to God He hath respect to the humble contrite soul. Isa. 57.15 and 66.2 Psal. 51.17 The hungry he filleth with good but the rich he sendeth empty away Luk. 1.53 He giveth more grace to the humble when the proud are abhorred by him 1 Pet. 5.5 The Church of Laodicea that said I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing was miserable and poor and blinde and naked Rev. 3.17 As many that are proud of their honour and birth run out of all by living above their estates when meaner persons grow rich because they are still gathering and make much of every little So proud Professors of Religion are in a Consumption of the Grace they have while the humble increase by making much of every little help which is sleighted and neglected by the proud and by shunning all those spending courses which the proud are plunged in Be sure to keep mean thoughts of your selves of your knowledg and parts and grace and duties and be content to be mean in the esteem of others if you would not be worse than mean in the esteem of God DIRECT V. Exercise your selves daily in a life of Faith upon Jesus Christ as your Saviour your Teacher your Mediator and your King as your Example your Wisdom your Righteousness and your Hope ALL other studies and knowledg must be meerly subservient to the study and knowledg of Christ 1 Cor. 2.2 That vain kind of Philosophy which St. Paul so much cautioneth Christians against is so far yet from being accounted vain that by many called Christians it is preferred before Christianity it self and to shew that it is Vain while they overvalue it they can shew no solid worth or vertue which they have got by it but only a tumified mind and an idle tongue like a tinkling Cymbal 1 Cor. 13.1 and 12.31 and 2.4.14 15 16. and 1.18 19 20 21 23 24 27. Col. 2.8 9. We are compleat in Christ in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ver 10. No study in the World will so much lead you up to God and acquaint you with him especially in his Love and Goodness as the study of Christ his Person his Office his Doctrine his Example his Kingdom and his benefits As the Deity is your ultimate end to which all things else are but helps and means so Christ is that great and principal means by whom all other means are animated Remember that you are in continual need of him for direction intercession pardon sanctification for support and comfort and for peace with God Let no thoughts therefore be so sweet and frequent in your hearts nor any discourse so ready in your mouths next to the excellencies of the eternal Godhead as this of the design of mans Redemption Let Christ be to your Souls as the Air the Earth the Sun and your Food are to your bodies without which your life would presently fail As you had never come home to the Father but by him so without him you cannot a moment continue in the Fathers love nor be accepted in one duty nor be protected from one danger nor be supplyed in any want For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell Col. 1.18 19. And by him it is that being justified by Faith we have peace with God and have access by Faith unto this Grace wherein we stand and rejoyce in hope of the Glory of God Rom. â— 1 2. And it is in him the Head that we must grow up in all things from whom the whole body doth receive it's increase Ephes. 4.15 16. You grow no more in Grace than you grow in the true knowledg and daily use of Jesus Christ. But of this I will say no more because I have said so much in my Directions for a sound Conversion DIRECT VI. Let the Knowledg and Love of God and your obedience to him be the Works of your Religion and the everlasting fruition of him in Heaven be the continual end and ruling Motive of your Hearts and Lives that your very Conversation may be with God in Heaven YOu are so far HOLY as you are DIVINE and HEAVENLY A Christian indeed in casting up his accounts being certain that this World doth make no man happy hath been led up by Christ to seek a Happiness with God above If you live not for this everlasting happiness if you trade not for this if this be not your treasure your hope and home the chief matter of your desires love and joy and if all things be not prest to serve it and despised when they stand against it you live not indeed a Christian life GOD and HEAVEN or GOD in HEAVEN is the Life and Soul the beginning and the end the Sum the All of true Religion And therefore it is that we are directed to lift up our Heads and Hearts and begin our Prayers with Our Father which art in Heaven and end them with ascribing to Him the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever It is not the Creatures but God the Creator that is the Father the Guide and the felicity of Souls and therefore the ultimate end and object of all Religious actions and affections Dwell still upon God and dwell in Heaven if you would understand the nature and design of Christianity Take God for all that is for God Study after the knowledg of him in all his Works Study him in his Word Study him in Christ And never study him barely to know him but to know him that you may love him Take your selves as dead when you live not in the Love of God Keep still upon your hearts a lively sense of the infinite difference between him and the Creature Look on all the World as a shadow and on God as the substance Take the very worst that man can do to be in comparison of the punishments of God but as a Flea-biting to the sorest death And take all the dreaming pleasures of the World to be less in comparison with the joyes of Heaven than one lick of honey is to a thousand years possession of all the felicities on earth Think not all the pleasures honours or riches of the world to be worthy to be named in comparison of Heaven nor the Greatest of Men to be worthy to be once thought on in comparison of God As one straw or feather won or lost would neither much rejoyce or trouble you if all the City or land were yours So live as men whose eyes are open and who discern a greater disproportion between the portion of a worldling and a Saint Let God be your King your Father your master your friend your wealth your joy your All. Let not a day go over your heads in which your hearts have no converse with God in Heaven when any trouble overtaketh you on Earth look up to Heaven and remember that it is there that Rest and Joy are prepared for believers When you are under any want or cross or
sorrow fetch not your comfort from any hopes of deliverance here on Earth but from the place of your final full deliverance If you feel any strangeness and backwardness on your minds to Heavenly contemplations do not make light of them but presently by Faith get up to Christ who must make your thoughts of Heaven familiar and seek remedy before your estrangedness increase The soul is in a sad condition when it cannot fetch comfort and encouragement from Heaven for then it must have none or worse than none When the thoughts of Heaven will not sweeten all your crosses and relieve your minds against all the encombrances of earth your souls are not in a healthful state It 's time then to search out the cause and seek a cure before it come to worse There are three great causes of this dark and dangerous state of soul which make the thoughts of Heaven uneffectual and uncomfortable to us which therefore must be overcome with the daily care and diligence of your whole lives 1. Unbelief which maketh you look towards the life to come with doubting and uncertainty And this is the most common radical powerful and pernicious impediment to a heavenly life The second is the Love of present things which being the vanity of a poor low fleshly mind the reviving of Reason may do much to overcome it but it 's the sound Belief of the life to come that must indeed prevail The third is the inordinate Fear of Death which hath so great advantage in the constitution of our nature that it is commonly the last enemy which we overcome as Death it self is the last enemy which Christ overcometh for us Bend all your strength and spend your daies in striving against these three great impediments of a heavenly conversation And remember that so far as you suffer your heart to retire from Heaven so far they retire from a life of Christianity and peace DIRECT VII In the work of Mortification let SELF-DENYAL be the First and Last of all your study care and diligence UNderstand how much of the fallen depraved state of man consisteth in the sin of SELFISHNESS How he is sunk into Himself in his fall from the Love of God and of his Neighbour of the publick or private good of others And how this inordinate Self-love is now the grand enemy of all true Love to God or Man and the root and heart of Covetousness Pride Voluptuousness and all iniquity Let it be your work therefore all your dayes to mortifie it and watch against it When you feel your selves partial in your own cause and apt to be drawing from others to your selves in point of reputation precedency or gain and apt to make too great a matter of every word that is spoken against you or every little wrong that is done you observe then the pernicious root of Selfishness from whence all this mischief doth proceed Read more of this in my Treatise of Self-denyal DIRECT VIII Take your corrupted fleshly Desires for the greatest enemy of your Souls and let it be every day your constant work to mortify the Flesh and to keep a watch upon your lusts and appetite and every sense REmember that our senses were not made to govern themselves but to be governed by right Reason And that God made them at the first to be the ordinary passage of his Love and mercy to our hearts by the means of the Creatures which represent or manifest him unto us But now in the depraved state of man the Senses have cast off the Government of Reason and are become the Ruling power and so man is become like the Beasts that perish Remember then that to be sensual is to be bruitish And though Grace doth not destroy the appetite and sense yet it subjecteth it to God and Reason Therefore let your appetite be pleased in nothing but by the allowance of right Reason And think not that you have reason to take any meats or drink or sport meerly because your flesh desireth it but consider whether it will do you good or hurt and how it conduceth to your ultimate end It is a base and sinful state to be in servitude to your appetite and sense When by using to please it you have so increased its desires that now you know not how to deny it and displease it When you have taught it to be like a hungry dog or swine that will never be quiet till his hunger be satisfied Whereas a well-governed appetite and sense is easily quieted with a rational denyal Rom. 8.1 6 7 8 13. and 13.13 14. 1 Pet. 2.11 1 Johnâ— 16 DIRECT IX Take heed lest you fall in love with the World or any thing therein and lest your thoughts of any place or condition which you either possess or hope for do grow too sweet and pleasing to you FOr there is no one perisheth but for loving some Creature more than God And complacency is the formal act of Love Love not the World nor the things that are in the World for if any man love the World the love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 Value all earthly things as they conduce to your Masters Service or to your Salvation and not as they tend to the pleasing of your Flesh It is the commonest and most dangerous folly in the World to be eager to have our houses and lands and provisions and every thing about us in the most pleasing and amiable state when as this is the acknowledged way to Hell and the only poyson of the Soul Are you not in more danger of overloving a pleasing and prosperous condition than a bitter and vexatious state and of overloving Riches honour and sensual fulness and delights rather than Poverty reproach and mortification And do you not know that if ever you be damned it will be for loving the World too much and God too little Is it for nothing that Christ describeth a Saint to you as a Lazarus in poverty and sores and a damned wretch as one that was clothed in Purple and Silk and fared sumptuously every day Luke 16. Did not Christ know what he did when he put the rich man upon this tryal to part with all his worldly riches and follow Christ for a treasure in heaven Luke 18.22 13. All things must be esteemed as loss and dung for the knowledg of Christ and the hopes of heaven if ever you will be saved Phil. 3.6 7 8. You must so live by Faith and not by sight as not to look at the temporal things that are seen but at the things eternal which are unseen 2 Cor. 4.17 18. and 5.7 8. And one that is running in a race for his life would not so much as turn his head to look back on any one that called to him to stay or to look aside to any one that would speak with him in his way Thus must we forget the things that are behind as counting them not worthy a thought
that day But yet he thinketh not of it with so strong a faith and great consolation nor with such boldness and desire as the confirmed Christian doth but either with much more dull security or more perplexity and fear His thoughts of God and of the world to come are much more dark and doubtfull and his fears of that day are usually so great as make his desires and joys scarce felt Only he thinketh not of it with that contempt or stupidity as the Infidel or hardened sinner nor with the terrours of those that have no God no Christ no hope except when temptation bringeth him near to the borders of despair His death indeed is unspeakably safer than the death of the ungodly and the joys which he is entring into will quickly end the terrour but yet he hath no great comfort of the present but only so much trust in Christ as keepeth his heart from sinking into despair 3. But to the Hypocrite or seeming Christian Death and Judgement are the most unwelcome daies and the thoughts of them the most unwelcome thoughts He would take any tolerable life on earth at any time for all his hopes of Heaven and that not only through the doubts of his own sincerity which may sometime be the case of a tempted Christian but through the unsoundness of his belief of the life to come or the utter unsuitableness of his soul to such a blessedness which maketh him look at it as less desirable to him than a life of fleshly pleasures here All that he doth for Heaven is upon meer necessity because he knoweth that Die he must and he had rather be in Heaven than in Hell though he had rather be in prosperity on earth than either And as he taketh Heaven but as a reserve or second good so he seeketh it with reserves and in the second place And having no better preparations for Death and Judgement no marvel if they be his greatest terrour He may possibly by his self-deceit have some abatement of his fears and he may by Pride and Wit seem very valiant and comfortable at his death to hide his fear and pusillanimity from the world But the 〈◊〉 of all his misery is that he sought not first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness and laid not up a treasure in Heaven but upon earth and loved this world above God above the world to come and so his heart is not set on Heaven nor his affections on the things above and therefore he hath not that Love to God to Christ to Saints to perfect Holiness which should make that world most desirable in his eyes and make him think unfeignedly that it is best for him to depart and live with Christ for ever Having not the Divine Nature nor having lived the Divine Life in walking with God his complacency and desires are carnal according to the nature which he hath And this is the true cause and not only his doubts of his own sincerity of his unwillingness to die or to see the day of Christs appearance Matth. 6.33.19.20 21. 1 Joh. 2.15 Col. 3.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.5 6 7 8. 1 Cor. 2.13 14. 2 Pet. 1.4 And thus I have shewed you from the Word of God and the Nature of Christianity the true Characters of the confirmed Christian and of the weak Christian and of the seeming Christian. The Vses for which I have drawn up these Characters and which the Reader is to make of them are these I. Here the weak Christian and the Hypocrite may see what manner of persons they ought to be Not only how unsafe it is to remain in a state of Hypocrisie but also how uncomfortable and unserviceable and troublesome it is to remain in a state of weakness and diseasedness what a folly and indeed a sign of Hypocrisie is it to think If I had but grace enough to save me I would desire no more or I would be well content Are you content if you have but Life here to difference you from the dead If you were continually Infants that must be fed and carried and made clean by others or if you had a continual Gout or Stone or Leprosie and lived in continual want and misery you would think that Life alone is not enough and that non vivere tantum sed valere vita est that Life is uncomfortable when we have nothing but Life and all the delights of life are gone He that lyeth in continual pain and want is weary of his life if he cannot separate it from those calamities He that knoweth how necessary strength is as well as life to do any considerable service for God and how many pains attend the diseases and infirmities of the weak and what great dishonour cometh to Christ and Religion by the faults and childishness of many that shall be pardoned and saved would certainly bestir him with all possible care to get out of this sick or infant state II. By this you may see who are the strong Christians and who are the weak It is not alwaies the man of Learning and free expressions that can speak longest and wiseliest of holy things that is the strong confirmed Christian But he that most excelleth in the Love of God and man and in a heavenly mind and holy life Nor is it he that is unlearned or of a weak memory or slow expression that is the weakest Christian But he that hath least Love to God and man and the most Love to his carnal self and to the world and the strongest corruptions and the weakest grace Many a poor day-labourer or woman that can scarce speak sense is a stronger Christian as being stronger in Faith and Love and Patience and Humility and Mortification and Self-denial than many great Preachers and Doctors of the Church III. You see here what kind of men they be that we call the Godly and what that Godliness is which we plead for against the malicious Serpentine Generation The lyars would make men believe that by Godliness we mean a few affected strains or hypocritical shews or heartless lip-service or singular opinions or needless scrupulosity or ignorant zeal yea a schism or faction or sedition or rebellion or what the Devil please to say If these sixty Characters describe any such thing then I will not deny that in the way that such men call heresie faction schism singularity so worship we the God of our Fathers But if not the Lord rebuke thee Satan and hasten the day when the lying lips shall be put to silence Psal. 131.18 120.2 109.2 Prov. 12.19 22. 10.18 IV. By this also you may see how unexcusible the enemies of Christianity and Godliness are and for what it is that they hate and injure it Is there any thing in all this Character of a Christian that deserveth the suspicion or hatred of the world what harm is there in it or what will it do against them I may say to them of his servants
the injury was like to go both against me and many others of my Brethren Therefore finding since among the relicts of my scattered Papers this imperfect piece which I had before written on that Text I was desirous to publish it as for the benefit of weak Christians so to right my self and to cashier that Farewel Sermon If the Reader will but peruse these Directions impartially and read them as he doth the Prescripts of his Physicians which are not written meerly to be read but must be daily practised whatever it cost him as he loveth his life then I make no doubt notwithstanding the weakness of the composure but it may further the cure of his spiritual weaknesses and distempers and of the consequent troubles and losses of others and himself I hope I shall not meet with many besides malignant hypocrites who will be so impenitent and peevish as to fly in the face of the Reprover and Directer and say that I open the nakedness of many servants of Christ to the reproach and dishonour of Religion I have told you from the Word of God that it is Gods way and must be ours to lay the just dishonour upon the sinner that it may not fall upon Religion and on God And that the defending or excusing odious sins in tenderness of the persons who committed them is the surest and worse way to bring dishonour first or last both upon Religion and on them A Noah a Lot a David a Solomon a Peter c. shall be dishonoured by God in holy Record to all ages that God may not be more dishonoured by them And the truly penitent are willing that it should be so and account their honour a very cheap Sacrifice to offer up to the honour of Religion which they have wronged And till you come to this you come short of true Repentance He that defendeth his open sin unless he could deny the fact doth as bad as say God liketh it Christ bid me do it the Scripture is for it or not against it Religion taught it me or doth not forbid it me The godly allow it and will do the like And what can be said more Blasphemously against God or more injuriously against Religion the Scriptures and the Saints But he that confesseth his sin doth as good as say Lay all the blame on me who do deserve it and not on God on Christ on Scripture on Religion or on the Servants of God For I learned it not from any of them nor was encouraged to it by them None are greater enemies to it than they If I had hearkened to them I had done otherwise It is one of the chief reasons why Repentance is so necessary because it justifieth God and godliness And alas it is too late to talk of concealing those weaknesses and crimes of Christians which are so visible before all the World which have had such publick effects upon Churches Kingdoms and States which have kept almost all the Christian Churches in a torn and bleeding woful state for so many hundred years to this present day Which have separated the Churches of the East and West and defiled both And have drawn so much blood in Christian Countreyes And keep us yet like distracted persons gazing strangely at our nearest friends and running away by peevish separation from our Brethren with whom we must live in Heaven and mistakingly using those as enemies with whom if we are Christians as we profess we are united in the same Head and by the same Spirit which is a Spirit of Love In a word when our faults are so conspicuous as to harden the Infidels Heathens and ungodly and to hinder the Conversion of the World and when they sound so loud in the mouths of our common reproaching enemies and when they have contracted so much malignity as to refuse a cure by such Wars Divisions Church-desolations Plagues and Flames as we have seen It is then too late to say to the Preachers of Repentance Be silent lest you open the nakedness of Christians and disgrace Religion and the Church We must not be silent lest we disgrace Religion and the Church to save the credit of the sinners Whoever readeth the holy Scriptures and ever understood the Christian Faith must needs know that nothing in all the World is so much against every one of our errors and mis-doings It is only for want of more Religion that any Professors of Religion do miscarry Nothing but the Doctrine of Christianity and Godliness did at first destroy the reign of their sin and nothing else can subdue the rest and finish the Cure It is no disgrace to Life that so many mens lives are burdensome with sickness which the dead are not troubled with Nor is it any disgrace to Learning that Scholars for want of more Learning have troubled the World with their contentious Disputes Nor is it any disgrace to reason that mens different Reasons for want of more Reason doth set the World together by the ears We can never magnifie you enough as you are Christians and Godly unless we should ascribe more to you than your bounteous Lord hath given you who hath made you little lower than Angels and crowned you with glory and honour Psal. 8.5 6. But your sins are so much the more odious as they are brought so near the holy presence and as they are aggravated by greater mercies and professions And God is so far from being reconciled or reconcileable to any one of them that though he see not such iniquity in Jacob as is in Heathens and the ungodly because it is not in them to be seen yet he seeth more aggravated iniquity in such sins as you do commit in many respects than in the Heathens And that which is our common trouble is that you hurt not your selves alone by your iniquities Families are hurt by them Neighbours are hurt by them Churches are distracted by them Kingdoms are afflicted by them and thousands of blind sinners are hardened and everlastingly undone by them The ignorant Husband faith I will never follow Sermons nor Scriptures nor be so Religious while I see my Wife that maketh so much ado with Religion to be as peevish and discontented and foul-tongued and unkind and contemptuous and disobedient as those that have no Religion The Master that is prophane saith I like not your Religion when that servant which most Professeth Religion in my house is as lazy and negligent and as surly and sawcy and as ready to dishonour me and answer again and as proud of his little knowledg as those that have no Religion at all The like I might say of all other Relations All the dishonour that this casteth upon Grace is that you have too little of it and it is so weak in you that its Victory over your flesh and passions is lamentably imperfect A servant hearing a high commendation of a Gentleman that he was of extraordinary wisdom and godliness and bounty and patience and
ever heaven and holiness were good they are good still and therefore go on till thou hast obtained more and forget not the Reasons that first perswaded with thee 16. Nay more than so you have the addition of much experience which should be an exceeding help to quicken your affections When you first Repented and came into Christ you had never had any experience in your selves of his saving special Grace before but you came in upon the bare hearing and believing of it But now you have tasted that the Lord is gracious and you have received at his hands the pardon of sin the Spirit of adoption the hope of glory which before you had not You have had many a Prayer answered and many a deliverance granted and will you make a stand when all these experiences do call you forward Should not new Motives and helps thus added to the old be the means of adding to your zeal and holiness Surely more wages and encouragement doth be speak more work and diligence And therefore see that you increase 17. And most or many of you have cause to consider how long you have been already in the Family and School of Christ. If you are but newly entered I may well exhort you to increase but I cannot reprove you for not increasing But alas what a multitude of dwarfs hath Christ that are like Infants at twenty or fourty or threescore years of age What! be so many years in his School and yet be in the lowest Form For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers you have need that one teach you again which be the first Principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of Milk and not of strong meat For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of Righteousness for he is a Babe but strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age that by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil Heb. 5.12 13 14. O poor weak diseased Christian hast thou been so many years beholding the face of God by Faith and yet art thou no more in love with him than at the first Hast thou been so long making tryal of his goodness and dost thou see it and savour it no more than in the beginning Hast thou been so long under his cure and art thou no more healed than the first year or day Hast thou been hearing and talking of Heaven so long and yet art thou no more heavenly nor ready for Heaven Hast thou heard and talk'd so much against the World and the Flesh and yet is the World as high in thee as at first and the Flesh as strong as in the begining of thy Profession O what a sin and shame is this and what a wrong to God and thee Yea consider here also what means thou hast had as well as what time O who hath gone beyond thee for power and plenty and purity of Ordinances or at least how few Surely few parts of all the earth are like to England for the showers of Heaven and the Riches of the precious Ordinances of God You have Sermons till you can scarce desire more And that so plain that men can scarce tell how to speak plainer and so earnest as if the servants of Christ would take no nay even almost as if they must perish if you perished You have as frequent as plain and powerful Books You have the warnings and examples of the godly about you And what yet would you have more And should a people thus fed be Dwarfs continually Is ignorance and dulness and earthliness and selfishness excusable after all these means Surely sirs it is but just that God should expect you all to be Gyants even heavenly grown confirmed Christians Whatever others do it should be so with you 18. And methinks it should somewhat move you to consider how others have thriven in less time and by smaller means by far than you have had and how some of your neighbours can yet thrive by the same means that you so little thrive by Job that was so magnified by God himself had not such means as you Abraham Isaac Jacob Joseph had none of them all such means as you Many Prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things that you see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them Matth. 13.17 Though John Baptist was greater than any of the Prophets yet the least of you that are in the Gospel Kingdom are greater than he in respect of means As the times of the Gospel have far clearer light and give out greater measures of Grace so the true genuine children of the Gospel should taking them one with another be far more confirmed strong and heavenly than those that were under the darker and scanter administrations of the Promise And do you not see and hear how far you are outstript by many of your poor Neighbours that are as low in natural parts and as low in the world and the esteem of men as you How many in this place I dare boldly speak it do shine before you in knowledg and meekness and patience and a blameless upright life in fervent prayers and a heavenly conversation Men that have had as much need to look after the World as you and no longer time to get these qualifications and no other means but what you have had or might have had as well as they And now they shine as stars in the Church on earth while you are like sparks if not like clods I know that God is the free disposer of his graces but yet he so seldom faileth any even in degrees that be not wanting to themselves that I may well ask you why you might not have reached to some more eminency as well as these about you if you had but been as careful and industrious as they 19. Consider also That your holiness is your personal perfection and that of the same kind you must have in glory though not in the same degree And therefore if you be not desirous of its increase it seems your are out of love with your souls and with Heaven it self And when you cease to grow in Holiness you cease to go on any further to Salvation If you would indeed your selves be perfect and blessed you must be perfected in this holiness which must make you capable of the perfect fruition of the most holy God and capable of his perfect love and praise There is no Heaven without a perfection in holiness If therefore you let fall your desires of this it seems you let fall your desires of Salvation Up then and be doing and grow as men that are growing up to glory and if you believe that you are in your progress to Heaven being nearer your Salvation than when you first believed see then that you make a progress in heavenly mindedness and that you be riper for Salvation than
Every sentence is good for somthing All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works 2 Tim. 3.16 17. Not a word is without its usefulness 5. Moreover you must grow not only in knowing the usefulness of truths but also in knowing how to use them that you may have the benefit of that worth that is in them Many a man knows what use a workmans tools are for that yet knows not how himself to use them And many a one knows the use and vertue of herbs and drugs that knows not how to make a medicine of them and compound and apply them There is much skill to be used in knowing the seasons of application and the measure and what is fit for one and what for another that we may make that necessary variation which diversity of conditions do require As it is a work of skill in the Pastors of the Church to divide the word of God aright and speak a word in season to the weary and give the children their meat in due season 2 Tim. 2.15 Isa. 50.4 Mat. 24.45 So is it also a work of skill to do this for your selves to know what Scripture it is that doth concern you and when and in what measure to apply it and in what order and with what advantages or correctives to use it as may be most for your own good You may grow in this skill as long as you live even in understanding how to use the same truths which you have long known O what excellent Christians should we be if we had but this holy skill and hearts to use it We have the whole armour of God to put on and use but all the matter is how to use it The same sword of the spirit in the hand of a strong and skilful Christian may do very much which in the hand of a young unskilful Christian will do very little and next to nothing A young raw Physician may know the same medicines as an able experienced Physician doth but the great difference lieth in the skil to use them This is it that must make you rich in grace when you increase in the skilful use of truths 6. Moreover your understandings may be much advanced by knowing the same truths more experimentally than you did before I mean such truths as are capable of experimental knowledge Experience giveth us a far more satisfactory manner of knowledge than others have that have no such experience To know by hearsay is like the knowing of a Countrey in a Map and to know by experience is like the knowing of the same Countrey by sight An experienced Navigator or Soldier or Physician or Governour hath another manner of knowledge than the most learned can have without experience even a knowledge that confirmeth a man and makes him confident Thus may you daily increase in knowledge about the same points that you knew long ago When you have tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious Psal. 34.8 1 Pet. 2.3 you will know him more experimentally than you did before when you have tasted the sweetness of the promise and of pardon of sin and peace with God and the hopes of glory you will have a more experimental knowledge of the riches of grace than you had before And when you have lived a while in communion with Christ and the Saints and walked a while with God in a heavenly conversation and maintained your integrity and kept your selves unspotted of the world you will then know the nature and worth of holiness by a knowledge more experimental and satisfactory than before And this is confirmation and growth in knowledge 7. Moreover you must labor to grow in a higher estimation of the same truths which you knew before And this will be a consequent of the forementioned acts A child that findeth a jewel may set by it for the shining beauty when yet he may value it many thousand pounds below its worth You see so much wisdom and goodness in God the first hour of your new life as causeth you to prefer him before the world and you see so much necessity of a Saviour so much love and mercy in Jesus Christ as draweth up your hearts to him and you see so much certainty and glorious excellency of the life to come that makes you value it even more than your lives But yet there is in all these such an unsearchable treasure that you can never value them neer their worth for all that thou hast seen of God and Christ and Glory there is a thousand times more excellency in them yet to be discerned For all the beauty thou hast seen in holiness it is a thousand fold more beautiful than ever thou didst apprehend it for all the evil thou hast seen in sin it is a thousand fold worse than ever thou didst perceive it to be So that if you should live a thousand years you might still be growing in your estimation of those things which you knew the first day of your true conversion For the deeper you dig into this precious Mine the greater riches will still appear to you There is an Ocean of excellency in one Article of your belief and you will never find the banks or bottom till you come to heaven and then you will find that it had neither banks nor bottom And thus I have shewed you what confirmation growth is needful for your understandings even about the very same truths which at first you knew And now I shall add 8. You must also labour to understand more truths for number than at the first you understood and to reach to as much of the revealed will of God as you can and not to stop in the meer essentials For all divine revelations are precious and of great use and none must be neglected And the knowledge of many other truths is of some necessity to our clear understanding of the essentials and also to our holding them fast and practising them Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our children Deut. 29.29 But here I must give you this further advice 1. That you proceed in due order from the fundamental points to those that lye next them do not overpass the points of next necessity and weight and go to higher and less needful matters before you are ready for them 2. And also see that you receive all following truths that are taught you as flowing from the foundation and conjoyned with it Disorderly proceedings have unspeakably wrong'd the souls of many thousands when they are presently upon controversies and smaller matters before they understand abundance of more necessary things that must be first understood This course doth make them lose their labour and worse it deceiveth the understanding instead of informing it and thereupon it perverts the will it self and turns
his hand or the Fornicator to cure his lust than to put out his eyes it were a cheap remedy A cheap and easy superficial Repentance may skin over the sore and deceive an Hypocrite but he that would be sure of pardon and free from fear must go to the bottom DIRECT XX. Live as with Death continually in your eye and spend every day in serious preparation for it that when it cometh you may find your work dispatcht and may not then cry out in vain to God to try you once again PRomise not your selves long life Think not of death as at many years distance but as hard at hand Think what will then be needful to your peace and comfort and order all your life accordingly and prepare that now which will be needful then Live now while you have time as you will resolve and promise God to live when on your death-bed you are praying for a little time of tryal more It is a great work to die in a joyful assurance and hope of everlasting life and with a longing desire to depart and be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1.21 23. O then what a burden and terror it will be to have an unbelieving or a worldly heart or a guilty Conscience Now therefore use all possible diligence to strengthen Faith to increase love to be acquit from guilt to be above the World to have the mind set free from the Captivity of the flesh to walk with God and to obtain the deepest most delectable apprehensions of his love in Christ and of the heavenly blessedness which you expect Do you feel any doubts of the state of immortality or staggering at the Promise of God through unbelief Presently do all you can to conquer them and get a clear resolution to your souls and leave it not all to do at the time of sickness Are the thoughts or God and Heaven unpleasant or terrible to you Presently search out the cause of all and labour in the cure of it as for your lives Is there any former or present sin which is a burden or terror to your Consciences Presently seek out to Christ for a Cure by Faith and true Repentance and do that to disburden your Consciences now which you would do on a sick-bed and leave not so great and necessary a 〈◊〉 to so uncertain and short and unfit a time Is there any thing in this World that is swâ—â—tâ—r tâ— your thoughts than God and Heaven 〈◊〉 which you cannot willingly let go Mâ—rtiâ—iâ— it without delay consider of its vanity compare it with Heaven Crucifie it by the Cross of Christ cease not till you account it loss and â—â—ung for the excellent knowledg of Christ and life eternal Phil. 3.7 8 9. Let not death surprize you as a thing that you never seriously expected Can you do no more in preparation for it than you do If no why do you wish a death to be tryed once again and why are you troubled that you lived no better But if you can when think you should it be done Is the time of uncertain painful sickness better than this O how doth sensuality besot the World and inconsiderateness deprive them of the benefit of their reason O Sirs if you know indeed that you must shortly die live then as dying men should live Choose your condition in the World and manage it as men that must shortly dye Use your Power and Command and Honour and use all your Neighbours and especially use the Cause and Servants of Christ as men should do that must shortly die Build and plant and buy and sell and use your Riches as those that must die remembring that the fashion of all these things is passing away 1 Cor. 7.29 30. Yea pray and read and hear and meditate as those that must die Seeing you are as sure of it as if it were this hour in the name of God delay not your preparations It is a terrible thing for an immortal Soul to pass out of the body in a carnal unregenerate unprepared state and to leave a World which they loved and were familiar with and go to a World which they neither know nor love and where they have neither heart nor treasure Matth. 6.19 20 31. The measure of Faith which may help you to bear an easie cross is not sufficient to fortifie and encourage your souls to enter upon so great a change So also bear all your wants and crosses as men that must shortly die Fear the cruelties of men but as beseemeth those that are ready to die He that can die well can do any thing or suffer any thing And he that is unready to die is unfit for a fruitful and comfortable life What can rationally rejoyce that man who is sure to die and unready to dye and is yet unfurnished of dying comforts Let nothing be now sweet to you which will be bitter to your dying thoughts Let nothing be much desired now which will be unprofitable and uncomfortable then Let nothing seem very heavy or grievous now which will be light and easy then Let nothing now seem honourable which will then seem despicable and vile Consider of every thing as it will look at death that when the day shall come which endeth all the joyes of the ungodly you may look up with joy and say Welcome Heaven This is tho day which I so long expected which all my dayes were spent in preparation for which shall end my fears and begin my felicity and put me into possession of all that I desired and prayed and laboured for when my Soul shall see its glorified Lord For he hath said John 12.26 If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be If any man serve me him will my Father honour Even so Lord Jesus remember me now thou art in thy Kingdom and let me be with thee in Paradise Luke 23.42 43. O thou that spakest those words so full of unexpressible comfort to a sinful woman in the first speech after thy blessed Resurrection Joh. 20.17 GO TO MY BRETHREN AND SAY VNTO THEM I ASCEND UNTO MY FATHER AND YOUR FATHER AND TO MY GOD AND YOVR GOD. Take up now this Soul that is thine own that it may see the Glory given thee with the Father Joh. 17.24 and instead of this life of temptation trouble darkness distance and sinful imperfection I may delightfully Behold and Love and Praise thy Father and my Father and thy God and my God Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Luke 2.29 Acts 7.59 And now I have given you all these Directions I shall only request you in the close that you will set your very hearts to the daily serious practise of them For there is no other way for a ripe confirmed state of Grace And as ever you regard the glory of God the honour of your Religion the welfare of the Church and those
to his praises Psal. 116.1 c. Psal. 106. 103. 145. 146. c. Rom. 8.37 2. The weak Christian is taken up but very little with the lively exercises of Love and Praise nor with any Studies higher than his own distempered heart The care of his poor soul and the complaining of his manifold infirmities and corruptions is the most of his Religion And if he set himself to the Praising of God or to Thanksgiving he is as dull and short in it as if it were not his proper work Psal. 77. Mar. 9.24 16.14 3. The seeming Christian liveth to the flesh and carnal self-love is the active principle of his life and he is neither exercised in Humiliation or in Praise sincerely being unacquainted both with holy Joy and Sorrow But knowing that he is in the hands of God to prosper or destroy him he will humble himself to him to escape his judgements and praise him with some gladness for the sunshine of prosperity and he will seem to be piously thanking God when he is but rejoycing in the accommodations of his flesh or strengthning his presumption and false hopes of heaven Luke 18.11 12.19 Isa. 58.2 VIII 1. A Christian indeed is one that is so apprehensive of his lost condition unworthyness and utter insufficiency for himself and of the office perfection and sufficiency of Christ that he hath absolutely put his soul and all his hopes into the hands of Christ and now liveth in him and upon him as having no Life but what he hath from Christ nor any other way of access to God or acceptance of his person or his service but by him In him he beholdeth and delightfully admireth the Love and goodness of the Father In him he hath access with boldness unto God Through him the most terrible avenging Judge is become a Reconciled God and he that we could not remember but with trembling is become the most desirable object of our thoughts He is delightfully employed in prying into the unsearchable mysterie And Christ doth even dwell in his heart by faith and being rooted and grounded in love he apprehendeth with all saints what is the bredth and length and depth and height and knoweth the love of Christ which passeth knowledge Eph. 3.17 18 19. He perceiveth that he is daily beholden to Christ that he is not in hell that sin doth not make him like to Devills and that he is not utterly forsaken of God He feeleth that he is beholden to Christ for every hours time and every mercy to his soul or body and for all his hope of mercy in this life or in the life to come He perceiveth that he is dead in himself and that his life is hid with Christ in God And therefore he is as buryed and risen again with Christ even dead to sin but alive to God through Jesus Christ. Rom. 6.3 4 11. Col. 4.4 He saith with Paul Gal. 2.20 I am crucified with Christ Nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me Thus doth he live as truly and constantly by the second Adam who is a quickning spirit as he doth by the first Adam who was a living soul. 1 Cor. 15.45 This is a confirmed Christians life 2. But the weak Christian though he be also united unto Christ and live by faith yet how languid are the operations of that faith How dark and dull are his thoughts of Christ How little is his sense of the wonders of Gods love revealed to the world in the mysterie of Redemption How little use doth he make of Christ And how little life receives he from him And how little comfort findeth he in believing in comparison of that which the confirmed find He is to Christ as a sick person to his food He only picketh here and there a little of the crums of the bread of life to keep him from dying but is wofully unacquainted with the powerfullest works of faith He is such a Believer as is next to an unbeliever and such a member of Christ as is next to a meer stranger 3. And for the seeming Christian he may understand the letter of the Gospel and number himself with Christs disciples and be baptized with water and have such a faith as is a dead opinion But he hath not an effectual living faith nor is baptized with the Holy Ghost nor is his soul engaged absolutely and entirely in the covenant of Christianity to his Redeemer He may have a handsome well-made image of Christianity but it is the flesh and sense and not Christ and faith by which his life is actuated and ordered Joh. 3.6 Rom. 2.28 IX 1. A Christian indeed doth firmly believe that Christ is a Teacher sent from God Joh. 3.2 and that he came from Heaven to reveal his Fathers will and to bring life and immortality more fully to light by his Gospel and that if an Angel had been sent to tell us of the life to come and the way thereto he had not been so credible and venerable a messenger as the Son of God And therefore he taketh him alone for his chief Teacher and knoweth no Master on Earth but him and such as he appointeth under him His study in the world is to know a crucified and glorified Christ and God by him and he regardeth no other knowledge nor useth any other studies but this and such as are subservient to this Even when he studieth the works of nature it is as by the conduct of the restorer of nature and as one help appointed him by Christ to lead him up to the knowledge of God And therefore he perceiveth that Christ is made of God unto us wisdom as well as Righteousness And that Christianity is the true Philosophy and that the wisdom of the world which is only about worldly things from worldly principles to a worldly end is foolishness with God He taketh nothing for wisdom which tendeth not to acquaint him more with God or lead him up to everlasting happiness Christ is his Teacher either by natural or supernatural revelation and God is his ultimate end in all his studies and all that he desireth to know in the world He valueth knowledge according to its usefulness And he knoweth that its chief use is to lead us to the love of God Math. 23.8 1 Cor. 1.30 2.2 c. Joh. 1.18 Col. 2.3 Eph. 4.13 2. Though the weak Christian hath the same Master yet alas how little doth he learn and how oft is he hearkning to the teaching of the flesh and how carnal and common is much of his knowledge How little doth he depend on Christ in his enquiries after the things of nature And how apt is he to think almost as highly of the teaching of Aristotle Plato Seneca or at least of some excellent preacher as of Christs and
win the world and lose his soul. His eye and heart are where his God and treasure is above and worldly wealth and greatness are below him even under his feet He thinketh not things temporal worth the looking at in comparison of things eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 He thinketh that their money and riches do deservedly perish with them who think all the mony in the world to be a thing comparable with grace Act. 8.20 2. And the weak Christian is of the same judgement and resolution in the main But yet the world retaineth a greater interest in his heart It grieveth him more to lose it It is a stronger temptation to him To deny all the preferments and honours and riches of it seemeth a greater matter to him and he doth it with more striving and less ease and sometimes the respect of worldly things prevaileth with him in lesser matters to wound his conscience and maketh work for repentance and such are so entangled in worldly cares and prosperity tasteth so sweet with them that grace even languisheth and falleth into a consumption and almost into a swoun So much do some such let out their hearts to the world which they renounced and scrape for it with so much care and eagerness and contend with others about their commodities and rights that they seem to the standers by to be as worldly as worldlings themselves are and become a shame to their profession and make ungodly persons say Your godly professors are as coveteous as any 2 Tim. 4.10 3. But seeming Christians are the servants of the world when they have learnt to speak hardliest of it it hath their hearts Heaven as I said before is valued but as a reserve when they know they can keep the world no longer They have more sweet and pleasing thoughts and speeches of the world than they have of God and the world to come It hath most of their hearts when God is most preferred by their tongues there it is that they are daily laying up their treasure and there they must leave it at the parting hour when they go naked out as they came naked in the love of deceitful riches choaketh the word of God and it withereth in them and becometh unfruitful Mat. 13.22 They go away sorrowful because of their beloved riches when they should part with all for the hopes of heaven Luk. 18.23 yea though they are beggars that never have a dayes prosperity in the world for all that they love it better than heaven and desire that which they cannot get because they have not an eye of faith to see that better world which they neglect and therefore take it for an uncertain thing nor are their carnal natures suitable to it and therefore they mind it not Rom. 8.7 When an Hypocrite is at the best he is but a Religious worldling The world is neerer to his heart than God is but pure Religion keepeth a man unspotted of the world Jam. 1.27 XIX 1. A confirmed Christian is one that still seeth the end in all that he doth and that is before him in his way and looketh not at things as at the present they seem or relish to the flesh or to short sighted men but as they will appear and be judged of at last The first letter maketh not the word nor the first word the sentence without the last Present time is quickly past and therefore he less regardeth what things seem at present than what they will prove to all eternity When temptations offer him a bate to sin with the present profit or pleasure or honour he seeth at once the final shame he seeth all worldly things as they are seen by a dying man and as after the general conflagration they will be He seeth the godly in his adversity and patience as entring into his masters joys he seeth the derided vilified saint as ready to stand justified by Christ at his right hand and the lyes of the malicious world as ready to cover themselves with shame he seeth the wicked in the height of their prosperity as ready to be cut down and withered and their pampered flesh to turn to dirt and their filthy and malicious souls to stand condemned by Christ at his left hand and to hear Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels Mat. 25. 1 Pet. 1.24 Jam. 1.10 11. Psal. 73. 37. Therefore it is that he valueth grace because he knoweth what it will be and therefore it is that he flieth from sin because he knoweth the terrors of the Lord and what it will prove to the sinner in the end and how sinners themselves will curse the day that ever they did commit it and wish when it is too late that they had chosen the holiness and patience of the saints and therefore it is that he pitieth rather than envieth the prosperous enemies of the Church because he foreseeth what the end will be of them that obey not the Gospel of Christ and if the righteous be scarcely saved where shall the ungodly and sinner appear 1 Pet. 4.17 18. 2 Thes. 1.8 9 10. If the wicked unbelievers saw but the ending of all things as he doth they would be all then of his mind and way This putteth so much life into his prayers his obedience and patience because he seeth the end in all Deut. 32.39 Prov. 19.20 Isai. 47.7 2. And the weakest Christian doth the same in the main so far as to turn his heart from things temporal to things eternal and to resolve him in his main choice and to conduct the course of his life towards heaven But yet in particular actions he is often stopt in present things and forgetfully loseth the fight of the end and so is deluded and entised into sin for want of seeing that which should have preserved him he is like one that travelleth over hills and vallies who when he is upon the hills doth see the place that he is going to but when he cometh into the vallies it is out of his sight Too oft doth the weak Christian think of things as they appear at the present with little sense of the change that is neer when he seeth the bates of sin whether riches or beauty or meat and drink or any thing that is pleasing to the senses the remembrance of the end doth not so quickly and powerfully work to prevent his deceived imaginations as it ought And when poverty or shame or sufferings or sickness are presented to him the foresight of the end is not so speedy and powerful in clearing his judgement and setling his resolution and preventing his misapprehension and trouble as it ought And hence come his oft mistakes and falls and herein consisteth much of that foolishness which he confesseth when Repentance bringeth him to himself 2 Sam. 24.10 2 Chron. 16.9 3. But the seeming Christian hath so dim and doubtful a fore-sight of the end and it is so frequently out of his mind that
things present do carry away his heart and have the greatest power and interest with him and are most regarded and sought after in this life For he is purblind not seeing a farr off as it is said 2 Pet. 1.9 He wanteth that faith which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen Heb. 11.1 Things promised in another world seem to him too uncertain or too farr off to be preferred before all the happiness of this world he is resolved to make his best of that which he hath in hand and to prefer possession before such hopes Little doth his heart perceive what a change is neer and how the face of all things will be altered How sin will look and how the minds of sinners will be changed and what all the riches and pleasures and honours of the world will appear at the latter end He foreseeth not the day when the slothful and the worldly and the fleshly and the proud and the enemies of godliness shall all wish in vain O that we had laid up our treasure in heaven and laboured for the food that perisheth not and had set less by all the vanities of the world and had imitated the holiest and most mortified believers Though the hypocrite can himself foretell all this and talk of it to others yet his belief of it is so dead and his sensuality so strong that he liveth by sense and not by that belief and present things are practically preferred by him and bear the sway so that he needeth those warnings of God as well as the profane Deut. 32. O that they were wise that they understood this and that they would consider their latter end And he is one of the foolish ones Mat. 25.8 11. who are seeking oyl for their lamps when it is too late and are crying out Lord Lord open to us when the door is shut and will not know the time of their visitation nor know effectually in this their day the things which belong to their everlasting peace XX. 1. The Christian indeed is one that liveth upon God alone His faith is Divine his love and obedience and confidence are Divine his chiefest converse is Divine his hopes and comforts are Divine As it is God that he dependeth on and trusteth to and studieth to please above all the world so it is Gods approbation that he taketh up with for his justification and reward He took him for his absolute Governour and judge and full felicity in the day when he took him for his God He can live in peace without mans approbation If men are never acquainted with his sincerity or vertues or good deeds it doth not discourage him nor hinder him from his holy course he is therefore the same in secret as in publick because no place is secret from God If men turn his greatest vertues or duties to his reproach and slander him and make him odious to men and represent him as they did Paul a pestilent fellow a mover of sedition and the ringleader of a sect and make him as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things this changeth him not for it changeth not his felicity nor doth he miss of his reward 1 Cor. 4.9 10 11 12 13 14. Read the words in the text Though he hath so much suspition of his own understanding and reverence for wiser mens that he will be glad to learn and will hear reason from any one yet praise and dispraise are matters of very small regard with him and as to himself he accounteth it but a small thing to be judged of men whether they justifie or condemn him because they are fallible and have not the power of determining any thing to his great commodity or detriment nor is it their judgement to which he stands or falls 1 Cor. 4.3.4 He hath a more dreadful or comfortable judgement to prepare for man is of small account with him in comparison of God Rom. 8.33 34 35 36. 2. And though with the weakest true Christian it is so also as to the predominancie of Gods esteem and interest in him yet is his weakness daily visible in the culpable effects Though God have the chiefest place in his esteem yet man hath much more than his due The thoughts and words of men seem to such of far greater importance than they should Praise and dispraise favours and injuries are things which affect their hearts too much they bear not the contempts and wrongs of men with so quiet and satisfied a mind as beseemeth those that live upon God They have so small experience of the comforts of God in Christ that they are tasting the deeper of other delights and spare them not so easily as they ought to do God without friends or house or land or maintenance or esteem in the world doth not fully quiet them but there is a deal of pievish impatience left in their minds though it doth not drive them away from God 3. But the seeming Christian can better take up with the world alone than with God alone God is not so much missed by him as the world He alwayes breaks with Christ when it cometh to forsaking all He is godly notionally and professedly and therefore may easily say that God is his portion and enough for those that put their trust in him But his heart never consented truly to reduce these words to practise When it comes to the trial the praise or dispraise of man and the prosperity or matters of the world do signifie more with him than the favour or displeasure of God and can do more with him Christ and riches and esteem he could be content with but he cannot away with a naked Christ alone Therefore he is indeed a practical Atheist even when he seemeth most religious For if he had ever taken God for his God indeed he had certainly taken him as his portion felicity and all and therefore as enough for him without the creature Luk. 18.23 XXI 1. For all this it followeth that A Christian indeed hath with himself devoted all that he hath to God and so all that he hath is sanctified he is only in doubt oft times in particular cases what God would have him do with himself and his estate but never in doubt whether they are to be wholly employed for God in obedience to his will so far as he can know it and therefore doth estimate every creature and condition purely as it relateth unto God and life eternal HOLINES TO THE LORD is written upon all that he hath and doth he taketh it as sent from God and useth it as his Masters goods and talents not chiefly for himself but for his Masters ends and will God appeareth to him in the creature and is the life and sweetness and glory of the creature to him his first question in every business he undertaketh or every place or condition that he chooseth is how it conduceth to the Pleasing of God and
is made to shine upon the world he could not be content to live idly or to labour unprofitably or to get never so much to himself and live in never so much plenty himself unless he some way contribute to the good of others Not that he grudgeth at the smallness of his talents and lowness or obscurity of his place for he knoweth that God may dispose his creatures and talents as he please and that where much is given much is required Mat. 25. Luk. 12.48 19.23 But what his Lord hath entrusted him with he is loth to hide and willing to improve to his Masters use He is so far from thinking that God is beholden to him for his good works that he taketh it for one of his greatest mercies in the world that God will use him in doing any good And he would take it for a very great suffering to be deprived of such opportunities or turned out of service or called to less of that kind of duty If he were a Physitian and denied liberty to practice or a minister and denied liberty to preach it would far more trouble him that he is hindered from doing good than that he is deprived of any profits or honours to himself He doth not only comfort himself with the foresight of the reward but in the very doing of good he findeth so much pleasure as makeeth him think it the delightfullest life in the world And he looketh for most of his receivings from God in a way of duty Joh. 5.29 Gal. 6.10 Heb. 13.16 1 Pet. 3.11 2. But the weak Christian though he have the same disposition is far less profitable in the world He is more for himself and less able to do good to others He wanteth either parts or prudence or zeal or strength Yea he is oft like the infants and sick persons of a family that are not helpful but troublesome to the rest They find work for the stronger Christians to bear their infirmities and watch them and support and help them Indeed as an infant is a comfort to the mother through the power of her own love even when she endureth the trouble of its crying and uncleaness so weak Christians are a comfort to charitable ministers and people we are glad that they are alive but sadded often by their distempers Rom. 14.1 15.12 3. The seeming Christian liveth to himself and all his good works are done but for himself to keep up his credit or quiet his guilty conscience and deceive himself with the false hopes of a reward for that which his falseheartedness maketh to be his sin If he be a man of learning and good parts he may be very serviceable to the Church But the thanks of that is due to God and little to him who seeketh himself more than God or the good of others in all that he doth Mat. 25 24 25 26. XLII 1. A Christian indeed doth truly love his neighbour as himself He is not all for his own commodity His neighbours profit or good name is as his own He feeleth himself hurt when his neighbours is hurt And if his neighbour prosper he rejoyceth as if he prospered himself Though his neighbour be not united to him in the nearest bonds of Christianity or Piety yet he is not disregardfull of the common Vnity of Humanity Love is the very soul of life Lev. 19.18 Mat. 19.19 22.39 Rom. 13.9 Gal. 5.14 Jam. 2.8 Mark 10.21 1 Joh. 4.10 2. But the Love that is in weaker Christians though it be sincere is weak as they are and mixed with too much selfishness and with too much sowerness and wrath Little matters cause differences and fallings out When it cometh to MINE and THINE and their neighbours cross their interest or commodity or stand in their way when they are seeking any preferment or profit to themselves you shall see too easily by their sowreness and contention how weak their love is Mat. 24.12 1 Tim. 6.10 Luke 22.24 3. But in the seeming Christian selfishness is so predominant that he loveth none but for himself with any considerable love All his kindness is from self-love because men love him or highly value him or praise him or have done him some good turn or may do him good hereafter or the like If he hath any love to any for his own worth yet self-love can turn all that to hatred â—f they seem against him or cross him in his way For no man that is a Lover of the world and flesh and carnall self can ever be a true friend to any other For he loveth them but for his own ends and any cross Interest will shew the falshood of his love 2 Tim. 3.2 3 4. Mat. 5.46 XLIII 1. A Christian indeed hath a special Love to all the Godly such as endeareth his heart unto them and such as will enable him to visit them and relieve them in their wants to his own loss and hazzard according to his ability and opportunity For the image of God is beautifull and honourable in his eyes He loveth not them so much as God in them Christ in them the Holy Spirit in them He foreseeth the day when he shall meet them in Heaven and there rejoyce in God with them to Eternity He loveth their company and converse and delighteth in their gracious words and lives And the converse of ungodly empty men is a weariness to him unless in a way of duty or when he can do them good In his eyes a vile person is contemned but he honoureth them that fear the Lord Psal. 15.4 Other men grieve his soul with their iniquities while he is delighted with the appearances of God in his holy ones even the excellent ones on earth Psal. 16.3 2 Pet. 2.7 8. Yea the infirmities of Believers destroy not his Love for he hath learned of God himself to difference between their abhorred frailties and their predominant Grace and to love the very Infants in the Family of Christ. Yea though they wrong him or quarrel with him or censure him in their weakness he can honour their sincerity and love them still And if some of them prove scandalous and some seeming Christians fall away or fall into the most odious crimes he loveth Religion never the less but continueth as high an esteem of piety and of all that are upright as he had before 1 Joh. 4.7 8 10. Joh. 13.34 35. 1 Thess. 4.9 1 Joh. 3.11 14 23. Matth. 25.39 40 c. 2. The weak Christian sincerely loveth all that bear his Fathers image But it is with a Love so weak even when it is most passionate as will sooner be abated or interrupted by any tempting differences He is usually quarrelsome and froward with his Brethen and apter to confine his love to those that are of his own opinion or party And because God hath taught him to love all that are sincere the Devil tempteth him to censure them as not sincere that so he may justifie himself in the
honesty 1 Tim. 2.2 Yea though Infidel Princes hate and persecute them they continue to pray for them and to honour their authority and will not thereby be driven from their duty If God cast their lot under Infidel ungodly and malicious Governours they do not run to arms to save themselves or save the Gospel as if God had called them to reform the world or keep it from the oppression of the higher powers Nor do they think it a strange intollerable matter for the best men to be lowest and to be the suffering side and so fall to fighting that Christ and the Saints may have the rule For they know that Christs Kingdom is not of this world Joh. 18.36 that is not a visible Monarchy as his usurping Vicar doth pretend and that Christ doth most eminently rule unseen and disposeth of all the Kingdoms of the world even where he is hated and resisted and that the reign of Saints is in their state of glory and that all Gods graces do sit them more for a suffering life than for worldly power Their humility meekness patience self-denyal contempt of the world and heavenly mindedness are better exercised and promoted in a suffering than a prosperous reigning state Wher◠〈◊〉 think of the holy blood which hath been shed by Heathen Rome from Christ and Stephen till the daies of Constantine and the far greater streams which have been shed by the bloody Papal Rome where-ever they had power in Piedmont Germany Poland Hungary in Belgia England and in other Lands the 30000 or 40000 murdered in a few daies at the Bartholomew Massacre in France the two hundred thousand murdered in a few weeks in Ireland they are not so unlike their suffering Brethren as to think that striving for honours and command is their way to Heaven When Christ hath foretold them that self-denyal under the Cross tribulation and persecution is the common way Luk. 14.26 27 29 33. Acts 14.22 Joh. 16.33 Rom. 5.3 8.35 2 Tim. 3.12 Mat. 5.10 11 12. 2 Thes. 2.6 7 10. Mark 10.30 So far are they from fighting against the injuries and cruelties of their Governours that they account the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than all their treasures Heb. 11.25 26. and think they are blessed when they are persecuted Matth. 5.10 and say with Paul God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world Gal. 6.14 And 2 Cor. 12.19 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities in reproaches in necessities in persecutions in distresses for Christs sake for when I am weak then I am strong Rom. 8.35 36 37. Nay in all these things when persecuted and killed all the day long and counted as sheep to the slaughter they are more than Conquerours through Christ They obtain a nobler conquest than that which is obtained by the sword 2. But the weak Christian having less patience and more selfishness and passion is easilier tempted to break his bounds and with Peter to run to his unauthorized sword when he should submit to suffering Matth. 26.51 52. And his interest and sufferings cause his passion to have too great a power on his Judgement so that he is easilier tempted to believe that to be lawfull which he thinks to be necessary to his own preservation and to think that the Gospel and the Church are falling when the power of men is turned against them and therefore he must with Vzzah put forth his hand to save the Ark of God from falling He is more troubled at mens injustice and cruelty and maketh a wonder of it to find the enemies of Christ and Godliness to be unreasonably impudent and bloody as if he expected reason and righteousness in the malicious world His sufferings fill him more with discontent and desires of revenge from God Luke 9.54 and his prosperity too much lifts him up 2 Chron. 32.25 And in the litigious titles of pretenders to supremacy he is oft too hasty to interess himself in their contentions as if he understood not that whoever is the conquerour will count those rebels that were on the other side and that the enemies of Christ will cast all the odium upon Christianity and piety when the controversie is only among the Statesmen and Lawyers and belongs not to Religion at all 3. The seeming Christian will seem to excel all others in loyalty and obedience when it maketh for his carnal ends He will flatter Rulers for honours and preferment and alwaies be on the rising side unless when his pride engageth him in murmurings and rebellions He hath a great advantage above true Christians and honest men to seem the most obedient subject because he hath a stretching conscience that can do any thing for his safety or his worldly ends If he be among Papists he can be a Papist if among Protestants he is a Protestant and if he were among Turks its like he would rather turn a Mahometan than be undone No Prince or Power can command him any thing which he cannot yield to if his wordly interest require it If there be a Law for worshipping the golden Image it is the conscionable servants of God and not the time-servers that refuse to obey it Dan. 3. If there be a Law against praying Dan. 6. it is Daniel and not the ungodly multitude that disobey it If there be a command against preaching Acts 4.17 18. it is the holy Apostles and best Christians that plead the command of God against it and refuse obedience to it vers 20 29. The self-seeking temporizing hypocrite can do any thing And yet he obeyeth not while he seemeth to obey For it is not for the Authority of the Commander that he doth it but for his own ends He never truly honoureth his superiours for he doth not respect them as the Officers of God nor obey them for his sake with a conscionable obedience He feareth the Higher Powers as Bears or Tygers that are able to hurt him or useth their favour as he useth his horse to do him service Were it not for himself he would little regard them The true Christian honoureth the basest creature more than the hypocrite and worldling honoureth his King For he seeth God in all and useth the smallest things unto his glory Whereas the worldling debaseth the highest by the baseness of his esteem and use and end For he knoweth not how to esteem or use the greatest Prince but for himself or for some worldly ends 2 Tim. 3.3 4. XLIX 1. A Christian indeed is a man of courage and fortitude in every cause of God For he trusteth God and firmly believeth that he will bear him out He knoweth his superiours and hath a charitable respect to all men but as for any selfish or timerous respect he hath the least regard to man For he knoweth that the greatest are but worms whose breath is in their nostrils that pass away as shadows
were done to himself Mat. 25. and hath commanded the strong to bear with the infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves Rom. 15.1 2 3. and to receive one another as Christ received us Rom. 15.7 and hath told those that offend but one of his little ones that it were good for that man that a milstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the Sea Matth. 18.6 and hath told him that suiteth his fellow servants that his Lord will come in a day when he looketh not for him and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the Hypocrites where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Mat. 24.48 49 50 51. I wonder what men would have Christ do to free himself and the Christian Religion from the imputation of the sins of the Hypocrites and the weak distempered Christians Would they have him yet make stricter Laws when they hate these for being so strict already Or would they have him condemn sinners to more grievous punishment when they are already offended at the severity of his threatnings O what an unrighteous generation are his enemies that blame the Law because men break it and blame Religion because many are not Religious enough As if the Sun must be hated because that shadows and dungeons do want light or Life and Health must be hated because many are sick and pained by their diseases But Christ will shortly stop all the mouths of these unreasonable men and O how easily will he justifie himself his Laws and all his holy waies when all iniquity shall be for ever silent And though it must needs be that offences come yet wo to the world because of offences and wo to the man by whom they come Mat. 18.7 Luke 17.1 The wrong that Christ receiveth from hypocrites and scandalous Christians of all ranks and places is not to be estimated These are the causes that Christianity and Godliness are so contemptible in the eyes of the world that Jews and Heathens and Mahometans are still unconverted and deriders of the Faith Because they see such scandalous tyranny and worship among the Papists and such scandalous lives among the greatest part of professed Christians in the world whereas if the Papal Tyranny were turned into the Christian Ministry Luke 22.25 26 27. and 1 Tim. 5.17 and their irrational sopperies and historical hypocritical worship were changed into a reverent rational and spiritual worship and the cruel carnal worldly lives of men called Christians were changed into Self-denial Love and Holiness In a word if Christians were Christians indeed and such as I have here described from their Rule what a powerfull means would it be of the conversion of all the unbelieving world Christianity would then be in the eye of the world as the Sun in its brightness and the glory of it would dazle the eyes of beholders and draw in millions to enquire after Christ who are now driven from him by the sins of Hypocrites and scandalous Believers And this doth not contradict what I said before of the Enmity of the world to Holiness and that the best are most abused by the ungodly For even this enmity must be rationally cured as by the errour of reason it is sed God useth by the power of intellectual light to bring all those out of darkness whom he saveth and so bringeth them from the power of Satan to himself Acts 26.18 Men hate not Holiness as Good but as misconceived to be evil Evil I say to them because it is opposite to the sensual pleasures which they take to be their chiefest good And the way of curing their enmity is by shewing them their errour and that is by shewing them the excellency and necessity of that which they unreasonably distaste Acts 26.9 10 11 14 19. Luke 15.13 14 15 16. Acts 2.36 37. VI. Lastly In these Characters you have some help in the work of Self-examination for the tryal both of the Truth and Strength of grace I suppose it will be objected that in other Treatises I have reduced all the infallible Marks of Grace to a smaller number To which I answer I still say that the predominancy or prevalency of the Interest of God as our God and Christ as our Saviour and the Spirit as our Sanctifier in the estimation of the Vnderstanding the Resolved Choice of the Will and the Government of the Life against all the worldly interest of the Flesh is the only infallible sign of a justified regenerate soul. But this whole hath many parts and it is abundance of particulars materially in which this sincerity is to be found Even all the sixty Characters which I have here named are animated by that one and contained in it And I think to the most the full description of a Christian in his essential and integral parts yet shewing which are indeed essential is the best way to acquaint them with the nature of Christianity and to help them in the tryal of themselves And as it were an abuse of Humane Nature for a Painter to draw the picture of a man without arms or legs or nose or eyes because he may be a man without them so would it have been in me to draw only a maimed picture of a Christian because a maimed Christian is a Christian. Yet because there are so many maimed Christians in the world I have also shewed you their lamentable defects not in a manner which tendeth to encourage them in their sins and wants under pretence of comforting them but in that manner which may best excite them to their duty in order to their recovery without destroying their necessary supporting comforts O happy Church and State and Family which are composed of such confirmed Christians where the predominate temperature is such as I have here described Yea happy is the place where Magistrates and Ministers are such who are the vital parts of State and Church and the instruments appointed to communicate these perfections to the rest But how much more happy is the New Jerusalem the City of the Living God where the perfected spirits of the just in Perfect Life and Light and Love are perfectly beholding and admiring and praising and pleasing the Eternal God their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier for ever where the least and meanest is greater and more perfect than the confirmed Christian here described And where Hypocrisie is utterly excluded and Imperfection ceaseth with scandal censures uncharitableness division and all its other sad effects And where the souls that thirsted after Righteousness shall be fully satisfied and Love God more than they can now desire and never grieve themselves or others with their wants or weaknesses or misdoings any more And O blessed day when our most Blessed Head shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels and shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that now believe whose weakness here occasioned his dishonour and their own contempt when