they may transferre the Directions which are given on another Subject in my Book of Rest to the Subject now in hand 1. Do not stay till such thoughts will come of them selvs into your minds but set your selves purposely to Consider of these matters Take some time to call your Souls to an account concerning their present state and their preparations for Eternity If a Heathen Seneca could call himself every night to an account for the evill committed and the good omitted in the day past as he professeth that he ordinarily did why may not even an Unconverted man that hath the helps which are now among us bethink himself of the state of his Soul But I know that a Carnal heart is exceeding backward to serious Consideration and is loath to be troubled with such thoughts as these and the Devil will do what he can to hinder it by himself and others but yet if men would but do what they may do it might be better with them then it is Will you but now and then purposely withdraw you selvs from company into some secret place and there set the Lord before your eyes and call your Souls to a strict account about the matters that I have mentioned even now and make it your business to exercise your Reason upon them and as you Purposely go to Church to heare so Purposely set your selvs to this duty of Consideration as a necessary thing 2. When you are upon it labour to waken your Souls and to be very Serious in all your Thoughts and do not think of the Matters of Salvation as you would do of an ordinary triviall business which you do not much regard or care how it goes But remember that your Life lyeth on it even your everlasting Life And therefore call up the most earnest of your thoughts and rouse up all the powers of your Souls and suffer them not to draw back but command them to the work And then set the seven Points that I mentioned even now before you And as you think of them lobour to be Affected with them in some measure according to their exceeding weight As Moses said to Israel Deut. 32. 46. Set your Hearts to all the words which I testifie among you this day which ye shall command your children to do c. For it is not a vaine thing for you because it is your life And as Christ said Luke 9. 44. Let these sayings sink into your ears So I say to you Let the Matters which you think of go to your hearts and sink down to the quick of your affections And if your hearts would slip away from the work and other thoughts would creep into your mind and you are aweary of these Considerations before they have done their wor see that you give not way to this laziness or unwillingness but remember it is a work that Must be done and therefore hold your Thoughts upon it till your hearts are stirred and warmed within you And if after all you cannot awake them to Seriousness and Sensibility put two or three such wakening Questions as these to your selves 1. Quest. What if it were but the case of my body or state or name should I not earnestly consider of it If one do but wrong me how easily can I think of it and how tenderly do I feel it and can scarce forget it If my good name be blemished and I be but disgraced I can think of it night and day If I lose but a beast or have any Cross in the world or decay in my Estate I can think of it with sensibility If I lose a child or a friend I can feel it as well as think on it If my health be decayed and my Life in danger I am in good earnest in thinking of this And should I not be as serious in the Matters of Everlasting Life Should I not think of it and soberly and earnestly think on it when body and Soul do lie at the stake and when it concerneth my everlasting Joy or Torment 2. Quest. What if I had but heard the Sonne of God himself calling on me to Repent and be Converted and seconding his Commands with those earnest expression He that hath an eare to hear let him hear would it not have brought me to som serious Thoughts of my state Why this he hath done in his Word and doth it by his Embassadors and why then should I not consider it 3. Quest. If I did but know that death were at my back and ready to arrest me and that I should be in another world before this day sevennight I should then begin to bethink me in good sadness And why do I not so now when I have no hold of my life an hour and when I am sure that shortly that time will come 4. Quest. If my eyes were but open to see that which I pretend to believe and which is certainly true even to see a glimpse of the Majesty of the Lord to see the Saints in Joy and Glory to see the damned Souls in Misery and if I heard their lamentations would not this even force my heart to Consideration O then how earnestly should I think of these things And why should I not do so now when they are as sure as if I saw them and when I must see them ere it be long Many more such awakening Questions are at hand but I give you but these brief touches on the things that are most common and obvious that the most ignorant may be able to make some use of them With such thoughts as these you must bring on your backward hearts and shake them out of their insensibility
in the dark and therefore we call you to the Law and to the Testimony and desire you to take our words into the light and see whether they be according to the Word of the Lord. Nothing troubleth us more then that we cannot perswade our hearers to this tryal Some of them are so hardened in their sinne and misery that they will not be at so much labour as to open their Bibles and try whether we say true or not Some of them will not trouble their minds with the thoughts of it Psal. 10 4. God is not in all their thoughts And some are already too wise to learn they will not so long abate their confidence of their former opinions though poor soules their ignorance doth threaten their damnation And some are so engaged in a sinfull party that their companions will not give them leave to make so much question of the way that they are in And some will scarce take the Scripture for the Rule by which they must try and be tryed but look more to custom and the will of those in power over them And most are unwilling to try because they are unwilling to know the truth and cannot endure to find themselves miserable nor see the sinne which they would not leave nor see the duty which they love not to practice And thus we cannot get them to try whether the things that we teach them be so For want of this it is that men deceive themselves and think their case to be safe when it is miserable because they will not try it by the Word This makes them rage and be confident in their folly Prov. 14. 16. and laugh and sing at the brink of Hell and swimme as merrily down the stream to the devouring gulf as if no evil were near them This makes them in the depth of misery to have no pitty on themselves and to do so little to escape it Though they have time and means and helps at hand yet there are not hearts in them to make use of them yea they runne themselves daily further on the score and all because we cannot get them to search the Scripture and try whether sinne be so small a matter and whether this will not be bitterness in the end Hence it is that they are so easily drawn by a temptation and that they dislike a holy life and have base thoughts of them that are most diligent for salvation and are most precious in the eyes of God and that they can even deride the way that they should walk in Prov. 1 22. Psal. 1. 2. because they will not search the Scripture to see what it saith to these matters The Word is a Light and would do much to open their eyes and winne them over to God if they would but come to it with a desire to know the truth You think that the ungodly that are rich and great are in a better condition then a godly man that is poor and despised And why is this but because you will not go into the Sanctuary and see in what a slippery place they stand and what will be the end of these men Psal. 73. 16 17 22. In a word this is the undoing of millions of souls They are all their life time out of the way to Heaven and yet will not be perswaded to ask the way but they runne on and wink and put it to the venture Many a thousand are gone out of the world before they ever spent the quantity of one day in trying by the Scripture whether their state were good and their way were right Nay let their Teachers tell them that they must be sanctified and take another course they will differ from their Teachers though they be never so wise or Learned and they will contradict them and not believe or regard them And yet we cannot get them to come to us and put the case to the tryal and let the Scripture be the jndge Would they but do this they could never sure have such hard thoughts of their Teachers and be offended at their plainest closest dealing You would then say I see now the Minister saies not this of himself he speaks but that which God commandeth him And if he would not deliver the Message of the Lord he were unworthy and unfit to be his Embassadour He were cruel to me if he would not pull me out of the fire by the plainest closest meanes Jud. 23. He hated me if he would not rebuke me but suffer sinne upon me Lev. 19. 17. If he would please men he should not be the servant of Christ Gal. 1. 10. I know it is no pleasure to him to trouble me or to provoke me but it would be his own destruction if he tell me not of my danger Ezek. 3. 18. And I have no reason to wish him to damn his own soul and suffer me to do the like by mine and all for fear of displeasing me in my sinne These would be your thoughts if you would but try our words by the Scripture and see whether we speak not the mind of God And sure it would go somewhat deeper in your hearts and it would stick by you and be more before your eyes when you once understood that it is the Word of God This then is my request to you sirs that the work of your Conversion may not miscarry that you would carry all that you hear to the Scripture and search there and see whether it be so or not that so you may be put out of doubt and may be at a certainty and not stand wavering and that your Faith may be resolved into the Authority of God and so the work may be Divine and consequently powerfull and prevailing when the Ground and Motive is Divine If you be not satisfied in the Doctrine which the Minister delivereth to you first search the Scripture your selves and if that will not do go to him and desire him to shew you his grounds for it in the Word of God and joyn with you in Prayer for a right understanding of it Do you question whether there be so severe a judgment and a Heaven and a Hell as Ministers tell you Search the Scripture in Mat. 25. 2 Thes. 1. 8 9 10. Joh. 5. 29 Matth. 13. Do you question whether a man may not be saved without conversion regeneration and holyness Open your Bibles and see what God saith John 3. 3 6. Mal. 18. 3. 2 Cor. 5. 17. Rom. 8. 9. Heb. 12. 14. Do you think a man may be saved without Knowledge Let Scripture judge 2 Cor. 4 3 4. Joh. 17. 3. Hos. 4. 6. Do you think a man may be saved that doth as the most do and goeth in the common way of the world Search the Scripture and see Mat. 7. 13. and 20. 16. and 22. 14. Luke 12. 32. Do you think an unhumbled Soul may be saved that never was contrite and broken hearted for sin Try by Isa. 57. 15. and 66. 2.
Psal. 51. 17. Luke 4. 18. Mat. 11. 28. Do you think a man can be the Servant of God that liveth a fleshly life will keep his sin Try by Rom. 8. 13. Joh. 3. 19. Ephes. 5. 5 6. 1 Joh. 3. 9 10. Do you doubt whether it be necessary to make so much adoe to be saved and to be so strict and make Religion our cheifest business Try by Psal. 1. 1 2 3. 1 Pet. 4. 18. Heb. 12. 14. Luke 10. 42. Luke 13. 24. Ephes. 5. 15 16. Do you think a man can be saved that is a worldling whose heart is more on Earth then heaven Try by 1 Joh. 2 15. Phil. 3. 19. Col. 3. 1. Luke 14. 26 33. Do you doubt whether you should serve God with your families and instruct them and pray with them Try by Jos. 24. 15. Deut. 6. 6 7. Dan. 6. 10. 11. Exod. 20. 10. Thus if you will in all these weighty matters but goe to the Scriptures and see whether it say as your Teachers say you might soone be resolved and that by the surest authority in the world If you think that your Ministers may be deceived I hope you will confess that God cannot be deceived If you think that your Ministers are passionate or felf-conceited or speak out of ill will to you I hope you dare not say so by the Lord he owes you no ill will nor speaks a word but what is most sure If you think us partiall sure God is impartiall what better judge can you have now then he that is infallible and must judge you all at the last If any Papist put it into your head to ask who shall be judge of the sence of Scripture I answer who shall be judge of the judge of all the world The Law is made to judge you and not to be judged by you None can be the proper judges of the sence of a Law but the maker of it Though others must judge their cases by the Law Your work is to discern it and understand and obey it and your work is to help you to understand it but it 's neither our work nor yours to be the proper or absolute judges of it At least where it speaks plaine it needs no judge Come then to the word in meekness and humility with a teachable frame of Spirit and a willingness to know the truth and a resolution to stand to it and yield to what shall be revealed to you and beg of God to shew you his will and lead you into the truth and you will find that he will be found of them that seeke him DIRECT III. If you would not have the work of your Conversion miscarry my next advice is this See that you be much in the serious Consideration of the Truths which you understand betwixt God and you in secret I have often spoken of this heretofore But because I apprehend it to be a point of exceeding great concernment I shall be longer on it againe then on the rest The greatest matters in the world will not work much upon him that will not think of them Consideration opens the eare that was stopt and the heart that was shut up It sets the powers of the Soul awork and wakeneth it from the sleep of incogitancy and security The Thoughts are the first actings of the Soul that set a work the rest Thinking on the matters that must make us wise do the work of God on the heart is that which lieth on us to do in order to our Conversion By Consideration a sinner makes use of the Truth which before lay by and therefore could do nothing By Consideration he taketh in the Medicine to his Soul which before stood by and could not work By Consideration a man makes use of his Reason which before was laid asleep and therefore could not do it's work When the Master 's from home the Schollars will be at play When the Coach-man is asleep the Horses may miss the way and possibly break his neck and their owne If the plowman go his way the Oxen will stand still or make but bad unhandsome work So when Reason is laid asleep and out of the way what may not the Appetite do and what may not the Passions do and what may not Temptations do with the Soul A wise man when he is asleep hath as little use of his wisdome as a foole A Learned man when he is asleep can hardly dispute with an unlearnd man that is awake A strong man that 's never so skillfull at his weapons is scarce able in his sleep to deale with the weakest child that is awake Why all the powers of your Soul are as it were asleep till Consideration awake them and set them on work And what the better are you for being men and having Reason if you have not the Vse of your Reason when you need it As men are Inconsiderate because they are wicked so they are the more wicked because they are inconsiderate The keenest sword the greatest Cannon will do no execution against an enemie while they lie by and are not used There is a mighty power in the Word of God and the example of Christ to pull down strong holds and conquer the strongest lusts and corruptions But they will not do this while they are forgotten and neglected Will Heaven intice the man that thinks not of it Will Hell deterre the man that thinks not of it Why is it that all the reasoning in the world will do no more good on a man that is deaf then if you said nothing But because the passage to his Thoughts and understanding is stopt up And if you have eyes and see not and eares and heare not and willfully cast it out of your thoughts what good can any thing do to you that is spoken It is not holding your meat in your mouth that will nourish you if you will not let it down nor taking it into your stomack if you will not keep it but presently cast it up again But it must be kept till it be disgested and distributed So it is not the most excellent Truths in the world that will change your hearts if you let them not down to your hearts and keep them not there by Meditation till they are digested and turned into sprituall life The plaister must be laid upon the sore if you would be cured The wound and sickness is at your Heart and if you will not take in the word to your heart where the sickness is I know not how you should expect a cure The Soul will not be charmed into Holiness by the bare hearing or saying over a few good words as wizzards use to cure diseases or seeme to cure them It must be Truth at the Heart that must change the Heart And if you will not Think on it and think on it againe how can you expect it should come at your Hearts You say you would gladly have Christ and grace and are ready to
lay the blame on God because he doth not give it you and say We cannot convert our selves But would you have the Spirit come in while you hold the dore against him He knocks and desireth you to open and let him in and you wish him to come in but you bolt the dore and no intreaty will procure you to open it It is Consideration of the saving doctrine of the Gospell that openeth the heart and giveth it entertainment Set you selves therefore on purpose to this work open the doores of your heart which are now shut and let the King of Glory come in Who will believe that you love the Light when you shut the windows and draw the curtains If you will set your selves to consider of the Truth the windows of your Soul will be set open and then the light will certainly come in Now you read over whole Chapters and hear Sermon after Sermon and either they never stir you or at least it 's but a little for a fit like a man that hath a little warmd him at the fire in the winter and when he goes from it is colder then before But if you would but set your selves to consider of what you hear or read one line of a Chapter or one sentence of a Sermon would say you in tears or make you groane or at least do more then now is done Satan hath garrisond the heart of every carnall man And consideration is the principall means to cast him out If by considering of the terrible threatnings of the word you would discharge these Canons of God against them what a battery would it make in the corruptions of your Souls Our God is a consuming fire and the fire of hell is threatned in his Law as the wages of sin By serious Consideration you may as it were fetch fire from God and from his word and set to the very gates of Satans garrison and fire him out of many of his holds But because this is so needfull a point I shall be so large upon it as 1º to tell you some of those things that you should consider of 2o. to tell you in what manner you should do it and 3o. to give you some Motives to put you on I. The first thing that I would have you oft to think on is The Nature of that God with whom you have to do Consider that if he be the most wise it is all the reason in the world that he should rule you If he be Good and infinitely Good there is all the reason in the world that you should Love him and there is no shew of reason that you should love the world or sin before him If he be faithfull and true his threatnings must be feared and his promises must not be distrusted and there is no reason that you should make any question of his Word If he be Holy then Holiness must needs be most excellent and those that are the Holiest must needs be the best because they are most like to God And then he must be an enemy to sin and to all that are unholy because they are contrary to his nature Consider that he is Almighty and there is no resisting him or standing out against him In the twink of an eye can he snatch thy guilty Soul from thy body and cast it where sin is better known A word of his Mouth can set all the world against thee and set thine own conscience against thee too A frown of his face can turn thee into Hell And if he be thine enemy it is no matter who is thy friend For all the world cannot save thee if he do but condemne thee They are blessed whom he blesseth and they are cursed indeed whom he curseth He was from Eternity and thou art but as it were of yesterday Thy being is from him thy life is alwaies in his hands Thou canst not live an hour without him thou canst not fetch a breath without him nor think a thought nor speak a word nor stir a foot or hand without him Thou mayst better live without bread or drink or fire or aire or earth or water then without him All the world is before him but as the drop of a bucket or a little sand of dust that should be laid in ballance with all the earth Hadst thou but compassed about this lower world and seen all the Nations of it and its wonderfull furniture and seen the great deeps of of the mighty Ocean and the abundance of Creatures that be in all O what thoughts then wouldst thou have of God! But if thou hadst been above the Starres and seen the Sun in all its glory and seen the frame and course of those higher Orbes and seen the blessed glorious Angels and all the inhabitants of the higher world O then what thoughts of God wouldst thou entertaine O but if it were possible that thou hadst seen his Glory or seen but his back-parts as Moses did or seen him in Christ the now glofied Redeemer what apprehensions wouldst thou have of him then Then how wouldst thou abhor the name of sin and how weary wouldst thou be of the pleasantest life that sensuality could afford thee Then thou wouldst quickly know that no Love can be great enough and no praises can be high enough and no service can be holy and good enough for such a God Then you wouldst soon know that this is not a God to be neglected or dallyed with nor a God to be resisted nor provoked by the wilfull breaking of his Laws It is Eternal Life to know this God Joh. 17. 3. and for want of knowing him it is that sin aboundeth in the world This maketh Holyness so scarce and leane Men worship they care not how because they worship they know not whom O therefore dwell on the Meditations of the Almighty So far as he doth possess thy mind there will be no place for sin and vanity One would think if I should set you no further task and tell you of no other matter for your Meditation this one should be enough For this one is in a manner all What will not the due knowledge of God do upon the Soul That 's the best Christian and the most happy man that knoweth most of him And that 's the most vile and miserable wretch that is furthest from him and strangest to him It is the Character of the foole of fooles to have a heart whose disposition and practice saith There is no God Psal 14. 1. That is To be so affected and employed in their hearts as if there were no God and when God is not in all his thoughts Psal. 10. 4. It was better with man when he had less knowledge for himself and fewer thoughts for himself and more of God And there is no way to restore us to sound understanding and to perfect our knowledge but to turn our eye upon God again For in knowing him we know all that 's worth the knowing Take
hold then of the blessed God in thy Meditations and fill thy thougts with him and dwell upon those thoughts Remember he is alwaies with thee and where ever thou art or what ever thou art doing most certainly he seeth thee As sure as thou are there the Lord is there He knowes thy thoughts he heares thy words he sees all thy waies And is such a God as this to be provoked or despised Were it not better provok and despise all the world Is his favour to be sleighted Were it not better to lose the favour of all the world Consider of this 2º Another thing that I would have you oft Think of is what end you were made for and what business it is that you came for into the world You may well think that God made you not in vaine and that he made you for no lower end then for himself And that he would never have made you nor so long preserved you if he had not cared what you do He would never have endued you with a Reasonable and immortal Soul but for some high and noble and immortal end Surely it was that you might be happy in Knowing him that he made you capable of Knowing him for he made nothing in vaine It is usefull to a horse to know his pasture and provender and work and perhaps his master but he needs not know whether there be a God And accordingly he is qualified But it is sure mans chief concernment to know that there is a God and what he is and how to serve him and what he is and will be to us Or else we should never have been capable of such things And he would never have made you capable of loving him but that you should be exercised and made happy in that Love The frame and faculties and capacity of your Souls and the scope of Scripture do all declare that you were sent into this world to seek after God and to Love him and obey him and rejoice in him in your measure and to prepare for a life of nearer Communion where you may Enjoy him and please him in the highest perfection Consider with your selves whether a life of sin be that which you were made for Or whether God sent you hither to break his Laws and follow your own lusts And whether the satisfying of your flesh and the gathering of a little worldly wealth and the feathering of a nest which you must so quickly leave be like to be the business that you were sent about into the world 3o. The next thing that I would have you consider of is How you have answered the Ends of your Creation and how you have done the business that you came into the world to do Look back upon the drift of your hearts and lives read over the most ancient records of your consciences and see what you have been what you have been doing in the world till now Have you spent you daies in seeking after God and your estates and strength in faithfull serving him Have you lived all this time in the admirations of his excellencies and the servent Love of him and delightfull remembrance of him and the zealous worship of him If you had done this you had not need of a Conversion But consider have you not forgotten what business you had in the world and little minded the world that you should have prepared for and lived as if you knew not him that made you or why he made you was sport and merryment the end that you were created for was ease and idleness or eating or drinking or vaine discourses or recreation the business that you came into the world about was living to the flesh and scraping up riches or gapeing after the esteeme of men the work that God sent you hither to do Was this it that he preserved you for and daily gave you in provision for what was it to forget him and sleight him and turne him out of your hearts and rob him of his service and honour and to set up your flesh in his stead and give that to it that was due to him Bethink you what you have done and whether you have done the work that you were sent to do or not 4º The next thing you should use to Consider of is How grievously you have sinned and what a case it is that your sin hath brought you into If you take but an impartiall view of your lives you may see how far you have mist your marks how far you have been from what you should have been and how little you have done of that which was your business And O what abundance of aggravations have your sins which I shall pass over now because I must mention them under another head It is not only some actuall out-breakings against the bent of your heart and life but your very heart was false and gone from God and set in you to do evill O the time that you have lost the means and helps that you have neglected the motions that you have resisted the swarms of evil thoughts that have filled your imaginations the streams of vaine and evill words that have flowed from your mouth the works of darkness in publik and in secret that God hath seen you in And all this while how empty were you of inwad holiness and how barren of good works to God or men What have you done with all your talents and how little or nothing hath God had of all And now consider what a case you are in while you remain unconverted you have made your selves the sinks of sinne the slaves of Satan and the flesh and are skilfull in nothing but doing evill If you be called to prayer or holy meditation your hearts are against it and you are not used to it and therefore you know not how to do it to any purpose But to think the thoughts of lust or coveteousness or hatred or malice or revenge this you can do without any toile To speak of the world or of your sports and pleasures or against those that you bare ill will to this you can do without any study You are such as are spoken of Jer. 4. 22. My people is foolish they have not known me they are sottish children and they have no understanding they are wise to do evill but to do good they have no knowledge You are grown strangers to the God that made you in whose love and service you should live and find your chief delights Your hearts are hardned and you are dead in your sins The guilt of the sins of your lives are still upon you You can neither look into your hearts or lives no not on one day of your lives or the best hour that you have spent but you must see the ugly face of sin which deserveth condemnation You have made God your Enemy that should have been your only felicity And yet you are alwaies at his mercy and in his hands Little do you know
many sinnes and the wrath of God if they did but well Consider of it Durst they live so peaceably in a state of death and in the slavery of the Devill if they did but well Consider of it Would they do no more to prepare for their speedy appearing before God and for the scaping of Hell fire if they did but Consider of it Would thâ—â— swallow down their cups so greedily and give up themselves to the world so eagerly if they did but well Consider what they do Methinks they should not The cause of sinne and the Devil is so naught that I should hope to shame it with most of the ungodly if I could but bring them to a serious Consideration of it O how the Kingdom of Satan would down if we could but tell how to make men Considerate How fast the Devil would lose his servants What abundance Christ would gaine And how many would be saved if we could but tell how to make men Considerâ—te And one would think that this should be easily done seeing man is a self-loving and reasonable creature But yet to our grief and great admiration we cannot bring them to it I should not doubt but one Sermon or one Sentence of a Sermon might do more good then a hundred do now If I were but able to perswade the hearers when they come home to follow it by serious Consideration But we cannot bring them to it If our lives lay on it we could not bring them to it Though we knew that their own lives and Salvation lieth on it yet can we nor bring them to it They think and talk of other matters almost as soon as the Sermon 's done and they turn loose their Thoughts or if they do read or hear or repeat a little yet cannot we get them to one half hours secret and sober Consideration of their case This is the Reason why it is so rare a thing to see men throughly turn to God This is much of the use of all Gods teachings and afflictions too but to bring men to sober Consideration God knows that sinne hath unmanned us and lost us the use of our Reason where we have most use for it and therefore the means and Works of God are to recover us to our Reason and to make us men againe The very graces of his Spirit are to make us to be more Reasonable And now before I dismiss this Direction I have a Question and a Request to make to thee whoever thou art that Readest these lines My Question is this Hast thou ever sâ—berly Considered of thy waies and laid thâ—se greatest matters to heart or hast thou not Dost thou ever use to retire into thy self and spend any time in this needâ—ull work If thou dost not my Request to thee is that now at last thou wouldest do it without delay Shall I beg this of thee shall the Lord that made thee that bought thee that preserveth thee Request this of thee that thou wouldest sometimes betake thy self into some secret place and set thy self purposely to this work of Consideration and follow it earnestly and close with thy heart till thou hast made something of it and brought it to a Resolution Wilt thou then spend a little time in reasoning the case with thy self and calling thy heart to a strict account and ask thy self What is it that I was made for And what business was I sent into the world about And how have I dispatcht it How have I spent my time my thoughts my words and how shall I answer for them Am I ready to die if it were this hour Am I sure of my Salvation Is my Soul Converted and truly Sanctified by the Holy Ghost If not what Reason have I to delay Why do I not set about it and speedily resolve Shall I linger till death come and find me unconverted O then what a sad appearance shall I make before the Lord. And thus follow on the discourse with your hearts What say you Sirs Will you here promise me to bestow but some few hours if it be but on the Lords Day or when you are private on the way or in your beds or in your shops in these Considerations I beseech you as ever you will do any thing at my Request deny me not this Request It is nothing that is unreasonable If I desired one of you to spend an hour in talking with me you would grant it yea or if it were to ride or go for me And will you not be intreated to spend now and then a little time in Thinking of the matters of your own Salvation Deny not this much to your selves deny it not to God if you will deny it me Should you not bethink you a few hours of the place and state that you must live in for ever Men will build strong where they think to live long But a tent or a hut will serve a Souldiour for a few nights O Sirs Everlasting is a long day In the Name of God let not Conscience have such a charge as this against you hereafter Thou art come to thy long homeâ— to thy Endless state before eveâ— thou spentest the space of an hour in deep and sad and serious Considerations of it or in trying thy title to it O what a Confounding charge would this I am confident I have the witness of your Conscienses going along with me and telling you it is but reasonable yea and needfull which I say If yet you will not do it and I cannot beg one hours sober discourse in secret between you and your hearts about these things then what remedie but even to leave you to your misery But I shall tell you in the Conclusion that I have no hope of that Soul that will not be perswaded to this duty of Consideration But if I could perswade you to this reasonable this cheap this necessary work and to follow it close I should have exceeding great hopes of the Salvation of you all I have told you the truth Consider what I say and the Lord give you understanding 2 Tim. 2. 7. Or if you put me to conclude in harsher terms they shall be still the Oracles of God Now Consider this yee that forget God lest I teare you in pieces and there be none to deliver you Psal. 50. 22. And so much for the third Direction about Consideration on which I have staid somewhat long because I apprehend it of exceeding necessity DIRECT IV. The fourth Direction which I shall give you that the work of your Conversion may not miscary is this See that the work of Humiliation be throughly done and break not away from the Spirit of Contrition before he have done with you and yet see that you mistake not the Nature and the Ends of the work and that you drive it not on further then God requireth you Here I shall first shew you the true Nature of Humiliation and 2o. the use and ends of it and 3o. the
It layeth this Tower of Babel in the dust and maketh us abhorre our selves in dust and ashes It setteth the house on fire about our eares which we both Trusted and Delighted in And makes us not only see but feel that it's time for us to be gone Pride is the Master Vice in the unsanctified and it 's the part of Humiliation to cast it down Self-seeking is the busines of their Lives till Humiliation help to turn the streame And then if you did but see their thoughts you should see them think most vilely of themselves And if you do but over-heare their Prayers or Complaints you shall hear them still cry out upon themselves and beg help against themselves as their greatest Enemies 2. The next Use of Humiliation and implyed in this is to Mortifie those sinnes which Carnal self doth live upon and is maintained by and to stop all the avenues or passages of it's provision Sinne is sweet and dear to all that are unsanctified But Humiliation makes it bitter and base As the Indians cured the Spanish Captaine of his Thirst after Gold by pouring melted God down his throat or as Children are perswaded from playing with a Bee-hive when they are once or twice stung by them or from playing with snappish dogs when they are bitten by them So God will teach his Children to know what it is to play with sinne when they have smarted by it They will know a nettle from a harmless herbe when they feel the sting we are so apt to live by sense that God seeth it needfull that our Faith have something of sense to helpe it When the Conscience doth accuse and the heart is smarting and groaning in pain and we feel that no shifting or striving will deliver us then we begin to be wiser then before and to know what sinne is and what it will do for us When that which was our delight is become our burden and a burden too heavy for us to bear it cureth our delighting in it When David was watering his couch with his tears and made them his drink his sinne was not the same thing to him as it was in the committing Humiliation washeth away the painting of this harlot and sheweth her in her deformity It unmasketh sinne which had got the vizard of Virtue or of a small matter or harmless thing It unmasketh Satan who was transformed into a Friend or an Angel of light and sheweth him as we say with his cloven feet and horns How hard is it to cure a worldling of the love of money But when God hath laid such a load of it on his Conscience that makes him groan and cry for help he hath then enough of it When he feels those words in Jam. 5. 1 2 3 4. And he begins to weep and howl for the Miseries that are comming on him and he feels the stink of his corrupted Riches and the Canker of his Gold and Silver do begin to eat his flesh as fire and his Idol is but a witness against him then he is better able to judge of it then he was before The wanton thinks he hath a happy life when the harlots lips do drop as the honey-combe But when he perceiveth her end is bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword and that her feet go down to death and her steps take hold on Hell and he lyeth in sorrow complaining of his folly Prov 5. 3 4 5 11 12. he is then of a more rectified judgment then he was Manasseh humbled in irons is not the same as he was upon the Throne Though Grace did more to it then his fetters yet were they some way serviceable to that end Humiliation openeth the doore of the heart and telleth you what sinne is to the quick and letteth in the words of life which passed no further then the care or braine It is a tireing work to talk to dead men that have lost their feeling especially when it is an affective and practicall doctrine which we must deliver to them which is lost if it be not felt and practised Till Humiliation comes we speak to dead men or at least to men that are fast asleep How many Sermons have I heard that one would think should have turned mens hearts within them and made them cry out against their sinnes with sorrow and shame in the face of the Congregation and never meddle with them more When yet the hearers have scarce been moved by them but gone away as they came as if they knew not what the Preacher said because their hearts were all the while asleep within them But a Humbled Soul is an awakened Soul It will regard what is said to it especially when they perceive that it cometh from the Lord and concerneth their Salvation It is a great encouragment to us to speak to a man that hath eares and life and feeling that will meet the word with an appetite and take it with some relish and let down the food that is put into their mouths The will is the chiefest fort of sinne If we can there get in upon it we may do something But if it keep the heart and we can get no neerer it then the eare or braine there will no good be done Now Humiliation openeth us a passage to the heart that we may assault sâ—nne in it's strength When I tell you of the abominable nature of sinne that caused the death of Christ and causeth Hell and tell you that it is better to runne into the fire then to commit the least sinne wilfully though it be such as the world makes nothing of another man may hear all this and superficially believe it and say it is true but it is the humbled Soul that feeleth what I say What a stir have we with a drunkard or worldling or any other sensuall sinner in perswading him to cast away his sinnes with detestation and all to little purpose sometime he will and sometime he must needs be tasting them again and thus he stands dallying because the word hath not mastered his heart But when God comes in upon the Soul as with a â—empest and throweth open the doores and as it were thundereth and lighteneth in the Conscience and layeth hold upon the sinner and shaketh him all in pieces by his terrours and asketh him Is sinning good for thee Is a fleshly careless life so good Thou wretched worm Thou foolish piece of clay Darest thou thus abuse me to my face Dost thou not know that I look on Is this the work that I made thee for and that I feed and preserve thee and continue thee alive for Away with thy sinne without any more adoe or I 'le have thy Soul away and deliver thee to the tormentors This wakeneth him out of his dalliance and delaies and makes him see that God is in good earnest with him and therefore he must be so with God If a Physician have a patient that is addicted to his appetite who hath
the Gout or Sâ—one or other disease and he forbid him wine or strong drink or such meats as he desireth as long as he feeles himself at ease he will be venturing on them and will not be curbed by the words of the Physion But when the fit is on him and he feels the torment then he will be ruled Pain will teach him more effectually then words could do When he feeleth what is hurtfull to him and feeleth that it alway makes him sick it will restraine him more then hearing of it could do So when Humiliation doth break your hearts and make you feel that you are sick of sinne and filleth your Soul with smart and sorrow then you will be the more willing that God should destroy it in you When it lyeth so heavy on you that you are unable to look up and makes you go to God with groanes and teares and cry O Lord be mercifull to me a sinner When you are faine to go to Ministers for ease to your Consciences and fill their eares with accusations of your selves and open even your odious shamefull sinnes then you will be content to let them go Now there is no talking to you of Mortification and the resolute rejecting of your sinnes The Precepts of the Gospel are too strict for you to submit to But a broken heart would change your mindes The healthfull Plow-man saith Give me that which I love these Physicians would bring us all to their Rules that they may get money by us I never mean to follow their directions But when sickness is upon him and he hath tryed all his own skil in vaine and paine giveth him no rest then send for the Physician and then he will do any thing and take any thing whatever he will give him so that he may but he eased and recovered So when your hearts are whole and unhumbled these Preachers and Scriptures are too strict for you You must have that which you love self-conceited precise Ministers must have leave to talk but you will never believe that God is of their mind or will damn men for taking that which they have a mind of O but when these sinnes are as swords in your hearts and you begin to feele what Ministers told you of then you will be of another mind Away then with this sinne There 's nothing so odious so hurtfull so intollerable O that you could be rid of it what ever it cost you Then he will be your best Friend that can tell you how to kill it and be free from it and he that would draw you to it would be as Satan himself to you Matth. 16. 22 23. Gal. 1. 8 9. Humiliation diggeth so deep that it undermineth sinne and the fortress of the Devil and when the foundation is rooted up it will soone be over throwne When the Murderers of Christ were pricked to the heart they 'l then cry out for counsell to the Apostles Acts 2. 37. When a murderer of the Saints is stricken blindfold to the earth and the Spirit withall doth humble his Soul he will then cry out Lord what would'st thou have me to do Acts 9. 6. When a cruel Jaylour that scourged the Servants of Christ is by an Earth-quake brought to a heart-quake he will then cry out What shall I do to be saved Acts 16. 30. And here comes in the usefulness of Afflictions even because they are so great advantages to Humiliation Men will be brought to some Reason by extreamities When they lie a dying a man may talk to them and they will not so proudly fly in his face nor make a scorne of the word of the Lord as in their prosperity they did God will be more regarded when he pleadeth with them with the rod in his hand stripes are the best Logick and Rhetorick for a fool When sinne hath captivated their Reason to their flesh the Arguments to convince them must be such as the flesh is capable of perceiving We may long tell a beast of dangers and discommodities before we can perswade him from that which he loves Sensuality doth brutifie men in too great a measure And so far as they are brutish it is not the clearest Reasons that will prevaile And if God did not maintaine in corrupted man some remnants of free Reason we migh preach to beasts as hopefully as to men But Afflictions tend to weaken the Enemy that doth captivate them as prosperity by accident tends to strengthen him The flesh understandeth the language of the rod better then the language of Reason or of the Word of God And as the sensible part of our Humiliation promoteth Mortification so the rational and voluntary Humiliation which is proper to the Sanctified is a principal part of Mortification it self And thus you may see that it 's necessary that we be throughly humbled that sin may be throughly killed in us 3. Another use of Humiliation is to fit the Soul for a meet entertainment of further Grace and that both for the honour of Christ and Grace and for our own welfare 1. In respect of Christ it is equal that he should dwell in such Souls only as are fit to entertaine him Neither his person nor his business are such as can suit with the unhumbled heart Till Humiliation make a sinner feel his sinne and misery it is not possible that Christ as Christ should be heartily welcome to him or received in that sort as his honour doth expect Who cares for the Physician that feels no sickness and feares not death He may pass by the doores of such a man and he will not call him in But when paine and feares of death are on him â—e will send and seek and bid him welcome Will any man fly to Christ for succour that feeleth not his wants and danger Will they lay hold on him as the only refuge of their Souls and cleave to him as their only hope that feele no great need of him Will they lie at his feet and beg for mercy that feel themselves well enough without him When men do but hear of sinne and misery and superficially believe it they may coldly look after Christ and Grace and feel the worth of the later in such a manner as they feel the weight of the former But never is Christ valued and sought after as Christ till sorrow have taught us how to value him Nor is he entertained in the necessary honour of a Redeemer till Humiliation throw open all the doores No man can seek him with his whole heart that seeks him not with a broken heart And it 's certain that Christ will come on no lower terms into the Soul Though he come to do us good yet he will have the honour of doing it Though he come to heâ—l us and not for any need he hath of us yet he will have the welcome that 's due to a Physician He comes to save us but he will be honoured in our Salvation He inviteth all to the
have the Love the Honour or the thanks that he intended by his gift It is necessary therefore that the Soul be throughly humbled that pardon may be received as pardon and Grace as Grace and not set light by And 2. as this is necessary for the honour both of Christ and Grace so also it is necessary for our own benefit and consolation The Mercy cannot indeed be ours if Humiliation do no make us capable of it These Cordials must be taken into an empty Stomack and not be drownd in â—legm and filth A man on the Gallows will be glad of a pardon but a stander by that thinks he is innocent would not regard it but take it for an accusation There is no great sweetness in the name of a Redeemer to an unhumbled Soul It sets not by the Spirit the Gospel is no Gospel to it the tidings of Salvation are not so glad to such a one as the tidings of riches or worldly delights would be As it is the preparation of the Stomack that maketh our meat sweet to us and the coursest fare is pleasanter to the sound then sweet-meats to the sick so if we were not emptied of our selves and vile and lost in our own apprehensions and if Contrition did not quicken our appetites the Lord himself and all the miracles of his Saving Grace would be but as a thing of nought in our eyes and we should be but weary to heare or think of them But O what an inestimable Treasure is Christ to the Humbled Soul What life is in his promises What sweetness in every passage of his grace and what a feast in his unmeasurable Love 4. Another Use of Humiliation implyed in the former is that it is necessary to bring men to yield to the terms of the Covenant of Grace Nature holds fast it 's fleshly pleasures and lives by feeling upon present things and knows not how to live upon invisibles by a life of Faith And this is the life that all must live that will live in Christ And therefore he calleth them to the forsaking of all the crucifying the world and flesh the denying of themselves if they will be his Disciples But O how loath is nature to part with all and make a full resignation unto Christ but fain it would make sure of present things for fear leâ—t the promises of Heaven should but deceive them and then they would have Heaven at last as a reserve And on these terms it is that Hypocrites are Religions and thus it is that they deceive their Souls But when the heart is truly broken it will then stand no longer on such terms with Christ but yield up all It will then no longer Condition with him but stand to his Conditions and thankfully accept them Any thing will then serve with Christ and Grace and the hopes of Glory 5. Another Use of Humiliation is to fit us for the Retaining and Improving of Grace when we have received it The Proverb is Lightly come lightly go If God should give the pardon of sinne to the unhumbled how soon would it be cast away And how easily would such be hearkning to temptation and returning to their vomit The burn't Child we say dreads the fire When sinne hath kill'd you once and broken your hearts you will think the worse of it while you live And when a temptation comes you will think of your former smart Is not this it that cost me so many groans and laid me in the dust and had almost damned me and shall I go to it again Was I so hardly recovered by a Miracle of Mercy And shall I runne again into the misery that I was saved from Had I not sorrow and fear and care enough but I must go back again for more and renew my trouble Thus the remembrance of your sorrows will be a continuall preservative to you And a contrite spirit that is emptied of it self and is taught the worth of Christ and mercy will not only hold them fast but will know how to use them in thankfullness to God and benefit to himself 6. Another Use of Humiliation is to fit the Soul for it's approach to God himself from whom it had revolted As it beseems not any creature to approach the God of Heaven but in Reverentiall humility so it beseems not any sinner to approach him but in Contrite Humility Who can come out of such wickedness and misery and not bring along the sense of it on his heart It beseemeth not a Prodigal to meet his Father as confidently and boldly as if he had never departed from him but to say Father I have sinned against Heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy sonne Luke 15. 18. It is not ingenious for a guilty Soul or one that is snatcht as a brand out of the fire to look towards God with a brazen face but with shame and sorrow to hang down the head and smite upon the brest and say O Lord be mercifull to me a sinner For God resisteth the proud but giveth Grace to the humble 1 Pet. 5. 5. Jam. 4. 6. Though the Lord be high yet he hath regard unto the lowly but the proud he knoweth afar off Psal. 138. 6. For thus saith the High and Holy one that inhabiteth Eternity whose Name is Holy and I dwell in the High and Holy Place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones Isa. 57. 15. To this man will I look even to him that is poore and of a contrite spirit and that trembles at my Word Isa 66. 2. The Lord is nigh to them that are of a broken hâ—art and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit Psal. 34. 18. The Sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart O God thou wilt not dispise Psal. 51. 17. There is no turning to God unless we loath our selves for all our abominations Ezek. 16. 63. The nearer we approach him the more we must abhor our selves in dust and ashes Job 42. 6. He will not embrace a sinner in his dung but will first wash and clense him Isa. 1. 16. Conversion must make us humble and as little Children that are teachable and look not after great matters in the world or else there is no entering the Kingdom of God Matth. 18. 3 4. And thus you see the Uses and Necessity of Humiliation III. By what hath been already said you may perceive what Mistakes are carefully to be avoided about your Humiliation and with what caution it must be sought 1. One Error that you must take heed of is That you take not Humiliation for an indifferent thing or for such an appurtenance of Faith as may be spared Think not an unhumbled Soul while such can be Sanctified Some carnal hearts conceive that it is only more haynous sinners that must be contrite and broken hearted and
that this is not necessary to them that have been brought up civilly or religiously from their youth But it is as possible to be saved without Faith as without Repentance and that special Humiliation which I described to you before It 's part of your Sanctification 2. Another mistake to be carefully avoided is The placeing of your Humiliation either only or principally in the Passionate part or in the outward expression of those Passions I mean either in pinching grief and sorrow of heart or else in tears But you must remember that the Life of it is as was said before in the Judgment and the Will It is not the measure of Passionate sorrow and anguish that will best shew the measure of your sincere Humiliation much less is it your teares or outward expressions But it is your low esteem of your selves and contentedness to be vile in the eyes of others And your displacency with your selves and willingness to mourn and weep for sinne as much as God would have you with the rest of the acts of the Judgment and Will before described Two great dangers are here before you to be avoided First some there be that have terrible pangs of sorrow and are ready to teare their own haire yea or make away themselves as Judas in the horror of their Consciences and these may seem to have true Humiliation and yet have none And some can weep abundantly at a Sermon or in Prayer or in mentioning their sinne to others and therefore think that they are truly humbled and yet it may be nothing so For if at the same time their hearts are in love with sinne or had rather keep it then let it go or have not an habitual hatred to it and a predominant superlative Love to God their Humiliation is no saving work That which is in the Passions and teares may be even forced against your wills And it signifieth scarce so much as a common Grace where you are not willing of it Many a one can weep through a passionate womanish tender nature and yet not only remain unhumbled but be Proud in a very high degree How many such do we ordinarily see especially women that can weep more at a duty or conference then some that are truly broken hearted could do in all their lives and yet be so far from being vile in their own eyes and willing to be so in the eyes of others that they will hate and reproach and raile at thoâ—e that charge them with the faults which they seemed to lament or at least that charge them with disgracefull sinnes and they will excuse and mince their sinnes and make a small matter of them and love none so well as those that have the highest thoughts of them So that Pride doth ordinarily reign in their hearts and break out in their words and lives and make them hate the faithfullest reproachers and live in contention with any that dishonour them for all the tears that come from their eyes Judge not therefore by passions or tears alone but by the Judgment and the Will as is aforesaid 2. Another sort there are much better and happier than the former that yet to their great trouble are mistaken in this point And that is they that think they have no true Humiliation because they find not such pangs of sorrow and freedom of tears as others have when as their hearts are contrite even when they cannot weep a tear Tell me but this Are you vile in your own eyes because you are guilty of sinne and that against the Lord whom you chiefly love Do you loath your sinnes because of your abominations and could you heartily wish that you had been suffering when you were sinning and if it were to do again would you chuse to suffer rather then to sinne Have you a desire to grieve when you cannot passionately grieve and a desire to weep when you cannot weep Can you quietly beare it when you are vilified by others because you know your selves to be so vile And are you thankfull to a plain Reprover though he tell you of the most disgracefull sinne Do you think meanly of your own sayings and doings and think better of others where there is any ground then of your selves Do you justifie Gods afflictions and mens true rebukes and think your selves unworthy of the Communion of the Saints or to see their faces and unworthy to live on the face of the Earth Yea would you justifie God if he should condemn you This is the state of a humbled Soul Find but this and you need not doubt of Gods acceptance though you were unable to shed a tear There 's more Humiliation in a base esteem of our selves then in a thousand tears And more in a will or desire to weep for sinne then in tears that come through force of terror or moisture of the brain or passionate tenderness of Nature If the Will be right you need not fear It is he that most hateth sinne and is hardliest drawn to it that is trulyest humbled for it He that will lament it to day and commit it to morrow is far less humbled and penitent then he that would not be drawn to it with the hopes of all the pleasures of the world nor commit it if it were to save his life 3. To avoid this some runne into the contrary mistake and think that sorrow and teares are unnecessary and that they may Repent as well without them as with them and they lay all in some dull uneffectual wishes and so they think the Heart is changed But certainly God made not the Affections in vain It cannot be that any man can have a Sanctified Will but his Affections will hold some correspondence with it and be commanded by it Though we cannot mourn in that Measure as we desire yet some sorrow there will be wherever the Heart is truly changed And appretiativè this sorrow will be the greatest No man can heartily believe that sinne is the greatest evil to his Soul and not be grieved for it And indeed our Liveliest Affections should be exercised about these weightiest things It 's a shame to see a man mourn for a friend and whine under a Cross that toucheth but the flesh and yet be so insensible of the plague of sinne and the anger of the Lord and to laugh and â—est with such mountains on his Soul Though grief and tears be not the heart or principal part of our Humiliation yet are they to be lookt after as our duty yea sorrow in some measure is of absolute necessity and the want of tears is no good signe in them that have tears for other things Indeed the sense of our folly and unkindness should be so great that it should even turn our hearts into sorrow and melt them in our brests and draw forth streams of tears from our eyes and if we cannot bring our selves to this we must yet lament the hardness of our hearts and not excuse it
play You must be taught better to know your home and to take more pleasure in your father and your husband and your brethren and your Inheritance then in strangers or enemies to God and you 9. When you begin to grow wanton with Ordinances or other Mercies and in stead of thankfull receiving them and feeding on them you pick quarrells with them and nothing will please you either the Minister is too weak or he is too curious or too formall you must have it this way or that way either you must have more of a form or no form in this gesture or that order and something or other is still amiss this shews that you want humbling and that you are fitter for the rod then for meat If God do but open you a doore into your hearts and shew you the monsters and emptyness that is there you will then see that the fault lay somewhere else then in the Minister or the Ordinances If it were in them it was more in you The cause of your loathing and quarrelling with the Word was the fullness of your own stomack and God must give you a vomit or purge that shall make your hearts ake before it hath done working and then your appetits will be mended and your wantonness will cease and that will be sweet to you which before you sleighted 10. When you begin to be leavened with Pride and think highly of your selves and have good conceits of your own parts and performances and would be noted and taken for some-body among the godly and you cannot endure to be overlookt or past by when you think meaâ—ly of other mens parts and dutys in comparison of yours and think your selves as wise as your Teachers and begin to hear them as Judas magisterial spirit and think you could do as well as this your selves when you are finding fault with that which should nourish you and in every Sermon you are most noting the defects and think that this you could have mended when you itch to be Teachers your selves and think your selves fitter to preach then to learn to rule then to be ruled to answer then to ask for resolution when you think so well of your selves that the Church is not pure or good enough for your company though Christ disowneth it not and they force you not to sinne when you grow censorious and aggravate the faulte of others and extenuate their graces and can see a mote in another's eye but will discern none of their Graces if they be not as high as mountains and none can pass for Godly with you but those of the most eminent magnitude when you are itching after novelties in Religion and setting your wisdom against the present or ancient Church and affecting singularity because you will be of no common way when you cannot heare this Minister nor that Minister though the Ministers of Christ and you are harping upon that Come out from among them and be yee separate as if Christ had called you to come out of the Church when he called you to come out of the company of Infidels All this cries aloud for further Humiliation You have a tympanie that must be prickt to let out the wind that puffs you up If you be not for perdition and to be forsaken and given over to your selves you must be fecht over again and humbled with a witness When God hath turned your inside outward and shewed you that you are poor and miserable and blind and naked and that you are empty Nothings who thought so well of your selves he will then make you stoop to those that you despised and think your selves unworthy of the Communion of those that before you thought unworthy of your selves He will make you think your selves unworthy to hear those Ministers that you turned your back upon and he will take down your Teaching talking vaine and make you glad again to be learners In a word he will by Conversion make you as little Children or you shall never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And this spiritual Pride is a most lamentable disease and the issue usually is exceeding sad For with many 't is the fore-runner of damnable Apostacy and God gives them once to their own conceits and the wisdom which they so esteem till it have led them to perdition And those that are cured are many of them cured by the saddest way of any men in the world For it is usual with God to let them alone till they have runne themselves into some abominable errour or fallen into some shamefull scandalous sinne till they are made a hissing and by-word among men that shame and confusion may bring them to their wits and they may learn to know what it was that they were Proud of and see that they were but silly worms And thus I have shewed you when you must seek after deeper Humiliation and may conclude that you are not humbled enough Yea and when a greater measure is of some Necessity to your Souls Quest. Well but yet you have not told â—is what course a poor Sinner should take in such a strait when he knows not whether his Humiliation as to the Affectionare part be too little or too much Answ. 1. You may partly discern your selves by what is said whether you have need of more or less Humiliation if you can but try your hearts by these signes 2. But yet I would advise and earnestly perswade you in Cases of difficulty to betake your selves to some able faithfull Minister for resolution If you feel sorrow seize so deep upon your spirits that it distempereth you or threatneth your understanding or your health especially if your are either passionate women or Melancholly persons stay not then any longer left delay do that which cannot easily be undon but go and open your case and crave advice This is a principal Use of Pastors that you should have them at hand to advise with in the diseases and dangers of your Souls as you do with Physicians in the diseases and dangers of the body Lay by all sinfull bashfullness and trust not your selves any longer with your own skill but go to them that God hath set in Office over you for such uses as these and tell them your Case This is Gods way and he will bless his own Ordinance Melancholly and Passionate distempered persons are not fit judges of their own condition In this Case you must distrust your own understanding and be not selfconceited and stick not obstinately to every fancy that comes into your heads but in the sense of your weakness rely upon the guidance of your faithfull Overseers till your distempers are overcome and you are made more capable of discerning for your selves 5. You are further here to be informed that it is not for it selfe that sorrow and tears are so desireable but as they are expressions of a gracious temper of the will and as they help on to the Ends that Humiliation is appointed to
Justified and Reconciled to God 7. He hath given Apostles Evangelists Pastors and Teachers to proclaim this Act of Grace to the world commanding them to go into All the world and preach this Gospel to every Creature and promise Salvation to all that by Faith will become his true Disciples Marke 16. 16. Matth. 28. 20 22. So that their commission also for the promulgation is universal 8. Though his servants have most lamentably neglected their duty and have not gone abroad the world to divulge the Gospel according to his Will imagining that this work had been proper to Apostles and though the Nations have sinfully neglected a due enquirie after this blessed Light yet hath he not left himself among them without witness but hath given them some dawnings of the day or some moon-light in the reflections of Evangelical Truth who have not seen the Sunne it self Much Mercy they have had notwithstanding their transgressions and while they served Devils they have been provided for by God in whom they live and move and be doing them good and giving them raine from Heaven and fruitfull seasons filling their hearts with foâ—d and gladness and this to teach them that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after him and find him though he be not farre from every one of them Acts 14. 17. 17. 27 28. And that which may be known of God is manifest among them for God hath shewed it to them 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 they are without excuse Rom. 1. 19 20. By experience they may find that God dealeth not now in rigor of Justice but on terms of Grace and that sinne is not â—ow unpardonable and they should know that the Goodness of God leadeth them to repentance Rom. 2. 4. 9. As the Gospel conditionally pardoneth all their sinnes and offereth them Everlasting life so it conteineth the clearest Reasons and most effectual motives to perswade them to Accept the offer It affordeth them most excellent precepts and instructions and exhortations and other helps to bring them to a willingness that Salvation may be theirs 10. To which also is added abundance of outward providential helpes to further the working of the Gospel as seasonable afflictions and Mercies of divers sorts 11. And with these is usually concurrent some inward motions and assistance of the Holy Ghost as knocking at the doore where he is not yet let in and entertained 12. And by their presence in the visible Church even the ungodly have many benefits in the Ordinances and instructions and examples of the Saints All these besides a Resurrection are common effects of General Redemption and not appropriated to the Elect. Besides which there are others that the Elect only do receive As 1. God is pleased by effectual Grace to draw them to his Sonne and make the Gospel succesfull to their Conversion insuperably teaching and charging them by his Spirit and causing them to Repent and believe in Christ and to perform the Conditions of his forementioned Promises That Love that brought the Lord on Earth that cloatheth him with flesh that lifted him up upon the Cross doth stream forth in his season into the hearts of his Elect and toucheth them with a changing Power and winneth them to his Father and himself and droppeth into them those Heavenly Principles which will grow up in them to Everlasting Life 2. Hereupon the Soul believing in Christ is United to him as a Member of his Body even of his true Catholik Church and Christ is become the Head the Husband the Lord the Saviour of that Soul in a special sort Christ himself is first given to us in these Relations and from him as our Head his following benefits are conveyed He that hath the Sonne hath life and he that hath not the Sonne hath not life for this Life is in the Sonne 1 Joh. 5. 11 12. He is the Vine and we are the Branches and out of him we can do nothing Joh. 15. 1 2 5. As it was not we that purchased our own Salvation so it is not we but Christ that must have the keeping and dispensing of the purchased benefits For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell and that he should be the Head over all things to his Church that it might by communication become his fulness Col. 1. 19. Eph's 1. 22 23. He is our Treasury and from him we must have our continual supplies For with him the Father will give us all things Rom. 8. 32. And thus Christ will dwell in our hearts by Faith Ephes. 3. 17. And set up the Kingdom of God within us 3. Hereupon we have the pardon of all our sinnes not only as to the temporal punishment nor only as to the bestowing of temporal Mercies or common helps of Creatures and Providences for this is but a winking at the daies of our ignorance Acts 17. 30. in comparison of the pardon which afterward we receive Nor is it only a Conditonal or Offered pardon But it is an Actual Remission of the Eternal and of all the destructive Punishment And thus we are Justified from all that might be charged on us from the Law and accepted and used as just by God There is a kind of forgiveness that was promised to the Sacrificers Lev. 4. 20 26 31 35 5 10 13 16 18 6. 7. Numb 15. 28. But as that was upon Christs account so it extended not to the pardon of the Eternal Punishment to any but true Believers He that was once Crucified is exalted by Gods right-hand a Prince and a Saviour to give Repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sinnes Acts 5. 31. Through this man is preached the forgiveness of sinnes and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses Acts 13. 38 39. When our eyes are open and we are turned from dakness to light and from the power of Satan unto God we then receive Remissioâ— of our sinnes Acts 26. 18. When we are delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of Christ in him we have then Redemption through his Blood even the forgiveness of sinnes Col. 1. 13 14. And blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sinnes are covered to whom the Lord imputeth not sinne Rom. 4. 7. And now who shall condemn us It is God that justifieth us For there is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Rom. 8. 1 33 34. 4. With this benefit doth concurre our Reconciliation to God and our Adoption by which we are made his Sonnes and God is pleased to own us as our Father For being one with Christ the Sonne of God we are Sonnes by him For to as many as receive
both naturally and graciously perfected both in their faculties and qualities We shall be brought nigh to God We shall be numbered with the Inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem and be members of that blessed Society and be companions and equal with the Angels of God we shall for ever behold our Glorified Redeemer and see our own Nature united to the Godhead and we shall have the greatest and neerest intuition and fruition of God thefullest Love to him and the swetest Rest content and delight in him that our created Natures are capable of We shall everlastingly be imployed in this Love and delight and in his Praises with all the Heavenly Host And the Glory of God will shine forth in our Glory and the abundance of his Goodness will be communicated to us and he will be well pleased with us with our praises with all that blessed Society and with our Head And this will endure to all Eternity Christians I have now named in a few words those Benefits by Christ which the heart of man is not able to value in any proportion to their unexpressible worth I have named that in an hour which you must enjoy for ever So much of our Benefits by Christ. 5. The fifth point to be understood in the right Knowledg of Christ is The terms on which he conveyeth his Benefits to men and how we must be made partakers of them And these Mercies are of two sorts 1. Common 2. Proper to them that are Heirs of Salvation The Common are 1. Those discoveries of Grace that are made even to Heathens in the Creatures and the mercifull Providences of God These are Absolutely and freely bestowed stowed in some measure on all but in a greater measure upon some as please the Giver 2. The Supernatural or Instituted means of Revealing Christ and Life to the world and drawing them to a saving consent of Faith These are the Gospel written and preached with other concomitant helps The Commission Christ hath given to his Embassadors is to preach this Gospel to all the world even to every reasonable Creature without exception or restriction And it is Absolutely and freely given where it is given But as to the providential disposal of the event God causeth it not to be sent to all but to whom he seeth meet 2. The Proper or Special Mercies are of two sorts 1. Some are Physical inherent qualities or performed acts 2. And some are adherent Rights or Relations Of the former inherent sort there are these three Degees 1. There is the first special work of Vocation Conversion or Regeneration causing the sinner to Repent and Believe and giving him the Principle of Spiritual Life 2. There is the bestowing of the In-dwelling Spirit of God and progressive Santification of heart and life and perseverance with Victory 3. There is the perfecting of all this in our Glorious Perfection in the life to come For the first of these God hath not promised it Conditionally or Absolutely to any individual person that hath it not He hath bound all to Repent and Believe but hath not promised to make them do it only he hath revealed that there are certain persons so given to Christ as that they shall be infallibly drawn to believe But he hath appointed certain means for the ungodly which they are bound to use in order to their Conversion and if they will not use them they are without excuse If they will they have very much encouragement from God Both 1. In the Nature of the means which are fitted to their ends and are mighty to bring down all oppositions and 2. In the Commands and Institution of God whose Wisdom and Goodness may easily resolve us that he will not appoint us means in vaine nor set his Creatures on fruitless labours And 3. Also from the Issue for no man can stand forth and say such a one did his best in the Use of means and yet could not attain the End but fell short of the Grace and Glory of God The diseases of mens Souls are wilfullness and blindness The means of Cure are the Perswasions with the Revelations of the Gospel Men have the Natural Powers of Understanding and Willing but they want that right disposition which we call the Habit or Moral Power which is no more then to say They are Habitually Blind and Wilfull It is so far from being unreasonable to teach and perswade men that are under such an Impotency as this that there is nothing in the world that doth more bespeak our teaching and perswasions For this is the Natural and Instituted way to cure them and give them Power What means of overcoming Ignorance like Teaching and what means of overcoming Habituated Wilfullness like Perswasion added to informing truths We do not use to reason men out of a Natural Impotency nor to perswade them to do that for which they have no Faculties or Object but it is the very means of overcoming a Moral Impotency and making men willing of the Good which they rejected And with this means doth God set in and infallibly cause it to be effectual with his chosen Thus no man cometh to the Sonne except the Father draw him And then for the two following Degrees of Holiness in our Sanctification and Glorious Perfection God hath promised them to those that have this first Degree For the Spirit of Holiness is promised to all that truly Repent and Believe and Salvation to all that are Sanctified and persevere So that the Right to these Inherent Mercies being a Relaetion is conveyed as other Rights and Relations of which we are next to speak 2. As the Spirit by the Operation of the Word upon the heart conveyeth the foresaid Inherent benefits or qualities and acts so the Promise of Grace indited by Christ and the Spirit doth as a Deed of Gift or Testament or Act of Oblivion bestow on us our Rights and Spiritual Relations and from these they do result as the immediate instrumental Cause Thus doth he give Power or Right to as many as receive him to become the Sonnes of God Joh. 1. 12. Thus doth he give us Pardon Justification Adoption and our Right to further Grace and Glory And these Promises are Conditional and our Repenting and Believing in Christ is the Condition And therefore till Conversion do bring us to Repent and Believe we have no Right to any of these benefits of the Promise And therefore though our Repentance and Faith be none of the Proper Cause of our Justification or Right yet the main work in order to our procurement of these benefits that 's now to be done is to perswade the sinner to Repent and Believe to turn that he may live For Gods Act of Grace is past already and the Conditional Pardon is granted long ago and will effectually Pardon us as soon as we perform the Condition and not before Till then we hinder the Efficacy of the Deed of Gift For Unbelief and Impenitency are true
Causes of mens Condemnation though Faith and Repentance be not Proper Causes of their Salvation These Promises being Conditional we cannot be assured of our part in the benefits but by being assured that we perform the Condition By this you may see the Nature of presumption When men say they believe that which never was promised or believe that they have right to the Blessings that are promised to others and not to them or believe that they shall have the benefits promised when they perform not the Conditions all this is presuming and not true believing If men believe that God is reconciled to them and will Pardon them and Justifie them and save them when they are unconverted impenitent unregenerate men this is not indeed a believing of God that hath never made them any such promise nor ever told them any such matter but the contrary But it is a believing the false delusions of the Devil and their own hearts He that will claim any title to Christ and Pardon and Salvation must have something to shew for it yea and something more then the most of the world have to shew For the most shall be shut out Every man therefore that regardeth his Salvation must seriously ask his Soul this question What have I to shew for my title to Salvation more then the most of the world can shew It is not saying I hope to be saved that will serve the turn ' except I can give a Reason of my hopes ' Thousands that lay claim to Salvation shall miss of it because they have no title to it And that which you must have to shew is this A Promise or Deed of Gift on Gods part and the fullfilling of the Condition on your part God saith to all men who ever Repenteth Believeth or is converted shall be saved When you have found that you Repent of all your sinnes and truly believe and are converted to God then and not till then you may conclude that you shall be saved 6. The sixth Point to be understood or believed concerning these Benefits of Christ is the infallible Certainty of them While men look on the promised Glory to come as on an uncertain thing they will hardly be drawn to venture and let go the porfits and pleasures of the world to attaine it much less to part with life it self The life of all our Christian motion is the unfeigned belief of the Truth of Gods Word and specially of the unseen things of the world to come Such as mens belief of Heaven and Hell is such will be the bent of their hearts and the course of their lives and such they will be in yielding to sinne or in resisting it and in all the service they do for God As all men would take another course if they did but see Heaven and Hell with their eyes so all men would presently throw away their worldly fleshly pleasures and turn to God and a holy life if they did but as throughly believe the Joyes and torments to come as if they saw them Flesh and blood can hardly judg of things without the help of sense and fleshly men take all things to be fantasmes or nothings that are not within the judgment of their senses They must see it or feel it or tast it or hear it and Believing is a way that hardly satisfies them though it be God himself that they are to believe Believing is trusting the Credit of an other and we are naturally loth to trust to any but our eyes or other senses We are so false our selves that we are ready to measure God by our selves and to think that he is a deceiver because that we are such And hence it is that the world is so ungodly that they venture on sinne and will not be at the cost and labour of a Heavenly life because they take the matters of the life to come to be but uncertainties and have not so true a belief of them as might possess them with a deep apprehension of their reallity How should the Word profit them that mixe it not with Faith Heb. 4. 2. Unless by begetting Faith it self O what a change would a sound belief of the Scriptures make in the world But having spoken so oft of this in other writings I shall say no more of it now So much of the Knowledg of Christ. II. I have shewed you the first part of this Direction How Christ must be Received understandingly I now come to the second which is that He must be Received heartily As God must be loved so Christ must be believed in with all the heart and Soul and strength If not with All in a Perfect degree for that will not be till we come to Heaven yet with All in a predominant prevalent degree There are many convictions and good meanings and wishes and purposes which may proceed from common Grace and be found in those that never shall be saved These may be called analogically Faith and Love and Desire as those are that are found in the truly Regenerate and yet the persons in whom they are found may not fitly be called Believers or Lovers of God because a man is to be denominated from that in him which is predominant and hath the chief power on his heart The Soul of man is not so simple as to move but one way Its state in this life is to stand between two differing Competitours God and the world Spirit and flesh and there is no man that is Totally given up to either of them No man is so good and spiritual that hath not something in him that is bad and carnal And no man is so fully addicted to God but the Creature hath too much interest in his heart Nor is there any man so given up to the Creature in whom God hath no manner of interest at all in his Estimation and Affections if he indeed believe that there is a God At least it is not so with all that are unconverted Otherwise 1. What is it that common Grace doth if it no whit dispose them towards God Certainly it would not else be Grace 2. And if this were not so then we must say that no unregenerate man hath any Good in him that is truly Moral For if there be no interest of God in his mind or will there can be no Good in him But this is contrary to Scripture and experience It was undoubtedly some Moral Good which Christ loved the man for in Marke 10. 21. Who was not far from the Kingdom of God 3. Otherwise all men must be equally departed from God which is contrary to experience 4. Yea all men must be as bad on Earth privatively as in Hell which certainly is false I may well say that on Earth there is some Good in the worst much more in those that are almost perswaded to be converted Christians Many a thought of the Goodness of God and the necessity of a Saviour and of the Love of Christ and of
not have the principal part of thy life If Christ have thy Heart it will be heard much in thy conference it will be seen in thy labours For that which hath a mans Heart will hardly be hid unless he purposely hide it which a Christian neither can nor ought to do It would make a man wonder to hear some wretches that will runne from God as fast as they can and yet face you down that God hath their hearts that have no mind so much as to meditate or talk of Christ or his precious Blood or mysterious Redemption or the glorious Kingdom purchased by him that will be at neither cost nor labour in his Service and yet profess that Christ hath their hearts that will refuse a Holy Heavenly life and perhaps make a scorn of it and maliciously prate against the Sanctified and yet will stand to it that the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier of the Elect hath their hearts No wonder if those hearts are ill managed and in a miserable deceived state that are so unacquainted with themselves Faith entreth at the Understanding but it hath not all its essential parts and is not the Gospel Faith indeed till it have possessed the will The heart of Faith is wanting till Faith hath taken possession of the heart For by Faith Christ dwelleth in the Heart Ephes. 3. 17. And if he dwell not in the heart he dwells not in the Man in a saving sort He had some interest in Judas Simon Magus Ananias and Saphira as to the head and perhaps somewhat more in a superficial sort But Satan entred into the heart of one and filled the heart of another of them with a lie and the heart of the third was not right in the sight of God and therefore he had no part or lot in Christ but was still in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity and all because Christ was not heartily entertained Acts 5. 3 8. 22 23. It is in the heart that the word must have its rooting or else it will wither in time of tryal It is seeking with the whole heart that is the evidence of the blessed Psal. 119 2. And it is a feigned turning when men turn not to God with the whole heart Jer. 3. 10. This is Gods promise concerning his Elect I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God for they shall return unto me with their whole heart Jer. 24. 7. See then that the heart be unfeignedly delivered up to Christ For if Christ have it not the flesh the world and the Devil will have it Your Hearts must be a dwelling for one of these Masters choose you whether It is the damnation of most professed Christians that they have nothing for Christ but a good opinion or a few good words or outside services or some sleight Religiousness on the by when the flesh and the world go away with their hearts and yet they will not know it nor confess it Christ will not be an underling or servant to your flesh Your Hearts he hath bought and your Hearts he will have or you are none of his If he shall have nothing from you but a name you shall have nothing but the name of his purchased Salvation III. The last part of the Direction yet remains viz. that you must clâ—se with Christ entirely as well as Vnderstandingly and Heartily It is whole Christ that must be received with the whole heart For the understanding of this it must be known both How and Why Christ is offered to us As he came into the world to destroy the works of the Devil 1 Joh. 3. 8 and to seek and save that which was lost Luke 19. 19 And by his Mediation to reconcile us to God and bring us up to Glory so two things were to be done for the accomplishment of this First he was himself to Merit our Salvation and pay the price of our Redemption on the Cross and in his own Person to conquer the world the Devil and death and the grave And then he was by his Intercession in the Heavens to make application of this and bestow the benefits thus purchased by him And because it was he and not we that made the purchase it therefore pleased the Father that the purchased treasure should be put into his hands and not immediately put into ours He is become our Treasury and authorized to be our Head All Power is given him in Heaven and Earth We have so fouly miscarryed already that he will no more trust his honour in our hands as at first he did We shall have nothing of Pardon or Grace or Glory but what we have in and from the Sonne God hath given us Eternal Life and this Life is in his Sonne He that hath the Sonne hath Life and he that hath not the Sonne hath not Life 1 Joh. 11. 12. It is not only the Nature and Person of Christ that is to be believed in but it is the Person as impowred to certain ends and clothed with his Office yet we must now entertain Now the Office of Christ being for our Salvation and the Glory of God is suited to these happy ends And our Necessities are principally in these three points 1. We have the Guilt of sinne upon us to be pardoned and the Wrath of God and Curse of the Law and the punishment of sinne to be removed 2. We have the Corruption of our Nature to be healed the power of sinne to be destroyed the Image of God repaired on us and our hearts and lives to be acted and ordered according to the Will of God and to these ends Temptations to be conquered and our Souls directed strengthned and preserved to the end 3. We must be raised from the Grave at the last day we must be Justified in Judgment and possessed of that Glory which is the End of our Faith To this Justification Sanctification and Glorification may the rest be reduced Now the Office of Christ is suited to these Necessities of ours and as we cannot possibly be saved unless all these Necessities be supplied and these works done for us so we cannot possibly have these things done but by Accepting of Christ as Authorized and impowred by his Office and Perfections to do them The Glory that God will have by this work I have before expressed to you at large He will have his Justice Wisdom and Power and Holiness and Mercy to be demonstrated and honoured by Christ. And therefore Christ hath resolved to give out none of his benefits but in such manner and waies as may best attain these highest Ends. These several points therefore I must intreate you here to note distinctly 1. That you must be brought into a special Relation to the Person of Christ as cloathed with his Office before you can lay claim to his Saving Benefits He is the Head and you must become his Members He is
the Husband of the Church and you must become his Spouse and so of the rest This is called our Vniâ—â—ng to Christ which must go before your further Communion with him It is the Will of God that you shall never receive his Benefits without or before you receive his Sonne Except only those Benefits which go before your Union with Christ himselfe in order to the accomplishing it as the Gospel the gift of Faith to the Elect c. You shall never have actual Pardon Justification Adoption Sanctification or Glory till you have first saving interest in Christ himself He is the Vine and we are the Branches we must be planted into him and live in him or else we can have nothing further from God nor do nothing acceptable to God And therefore the first and great work of Faith is to Receive and close with the Person of Christ as cloathed with his Office 2. Understand and note that as you shall not have his great Benefits before or without his Person so God hath resolved that you shall not have his Special Benefits unless you will take them all together I speak of men at age that are capable of all You shall not have Pardon and Justification or Glory without Sanctification nor the Comforts of Christ without the guidance and government of Christ. You must have all or none 3. From hence it follows that therefore you must Receive and close with Christ Entirely in his whole Office as he is to accomplish all these works or else you cannot be United to him He will not be divided You shall not have Christ as a Justifier of yon if you will not have him as a Guid and Ruler and Sanctifier of you He will not be a partial Saviour If you will not consent that he shall save you from your sinnes he will not consent to save you from Hell 4. Understand and note that Christ will look to his Fathers Interest and Honour and his own as well as to your Salvation yea and before it And therefore you must not hope for any Mercy from him in any way that is dishonourable to him or that is inconsistent with his own blessed Ends and Interest And therefore do not look for any such Grace from him as shall discharge you from your duty or give you liberty to dishonour or disobey him Nor do not think that you shall have him Related to you only for your own ends but on terms of highest honour to God and you Redeemer And do not think that your Grace is ever the less free because Gods Honour is thus preferred For if you are Christians indeed you will take Gods Interest as your own highest Interest and will confess that you could not have your own Ends and welfare any other way 5. Understand and Note also that as all your Mercies are in the hand of Christ so Christ hath appointed in his Gospel a certain way and course of means in which he will bestow it And you cannot expect it from him in any other way but his own As God hath made Christ the way and no man cometh to the Father but by him so Christ hath ordained a standing course of means which are his way for the making over of his Benefits and here you must have them or go without them 6. Understand and Note that there are some of Christ's Ends and Benefits that the very Natural man desires and some that Corrupted Natuâ—e is against Now it is therefore the established way of Christ to Promise us those which we can desire on Condition that we will also accept of and submit to those that we are against Not but that his Grace doth dispose men to the performance of such Conditions But his Grace worketh by means and a Conditionall Promise is his stablished means to draw mans heart to the Performance of the Condition which well considered is a sufficient answer to the Arguments that are commonly urged against the Conditionality of the Promise As the Spirit doth Powerfully work within so he useth that Word from without as his Instrument which worketh Sapientially and Powerfully to the same work If a Physician have two medicines to give his patient as necessary for his cure the one very sweet and the other bitter the one which he loves and the other which he loaths he will Promise him the Sweeter if he will take the Bitter one that by the love of one he may prevail against the loathing of the other and may â—ice it down He will not promise the bitter one which is loathed and make the Taking of the sweet one the Condition He will not say I will give thee this Aloes on Condition thou wilt take this Sugar but contrary I will give thee the sweeter if thou wilt take the bitter In Christs Ends and Works 1. We Naturally are more willing of that which makes for our selves directly then of that which makes directly for the Honour of God and the Redeemer We preferre our own Ends before Gods Glory And therefore Christ hath so ordered the Condition of his Promises that unless we will take him in his Relations of Dignity as King and Lord and will make the Glory and Pleasing of God our principal End we shall have none of him or his Saving Benefits For he came not to fulfill our selfish desires but to fetch us off from our selves and recover us to God that he might have his own And if we will not have our All in God we shall have Nothing 2. And Naturally we are willing as to our own Benefits to be pardoned and freed from the Curse of the Law and the flames of Hell and Natural death and punishment And therefore we are thus farre Naturally willing of free Justification But we are unwilling to let go the seeming profit and credit and pleasure of sinne and to deny the flesh and forsake the world and we are averse to the Spiritual felicity of the Saints and to the Holiness of heart and life that is the way to it And therefore Christ hath most wisely so ordered it in the tenor of his Promises that our Repentance and Faith shall be the Condition of our Justification and deliverance from death and Hell And this Faith is the believing in him and Accepting him Entirely in his whole Office to Sanctifie us and Rule us as well as to Justifie us And thus we must take him wholly or we shall have none of him And the Accepting him as our Teacher and Sanctifier and King is as much at least the Condition of our Justification and Pardon and deliverance from Hell as the Accepting him as a Justifier of us is He that had the Power in his own hands and that made the free Promise or Deed of Gift hath put in such Conditions as his own Wisdom saw best and they are such as suit most congruously to all his Ends even the Glory of God in all his Attributes and the Redeemers Glory and our own
and most full and free Salvatition And on his Conditions must we have his Benefits or we shall never have them 7. Lastly Understand and Note that the Means which Christ hath resolved on for Teaching and Ruling us ordinarily are his Word his Ministers and his Spirit all must be submitted to together where they may be had and none of them laid by by separation His Word is the Grammar or Book as it were that we must learn His Ministers must teach us this Book And his Spirit who in the Apostles and Prophets indited and sealed it must inwardly teach us by powerfull Illumination The Word is Gods Laws the Ministers are his Embassadours or Heraulds to proclaime them and command obedience in his Name and his Spirit must open mens hearts to entertain them The Word is Gods Seed the Ministers are the Husbandmen or Servants that sow it and the Spirit must give the increase without which our planting and watering will do nothing He therefore that takes Christ for his Master and King must resolve to be taught and ruled by his established means even by his Word and Ministers and Spirit conjunct For he that refuseth and despiseth these doth refuse and despise Christ and consequently the Father that sent him Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes. 4. 8. For it was never the meaning of Christ when he became the Teacher and King of the Church to stay on Earth and personally and visiby to teach them himself but these three are his means which all must submit to that will be his Subjects and Disciples And he that despiseth the Word shall be destroyed Prov. 13. 13. He that will not have the Word Ministry and Spirit teach him will not have Christ teach him and he that refuseth to be ruled by these three shall be destroyed as a Rebel against Christ himself Luke 19. 27. Still it is supposed that Ministers must Teach and Rule according to this Word And the Society in which Christ will Teach and govern us is his Church As members therefore of the Vniversal Church and in Communion with his Particular Church where we live and have opportunity we must wait on Christ for his Teaching and Benefits For this is his Schoole where his Disciples must diligently attend and learn Lay all this together and this is the summe The Object of Justifying Saving Faith is One only undivided Christ one in Person but of two Natures God and Man in Office the Mediator between God and man who hath already done the work of Sanctification and Merit and is authorized further to bestow the Benefits By the Gospel Grant he hath given himself as Head and Husband Teacher King and Saviour to all that will entirely and heartily accept him and with himself he giveth Justification by the Promise Sanctification by the Word Ministry and Spirit and final Absolution and Everlasting Life If ever then you will have Christ and Life you must accept him in all these Essentials of his Person and Office and that to the Ends which his Redemption was intended for you must be willing to be Sanctified by him as well as to be Justified You must at once unfeignedly become his Disciples his Subjects his Members if you would become his saved ones You wust consent that as your Teacher and your Lord he shall Teach and Rule your heart and life by his Word Ministers and Spirit in Communion with his Church No barre or exception must be put in nor reservation made against any one of these parts of his Office If you yield not to those parts of his Saving work that tend but to the compleative growth you sinne and deprive your selves of the Benefit but if you yield not to those that must make you truly Sanctified and Justified men you cannot be saved The Essentials of Christ's Person and Office do costitute him the Christ and if he be not received in all those Essentials he is not received as Christ. And thus I have given you the summe of the Gospel and the description of Faith and true Christianity in this Direction for a right closing with the Lord Jesus Christ. And experience of most that I discourse with perswades me to think this Direction of great necessity and to intreat you throughly to peruse and consider it I find abundance of ignorant people that talk much of Christ but know very little of him that can scarce tell us whether he be God or man or which Person in the Trinity he is nor to what End he was incarnate and died noâ— what Relation he stands in to us or what use he is of or what he now is or what he is engaged to do for us But if we ask them about their hopes of Salvation they almost overlook the Redemption by Christ and tell us of nothing but Gods Mercies and their own good meanings and endeavours And I am afraid too many Professors of Piety do look almost all at the Natural part of Religion and the mending of their own hearts and lives and I would this were better done while they forget the supernatutural part and little are affected with the infinite Love of God in Christ. I desire such to consider these things 1. You overlook the summe of your Religion which is Christ Crucified besides whom Paul desired to know nothing 2. You overlook the fountain of your own life and the author of your supplies and you strive in vaine for Sanctification or Justification if you seek them not from a Crucified Christ. 3. You leave undon the principal part of your work and live like moral Heathens while you have the name of Christians Your daily work is to study God in the face of his Sonne and to labour with all Saints to comprehend the height and bredth and length and depth and to know the Love of Christ which passeth knowledg Eph. 3. 18. 19. All your Graces should be daily quickned and set awork by the life of Faith in the contemplation of the Redeemer and his blessed work This is the weight that must set all the wheels agoing You do God no Service that he can accept if you serve him not in this Gospel-work of loving trusting and admiring and praysing him in the Redeemer and for his Redemption 4. And so you rob God of the principal part of his Glory which you are to give him which is for this most glorious work of our Redemption I pray you read over again the Ends of this work which I laid down in the beginning of this Direction 5. Moreover you rob your selves of your principal comfort which must all come in by living upon Christ. 6. And you harden the Antiâ—omians and Libertines and tempt men to their extreams that runne from us as Legalists and as men that Savour not the Doctrine of free Grace and are not of a Gospel-Spirit and conversation I would our great neglect of Christ had not been a snare to these mistaken Soulâ— and a stumbling block in their way O Sirs if
a thought of your hearts if a word of your mouths have not some relation to Christ to suspect it yea reject it Call it not a Sermon or a Prayer nor a duty that hath nothing of Christ in it Though the pure God-head be your principal End yet there is no way to this End but by Christ and though Love which is exercised on that End must animate all your graces and duties as they are Means to that End yet Faith hath Love in it or else it is not the Christian Faith and Christ is the Object of your Faith and Love and your perfect Everlasting Love will be animated by Christ For your Love and Praise will be to him that was slain and Redeemed us to God by his Blood out of every Kindred Tongue and Nation and made us Kings and Priests to God So much for the fifth Direction DIRECT VI. The next Direction which I would give you for a through Conversion is this See that the flesh be throughly mortified and your hearts be throughly taken off the world and all its pleasures and profits and honours and that the Roote of your fleshly Interest prevaile not at the heart and that you think not of reconciling God and the world as if you might secure your Interest in both This is a very common cause of the deceit and destruction of such as verily think they are converted It is the very Nature and business of true Conversion to turn mens hearts from the flesh and from the world to God and from an earthly and seeming happiness to a Heavenly Real Everlasting Happiness And when men are affrighted into som kind of Religiousness and yet never learnt to deny themselves and never mortified their fleshly mind but the love of this world is still the chiefest principle at their hearts and so go on in Profession of godliness with a secret reserve that they will look as well as they can to their outward prosperity whatever become of their Religion and they will have no more to do with the matters of another world then may stand with their bodily safety in this world these are the miserable deluded Hypocrites whose hopes will prove as the giving up of the ghost whom Christ will disown in their greatest extremities after all their seeming Religiousness O Sirs look to this as ever you would be happy It s an easie it s a common it s a most dangerous thing to set upon a course of outward Piety and yet keep the world next your hearts and take it still as a great part of your felicity and secretly to love your former lusts while you seem to be converted The heart is so deceitfull that you have great cause to watch it narrowly in this point It will closely cherish the love of the world and your fleshly pleasures when it seems to renounce them and when your tongue can speak contemptuously of them It was not for nothing that Christ would have the first fruits of his Gospel-Church who were to be the Example of their successours to sell all and lay it down at the feet of his Apostles And it is his standing Rule that Whoever he be that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 33. In estimation affection and resolution it must be forsaken by all that will be saved and also in practice when ever God calls us to it You can have but one Happiness If you will needs have it in this world in the contenting of your flesh there is no hope of having it also in another world in the fruition of God If you think not God and Heaven enough for you and cannot let go the Prosperity of the flesh for them you must let go all your hopes of them God will not halve it with the world in your hearts nor part stakes with the flesh much less will he be below them and take their leavings Heaven will not be theirs that set not by it more then Earth God will not call that Love to him Sincere which is not a Superlative Love and able to make you even hate all those things that would draw away your affections and obedience from him Luke 14. 26 27. There 's no talk of serving God and Mammon and compounding you a Happiness of Earth and Heaven Do therefore as Christ bids you Luke 14. 28 29 30. Sit down and count what it must cost you if you will be saved and on what rates it is that you must follow Christ. Can you voluntarily for the love of him and the hope of Glory take up your Cross and follow him in poverty in losses in reproaches though scornes and scourgings and prisons and death Do you value his loving kindness better then life Psal. 63. 3 Can you deny your eyes and your appetites their desires Can you consent to be vile in the eyes of men and to tame your own flesh and keep it in subjection and live a flesh-displeasing life that hâ—ving suffered with Christ you may also be glorified with him Rom. 8. 17. If you cannot consent to these terms you cannot be Christians nor you cannot be Saved If you must needs be rich or must be honourable yea if you must needs save your estates or liberties or lives it 's past all question you must needs let go Christ and Glory If you must needs have the world you must needs lose your Souls If you must have your good things here you must not have them hereafter too but be tormented when Christ's sufferers are comforted Luke 16. 25. These hopes of purveying for the flesh as long as they can and then of being saved when they can stay here no longer is it that hath deceived many a thousand to their undoing It 's a strang thing to see how the world doth blind very knowing men and how unacquainted these Hypocrites are with their own hearts What a confident profession of down-right godliness many of them will make yea of some extraordinary height in Religion when nothing is so dear to to them as their present prosperity and God hath not neer so much interest in them as the flesh What contrivances some of them make for riches or rising in the world And how tender others are of their honour with men and how tenacious they are of their Mammon of unrighteousness and how much money and great men can do with them And most of them pamper their flesh and serve it in a cleanlier way of Religiousness even as much though not so disgracefully and grossly as drunkards and whoremongers do in a more discernable sensuality If the times do but change and countenance any errour how smal an Argument will make their judgments bend with the times If truth or duty must cost them deer O how they will shift and stretch and wriggle to prove Truth to be no Truth and duty to be no duty and no Argument is strong enough to satisfie them when the flesh doth but say It s
those best that are of his own Opinion though there be nothing of the special Image of God upon his Soul Or if he love a true Christian it is not so much for his Holiness and Spirituality as because he is of his mind in those matters of Opinion Hence it is that he is usually a bitter censurer of those that are not of his Opinion how upright soever they may be His very esteeme of men and love to them is partial and factious to those that are of his Mind and Sect A Papist will esteem and love men of the Popish Sect and an Anabaptist will esteem and love men of that Sect most yea a Protestant if he be an Opinionist doth esteem of men and love them as a Sect Whereas the true Christian as he is truly Catholick and of the Catholick Church which is not confined to Papists no nor Protestants so he hath truly Catholik affections and loveth a Christian as a Christian a Godly man as Godly yea if he saw more serious Godliness in one that is not of his Opinion in lesser things yet would he love him more then one that is in such matters of his Opinion that is ungodly or of more doubtfull Piety For as it is God in Christ that he principally loveth so it is Christ that he admireth in his Members and so much of Christ as he sees in any so much are his special affections towards them 9. Ordinarily the meer Opinionist will Sacrifice the very Ends of the Gospel and the honour and success of the great fundamental Truths of God to the interest of those Opinions which he hath in a singular manner to his Own He will rather hinder the propagation of the common Truths and the Conversion of the ignorant then he will silence his Opinions or suffer them to lose any advantages with the world Hence it is that we cannot prevaile with the Papists to silence a while the differences between us and them till we have taught their ignorant in Ireland and other barbarous parts the knowledg of those Truths that all are agreed in Nor can we get many Anabaptists or any such Sect that is engaged in a division to forbear their Opinions till we have endeavoured â—o lay the necessary grounds on which all must build that will be saved But though it be apparent to the world that their disputes and contentions do exceedingly harden the ignorant and ungodly against all Religion and hinder their Conversion and Salvation yet will they go on in the unseasonable intemperate bruting of their conceits and will not be perswaded to agree on those terms for the managing of differences as most tend to secure the interest of Christ and his Gospel in the maine If an Opinionist be for the Truth he is usually without much zeale for it because that Nature doth not befriend the great Spirituall Truths of the Gospel so much as it doth errours and private conceits But if he be of Erroneous Opinions he is usually very zealous for them For Corrupted Nature and Self and Satan and the world oft-times do more befriend these and furnish him with a Zeale for them and blow the coale The counterfeit Angel of Light is very ordinarily also a spirit of heat and great activity not a reviving fire nor a refining fire but a consuming fire devouring Christian Love and meekness and patience and therewith the Church and Truth of God so far as it can prevail For lesser matters that minister Questions such men can say by that which tends to Godly Edifying in Faith 1 Tim. 1. 4. Yea that Charity which is the very End of the Commandement out of a pnre Heart a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned vers 5. From these they swerve and turn aside to vain jangling oft times desiring to be Teachers of such thigs in which they understand not what they say nor whereof they speak vers 6 7. Consenting not to the wholsome Words of Christ and the Doctrine which is according to Godliness they teach otherwise being proud knowing nothing but doting about questions and strife of words whereof cometh envy strife railings evill surmisings perverse disputing of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the Truth 1 Tim. 6. 3 4 5. Yea they sometime take their Opinions or their worldly gain that they often ayme at to be instead of Godliness And think that to be Godly is to he of their mind and way They use to strive about words to no profit but to the subverting of the hearers and their vain bablings increase to more ungodliness 2 Tim. 2. 14 16. But the True Convert looks principally to the main He loves every known Truth of God but in their Order and accordingly to their worth and weight He will not for his own Opinions wilfully do that which shall hazard the main or hinder the Gospel and the saving of mens Souls Though he will not be false to any Truth yet he will avoid foolish and unlearned questions knowing that they do gender strife and the Servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men and meekly instruct opposers following Righteousness Faith Charity Peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart Tim. 2. 22 23 24 25. 10. Lastly True Converts are stedfast but Opinionists are usually mutable and unconstant The sound Convert receiveth the greatest Truths and receives the Goodness as well as the Truth and takes it not only into the Head but into the Heart and giveth it deep rooting He closeth with God as his only felicity and with Christ as his only Refuge and Redeemer and with Heaven as the sure everlasting Glory to which the world is but a mole-hill or a dungeon No wonder then if this man be stedfast and unmovable alwaies abounding in the Work of the Lord that knows his Labour is not in vain in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. But the Opinionist either fasteneth on smaller matters or else holdeth these great matters but as bare Opinions and therefore they have no such interest in his heart as to stablish him against shaking tryals and temptations For two sortâ— there are of these Opinionists the onâ— sort have no Zeal for their own Opinions because they are but Opinions And these are time-servers and will change as the King or their Land-lords change and fit their Opinions to their worldly Ends. The other sort have a burning Zeale for their Opinions and these use to wander from one Opinion to another not able to resist the subtilty of seducers but are taken with fair and plausible reasonings not able to see into the heart of the cause These are as Children tâ—ssed to and fro and carried about with every wind of Doctrine by the slight and cunning craftiness of men whereby they lie in weight to deceive Eph. 4. 14. When with great confidence they have held one sort of Opinions a while and railed against those that were not of their mind ere long they
Evidences might raise you from Opinion to a working saving Faith 6. Lastly take heed lest any thing be suffered to keep possession of your Hearts and so to confine the truth to your braine When the world is kept up in life and power and is nearest the heart there is no room for the Word there but it must float upon the top and swim in your Opinion because it can go no deeper your lusts and profits having possession before it The Word can never go to the heart with unmortified men but by casting your Idols out of your hearts nor will it take rooting in you but by rooting out the world O Sirs if you knew the misery of a meer Opinionist you would sure be perswaded now to practise these Directions that may raise you higher An Opinionist is a deceiver of himself and oft of others a troubler of the Church 〈◊〉 he have any Zeal for Opinions and hit as usually he doth on the wrong And when his Religion is right he is wrong himself being out of the way even when he is in the right way because he is not right in that right way For he doth but sit down in it when he should travaile it A runner shall not win the prize by being in the right way only unless he make hast The knowledg of the Opinionist doth but serve to aggravate his sinne and cause him to be beaten with many stripes but is not of force to Sanctifie his heart and life and to save him Jam. 2. fully shews Stick not therefore in an Opinionative Religiousness DIRECT IX My next Direction that your Conversion may prove sound is this Acquaint your Souls by Faith with the Glory of the Everlasting Kingdom and see that you make it your Portion and your End and from thence let the rest of your endeavours be animated No man can be a sound Christian that knoweth not the Ends and Portion of a Christian. There is a great deal of difference between the desires of Heaven in a Sanctified man and an unsanctified The Believer prizeth it above earth and had rather be with God then here Though death that stands in the way may possibly have harder thoughts from him But to the ungodly there is nothing seemeth more desirable then this world and therefore he only chooseth Heaven before Hell but not before earth and therefore shall not have it upon such a choice We heare of Gold and Silver mines in the Indies If you offer a Golden mountaine there to an English man that hath an estate and family here that are deare to him perhaps hee 'l say I am uncertain whether their Golden mountains be not meer fictions to deceive men and if it be true that there are such things yet it is a great way thither and the seas are perilous and I am well enough already where I am and therefore let who will go thither for me I will stay at home as long as I can But if this man must needs be banished out of England and had his choise whether he would go to the Golden Ilands or to dig in a colepit or live in a wilderness he would rather choose the better then the worse So is it with an ungodly mans desires in respect to this world and that to come If he could stay here in fleshly pleasure for ever he would because he looks at Heaven as uncertain and a great way off and the passage seemeth to him more troublesom and dangerous then it is and he is where he would be already But when he sees that there is no staying here for ever but death will have him away he had rather go to Heaven then to Hell and therefore will be Religious as far as the flesh and the world will give him leave left he should be cast into Hell when he is taken from the Earth But take an English man that is in poverty and reproach and hath neither house nor land nor friend to comfort him and let him have the offer of a Golden Iland and a person of unquestionable skilfullness and fidelity that will promise in short time to bring him safe thither if he believe this person and can put his trust in him doubtless he will be gone and follow him over sea and land and though the passage may somewhat daunt him yet the promised possession will carry him through all So is it with the true Christian He is dead to this world and sees nothing here in which he can be happy he is burdened and wearied with sinne and suffering he is firmly perswaded of the truth of the Gospel and seeth by Faith the world that is to flesh invisible and believeth in Jesus Christ who hath promised to convey him safely thither and therefore he would away and though he love not death the stormy passage yet he will submit to it having so sure a Pilot because he loves the life which through death he must pass into and had rather be there then here Such as a mans principall End is such is the man and such is the course of his life He that takes this world for his Portion and makes the felicity of it his end is a carnall worldy unsanctified man whatever good and godly actions may come in upon the by It is he and only he that is a sanctified Believer who looks on Heaven as his only Portion and is sailing through the troublesome Seas of this world of purpose to come to that desired harbour not loving these seas better then the Land of Rest which he is sailing to but patiently and painfully passing through them because there is no other way to Glory As it is the desire of the Land to which he is sailing that moveth the Marriner or Passenger to do all that he doth in his Voyage and the desire of his home or journeys End that moveth the travailer all the way and the desire of seeing a perfect Building that moveth the Builder in every stroke of his Work so it must be the love of God and the desire after Everlasting blessedness that must be the very Engine to move the rest of the affections and endeavours of the Saints and must make men resolve on the necessary labour and patience of Believers Take off this weight and all the motions of Christianity will cease No man will be at labour and sufferings for nothing if he can avoid them It is a life of Labour though sweet to the Spirit yet tedious to the flesh which Christianity doth engage us in and there is much suffering to be undergone and this to the very last and to the denyall of our selves and if God require it to the loss of all the comforts of the world For no less then forsaking all that we have will serve to make us Christs Disciples And will any man do this for he knows not what Will any man forsake all that he hath unless it be for something better which may be as sure
to him as that he had and may make him more happy Look to it therefore that you have right and beliving thoughts of Heaven and that unfeignedly you take it for your Home and Happiness and look not for any other Portion Till you see so much of the certainty and excellency of Everlasting Glory as shall prevail with you to lay out your faithfull labour for it and to be at a point with all this world as having laid up your Treasure and Hopes in the world to come you have no ground to conclude that you are true Christian Converts Seeing therefore that it's Heaven that is the very Reason the End the Life of all your Religion it follows that you must necessarily understand somewhat of its excellency and believe its certainty and accordingly set your hearts upon it and make the attainment of it your daily work and business in the world This is to be a Convert indeed Remember therefore first what I told you before wherein the nature of this Blessedness doth consist I will only name the Essentials of it that your apprehensions may be right and forbear to say much as being done already 1. The first thing considerable in our Everlasting Blessedness will be our personal Perfection of the whole man This is in order to the Perfection of our Everlasting Operations and Enjoyments Our bodies shall be no more flesh and blood nor corruptible or mortall or subject to hunger or pain or weariness nor to passions that rebell against the reasonable soul but they shall be spiritul bodies and Immortall and Incorruptible and Undefiled Our Souls will be perfected in their Natural Perfections and in their Moral They shall be of more advanced Understanding and comprehensive Wisdom then now Our wills shall attain to perfect rectitude in a perfect conformity to the Will of God and every affection shall be brought to its perfect order and elevation All sinne shall be done away whether it were in the understanding will affections or the actions The executive power will be answerable to the rest of the Perfections and to the blessed work which it hath to do And thus we shall be like the Angels of God 2. The next thing considerable in our Blessedness is our approximation or approach to God We shall be admitted into the holiest and brought as neer him as our natures are capable of and we are fit for 3. Moreover we shall be Members of the new Jerusalem and receive our Glory in Communion with that blessed Society and so as Members contribute to her Glory 4. And we shall behold the glorified Person of our Redeemer and he will be glorified on us as the fruits of his Victory 5. And we shall behold the face of the blessed God and see his wisdom and power and glory and know as we are known Though we cannot now fully know the manner yet in that sense as our Angels are said to behold the face of God Mat. 18. 10. we also shall behold it 6. We shall also enjoy him in the neerest relation and by the most raised vigorous affections of our souls We shall be filled with his Love as full as we can hold and we shall abound with perfect Love to him again And the Joy that is in his presence which this Intuition and Everlasting Love will afford us is such as no heart is here able to conceive 7. Being thus furnished we shall be employed in his perfect Praises in singing and rejoycing to him with the heavenly Host and Magnifying his great and holy Name 8. And in all this will the Glory of God shine forth and he will be admired in his Saints 2 Thes. 1. 10. 11. In us it shall appear how abundant he is in power and wisdom and goodness in holiness faithfulness and righteousness 9. And God himself will be well pleased with us and with the new Jerusalem and his glorified Sonne and will take complacenâ—y in this manifestation and communication of his Glory and of Himself unto his creatures And this is his Ultimate End and should be the highest point of ours The Revolution hath now brought all to that Center which is both the Alpha and Omega the begining and the end His Will is the Fountain or Efficient of all and it is the Ultimate End and Perfection of all There is no more to add as to the matter but that as to the Duration first we may take it as that which leaves no room for any addition that all this will be Everlasting leaving not any doubts or fears of a cessation Abundance of glorious adjuncts of this felicity might be mentioned but I pass them all by and do but name these few which are the Essentiall Constitutive parts of our Happiness because I have touched them before and fullyer spoken of them in the Saints Rest. Thus much I thought meet to mention here that you may have somewhat of that in your eye that I am perswading you to intend and seek and the rather because I perceive that many of the godly have not such distinct Apprehensions of the constitutive parts of this Felicity as they should have but much wrong their souls and God Himself and the Glory of their Profession by looking but at some of the Parts Believe God sirs that this is the life that you shall live if you will take it for your Portion and set your hearts upon it and follow the Conduct of Christ for the obtaining it Can you be content with Heaven alone Is it enough for you though you be despised and persecuted in the world Do you account this for Certainty and Excellency to be worth all Yea that all is dross and dung to this Thus must you do if you will be true Converts For all such are heavenly in their minds and hearts and in the drift of all their lives and Conversations DIRECT X. My next Advice that you may prove sound Converts is this Rest not and count not your selves truly Converted till God and his holy Waies have your very Love and Desire and Delight and take not that for a saving Change when you had rather live a worldly ungodly life if it were not for the fear of punishment I shall speak but little of this because I toucht upon it before when I told you that Christ must have your hearts and because it is but a consectary of the last or contained in it But yet I think it best to present it here distinctly to your Consideration because a slavish kind of religiousness doth deceive so many and because the life of Grace is here exprest I deny not but holy Fear is eâ—ceeding usefull to us even a Fear of the Threatnings and Judgments of God But yet I must tell you that in Fear there is much more that is common to the unsanctified then there is in Love Desire and Delight Though the Fear of God be the beginning of wisdom it is Love that is the Perfection and that Fear is not
Saints you have far more to do then other men You have a multitude of head-strong passions to subdue and abundance of deadly sinnes to kill and rooted vices to root upâ—â— You have many a false opinion of God and his waies to be plucked up and the customes of many years standing to be broken You have blind minds that must be enlightned with heavenly kowledg and abundance of Spiritual Truths that are above the reach of flesh and blood that you must needs learn and understand You have much to know that is hard to be known You have a dead Soul to be made alive and a hard heart to be melted and a scared Conscience to be softned and made tender and the guilt of many thousand sinnes to be pardoned You have a new heart to get and a new End to ayme at and seek after and a new life to live abundance of Enemies you have to sight with and overcome abundance of temptations to resist and conquer Many Graces to get and preserve and exercise and increase and abundance of holy works to do for the Service of God and the good of your selves and others O what a deal of work doth every one of these words conteine and yet what abundance more might I name And have you all this to do and yet will you delay And they are not indifferent matters that are before you It is no less then the saving of your Souls and the obtaining the blessed Glory of the Saints Necessity is upon you These are things that Must be done or else wo to you that ever you were born And yet have you another day to lose Why Sirs if you had a hundred mile to go in a day or two upon paine of death would you delay O think of the work that you have to do and then judg whether it be not time to stirre 20. And me thinks it should exceedingly terrifie you to consider what abundance by such Delayes do perish and how few that wilfully delay are ever converted and saved Many a Soul that once had purposes hereafter to repent is now in the misery where there is no Repentance that will do them any good For my part though I have known some very few Converted when they were old yet I must needs say both that they were very few indeed and that I had reason to believe that they were such that had sinned before in ignorance and did not wilfully put off Repentance when they were convinced that they must turn Though I doubt not but God may convert even these if he please yet I cannot say that I have ever known many if any such to be converted Sure I am that Gods usual time is in Child-hood or youth before they have long abused grace and wilfully delaid to turn when they were convinced Some considerable time I confess many have before their first convictions and purposes be brought to any great ripeness of performance but O how dangerous is it to delay 21. Consider also Either Conversion is Good or Bad for you Either it is needfull or unnecessary If it be bad and a needless thing then let it alone for altogether But if you are convinced that it is Good and necessary is it not better now then to stay any longer Is it not the sooner the better Are you afraid of being safe or happy too soon If you are sick you care not how soon you are well If you have a bone out you care not how soon it is set If you fall into the water you care not how soon you get out If your house be on fire you care not how soon it be quenched If you are but in fears by any doubts or ill tidings you care not how soon your fears be over And yet are you afraid of being to soon out of the power of the Devil and the danger of Hell and of being too soon the Sons of God and the holy justified heirs of Heaven 22. Consider also Either you can turn now or not If you can and yet will not you are utterly without excuse If you cannot to day how much less will you be able hereafter when strength is less and difficulties greater and burdens more Is it not time therefore to make out to Christ for strength and should not the very sense of your disability disswade you from delay 23. Consider how long you have staid already and put Gods Patience to it by your folly Hath not the Devil the world and the flesh had many years time of your life already Have you not long enough been swallowing the poison of sinne and long enough been abusing the Lord that made you and the blood of the Sonne of God that was shed for you and the Spirit of Grace that hath moved and perswaded with you Are you not yet gone far enough from God and have you not yet done enough to the damning of your selves and casting away Everlasting Life O wretched sinners it is rather time for you to fall down on your faces before the Lord and with tears and groans to lament it day and night that ever you have gone so far in sinne and delayed so long to turn to him as you have done Sure if after so many years rebellion you are yet so far from lamenting it that you had rather have more of it and had rather hold on a little longer no wonder if God forsake you and let you alone 24. Have you any hopes of Gods acceptance and your Salvation or not If you have such hopes that when you turn God will pardon all your sinnes and give you Everlasting Life is it think you an ingenious thing to desire to offend him yet a little longer from whom you expect such exceeding Mercy and Glory as you do Have you the faces to speak out what is in your hearts and practice and to go to God with such words as these Lord I know I cannot have the pardon of one sinne without the Blood of Christ and the riches of thy Mercy Nor can I be saved from Hell without it But yet I hope for all this from thy Grace I beseech thee let me live a little longer in my sinnes a little longer let me trample on the Blood of Christ and despise thy commands and abuse thy Mercies a little longer let me spit in the face of thy Goodness and prefer the flesh and the world before thee and then pardon me all that ever I did and take me into Glory Could you for shame put up such a request to God as this If you could you are past shame If not then do not practise and desire that which you cannot for shame speak out and request 25. Moreover it is an exceeding advantage to you to come in to God betimes and an exceeding loss that you will suffer by delay if you were sure to be converted at the last If you speedily come in you may have time to learn and get more understanding in the matters of
for want of Resolution and Regeneration 〈◊〉 Do you think that Judas himself had not some good Desires that followed Christ so long and preached the Gospel Do you think that Herod had not some good Desires that heard John gladly and did many things accordingly Agrippa had some good Desires when he was almost perswaded to be a Christian. They that for a time believe have sure some good Desires and more Matth. 13. 20. And so had the young man that went away sorrowfull from Christ when he could not be his Disciple unless he would part with all that he had Luke 18. 23. Matth. 19. 22. And doubtless those had more then good Desires that had known the way of Righteousness and had escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledg of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 2 Pet. 2. 20 21. And so had those Heb. 10. 26 29. That had received the knowledg of the Truth and were Sanctified by the blood of the Covenant And those Heb. 6. 4 5 6. That were once inlightened and tafted of the Heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come And sure Ananias and Saphira had more then some good Desires when they sold all and brought half the price to the Apostles Believe it Sirs there are none of your Desires or Endeavours that will serve turn to prove you in a state of Grace unless they be accompanied with firm Resolution Be it known to you that you are unconverted if you are not habitually Resolved And therefore I must here intreat you all to put the question close to your hearts Are you Resolved firmly Resolved to give up your selves and all to Christ and to be wholly his and follow his conduct or are you not The question is not what good meanings or wishes or purposes you may have but whether you are Resolved and firmly Resolved Take heed Sirs what you venture your Souls upon God will not be dallied with nor be deceived He will have no unresolved false-hearted servants Before I proceed to urge you further I shall here tell you what kind of Resolution it must be that will prove a man converted and then I shall give you such Motives as should perswade you to it It is not all kind of Resolution that will serve turn but it is only that which hath these following properties that will evidence a state of Grace 1. As to the Matter it must be the whole Essence of Christianity that must be Resolved on It must be no less then a closing with God as your chiefest happiness to be Loved above all and as your chiefest Lord to be obeyed before all and a closing with Jesus Christ as your only Saviour your Teacher and your Lord to bring your hearts again to God and reconcile you to him and a closing with the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier to make you a holy people and clense you from all your sinne of heart and life and guide you by the Ministery Word and Ordinances to Everlasting life Thus must you Resolve to deliver up your selves to God the Father Sonne and Holy Ghost to be made a peculiar people zealous of good works Should you be never so Resolute in some point of Religion and as Ananias to give God Half and to become half Religious and half Holy and half Heavenly this is but to be half Christians and will not bring you half way to Heaven It 's entire Christianity that must be Resolved on 2. You must also be Resolved for present obedience and to turn without any more delay and not only Resolve to turn to morrow or sometime hereafter No Resolution is sincere in this case if it be but for the future If you had rather stay but one day or hour longer in the state of sinne and service of the flesh you are no true Disciples of Christ though you should be Resolved to turn to morrow 3. And your Resolution must be Absolute and peremptory not only without any secret Reserves but Positively against any such Reserves Here it is that Hypocrites commonly fall short They see they must mend and they are convinced that a holy life is necessary and they Resolve hereupon to change their course and turn religious but either it is with this secret Reserve Provided alwaies that I look to my credit or estate or life what ever I do and provided that I go no further in Religion then will stand with these provided that godliness be not my undoing in the world Or else if he have not actually such thougths he hath them alwaies virtually and habitually He is not Resolved against such Reserves He hath not considered that Christ will have no Disciples that cannot and will not part with all and that if he hope for Heaven he must not look for a treasure on earth but only pass through the world as a travailer or labour in it as the harvest of the Lord in expectation of a Reward and Rest hereafter and so Resolved to take Christ on these self denying terms But he that will be saved must be thus resolved Even to sell all to buy the unvaluable pearl Matth. 13. 46 47. To make sure of Heaven though he lose all on Earth by it to lay up his hopes in the life to come and venture and let go all rather then those hopes to take Christ absolutely upon his own terms for better and worse as being certain that there is no other way to life and that there is no danger of losing by him The Hypocrite is like a man that when he delivereth up the possession of his house will make his bargain that he will keep this room or that room to himself for his own use Or like a servant that will not be hired but on Condition that his Master shall not set him to such or such work that he loves not But Christ will have no such servants You must deliver up all to him or he will accept of none You must give him leave to make his Conditions for you and tell you on what terms you must serve him and wholly referre the matter to him even for life it self and not offer to put Conditions upon him and think to bring him to any terms of yours It is not true Resolution unless it be Absolute and unreserved and against all reserves Yea and that also as to perseverance that you Resolve to give up your selves finally as well as totally not only without any Reserve of a Revocation but against any such Revocation It must not be a coming to Christ upon essay or meer tryal that if you do not like you may leave again But you must make an unchangable everlasting Covenant It must be part of your Covenant that you will never revoke it 4. Moreover your Resolution must be well grounded You must know what the Essentials are of that Religion which you Resolve on and you must
am now come to the End of this part of my work if the reading of it have brought thee to the End of thy ungodly careless life it will be happy for thee and I shall so far attain the End of my labour I have purposely put this Direction of the Necessity of Resolution in the last place that I might leave upon thy spirit the Reasons for Resolution that here I have laid down And now I beseech thee Reader whoever thou art with all the earnestness that I am able to use with thee as ever thou wouldest scape the fruits of all thy sinne as ever thou wouldest see the face of God with comfort and have him thy reconciled Father in Christ as ever thou wouldest have a saving part in Christ and have him stand thy friend in thy extremities as ever thou wouldest have hope in thy death and stand on the right hand and be justified at Judgment as ever thou wouldest scape the day of Vengeance prepared for the unconverted and the endless misery that will fall upon all unsanctified Souls as sure as the Heaven is over thy head See that thou Resolve and Turn to God and trifle with him no more Away with thy old transgressions away with thy careless worldly life away with thy ungodly company and set thy selfe presently to seek after thy Salvation with all thy heart and mind and might I tell thee once more that Heaven and Hell are not matters to be jested with nor to be carelesly thought of or spoken of or regarded The God of Heaven stands over thee now while thou art reading all these words and he seeth thy heart whether thou art Resolved to turn or not Shall he see thee read such urgent Reasons and yet wilt not Resolve Shall he see thee read these earnest requests and yet not Resolve What not to come home to thy God to thy Father to thy Saviour to to thy self after so long and wilfull sinning What not to accept of Mercy now it is even thrust into thy hands when thou hast neglected and abused Mercy so long O let not the Just and Jealous God stand over thee and see thee guilty of such wickedness If thou be a Christian shew thy self a Christian and use thy belief and come to God If thou be a man shew thy self a man and use thy Reason and come away to God I beseech thee read over and over again the Reasons that I have here offered thee and judge whether a reasonable man should resist them and delay an hour to come in to God I that am now writing these lines of Exhortatation to thee must shortly meet thee at the barre of Christ. I do now adjure thee and charge thee in the Name of the living God that thou do not thy self and me that wrong as to make me lose this labour with thee and that thou put me not to come in as a witness against thee to thy coufusion and condemnation Resolve therefore presently in the strength of Christ and strik an unchangeable Covenant with him Get thee to thy knees and bewaile with tears thy former life and deliver up thy self wholly now to Christ and never break this Covenant more If thou lay by the Book and go away the same and no perswasion will do any good upon thee but unholy thou wilt still be and sensual and worldly still thou wilt be I call thy Conscience to witness that thou wast warned of the evill that is neer thee and Conscience shall obey this call and bear me witness whether thou wilt or not And this Book which thou hast read which I intended for thy Conversion and Salvation shall be a witness against thee Though age or fire consume the leaves and lines of it yet God and Conscience shall bring it to thy memory and thou shalt then be the more confounded to think what Reasons and earnest perswasions thou didst reject in so plain so great and necessary a case But if the Holy Ghost will now become thy tutor and at once both put this Book into thy hand and his Heavenly light into thy understanding and his life into thy heart and effectually perswade thee to Resolve and Turn how happy wilt thou be to all Eternity Make no more words on it but answer my request as thou wouldest do if thou wert in a burning fire and I intreated thee to come out Thou hast long enough grieved Christ and his Spirit and long enough grieved thy friends and Teachers Resolve this hour and Rejoyce them that thou hast grieved and now grieve the Devil that thou hast hitherto rejoyced and hereafter grieve the wicked and thy own deceitfull flesh whose sinfull desires thou hast hitherto followed And if thou also grieve thy self a little while by that moderate sorrow that thy sinne hath made necessary for thee it will be but a preparative to thy endless joyes and the day is promised and coming apace when Satan that thou turnost from shall trouble thee no more and God that thou turnâ—st to shall wipe away all tears from thy eyes And if the reading of this Book may be but a means of so blessed an End as God shall have the Glory so when Christ cometh to be glorified in his Saints and admâ—red in all them that do believe 2 Thes 1. 10. both thou and I shall then partake of the Communication of his Glory if so be that I be sincere in writing and thou and I sincere in obeying the Doctrine of this Book Amen July 5. 1657. FINIS
filial and of the right strain if Love be not its Companion Fear of punishment shews that you love your natural selves but it shews not that you love God and are true-hearted to him The Devils fear and tremble but they do not Love It is Love and and not Fear that is the Byas the Inclination and as I may say the Nature of the will of man By his Love it is that you must know what the man is The Philosopher saith Such as a man is such is his end which is all one as to say Such as a man is such is his Love You may Fear a thing at the same time when you hate it and it 's too common to have some hatred mixt with Fear You may be as much against God and his holy waies when Fear only drives you to some kind of religiousness as others are that scarce meddle with Religion at all The first thing that God looks at is what you would do and the next is what you do If you do it but had rather leave it undone you lose your reward and God will take it as if you had not done it For it was not you that did it if you did it not from Love but it was Fear that dwelleth in you God takes mens hearty Desires and Will instead of the Deed where they have not power to fulfill it But he never took the bare Deed instead of the Will A blockish kind of worship consisting in outward actions without the heart is fit to be given to a wooden god a sensless Idol but the true and living God abhorres it He is a Spirit and will be worshiped in Spirit and in Truth such worshipers he seeketh and such he will accept Joh. 4. 23 24. A begger will be glad of your Almes though you leave it with an ill will because he needeth it but God hath no need of you nor of your service and therefore think not that he will accept you on such termes That people worshipeth God in vain that draw near him with their mouth and honour him with their lips when their heart is farre from him Mat. 15. 8 9. A mans heart is where his Love is rather then where his Fear is If you should lie still upon your knees or in the holy Assembly If you should be the strictest Observer of the Ordinances on the Lords daies and yet had such hearts in you as had rather let all these alone if it were not for fear of punishment it will all be disregarded and reckoned to you according to your wills as if it had never been done by you at all It 's Love that must win Love or make you fit for Love to entertain If you give your goods to the poor or your bodies to be burned in a cause that in it self is good and yet have not Love it availeth nothing 1 Cor. 13. 1 2 3 5. You will not think your Wife hath conjugall affections that loveth another man better then you and had rather be gone from you if she could live without you It 's an unnatural Son that loves not his Father but had rather be from him then with him If God called you to a bestiall drugery or slavery he would then look but for your work and not care much whether you be willing or unwilling If your Ox draw your plow and your Horse carry his burden you care not much whether it be willingly or unwillingly Or if it be an enemy that you have to deal with you will look for no more then a forced submission or that he be disabled from doing you hurt But this is not your case It is a state of friendship that the Gospel calls you to you must be nigh to God his Children and the Members of his Sonne espoused to him in the dearest strongest bonds And do you think it is possible that this should be done without your wills and affections If you can be content with the Portion of a slave and an enemy then do your task and deny God your affections But if you look for the entertainment and Portion of a Friend a Child a Spouse you must bring the heart of a Friend and of a Child and of a Spouse Fear may do good by driving you to the use of means and taking out of your hands the things by which you would do your selves a mischief It may prepare you for saving Grace and when you are sanctified it will prove a necessary servant of Love to keep you in awe and save you from temptations But Love is the ruling affection in the sanctified and fear is therefore necessary because of the present imperfection of Love and because of the variety of temptations that here beset us Think not therefore that you are savingly renewed till God have your very hearts When you do but believe and tremble it is better then to be unbelieving and stupid and secure but you are not true Christians till you believe and Love We use to fly from that which we fear and therefore do apprehend it to be evil to us We avoid the presence and company of those that we are afraid of but we draw nigh them that we love and delight in their company We Fear an Enemy We Love a Friend We Fear the Devil naturally but we do not Love him It is Love that is that Affection of the soul that entertaineth God as God even as Good though that Love must be accompanied with a filial fear even a dread and reverence of his Majesty and greatness and a fear of displeasing him If you should toile out your selves in Religious duties with a heart that had rather forbear them if you durst you have not the hearts of Gods Children in your breasts The Magistrate can frighten men to the Congregation and outward worship You may lock a man in the Church that had rather be away And will any man think that this makes him acceptable to God You may keep a Theif from stealing by prison and irons but this makes him not accepted with God as a true man You may cure a man of cursing and swearing and railing and idle and ribbald talking even in a minute of an hour by cutting of his tongue but will God accept him ever the more as long as he hath a heart that would do it if he could There 's abundance of people at this day that are kept from abusing the Lords day and from swearing and stealing yea and from laying hands on all about them that are godly and this by the Law of man and the fear of present punishment And do you think that these are therefore innocent or acceptable with God By this account you may make the Devil a Saint when he is chained up from doing mischief You may as well say that a Lyon is become a Lamb when he is shut up in his Den Or that a mastiff Dog is become harmelss and gentle when he is muzled Believe it sirs you are
never Christians till you see that in God that winnes your hearts to him so that you would not change your Master for any in the world and till you see that in the Hopes of Everlasting Glory that you would not change it for any thing else that can be imagined by the heart of man And till you see that goodness in a heavenly life that you had rather live it then any life in the world You are not converted to God indeed till you had rather live in Holiness then in Sinne if you had your freest choice and till you would gladly be the strictest holiest persons that you know in the world and long after more and more of it and fain would reach Perfection it self For though we cannot be perfect here yet no man is upright that desireth not to be perfect For he that loveth Holiness as Holiness must needs love the greatest measure of Holiness with the greatest Love This is it that maketh sound Converts to be so faithfull and constant with God A man is forward and ready to a work that he loves when he draws back from it as if it were a mischief that hath no mind to do it A man is hardly kept from the persons and places and employments that he loves but a little will withdraw him from that which he loveth not Why is it that we have so much adoe to take off a Drunkard from his Companions and his lusts but because he loves them better then temperance and gracious company And why can we so hardly draw the lustfull wretch from his filthy lusts or the glutton or the idle sensuall person from his needless or ezcessive recreations but because they love them And why is it that you cannot draw the worldling from his covetousness but he parteth with his money almost as hardly as with his blood but because he loveth it And therefore what wonder if temptations be resisted and the fairest baits of the world despised by him that is truly in Love with God No wonder if nothing can turn back that man from the way to Heaven that is in Love both with Heaven and with the Way No wonder if that man stick close to Christ and never forsake a holy life that tafteth the sweetness of it and feels its to do him good and had rather go that way then any in the world There is no true Christian but can say with David that a day in Gods Courts is better then a thousand and he had rather be a door-keeper in the house of God then to dwell in the tents yea or the Pallaces of wickedness Do but mark those Professors that prove Apostates and sorfake the way of godliness which they seemed to embrace and see whether they be not such as either took up some bare Opinions and outward Duties upon a flash of superficial illumination or else such as were frightned into a course of Religion and so went on from duty to duty for fear of being damned when all the while their hearts were more another way and they had rather have been excused These hypocrites are they that are disputing so oft the Obligations to their Duty and asking How do you prove that it is a Duty to pray in my Family or a Duty to observe the Lords Day or to come constantly to the Congregation or to use the Communion of the godly in private meetings or to repeat Sermons or sing Psalms and the like Intimating that they are as Birds in a Cage or Hens in a Pen that are boaring to get out and had had rather be at liberty If it were not for the fear of the Law of God that is upon them they had rather let all these Duties alone or take them up but now and then at an idle time when Satan and the flesh will give them leave If a Feast be prepared and spread before them a good stomack will not stand to ask How can you prove it my duty to eat but perhaps the sick that loath it may do so If the Cup be before the Drunkard he doth not stand on those termes How do you prove it my duty now to drink this Cup and the other Cup No if he might have but leave he would drink on without any questioning whether it be a duty If the Gamester or the Whoremonger might but be sure that he should scape the punishment he would never stick at the want of a Precept and ask Is it my duty If there were but a gift of twenty pound a man to be given to all the poor of the Town yea and to all the people in generall I do not think I should meet with many people in the Town that would draw back and say What Word of God commandeth me to take it Or how can you prove that it is my duty And why is all this but because they have an inward Love to the thing and Love will carry a man to that which seemeth good for him without any command or threatning If these ungodly wretches had one sparke of spiritual life within them and any taste and feeling of the matters that concern their own salvation instead of asking How can you prove that I must pray with my Family or that I must keep the Lords day or that I must converse with the godly and live a holy life they would be readier to say How can you prove that I may not pray with my Family and that I may not sanctifie the Lords Day and that I may not have Communion with the Saints in Holiness Seeing so great a mercy is offered to the world why may not I partake of it as well as others I can perceive in many that I converse with the great difference between a heart that loves God and Holiness and a heart that seemes religious and honest without such a Love The true Convert perceiveth so much sweetness in holy Duties and so much spiritual advantage by them to his â—oul that he is loath to be kept back he cannot spare these Ordinances and Mercies no more then he can spare the bread from his mouth or the cloathes from his back yea or the skin from his flesh no nor so much He loveth them he cannot live without them at the worst that ever he is at he had rather be holy then unholy and live a godly then a fleshly worldly life And therefore if he had but a bâ—re leave from God without a Command to sanctifie the Lords Day and to live in the holy Communion of the Saints he would joyfully take it with many thanks For he need not be driven to his rest when he is weary nor to his spiritual food when he is hungry nor to Christ the reâ—uge of his soul when the curse and accuser are pursuing him But the unsanctified hypocrite that never loved God or Godliness in his heart he stands questioning and enquiring for some proof of a necessity of these courses And if he can but bring
your Cross and follow him You must be hated of all men for his sake and the Gospels and you must prepare for prison and fire and sword There 's no hope of being saved while you purpose to save your pleasures riches liberties or lives Matth. 16. 25. Marke 8. 35. Luke 9. 24. And will a man that is unresolved forsake his friends estate and life for the sake of Christ and the hopes of Glory He cannot do it I know that a carnal ungrounded Resolution may decive a man in the day of tryal when the self-suspecting fearfull Christian may hold out But yet without a humble self-denying Resolution joyned with an adherence to Christ for strength there 's no man will hold out If thou be a wavering minded man thou wilt be unstedfast in all thy waies Jam. 1. 8. If thou be not Resolved the words of a mans mouth will turn thee out of the way the very mocks and scorns of a drunkard or a fool that hath no understanding in the matters of Salvation will make thee shrink and hide thy profession and be ashamed of Christ in whom alone thou hast cause to Glory If thou be not a Resolved man what better can be expected but that thou turn as the weather-cock with every wind and fit thy Religion to thy worldly ends and as another Judas sell thy Lord for a little money If thou fall not away it will be but for want of a tryal to procure it and therefore in Gods account thou art gone already because thy Resolution was never with him When you turn to God there will remain within you the remnants of your corruption a body of death a rebelling flesh and this will be still tempting you and drawing you from God And O how strong do these temptations seem to the Soul that is unresolved Yea without a firm habituate Resolution it is impossible to overcome them Your whole way to Heaven is a continual warfare You have enemies that will dispute every foot of the way with you There 's no going a step forward but as the ship doth in the Sea by cutting its way through the waves and billows and as the plow doth in the earth by cutting through the resisting soil There is self which is your principal enemy and there is Satan and the world and almost all that you meet with in it will prove your hinderers And you must make your way by valour and Holy Violence through all And will an unresolved man do this You will scarce ever how your knee to God in secret prayer nor set your selves upon serious Meditations but the flesh and the Devil will be drawing you off You will never attempt a faithfull reproof a liberal work of Charity a hazardous confession of Christ or any dangerous or costly duty but the flesh and the Devil will plead against it and put you to it And in these and many such cases of your lives you will never break through nor do any good on it without Resolution Do I need to tell you how hard the way of Salvation is that fly from it on mistake because you think it harder then it is Do I need to tell you how false you will prove to Christ if you have not Resolution that know it by your ordinary miserable experience that a poor temptation will make you sinne against your knowledg How many good wishes and purposes have you had already in sickness or at a lively Sermon that are all come to nothing for want of a firm Habituate Resolution What abundance of time-servers and of chaffie professours are lately fallen off to the way of rising and riches in the world or to the pride and giddy levity of dividers that oppose the Truth of God and their Teachers and trouble the Church and all because they were never well rooted by a sound Resolution They that take Christ but upon liking do usually mislike him when he calls them to self-denial For they had never that connatural principle that should effectually dispose their Souls to like him nor had they ever the inward experiences of power and sweetness which are proper to the sincere and should increase their liking of him Either Resolve therefore or stand by and perish 10. I beseech you consider also what abundance of clear undeniable Reasons doth God give in to thee to turn the Scales and cause thee to Resolve He fetcheth Reasons from his own Dominion and Soveraignty Should not a creature obey the Lord that made him He reasoneth with you from his daily preservations Do you live upon him and should you not obey him He reasoneth with you from his Almightiness You are all at his Mercy and wholly in his hands and yet dare you disobey him He reasoneth with you from his Love and Goodness Never did evil come from him nor did he ever do any wrong Never was there man or Angel that was a loser by him it is not possible to have so good a master and yet will you not obey him He fetcheth reasons from all his Mercies Every bit of bread is from him and should be an Argument with thee to obey him Every daies health and strength and comforts and every nights rest and ease thy Mercies at home and thy Mercies abroad in private and in publike all should be so many Arguments with thee to Resolve You cannot look upon a plant or a flower under your feet upon the Sun or a Starre that 's over your heads or upon any creature but you may see so many Reasons that should move you to Resolve If all these will not serve he fetcheth yet stronger Reasons from the Incarnation example and blood of the Sonne of God Canst thou look on God incarnate for sinne combating with Satan and conquering for thee and dying and bleeding and buried for thy sinne and yet be unresolved to leave that sinne and turn to him that hath bought thee by his blood If all this will not serve he Reasoneth with thee from thy own benefit If thou care not for God dost thou care for thy self Dost thou regard thy own Soul If thou do it 's high time to Resolve He reasoneth with thee from Everlasting Glory Is a certain Kingdom an Everlasting glorious Kingdom nothing to thee Art thou content to be thrust out of that Eternal Inheritance Is the filthy pleasure of the flesh for a few hours better then the endless joys of the Saints He pleads also with thee from the danger that thou art near Poor Soul thou little seest what others see that are dead before thee Thou little knowest what they feel that died before they were Resolv'd for God He fetcheth his Reasons from the certaine everlasting flames of Hell and is there not force enough in these for to Resolve thee Good Lord what a thing is a senseless sinner Dost thou believe Heaven and Hell as thou takest on thee to do If thou do believe them is it possible for thee believingly to think of
Heaven and its Eternal Glory and yet to be unresolved whether to turn or not Or canst thou think of the endless miseries of the damned and yet be unresolved whether to turn or not Can any heart be so senseless or deluded Moreover he pleadeth with thee from the equity and sweetness of his Service It is but to Love him and to seek his Kingdom and forbear those things that hurt thy Soul His Commands are not unreasonable nor grievous Darest thou speak out and say that sinne is better and that Satan hath provided thee a better work then God hath done He reasoneth with thee also from his Wisdom and his Justice He tels thee that as Satan hath nothing to do with thee and as he is none of thy friends and meaneth thee not so well as God doth so he is not able to prescribe thee a more just and perfect law then God hath done Follow God and thou art sure thou shalt never be deceived or misled For he wanteth not Wisdom or Power or Goodness to be a meet Law-giver and Guide But if thou follow the Devil the world or the flesh thou followest a blind and a deceifull guide And yet after all these Reasons art thou not Resolved He Reasoneth with thee also from thy own experience What good hath sinne done thee And what hurt would Holiness do thee Yea he reasons with thee from the experience of all the world Who was ever the bâ—tter for sinning And who was ever the worse for Holiness How long will thy fleshly delights endure What will this do for thee in thy extremity Was ever man made Happy by it Thou knowest well enough thou must shorty leave it and that it will forsake thee in thy greatest need But so would not God if thou hadst Resolvedly given up thy self to him All men that refuse a Heavenly life do sooner or later wish that they had chosen it Abundance of such Reasonings God useth with thee in his Word and by his Ministers and dost thou think indeed that there is not weight enough in these to give thee cause immediately to Resolve How little or nothing canst thou say against them Canst thou bring any Reason that is Reason indeed against these or any of these Reasons of the Lord Darest thou say that ever a one of them is false or insufficient And what are the Reasons which you have on the contrary to hinder you from Resolving Forsooth because your sinnes are sweet you would fain have the pleasure of them a little longer yet O wretched Souls that find more pleasure in the abusing of your Maker and Redeemer then in loving honoring and pleasing him That delight more in serving the flesh and the Devil then in serving God and seeking after his Favour and your own Salvation You are a hundred times madder then a man that lieth tumbling himself in his dung and will not rise out of it to receive a Kingdom because it is so soft and so sweet that he is loth yet to leave it You are foolisher then Nebuâ—hadnezzar had been if he had been loath to return again to his Kingdom because he would fain stay longer among the beasts of the fields among whom in his distraction he had betaken himself Dan. 4. 31 32 33. And what other Reasons have you against Resolving Forsooth you shall be mockt or jested at by others By whom I pray you Not a man but a miserable fool will do it Yea but you are told you must forsake â—ll and be ready to die for Christ if he â—all you to it Very true and can you â—eep that which he calleth you to forsake How long will you keep it Silly Souls do you not know that you forsake it by not for saking it and lose all by saving any thing and that you have no way to save it but by losing and forsakeing it Suppse you were by enemies banished out of England and upon pain of death you must be gone within a twelve-month And a King that loveth you inviteth you to his Country and tells you for the poor livings that you have lost he will make you Lords and Princes so you will bring with you the little goods you have and leave nothing behind you Hereupon one man takes the next wind and ships over all his riches that he may have it when he comes there Another saith I am loath to leave my goods I have a while longer to stay here and what shall I do without them I am loath to see the habitation of my Ancestours impoverished And so when his time is expired he is fain to leave them all behind him and hath none that will receive him in the Country where he must abide Which of these think you is the wiser man Which of them was it that lost his goods and which did save them I speak to you but such another parable as Christ used to you himself Luke 16. 2 3 4 9. Where you are advised to send your riches before you and to make you friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that when you dye you may be received into the everlasting habitations I know there are other vain delusions that hinder you from Resolving I will not call them Reasons for they are unreasonable I shall only say this to you that if there be ever a man of you that heareth his words that dare be such a Blasphemer as to reproach the Laws and Image of his maker and say that he hath made you too strict a Law and laid too heavy a task upon you and a Heavenly life is troublesome and unnecessary If there be a man of you that is so devilish as that you dare plead the Devils cause and justifie his work before the Lord's and say that it is better to please the flesh let that man prepare himself to make good these words before the Lord and his Holy Angels and be sure that he shall be there put to it in another manner then he is here by me And if you have such Reasons as you will stand to before the Barre of God to prove the Devil the better Master and an unholy life to be better then a Heavenly see then that you look them up and there make your best of them and expect to live with the Master that you served and to reape as you sowed and eate the fruit of your fleshly waies which you took to be the best But if you have no such Reasons but your Consciences are convinced that God should be served and sinne should be speedily forsaken and Heaven should be provided for above all Resolve then to do it before you stirre Or else say plainly I have no Reason to be wicked but because I will be wicked I will forseke God and damn my own Soul without any Reason because I will do it And if you are at this pass you may take your course 11. Another thing that I would intreat you to consider of is this It is a most