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
and the evil one Mark him in his prayers and you shall find that he is above other men taken up in earnest petitions for the Conversion of the Heathen and Infidel world and the undeceiving of Mahometans Jews and Hereticks and the clearing of the Church from those Papal tyrannies and sopperies and corruptions which make Christianity hateful or contemptible in the eyes of the Heathen and Mahometan world and hinder their Conversion No man so much lamenteth the Pride and Covetousness and Laziness and Unfaithfulness of the Pastors of the Church because of the doleful consequents to the Gospel and the souls of men and yet with all possible honor to the sacred office which they thus prophane No man so heartily lamenteth the contentions and divisions among Christians and the doleful destruction of charity thereby It grieveth him to see how much selfishness pride and malice prevaileth with them that should shine as lights in a benighted world and how obstinate and uncurable they seem to be against the plainest means and humblest motions for the Churches edification and peace Psal. 120.6 7. 122.6 Phil. 2.1 2 3 4. Psal. 119.136 Zeph. 3.18 Ezek. 9.4 Psal. 69.9 Joh. 2.17 He envieth not Kings and Great men their dominions wealth or pleasure nor is he at all ambitious to participate in their tremendous exaltation But the thing that his heart is set upon is that the Kingdoms of the World may all become the Kingdoms of the Lord Rev. 11.15 and that the Gospel may every where have free course and be glorified and the Preachers of it be encouraged or at least delivered from unreasonable wicked men 2 Thes. 3.1 2. Little careth he who is uppermost or conquereth in the world or who goeth away with the preferments or riches of the earth supposing that he fail not of his duty to his Rulers so that it may go well with the affairs of the Gospel and souls be but helped in the way to Heaven Let God be honoured and souls converted and edified and he is satisfied This is it that maketh the Times good in his account He thinketh not as the proud and carnal Church of Rome that the Times are best when the Clergy is richest and greatest in the world and overtop Princes and claim the secular power and live in worldly pomp and pleasures But when holiness most aboundeth and the members of Christ are likest to their Head and when multitudes of sincere believers are daily added to the Church and when the Mercy and Holiness of God shine forth in the Numbers and Purity of his Saints It is no Riches or Honour that can be heaped upon himself or any others that make the Times seem good to him if Knowledge and Godliness are discountenanced and hindered and the way to Heaven is made more difficult if Atheism infidelity ungodliness pride and malignity do prevail and truth and sincerity are driven into the dark and when he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey Isa. 59.15 When the godly man ceaseth and the faithful fail from among the children of men when every man speaketh vanity to his neighbour and the poor are oppressed and the needy sigh and the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted Psal. 12.1 2 5 8. The Times are Good when the Men are good and Evil when the Men are evil be they never so great or prosperous As Nehemiah when he was Cup bearer to the King himself yet wept and mourned for the desolations of Jerusalem Neh. 1.3 4. 2.2 3. Whoever prospereth the Times are ill when there is a famine of the Word of the Lord and when the chief of the Priests and people do transgress and mock Gods messengers and despise his words and misuse his Prophets 2 Chron. 36.14 16. Amos 8.11 12. When the Apostles are charged to speak no more in the name of Christ Act. 4.18 5.40 It is a text enough to make one tremble to think into what a desperate condition the Jews were carryed by a partial selfish zeal 1 Thes. 2.15 16. who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own Prophets and have persecuted us and they please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sin alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost When the interest of themselves and their own Nation and Priesthood did so far blind and pervert them that they durst persecute the Preachers of the Gospel and forbid them to speak to the people that they may be saved it was a sign that wrath was come upon them to the uttermost A Christian indeed had rather be without Jereboams Kingdom than make Israel to sin make the basest of the people Priests and stretch out his hand against the Prophet of the Lord 1 King 12.30 31. 13.4 He had rather labour with his hands as Paul and live in poverty and rags so that the Gospel may be powerfully and plentifully preached and holiness abound than to live in all the prosperity of the world with the hinderance of mens salvation He had rather be a door-keeper in the house of God than be a Lord in the Kingdom of Satan He cannot rise by the ruines of the Church nor feed upon those morsels that are the price of the blood of souls 2. And the weakest Christian is in all this of the same mind saving that private and selfish interest is not so fully overcome nor so easily and resolutely denyed Luk. 14.26 33. 3. But here the Hypocrite sheweth the falseness of his heart His own interest is it that chooseth his Religion and that he may not torment himself by being wicked in the open light he maketh himself believe that whatsoever is most for his own interest is most pleasing unto God and most for the good of souls and the interest of the Gospel so that the carnal Romish Clergie can perswade their Consciences that all the darkness and superstitions of their Kingdom and all their Opposition of the light of the Gospel of Christ do make for the honour of God and the good of souls because they uphold their tyrannie wealth and pomp and pleasure Or if they cannot perswade their Consciences to believe so gross a lye let Church and Souls speed how they will they will favour nothing that favoureth not their interest and ends And the interest of the flesh and spirit of the world and Christ are so repugnant that commonly such worldlings take the serious practice of Godliness for the most hateful thing and the serious practicers of it for the most unsufferable persons Act. 7.57 21.36 22.22 24.5 6. Joh. 19.15 The enmity of interests with the enmity of nature between the Womans and the Serpent seed will maintain that warfare to the end of the world in which the Prince of the powers of darkness shall seem to prevail as he did against our Crucified Lord but he
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
of the godly and especially of the Faithful guides of the Flocks Alas that so many of the children of the Church should become the scourges and troublers of the Church and should set their teeth so deep in the breasts that were drawn out for their nourishment If you were never drawn to do any thing to the reproach of the Church yet what a grief must it be to us to see so many of your selves miscarry Ah thinks a poor Minister What hopes had I once of these Professors and are they come to this O mark Sirs the Apostle's warning Heb. 13.9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines And his way of prevention is that the heart be established with Grace 9. Consider also that it is a dishonour to Christ that so many of his Family should be such weaklings so mutable and unsetled and unprofitable as you are I do not mean that it is any real dishonour to him for it all the World should forsake him they would dishonour themselves and not him with any competent Judg As it would dishonour the beholders more than the Sun if all the world should say that it is darkness But you are guilty of dishonouring him in the eyes of the misguided world O what a reproach it is to Godliness that so many Professors should be so ignorant and imprudent and so many so giddy and unconstant and so many that manifest so little of the glory of their holy Profession All the enemies of Christ without the Church are not capable of dishonouring him so much as you that bear his Name and wear his Livery While your Graces are weak your corruptions will be strong and all those corruptions will be the dishonour of your Profession Will it not break your hearts to hear the ungodly pointing at you as you pass by to say yonder goes a Covetous Professor or yonder goes a proud or a tipling or a contentious Professor If you have any love to God and sense of his dishonour methinks such sayings should touch you at the heart While you are weak and unconfirmed you will like children stumble at every stone and catch many a fall and yield to temptations which the stronger easily resist and then being scandalous all your faults by foolish men will be charged on your Religion If you do but speak an ill word of another or rail or deceive or over-reach in bargaining or fall into any scandalous Opinions or practice your Religion must bear all the blame with the World Ever since I can remember it hath been one of the principal hinderances of mens Conversion and strengtheners of the wicked in their way that the Godly were accounted a sort of peevish unpeaceable covetous proud self-seeking persons which was a slander as to many but too much occasioned by the scandalousness of some And methinks you should be afraid of that Wo from Christ Wo be to him by whom offence cometh If you be Children you may have the Wo of sharp castigations and if you be Hypocrites you shall have the Wo of overlasting sufferings The world can judg no farther than they see And when they see Professors of Holiness to be so like to common men and in some things worse than many of them what can you expect but that they despise Religion and judg of it by the Professors of it and say If this be their Religion let them keep it to themselves we are as well without it as they are with it And thus will the holy waies of God be vilified through you If you will not excel others in the beauty of your conversations that in this glass the World may see the beauty of your Religion you must expect that they should take it but for a common thing which bringeth forth but common fruits to their discerning You should be such that God may boast of and the Church may boast of to the face of the accuser then would you be an honour to the Church when God may say of you as he did of Job Hast thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in the earth a perfect and an upright man one that feareth God and escheweth evil Job 1.8 If we could say so of you to the malignant enemies See what men the godly are there is none such among you men of Holiness Wisdome uprightness sobriety meekness patience peaceable and harmless living wholly to God as strangers on earth and Citizens of Heaven then you would be ornaments to your holy profession Were you such Christians as the old Christians were Act. 4. we might boast of you then to the reproaching adversaries 10. Moreover till you are confirmed and built up you may too easily be made the instruments of Satan to further his designs The weakness of your understandings and the strength of your passions and especially the interest that carnal Self hath remaining in you may lay you open to temptations and engage you in many a cause of Satan to take his part against the truth And how sad a case is this to any that have felt the love of Christ Have you been warmed with his wondrous love and washed with his blood and saved by his matchless mercy and may it not even break your hearts to think that after all this you should be drawn by Satan to wound your Lord to abuse his honour to resist his cause to hurt his Church and to confirm his enemies and gratify the Devil I tell you with shame and grief of heart that abundance of weak unsetled Professors that we hope have upright meanings in the main have been more powerful instruments for Satan to do his work by for the hindering of the Gospel the vilifying of the Ministry the dividing of the Church and the hindering of Reformation than most of the notoriously prophane have been What excellent hopes had we once in England of the flourishing of piety and happy union among the Churches and servants of Christ And who hath not only frustrated these hopes but almost broke them all to pieces Have any had more to do in it than weak unstable Professors of Religiousness What sad confusions are most parts of England in at this day by reason of the breaking of Churches into Sects and shreds and the contentions and reproaches of Christians against Christians and the odious abuse of holy truth and Ordinances And who is it that doth this so much as unstable Professors of Piety What greater reproach almost could have befallen us than for the adversary to stand by and see men pulling out each others Throats and hating and persecuting and reproaching one another and that our own hands should pull down the house of God and tear in pieces the miserable Churches while men are striving who shall be the Master of the Reformation O what a sport is this to the Devil when he can set his professed enemies by the ears and make them fall upon one another when if he have any
and ye have snuffed at it saith the Lord of Hosts and ye brought that which was torn and the lame and the sick thus ye brought an offering should I accept this of your hand saith the Lord But cursed be the deceiver which hath in his Flock a Male and voweth and Sacrificeth to the Lord a corrupt thing for I am a great King saith the Lord of Hosts and my Name is dreadful among the Heathen If you better knew the Majesty of God you would knew that the best is too little for him and trifling is not tollerable in his service When Nadab and Abibu ventured with false fire to his Altar and he smote them dead he silenced Aaron with this reason of his Judgment I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me and before all the people will I be glorified Lov. 10.1 2 3. That is I will have nothing common offered to me but be served with my own holy peculiar service When the Bethshemites were smitten dead 50070 men of them they found that God would not be dallyed with and cryed out Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God 1 Sam. 6.20 2. Consider also It was an exceeding great price that was payed for your Redemption For you were not redeemed with corruptible things as Silver and Gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your Fathers but by the precious blood of Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 1.18 19. It was an exceeding great Love that was manifested by God the Father and by Christ in this work of Redemption such as even paseth Angels and men to study it and comprehend it 1 Pet. 1.12 Eph. 3.18 19. And should all this be answered but with trissâ—ng from you Should such a matchless Miracle of Love be answered with no greater 〈◊〉 especially when you were purposely 〈◊〉 from all iniquity that you might be sanctified 〈◊〉 a peculiar people zealous of good works 〈◊〉 14. It being therefore so great a price that you are bought with remember that you are none of your own but must glorify him that bought you in body and spirit 1. Cor. 6.20 3. Consider also that it is not a small but an exceeding glory that is promised you in the Gospel and which you live in hope to possess for ever And therefore it should be an exceeding Love that you should have to it and an exceeding care that you should have of it Make light of Heaven and make light of all Truly it is an unsuitable unreasonable thing to have one low thought or one careless word or one cold Prayer or other performance about such a matter as eternal glory Shall such a thing as Heaven be coldly or carelesly minded and sought after Shall the endless fruition of God in glory be look't at with sleepy heartless wishes I tell you Sirs if you will have such high hopes you must have high and strong endeavours A slow pace becomes not him that travelleth to such a home as this If you are resolved for Heaven behave your selves accordingly A gracious reverent godly frame of spirit producing an acceptable service of God is fit for them that look to receive the Kingdom that cannot be moved Heb. 12.18 The believing thoughts of the end of all our labours must needs convince us that we should be stedfast and unmoveable alwaies abounding in the work of the Lord 1 Cor. 15.58 O heatken thou sleepy slothful Christian Doth not God call and Conscience call Awake and up be doing man for it is for Heaven Hearken thou negligent lazy Christian Do not God and Conscience call out to thee O man make hast and mend thy pace it is for Heaven Hearken thou cowardly saint hearted Christian Do not God and Conscience call out to thee Arm man and see thou stand thy ground do not give back nor look behind thee but fall on and fight in the strength of Christ for it is for the Crown of endless glory O what a heart hath that man that will not be heartned with such calls as these Methinks the very name of God and Heaven should awaken you and make you stir if there be any stirring power within you Remissness in wordly matters hath an excuse for they are but trifles but flackness in the matters of Salvation is made unexcusable by the greatness of those matters O let the noble greatness of your Hopes appear in the Resolvedness exactness and diligence of your lives 4. Consider also that it is not only low and smaller Mercies that you receive from God but mercies innumerable and inestimable and exceeding great And therefore it is not cold affections and dull endeavours that you should return to God for all these mercies Mercy brought you into the World and Mercy hath nourished you and bred you up and Mercy hath defended and maintained you and plentifully provided for you Your bodies live upon it Your Souls were recovered by it It gave you your being It rescued you from misery It saveth you from sin and Satan and your Selves All that you have at the present you hold by it All that you can hope for for the future must be from it It is most sweet in quality what sweeter to miserable souls than Mercy It is exceeding great in quantity The Mercy of the Lord is in the Heavens and his faithfulness reacheth to the Clouds His Righteousness is like the great Mountains His Iudgments are a great deep Psal. 36.5 6. O how great is his goodness which he hath laid up for them that fear him which he hath for them that trust in him before the sons of men Psal. 31.19 His Mercy is great unto the Heavens and his truth unto the Clouds Psal. 57.10 And O what an insensible heart hath he that doth not understand the voice of all this wondrous mercy Doubtless it speaketh the plainest language in the World commanding great returns from us of Love and praise and obedience to the bountiful bestower of them With David we must say Blessed be the Lord for he hath shewed me marvellous kindness in a strong City O Love the Lord all ye his Saints for the Lord preserveth all the faithfull Psal. 31.21 23. Teach me thy way O Lord I will walk in thy truth Vnite my heart to fear thy Name I will praise thee O Lord my God with all my heart and I will glorify thy name for evermore for great is thy mercy towards me and thou hast delivered my Soul from the lowest Hell Psal. 86.11 12 13. Vnspeakable Mercies must needs be felt in deep impressions and be so savoury with the Gracious soul that methinks it should work us to the highest resolutions Unthankfulness is a crime that Heathens did detest And it is exceeding great unthankfulness if we have not exceeding great love and obedience under such exceeding great and many mercies as we possess 5. Consider that they are exceeding great helps and means that you possess to further your holiness and obedience to God and
above others When Christ himself had spoken the fore-cited words it s said in the next Verses 28 29. that All they in the Synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the City and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their City was built that they might cast him down headlong This was the entertainment of Christ himself when he did but declare how few it is that God will save and for whole sakes he specially sends his Messengers And must we incur all this for magnifying you and will you dishonour your selves Is all our study and labour for you and our lives for you and all things for you and will not you be wholly and to the utmost of your strength for God Are you cull'd out of all the World for Salvation and will you not answer this admirable differencing Grace by an admirable difference from those that must perish and by an admirable excellency in meekness humility self-denial and heavenliness above other men 6. Moreover you know more and have a greater experience to assist you than others have and therefore you should excel them accordingly Others have but heard of the odiousness of sin but you have seen and felt it Others have heard of Gods displeasure but you have tasted it to the breaking or bruising of your hearts You have been warned at the very quick as if Christ had spoken to your very flesh and Bones Go thy way sin no more left a worse thing come unto thee And as Ezra said Chap. 9.13 After all that is come upon us should we again break thy Commandements wouldst thou not be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us So if after all your spiritual experiences after so many tasts of the bitterness of sin and groans and prayers and cryes against it you shall yet live as like to the wicked as you dare and be familiar with that which hath cost you so dear how do you think that God must take this at your hands You have tasted of the sweetness of the Love of Christ and wondered at the unspeakable Riches of his Grace You have tasted the sweetness of the hopes of Glory and of the powers of the World to come You have perceived the necessity and excellency of holiness by inward experience And if after all this you will draggle on the earth and live below your own experiences contenting your selves with an Infancy of Love and Life and fruitfulness how much do you then transgress against the Rules of Reason and of Equity 7. Moreover All the World expecteth much more from you than from any others God expecteth more from you for he hath given you more and meaneth to do more for you Must you be in the eternal Joyes of Heaven when all your unsanctified Neighbours are in torments and yet will you not more endeavour to excel them Is it not unreasonable to expect to be set eternally at so vast a distance from the ungodly world even as far as Heaven is from Hell and yet to be content to differ here but a little from them in Holiness The Lord knows that poor forsaken impenitent sinners will do no better but rage and be confident till they are past remedy He looks for no better from them than to neglect him and slight his Son and Word and Wayes and to go on in Worldliness and fleshly living to be filthy still and careless and presumptuous and self-conceited still But it 's higher matters that he expects from you and good reason he hath done more for you and prepared you for better things The Ministers of Christ do look for little better from many of their poor ignorant ungodly Neighbours but even to rub out their dayes in security and self-deceit and to be barren after all their labours if not to hate us for seeking to have saved them But it 's you that their eyes are most upon and you that their hearts are most upon Their comfort and the fruit of their lives lyes much in your hands saith Paul 1 Thess. 3.7 8 9. Brethren we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your Faith For now we live if you stand fast in the Lord For what thanks can we render to God again for you for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God Night and day Praying exceedingly that we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in your Faith You see here that your Pastors lives are in your hands If you stand fast they live For the end of life is more then life and your Salvation is the end of our lives If the impenitent world reproach us and abuse and persecute us we suffer it joyfully as long as our work goeth on with you But when you are at a stand When you are barren and scandalous and passionate and dishonour your Profession and put us in fears left we have bestowed all our labour on you in vain this breaks our hearts above any worldly cross whatsoever O when the people that we should rejoyce and glory in shall prove unruly self-conceited peevish proud every one running his own way falling into divisions contentions or scandals this is the killing of the comforts of your Ministers When the ungodly shall hit us in the teeth with your scandals or divisions and say These are the godly people that you boasted of see now what is become of them this is the smoak to our eyes and the gall and Vinegar that 's given us by the Adversary and though still we know that our reward is with the Lord yet can we not choose but be wounded for your sakes and for the sake of the Cause and Name of God Yea the World it self expecteth more from you than others When men talk of great matters and profess as every Christian doth to look for the greatest matters of eternity and to live for no lower things than everlasting fellowship with God and Angels no wonder then if the World do look for extraordinary matters from you If you tell them of reaching Heaven they will look to see you wing'd like Angels and not to creep on earth like worms If you say that you are more than men they look you should shew it by doing more than men can do even by denying your selves and forgiving injuries and loving your enemies and blessing those that curse you and contemning this World and having your conversation in Heaven O Sirs believe it it is not small or common things that will satisfy the expectations of God or men of Ministers or of the World themselves concerning you 8. Yea moreover God himself doth make his boast of you and call out the World to observe your excellency he sets you up as the light of the World to be beheld by others He calls you in his Word his peculiar treasure above all people Exod. 19.5 Deut. 14.3 Psal. 135. â— a peculiar People
resignation of your selves to him Of which I warned you in the former Directions O this is it that makes our people fall so fast in a day of tryal some shrink in adversity and some are enticed away by prosperity Greatness and honour deceiveth one and riches run away with another and fleshly pleasure poison a third and his Conscience Religion Salvation and all he Sacrificeth to his belly and swalloweth it down his throat and all the Love and goodness of God the Bloud of Christ the workings of the Spirit the Precepts and Promises and Threatnings of the Word and the joy and torments which once they seemed to believe all are forgotten or have lost their force And all because the Foundation was not laid well at the first But because this was the very business of the former Directions I will dismiss it now DIRECT II. Think not that all is done when once you are Converted but remember that the work of your Christianity then comes in and must be as long as the time of your lives OF this also I shall say but little because it is the drift of all the moving Considerations before-going I doubt it is the undoing of many to imagine that if once they are sanctified they are so sure in the hands of Christ that they have no more care to take nor no more danger to be afraid of and at last think that they have no more to do as of necessity to Salvation and thus prove that indeed they were never sanctified I confess when a man is truly Converted the principal part of his danger is over he is safe in the love and care of Christ and none can take him out of his hands But this is but part of the truth the other part must be taken with it or we deceive our selves There is still a great deal of work before us and Holiness is still the way to happiness and much care and diligence is required at our hands And it is no more certain that we shall be saved by Christ than it is that we shall be kept in Faith and love and holy obedience by him It is as true that none can separate us from the Love of God and from a care to please him and from a holy diligence in the work of our Salvation as that none can take us out of his hands and bring us into a state of condemnation He that is resolved to bring us to Glory is as much resolved to bring us to it by perseverance in Holiness and diligent obedience for he never decreeth one without the other and he will never save us by any other way Indeed when we are Converted we have escaped many and grievous dangers but yet there are many more before us which we must by care and diligence escape We are translâ—ted from death to life but not from earth to heaven We have the life of Grace but yet we are short of the life of Glory And why have we the life of Grace but to use it and to live by it Why came we into the Vineyard but to work And why came we into the Army of Christ but to fight Why came we into the race but to run for the prize or why turned we into the right way but to travel in it We never did God faithful service till the day of our Conversion and then it is that we begin And shall we be so sottish as to think we have done when we have but begun Now you begin to live that before were dead Now you begin to awake that were before asleep And therefore now you should begin to work that before did nothing or rather a thousand fold worse than nothing Work is the effect of life it is the dead that lye still in darkness and do nothing If you had rather be alive than dead you should rather delight in action than in idleness It 's now that you set to Sea and begin your voyage for the blessed Land many a storm and wave and tempest must you yet expect Many a combat with temptations must you undergo many a hearty prayer have you yet to pour forth Many and many a duty to perform to God and man Think not to have done your care and work till you have done your lives Whether you come in at the first hour or at the last you must work till night if you will receive your wages And think not this a grievous doctrine It is your priviledge it is your joy your earthly happiness that you may be so employed that you that till now have lived like swine or moles or earthly vermine may now take wing and fly to God and walk in heaven and talk with Saints and be guarded by Angels is this a life to be accounted grievous Now you begin to come to your selves to understand what you have to do in the world to live like men that you may live like Angels And therefore now you should begin accordingly to bestir you I would not have you retain the same measure of fear of Gods displeasure nor the same apprehensions of your misery nor the doubts and perplexities of mind which you were under at your first conversion for these were occasioned by the passage in your change and the weakness of your grace in that beginning and your former folly made them necessary for a time But I would have you retain your fear of sinning and be much more in the love of God and in his service than you were at first Temptations will haunt you to the last hour of your lives If therefore you would not fall by these temptations you must watch and pray to the last Give not over watching till Satan give over tempting and watching advantages against you The promise is still but on condition that you persevere and abide in Christ and continue rooted and stedfast in the faith and overcome and be faithful to the death as you may see in Joh. 15. throughout Joh. 8.31 Rev. 2. 3. Col. 1.22 23. Work out therefore your salvation with fear and trembling Phil. 2.12 If you have begun resolvedly proceed resolvedly It 's the undoing of mens souls to think that all the danger is over and lose their apprehensions of it when they are yet but in the way when their care and holy fears abate their watch goes down the soul 's laid open as a common wilderness and made a prey to every lust And therefore still know your work 's not done till your life be done DIRECT III. Be sure that you understand wherein your establishment and growth consisteth that you may not miscarry by seeking somewhat else instead of it nor think you have it when you have it not or that you want it when you have it and so be needlessly disquieted about it FOr your assistance in this I shall further shew you wherein your confirmation and growth consisteth in its several parts both as it is subjected or exercised in your understandings
the wisest Physician that can do most to save mens lives and not he that can best read a Lecture of Anatomy or is readiest in the terms of his Art Knowledg is to be esteemed according to the use of it and the Dignity of its Object and not according to the number and subtilty of notions And therefore I beseech you all that are young and weak in the Faith take much more pains to grow in the fuller acquaintance with that same Faith which you have received than to be acquainted with smaller controversal Truths which you never knew Men use to call these Higher points because they are more difficult but certainly the Articles of your Faith are much higher in point of excellency though they are lower in the due order of learning them as the Foundation is the lowest part of the building and is first laid but is that which must bear up all the rest And here you must observe how gracelesly and unlike to Christians those men speak that say They care not for reading such a Book or hearing such or such a Minister because he tells them no more than they know already And on that account some of them stay from Church because they hear nothing but what they know already It s a certain sign that they do not know already the blessed nature of God and the riches of Christ which they say they know For if they did they could not hear or think too much of them They would long to know more and therefore to hear more of the same things It 's a sign the Minister takes the course that tends to your edification and enriching in knowledg when he is most upon the great and most necessary truths All Saints do make it their study to comprehend the heighth and breadth and length and depth and know the Love of God in Christ but when they have done they confess that it passeth knowledg Eph. 3.17 18 19. It s a graceless wicked Soul in a state of damnation that conceits he knows so much of God and Jesus Christ and the essentials of Christianity that he cares not for hearing these things any more but had rather have novelties and let these alone and feeleth not need of knowing much more and more of the same truths and of using and living upon these vital Principles which he knows You have eaten Bread and drank Beer an hundred times but perhaps you never did eat of Sturgeon or Whale of a Bear or a Leopard of Chesnuts or Pig-nuts or many strange and dangerous fruits in all your life And yet I hope you will not seek after these because they are novelties and give over eating Bread because you have eaten of it already Nor will you churlishly refuse to go to a Feast because there is no meat but what you have eaten of before We have not a new God to Preach to you nor a new Christ nor a new Spirit nor a new Gospel nor a new Church nor a new Faith nor a new Baptismal Covenant nor a new Heaven or Hope or Happiness to propound Gal. 1.9 10. Eph. 4.3 4 5. Your growth in methods and definitions and distinctions and in additional points of knowledg is principally to be valued as it cleareth your understandings in the foresaid great essential points and brings you up to God himself Some wretches think they have quickly learned past the essential Articles of the Faith and ere long they are past the higher points and shortly they are past the Scripture it self and throw it by as a Schollar that hath learnt one Book and must be entred into another They understand not that the Ministry and spirit are but to teach them the word of the Gospel but they think they must outgrow the Word and Ministry and the Spirit must teach them some other Doctrine or Gospel which the written Word doth not contain I pray mark the Apostles warning Heb. 13.9 Be not carryed about with divers and strange Doctrines for it is a good thing that the heart be stablished with Grace And Eph. 4.14 That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carryed about with every mind of Doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness II. Having shewed you wherein your growth consisteth in the understanding I shall be short in the rest and next I must tell you wherein it consisteth in the Will And that is 1. When upon good understanding and deep consideration you are more fixedly habitually absolutely and practically resolved for God and Glory than before So that you are grown more beyond all shaking doubtfulness or wavering of mind and beyond all unevenness mutability and unconstancy When a man is thus satisfied that none but God hath title to him or can make him happy and that none but Christ can reconcile him to God and that it were a madness to make any other choice and thereupon is setled and firm as Mount Zion and say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee Psal. 73.25 When you are firmly resolved that let God do with you what he will and come of it what will you will never choose another Master or Saviour or Rule or Happiness or Way or Body than you are in and will never forsake the path of holiness this is the fixed stability of the Will and the more of this the more you grow 2. And when you have the lowest esteem of the Creatures and greatest and most resolved aversness to all that would draw you from God and can meet the greatest worldly or fleshly allurements with a holy contempt this shews a setled confirmed Will 3. And also when you are speedy in holy Resolutions and see nothing in a Temptation how great soever that can make you demur upon it or make a stop in a Christian course but go on to duty as if the Tempter had said nothing to you and the Flesh and the World had no interest in you and you do not so much as stand to think on it whether you should yield to sin or not as abhorring to call such a matter into question This shews a confirmed fixed Will And the more of this the more of Holiness III. The strength and growth of holy Affections consisteth principally in these particulars 1. When the Affections are Lively and not dull so that we make out after God and Heaven with vigor and alacrity 2. When they are ready at hand and not to seek and need not a great deal ado to quicken them or call them in 3. When they are most pure and unmixed having least of the Creature and most of God in them 4. But principally and the surest point to try them by when they contain in them or accompany the foresaid Confirmation and Resolvedness of the Will For it is more the Willingness that is in or with our Affections than the heat of them that we must judg them by 5. And lastly when
speech contradict the matter When hard heartedness and security and deadness and lethargick drowsiness is the common and dangerous disease of Souls let him that loveth his Soul and would not perish by his disease make use of a Physician and remedy that is suited to the cure and not of one to rock him asleep or give him an opiate to increase his malady 8. See also that he be one that is of a truly Catholick spirit not addicted to a Sect nor to Divisions in the Church nor one that liveth in a separation or distance from the generality of the godly sober Ministers For you take him not for your Guide as separated from the Catholick Church but as united to it and a Member of it as valuing the Judgment of all the Church above the judgment of any one Pastor and knowing that you are your selves to be kept in the unity of the Church and not seduced into a Sect and that the Pastors are to be the bonds and ligaments of the body that by their help it may grow up in love and unity and not the dividers of the body Eph. 4.13 14 15 16. As Captains and inferior Officers in an Army that are to conduct each Souldier in Vnity with the Army and not to separate and make every Troop or Regiment an Army by it self that they may be the petty Generals In a word read some good Visitation Sermons which tell you what a Minister must be and choose if possible to live under such a Minister I say if possible for I know to many it is not possible Wives and Children and Servants while they are bound cannot leave their Husbands Parents or Masters and strong Christians who are called to do good to others must prefer that before such advantages to themselves and many other impediments may deny men such a blessing But yet I say undervalue not so great a mercy and neglect it not where lawfully it may be had and prefer nothing before it as a just impediment which is not really more worth And remember that Divines do commonly resolve the case of the Infidel Nations of the World that they are unexcusable in their Infidelity because when they hear that other Nations profess to know the way to Heaven they do not in so great a case go over Sea and Land to enquire after the Doctrine which we profess And if the Tartarians Indians and other Nations are bound to send to Christian nations for Preachers of the Gospel I only leave you proportionably to measure your case by theirs allowing for the disproportion And to consider how far you should deny your worldly profit in removeing your habitations for such helps as your own necessities require DIRECT XII Make choice of such Christians for your familiar friends and the companions of your lives as are holy humble heavenly serious mortified charitable peaceable judicious experienced and fixed in the wayes of God and not of ungodly persons or proud self-conceited censorious dividing injudicious unexperienced sensual worldly opinionative superficial luke-warm or unsetled Professors THe Reasons of this Direction you may perceive in what I said under the last Your company is a matter of exceeding great concernment to you as one of the greatest helps or hinderances comforts or discomforts of all your lives especially those that you dwell with and those that you choose for your familiars and bosome friends And therefore so far as Gods Providence doth not forbid you and make it impossible choose such as are here described or at least one such for your bosome friend if you can have acquaintance with no more It is of unspeakable importance to your Salvation with whom you are associated for most familiar converse A good companion will teach you what you know not or remember you of that which you forget or stir you up when you are dull or warm you when you are cold and watch over you and warn you of your danger and save you from the poison of ill companions O what a help and delight it is to have a holy judicious faithful friend to open your heart to and to walk with in the wayes of life And how exceeding hard is it to scape sin and hell and get well to Heaven in company and familiarity of the servants of the Devil who are posting unto Hell Let not your companions be worse than your selves lest they make you worse but as much wiser and better as you can procure See Eccles. 4.9 12. Psal. 16.2 and 119.63 Prov. 13.20 DIRECT XIII Subdue your passions and abhor all uncharitable principles and practises and live in love maintaining peace in your families and with your neighbours but especially in the Church of God LOve as you would be loved yea Love if you would be loved for there is no surer way to purchase love And love because you are so freely loved by that God whose wrath you have so oft deserved Let the thankful feeling of his Love in Christ even turn you wholly into love to God and man Abhor every thought and word and deed which is contrary to love and tendeth to the hurt of others And hate the backbitings and bitter words of any which tend to make another odious and to destroy your love to any one that God commandeth you to love Allow that moderate passion which is the fruit of love and tendeth only to do good but resist that which inclineth you to hatred or to do evil The more men wrong you remember that you are the more watchfully to maintain your love knowing that these temptations are sent by the Devil on purpose to destroy and quench it and fill your heart with uncharitableness and wrath Give place to the wrath of others and stand not resisting it by words or deeds Rom. 12.18 19 20. Recompense to no man evil for evil in word or action ver 17. Especially be most tender of the Union of true Christians and of the Churches peace When you hear the men of several Sects representing one another as odious understand that it is the language of the Devil to draw you from love into hatred and divisions And when you must speak odiously of mens sin speak charitably of their persons and be as ready to speak of the good that is in them as of the evil Believe not that dividing ungrounded Doctrine which telleth you that you cannot sufficiently disown the Errors of any party in Doctrine and Worship and Discipline without a separation or withdrawing from their Communion and which telleth you that you are guilty of the Ministerial faults of every Pastor that you joyn with or of the faults of all that Worship which you are present at which would first separate you from every worshipping society and person upon earth and then lead you to give over the worshipping of God your selves You must Love Christians as Christians though they have errors and faults repugnant to their Christianity And you must joyn in Worship with Christians as
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
I meddle not now with the Lapsed Christian as such nor with those Giants in holiness of extraordinary strength nor with the perfect blessed Souls in Heaven But it is the Christian who hath attained that confirmation in grace and composed quiet fruitfull state which we might ordinarily expect if we were industrious whose Image or Character I shall now present you with I call him oft-times A Christian indeed in allusion to Christs description of Nathaniel Joh. 1.47 and as we commonly use that word for one that answereth his own profession without any notable dishonour or defect As we say such a man is a Scholar indeed and not as signifying his meer sincerity I mean one whose heart and life is so conform to the Principles the Rule and the Hopes of Christianity that to the Honour of Christ the true Nature of our Religion is discernible in his conversation Mat. 5.16 In whom an impartial Infidel might perceive the true nature of the Christian Faith and Godliness If the World were fuller of such living Images of Christ who like true Regenerate Children represent their Heavenly Father Christianity would not have met with so much prejudice nor had so many enemies in the World nor would so many millions have been kept in the darkness of Heathenism and Infidelity by flying from Christians as a sort of people that are common and unclean Among Christians there are Babes that must be fed with milk and not with strong meat that are unskilfull in the word of righteousness 1 Joh. 2.2.12 13 14. Heb. 5.12 13 14. and Novices who are unsetled and in danger of an overthrow 1 Tim. 3.6 Joh. 15.3 5 c. In these the nature and excellency of Christianity is little more apparent than Reason in a little childe And there are strong confirmed Christians who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil Heb. 5.13 14. and who shew forth the glory of him that hath called them out of darkness into his marvellous light of whom God himself may say to Satan and their malicious enemies as once of Job Hast thou not seen my servant Job c. This Christian indeed I shall now describe to you both to confute the Infidels slanders of Christianity and to unteach men those false descriptions which have caused the presumption of the profane and the irregularities of erroneous Sectaries and to tell you what manner of persons they be that God is honoured by and what you must be if you will well understand your own Religion Be Christians indeed and you will have the Comforts indeed of Christianity and will finde that its Fruits and Joyes are not dreams and shadows and imaginations if you content not your selves with an imagination dream and shaddow of Christianity or with some clouded spark or buryed seed The Characters I. A CHRISTIAN INDEED by which I still mean a sound confirmed Christian is one that contenteth not himself to have a seed or Habit of Faith but he Liveth by Faith as the Sensualist liveth by sight or sense Not putting out the eye of sense nor living as if he had no Body nor lived not in a world of sensible Objects But as he is a Reasonable creature which exalteth him above the sensitive Nature so Faith is the true information of his Reason about those high and excellent things which must take him up above things sensible He hath so firm a Belief of the Life to come as procured by Christ and promised in the Gospel as that it serveth him for the Government of his Soul as his bodily sight doth for the conduct of his Body I say not that he is assaulted with no temptations nor that his Faith is perfect in degree nor that believing moveth him as passionately as sight or sense would do But it doth effectually move him through the course and tenour of his life to do those things for the life to come which he would do if he saw the Glory of Heaven and to shun those things for the avoiding of damnation which he would shun if he saw the flames of Hell Whether he do these things so fervently or not his Belief is powerfull effectual and victorious Let sight and sense invite him to their Objects and entice him to sin and forsake his God the objects of Faith shall prevail against them in the bent of an even a constant and resolved life It is things unseen which he taketh for his treasure and which have his heart and hope and chiefest labours All things else which he hath to do are but subservient to his Faith and Heavenly interest as his sensitive faculties are ruled by his Reason His Faith is not only his Opinion which teacheth him to choose what Church or Party he will be of but it is his Intellectual Light by which he liveth and in the confidence and comfort of which he dyeth 2 Cor. 5.7 8 9. For we walk by faith not by sight We groan to be cloathed upon with our heavenly house Wherefore we labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him Heb. 10.3 Now the just shall live by faith Heb. 11.1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen Most of the examples in Heb. 11. do shew you this truth that true Christians live and govern their actions by the firm Belief of the promise of God and of another Life when this is ended v. 7. By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet moved with fear prepared an Ark to the saving of his house by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith V. 10. Abraham looked for a City which had foundations whose builder and maker is God Moses feared not the wrath of the King for he indured as seeing him who is invisible v. 27. So the three witnesses Dan. 3. and Daniel himself ch 6. And all Believers have lived this life as Abraham the Father of the faithfull did who as it is said of him Rom. 4.20 Staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief but was strong in faith giving glory to God The Faith of a Christian is truly Divine and he knoweth that Gods truth is as certain as sight it self can be however sight be apter to move the passions Therefore if you can judge but what a Rational man would be if he saw Heaven and Hell and all that God had appointed us to Believe then you may conjecture what a confirmed Christian is though sense do cause more sensible apprehensions 2. The weak Christian also hath a faith that is Divine as caused by God and resting on his word and truth And he so far liveth by this Faith as that it commandeth and guideth the scope and drift of his heart and life But he believeth with a great deal of staggering and unbelief And therefore his Hopes are interrupted by his troublesom doubts and fears and the dimness
friend who dealeth freely with him and is the greatest enemy to his faults And a flatterer he taketh but for the most dangerous insinuating kind of foe 2. But the weak Christian though he hate his sin and love reformation and loveth the most searching Books and Preachers and loveth a gentle kind of reproof yet hath so much pride and selfishness remaining that any reproof that seemeth disgracefull to him goeth very hardly down with him like a bitter medicine to a queasie stomack If you reprove him before others or if your reproof be not very carefully sugured and minced so that it rather extenuate than aggravate his fault he will be ready to cast it up into your face and with retortions to tell you of some faults of your own or some way shew you how little he loveth it and how little thanks he giveth you for it If you will not let him alone with his infirmities he will distaste you if not fall out with you and let you know by his smart and impatience that you have touched him in the sore and galled place He must be a man of very great skill in managing a Reproof that shall not somewhat provoke him to distaste 3. And for the seeming Christian this is his condemnation that Light is come into the world and he loveth darkness rather than light because his deeds are evil He cometh not to the light lest his deeds should be discovered and reproved Joh. 3.19 20 21. He liketh a searching Preacher for others and loveth to hear their sins laid open if it no way reflect upon himself But for himself he liketh best a General or a smoothing Preacher and he flyeth from a quick and searching ministry lest he should be proved and convinced to be in a state of sin and misery Guilt maketh him fear or hate a lively searching Preacher even as the guilty prisoner hateth the Judge He loveth no company so well as that which thinketh highly of him and applaudeth and commendeth him and neither by their reproofes nor stricter lives will trouble his conscience with the remembrance of his sin or the knowledge of his misery He will take you for his enemy for telling him the truth if you go about to convince him of his undone condition and tell him of his beloved sin Sin is taken to be as himself It is He that doth evil and not only sin that dwelleth in him And therefore all that you say against his sin he taketh it as spoken against himself and he will defend his sin as he would defend himself He will hear you till you come to touch himself as the Jews did by Stephen Act. 7.51 54. when they heard him call them stiffnecked resisters of God and persecutors then they were cut to the heart and grind their teeth at him And as they did by Paul Act. 22.22 They gave audience to this word and then lift up their voices and said away with such a fellow from the earth for it is not fit that he should live Gal. 4.16 Joh 9.40 Mat. 21.45 The priests and pharisees would have laid hands on Christ when they perceived that he spake of them And Ahab hated Michaiah because he did not prophesie good of him but evil 1 King 22.8 Deservedly do they perish in their sin and misery that hate him that would deliver them and refuse the remedy Prov. 12.1 Whose loveth instruction loveth knowledge but he that hateth reproof is bruitish Prov. 29.1 He that being often reproved hardneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy XII 1. A Christian indeed is one that unfeignedly desireth to attain to the highest degree of holiness and to be perfectly freed from every thing that is sin He desireth perfection though not with a perfect desire He sitteth not down contentedly in any low degree of grace He looketh on the holiest how poor soever with much more reverence and esteem than on the most rich and honourable in the world And he had far rather be one of the most holy than one of the most prosperous and great He had rather be a Paul or Timothy than a Caesar or an Alexander He complaineth of nothing with so much sorrow as that he can Know and Love his God no more How happy an exchange would he count it if he had more of the Knowledge and Love of God though he lost all his wealth and honour in the world His smallest sins are a greater burden to him than his greatest corporal wants and sufferings As Paul who because he could not perfectly fulfill Gods Law and be as good as he would be crieth out as in bondage O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death Rom. 7.27 2. And for the weak Christian though he is habitually and resolvedly of the same mind yet alas his desires after perfection are much more languid in him And he hath too much patience and reconciledness to some of his sins and sometimes taketh them to be sweet So that his enmity to his Pride or Coveteousness or passion is much abated and suffereth his sin to wast his grace and wound his conscience and hinder much of his communion with God He seeth not the odiousness of sin nor the beauty of Holiness with so clear a fight as the confirmed Christian doth He hateth sin more for the ill effects of it than for its malignant hateful nature He seeth not clearly the intrinsick evil that is in sin which maketh it deserve the pains of hell Nor doth he discern the difference between a holy and an unholy soul so clearly as the stronger Christian doth 1 Cor. 3.2 3. Heb. 12.1 3. And as for the seeming Christian though he may approve of perfect holiness in another and may wish for it himself when he thinketh of it but in the general and not as it is exclusive and destructive of his beloved sin yet when it cometh to particulars he cannot away with it He is so far from desiring it that he will not endure it The name of holiness he liketh and that preservation from Hell which is the consequent of it But when he understandeth what it is he hath no mind of it That holiness which should cure his ambition and pride and make him contented with a low condition he doth not like He loveth not that holiness which would deprive him of his coveteousness his intemperance in pleasant meats and drinks his fleshly lusts and inordinate pleasures Nor doth he desire that holiness should employ his soul in the Love of God and in daily prayer and meditating on his word and raise him to a heavenly life on earth XIII 1. A Christian indeed is one that maketh God and Heaven the End Reward and Motive of his Life And liveth not in the world for any thing in the world but for that endless happiness which the next world only can afford The Reasons which actuate his thoughts and choice and all his life are
fetcht from Heaven The interest of God and his soul as to eternity is the ruling interest in him As a traveller goeth all the way and beareth all the difficulties of it for the sake of the End or Place that he is going to how ever he may talk of many other matters by the way so is it with a Christian he knoweth nothing worthy of his life and labours but that which he hopeth for hereafter This world is too sinful and too vile and short to be his felicity His very trade and work in the world is to lay up a treasure in heaven Mat. 6.20 and to lay up a good foundation against the time to come and to lay hold on eternal life 1 Tim. 6.19 And therefore his very heart is there Mat. 6.21 and he is emploied in seeking and setting his affections on the things above Col. 3.1.2 3. And his conversation and trafick is in Heaven Phil. 3.20 21. He looketh not at the things which are seen which are temporal but at the things which are not seen which are eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 He is a stranger upon earth and Heaven is to him as his home 2. The weak Christian also hath the same End and Hope and Motive and preferreth his hopes of the life to come before all the wealth and pleasures of this life But yet his thoughts of Heaven are much more strange and dull He hath so much doubting and fear yet mixed with his faith and hope that he looketh before him to his everlasting state with backwardness and trouble and with small desire and delight He hath so much hope of Heaven as to abate his fears of hell and make him think of eternity with more quietness than he could do if he found himself unregenerate But not so much as to make his thoughts of Heaven so free and sweet and frequent nor his desires after it so strong as the confirmed Christians are And therefore his duties and his speech of Heaven and his endeavours to obtain it are all more languid and unconstant And he is much proner to fall in love with earth and to entertain the motions of reconciliation to the world and to have his heart too much set upon some place or person or thing below and to be either delighted too much in the possession of it or afflicted and troubled too much with the loss of it Earthly things are too much the Motives of his life and the reasons of his joyes and griefs Though he hath the true belief of a life to come and it prevaileth in the main against the world yet it is but little that he useth it to the commanding and raising and comforting his soul in comparison of what a strong believer doth Mat. 16.22 23. 3. But the seeming Christian would serve God and Mammon and placeth his chief and certainest happiness practically upon earth Though speculatively he know and say that Heaven is better yet doth he not practically judge it to be so to him And therefore he loveth the world above it and he doth most carefully lay up a treasure on earth Mat. 6.19 and is resolved first to seek and secure his portion here below and yet he taketh Heaven for a reserve as knowing that he world will cast him off at last and dye he must there is no remedy and therefore he taketh heaven as next unto the best as his second hope as better than hell and will go in Religion as far as he can without the loss of his prosperity here so that earth and flesh do govern and command the design and tenor of his life But heaven and his soul shall have all that they can spare which may be enough to make him pass with men for eminently religious 1 Joh. 2.15 Mat. 13.22 Luke 18.22 23. Luk. 14 24 33. Ps. 17.14 Phil. 3.18 19 20. XIV 1. A Christian indeed is one that having taken heaven for his felicity doth account no labour or cost too great for the obtaining of it he hath nothing so dear to him in this world which he cannot spare and part with for God and the world to come He doth not only notionally know that nothing should seem too dear or hard for the securing of our salvation but he knoweth this practically and is resolved accordingly Though difficulties may hinder him in particular acts and his executions come not up to the height of his desires Rom. 7.16 17. c. yet he is resolved that he will never break on terms with Christ There is no duty so hard which he is not willing and resolved to perform and no sin so sweet or gainful which he is not willing to forsake He knoweth how unprofitable a bargain he makes who winneth the world and loseth his own soul and that no gain can ransome his soul or recompence him for the loss of his salvation Mar. 8.36 He knoweth that it is impossible to be a loser by God or to purchase heaven at too dear a rate he knoweth that whatsoever it cost him heaven will fully pay for all and that it is the worldlings labour and not the saints that is repented of at last He marvelleth more at distracted sinners for making such a stir for wealth and honours and command than they marvail at him for making so much a-doe for heaven He knoweth that this world may be too dear bought but so cannot his salvation yea he knoweth that even our duty it self is not our smallest priviledge and mercy And that the more we do for God the more we receive and the greater is our gain and honour and that the sufferings of believers for righteousness sake do not only prognosticate their joyes in heaven but occasion here the greatest joyes that any short of heaven partake of Mat. 5.11 12. Rom. 5.12 3 c. He is not one that desireth the end without the means and would be saved so it may be on cheap and easie terms But he absolutely yieldeth to the terms of Christ and saith with Austin Da quod jubes jube quod vis Cause me to do what thou commandest and command what thou wilt Though Pelagius contradicted the first sentence and the flesh the second yet Augustine owned both and so doth every true believer He greatly complaineth of his backwardness to obey but never complaineth of the strictness of the command He loveth the holiness justness and goodness of the Laws when he bewaileth the unholiness and badness of his heart He desireth not God to command him less but desireth grace and ability to do more He is so far from the mind of the ungodly world who cry out against too much holiness and making so much ado for heaven that he desireth even to reach to the degree of Angels and would fain have Gods will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven and therefore the more desireth to be in heaven that he may do it better Psal. 119.5 Rom. 7.24 2. The weak Christian hath the
conflict and very uneasie to himself because the less the flesh is mortified the more able it is to raise perturbations and to put faith and reason to a continual fight And most of the scandals and blemishes of his life arise from hence even the successes of the flesh against the spirit so that though he live not in any gross or wilful sins yet in lesser measures of excess he is too frequently overtaken How few be there that in meat and sleep do not usually exceed their measure And they are easily tempted to libertine opinions which indulge the flesh having a weaker preservative against them than stronger Christians have Mat. 16.22 23. Gal. 5.13 1.16 2.12 13 14. Col. 2.11 3. But the seeming Christian is really carnal The flesh is the predominant part with him and the interest of the flesh is the ruling interest He washeth away the outward filth and in hope of salvation will be as religious as the flesh will give him leave and will deny it in some smaller matters and will serve it in a religious way and not in so gross and impudent a manner as the Atheists and openly profane But for all that he never conquered the flesh indeed but seeketh its prosperity more than the pleasing of God and his salvation And among prayers and sermons and holy conference and books yea and formal fastings too he is serving the flesh with so much the more dangerous impenitencie by how much the more his cloak of formality hindereth him from the discerning of his sin many a one that is of unblemished reputation in Religion doth constantly serve his appetite in meat and drink though without any notable excess and his fleshly mind in the pleasure of his dwelling wealth and accommodations as much as some profane ones do if not much more And whenever it cometh to a parting trial they will shew that the flesh was the ruling part and will venture their souls to secure its interest Luke 18.23 14.33 Rom. 8.5 6 7 9 13. Mat. 13.21 22. Jud. 19. XVII 1. Hence it followeth that a Christian indeed preferreth the means of his spiritual benefit and salvation incomparably before all corporal commodities and pleasures He had rather dwell under the teaching and guidance of an able experienced Pastor though it be cross to his prosperity and wordly gain than to live under an ignorant or dead hearted Preacher when it furthereth his trading or more accommodateth his flesh Though yet he must not remove when God layeth any restraint upon him by his duty to his family or others He had rather if he be a servant dwell in a family where he may do or receive most spiritual good than in a carnal family where he may have more ease and better fare and greater wages If he be to marry he had rather have one that hath wisdom and piety without wealth than one that hath riches without wisdom and piety He is gladder of an opportunity in publick or private for the profit of his soul than of a feast or a good bargain or an opportunity for some gain in wordly things Mat. 6.20.33 2. And the weak Christian is of the same mind in the main He valueth mercies and helps for his soul above those for his body But it is with less zeal and more indifferency and therefore is more easily and ofter drawn to the omitting of spiritual duties and neglect of spiritual helps and mercies and goeth to them with more averness and as driven by necessity and is much less sensible of his loss when he misseth of any such spiritual helps Luk. 10.41 42. Heb. 10.25 Act. 2.42 4.32 3. But the seeming Christian being a real worldling doth serve God and Mammon and Mammon with the first and best He had rather miss a Sermon than a good bargain or commodity he had rather dwell where he may thrive best or have most ease and pleasure than where he may find the greatest helps for heaven he will be Religious but it must be with an easie and a pleasant and merry Religion which may not be too nigardly with his flesh nor use it too strictly unless when one days austerity may procure him an indulgence for his liberty all the week following He will make his bargain with Christ so as to be sure that he may not lose by him And he will not believe that God is pleased with that which is much dipleasing to his flesh Rom. 8.5 6 7 8 13. Mat. 13.21 22. XVIII 1. The Christian indeed is one that is crucified to the world and the world is as a crucified thing to him Gal. 6.14 He hath overcome the world by faith and followeth Christ in the pursuit of it to a perfect conquest 1 Joh. 5.4 5. Joh. 16.33 He hath seen through all its glosing vanity and foreseen what it will prove at last He hath found that it cannot quiet conscience nor reconcile the guilty soul to God nor save it from his consuming wrath nor serve instead of God or Heaven of Christ or grace but will cast off its servants in their last extremity naked and desolate into remediless despair And therefore he is resolvedly at a point with all things under the Sun Let them take the world for their portion and felicity that will For his part he accounteth all things in it dung and dross in comparison of Christ and things eternal Phil. 3.7 8 19 20. All the preferments and honours and command and wealth and greatness of the world do not seem to him a bate considerable to make a wise man once question whether he should persevere in faithfulness to God or to tempt him to commit one wilful sin He would not speak or own a lie or approve the sin of any other for all that worldlings enjoy in their greatest prosperity while they live He accounteth his peace with God and conscience and his communion with Christ in the greatest povertie to be incomparably better than all the pleasures and commodities of sin yea the very reproach of Christ is better to him than all the treasures of Court or Country Heb. 11.25 26. Grace hath mortified and annihilated the world to him And that which is dead and nothing can do nothing with him against God and his soul. He looketh on it as a carrion which dogs may love and fight for but is unfit to be the food of man He is going to the land of promise and therefore will not contend for an inheritance in this howling wilderness Whether he be high or low rich or poor are so small a part of his concernments that he is almost indifferent to them farther than as the interest of God and souls may accidentally be concerned in them The world set against God and Heaven and holiness doth weigh no more in his estimation than a feather that is put in the ballance against a mountain or all the world He feeleth no great force in such temptations as would draw him to
predominant in him But alas he is too easily tempted into Religious passions discontents contentious disputations quarrelsome and opprobrious words and his judgement lamentably darkened and perverted whenever contentious zeal prevaileth and passions do perturb the quiet and orderly operations of his soul. He wanteth both the knowledge and the experience and the mellowness of spirit which riper Christians have attained He hath a less degree of Charity and is less acquainted with the mischiefs of unpeaceableness And therefore it is the common course of young professors to be easily tempted into unpeaceable waies and when they have long tryed them if they prove not Hypocrites to come off at last upon experience of the evils of them and so the young Christians conjunct with some hypocrites make up the rigorous fierce contentious and vexatious party and the aged riper Christians make up the holy moderate healing party that groan and pray for the Churches peace and mourn in secret both for the ungodliness and violence which they cannot heal Yea the difference is much apparent in the Books and Sermons which each of them is best pleased with The ripe experienced Christian loveth those Sermons that kindle Love and tend to Peace and love such healing Books as do narrow differences and tend to reconcile and heal such as Bishop Halls Peace-maker and Pax terris and all his writings and Bishop Davenants Bishop Mortons and Bishop Hall's Pacificatory Epistles to Duraeus and Mr. Burroughs's Irenicon Ludov. Crocius Amyraldus Junius Paraeus's and many other Irenicons written by forein Divines to say nothing of those that are upon single controversies But the younger sowre uncharitable Christians are better pleased with such Books and Sermons as call them aloud to be very zealous for this or that controverted point of Doctrine or for or against some circumstance of worship or Church discipline or about some fashions or customs or indifferent things as if the Kingdom of God were in them Rom. 14.1 2 15 16. 3. But the seeming Christian is either a meer temporizer that will be of that Religion whatever it be which is most in fashion or which the higher powers are of or which will cost him least Or else he will run into the other extream and lift up himself by affected singularities and by making a bustle and stir in the world about some small and controverted point and careth not to sacrifice the peace and safety of the Church to the honour of his own opinions And as small as the Christian Church is he must be of a smaller society than it that he may be sure to be amongst the best while indeed he hath no sincerity at all but placeth his hopes in being of the right Church or Party or Opinion And for his Party or Church he burneth with a feverish kind of zeal and is ready to call for fire from Heaven and to decieve him the Devil sendeth him some from Hell to consume those that are not of his mind Yet doth he bring it as an Angel of light to defend the Truth and Church of Christ And indeed when the Devil will be the Defender of Truth or of the Church or of Peace or Order or Piety he doth it with the most burning zeal You may know him by the means he useth He defendeth the Church by forbidding the people to read the Scriptures in a known tongue and by imprisoning and burning the soundest and holiest members of it and abusing the most learned faithfull Pastors and defendeth the flock by casting out the Shepherds and such like means as the murders of the Waldenses and the Massacres of France and Ireland and the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Maries Bonefires and the Powder-plot yea and the Munster and the English rage and phrensies may give you fuller notice of He that hath no Holiness nor Charity to be zealous for will be zealous for his Church or Sect or Customs or Opinions And then this zeal must be the evidence of his piety and so the Inquisitors have thought they have religiously served God by murdering his servants and it is the badge of their honour to be the Devils hang-men to execute his malice on the members of Christ and all this is done in zeal for Religion by irreligious Hypocrites There is no standing before the malicious zeal of a graceless Pharisee when it riseth up for his carnal interest or the honour and traditions and customs of his Sect Luk. 6.7 And they were filled with madness and communed with one another what they might do to Jesus Luke 4.28 Acts 5.17 13.45 John 16.2 Rom. 10 2. Phil. 3.6 Acts 36.10 11. The zeal of a true Christian consumeth himself with grief to see the madness of the wicked But the zeal of the Hypocrite consumeth others that by the light of the fire his Religiousness may be seen You may see the Christians fervent Love of God by the fervent flames which he can suffer for his sake And you may see the fervent Love of the Hypocrite by the flames which he kindleth for others By these he cryeth with Jehu Come and see my zeal for the Lord 2 King 10.16 2 Sam. 21.2 LV. 1. A Christian indeed is one that most highly esteemeth and regardeth the interest of God and mens salvation in the world and taketh all things else to be inconsiderable in comparison of these The interest of Great men and Nobles and Commanders yea and his own in corporal respects as riches honour health and life he taketh to be things unworthy to be named in competition with the interest of Christ and Souls The thing that his heart is most set upon in the world is that God be glorified and that the world acknowledge him their King and that his Laws be obeyed and that darkness and infidelity and ungodliness may be cast out and that pride and worldliness and fleshly lusts may not hurry the miserable world unto perdition It is one of the saddest and most amazing thoughts that ever entreth into his heart to consider how much of the world is overwhelmed in ignorance and wickedness and how great the Kingdom of the Devil is in comparison of the Kingdom of Christ that God should forsake so much of his Creation that Christianity should not be owned in above the sixth part of the world and Popish pride and ignorance with the corruptions of many other Sects and the worldly carnal minds of Hypocrites should rob Christ of so much of this little part and leave him so small a flock of holy ones that must possess the Kingdom His soul consenteth to the Method of the Lords Prayer as prescribing us the order of our Desires And in his prayers he seeketh first in order of estimation and intention the Hallowing of Gods name and the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his Will on Earth as it is done in Heaven before his daily bread or the pardon of his sins or the deliverance of his own soul from temptations
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
1 Cor. 3.9 10. Christ knew the necessity that the Infants of his Family had of such Nurses and he knew what numbers of such weak ones there would be in comparison of the strong or else he had never appointed the strong to such an Office And having appointed it he will keep up the honour of his Officers and will send you his Alms your food your Physick your Pardon your Priviledges by their hands If you be drawn by Seducers to forsake or neglect the Ministry of Christs Officers you forsake or neglect your helps and mercies you refuse his Grace you are like Infants that scorn their Nurses help and like Subjects who reject all the Officers of the King and like the Chickens that forsake the Hen you forsake the School and Church of Christ and may expect to be quickly catcht up by the Devil as straglers that have no defence or guide 2. Yet is there great difference between one Minister or Pastor and another as much as between Physicians Lawyers or men of any other function And there being no case in the world that you are so much concerned to be careful in as the instructing and conduct and safety of your souls you have exceeding great reason to take heed whom you choose to commit the care and conduct of your Souls to It is not enough to say that He is a true Ordained Minister and that his administrations are not nullities no more than to say of an ignorant Physician or Cowardly Captain that he hath a valid License or Commission when for all that if you trust him it may cost you your lives Nor is it a wise mans answer to say that God giveth his Grace by the worst as soon as by the best and by the weakest as soon as by the strongest and therefore I need not be so careful in my choice For though God have not confined the working of his Spirit to the most excellent means yet ordinarily he worketh according to the means he useth And this both Scripture Reason and daily experience fully prove God worketh rationally on man as man that is as a rational free agent by Moral operation and not by a meer Physical injection of his Grace When we see the man that is made wise unto Salvation by meer infusion of Wisdom without a Teacher or the study of the Word of God or when we see God work by his Word as by a charm that a few words shall convert a man though the speaker or hearer understood them not then we may hearken to this conceit And then we may think that a Heretick may as well teach you the truth as the Orthodox or a Schismatick teach you Unity and Peace as well as a Catholick peaceable Pastor or a man that is ignorant of the mysteries of Regeneration and holy Communion with God may best teach you that which he knoweth not himself and an enemy to Piety and Charity may teach you to be Pious and Charitable as well as any other But I need not say much more of this for all parties would never so strive to have such Ministers as they like and to put out such as they dislike if they thought not that the difference between Ministers and Ministers were very great See therefore that the Guide whom you choose for your Souls be 1. Judicious for an injudicious man may pervert the Scripture and lead you into Error and Heresie and sin before you are aware As an unskilful Coachman may soon overturn you or an unskilful Waterman may drown you yea though he be a zealous fervent Preacher yet if he be injudicious he may ignorantly give you Poison in your food as the experience of this age hath lamentably proved 2. See if possible that he be an experienced man that knoweth by experience on himself not only what it is to be regenerate and sanctified and made a new Creature but also how all the combate between the Spirit and the Flesh is to be managed and what are the methods and stratagems of the tempter and what are the chief helps and defensatives of the Soul and how they are all to be used For it is not harder to be a Judicious Physician or Lawyer or Souldier without experience than a judicious Pastor And therefore the Holy Ghost commandeth that he be not a novice or raw unexperienced Christian 1 Tim. 3.6 3. See that he be Humble for if he be puft up with pride he falleth into the condemnation of the Devil 1 Tim. 3.6 And then he will either scorn the labour of the Ministry as a drudgery to preach in season and out of season to beseech and exhort and stoop to the poorest of the flock or else he will speak perverse things to draw away Disciples after him Acts 20.30 or he will as Diotrephes reject the Brethren as loving himself to have the preheminence 3 John 9 10. and will Oversee the Church by constraint for filthy lucre as being a Lord over Gods heritage 1 Pet. 5.2 3. See Doctor Hammond on the Text. 4. See that he be Holy in his life for though this be not essential to his Office yet the unholy are unexperienced yea and have a secret enmity in their hearts against that Holiness which they should daily Preach and will usually be shewing it in their close disgracing discouraging speeches against that serious Piety which they should promote And they will neglect most of the personal care of their Flock and will unpreach by their lives the good which they Preach by their tongues and harden and embolden the people in their sins and make them believe that they believe not what they Preach themselves Choose not an enemy of Holiness to lead you in the way of holiness a way that he never went himself nor an enemy of Christ to conduct you in the Christian warfare when he is a servant of the Devil the world and flesh against whom you fight 5. See that he be of a Heavenly mind or else his Doctrine will be unsavoury and dry and he will be Preaching some speculations or barren Controversies instead of Heavenly edifying truth 6. See that he be faithful and diligent in his Ministry as one that knoweth the worth of Souls and will not sell them or betray them to the Devil for filthy lucre or his fleshly ends nor make Merchandise of them as desiring rather theirs than them and preferring the Fleece before the safety of the Flock But one that imitateth the pattern Acts 20. and in meekness instructeth those that are opposers 2 Tim. 2.25 26. 2 Pet. 2.3 1 Cor. 4.2 Rom. 16.17 18. 1 Pet. 5.3 4. 2 Cor. 12.14 7. See that he be a Lively serious Preacher for all will be little enough to keep up a lively seriousness in such dull and frozen hearts as ours A cold Preacher with cold hearts is like to make cold work He that speaks senslesly and sleepily about such matters as Heaven and Hell doth by the manner of his