thou art upon A mind that is drowned in ambition sensuality or passion will scarce find God any sooner in a wilderness than in a croud unless he be there returning from those sins to God whereever he seeth him God will not own and be familiar with so foul a soul. Seneca could say Quid prodest totius regionis silentium si affectus fremunt What good doth the silence of all the Country do thee if thou have the noise of raging affections within And Gregory saith Qui corpore remotus vivit c. He that in body is far enough from the tumult of humane conversation is not in solitude if he busie himself with earthly cogitations and desires and he is not in the City that is not troubled with the tumult of worldly cares or fears though he be pressed with the popular crouds Bring not thy house or land or credit or carnal friend along with thee in thy heart if thou desire and expect to walk in Heaven and to converse with God Direct 5. Live still by Faith Let Faith lay Heaven and Earth as it were together Look not at God as if he were far off set him alwaies as before you even as at your right hand Psal. 16. 8. Be still with him when you awake Psal. 1 39. 18. In the morning thank him for your rest and deliver up your self to his conduct and service for that day Go forth as with him and to do his work Do every action with the Command of God and the Promise of Heaven before your eyes and upon your hearts Live as those that have incomparably more to do with God and Heaven than with all this world That you may say with David Psal. 37. 25 26. as aforecited Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none on Earth that I desire besides thee And with Paul Phil. 1. 21. To me to Live is Christ and to Dye is gain You must shut up the eye of sense save as subordinate to Faith and live by Faith upon a God a Christ and a World that is unseen if you would know by experience what it is to be above the brutish life of sensualists and to converse with God O Christian if thou hadst rightly learned this blessed life what a high and noble soul-conversation wouldst thou have How easily wouldst thou spare and how little wouldst thou miss the favour of the greatest the presence of any worldly comfort City or Solitude would be much alike to thee saving that the place and state would be best to thee where thou hast the greatest help and freedome to converse with God Thou wouldst say of humane society as Seneca Unus pro populo mihi est populus pro uno Mihi satis est unus satis est nullus One is instead of all the people to me and the people as one One is enough for me and none is enough Thus being taken up with God thou mightest live in prison as at liberty and in a wilderness as in a City and in a place of banishment as in thy native Land For the Earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof and everywhere thou mayest find him and converse with him and lift up pure hands unto him In every place thou art within the sight of home and Heaven is in thine eye and thou art conversing with that God in whose converse the highest Angels do place their highest felicity and delight How little cause then have all the Churches enemies to triumph that can never shut up a true believer from the presence of his God nor banish him into such a place where he cannot have his conversation in Heaven The stones that were cast at holy Stephen could not hinder him from seeing the Heavens opened and Christ sitting at the right hand of God A Patmos allowed holy John Communion with Christ being there in the Spirit on the Lords day Rev. 1. 9 10. Christ never so speedily and comfortably owneth his servants as when the world disowneth them and abuseth them for his sake and hurls them up and down as the scorn and off-scouring of all He quickly found the blind man that he had cured when once the Jews had cast him out Joh. 9. 35. Persecutors do but promote the blessedness and exceeding joy of sufferers for Christ Mat. 5. 11 12. And how little Reason then have Christians to shun such sufferings by unlawful means which turn to their so great advantage and to give so dear as the hazard of their souls by wilful sin to escape the honour and safety and commodity of Martyrdome And indeed we judge not we Love not we Live not as sanctified ones must do if we judge not that the truest Liberty and Love it not as the Best Condition in which we may Best converse with God And O how much harder is it to walk with God in a Court in the midst of sensual delights than in a prison or wilderness where we have none to interrupt us and nothing else to take us up It is our prepossessed minds our earthly hearts our carnal affections and concupiscence and the pleasures of a prosperous state that are the prison and the Jaylors of our souls Were it not for these how free should we be though our bodies were confined to the straightest room He is at Liberty that can walk in Heaven and have access to God and make use of all the Creatures in the world to the promoting of this his Heavenly conversation And he is the prisoner whose soul is chained to flesh and earth and confined to his lands and houses and feedeth on the dust of worldly riches or walloweth in the dung and filth of gluttony drunkenness and lust that are far from God and desire not to be near him but say to him Depart from us we would not have the knowledge of thy waies that Love their prison and chains so well that they would not be set free but hate those with the cruellest hatred that endeavour their deliverance Those are the poor prisoners of Satan that have not liberty to believe nor to Love God nor converse in Heaven nor seriously to mind or seek the things that are high and honourable that have not liberty to meditate or pray or seriously to speak of holy things nor to love and converse with those that do so that are tyed so hard to the drudgery of sin that they have not liberty one month or week or day to leave it and walk with God so much as for a recreation But he that liveth in the family of God and is employed in attending him and doth converse with Christ and the Host of Holy ones above in reason should not much complain of his want of friends or company or accommodations nor yet be too impatient of any corporal confinement Lastly be sure then most narrowly to watch your hearts that nothing have entertainment there which is against your Liberty of converse with God Fill not those Hearts with
The Divine Life IN THREE TREATISES THE FIRST Of the Knowledge of God THE SECOND Of Walking with God THE THIRD Of Coversing with God In SOLITUDE By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet and Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster 1664. A TREATISE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. AND THE Impression which it must make upon the Heart and its necessary Effects upon our Lives Upon John 17. 3. By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet and Nevil Simmons Bookseller in Kederminster 1664. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND Exemplary Lady ANN COUNTESS OF BALCARRES MADAM IN hope of the fuller pardon of my delay I now present you with two other Treatises besides the Sermon enlarged which at your desire I preached at your departure hence I knew of many and great afflictions which you had undergone in the removal of your dearest friends which made this subject seem so suitable and seasonable to you at that time But I knew not that God was about to make so great an addition to your tryals in the same kind by taking to himself the principal branch of your Noble Family by a rare disease the embleme of the mortal malady now raigning I hope this loss also shall promote your gain by keeping you nearer to your Heavenly Lord who is so jealous of your affections and resolved to have them entirely to himself And then you will still find that you are not alone nor deprived of your dearest or most necessary friend while the Father the Son the sanctifying and comforting Spirit is with you And it should not be hard to reconcile us to the disposals of so sure a friend Nothing but good can come from God however the blind may miscall it who know no Good or Evil but what is measured by the private standard of their selfish interest and that as judged of by sense Eternal Love engaged by Covenant to make us happy will do nothing but what we shall find at last will terminate in that blessed end He envyed you not your Son as too good for you or too great a mercy who hath given you his own Son and with him the mercy of eternal life Corporal sufferings with Spiritual blessings are the ordinary lot of Believers here on earth As corporal prosperity with spiritual calamity is the lot of the ungodly And I beseech you consider that God knoweth better than you or I what an Ocean your son was ready to lanch out into and how tempestuous and terrible it might have proved and whether the world that he is saved from would have afforded him more of safety or seduction of comfort or calamity whether the protraction of the life of your Noble husband to have seen our sins and their effects and consequents would have afforded him greater joy or sorrow Undoubtedly as God had a better title to your Husband and Children and Friends than you had so it is much better to be with him than to be with you or with the best or greatest upon earth The heavenly inhabitants fear not our fears and feel not our afflictions They are past our dangers and out of the reach of all our enemies and delivered from our pains and cares and have the full possession of all those mercies which we pray and labour for Can you think your Children and Friends that are with Christ are not safer and better than those that yet remain with you Do you think that earth is better than heaven for you your self I take it for granted you cannot think so and will not say so And if it be worse for you it s worse for them The providence which by hastening their Glorification doth promote your Sanctification which helpeth them to the End and helpeth you in the Way must needs be good to them and you however it appear to flesh and unbelief O Madam when our Lord hath shewed us as he will shortly do what a state it is to which he bringeth the spirits of the just and how he doth there entertain and use them we shall then be more competent judges of all those acts of Providence to which we are now so hardly reconciled Then we shall censure our censurings of these works of God and be offended with our offences at them and call our selves blind unthankful sinners for calling them so bad as we did in our misjudging unbelief and passion We shall not wish our selves or friends again on earth among temptations and pains and among uncharitable men malicious enemies deceitful flatterers and untrusty friends When we see that face which we now long to see and know the things which we long to know and feel the Love which we long to feel and are full of the joyes which now we can scarce attain a taste of and have reacht the End which now we seek and for which we suffer we shall no more take it for a judgement to be taken from ungodly men and from a world of sin and fear and sorrow nor shall we envy the wicked nor ever desire to be partakers of their pleasures Till then let us congratulate our departed friends the felicity which they have attained and which we desire and let us rejoyce with them that rejoyce with Christ and let us prefer the least believing thought of the everlasting joyes before all the defiled transitory pleasures of the deluded dreaming miserable world And let us prefer such converse as we can here attain with God in Christ and with the Heavenly Society before all the pomp and friendship of the world We have no friend that is so able to supply all our wants so sufficient to content us so ready to relieve us so willing to entertain us so unwearied in hearing us and conversing with us as our blessed Lord. This is a friend that will never prove untrusty nor be changed by any change of interest opinion or fortune nor give us cause to suspect his Love A friend that we are sure will not forsake us nor turn our enemy nor abuse us for his own advantage nor will ever dye or be separated from us but we shall be alwaies with him and see his Glory and be filled and transported with his Love and sing his praise to all Eternity With whom then should we so delightfully converse on Earth and till we can reach that sweet delightful converse whom should we seek with more ambition or observe with greater devotedness and respect O that we were less carnal and more spiritual and lived less by Sense and more by Faith that we knew better the difference between God and Man between visible Temporals and invisible Eternals we should then have other thoughts and desires and resolutions and converse and employments and pleasures than too many have Madam it displeaseth me that it is no more elaborate a Treatise to which the present opportunity inviteth me to prefix your Name but your own Desire of the
Third must be my excuse for all But pardon the Manner and I dare commend the Matter to you as more worthy your serious contemplation and your daily most delightful practice than any other that was ever proposed unto mortal man This is the man-like noble life The life which the Rational soul was made for To which if our faculties be not by sanctifying Grace restored they fall below their proper dignity and use and are worse than lost like a Prince or Learned man that is employed only in sweeping Dog-kennels or tending Swine To walk in Holiness with the most Holy God is the improvement and advancement of the nature of man towards its designed equality with Angels When Earthliness and Sensuality degrade humanity into a voluntary and therefore sinful brutishness This is the Life which affordeth the soul a solid and durable pleasure and content When carnal minds evaporate into Air and bubble into froth and vanity wasted in a dream and the violent busie pursuit of a shadow deceiving themselves with a mixture of some counterfeit Religion playing with God and working for the world living in jeast and dying and despairing and suffering in earnest with unwearied labour building on the Sand and sinking at death for want of a foundation hating the serious practice of their own profest Religion because it is not the profession but the serious practice which hath the greatest enmity to their sensual delights yet wishing to be numbred with those hereafter whom they hated here This Holy Walking with the most Holy God is the only life which is best at last and sweet in the review which the Godly Live in and most of the ungodly could wish to dye in like him that wished to be Caesar in life and Socrates at death Yea this is the Life which hath no end which we are here but learning and beginning to practise and which we must hereafter live in another manner and degree with God for ever O wondrous Mercy which thus ennobleth even the state of mortality and honoureth Earth with so much participation of and communion with Heaven That by God and with God we may walk in holy peace and safety unto God and there be blessed in his perfect Sight and Love for ever Madam the greatest service I can do you for all your favours is to pray that God will more acquaint you with himself and lead you by this blessed way to that more blessed end that when you see all worldly glory in the dust you may bless him for ever who taught you to make a wiser choice Which are the prayers of Dec. 24. 1663. MADAM Your very much obliged Servant RICHARD BAXTER TO THE READER Reader THE Embryo of this Book was but one Sermon preached a little before the ending of my publick Ministry upon the Text of the third Treatise upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honour able Lady Being obliged to communicate the Notes and unavoidably gullty of some delays I made a compensation by enlargement and having reasons for the publication of them with which I shall not trouble you to make them more suitable to the designed end I prefixed the two former Treatises The first I had preached to my ancient flock Of the second I had preached but one Sermon If many of the materials in the second be the same as in the first you must understand that my design required that it should be so They being the same Attributes of God which the first Part endeavoureth to imprint upon the mind and which the second and third endeavour to improve into a constant course of holy affection and conversation As it is the same food which the first concoction chylifieth which the perfecting concoctions do work over again and turn into blood and spirits and flesh so far am I in such points from gratifying thy sickly desire of variety and avoiding the displeasing of thee by the rehearsals of the same that it is my very business with thee to perswade thee to live continually upon these same Attributes and Relations of God as upon thy daily air and bread and to forsake that lean consuming company who feed on the shels of hard and barren controversies or on the froth of complements and affected shews and run after novelty instead of substantial solid nutriment And to tell thee that the primitive pure simple Christianity consisted in the daily serious use of the great materials of the Creed Lords Prayer and ten Commandements contracted in the words of our Baptismal Covenant Do thus and thou will be like those examples of the succeeding Church in uprightness purity simplicity charity peaceableness and holy communion with God when the pretended subtilties and sublimities of wanton uncharitable contentious wits will serve but to strangle or delude their souls I have purposely been very brief on the several Attributes and Relations of God in the first Treatise because the copious handling of them would have made a very great volume of it self and because it is my great design in that first part to give you a sight of all Gods Attributes and Relations conjunct and in their order that looking on them not one by one but all together in their proper places the whole Image of God may by them be rightly imprinted on your minds The Method being the first thing and the necessary Impressions on the soul the second which I there desire you to observe and employ your minds about if you desire to profit and receive what I intend you Decem. 24. 1663. THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE Text explained The Doctrine The Knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ the Mediatour is the life of grace and the necessary way to the life of glory What is contained in the Knowledge of God as to the Act what as to the Object A short Scheme of the Divine properties and Attributes to be known Page 1 CHAP. II. Of the Knowledge of Gods Being and the necessary effects of it on the heart p. 14 CHAP. III. Of the Knowledge of Gods Unity and Indivisibility and its necessary effects p. 17 CHAP. IV. Of the Knowledge of Gods Immensity and so of his Incomprehensibleness Omnipresence and the effects p. 21 CHAP. V. Of the Knowledge of Gods Eternity and its due effects A Believer referring all things to Eternity honoureth his very horse or dog or smallest mercy more than Unbelievers honour their King their lives their souls regarding them but for transitory ends Unbelievers denying the End destroy morally all souls all mercies all Divine revelations all Gods ordinances all graces and duties and the whole Creation p. 28 CHAP. VI. The Knowledge of God as he is a Spirit and incorporeal and consequently 1. As he is simple or uncompounded 2. Invisible c. 3. Immortal Incorruptible Immutable The Uses of Gods Simplicity The Uses of his Invisibility The Uses of his Immortality and Immutability p. 44 CHAP. VII Of the Knowledge of Gods Almightiness
of sin and wickedness is not desirable to a Saint And is not God One and his Church One and hath he not commanded all his servants to be One and is not Love the new and great commandment by which they must be known to all men to be his Disciples Which then is the stricter servant of the Lord he that Loveth much or he that Loveth little he that Loveth all Christians or he that Loveth but a few with the special Love He that Loveth a Christian as a Christian or he that Loveth him but as one of his party or opinion He that is One in the Catholike Body Or he that disowneth Communion with the far greatest part of the body Will you say that Christ was loose and Pharises strict because Christ eat and drank with Publicans and Sinners and the Pharises condemned him for it It was Christ that was stricter in holiness then they for he abounded more in Love and Good works but they were stricter then he in a proud self-conceeted morosity and separation Certainly he that is highest in Love is highest in Grace and not he that confineth his Love to few Was it not the weak Christian that was the stricter in point of meats and drinks and dayes Rom. 14. 15. But the stronger that were censured by them did more strictly keep the commandment of God Christian Reader let the Unity of God have this effect upon thy soul 1. To draw thee from the distracting multitude of Creatures and make thee long to be all in God That thy soul may be still working toward him till thou â—nd nothing but God alone within thee In the multitude of thy thoughts within thee let his comforts delight thy soul Psal. 94. 19. The multitude distracteth thee Retire into Unity that thy soul may be composed quieted and delighted 2. And let it make thee long for the Unity of the Saints and endeavour it to the utmost of thy power that the Church in Unity may be more like the Head 3. And let it cause thee to admire the Happiness of the Saints that are freeed from the bondage of the distracting Creature and have but One to Love and Fear and Trust and Serve and Seek and Know One thing is needful which should be chosen but it s many that we are troubled about Luk. 11. 42. CHAP. IV. 3. THe Immensity of God which is the next Attribute to be considered must have this Effect upon thy soul 1. The Infinite God that is everywhere comprehending all places and things and comprehended by none must raise admiring reverent thoughts in the soul of the believer We wonder at the Magnitude of the Sun and the Heavens and of the whole Creation But when we begin to think what is beyond the Heavens and all created Being we are at a kind of loss Why it is God that is in all and above all and beyond all and beneath all and where there is no place because no Creature there is God And if thy thoughts should imagine millions of millions of miles beyond all place and measure all is but God and go as far as thou canst in thy thoughts and thou canst not go beyond him Reverently admire the Immensity of God The world and all the Creatures in it are not to God so much as a sand or atome is to all the world The point of a needle is more to all the world then the world to God For between that which is Finite and that which is Infinite there is no comparison Isa. 40. 12 15 17. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meated out Heaven with the span and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a ballance Behold the Nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the ballanceâ— behold he taketh up the Iles as a very little thing All Nations before him are as nothing and they are counted to him less then Nothing and Vanity 2. From this Greatness and Immensity of God also thy soul must reverently stay all its busie bold enquiries and know that God is to us and to every creature Imcomprehensible If thou couldst fathome or measure him and know his Greatness by a comprehensive knowledge he were not God A Creature can comprehend nothing but a Creature You may know God but not comprehend him As your foot treadeth on the earth but doth not cover all the earth The Sea is not the Sea if you can hold it in a spoon Thou canst not comprehend the Sun which thou seest and by which thou seest all things else nor the sea or earth no nor a worm or pile of grass Thy understanding knoweth not all that God hath put into any the least of these Thou art a stranger to thy self and to somewhat in every part of thy self both body and soul. And thinkest thou to comprehend God that perfectly comprehendest nothing Stop then thy overbold enquiries and remember that thou art a shallow finite worm and God is Infinite First reach to comprehend the Heaven and Earth and whole Creation before thou think of Comprehending him to whom the world is nothing or vanity or so small a dust or drop or point Job 37. 1 5. saith Elihu At this my heart trembleth and is moved out of his place Hear attentively the Noise of his Voice God thundereth marvelously with his Voice great things doth he which we cannot comprehend How then should we comprehend himself When God pleadeth his cause with Job himself what doth he but convince him of his Infiniteness and absoluteness even from the greatness of his works which are beyond our reach and yet are as nothing to himself Should he take the busie enquirer in hand but as he did begin with Job 38. 1 2. c. Who is this that darkeneth Counsel by words without knowledge Gird up thy loins like a man for I will demand of thee and answer thou me c. alas how soon would he non-plus and confound us and make us say as Job 40. 4. Behold I am vile what shall I answer thee I will lay my hand upon my mouth Once have I spoken but I will not answer yea twice but I will proceed no further Indeed there is mentioned Eph. 3. 11. The Saints comprehending the dimensions of the Love of Christ but as the next verse saith it passeth knowledge so comprehending there signifieth no more but a knowing according to our Measure an attainment of what we are capable to attain nay nor all that neither but such a prevalent knowledge of the Love of Christ as is common to all the Saints As there is nothing more visible then the Sun and yet no visible being less comprehended by the sight so is there nothing more Intelligible then God for he is All in all things and yet nothing so Incomprehensible to the mind that knoweth him It satisfieth me not to be
This they preferred or ventured on before a holy heavenly life And this is it that Believers are labouring to escape in all their holy care and diligence It is an Infinite value that is put upon the blood of Christ the promises of God the ordinances and means of Grace and grace it self and the poorest duties of the poorest Saints because they are for an Infinite Eternal glory No Mercy is small that tasts of Heaven as all doth or should do to the Believer No action is low that aims at Heaven And O how lively should the Resolutions and courage of those men be that are travelling sighting and watching for Eternity How full should be their Comforts that are fetcht from the foresight of Infinite Eternal Comforts As all things will presently be swallowed up in Eternity so methinks the present apprehension of Eternity should now swallow up all things else in the soul. Object But saith the Unbeliever if God have made man for Eternity it is a wonder that there are no more lively Impressions of so Infinite a thing upon the souls of all Our sense of it is so small that it makes me doubt whether we are made for it Answ. Consider 1. That benummedness and sleep and death is the very state of an unholy soul Hast thou cast thy self into a sleepy senseless disease and wilt thou argue thence against Eternity This is as if the blind should conclude that there is no Sun or that the eye of man was not made to see it because he hath no sight himself Or as if you should think that man hath not any life or feeling because your palsie limbs do not feel Or that the stomack was not made for meat because the stomacks of the sick abhor it 2. And for believers 1. You may see by their lives that they have some apprehensions of Eternity why else do they differ from you and deny themselves and displease the world and the flesh it self why do they set their hearts above if they have not lively thoughts of an Eternity 2. But if you aske me Why their apprehensions are not a thousand times more lively about so Infinite a thing I answer 1. Their Apprehensions must be suitable to their State Our state here is a state of Imperfection and so will our apprehensions be But a perfect state will have perfect apprehensions It is no proof that the Infant in the womb is not made to come into this world and see the Sun and converse with men because he hath no apprehensions of it Our state here is a conjunction of the soul to a frail distempered body and so neer a conjunction that the actions of the soul must have great dependance on the Body And therefore our Apprehensions are limited by its frailty and the soul can go no higher then the capacity of the Body will allow 2. And our Apprehensions now are fitted to our Use and benefit We are now Believers and must live by faith And therefore must not be Beholders and live by sense If Eternity were open to mens Natural sight or we had here as clear and lively apprehensions of it as those have that are there then it were not thanks no praise to us to be believers or to obey and live as Saints And then God should not Govern man as man here in the way by a Law but as a beast by sense or as the glorified that have possession Where there are perfect Apprehensions of God and Glory there will be also perfect Love and Joy and Praise and consequently perfect Happiness and this were to make Earth and Heaven the way and the end to be all one Perfect apprehensions are kept for a perfect state of Happiness But here it is well if we have such Apprehensions as are fitted to the use of travellers and soldiers as will carry us on and prevail against the difficulties of our course If you had never been at London you could not have any such clear Apprehensions of the place as those that see it have And yet your imperfect Apprehensions might be sufficient to make you take a journey thither and you may come as safely and certainly to it as if you had seen it Moreover the body the brain which the soul in Apprehending now makes use of cannot bear such Apprehensions as are suitable to the thousandth part of the greatness of the object without distraction The smallest eye may see the sun but the greatest cannot endure to gaze upon its Glory much less if it were at the neerest approach It s a mercy oâ— mercies to give us such Apprehensions of Eternity as are meet for passengers to bring us thither and it is part of our Mercy that those Apprehensions are not so great as to distract and over whelm us 4. Lastly The Eternity of God must teach the soul contentedness and patience under all labours changes sufferings and dangers that are here below Believing Soul draw neer look seriously on Eternity and try whether it will not make such Impressions as these upon thee Art thou weary of Labours either of the mind or body Is not Eternity long enough for thy Rest Canst thou not afford to work out the day light of this life when thou must Rest with Christ to all Eternity Canst thou not run with patience so short a race when thou lookest to so long a Rest Canst thou not watch one hour with Christ that must Reign with him to all Eternity Dost thou begin to shrinke at sufferings for Christ when thou must be in Glory with him for ever How short is the suffering how long is the Reward Dost thou begin to think hatdly of the dealing of the Lord because his people are here afflicted and made the scorn and by-word of the world why is not Eternity long enough for God to shew his Love and bounty to his people in Is not the day at hand when Lazarus and the Rich worldling both must hear But now he is comforted and thâ—n art tormented Luk. 16. 25. Did not that Now câ—me â—â—me enough which was the entrance of Eternity Even Jesus the Author and perfecter of our saith for the Joy that was â—â—t before him endured the Cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God! consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lâ—st yâ—â— be wâ—â—â—ied and saint in your minds Heb. 12. 2 3. Dâ—st 〈…〉 the prosperity of the wicked and prevalency of the Churches Enemies Look then unto Eternity and 〈…〉 e whether that be not long enough for the 〈…〉 aâ—d the wicked to be tormented Wouldst 〈…〉 their time Dost thou begin to 〈…〉 of Christ oâ— the truth of his promises because he doth 〈…〉 O what is a thousand years to Eternity is there not yet time enough before thee for Christ to make good all his promises in Were not those Disciples sharply but justly rebuked as Fools and slow of heart to believe that when
and dead to morrow They are our delight to day and our sorrow or horrour to morrow But our God is Immortal Our houses may be burned Our goods may be consumed or stolne our cloaths will be worn out our treasure here may be corrupted But our God is unchangeable the same for ever Our Laws and Customes may be changed our Governours and Priviledges changed our company and employments and habitation changed but our God is never changed Our estates may change from Riches to poverty and our names that were honoured may incur disgrace Our health may quickly turn to sickness and our ease to pain But still our God is unchangeable for ever Our friends are unconstant and may turn our enemies Our Peace may be changed into war and our liberty into slavery but our God doth never change Time will change customes families and all things here but it changeth not our God The Creatures are all but earthen mettal and quickly dasht in peices our comforts are changeable our selves are changeable and mortal but so is not our God 3. And it should teach us to draw as near to God as we are capable by unchangeable fixed Resolutions and constancy of endeavours and to be still the same as we are at the best 4. It should move us also to be more desirous of passing into the state of immortality and to long for our unchangeable habitation and our immortal incorruptible Bodies and to possess the Kingdom that cannot be moved Heb. 12. 28. And let not the mutability of things below much trouble us while our Rock our Portion is unmoveable God waxeth not old Heaven doth not decay by duration the Glory of the blessed shall not wither nor their sun set upon them nor their day have any night nor any mutations or commotions disturb their quiet possessions O Love and Long for Immortality and Incorruption CHAP. VII 6. HAving spoken of the effects of the Attributes of Gods Essence as such we must next speak of the Effects of his three great Attributes which some call Subsistential that is his Omnipotency Understanding and Will or his Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness By which it hath been the way of the Schoolmen and other Divines to denominate the three Persons not without some countenance from Scripture Phrase The Father they call the Infinite Power of the God head and the Son the Wisdom and Word of God and of the Father and the Holy Ghost the Love and Goodness of God of the Father and Son But that these Attributes of Power Understanding and Will or Power Wisdome and Goodness are of the same importance with the termes of Personality Father Son and Holy Ghost we presume not to affirm It sufficeth us 1. That God hath assumed these Attributes to himself in Scripture 2. And that man who beareth the Natural Image of God hath Power Understanding and Will and as he beareth the Holy Moral Image of God he hath a Power to execute that which is Good and Wisdome to direct and Goodness of Will to determine for the execution And so while God is seen of us in this Glass of Man we must conceive of him after the Image that in man appeareth to us and speak of him in the language of man as he doth of himself And first The Almightiness of God must make these impressions on our souls 1. It must possess the soul with very awful Reverent thoughts of God and fill us continually with his holy Fear Infinite Greatness and Power must have no common careless thoughts lest we Blaspheme him in our Minds and be guilty of Contempt The Dread of the Heavenly Majesty should be still upon us and we must be in his fear all the day long Prov. 23. 17. Not under that slavish Fear that is void of Love as men fear an Enemy or hurtful Creature or that which is Evil For we have not such a spirit from the Lord nor stand in a Relation of enmity and bondage to him But Reverence is necessary and from thence a Fear of sinning and displeasing so Great a God The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdome Prov. 1. 7. and 9. 10. Psal. 111. 10. By it men depart from evil Prov. 16. 6. Sin is for want of the Fear of God Luk. 23. 40. Pro. 3. 7. Jer. 5. 24. I. ev 25. 36. The Fear of God is often put for the whole new man or all the work of Grace within us even the Principle of new life Jer. 2. 19. and 32. 40. And it is often put for the whole work of Religion or Service of God Psal. 34. 11. Prov. 1. 29. Psal. 130. 4. and 34. 9. And therefore the Godly are usually denominated such as Fear God Psal. 15. 4. and 22. 23. and 115. 11 13. and 135. 20. and 34. 7 9. c. The godly are devoted to the Fear of God Psal. 119. 38. It is our Sanctifying the Lord in our hearts that he be our fear and dread Isa. 8. 13. If we Fear him not we take him not for our Master Mal. 1. 6. Evangelical Grace excludeth not this Fear Luk. 12. 5. Though we receive a Kingdom that cannot be moved yet must our acceptable service of God be with Reverence and godly fear Heb. 12. 28. With fear and trembling we must work out our salvation Phil. 2. 12. In fear we must pass the time of â—â—journing here 1 Pet. 1. 17. In it we must converse together Eph. 5. 4. Yea Holiness is to be perfected in the fear of God 2 Cor. 7. 1. and that because we have the Promises The most prosperous Churches walk in this fear Acts 9. 31. It s a necessary means of preventing destruction Heb. 11. 7. and of attaining salvation when we have the promises Heb. 4. 1. God puts this fear in the hearts of those that shall not depart from him Jer. 32. 40. See therefore that the Greatness of the Almighty God possess thy soul continually with his Fear 2. Gods Almightiness should also possess us with holy Admiration of him and cause us in heart and voice to Magnifie him Oh what a Power is that which made the world of nothing which upholdeth the earth without any foundation but his Will which placed and maintaineth all things in their Order in Heaven and Earth which causeth so great and glorious a creature as the Sun that is so much bigger then all the earth to move so many thousand miles in a few moments and constantly to keep its time and course that giveth its instinct to every brute and causeth every part of nature to do its office By his Power it is that every motion of the Creature is performed and that order is kept in the Kingdoms of the world Jer. 32. 17 18 19. He made the Heaven and the Earth by his Great Power and stretched out arm and nothing is too hard for him The Great the Mighty God the Lord of Hosts is his Name great in counsel and mighty in works Neh. 9.
Praises of the Lord. The Goodness of God should be a daily feast to a gracious soul and should continually feed our cheerful Praises as the spring or cistern fills the Pipes I know no sweeter work on earth nay I am sure there is no sweeter then for faithful sanctified souls rejoicingly to magnifie the Goodness of the Lord and joyn together in his cheerful Praises O Christians if you would tast the Joys of Saints and live like the redeemed of the Lord indeed be much in the exercise of this Heavenly work and with holy David make it your employment and say O how great is thy Goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee Psal. 31. 19. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord Psal. 33. 5. What then are the Heavens Thy Congregation hath dwelt therein thou O Lord hast prepared thy Goodness for the poor O that men would praise the Lord for his Goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men For he satisfyeth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with goodness Psal. 107. 8 9. The goodness of God endureth continually Psal. 52. 1. Truly God is good to Israel even to such as are of a clean heart Psal. 73. 1. O taste and see that the Lord is good blessed is the man that trusteth in him Psal. 34. 8. The Lord is good his mercy is Everlasting his truth endureth from generation to generation Psal. 100. 5 The Lord is good to all and his tender Mercies are over all his works Psal. 145. 9. O Praise the Lord for the Lord is good sing Praises to his name for it is pleasant Psal. 135. â— Call him as David My goodness and my fortress my high tower and my deliverer and my shield and he in whom I trust Psal. 144 2. Let men therefore speak of the glorious honour of his Majesty and of his wonderous works Let them abundantly utter the memory of his great goodness and sing of his Righteousness Psal. 145 5 7. If there be a thought that is truly sweet to the soul it is the Thought of the Infinite Goodness of the Lord. If there be a pleasant word for man to speak it is the mention of the Infinite goodness of the Lord And if there be a pleasant hour for man on earth to spend and a delightful work for man to do it is to meditate on and with the Saints to Praise the Infinite goodness of the Lord. What was the glory that God shewed unto Moses and the tast of Heaven that he gave him upon Earth but this I will make all my Goodness pass before thee and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee and I will be gracious on whom I will be gracious and will shew Mercy on whom I will shew Mercy Exod. 33. 19. And his proclaimed Name was The Lord the Lord God Merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth Exod. 34. 6. These were the holy Praiâ—es that Solomon did consecrate the Temple with 2 Chron. 6. 41. Arise O Lord God into thy resting place thou and the Ark of thy strength let thy Priests O Lord God be cloathed with salvation and let thy Saints rejoyce in Goodness See Isai. 63. O Christians if you would have joy indeed let this be your employment Draw neer to God and have no low undervaluing thoughts of his Infinite Goodness For How great is his Goodness and how great is his Beauty Zach. 9 17. Why is it that Divine Consolations are so strange to us but because Dive Goodnesâ— is so lightly thought upon As those that think little of God at all have little of God upon their hearts so they that think but little of his Goodness in particular have little Love or Joy or Praise 6. Moreover the Goodness of God must possess us with desire to be conformed to his goodness in our measure The Holy perfection of his Will must make us desire to have our Wills conformed to the will of God We are not called to Imitate him in his works of Power nor so much in the paths of his Omniscience as we are in his goodness which as manifested in his work and word is the Pattern and standard of Moral Goodness in the sons of men The Impress of his goodness within us is the chief part of his Image on us and the fruits of it in our Lives is their Holiness and Vertue As he is Good and doth Good Psal. 119. 68. so must it be our greatest care to be as good and do as much good as possibly we can Any thing within us that is sinful and contrary to the Goodness of God should be to our souls as griping poyson to our bodies which nature is excited to strive against with all its strength and can have no safety or rest till it be cast out And for Doing Good it must be the very study and trade of our lives As worldlings study and labour for the world and the Pleasing of their flesh so must the Christian study and labour to improve his masters talents to his use and to do as much good as he is able and to please the Lord. Prov. 11. 23. The desire of the Righteous as such is only Good To depart from evil and do good is the care of the just Psal. 34. 14. We must please our neighbours for Good to their Edification Rom. 15. 2. While we have time we must do good to all men as we are able but especially to them of the houshold of faith Gal. 6. 10 Not only to them that do good to us but to our enemies Luk. 6. 32 33 34. Mat. 5. 44. This is it that we must not forget Heb. 13. 16. and which by Ministers we must be â—ut in mind of 1 Tim. 6. 18. which all that love life and would inherit the blessing must devote themselves to 1 Pet. 3. 10 11 12. In this we must be like our heavenly Father and approve our selves his Children Mat. 5. 45 46. 7. From the perfect Infinite goodness of God we must learn to judge of Good and Evil and in all the Creatures To this must all be reduced as the standard and by this must they be tryed It is a most wretched absurdity of sensual men to try the will or word or wayes of God by themselves and by their own interests or wills and to judge all to be Evil in God that is against them And yet alas how common is this case Every man is naturally â—oth to be miserable suffering he abhors and therefore that which causeth his suffering he calleth evil And so when he hath deserved it himself by his sin he thinks that the Law is Evil for threatning it and that God himself is Evil for inflicting it so that Infinite Goodness must be tryed and judged by the vicious creature and the Rule and standard must be reduced to the crooked line of humane actions or dispositions and if God will please
crossed or accomplished pleased or displeased and you will see that his will is alwayes done and pleased even by them that displease him in 〈…〉 ting his will â—or Gods will hath two sorts of Objects or Products which must be still distinguished 1. He willeth what shall be Due from us to him and from him to us 2. He willeth Entities and Events or what shall actually Be or come to pass Strictly both these acts of Gods will perform the things willed and so are not without their proper effect God as the Cause and disposer of all things attaineth his will concerning Events All things shall Come to pass which he absolutely wideth shall come to pass He is not frustrated of his will herein being neither unwise nor impotent nor unhappy Whatsoever pleased the Lord that did he in Heaven and in Earth in the Sea and in the depths Psal. 135. 6. Our God is in Heaven he hath done whatsoever he pleased Psâ—â— 115. 3. And as God as our Governour doth by his Laws oblige man to his Duty his will hath its effect A Command doth but make the thing commanded to be our Duty and our Duty it is and so this act of the will of God is not in vain Thus far he hath his will By his Promises he maketh the Reward to be Due to all on condition they perform the Duty on which he hath suspended it and to be Actually Due to those only that perform the condition And all this is accomplished Heaven is Conditionally given to all and Actually to the Faithful only So that what God willeth to be Due as a Lawgiver is accordingly Due and what he actually willeth shall come to pass shall come to pass according to his will But perhaps you will say He doth not will that all men shall Eventually obey his Laws but only that it shall be their Duty I answer Our speeches of God being borrowed from man who is one of the Glasses in which he is here seen by us especially the manhood of Jesus Christ We must accordingly conceive and say acknowledging still the improprieties and imperfections of our conceptions and expressions that as man doth simply and most properly will the Event of some things which he absolutely desireth should come to pass and doth not simply will some other things but only in tantum he so far willeth them that he willeth and resolveth to do such and such things as have a tendency thereto and to go no farther and do no more for the attaining of them though he could so God doth simply and properly will some things that is the things which he Decreeth shall come to pass but we must after our manner conceive and say that there are other things which he willeth but in tantum so far as to make it mans Duty to perform it and perswade him to the doing of that duty and give him such a measure of help as leaveth him without any just excuse if he do it not and so far he willeth the salvation of such as to Promise or offer it them on such terms and no further doth he will the obedience or salvation which never comes to pass but leaveth it here to the will of man For if he simply willed that every Duty should be Eventually done it would be done and if he simply willed that all men should be actually saved they would be saved And that he simply willeth their Duty or Obligation and in tantum so far doth will the event of their obedience and salvation as this comes to as aforesaid is certain and in this we are all agreed and I am not so well skild in dividing as to understand where the real difference lyeth between the parties that here most contend But about the bare Name I know they differ some thinking that this last is not to be Named an Act of Gods will or a willing of mans obedience or salvation and some thinking that it is so to be named who doubtless are in the right nor is there room for controversies while we confess the impropriety of this and all our speeches of God as speaking after the manner of men and while Scripture that must teach us how to speak of God doth frequently so speak before us 2. God being the Maker and first Cause of all things that is of all substantial Beings commonly called Creatures we must conclude that Sin is no such Being because it is most certain that he is not the Creatour or the cause of it Scripture assureth us and all Christians are agreed that God is not the Cause or Author of sin How odious then should that be to us that is so bad as not to come from God If God disclaim it let us disclaim it Let us abhor that it should come from us seeing God abhorreth that it should come from him Own not that which hath nothing of God upon it If you say that it is an Accident though not a substance and therefore it must needs come from God because even Accidents have their Being I answer That among the subtilest Disputers it is granted that it hath no Created Being or no Being that is caused by God of this they are agreed It s granted by all Christians that sin hath no other kind of Being but what the will of man can cause And if that be so the Philosophical trifling controversie whether it be only a Privation or a Relation or Modus Entis which the will thus causeth must be handled as Philosophical and valued but as it deserveth For this is all the controversie that here remains If the form be Relative and the Foundation be but a meer Prevation the Disconformity being founded in a defect then the case is soon resolved as to the rest He that erreth understandeth amiss that he understandeth is of God that he erreth that is is defective and so false in his understanding is of himself that he willeth when he chooseth sin is of God the Universal cause But that he willeth a forbidden object rather then the contrary and faileth in his understanding and his will this is not of God but of himself If others say that the very Fundamentum of that Disconformity which is the Form of sin is sometime an Act they must also say that it is not an Act as such but This Act comparatively considered or as circumstantiated or as exercised on the forbidden object rather then another or a Volition instead of a Nolition and choosing that which should be refused or a refusing that which should be chosen And whether this comparate specifying foundation be a Privation or a Mode is a Philosophical controversie and in Philosophy and not in Theology is the difficulty Divines being agreed as aforesaid that what ever you Name it Being or Privation or Mode it is but such as must be resolved ultimately into the will of man as its Original or first cause supposing God to be the Creator and Conserver of that free Power
feel though they are such as were sanctified never so early before actual sin had time to breed those evil habits which therefore certainly were born with us And if the Image of God consisting in true holiness be not natural or born in every Infant in the world then Original sin must needs be born with them for that sin is either only or chiefly the Privation of that Image or Holiness He that will say that this Image is not requisite to Infants and so that the absence of it is a meer negation doth make them bruits and not of the race of man whom God created after his Image and leaves them uncapable of Heaven or Hell or any other life then beasts have And he that thinks so of Infants to day may think so of himself to morrow And he that will affirm that this Image or Holiness is born with every Infant into the world so wilfully contradicteth common evidence which appeareth in the contrary effects that he is not worthy to be further talkt with One thing more I will propound yet to the contrary-minded Can they say that any Infants are saved or not If not either they perish as bruits which is a bruitish opinion or they live in misery and then they had sin that did deserve it yea if they think that any of them perish in the wrath to come it must be for sin If they think that any of them are saved it is either by covenant or without there is some promise for it or there is none If none then no man can say that any of them are saved For who hath known the mind of the Lord without his Revelation It is arrogancy to tell the world of the saving of any that God did no way reveal that he will save But if they plead a Revelation or promise it is either the Covenant of Nature or of Grace a promise contained in Nature Law or Gospel The former cannot be affirmed not only because the dissenters themselves deny any such Covenant to have been in nature or any way made to Adam but because there is no such Covenant or promise in Nature to be found for the Salvation of all Infants and if not for all then for none and because it is contrary to abundance of plain passages in the Scriptures that assure us there is but One Covenant of Salvation now in force and that all the world shall become guilty before God and every mouth be stopped Rom. 3. 19. and that by the deeds of the Law no flesh shall be justified in his sight v. 20. Gal. 2. 16. And if righteousness come by the Law then Christ is dead in vain Gal. 2. 21. For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the Curse Gal. 3. 10. And that no man is Justified by the Law in the sight of God is evident for the just shall live by faith and the Law is not of faith but The man that doth them shall live in them And certainly the Law of nature requireth not less then Moses Law to a mans justification if not more And if there had been a Law given which could have given life verily Righteousness should have been by the Law But the Scripture hath concluded All under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that belive Gal. 3. 21 22. By the fulness of this evidence it is easie to see that Infants and all mankind are sinners and therefore have need of the Redeemer 2. To know God as our Redeemer containeth the knowledge of the great ends of our Redemption and of the manifestation of God to man thereby Having treated of these in the Book forecited I shall now say but this in brief It is beyond dispute that God could have made man capable of Glory and kept him from falling by confirming grace and without a Redeemer setled him in felicity as he did the Angels He that foresaw mans fall and necessity of a Saviour could easily have prevented that sin and necessity But he would not he did not but chose rather to permit it and save man by the way of a Redeemer In which his Infinite wisdom is exceedingly manifested And in Christ who is the Power and Wisdom of God 1 Cor. 1. 24. among others these excellent effects are declared to us which the way of Redemption attaineth above what the saving us on the terms of Nature would have attained 1. God is now wonderfully admired and magnified in the person of the Redeemer Angels themselves desire to pry into this mysterie 1 Pet. 1. 12. As the frame of Nature is set us to see God in where we daily as in a glass behold him and admire him so the person of the Redeemer and work of Incarnation and Redemption is set the Angels for their contemplation and admiration as well as us Eph. 3. 10. To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God And in the glorious perfection and dignity of the Redeemer will God be everlastingly glorified For his greatest works do greatliest honour him And as the sun doth now to us more honour him then a star so the glorified person of the Redeemer doth more honour God then man or Angels 1 Pet. 3. 23. He is gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God Angels and Authorities and Powers being made subject to him Eph. 1. 20 21 22. Being raised from the dead God hath set him at his own right hand in heavenly places far above all principalities and powers and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come and hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be the Head over all things to the Church which is his Body the fulness of him that filleth all in all Heb. 1. 3. Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins sate down on the right hand of the Majesty on high being made so much better then the Angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name then they And here a very great truth appeareth which very many overlook that the exaltation of the person of the Redeemer and the glory that God will have in him is a higher and more principal part of Gods intent in the sending of him to be Incarnate and Redeem us then the glorifying of man and of God by us Christ will be more glorious then men or Angels and therefore will more glorifie God and God will eternally take more complacency in him then in men or Angels And therefore though in several respects He is for us and the means of our felicity and we are for him and the means of his glory as the Head is for the Body and the Body
6. Submit your selves to every ordinance of man for the Lords sake For so is the will of God 1 Pet. 2. 13 15. Deut. 1. 16 17. Judge righteously between every man and his brother ye shall not respect persons in judgement but shall hear the small as well as the great you shall not be afraid of the face of man for the judgement is Gods 2 Chron. 19 5 6 7. And he said to the Judges Take heed what ye do for you judge not for man but for the Lord who is with you in the judgement wherefore let the fear of the Lord be upon you But our Atheistical Politicians would teach Rulers that they are none of the Ministers of God and that they judge for man only and not for him The nature of all true obedience is such as Paul describeth in children and servants Eph. 6. 1 6 7 8. that setcheth its rise and motives from the Lord Children obey your Parents in the Lord for this is right Servants be obedient to them that are your Masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in singleness of your heart as unto Christ not with eye-service as men-pleasers but as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart with good-will doing service as to the Lord and not to men So Colos. 3. 22 23. 7. Hence also you must learn that Gods authority is the highest authority and there is indeed no such thing in the world as true authority that is against him or not subordinate unto him And therefore if men command us to disobey God by neglecting that which is hic nunc a duty or by sinning against him their commands are from a disobedient will of their own but from no Authority and it is better in such cases to obey God then man Act. 5. 29. so many Prophets Apostles and other Martyrs would not have been sacrificed by the fury of Persecutors if they had thought it just to obey them before God God never gave any man Authority against him Nor to nullifie his laws The acts of a Justice or Constable against the King or beyond their power are private or rebellious acts and not Authoritative And so are the Laws of men that are against God Yet note well that though we must rather disobey men then God yet we may not forcibly Resist when we may not obey them And in some cases as if a King would ravish a woman or the like when it is lawful to Resist his fact it is not lawful to Resist his State and disturb the Government of the Commonwealth Obey men chearfully when God forbids it not but see that God be your Absolute Soveraign whose Laws can be dispensed with by none If Parents or Masters command you to break the Laws of God obey them not Despise them not but humbly deprecate their displeasure and obey them in all other things but in the unlawful thing obey them not no not if they were the greatest Princes upon earth But say as the three witnesses of God Dan. 3. 16 17. We are not careful to answer thee in this matter If it be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thy hands O King But if not be it known unto thee O King that we will not serve thy Gods nor worship thy golden Image which thou hast set up What I have said of Magistrates in the two last cases I mean also of Pastours of the Church They must be obeyed in and for the Lord but not against the Lord. Saith Paul of the Churches of Maceâ—onia 2 Cor. 8. 5. They gave their own selves to the Lord and unto us by the will of God See Act. 20. 28. 1 Thes. 5. 12. Luk. 10. 16. He that heareth you heareth me and he that despiseth you despiseth me And yet the leaven of the Pharisees must be avoided and an Angel from Heaven be held as accursed if he should preach another Gospel Gal. 1. 8. And I would not have flatterers to set either Princes or Pastours above the Angels of Heaven Though yet in other respects we may be still obliged as I said before to hear and to obey them 8. And the Knowledge of Gods soveraignty must teach us to fear his righteous Threatnings and reverence his Justice and prepare our selves to be judged by him He ruleth by his Laws and so by Threatnings and Promises which he will make good It is not a painted fire that he Threatneth Judgement is a part of Government Laws are but shadows if there be no execution O worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness fear before him all the earth Say among the Heathen that the Lord reigneth Psal. 96. 9 10 As his promises so his peremptory threatnings shall be fulfilled He will not revoke his stablished Laws for fear of hurting willful sinners that will not fear his judgements till they feel them Psal. 33. 8. Let all the earth fear the Lord let all the inhabitants of the world stand in aw of him for he spake and it was done he commanded and it stood fast Mark also the present judgements of the Lord and rush not on his indignation For the Lord is known by the judgements which he executeth the wicked is oft snared in the work of his own hands Psal. 9. 16. Though the wicked contemn God and say in his heart Thou wilt not require it Psal. 10. 13. yet they shall find that he beholdeth mischief to requite it with his hand and that he is the helper of the fatherless and poor that commit themselves unto him ver 14. The Lords throne is in heaven his eyes behold his eyelids try the children of men the Lord tryeth the Righteous but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth Psal. 11. 4 5. 9. The Soveraignty of God is a comfort to his loyal subjects They may be sure that he will protect them and make good his word Behold he cometh and his reward is with him Rev. 22. 12. The righteous Judge at his appearing will give the Crown of Righteousness to all them that love his appearing 2 Tim. 4. 18 7 8. O let the Nations be glad and sing for joy for thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the Nations upon earth Psal. 67. 4. Let the Heavens rejoyce and the earth be glad before the Lord for he cometh for he cometh to judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth Psal. 69. 11. 13. 10. Lastly the Knowledge of God as our Soveraign King must cause us to desire and pray for and promote the glory of his Kingdome and the obedience of his subjects in the world that his Name may be hallowed by the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his will on earth as it is in Heaven must be the matter of our daily requests to God It must be the grief of every subject of the Lord to
to leave the crowd and come home to God and try a more noble and gainful conversation If Reasons may have room and leave to work upon you I will set a few before you more distinctly to call you off from your barren inordinate creature converse to a believing serious converse with God 1. The higher and more excellent the object is especially when it is also of most concernment to our selves the more excellent is the converse Therefore as nothing dare compare it self with God so no employment may be compared with thâ—s of holy walking with him How vile a contempt is it of the Almighty and of our Celestial joyes for the heart to neglect them and turn away and dwell upon vanity and trouble and let these highest pleasures go Is not God and Glory worthy of thy thoughts and all thy service 2. What are those things that take thee up Are they better then God Or fitter to supply thy wants If thou think and trust in them accordingly ere long thou shalt know better what they are and have enough of thy cursed choice and confidence Tell those that stand by thee at the parting hour whether thou didst choose aright and make a gaining or a saving match O poor sinners have you not yet warning enough to satisfie you that all things below are Vanity and Vexation and that all your hope of happiness is above Will not the testimony of God satisfie you will not the experience of the world for so many thousand years together satisfie you will not the ill success of all the damned satisfie you will nothing but your own experience convince you If so consider well the experience you have already made and seasonably retire and try no further and trust not so dangerous a deceiver to the last least you buy your knowledge at a dearer rate then you will now believe 3. You have daily more to do with God than with all the world whether you will or no And therefore seeing you cannot avoid him if you would prefer that voluntary obediential converse which hath a reward before that necessitated converse which hath none You are alwaies in his hands he made you for his service and he will dispose of you and all that you have according to his will It shall not go with you as your selves would have it nor as your friends would have it nor as Princes and great ones of the world would have it unless as their wills comply with Gods but as God would have it who will infallibly accomplish all his will If a sparrow fall not to the ground without him and all the hairs of our heads are numbered then certainly he overruleth all your interests and affairs and they are absolutely at his dispose To whom then in reason should you so much apply your selves as unto him If you will not take notice of him he will take notice of you He will remember you whether you remember him or not but it may be with so strict and severe a remembrance as may make you wish he did quite forget you You are alwaies in his presence and can you then forget him and hold no voluntary converse with him when you stand before him If it be but mean inferiour persons that we dwell with and are still in company with yet we mind them more and speak more to them then we do to greater persons that we seldom see But in God there is both Greatness and Nearness to invite you Should not all the worms on earth stand by while the Glorious God doth call you to him and offer you the honour and happiness of his converse shall the Lord of Heaven and Earth stand by and be shut out while you are chatting or trifling with his creatures Nay shall he be neglected that is alwaies with you You cannot remove your selves a moment from his sight and therefore you should not shut your eyes and turn away your face and refuse to observe him who is still observing you Moreover your dependence both for soul and body is all on him You can have nothing desirable but by his gift He feeds you he cloatheth you he maintaineth you he gives you life and breath and all things and yet can you overlook him or forget him Do not all his mercies require your acknowledgement A Dog will follow him that feedeth him his eye will be upon his Master And shall we live upon God and yet forget and disregard him We are taught a better use of his Mercies by the Holy Prophet Psal. 66. 8 9. O bless our God ye people and make the voice of his praise to be heard which holdeth our soul in life and suffereth not our feet to be moved Nay it is not your selves alone but all the world that depends on God It is his power that supporteth them and his will that disposeth of them and his bounty that provideth for them And therefore he must be the observation and admiration of the world It is less unreasonable to take no notice of the Earth that beareth us and yieldeth us fruit and of the Sun that yields us heat and light than to disregard the Lord that is more to us than Sun and Earth and all things The eyes of all things wait on him and he giveth them their meat in season He openeth his hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing Psal. 145. 15 16. The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works All his works therefore shall praise him and his Saints shall bless him They shall speak of the glory of his Kingdom and talk of his power vers 10 11. Moreover God is so abundantly and wonderfully represented to us in all his works as will leave us under the guilt of most unexcusable contempt if we overlook him and live as without him in the world The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy work Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge Psa. 19. 1 2. Thus that which may be known of God is manifest for the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that the ungodly are without excuse Rom. 1. 19 20. Cannot you see that which all the world revealeth nor hear that which all the world proclaimeth O sing ye forth the honour of his name make his praise glorious Say to the Lord How terrible art thou in thy works through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee they shall sing unto thy name come and see the works of God he is tertible in his doings towards the children of men Psal. 66. 2 3 4 5. Can we pass him by that is everywhere present and by every Creature represented to us Can we forget him when all the world are our
though all your carnal friends and superiors be against it though the devil will do all that he can against it yet all this must be done or you are lost for ever And all this must be done by the Spirit of God for it is his work to make you New and Holy And can you think then that the business is not great which you have with God when you have tryed how hard every part of this work is to be begun and carryed on you will finde you have more to do with God than with all the world 9. Moreover in order to this it is necessary that you read and hear and understand the Gospel which must be the means of bringing you to God by Christ This must be the instrument of God by which he will bring you to Repent and Believe and by which he will renew your Natures and imprint his Image on you and bring you to Love him and obey his will The Word of God must be your Counsellor and your delight and you must set your heart to it and meditate in it day and night Knowledge must be the means to reclaim your perverse misguided Wills and to reform your careless crooked Lives and to bring you out of the Kingdom of darkness into the State of Light and Life And such Knowledge cannot be expected without a diligent attending unto Christ the Teacher of your souls and a due consideration of the truth By that time you have learnt what is needful to be learnt for a true Conversion a sound Repentance a saving Faith and a holy Life you will finde that you have far greater business with God than with all the world 10. Moreover for the attaining of all this Mercy you have many a prayer to put up to God You must daily pray for the forgiveness of your sins and deliverance from temptations and even for your daily bread or necessary provisions for the work which you have to do You must daily pray for all the supplies of Grace which you want and for the gradual mortification of the flesh and for help in all the duties which you must perform and for strength against all the spiritual enemies which will assault you and preservation from the manifest evils which attend you And these prayers must be put up with unwearied constancy fervency and Faith Keep up this course of fervent prayer and beg for Christ and Grace and Pardon and Salvation in any measure as they deserve and according to thy own necessity and then tell mee whether thy business with God be small and to be put off as lightly as it is by the ungodly 11. Moreover you are made for the Glory of your Creator and must apply your selves wholly to glorifie him in the world You must make his service the trade and business of your lives and not put him off with something on the by You are good for nothing else but to serve him as a knife is made to cut and as your cloaths are made to cover you and your meat to seed you and your horse to labour for you so you are made and redeemed and maintained for this to Love and Please your great Creator And can you think that it is but little business that you have with him when he is the End and Master of your lives and all you are or have is for him 12. And for the due performance of his service you have all his Talents to employ To this end it is that he hath entrusted you with reason and health and strength with time and parts and interest and wealth and all his mercies and all his ordinances and means of Grace and to this end must you use them or you lose them And you must give him an account of all at last whether you have improved them all to your Masters use And can you look within you without you about you and see how much you are trusted with and must be accountable to him for and yet not see how great your business is with God 13. Moreover you have all the graces which you shall receive to exercise and every grace doth carry you to God and is exercised upon him or for him It is God that you must study and know and love and desire and trust and hope in and obey It is God that you must seek after and delight in so far as you enjoy him It is his absence or displeasure that must be your fear and sorrow Therefore the soul is said to be sanctified when it is renewed because it is both disposed and devoted unto God And therefore Grace is called Holiness because it all disposeth and carryeth the soul to God and useth it upon and for him And can you think your business with God is small when you must live upon him and all the powers of your soul must be addicted to him and be in serious motion towards him and when he must be much more to you than the Air which you breath in or the Earth you live upon or than the Sun that gives you light and heat yea than the soul is to your bodies 14. Lastly you have abundance of temptations and impediments to watch and strive against which would hinder you in the doing of all this work and a corrupt and treacherous heart to watch and keep in order which will be looking back and shrinking from the service Lay all this together and then consider whether you have not more and greater business with God than with all the creatures in the world And if this be so as undeniably it is so is there any cloak for that mans sin who is all day taken up with creatures and thinks of God as seldome and as carelesly as if he had no business with him And yet alas if you take a survey of high and low of Court and City and Country you shall find that this is the case of no small number yea of many that observe it not to be their case it is the case of the prophane that pray in jeast and swear and curse and rail in earnest It is the case of the malignant enemies of holiness that hate them at the heart that are most acquainted with this converse with God and count it but hypocrisie pride or fancy and would not suffer them to live upon the Earth who are most sincerely conversant in Heaven It is the case of Phariseâ—s and Hypocrites who take up with ceremonious observances as touch not taste not handle not and such like traditions of their forefathers instead of a spiritual rational service and a holy serious walking with the Lord. It is the case of all ambitious men and covetous worldlings who make more ado to climb up a little higher than their brethren and to hold the reins and have their wills and be admired and adored in the world or to get a large estate for themselves and their posterity than to please their Maker or to save their souls It is
fancy or self-deceit I answer that really their hearts are set upon God and the everlasting world and that it is their chiefest care and business to attain it this is a thing that they feel and you may see in the bent and labour of their lives and therefore you cannot call that a fancy of which you have so full experience But whether the motives that have invited them and engaged them to such a choice and course be fancies and deceits or not let God be Judge and let the awakened consciences of worldlings themselves be Judge when they have seen the end and tryed whether it be Earth or Heaven that is the shadow and whether it be God or their unbelieving hearts that was deceived Quest. 10. Have you any hopes of living with God for ever or not If you have not no wonder if you live as beasts when you have no higher expectations than beasts When we are so blind as to give up all our hopes we will also give up all our care and holy diligence and think we have nothing to do with Heaven But if you have any such hopes can you think that any thing is fitter for the chiefest of your thoughts and carâ—â— than the God and Kingdom which you hope for ever to enjoy Or is there any thing that can be more suitable or should be more delightful to your thoughts than to employ them about your highest hopes upon your endless happiness and joy and should not that be now the most noble and pleasant employment for your minds which is nearest to that which you hope to be exercised in for ever Undoubtedly he that hath true and serious thoughts of Heaven will highliest value that life on Earth which is likest to the life in Heaven And he that hateth or is most averse to that which is nearest to the work of Heaven doth boast in vain of his hopes of Heaven By this time you may see if you love not to be blind that mans chiefest business in the world is with his God and that our thoughts and all our powers are made to be employed upon him or for him and that this is no such needless work as Atheists make themselves believe Remember that it is the description of the desperately wicked Psal. 10. 4. that God is not in all his thoughts And if yet you understand it not I will a little further shew you the evil of such Atheistical unhallowed thoughts 1. There is nothing but darkness in all thy Thoughts if God be not in them Thou knowest nothing if thou knowest not him and thou usest not thy knowledge if thou use it not on him To know the creature as without God is to know nothing No more than to know all the Letters in the Book and not to know their signification or sense All things in the world are but insignificant ciphers and of no other sense or use if you separate them from God who is their sense and end If you leave out God in all your studies you do but dream and dote and not understand what you seem to understand Though you were taken for the learnedst men in the world and were able to discourse of all the Sciences and your thoughts had no lower employment daily than the most sublime speculations which the nature of all the creatures doth afford it is all but folly and impertinent dotage if it reach not unto God 2. Yea your thoughts are erroneous and false which is more than barely ignorant if God be not in them You have false thoughts of the world of your houses and lands and friends and pleasures and whatsoever is the daily employment of your minds You take them to be something when they are nothing you are covetous of the empty purse and know not that you cast away the treasure You are thirsty after the empty cup when you wilfully cast away the drink You hungrily seek to feed upon a painted feast You murder the creature by separating it from God who is its life and then you are enamoured on the carkass and spend your daies and thoughts in its cold embracements Your thoughts are but vagabonds stragling abroad the world and following impertinencies if God be not in them You are like men that walk up and down in their sleep or like those that have lost themselves in the dark who weary themselves in going they know not whither and have no end nor certain way 3. If God be not in all your thoughts they are all in vain They are like the drone that gathereth no honey They fly abroad and return home empty They bring home no matter of honour to God of profit or comfort to your selves They are employed to no more purpose than in your dreams Only they are more capable of sin Like the distracted thoughts of one that doteth in a feaver they are all but non-sense whatever you employ them on while you leave out God who is the sense of all 4. If God be not in all your thoughts they are nothing but confusion There can be no just Unity in them because they forsake him who is the only Center and are scatterad abroad upon incoherent creatures There can be no true Unity but in God The further we go from him the further we run into divisions and confusions There can be no just Method in them because he is left out that is the Beginning and the End They are not like a well ordered Army where every one is moved by the will of one Commander and all know their colours and their ranks and unanimously agree to do their work But like a swarm of Flyes that buzze about they know not whither nor why nor for what There is no true Government in your thoughts if God be not in them they are masterless and vagrants and have no true order if they be not ordered by him and to him if he be not their First and Last 5. If God be not in all your thoughts there is no Life in them They are but like the motion of a bubble or a feather in the Air They are impotont as to the resisting of any evil and as to the doing of any saving-good They have no strength in them because they are laid out upon objects that have no strength They have no quickning renewing reforming encouraging resolving confirming power in them because there is no such power in the things on which they are employed whereas the thoughts of God and everlasting life can do wonders upon the soul They can raise up men above this world and teach them to despise the worldlings Idol and look upon all the pleasures of the flesh as upon a Swines delight in wallowing in the mire They can renew the soul and cast out the most powerful beloved sin and bring all our powers into the obedience of God and that with pleasure and delight They can employ us with the Angels in a heavenly conversation and shew us the Glory of
the world above and advance us above the life of the greatest Princes upon earth But the thoughts of earthly fleshly things have power indeed to delude men and mislead them and hurry them about in a vertiginous motion but no power to support us or subdue concupiscence or heal our folly or save us from temptations or reduce us from our errors or help us to be useful ie the world or to attain felicity at last There is no Life nor Power nor Efficacy in our thoughts if God be not in them 6. There is no stability or fixedness in your thoughts if God be not in them They are like a boat upon the Ocean tost up and down with winds and waves The mutable uncertain creatures can yield no rest or settlement to your minds You are troubled about many things and the more you think on them and have to do with them the more are you troubled But you forget the One thing Necessary and fly from the Eternal Rock on which you must build if ever you will be established While the Creature is in your thought instead of God you will be one day deluded with its unwholesome pleasure and the next day feel it gripe you at the heart One day it will seem your happiness and the next you will wish you had never known it That which seemeth the only comfort of your lives this year may the next year make you aweary of your lives One day you are impatiently desiring and seeking it as if you could not live without it and the next day or ere long you are impatiently desiring to be rid of it You are now taking in your pleasant morsâ—ls and drinking down your delicious draughts and jovially sporting it with your inconsiderate companions But how quickly will you be repenting of all this and complaining of your folly and vexing your selves that you took not warning and made not a wiser choice in time The creature was never made to be your end or rest or happiness and therefore you are but like a man in a wilderness or a maze that may go and go but knoweth not whither and findeth no end till you come home to God who only is your proper end and make him the Lord and life and pleasure of your thoughts 7. As there is no present fixedness in your thoughts so the business and pleasure of them will be of very short continuance if God be not the chief in all And who would choose to imploy his thoughts on such things as he is sure they must soon forget and never more have any business with to all eternity You shall think of those houses and lands and friends and pleasures but a little while unless it be with repenting tormenting thoughts in the place of misery you will have no delight to think of any thing which is now most precious to your flesh when once the flesh it self decayes and is no more capable of delight Psal. 146. 4. His breath goeth forth he returneth to his earth in that very day his thoughts perish Call in your thoughts then from these transitory things that have no consistency or continuance and turn them unto him with whom they may find everlasting employment and delight Remember not the enticing baits of sensuality and pride but Remember now thy Creatour in the dayes of thy youth while the evil dayes come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them 8. Thy thoughts are but sordid dishonourable and low if God be not the chiefest in them They reach no higher then the habitation of beasts nor do they attain to any sweeter employment then to meditate on the felicity of a brute Thou choosest with the fly to feed on dung and filthy ulcers and as magots to live on stinking carrion when thou mightst have free access to God himself and mightst be entertained in the Court of heaven and wellcomed thither by the holy Angels Thou wallowest in the mire with the swine or diggest thy self a house in the earth as worms and moles do when thy thoughts might be soaring up to God and might be taken up with high and holy and everlasting things What if your thoughts were employed for preferment wealth and honour in the world Alas what silly things are these in comparison of what your souls are capable of You will say so your selves when you see how they will end and fail your expectations Imprison not your minds in this infernal cell when the superior regions are open to their access confine them not to this narrow vessel of the body whose tossings and dangers on these boistrous seas will make them restless and disquiet them with tumultuous passions when they may safely land in Paradise and there converse with Christ. God made you men and if you reject not his grace will make you Saints Make not your selves like beasts or vermine God gave you souls that can step in a moment from earth to heaven and there foretast the endless joyes Do not you stick then fast in clay and setter them with worldly cares or intoxicate them with fleshly pleasures nor employ them in the worse-then-childish toyes of ambitious sensual worldly men Your thoughts have Manna Angels food provided them by God If you will loath this and refuse it and choose with the serpent to feed on the dust or upon the filth of sin God shall be judge and your consciences one day shall be more faithful witnesses whether you have dealt like wise men or like fools like friends or enemies to your selves and whether you have not chosen baseness and denyed your selves the advancement which was offered you 9. If God be not the chiefest in your thoughts they are no better then dishonest and unjust You are guilty of denying him his own He made not your mindes for lust and pleasure but for himself you expect that your cattle your goods your servants be employed for your selves because they are your own But God may call your minds his own by a much fuller title for you hold all but derivatively and dependently from him what will you call it but injustice and dishonesty if your wife or children or servants or goods be more at the use and service of others then of you If any can shew a better title to your Thoughts then God doth let him have them but if not deny him not his own O straggle not so much from home for you will be nowhere else so well as there Desire not to follow strangers you know not whither nor for what you have a Master of your own that will be better to you then all the strangers in the world Bow not down to creatures that are but Images of the true and solid good Commit not Idolatry or Adultery with them in your thoughts Remember still that God stands by Bethink you how he will take it at your hands and how it will be judged of at last when he pleads his
that hath rightly and resolvedly determined of his end hath virtually resolved a thousand controversies that others are unsatisfied and erroneous in He that is resolved that his End is to Please and Glorifie God and to enjoy him for ever is easily resolved whether a holy life or a sensual and worldly be the way whether the way be to be Godly or to make a mock at Godliness whether Covetousness and Riches Ambition and Preferment Voluptuousness and Fleshly pleasures be the means to attain his End whether it will be attained rather by the studying of the Word of God and meditating on it day and night and by holy conference and fervent prayer and an obedient life or by negligence or worldliness or drunkenness or gluttony or cards and dice or beastly filthiness or injustice and deceit Know once but whither it is that we are going and its easie to know whether the Saint or the Swine or the Swaggerer be in the way But a man that doth mistake his End is out of his way at the first step and the further he goes the further he is from true felicity and the more he erreth and the further he hath to go back again if ever he return Every thing that a man doth in the world which is not for the right end the Heavenly felicity is an act of foolishness and errour how splendid soever the Matter or the Name may make it appear to ignorant men Every word that an ungodly person speaketh being not for a right End is in him but sin and folly however materially it may be an excellent and useful Truth While a miserable soul hath his back upon God and his face upon the world every step he goeth is an act of folly as tending unto his further misery It can be no act of wisdome which tendeth to a mans damnation When such a wretch begins to enquire and bethink him where he is and whither he is going and whither he should go and to think of turning back to God then and never till then he is beginning to come to himself and to be wise Luk. 15. 17. Till God and Glory be the End that he aimeth at and seriously bends his study heart and life to seek though a man were searching into the mysteries of nature though he were studying or discussing the notions of Theology though he were admired for his earning and wisdome by the world and cryed up as the Oracle of the Earth he is all the while but playing the fool and going a cleanlier way to Hell than the grosser sinners of the world For â—s he wise that knoweth not whether Heaven or Earth be better whether God or his Flesh should be obeyed whether everlasting joyes or the transitory pleasures of sin should be preferred or that seemeth to be convinced of the truth in these and such like cases and yet hath not the wit to make his choice and bend his life according to his conviction He cannot be wise that practically mistakes his End 3. He that walketh with God doth know those things with a deep effectual heart-changing knowledge which other men know but superficially by the halves and as in a dream And true wisdome consisteth in the Intensiveness of the knowledge subjectively as much as in the extensiveness of it objectively To see a few things in a narrow room perspicuously and clearly doth shew a better eye-sight than in the open Air to see many things obscurely so as scarce to discern any of them aright â—â—ke him that saw men walk like trees The clearness and 〈◊〉 of knowledge which makes it effectual to its proper use 〈…〉 greatness and excellency of it Therefore it is that unlearned men that love and fear the Lord may well be said to be incomparably more wise and knowing men than the most learned that are ungodly As he hath more riches that hath a little Gold or Jewels than he that hath many load of stones so he that hath a deep effectual knowledge of God the Father and the Redeemer and of the life to come is wiser and more knowing than he that hath only a notional knowledge of the same things and of a thousand more A wicked man hath so much knowledge as teacheth him to speak the same words of God and Christ and Heaven which a true Believer speaks but not so much as to work in him the same affections and choice nor so much as to cause him to do the same work As it is a far more excellent kind of knowledge which a man hath of any Country by travel and habitation there than that which cometh but by reading or report or which a man hath of meat of fruits of wine by eating and drinking than that which another hath by hearsay so is the inward heart-affecting knowledge of a true believer more excellent than the flashy notions of the ungodly Truth simply as Truth is not the highest and most excellent object of the mind But Good as Good must be apprehended by the Understanding and commended to the Will which entertaineth it with Complacency adhereth to it with Choice and Resolution prosecuteth it with Desire and Endeavour and Enjoyeth it with Delight And though it be the Understanding which apprehendeth it yet it is the Heart or Will that rellisheth it and tasteth the greatest sweetness in it working upon it with some mixture of internal sense which hath made some ascribe a knowledge of Good as such unto the Will. And it is the Wills intention that causeth the Understanding to be denominated Practical And therefore I may well say thâ—t it is Wisdom indeed when it reacheth to the heart No man knoweth the Truth of God so well as he that most firmly Believeth him And do man knoweth the Goodness of God so well as he that Loveth him most No man knoweth his Power and Mercy so well as he that doth most confidently Trust him And no man knoweth his Justice and Dreadfulness so well as he that feareth him No man knoweth or believeth the Glory of Heaven so well as he that most esteemeth desireth and seeketh it and hath the most Heavenly Heart and Conversation Ho man believeth in Jesus Christ so well as he that giveth up himself unto him with the greatest Love and Thankfulness and Trust and Obedience As James saith Shew mee thy Faith by thy works so say I Let me know the measure and value of my knowledge by my Heart and Life That is wisdome indeed which conformeth a man to God and saveth his soul This only will be owned as wisdome to eternity when dreaming notions will prove but folly 4. He that walketh with God hath an infallible Rule and taketh the right course to have the best acquaintance with it and skill to use it The Doctrine that informeth him is Divine It is from Heaven and not of Men And therefore if God be wiser than man he is able to make his Disciples wisest and Teaching will more certainly and
wanteth more of God than he enjoyeth and his enjoying graces Love and Joy are yet imperfect But when he hath attained his nearest approach to God he will have fulness of Delight in fulness of fruition O Christians Do I need to tell you that after all the tryals you have made in the world you have never found any state of life that was worthy your desires nor that gave you any true content but only this living upon God If you have not found such comfort here as others have done yet at least you have seen it afar off within your reach As men that in the Indies in the discovery of Plantations expect Gold Mines when they find those golden sands that promise it You have found a life which is certainly desirable and leadeth to joy in the midst of sorrow And it is no small joy to have a certain promise and prospect of everlasting joy It is therefore more excusable in those that never tasted any better than the pleasures of the flesh to neglect this sweeter Heavenly life than it is in you that have been convinced by your own experience that there is no life to be compared with it 4. YOur Walking with God is the necessary prosecution of your Choice and Hopes of life eternal It is your necessary preparation to your enjoying him in Heaven And have you fixed on those Hopes with so great reason and deliberation and will you now draw back and be slack in the prosecution of them Have you gone so far in the way to Heaven and do you now begin to look behind you as if you were about to change your mind Paul setteth you a better example Phil. 3. 8 9 10 11 12 13. Yea doubtless I account all things but loss for the excellency of the Knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may win Christ and be found in him If by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead Not as though I had already attained either were already perfect But I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus Brethren I count not my self to have apprehended but this one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before I press toward the mark for the price of the high Calling of God in Christ Jesus He compareth himself to a runner in a race that till be apprehend the price or mark doth still make forward with all his might and will not so much as mind or look at any thing behind him that would turn him back or stop him in his course The world and the flesh are the things behind us We turned our backs upon them at our conversion when we turned to God It is these that would now call back our thoughts and corrupt our affections when we should run on and reach forward to the heavenly price It is God and Heaven and the remaining duties of a holy life that are the things before us And shall we now look back what we that are running and striving for a Crown of endless glory we that if we lose it do lose our souls and hopes for ever we that have loitered in the morning of our lives and lost so much precious time as we have done we that have gone so far in our way and held out through so many difficulties and assaults Shall we now grow weary of walking with God and begin to look to the things behind us Did he not tell us at the first that Father and Mother and house and land and life and all things must be forsaken for Christ if we will be his Disciples These are the things behind us which we turned our back on when we consented to the Covenant and are they now grown better or is God grown worse that we turn our hearts from him to them when we first begun our Christian race it was upon supposition that it was for that immortal Crown which all the world is not to be compared to And have we not still the same consideration before us to move us to hold on till we attain it Hold on Christians it is for Heaven Is there not enough in that word to drive back all the cares and pleasures that importune your minds to forget your God Is there not enough in that word to quicken you up in your greatest dulness and to call you home when you are wandring from God and to make you again fall out with all that would reduce you or divert you and call it Vanity and Vexation of spirit Methinks the fore-thought of that life and work which you hope to have with God for ever should make you earnestly desire to have as much of the like on earth as is here to be attained If it will he your Heaven and Happiness then it must needs be desirable now It is not beseeming a man that saith he is seeking for perfect communion with God in Heaven and that above all things as every Christian doth to live in a daily neglect or forgetfulness of God on earth Delightfully to draw near him and exercise all our faculties upon him or for him sometime in prayer and contemplation on himself and alwaies in works of obedience to him this is the life that beseemeth those that profess to seek eternal life O therefore let us make it our daily work to keep our God and Glory in our eye and to spur on our dull affections and in the diligent attendance and following the Captain of our salvation to prosecute our expected End 5. LAstly consider that God doth purposely provide you hard entertainment in the world and cause every creature to deny you the pleasure and satisfaction which you desire that so you may have none to walk with but himself with any heart-setling comfort and content If you see not enough in him to allure you to himself you shall feel enough in the world to drive you to him If his Love and Goodness will not serve alone to make him your pleasure and hold you to him in the best and most excellent way of Love at least the storms and troubles that are abroad shall shew you a Necessity of keeping close to God and the Love of your selves shall help you to do that which was not done by the attraction of his Love alone If you will put him to it to send out his command to every creature to cross and vex you and disappoint all your expectations from it that so he may force you to remember your Father and your home deny not then but it is long of your selves that you were not saved in an easier way Would you wish God to make that condition pleasant to you which he seeth you take too much pleasure in already or seek and desire it at least When as it is the pleasantness of the
Creature that is your danger and which detaineth your thoughts and affections from himself If you could but learn to walk with him and to take up your pleasure in his Love appearing to you in his Creatures and to make their sweetness a means to your apprehension of the sweetness of his favour and of the everlasting joyes then you might say the Creature doth you good and then it 's like you might be permitted to possess and use it for such pleasure The jealous God will watch your hearts though you watch them not and he will make you know that he seeth which way they run out from him and what Creature it is that is minded and delighted in while he is neglected as if he were unsuitable and scarce desirable And you must never look that he should long permit you those prohibited delights or let you alone in those idolatrous inclinations If he Love you he will cure that Carnal Love and recover your Love to himself that hath deserved it If he intend not your salvation he may let you go and try again whether the Creature will prove better to you than himself But you cannot think that he will thus let go his Children that must live with him for ever Have you not perceived that this is the design and meaning of his afflicting and disappointing providences even to leave you no comfortable entertainment or converse but with himself and with his servants and with those means that lead you to himself If you begin to desire to lodge abroad in strange habitations he will uncover those houses and will not leave you a room that 's dry to put your head in or he will throw open the doors and leave all open to the lust of ravenous beasts and robbers He will have thy heart and he will have thy company because thou art his child and because he loveth thee He will allow thee neither thy carnal Delights or Hopes If he perceive thee either taking that Pleasure in thy Prosperity which thou shouldest take in him alone or Hoping at least that the world may hereafrer prove more amiable and delightful to thee the more he loveth thee the more his Providence shall conspire with his Grace to change thy mind by depriving thee of thy unwholsome dangerous delights and of all thy Hopes of such hereafter Use the world as a traveller for the ends to which it was ordained to the service of God and the furtherance of thy salvation and then thou shalt find that God will furnish thee with all that is necessary to these necessary ends But if the world must have your Love and Care and must be your chiefest business and delight and your excuse for not attending upon God murmure not nor marvel not if he dispose of it and you accordingly If you are yet too healthful to think with seriousness on your eternal state If you are too Rich to part with all for Christ or openly to own his Cause If you are too much esteemed in the world to own a scorned slandered Religion If you are so busie for Earth that you cannot have time to think of Heaven If you have so much delight in House or Land or in your employments or recreations or friends that God and Godliness can have little or none of your delight Marvel not then if God do shake your Health or waste your Riches or turn your Honour into contempt and suffer men to slander and reproach you and spit in your sace and make you of no reputation Marvel not if he turn you out of all or turn all to your grief and trouble and make the world a desert to you and the inhabitants as wolves and bears The great Lesson that Christ hath undertaken to teach you is the difference betwixt the Creatour and the Creature and the difference betwixt Heaven and Earth The great work that Christ hath undertaken to do upon you is to recover your hearts from the world to God And this Lesson he will teach you and this work he will do upon you whatever it cost you For it must be done Yet is not the world unjust enough or cruel or vexatious enough to you to teach you to come home and take up your content and rest in God It may then prove more cruel and more vexatious to you till you have better learned this necessary Lesson Yet is not your condition empty enough of carnal delusory pleasures to weâ—n you from the world and make you look to surer things Yet are you keeping up your worldly hopes that the world will again prove better to you and that you shall have happy daies hereafter It seems you are not yet brought low enough you must yet take another purge and perhapâ— a sharper than you took before You must have more blood letting till your delâ—ration cease and your feaverish thirst after creature-comorts do abate It is sad that we should be so foolish and unkind as to stay from God as long as any preferments or pleasures or profits in the world will entertain us But seeing it is so let us be thankful both to that Grace and that Providence which cureth us If you perceive it not better to dwell with God than with a flattering prospering world he will try whether you can think it better to dwell with God than with a malicious cruel persecuting world And whether it be better to have your hearts in Heaven than in poverty prison banishment or reproach If you find it not better to converse with God than with those that honour you please you or prefer you he will try whether you can think it better to converse with him than with those that hate revile belye and persecute you And are these the wise and wholsome methods of our great Physician And shall we not rather be ruled by him than by our brutish appetites and think better of his counsels than of the blind concupiscence of the flesh Let this be the issue of all our sufferings and all the cruelties and injuries of the world to drive us home to converse with God and to turn our desires and labours and expectations to the true felicity that never will forsake us and then the Will of the Lord be done Let him choose his means if this may be the end Let us kiss the Rod and not revile it if this may be the fruit of his corrections Who will not pray that God would deny us those contents which keep us from seeking our content in him And that he would deny us all those hurtful pleasures which hinder us from pleasing him or from making him and his waies our chiefest pleasure And that he would permit us no such creature-converse as hinderth our converse with him It is best living there be it in prison or at liberty where we may live best to God Come home O suffering Christian to thy God! take up thy Content and Rest in him be satisfied with him as thy Portion and
would have been grieved for their griefs and for ought they know might have fallen into as sad a state as they themselves are now lamenting 6. Do you think it is for the Hurt or the Good of your friend that he is removed hence It cannot be for his Hurt unless he be in Hell At least it is uncertain whether to live would have been for his Good by an increase of Grace and so for greater Glory And if he be in Hell he was no fit person for you to take much pleasure in upon earth He might be indeed a fit object for your compassion but not for your complacency Sure you are not undone for want of such company as God will not endure in his sight and you must be separated from for ever But if they be in Heaven you are scarce their friends if you would wish them thence Friendship hath as great respect to the good of our friends as of our selves And do you pretend to friendship and yet lament the removal of your friend to his greatest happiness Do you set more by your own enjoying his company then by his enjoying God in perfect blessedness This sheweth a very culpable defect either in Faith or Friendship and therefore beseemeth not Christians and friends If Love teacheth us to mourn with them that mourn and to rejoyce with them that rejoyce can it be an act of rational Love to mourn for them that are possessed of the highest everlasting joyes 7. God will not honour himself by one only but by many He knoweth best when his work is done When our friends have finished all that God intended them for when he put them into the world is it not time for them to be gone and for others to take their places and finish their work also in their time God will have a succession of his servants in the world Would you not come down and give place to him that is to follow you when your part is played and his is to begin If David had not died there had been no Solomon no Jehoshaphat no Hezekiah no Josiah to succeed him and honour God in the same throne You may as wisely grudge that one day only takes not up all the week and that the clock striketh not the same hour still but proceedeth from one to two from two to three c. as to murmur that one man only conâ—inueth not to do the work of his place excluding his successors 8. You must not have all your Mercies by one messenger or hand God will not have you consine your Love to one only of his servants And therefore he will not make one only useful to you but when one hath delivered his message and done his part perhaps God will send you other mercies by another hand And it belongeth to him to choose the messenger who gives the gift And if you will childishly dote upon the first messenger and say you will have all the rest of your mercies by his hand or you will have no more your frowardness more deserveth correction than compassion and if you be kept fasting till you can thankfully take your food from any hand that your Father sends it by it is a correction very suitable to your sin 9. Do you so highly value your friends for God or for them or for your selves in the final consideration If it was for God what reason of trouble have you that God hath disposed of them according to his wisdome and unerring will should you not then be more pleased that God hath them and employeth them in his highest service than displeased that you want them But if you value them and love them for themselves they are now more lovely when they are more perfect and they are now fitter for your content and joy when they have themselves unchangeable content and joy than they could be in their sin and sorrows But if you valued and loved them but for your selves only it is just with God to take them from you to teach you to value men to righter ends and upon better considerations and both to prefer God before your selves and better to understand the nature of true friendship and better to know that your own felicity is not in the hands of any creature but of God alone 10. Did you improve your friends while you had them or did you only Love them while you made but little use of them for your souls If you used them not it was just with God for all your Love to take them from you They were given you as your candle not only to Love it but to work by the Light of it And as your garments not only to Love them but to wear them and as your meat not only to Love it but to feed upon it Did you receive their counsel and hearken to their reproofs and pray with them and conser with them upon those holy truths that tended to elevate your minds to God and to inflame your brests with sacred Love If not be it now known to you that God gave you not such helps and mercies only to talk of or look upon and Love but also to improve for the benefit of your souls 11. Do you not seem to forget both where you are your selves and where you must shortly and for ever live Where would you have your friends but where you must be your selves Do you mouâ—n that they are taken hence Why if they had staid here a thousand years how little of that time should you have had their company when you are almost leaving the world your selves would you not send your treasure before you to the place where you must abide How quickly will you pass from hence to God where you shall find your friends that you lamented as if they had been lost and there shall dwell with them for ever O foolish mourners would you not have your friends at home at their home and your home with their Father and your Father their God and your God! Shall you not there enjoy them long enough Can you so much miss them for one day that must live with them to all eternity And is not eternity long enough for you to enjoy your friends in Obj. But I do not know whether ever I shall there have any distinct knowledge of them or love to them and whether God shall not there be so far All in All as that we shall need or fetch no comfort from the creature Answ. There is no reason for either of these doubts For 1. You cannot justly think that the knowledge of the Glorified shall be more confused or imperfect then the knowledge of natural men on earth We shall know much more but not so much less Heaven exceedeth earth in knowledge as much as it doth in joy 2. The Angels in Heaven have now a distinct particular knowledge of the least believers rejoycing particularly in their conversion and being called by Christ himself Their Angels Therefore when we shall
Righteous Judgement be remembered and all be terminated in the glorious everlasting Kingdom Is it not much better thus to converse with him that I must be with for ever about the place and the company and work and concernments of my perpetual abode then to be taken up with strangers in my way and detained by their impertinencies I have form'd my self so long in these meditations that I will but name the rest and tell you what I had further to have treated on and leave the enlargement to your own meditations 8. I have no reason to be weary of converse with God seeing it is that for which all humane converse is regardable Converse with man is only so far desirable as it tendeth to our Converse with God And therefore the end must be preferred before the means 9. It is the office of Christ and the work of the Holy Ghost and the use of all the means of Grace and of all creatures mercies and afflictions to reduce our straying souls to God that we may converse with him and enjoy him 10. Converse with God is most suitable to those that are so near to death It best prepareth for it It is likest to the work that we are next to do We had rather when death comes be found conversing with God then with Man It is God that a dying man hath principally to do with It is his judgement that he is going to and his mercy that he hath to trust upon And therefore it concerneth us to draw near him now and be no strangers to him lest strangeness then should be our terrour 11. How wonderful a condescension is it that God should be willing to converse with me with such a worm and sinful wretch And therefore how unexcusable is my crime if I refuse his company and so great a mercy 12. Lastly Heaven it self is but our Converse with God and his Glorified ones though in a more perfect manner then we can here conceive And therefore our holy converse with him here is the state that is likest Heaven and that prepareth for it and all the Heaven that is on earth IT remaineth now that I briefly tell you what you should do to attain and manage this Converse with God in the improvement of your solitude For Directions in general for Walking with God I reserve for another place At present let these few suffice Direct 1. If you would comfortably Converse with God make sure that you are Reconciled to him in Christ and that he is indeed your friend and Father Can two walk together except they be agreed Can you take pleasure in dwelling with the consuming fire or conversing with the most dreadful enemy Yet this I must add that every doubting or self-accusing soul may not find a pretence to fly from God 1. That God ceaseth not to be a Father when ever a fearful soul is drawn to question it or deny it 2. That in the Universal Love and Grace of God to miserable sinners and in the universal act of conditional pardon and oblivion and in the offers of Grace and the readiness of God to receive the penitent there is Glad tidings that should exceedingly rejoyce a sinner and there is sufficient encouragement to draw the most guilty miserable sinner to seek to God and sue for mercy But yet the sweetest converse is for children and for those that have some assurance that they are children But perhaps you will say that this is not easily attained How shall we know that he is our friend In brief I answer If you are unfeignedly friends to God it is because he first loved you Prefer him before all other friends and all the wealth and vanity of the world Provoke him not by wilfulness or neglect use him as your best friend and abuse him not by disobedience or ingratitude own him before all at the dearest rates whenever you are called to it Desire his presence Lament his absence Love him from the bottom of your hearts Think not hardly of him Suspect him not Misunderstand him not Hearken not to his enemies Receive not any false reports against him Take him to be really Better for you than all the world Do these and doubt not but you are friends with God and God with you In a word Be but heartily willing to be friends to God and that God should be your chiefest friend and you may be sure that it is so indeed and that you are and have what you desire And then how delightfully may you converse with God! Direct 2. Wholly depend on the Mediation of Christ the great Reconciler Without him there is no coming near to God But in his Beloved you shall be accepted Whatever fear of his displeasure shall surprize you fly presently for safety unto Christ Whatever guilt shall look you in the face commit your self and cause to Christ and desire him to answer for you When the doors of mercy seem to be shut up against you fly to him that bears the keyes and can at any time open to you and let you in Desire him to answer for you to God to your consciences and against all accusers By him alone you may boldly and comfortably converse with God But God will not know you out of him Direct 3. Take heed of bringing particular Guilt into the presence of God if you would have sweet communion with him Christ himself never reconciled God to sin And the sinner and sin are so nearly related that for all the death of Christ you shall feel that iniquity dwelleth not with God but he hateth the works of it and the foolish shall not stand in his sight and that if you will presume to sin because you are his Children be sure your fin will find you out O what fears what shame what self-abhorrence and self-revenge will guilt raise in a penitent soul when it comes into the light of the presence of the Lord it will unavoidably abate your boldness and your comforts When you should be sweetly delighting in his pleased face and promised Glory you will be befooling your selves for your former sin and ready even to tear your flesh to think that ever you should do as you have done and use him as you would not have used a common friend and cast your selves upon his wrath But an innocent soul or pacified conscience doth walk with God in quietness and delight without those frowns and fears which are a taste of Hell to others Direct 4. If you would comfortably converse with God be sure that you bring not Idols in your hearts Take heed of inordinate affection to any Creature Let all things else be nothing to you that you may have none to take up your thoughts but God Let your Minds be further separate from them than your Bodies Bring not into solitude or to contemplation a proud or lustful or covetous mind It much more concerneth thee what Heart thou bringest that what Place thou art in or what work
worldly trash which are made and new-made to be the dwelling place of God Desire not the company which would diminish your heavenly acquaintance and correspondency Be not unfriendly nor conceited of a self-sufficiency but yet beware lest under the honest ingenuous title of a friend a special faithful prudent faithful friend you should entertain an Idol or an enemy to your Love of God or a corrival and competitor with your highest friend For if you do it is not the specious title of a friend that will save you from the thorns and bryars of disquietment and from greater troubles than ever you found from open enemies O blessed be that High and everlasting friend who is every way suited to the upright souls To their Minds their Memories their Delight their Love c. by surest Truth by fullest Goodness by clearest Light by dearest Love by firmest Constancy c. O why hath my drowsie and dark-sighted soul been so seldome with him why hath it so often so strangely and so unthankfully passed by and not observed him nor hearkened to his kindest calls O what is all this trash and trouble that hath filled my memory and employed my mind and cheated and corrupted my affections while my dearest Lord hath been daies and nights so unworthily forgotten so contemptuously neglected and disregarded and loved as if I loved him not O that these drowsie and those waking nights those loitered lost and empty hours had been spent in the humblest converse with him which have been dreamed and doted away upon now I know not what O my God how much wiser and happier had I been had I rather chosen to mourn with thee than to rejoyce and sport with any other O that I had rather wept with thee than laughed with the creature For the time to come let that be my friend that most befriendeth my dark and dull and backward soul in its undertaken progress and heavenly conversation Or if there be none such upon earth let me here take no one for my friend O blot out every Name from my corrupted heart which hindereth the deeper engraving of thy Name Ah Lord what a stone what a blind ungrateful thing is a Heart not touched with celestial Love yet shall I not run to thee when I have none else that will know me shall I not draw near thee when all fly from me When daily experience cryeth out so loud NONE BUT CHRIST GOD OR NOTHING Ah foolish Heart that hast thought of it Where is that place that Cave or Desert where I might soonest find thee and fullest enjoy thee is it in the wilderness that thou walkest or in the croud in the Closet or in the Church where is it that I might soonest meet with God But alas I now perceive that I have a Heart to find before I am like to find my Lord O Loveless Lifeless stony heart that 's dead to him that gave it Life and to none but him Could I not Love or Think or Feel at all methinks I were less dead than now Less dead if dead than now I am alive I had almost said Lord let me never Love more till I can Love thee Nor think more on any thing till I can more willingly think of thee But I must suppress that wish for Life will act And the mercies and motions of Nature are necessary to those of Grace And therefore in the life of Nature and in the glimmerings of thy Light I will wait for more of the Celestial life My God thou hast my consent It is here attested under my hand Separate me from what and whom thou wilt so I may but be nearer thee Let me Love thee more and feel more of thy Love and then let me Love or be beloved of the world as little as thou wilt I thought self-love had been a more predominant thing But now I find that Repentance hath its Anger its Hatred and its Revenge I am truly Angry with that Heart that hath so oft and foolishly offended thee Methinks I hate that Heart that is so cold and backward in thy love and almost grudge it a dwelling in my breast Alas when Love should be the life of Prayer the life of holy meditation the life of Sermons and of holy conference and my soul in these should long to meet thee and delight to mention thee I straggle Lord I know not whither or I sit still and wish but do not rise and run and follow thee yea I do not what I seem to do All 's dead all 's dead for want of Love I often cry O where is that place where the quickening beams of Heaven are warmest that my frozen soul might seek it out But whither ever I go to City or to Solitude alas I find it is not Place that makes the difference I know that Christ is perfectly replenished with Life and Light and Love Divine And I hear him as our Head and Treasure proclaimed and offered to us in the Gospel This is thy Record that he that hath the Son hath Life O why then is my barren soul so empty I thought I had long ago consented to thy offer and then according to thy Covenant both He and Life in him are mine And yet must I still be dark and dead Ah dearest Lord I say not that I have too long waited but if I continue thus to wait wilt thou never find the time of Love and come and own thy gasping worm wilt thou never dissipate these clouds and shine upon this dead and darkened soul Hath my Night no Day Thrust me not from thee O my God! For that 's a Hell to be thrust from God But sure the cause is all at home could I find it out or rather could I cure it It is sure my face that 's turned from God when I say His face is turned from me But if my Life must here be out of sight and hidden in the Root with Christ in God and if all the rest be reserved for that better world and I must here have but these small beginnings O make me more to Love and long for the blessed day of thine appearing and not to fear the time of my deliverance nor unbelievingly to linger in this Sodom as one that had rather stay with sin then come to thee Though sin hath made me backward to the fight let it not make me backward to receive the Crown Though it hath made me a loiterer in thy work let it not make me backward to receive that wages which thy Love will give to our pardoned poor accepted services Though I have too oft drawn back when I should have come unto thee and walked with thee in thy waies of Grace yet heal that unbelief and disaffection which would make me to draw back when thou callest me to possess thy Glory Though the sickness and lameness of my soul have hindered me in my journey yet let their painfulness help me to desire to be delivered from them and to be at home where without the interposing nights of thy displeasure I shall fully feel thy fullest Love and walk with thy Glorified ones in the Light of thy Glory triumphing in thy Praise for evermore Amen BUT now I have given you these few Directions for the improvement of your solitude for converse with God lest I should occasion the hurt of those that are unfit for the Lesson I have given I must conclude with this Caution which I have formerly also published That it is not melancholly or weak-headed persons who are not able to bear such exercises for whom I have written these Directions Those that are not able to be much in serious solitary thoughtfulness without confusions and distracting suggestions and hurrying vexatious thoughts must set themselves for the most part to those duties which are to be done in company by the help of others and must be very little in solitary duties For to them whose natural faculties are so diseased or weak it is no duty as being no means to do them the desired good but while they strive to do that which they are naturally unable to endure they will but confound and distract themselves and make themselves unable for those other duties which yet they are not utterly unfit for To such persons therefore instead of ordered well-digested Meditations and much time spent in secret thoughtfulness it must suffice that they be brief in secret Prayer and take up with such occasional abrupter Meditations as they are capable of and that they be the more in reading hearing conference and praying and praising God with others untill their melancholly distempers are so far overcome as that by the direction of their Spiritual Guides they may judge themselves fit for this improvement of their Solitude FINIS * Charles Earl of Balcarres who dyed of a stone in his heart of a very strange magnitude