are guilty of more disorders tautologies unmeet expressions and manifold defects than any that I ever yet heard from those Ministers that pray either by habit or book Direct 9. Take heed both of carelesness and curiosity in the worshipping of God Avoid carelesness because it is prophaneness and contempt Therefore watch against idleness of mind and wandering thoughts and remember how great a work it is to speak to God or to hear from him about your everlasting state And yet curiosity is a heinous sin When men are so nice that unless there be quaint phrases and fine cadencies and jingles or at least a very laudable style they nauseate all and are weary of hearing a homely style or common things when every unmeet expression or tautology of the speaker doth turn their stomachs against the wholesomest food This curiosity cometh from a weak and an unhealthful state of soul Direct 10. Lastly Let your eye of Faith be all the while upon the heavenly Host or Church triumphant I remember how they worship God with what wisdom and purity and fervour of Love and sacred pleasure and with what unity and peace and concord And let your Worship be as much composed to the imitation of them as is agreeable to the likeness of our condition unto theirs There is no hypocrisie dulness darkness errours self-conceitedness pride division section or uncharitable contention Oh how they burn in Love to God and how sweet that Love is to themselves and how those souls work up in heavenly Joyes to the face of God in all his praises Labour as it were to joyn your selves by faith with them and as far as standeth with your different case to imitate them They are more imitable and amiable than the purest Churches upon earth Their love and blessed concord is more lovely than our uncharitable animosities and odious factions and divisions are And remember also the time when you must meet all those upright souls in Heaven whose manner of Worship you vilified and spake reproachfully of on earth and from whose communion you turned away And only consider how far they should be disowned who must be dear to Christ and you for ever The open disowning and avoiding the ungodly and scandalous is a great duty in due season when it is regularly done and is necessary to cast shame on sin and sinners and to vindicate the honour of Christianity before the world But otherwise it is but made an instrument of pernicious pride and of divisions in the Church and of hindering the successes of the Gospel of Christ CHAP. XXII How to pray in Faith PAssing by all the other particular parts of Worship as handled elsewhere in my Christian Directory I shall only briefly touch the duty of prayer especially as in private Direct 1. Let your heart lead your tongue and be the fountain of your words and suffer not your tongues in a customary volubility to over-run your hearts Desire first and pray next and remember that desire is the soul of prayer and that the heart-searching God doth hate hypocrisie and will not be mocked Matth. 6.1 3 4. Direct 2. Yet do not forbear prayer because your desires are not so earnest as you would have them For 1. Even good desires are to be begged of God 2. And such desires as you have towards God must be exercised and expressed 3. And this is the way of their usual increase 4. And a prophane turning away from God will kill those weak desires which you have when drawing near him in prayer may revive and cherish them Direct 3. Remember still that you pray to a heavenly Father who is readier to give than you are to receive or ask If you knew his Fulness and Goodness how joyfully would you run to him and cry Abba Father John 20.17 Luke 12.30 32. Mark 11.25 Matth. 6.8 32. Direct 4. Go boldly to him in the Name of Christ alone Remember that he is the only Way and Mediatour When guilt and conscience would drive you back believe the sufficiency of his sacrifice and attonement When your weakness and unworthiness would discourage you remember that no one is so worthy as to be accepted by God on any other terms than Christs Mediation Come boldly then to the Throne of Grace by the new and living way and put your prayers into his hand and remember that he still liveth to make intercession for you and that he appeareth before God in the highest in your cause Heb. 10.19 Ephes 3.12 Rom. 5.2 Heb. 9.24 7.25 26. Direct 5. Desire nothing in your hearts which you dare not pray for or which is unmeet for prayer Let the Rule of Prayer be the Rule of your Desires And undertake no business in the world which you may not lawfully pray for a blessing on Direct 6. Desire and pray to God first for God himself and nothing lower and next for all those spiritual blessings in Christ which may fit you for communion with him And lastly for corporal mercies as the means to these Matth. 6.33 Psal 42.1 2 3 c. Psal 73.25 26. Direct 7. Pray only for what is promised you or you are commanded to pray for And make not promises to your selves and then look that God should fulfil them because you confidently believe that he will do it and do not so reproach God as to call such self-conceits and expectations by the name of a particular Faith For where there is no word there is no faith Direct 8. What God hath promised confidently expect though you feel no answer at the present For most of our prayers are to be granted or the things desired to be given at the harvest time when we shall have all at once Whether you find your selves the better at present for prayer or not believe that a word is not in vain but you shall reap the fruit of all in season Luke 18.1 7 8. James 5.7 8. Direct 9. Let the Lords Prayer be the Rule for the matter and method of your desires and prayers But with this difference It must alwaies be the Rule which your desires must be formed to both in matter and method You must alwaies first and most desire the hallowing of Gods Name the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his will on Earth as it is in Heaven before your own being or well-being But this is only a Rule for your General Prayers which take in all the parts For when you either intend to pray only or chiefly for some one particular thing you may begin with that or be most upon it Therefore all Christians should specially labour to understand the true sense and method of the Lords Prayer which God willing I hope elsewhere to open Direct 10. Be more careful in secret of your affections than of the order of your words yet chusing such as are aptest to the matter and fittest to excite your hearts But in your families or with others be very careful to speak to God in
the interest of the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ and to promote the Gospel by silencing or prohibiting the most able zealous faithful Preachers of it and to go with a drawn sword among the people and say Love us or we will kill you Love Christ and us or the inquisition and wrack shall reach you love To see them take the terrifying of men by corporal penalties to be their chiefest work and the way of Love to be but such popularity as destroyeth the Church Will not now and then a walk in Heaven be a great refreshing to the mind that hath been long haunted with such hideous and ugly specters as all these Will not some converse with the most wises and holy and peaceable Society whose Life is Love be a great recreation to your minds when such sights as these have made them sad Moreover you have many burdens of your own to bear your own ignorance your own temptations your passions your wants and worst of all the relicks of your sin which you cannot bear with that hope and support which is needful to you without oft looking to the happiness of those that have overcome all these and are now at rest And you have many excellent duties to perform which will not be so well done without looking oft on such a Copy Yea you have the fears of death to overcome which will not be so easily done as by looking to all the world of souls that have already gone that way before you Yea in your converse with God himself though you have one only sufficient Mediator you will cast your selves upon great disadvantages if your thoughts leave out the blessed society of Saints and Angels who are nearest to him You cast away your stepping-stones or stairs of ascent and you will but tempt your selves to look at God as through the great interposing gulf and hinder the needful familiarity of your thoughts above Neglect not then a help so needful to you in your present state 12. Lastly The remembrance and observation of the heavenly inhabitants is the way that is commended and commanded to all Believers and that as part of their ordinary duty in their prayers to God He hath not only minded us that Abraham Isaac and Jacob are still living to prove the resurrection Matth. 12.27 but hath also comforted the expectants of Heaven by describing the joy of Lazarus as in Abrahams bosome Luke 16.22 23. and introduced Abraham as pleading Lazarus's cause v. 25 26. And hath made it a part of the comfortable description of his Kingdom that we shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in it Matth. 8.11 And when he would appear transfigured in a glimpse of his glory to Peter James and John he would not do it alone but with Moses and Elias talking with him Matth. 17. And the comfort which Paul giveth to the suffering Thessalonians is Rest with us 2 Thes 1.6 not only Rest with Christ but with his servants And when he describeth the glory of Christs appearing it is that He shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe vers 11 12. As himself describeth his appearing as with his glorious Angels Mat. 25.31 All the holy Angels with him Whether it be all the blessed Spirits of the higher worlds or only all those of them who were deputed to the service of the Church on earth Matth. 18.10 and so were made Angels to man I pass over And Henoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his Saints c Jude v. 14. Many other Scriptures tell us that we must not leave out the Saints and Angels when we look towards Heaven by faith and when we converse and walk above But this is but as on the by That which I intend for your special observation is the third Petition of the Lords Prayer where the annexed clause which seemeth to referr to all the three first Petitions doth set the heavenly Church before us as the Pattern of that obedience to the will of God which both we and all the world must imitate and pray to God that we may imitate Thy Will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven Here Christ requireth all Christians in Prayer to look up to the Heavenly Society and to consider how they do the Will of God and to make it their Pattern and in their daily Prayers as men that long for their celestial perfection to pray that they may become their imitators even as the Scholars in the lowest form in the school must look at those in the highest form and desire and endeavour to attain to their degree You see them that this is a commanded ordinary duty Direct 7. Consider next wherein it is that your converse with Angels and the perfected spirits of the just consisteth that you may neither by your mistake neglect it nor carry it too far I. Negatively 1. It is not a Deifying them as the Heathen did their Hero's and their Divi They are still but Gods Ministers and must have nothing ascribed to them of the Divine Prerogative 2. Nor doth it consist in building Temples and Altars to their honour which savoureth at least of a compliance with Idolatry 3. Nor doth it at all consist in praying to them 1. Because as we know that they are not omnipresent or omniscient so 2. We know not at all when they are present and when they do hear us and when not 3. Nor do we know which of them it is that is at any time present with us 4. Nor have we any precept president promise or other encouragement to such prayers in Gods Word but rather much to keep us from it 4. Nor yet is it in desiring them to pray for us For that which is their duty they better know than we and it is little that we know of their capacities or opportunities And we have no Word of God neither to encourage us to this 5. Nor doth it consist in chusing any one of them above the rest for our guardian and protector and so committing our selves to their care For we have no reason to be so presumptuous as to think that we have the choice of our own Protector or that it is a matter at all referred to us or that they will undertake it ever the more for our choice 6. Nor yet may we pretend to know what particular Saint or Angel is deputed of God to our protection For there is not the least discovery of it in Nature or in the Word of God And he that pretendeth extraordinary revelation of it must be sure to prove it 7. Nor may we pray for them as if they were in purgatory or in any misery or danger which did need our prayers for them For we have neither reason to believe the thing nor any precept or encouragement to the work And as all these seven are unlawful things so these also that follow must be medled
converse and our comfort Will you converse with none but ignorant selfish worldly sinners Are you more contemptuous of the heavenly inhabitants than the Gentleman in hell torments was Luke 16.26 27. that thought one from the dead though it had been but a beggar would have been reverenced even by his sensual brethren on earth so far as to have perswaded them unto saving Repentance I tell you a dead mans skull is oft-times a more profitable companion than most that you shall converse with in the common world The dust of your departed friends and the clay that corps are turned into is a good medicine for those eyes that are blinded with the dust of worldly vanities Much more should you keep your acquaintance with the soul which may for all the distance be perhaps more useful to you than it was in the flesh Alas how carnally and coldly or seldom do most Professors look at their Brethren and at the Angelical hosts that are above They long for our conversion and mind our great concernments and rejoyce in our felicity and shall we be so swinishly ungrateful as seldom to look up and remember their high and blessed state Many think that they have no more business with their deceased friends than to see them decently interred and to mourn over them as if their removal were their loss or to grieve for our own loss when we perceive their places empty but we scarce look up after them with an eye of faith much less do we daily maintain our communion with them in Heaven When Christ was taken up his Disciples gazed after him Act. 1.10 Stephen looked up stedfastly into Heaven and saw Christ sitting at the right hand of God Acts 7.55 And how seldome how slightly do we look up either to Jesus his Angels or his Saints I tell you Sirs you have not done with your friends when you have buryed their flesh They have left you their holy examples They are entered before you into rest You are hastening after them and must be quickly with them if you are true Believers You must see them every day by faith When you look to Christ you must look to them as his beloved friends entertained by him in his family of glory When you look up to Heaven remember that they are there When you think of coming thither remember that you must there meet them You must honour their memories more than you did on earth because they are more honourable being more honoured of God You must love them better than you did when they were on earth because they are better and so more lovely You must rejoyce much more for their felicity than you did whilest they were on earth because they are incomparably more happy than they were Either you believe this or you do not If you do not believe that the dead are blessed that die in the Lord and rest from their labours and are with Christ in Paradise why do you seem Christians If you do believe it why do you not more rejoyce with your glorified friends than you would have done if they had been advanced to the greatest honours in the world It is the natural duty of friends to mourn with them that mourn and to rejoyce with them that rejoyce and if one member be honoured or dishonoured the rest of the body are accordingly affected Do not your sorrows then instead of joyes tell all men that you believe that your friends are gone to sorrow and not to joy If not you are very selfish or inconsiderate Direct 10. Lastly Let not your aversation to Popery turn to a factiâ—us partial forsaking of Gods Truth and your own duty and consolation in this point Abundance of Christians have taken up opinions in Religion upon the love and honour of the parties that they took them of and being possessed with a just dislike of Popery in the main they suspect and cast away not a few great truths and duties upon a false information that they are parts of Popery It hath grieved 〈…〉 â—han once to hear religious persons come from heariâ—g 〈◊〉 Ministers with disdain and censure saying that they prayed for the dead and all their proof was that Thanksgiving is a part of prayer but they gave God thanks for the glorification of the spirits of the Just therefore they prayed for them And so have they argued because they have read the 1 Cor. 15. at the grave or because they have preached a Funeral Sermon while the Corpse was present or because they prayed then for themselves or for the Church Alas for the childish ignorance and pievishness and foolish wranglings of many Christians who think they are better than their neighbours How much is Christs family dishonoured by his silly froward children And they will not be instructed by their friends and therefore they are posted up and openly reproached by their enemies Have Angels or heavenly Saints deserved so ill of God or us that we should be so shy of their communion Are they nothing to us Have we nothing to do with them Have we cause to be ashamed of them Is their honour any dishonour to God or us if it be no more than what is their due Can we give so much love respect and honour to Magistrates Ministers and Friends on earth imperfect sinful troublesome mortals and shall we think that all is idolatrous or cast away which is given to them that so far excel us Is it your design to make Heaven either contemptible or strange to men on earth Or would you perswade the world that the souls of the Saints are not immortal but perish as the bruits Or that there is no Heaven Or that God is there alone without any company Are so many fond of the opinion of a Personal Reign on Earth for Christ with his holy ones and yet is it Popery so much as to speak honourably and joyfully of the Saints in Heaven My Brethren these things declare you yet to be too dark too factious and too carnal and to hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect to parties sides and persons Christ taketh not his Saints as strangers to him He that judgeth men as they love and use him in the least of his Brethren upon Earth will not so soon censure and quarrel with us as the Sectary will do for loving and honouring him in his Saints in Heaven for it is his will and prayer that they be with him where he is to behold his glory John 12.26 17.24 And he will come with his holy Angels to be glorified in his Saints who shall judge the world and Angels and to be admired in all them that do now believe 2 Thes 1.10 11 12. CHAP. XXVII How to receive the Sentence of Death and how to die by Faith HAving said so much of this elsewhere in my Books called A Believers last work The last Enemy My Christian Directory Treatise of Self-denyal c. I shall be here but
they become the heirs of that Righteousness which is by faith and condemn the unbelieving careless world that take not the warning and use not the remedy By this time you may see that the Life of Faith is quite another thing than the lifeless opinion of multitudes that call themselves believers To say I believe there is a God a Christ a Heaven a Hell is as easie as it is common But the faith of the ungodly is but an uneffectual dream To dream that you are fighting wins no victories To dream that you are eating gets no strength To dream that you are running ridâ— no ground To dream that you are plowing or sowing or reaping procureth but a fruitless harvest And to dream that you are Princes may consist with beggery If you do any more than dream of Heaven and Hell how is it that you stir not and make it not appear by the diligence of your lives and the fervour of your duties and the seriousness of your endeavours that such wonderful unexpressible over-powering things are indeed the matters of your belief As you love your souls take heed lest you take an image of faith to be the thing it self Faith sets on work the powers of the soul for the obtaining of that joy and the escaping of that misery which you believe But the image of faith in self-deceivers neither warms nor works it conquereth no difficulties it stirs not up to faithful duty It 's blind and therefore seeth not God and how then should he be feared and loved Iâ— seeth not Hell and therefore the senseless soul goes on as fearlesly and merrily to the unquenchable fire as if he were in the safest way This image of faith annihilateth the most potent objects as to any due impression on the soul God is as no God and Heaven as no Hâ—aven to these imaginary Christians If a Prince be in the room an image reverenceth him not If musick and feasting be there an image finds no pleasure in them If fire and sword be there an image fears them not You may perceive by the senseless neglectful carriage of ungodly men that they see not by faith the God that they should love and fear the Heaven that they should seek and wait for or the Hell that they should with all possible care avoid He is indeed the true Believer that allowing the difference of degrees doth pray as if he saw the Lord and speak and live as alwaies in his presence and redeem his time as if he were to die to morrow or as one that seeth death approach and ready to lay hands upon him that begs and cries to God in prayer as one that foreseeth the day of judgement and the endless joy or misery that followeth that bestirreth him for everlasting life as one that seeth Heaven and Hell by the eye of faith Faith is a serious apprehension and causeth a serious conversation for it is instead of sight and presence From all this you may easily and certainly infer 1. That true faith is a Jewel rare and precious and not so common as nominal careless Christians think What say they Are we not all believers will you make Infidels of all that are not Saints are none Christians but those that live so strictly Answer I know they are not Infidels by profession but what they are indeed and what God will take them for you may soon perceive by comparing the description of faith with the inscription legible on their lives It 's common to say I do believe but is it common to find men pray and live as those that do believe indeed It is both in works of charity and of piety that a living faith will shew it self I will not therefore contend about the name If you are ungodly unjust or uncharitable and yet will call your selves Believers you may keep the name and see whether it will save you Have you forgotten how this case is determined by the holy Ghost himself James 2.14 c. What doth it profit my Brethren if a man say he hath faith and hath not works Can faith save him Faith if it hath not works is dead being alone Thou believest that there is one God thou dost well the Devils also believe and tremble If such a belief be it that thou gloriest in it 's not denyed thee But wilt thou know oh vain man that faith without works is dead c. Is there life where there is no motion Had you that Faith that is instead of sight it would make you more solicitous for the things unseen than you are for the visible trifles of this world 2. And hence you may observe that most true Believers are weak in Faith Alas how far do we all fall short of the love and zeal and care and diligence which we should have if we had but once beheld the things which we do believe Alas how dead are our affections how flat are our duties how cold and how slow are our endeavours how unprofitable are our lives in comparison of what one hours sight of Heaven and Hell would make them be O what a comfortable converse would it be if I might but joyn in prayer praise and holy conference one day or hour with a person that had seen the Lord and been in Heaven and born a part in the Angelical Praises Were our Congregations composed of such persons what manner of worship would they perform to God How unlike would their heavenly ravishing expressions be to these our sleepy heartless duties Were Heaven open to the view of all this Congregation while I am speaking to you or when we are speaking in prayer and praise to God imagine your selves what a change it would make upon the best of us in our services What apprehensions what affections what resolutions it would raise and what a posture it would cast us all into And do we not all profess to believe these things as revealed from Heaven by the infallible God Do we not say that such a Divine Revelation is as sure as if the things were in themselves laid open to our sight Why then are we no more affected with them Why are we no more transported by them Why do they no more command our souls and stir up our faculties to the most vigorous and lively exercise and call them off from things that are not to us considerable nor fit to have one glance of the eye of our observation nor a regardful thought nor the least affection unless as they subserve these greater things When you observe how much in your selves and others the frame of your souls in holy duty and the tenour of your lives towards God and man do differ from what they would be if you had seen the things that you believe let it mind you of the great imperfection of faith and humble us all in the sense of our imbâ—cility For though I know that the most perfect Faith is not apt to raise such high affections in
sanctification but if they live endeavour it by all possible care in a wise and godly education Remember that nature and your dedicating them to God do both oblige you to this care for their salvation And that the education of children is one of the greatest duties in the world for the service of Christ and the prosperity of Church and State And the neglect of it not the smallest cause of the ruine of both and of the worlds calamity Many a poor sottish lazy Professor have I known who cry out against ignorant dumb and unfaithful Ministers as guilty of the blood of souls and are so religious as to separate from the Assemblies that have Ministers that are but partly such when as their own children are almost as ignorant as Heathens and they only use them to a few customary formal duties while they think they are enough against forms and turn over the chief care of their instruction to the Schoolmaster And are themselves so ignorant dumb and idle unfaithful and unnatural to their poor childrens souls as that it is a doubt whether in a well-ordered Church they ought not to be denyed communion themselves They so little practise Deut. 11.18 19. 6.7 Ephes 6.4 c. Direct 5. If your children live to the flesh in an ungodly course of life contrary to the Covenant which by you they made they forfeit all the benefits of the Covenant And you can have no assurance by any thing that you can do for them that ever they shall be converted though it is not past hope And if they be converted at age their pardon and adoption will be the effect of Gods Covenant as then it was newly entered with themselves and not as it was made before for them in infancy Direct 6. Yâ—t because that still while there is life there is hope you ought not by despair or negligence to omit prayer exhortation or any other duty which you can perform in order to their recovery And though now they have wills of their own their salvation is not laid so much upon you as it was in Infancy at their first covenanting with God yet still God will shew his love to his servants in their seed and faithful endeavours are not vain nor hopeless and therefore it is still one of your greatest duties in the world to seek their true recovery to Christ Direct 7. If God make your children a scourge or a heart-breaking to you bear and improve it as becomes Believers That is 1. Repent of your own former sin your own youthfull lusts your disobedience to your Parents your carnal fondness on your children your loving them too much and God too little the evil examples you have given them and your manifold neglect of a prudent seasonable earnest unwearied instructing them in godliness your bearing with their sin and giving them their own wills till they were masterless c Renew your Repentance and you have got some benefit 2. Think how unkindly and unthankfully you have dealt with a gracious Saviour and a heavenly Father 3. Let it take off your affections from all things under the Sun and call them up the more to God For who would love a world where none are to be trusted and where all things are vexatious even the children of your love and bowels Direct 8. If they die impenitently and perish mourn for them but with the moderation of Believers That is 1. Consider that God is more the owner of your children than you are and may do with his own as he list 2. And he is more wise and merciful than you and therefore not to be murmured at as wanting either 3. And it is an unvaluable mercy that your own soul is sanctified and shall be saved 4. And the most godly have had ungodly children before you Adam had a Cain Noah had a Cham Isaac had an Esau David had an Absalom c. 5. And if all the godly that pray for their childrens salvation must be therein gratified all the world would then have been saved For Noah would have prayed for all his children and they for theirs and so to the worlds end Object Oh but my conscience telleth me that it is my own sin which hath had a hand in their undoing Answ Suppose it be so it is certainly a pardonable sin Do you then repent of it or not If you repent as you mourn for your relations so you should rejoyce that God hath forgiven you For repented sin is certainly pardoned to you and pardoned sin to you is as great cause of joy as unpardoned sin in your relations is cause of sorrow Therefore mourn with such moderation and mixed comfort and thanksgiving as becometh one that liveth by faith The affliction indeed is neer and great and heavier than any calamity that could have befallen their bodies and is not to be slighted by an unnatural insensibility But yet you have a God who is better to you than a thousand children and your cross is but as a feather if you set it in the ballance against your blessings even the Love of God and your part in Christ and life eternal CHAP. XXIV How by Faith to order our Affections to publick Societies and the unconverted world Direct 1. TAke heed that you lose not that common Love which you owe to mankind nor that desire of the increase of the Kingdom of Christ which must keep up in you a constant compassion to the unconverted world viz. Idolaters Infidels and ungodly Hypocrites It is pittiful to observe the unchristian senslesness of most zealous Professors of Religion in this point Though God hath purposely put the three publick Petitions first in the Lords Prayer to tell them what they must first and most desire that is the hallowing of his Name and the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his Will on Earth as it is in Heaven yet they seem not to understand it or to regard it But their thoughts and desires are as selfish and private and narrow as if they knew nothing what the World or the Church is or cared for neither Their mind and talk is all of their own matters for body or soul or of their several Parties and particular Churches or if any extend his care as far as this spot of Land in Brittain and Ireland or some of the Reformed Churches they go further than their companions their selves and their side or party is almost all that most regard Perhaps the poor scattered Jews have a few words in the prayers of some but the miserable case of the vast Nations of the Earth who seem to be forsaken of God is neglected by them Five parts in six of the earth are Heathens and Mahometanes and of the sixth part the Protestants are but about a sixth compared with the poor ignorant Abbassines Armenians Syrians the Greek Churches and the Papists to say nothing what the most of the Protestants themselves are Yet are almost all these put by with
very brief I. For the first Case before sickness cometh Direct 1. Be sure that you settle your Belief of the life to come that your Faith may not fail Direct 2. Expect Death as seriously all your life as wise Believers are obliged to do That is as men that are alwaies sure to die as men that are never sure to live a moment longer as men that are sure that life will be short and death is not far off and as foreseeing what it is to die of what eternal consequence and what will then appear to be necessary to your safe and to your comfortable change Direct 3. All your daies habituate your souls to believing sweet enlarged thoughts of the infinite Goodness and Love of God to whom you go and with whom you hope to live for ever Direct 4. Dwell in the studies of a crucified and glorified Christ who is the way the truth and life who must be your hope in life and death Ephes 3.17 18 19. Direct 5. Keep clear your evidences of your right to Christ and all his Promises by keeping grace or the heavenly nature in life activity and increase 2 Pet. 1.10 2 Cor. 13.5 John 15 1 c. 1 John 3. Direct 6. Consider often of the possession which your nature in Christ hath already of Heaven and how highly it is advanced and how near his relation is and how dear his love is to his weakest members upon earth And that as souls in Heaven have an inclination and desire to communicate their own felicity to their bodies so hath Christ as to his body the Church John 17.24 Ephes 5.25 27 c. Direct 7. Look to the Heavenly Host and those who have lived before you or with you in the flesh to make the thoughts of Heaven the more familiar to you as in the former chapter Direct 8. Improve all Afflictions yea the plague of sin it self to make you weary of this world and willing to be gone to Christ Rom. 7. Direct 9. Be much with God in Prayer Meditation and other heart-raising duties that you may not by strangeness to him be dismayed Direct 10. Live not in the guilt of any wilful sin nor in any slothful neglect of duty lest guilt breed terrour and make you fly from God your Judge But especially study to redeem your time and to do all the good you can iâ— the world and to live as totally devoted to God as conscious that you live to no carnal interest but desire to serve him with all you have and your consciences testimony of this will abundantly take off the terrours of death whatever any erroneous ones may say to the contrary for fear of being guilty of conceits of merit A fruitful life is a great preparative for death 2 Tim. 4.8 2 Cor. 1.12 c. Direct 11. Fetch from Heaven the comforts which you live upon through all your life And when you have truly learned to live more upon the comforts of believed glory than upon any pictures or hopes below then you will be able to die in and for those comforts Matth. 6.20 21. Col. 3.1 4. Phil. 3.20 21. 1 Thes 4.18 Phil. 1.21 23. Direct 12. The Knowledge and Love of God in Christ is the beginning or foretaste of Heaven John 17.3 1 Cor. 13. c. and the foretastes are excellent preparations Therefore still remember that all that you do in the world for the getting and exercising the true Knowledge and Love of God in Christ so much you do for the foretastes and best preparations for Heaven 1 Cor. 8.3 If any man love God the same is known of him with approbation and love II. In the time of sickness and near to death Direct 1. Let your first work when God seemeth to call you away be to renew a diligent search of your hearts and lives and to see lest in either of them there should be any sin which is not truly hated and repented of Though this must be done through all your lives yet with an extraordinary care and diligence when you are like to come so speedily to your tryal For it is only to Repenting Believers that the Covenant of Grace doth pardon sin And the impenitent have no right to pardon Though for ordinary failings which are forgotten and for sins which you are willing to know and remember but cannot a general Repentance will be accepted as when you pray God to shew you the sins which you see not and to forgive those which you cannot remember or find out Yet those which you know must be particularly repented of And Repentance is a remembring duty and will hardly forget any great and heinous sins which are known to be sins indeed If your Repentance be then to begin alas it is high time to begin it And though if it be sound it will be saving that is If it be such as would settle you in a truly godly life if you should recover yet you will hardly have any assurance of salvation or such comfort in it as is desirable to dying man Because you will very hardly know whether it come from true conversion and contain a Love to God and Godliness or whether it be only the fruit of fear and would come to nothing if you were restored to health But he that hath truly repented heretofore and lived in uprightness towards God and man and hath nothing to do but to discern his sincerity and to exercise a special Repentance for some late or special sins or to do that again which he hath done unfeignedly before will much more easily get the assurance and comfort of his forgiveness and salvation Direct 2. Renew your sense of the Vanity of this world Which at such a time one would think should be very easie to do When you see that you are near an end of all your pleasures and have had all except a grave to rot in that ever this world willd o for you may you not easily then see whether the godly or the worldly be the wiser and the happier man And what it is that the life of man should be spent in seeeking after Matth. 6.33 Isa 55.1 2 3. Eccles 7.3 4 5 6. Direct 3. Remember what Flesh is and what it hath been to you that you may not be too loth to lay it down Of the dust it was made and to the dust it must return Corruption is your Father and the Worm is your Mother and your Sister Job 17.14 Drought and beat consume the Snow-waters so doth the grave those which have sinned The womb shall forget him the Worm shall feed sweetly on him Job 24.20 Flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God but this mortal must put on immortality by being made a spiritual body 1 Cor. 15. And this flesh hath cost you so dear to carry it about so much care and labour to provide it food to repair that which daily vanisheth away and so many weary painful hours and so many fearful
Nos quoque floruimus sed flos fuit ille caducus Flammaque de stipula nostra brevisque fuit Ov. VERA EFFIGIES RICHARDI BAXTERI MIN IES CH IN OP ET PATA FIDEI SPEI ET CHARITATIS An. 1670. AETAT SUAE 55º Farewell vaine World as thou hast been to me Dust and a Shadow those I leave with thee The vnseen Vitall Substance I committ The Leaves Fruit are dropt for soyle and Seed Heaven's heirs to generate to heale and feed Them also thou wilt flatter and molest But shalt not keep from Everlasting Rest THE LIFE OF FAITH THE Life of Faith In Three PARTS The First is a Sermon on Heb. 11.1 formerly preached before His Majesty and published by his Command with another added for the fuller Application The Second is Instructions for confirming Believers in the Christian Faith The Third is Directions how to live by Faith or how to exercise it upon all occasions By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Cor. 5.7 For we walk by faith not by sight 2 Cor. 4.16 17 18. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man parish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory While we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal Heb. 12.27 By faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible LONDON Printed by R. W. for Nevill Simmons at the three Crowns over against Holbern Conduit 1670. To the Worshipfull my much honoured Friend Richard Hampden of Hampden Esquire and the Lady Laetitia his Wife Grace and Peace be multiplied SIR YOur Names stand here in the front of this Treatise on a double account First that the custom of Writers having given me such an advantage I may tell the present and future Ages how much I love and honour your Piety Sobriety Integrity and Moderation in an Age when such Vertues grow into contempt or into lifeless Images and Names And how much I am my self your debter for the manifold expressions of your love and that in an Age when 〈…〉 the superioâ—â—â—â—culties is ouâ— of fâ—shion and towards such as I is grown â— crime Sincerity and 〈◊〉 are things that shall be honourable when Hypocrisie and Malice have done their worst But they are most conspicuous and refulgent in times of â—â—rity and when the shame of their contraries seâ— them off Secondly To signifie my Love and Gratitude by the best 〈◊〉 which I can make which is by tendering to you and to your family the surest Directions for the most noble manly life on earth in order to a blessed life in Heaven Though you have proceeded well you 〈…〉 need of help so great a 〈…〉 for skilfull counsel and 〈…〉 and industrious and unweaâ—â—◠〈…〉 And your hopeful children may 〈…〉 to learn this excellenâ— Life from these Directions for the love of your prefixed Names And how happy will they bâ— if they converse with God 〈…〉 are wallowing in the 〈◊〉 of 〈…〉 When the dead heaâ—ted sinner thinketh not of 〈…〉 be dragg'd out of 〈◊〉 paâ—pered corruptible flesh to divinie 〈◊〉 and â—â—â—with the beginnings of endless 〈◊〉 to the world where they might have found everlasting rest what joy will then be the portion of mortified and patient Believers whosâ— Treasâ—â—â—s and Hearts and Conversatiâ—â— in Heâ—ven are now the foretaste of their possession as the Spirit of Christ which causeth this iâ— the seâ—â— of God and the pledge and earnest of their inheritance If a 〈◊〉 pleasing life in a dark distracted 〈◊〉 world were better than a life with God and Angels methinks yet they that know they cannot have what they 〈◊〉 should make sue of what they may haâ—â— And they that cannot keep what they 〈◊〉 should learn to 〈◊〉 what 〈◊〉 may keep Wonderfull stupidity â—hâ—t they 〈…〉 dead bodies 〈…〉 grave is as common a work 〈…〉 children into the world and that this life is but the road to another and that all men are posting on to their 〈…〉 should think no more considerately whither so many thousand souls do go that daily shoot the gulf of death and return no more to the world which one they called their home That men will have no house or home but the ship which carryeth them so swiftly to eternity and spend their time in furnishing a dwelling on such a tempestuous Sea where winds and tide are hasting them to the shore and even to the end are contriving to live where they are daily dying and care for no â—â—bitation but on horse-back That almost all men die much wiser than they lived and yet the certain foreknowledge of death will not serve to make them more seasonably and more safely wiâ—e Wonderful that it should be possible for a man awake to believe that he must shortly be gone from earth and enter into an unchangeable endless life and yet not bend the thoughts of his soul and the labours of his life to secure his true and 〈…〉 Adam hath given sin the 〈…〉 grace and madness the priority to wisdom and our wisdom health and safety must now come after by the way of recovery and cure The first born of lapsed man was a malignant persecuting Cain The first born of believing Abraham was a persecutor of him that was born after the Spirit 1 John 3.12 Gal. 4.29 And the first born of this Isaac himself was a profane Esau that for one morsel sold his birth-right Heb. 12.16 And naturally we are all the off-spring of this profaneness and have not acquaintance enough with God and with healthful holiness and with the everlasting heavenly Glory to make us cordially preferr it before a forbidden cup or morsel or a game at foolery or a filthy lust or before the wind of a gilded fools acclamation and applause or the cap and counterfeit subjection of the multitude But the fortunae non tua turba ut Ov. quos sportula fecit amici ut Juv. who will serve mens lusts and be their servants and humble attendants to damnation are regarded more than the God the Saviour the Sanctifier to whom these perfidious rebels were once devoted That you and yours may live that more wise and delightful life which consisteth in the daily sight of Heaven by a Living Faith which worketh by Love in constant Obedience is the principal end of this publick appellation That what is here written for the use of all may be first and specially useful to you and yours whom I am so much bound to love and honour even to your safe and comfortable life and death and to your future joy and glory which is the great desire of Your obliged Servant RICH. BAXTER Feb. 4. 1669. THE PREFACE Reader 1. IF it offend thee that the Parts of
desire p. 66. l. 31. for against r. at p. 67. l. 32. for tam r. qâ—am p. 68. l. 8. for murmurr r. moâ—rn l. 27. after better put countrey p. 69. l. 17. r. nemo p. 70 l. 16. r. ventosam p. 75. l. 24. r. made them p. 77. l. 12. r. literate p. 87. l. 3. for offered read observed p. 93. l 25. for cannot r. can p. 96. l. 12. for Nations r. â—otions l. 21. r. conduceth p. 99. l. 9. r. which â—t p. 101. l. 38. for Goodness r. Good will p. 130. l. 13. r. inconsiderateness p. 134. l. 10. r. Victor â—tâ—censis p. 155. l. 37. for never r. neerer p. 163. l. 6. put out are p. 166. l. 2. for worketh r. marketh l. 24. r. aime at l. 29. r. taketh p. 196. r. 7. for meditate r. medâ—atâ— p. 206. l. 1. r. causally l. 4. for his r. this p 217. false Printed for 209 l. 38. blot out or p. 224. l. 6. for was r. were p. 232. l. 19. â— Antoninus p. 241. l. 31. r. commutative p. 244. l. 38. put out of p. 249. l. 5. for rather r. alwaâ—es p. 250. l. 9. blot out O and r. of objective graâ—e l. 30. for promiseth r. promiseth â—ot p. 253. l. 12. for confirmeth r. confineth l. 20. for ofâ— loss of p. 254. l. 29. r. non-amission p. â—32 l. 33. r. which most p. 346. l. 14. â— faults p. 359. l. 18. for him r. himself p. 366. l. 29. for that r. the p. â—71 l. 12. for there r. then p. 382. l. 28. for as r. or p. 384. l. 3. put a comma after efficient and Dirigent p. 405. l. 36. r. 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Assent p. 540. l. 21. put out and p. 582. l. 11. r. friends THE Life of Faith HEBREWS 11.1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen THough the wicked are distinguished into Hypocrites and Vnbelievers yet Hypocrites themselves are Vnbelievers too They have no faith which they can justifie by its prevailing efficacy and works and therefore have no faith by which they can be justified Because their discovery is needful to their recovery and all our salvation depends on the sincerity of our faith I have chosen this text which is a description of faith that the opening of it may help us for the opening of our hearts and resolving the great question on which our endless life depends To be a Christian and to be a Believer in Christ are words in Scripture of the same signification If you have not faith you are not Christians This faith hath various offices and objects By it we are justified sanctified and saved We are justified not by believing that we are justified but by believing that we may be justified Not by receiving justification immediately but by receiving Christ for our justification not by meer accepting the pardon in it self but by first receiving him that procureth and bestoweth it on his terms Not by meer accepting health but by receiving the Physician and his remedies for health Faith is the practical Believing in God as promising and Christ as procuring justification and salvation Or the practical belief and acceptance of life as procured by Christ and promised by God in the Gospel The everlasting fruition of God in Heaven is the ultimate object No man believeth in Christ as Christ that believeth not in him for eternal life As faith looks at Christ as the necessary means and at the divine benignity as the fountain and at his veracity as the foundation or formal object and at the promise as the true signification of his will so doth it ultimately look at our salvation begun on earth and perfected in Heaven as the end for which it looketh at the rest No wonder therefore if the holy Ghost here speaking of the Dignity and Power of faith do principally insist on that part of its description which is taken from this final object As Christ himself in his Humiliation was rejected by the Gentiles and a stumbling stone to the Jews despised and not esteemed Isa 53.2 3. having made himself of no reputation Phil. 2 7. So faith in Christ as incarnate and crucified is despised and counted foolishness by the world But as Christ in his glory and the glory of believers shall force them to an aweful admiration so faith it self as exercised on that glory is more glorious in the eyes of all Believers are never so reverenced by the world as when they converse in Heaven and the Spirit of Glory resteth on them 1 Pet. 4.14 How faith by beholding this glorious end doth move all the faculties of the soul and subdue the inclinations and interests of the flesh and make the greatest sufferings tollerable is the work of the holy Ghost in this Chapter to demonstrate which beginning with the description proceeds to the proof by a cloud of witnesses There are two sorts of persons and imployments in the world for whom there are two contrary ends hereafter One sort subject their reason to their sensual or carnal interest The other subject their senses to their reason cleared conducted and elevated by faith Things present or possessed are the riches of the sensual and the byas of their hearts and lives Things absent but hoped for are the riches of Believers which actuate their chief endeavours This is the sense of the text which I have read to you which setting things hoped for in opposition to things present and things unseen to those that sense doth apprehend assureth us that faith which fixeth on the first doth give to its object a subsistence presence and evidence that is it seeth that which supplieth the want of presence and visibility The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is that which quoad effectum is equal to a present subsistence And the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the evidence is somewhat which quoad effectum is equal to visibility As if he had said Though the glory promised to Believers and expected by them be yet to come and only hoped for and be yet unseen and only believed yet is the sound believer as truly affected with it and acted by its attractive force as if it were present and before his eyes as a man is by an inheritance or estate in reversion or out of sight if well secured and not only by that which is present to his view The Syriack Interpreter instead of a Translation gives us a true exposition of the words viz. Faith is a certainty of those things that are in hope as if they did already actually exist and the revelation of
can lay out your love and care and labour on nothing else that will answer your expectations nor make any other bargain whatsoever but what you are sure to be utterly undone by Psal 73.25 4.6 7. Mat. 6.20 21. 13.45 46. Luke 18.33 3. A sound belief of things invisible will be so far an effectual spring of a holy life as that you will seek first the Kingdom of God and its Righteousness Mat. 6.33 and not in your Resolutions only but in your Practices the bent of your lives will be for God and your invisible felicity It is not possible that you should see by faith the wonders of the world to come and yet prefer this world before it A dead opinionative belief may stand with a worldly fleshly life but a working faith will make you stir and make the things of God your business and the labour and industry of your lives will shew whether you soundly believe the things unseen 4. If you savingly believe the invisible things you will purchase them at any rate and hold them faster than your worldly accommodations and will suffer the loss of all things visible rather than you will cast away your hopes of the glory which you never saw A humane faith and bare opinion will not hold fast when trial comes For such men take Heaven but for a reserve because they must leave earth against their wills and are loth to go to Hell but they are resolved to hold the world as long as they can because their faith apprehendeth no such satisfying certainty of the things unseen as will encourage them to let go all that they see and have in sensible possession But the weakest faith that 's true and saving doth habitually dispose the soul to let go all the hopes and happiness of this world when they are inconsistent with our spiritual hopes and happiness Luke 14.33 And now I have gone before you with the light and shewed you what a Believer is will you presently consider how 〈◊〉 your hearts and lives agree to this description To know Whether you live by faith or not is consequentially to know whether God or the world be your portion and felicity and so whether you are the heirs of Heaven or Hell And is not this a question that you are most nearly concerned in O therefore for your souls sakes and as ever you love your everlasting peace Examine your selves whether you are in the faith or not Know you not that Christ is in you by faith except you be reprobates 2 Cor. 13.5 will you hearken now as long to your consciences as you have done to me As you have heard me telling you what is the nature of a living saving faith will you hearken to your consciences while they impartially tell you whether you have this life of faith or not It may be known if you are willing and diligent and impartial Iâ— you search on purpose as men that would know whether they are alive or dead and whether they shall live or die for ever and not as men that would be flattered and deceived and are resolved to think well of their state be it true or false Let conscience tell you What eyes do you see by for the conduct of the chief imployment of your lives Is it by the eye of sense or faith I take it for granted that it 's by the eye of Reason But is it by Reason corrupted and byâ—ssed by sense or is it by Reason elevated by faith What Countrey is it that your hearts converse in Is it in Heaven or Earth What company is it that you solace your selves with Is it with Angels and Saints Do you walk with them in the Spirit and joyn your eccho's to their triumphant praises and say Amen when by faith you hear them ascribing honour and praise and glory to the ancient of daies the Omnipotent Jehovah that is and that was and is to come Do you fetch your Joyes from Heaven or Earth from things unseen or seen things future or present things hoped for or things possessed What Garden yieldeth you your sweetest flowers Whence is the food that your hopes and comforts live upon Whence are the spirits and cordials that revive you when a frowning world doth cast you into a fainting fit or swoun Where is it that you repose your souls for Rest when sin or sufferings have made you weary Deal truly Is it in Heaven or Earth Which world do you take for your pilgrimage and which for your home I do not ask you where you are but where you dwell not where are your persons but where are your hearts In a word Are you in good earnest when you say you believe a Heaven and Hell And do you think and speak and pray and live as those that do indeed believe it Do you spend your time and chuse your condition of life and dispose of your affairs and answer temptations to worldly things as those that are serious in their belief Speak out do you live the life of faith upon things unseen or the life of sense on things that you behold Deal truly for your endless â—oy or sorrow doth much depend on it The life of faith is the certain passage to the life of glory The fleshly life on things here seen is the certain way to endless misery If you live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye by the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live Rom. 8.13 Be not dâ—ceived God is not mocked â— for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap everlasting life Gal. 6.7 8. If you would know where you must live for ever know how and for what and upon what it is that you live here Vse 4. Having enquired whether you are Believers I am next to ask you what you will be for the time to come will you live upon things seen or unseen While you arrogate the name and honour of being Christians will you bethink you what Christianity is and will you be indeed what you say you are and would be thought to be Oh that you would give credit to the Word of God that the God of Heaven might be but heartily believed by you And that you would but take his Word to be as sure as sense and what he hath told you is or will be to be as certain as if you saw it with your eyes Oh what manner of persons would you then be how carefully and fruitfully would you speak and live How impossible were it then that you should be careless and prophane And here that I may by seriousness bring you to be serious in so serious a business I shall first put a few suppositions to you about the invisible objects of faith and then I shall put some applicatory questions to you concerning your own resolutions and
wonder that such men can believe themselves when they say they do indeed believe the Gospel And shews what a monster the blind deceitful heart of an impenitent sinner is In good sadness can they think that they truly believe that God is God and yet so wilfully disobey him that Heaven is Heaven and yet prefer the world before it that Hell is Hell and yet will venture upon it for a lust or a thing of nought What! believe that there is at hand a life of endless joy and no more mind it but hate them that set their hearts upon it Do they believe that except a man be converted and new born he shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven as Christ hath told them Matth. 18.3 John 3.3 5. and yet never trouble their minds about it to try whether they are converted and new born or not Do they believe God that no man shall see him without holiness Heb. 12.14 and yet dare they be unholy and perhaps deride it Do they believe that Christ will come in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power 2 Thes 2.8 9. and yet dare they disobey the Gospel Do they take God for their absolute Lord and Governour while they will not so much as meditate on his Laws but care more what a mortal man saith or what their flesh and carnal reason saith than what he saith to them in his holy Word Do they take Christ for their Saviour and yet would not be saved by him from their sins but had rather keep them Do they take the Holy Ghost for their Sanctifier while they will not have a sanctified heart or life and love it not in those that have it Do they take Heaven for their endless home and happiness while they neither mind nor seek it in comparison of the world And do they take the world for vanity and vexation while they mind and seek it more than Heaven Do they believe the communion of Saints while they fly from it and perhaps detest and persecute it Is light and darkness more contrary than their words and deeds And is not HYPOCRISIE as visible in their practice as Christianity in their profession It is the complexion of their Religion HYPOCRITE is legibly written in the forehead of it They proclaim their shame to all that they converse with When they have said they believe the life to come they tell men by your ungodly worldly lives that they are dissemblers When their tongue hath loudly said that they are Christians their tongue and hand more loudly say that they are Hypocrites And when they profess their Faith but now and then in a lifeless outside piece of worship they profess their Hypocrisie all the day long in their impious neglect of God and their salvation in their carnal speeches in their worldly lives and in their enmity to the practice of the same Religion which they profess Their Hypocrisie is a web so thin and so transparent that it leaves their nakedness open to their shame They have not Profession enough to make a considerable cover for their unbelief They hide but their tongues the rest even heart and all is bare O the stupendious power of self love the wonderful blindness and stupidity of the ungodly the dreadfulness of the judgement of God in thus dâ—serting the wâ—lful resisters of his grace That ever men in other things of seeming wisdom should be such strangers to themselves and so deceived by themselves as to think they love the thing they hate and to think that their hearts are set upon Heaven when they neither love it nor the way that leadeth to it but are principally bent another way that when they arâ— strangers or enemies to a holy life they can yet make themselves believe that they are holy and that they seek that first which they never seek and make that the drift and business of their lives which was never the serious business of an hour O Hypocrites ask any impartial man of reason that sees your lives and hears your prayers whether you pray and live like men that believe that Heaven or Hell must be their reward Ask your families whether they perceive by your constant prayer and diligent endeavours and holy conversations that your hearts are set on a life to come It was a cutting answer of a late Apostate to one that told him of the unreasonableness of Infidels that denyed the life to come saith he There 's none in the world so unreasonable as you Christians that believe that there is an endless life of joy or misery to come and do no more to obtain the one and escape the other Did I believe such a life as this I would think all too little that I could do or suffer to make it sure Who sees the certainty greatness and eternity of the Crown of Life in the resolvedness fervency and constancy of your holy labour You take up with the picture of Sermons and Prayers and with the name of Christianity and holy obedience A little more Religion you will admit than a Parrot may learn or a Poppet may exercise Compare your care and labour and cost for Heaven and for this world That you believe the flattering deceitful world we see by your daily solicitousness about it You seek it you strive for it you fall out with all that stand in your way you are at it daily and have never done But who can see that you seriously believe another world you talk idly and wantonly and proudly by the hours but you talk of Heaven and holiness but by the minutes You do not turn the glass when you go to your unnecessary recreations or your vain discourse or at least you can stay when the glass is run But in hearing the most necessary truths of God or in praying for everlasting life the hour seems long to you and the tedious Preacher is your weariness and molestation You do not feast and play by the glass but if we do not preach and pray by it exactly but exceed our hour though in speaking of and for eternity we are your burden and put your languid patience to it as if we were doing you some intollerable wrong In worldly matters you are weary of giving but seldom of receiving you grudge at the asker but seldom at the giver But if the gift be spiritual and heavenly you are a weary to hear talk of it and expostulate the case with him that offereth it and he must shew by what authority he would do you good If by serious holy conference he would further your preparations for the life to come or help you to make sure of life eternal he is examined what power he hath to meddle with you and promote your salvation And perhaps he is snappâ—shly told he is a
me How long O scorner wilt thou delight in scorning How long wilt thou go on impenitently in thy folly And now I must cry out How long How long must I feel the wrath of the Almighty the unquenchable fire the immortal worm Alas for ever When shall I receive one moments ease when shall I see one glimpse of hope O never never never Now I perceive what Satan meant in his temptations what â—in intended what God meant in the threatnings of his Law what grace was good for what Christ was sent for and what was the design and meaning of the Gospel and how I should have valued the offers and promises of life Now I understand what Ministers meant to be so importunate with me for my conversion and what was the cause that they would even have kneeled to me to have procured my return to God in time Now I understand that holiness was not a needless thing that Christ and Grace deserved better entertainment than contempt that precious time was worth more than to be wasted idly that an immortal soul and life eternal should have been more regarded and not cast away for so short so base a fleshly pleasure Now all these things are plain and open to my understanding But alas it 's now too late I know that now to my woe and torment which I might have known in time to my recovery and joy For the Lords sake and for your souls sake open your eyes and foresee the things that are even at hand and prevent these fruitless lamentations Judge but as you will all shortly judge and live but as you will wish that you had lived and I desire no more Be serious as if you saw the things that you say you do believe I know this serious discourse of another life is usually ungrateful to men that are conscious of their strangeness to it and taking up their portion here are loth to be tormented before the time This is not the smoothing pleasing way But remember that we have flesh as well as you which longs not to be accounted troublesome or precise which loves not to displease or be displeased And had we no higher light and life we should â—aâ—k as men that saw and felt no more than fight and flesh can reach But when we are preaching and dying and you are hearing and dying and we believe and know that you are nâ—w going to see the things we speak of and death will straightway draw aside the veil and shew you the great amazing sight it 's time for us to speak and you to hear with all our hearts It 's time for us to be serious when we are so near the place where all are serious There are none that are in jest in Heaven or Hell pardon us therefore if we jest not at the door and in the way to such a serious state All that see and feel are serious and therefore all that truly believe must be so too Were your eyes all opened this hour to see what we believe we appeal to your own consciences whether it would not make you more serious than we Marvel not if you see Believers make another matter of their salvation than those that have hired their understandings in service to their sense and think the world is no bigger or better than their globe or map and reacheth no further than they can kennâ— As long as we see you serious about Lands and Lordships and titles and honours the rattles and tarrying Irons of the cheating world you must give us leave whether you will or no to be serious about the life eternal They that scramble so eagerly for the bonds of worldly riches and devour so greedily the drâ—ffe of sensual delights methinks should blush if such animals had the blushing property to blame or deride us for being a little alas too little earnest in the matters of God and our salvation Can you not pardon us if we love God a little more than you love your lusts and if we run as fast for the Crown of Life as you run after a feather or a fly or if we breath as hard after Christ in holy desires as you do in blowing the bubble of vain-glory If a thousand pound a year in passage to a grave and the chains of darkness be worth your labour give us leave to belieâ—â— that mercy in order to everlasting mercy grace in order to glory and glory as the end of grace is worth our labour and infinitely more Your end is narrow though your way be broad and our end is broad though our way be narrow You build as Miners in Cole-pits do by digging downwards into the dark and yet you are laborious Though we begin on earth we build towards Heaven where an attractive loadstone draws up the workmen and the work and shall we loiter under so great encouragements Have you considered that Faith is the beholding grace the evidence of things not seen and yet have you the hearts to blame Believers for doing all that they can do in a case of such unspeakable everlasting consequence If we are Believers Heaven and Hell are as iâ— were open to our sight And would you wish us to trifle in the sight of Heaven or to leap into Hell when we see it as before us what name can express the inhumane cruelty of such a wish oâ— motion or the unchristian folly of those that will obey you O give us leave to be serious for a Kingdom which by Faith we see Blame us for this and blame us that we are not beside our selves Pardon us that we are awake when the thunder of Jehovah's voice doth call to us denouncing everlasting wrath to all that are sensual and ungodly Were we asleep as you are we would lie still and take no heed what God or man said to us Pardon us that we are Christians and believe these things seeing you profess the same your selves Disclaim not the practice till you dare disclaim the profession If we were Infidels we would do as the ungodly world we would pursue our present pleasures and commodity and say that things above us are nothing to us and would take Religion to be the Troubler of the world But till we are Infidels or Atheists at the heart we cannot do so Forgive us that we are men if you take it to be pardonable Were we bruits we would eat and drink and play and never trouble our selves or others with the care of our salvation or the fears of any death but one or with resisting sensual inclinations and meditating on the life to come but would take our ease and pleasure while we may At least forgive us that we are not blocks or stones that we have life and feeling Were we insensate clods we would not see the light of Heaven nor hear the roaring of the Lion nor fear the threats of God himself we would not complain or sigh or groan because we feel not If therefore we may
the nature and cause of light and heat the order course and harmony of the universal systeme of the world what joyful acclamations would this produce in the literal studious sort of men what joy then should it be to us to know by Faith the God that made us the Creation of the world the Laws and Promises of our Creatour the Mysteries of Redemption and Regeneration the frame of the new Creature the entertainment of the spirits of the just with Christ the Judgement which all the world must undergo the work and company which we shall have hereafter and the endless joyes which all the sanctified shall possess in the sight and Love of God for ever How blessed an invention would it be if all the world could be brought again to the use of one universal language Or if all the Churches could be perfectly reconciled how joyful would the Author of so great a work be should we not then rejoyce who foresee by Faith a far more perfect union and consent than ever must be expected here on earth Alas the ordinary lowness of our Comforts doth tell us that our Faith is very small I say not so much The sorrows of a doubting heart as the little joy which we have in the fore-thoughts of Heaven when our title seemeth not much doubtful to us For those sorrows shew that such esteem it a joyful place and would rejoyce if their title were but cleared But when we have neither the sorrow or solicitousness of the afflicted soul nor yet the joy which is any whit suitable to the belief of such everlasting joyes we may know what to judge of such an uneffectual belief at best it is very low and feeble It is a joy unspeakable and full of glory which unseen things should cause in a Believer 1 Pet. 1.6 7 8. Because it is an exceeding eternal weight of glory which he believeth 2 Cor. â— 17 18. 8. Finally Learn to Die also as Believers The life of Faith must bring you to the very entrance into glory where one doth end the other begins As our dark life in the womb by nutriment from the Mother continueth till our passage into the open world You would die in the womb if Faith should cease before it bring you to full intuition and fruition Heb. 11.22 By faith Joseph when he died made mention of the departing of the children of Israel Josephs faith did not die before him Heb. 11.3 These all died in faith confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth and declaring that they sought a better Country They that live by faith must die in faith yea and die by faith too Faith must fetch in their dying comforts And O how full and how near a treasure hath it to go to To die to this world is to be born into another Beggars are best when they are abroad The travail of the ungodly is better to them than their home But the Believers home is so much better than his travail that he hath little cause to be afraid of coming to his Journeys end but should rather every step cry out O when shall I be at home with Christ Is it Earth or Heaven that you have prayed for and laboured for and waited and suffered for till now And doth he indeed pray and labour and suffer for Heaven who would not come thither It is Faith which overcometh the world and the flesh which must also overcome the fears of death and can look with boldness into the loathsome grave and can triumph over both as victorious through Christ It is Faith which can say Go forth O my soul depart in peace Thy course is finished Thy warfare is accomplished The day of triumph is now at hand Thy patience hath no longer work Go forth with joy The morning of thy endless joyes is near and the night of fears and darkness at an end Thy terrible dreams are ending in eternal pleasures The glorious light will banish all thy dreadful specters and resolve all those doubts which were bred and cherished in the dark They whose employment is their weariness and toil do take the night of darkness and cessation for their rest But this is thy weariness Defect of action is thy toil and thy most grievous labour is to do too little work And thy uncessant Vision Love and Praise will be thy uncessant ease and pleasure and thy endless work will be thy endless rest Depart O my soul with peace and gladness Thou leavest not a world where Wisdom and Piety Justice and Sobriety Love and Peace and Order do prevail but a world of ignorance and folly of bruitish sensuality and rage of impiety and malignant enmity to good a world of injustice and oppression and of confusion and distracting strifes Thou goest not to a world of darkness and of wrath but of Light and Love From hellish malice to perfect amity from Bedlam rage to perfect wisdom from mad confusion to perfect order to sweetest unity and peace even to the spirits of the just made perfect and to the celestial glorious City of God! Thou goest not from Heaven to Earth from holiness to sin from the sight of God into an infernal dungeon but from Earth to Heaven from sin and imperfection unto perfect holiness and from palpable darkness into the vital splendour of the face of God! Thou goest not amongst enemies but to dearest friends nor amongst meer strangers but to many whom thou hast known by sight and to more whom thou hast known by faith and must know by the sweetest communion for ever Thou goest not to unsatisfied Justice nor to a condemning unreconciled God but to Love it self to infinite Goodness the fountain of all created and communicated good to the Maker Redeemer and Sanctifier of souls to him who prepared Heaven for thee and now hath prepared thee for Heaven Go forth then in triumph and not with terrour O my soul The prize is won Possess the things which thou hast so long prayed for and sought Make haste and enter into thy Masters joy Go view the glory which thou hast so long heard of and take thy place in the heavenly Chore and bear thy part in their celestial melody Sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God! And receive that which Christ in his Covenant did promise to give thee at the last Go boldly to that blessed God with whom thou hast so powerful a Mediatour and to the Throne of whose grace thou hast had so oft and sweet access If Heaven be thy fear or sorrow what can be thy joy and where wilt thou have refuge if thou fly from God If perfect endless pleasures be thy terrour where then dost thou expect content If grace have taught thee long ago to prefer the heavenly and durable felicity refuse it not now when thou art so near the port if it have taught thee long ago to be as a stranger in this Sodom and to renounce this
Nature and therefore if we have a Head who hath no such corruption there is no place for that objection And as it is not credible that God would make no communication of this Image of his Dominions in the world so it is certain that besides the Lord Jesus the world hath no other Universal Head whatever the Pope may pretend to be an Vniversal Vicarious Monarch under the Vniversal Vicarious Monarch Kingdoms have their Monarchs subordinate to Christ but the world hath none but Christ alone 11. And how meet was it that he who was the Monarch or Deputy of God should be also the Mediatour and that a polluted sinner dwelling in clay should not come immediately to God but by a Reconciler who is worthy to prevail 12. And when we had lost the knowledge of God and of the world to come and of the way thereto yea and of our selves too and our own immortality of soul how meet was it that a sure Revelation should settle us that we might know what to seek and whither to return and by what way seeing Light must be the guide of our Love and Power And who could so infallibly and satisfactorily do this as a Teacher sent from God of perfectest knowledge and veracity 13. And when God intended the free forgiveness of our sins how meet was it that he who would be the Mediatour of our pardon should yield to those terms which are consistent with the ends of Government and expose not the wisdom and veracity and justice and the Laws of God to the worlds contempt If no mark of odiousness should be put upon sin nor any demonstration of Justice been made the Devil would have triumphed and said Did not I say truer than God when he told you of dying and I told you that you should not die And if the grand penalty had been remitted to the world for four thousand years together successively without any sufficient demonstration of Gods Justice undertaken why should any sinner have feared Hell to the worlds end If you say that Repentance alone might be sufficient I answer 1. That is no vindication of the Justice and Truth of the Law-maker 2. Who should bring a sinner to Repentance whose heart is corrupted with the love of sin 3. It would hinder Repentance if men knew that God can forgive all the world upon bare Repentance without any reparation of the breaches made by sin in the order of the world For if he that threatneth future misery or death for sin can absolutely dispense with that commination they may think that he may do so as easily by his threatning of death to the impenitent If you say that Threatnings in a Law are not false when they are not fulfilled because they speak not de eventâ— but de debito poenae I answer they speak directly only de debito but withall he that maketh a Law doth thereby say This shall be the Rule of your lives and of my ordinary Judgement And therefore consequently they speak of an ordinary event also And they are the Rule of Just Judgement and therefore Justice must not be contemned by their contempt Or if any shall think that all this proveth not a demonstration of Justice on the Redeemer to be absolutely necessary but that God could have pardoned the penitent without it it is nevertheless manifest that this was a very wise and congruous way As he that cannot prove that God could not have illuminated and moved and quickened the inferiour sensitives without the Sun may yet prove that the Sun is a noble creature in whose operations Gods Wisdom and Power and Goodness do appear 14. And how agreeable is this doctrine of the Sacrifice of Christ to the common doctrine of Sacrificing which hath been received throughout almost all the world And who can imagine any other original of that practice so early and so universally obtaining than either divine revelation or somewhat even in nature which beareth witness to the necessity of a demonstration of Gods Justice and displeasure against sin 15. How wisely is it determined of God that he who undertakes all â—is should be Man and yet more than Man even God That the Monarch of Mankind and the Mediatour and the Teacher of Man and the Sacrifice for sin should not be only of another kind but that he be one that is fit to be familiar with man and to be interested naturally in his concerns and one that is by nature and nearness capable of these undertakings and relations And yet that he be so high and near the Father as may put a sufficient value on his works and make him most meet to mediate for us 16. How wisely is it ordered that with a perfect doctrine we should have the pattern of a perfect life as knowing how agreeable the way of imitation is to our natures and necessities 17. And as a pattern of all other vertue is still before us so how fit was it especially that we should have a lively example to teach us to contemn this deceitful world and to set little comparatively by reputation wealth preheminence grandeur pleasures yea and life it self which are the things which all that perish prefer before God and immortality 18. And how needful is it that they that must be overtaken with renewed faults should have a daily remedy and refuge and a plaister for their wounds and a more acceptable name than their own to plead with God for pardon 19. How meet was it that our Saviour should rise from the dead and consequently that he should die to shew us that his Sacrifice was accepted and that there is indeed another life for man and that death and the grave shall not still detain us 20. And how meet was it that our Saviour should ascend into Heaven and therein our natures be glorified with God that he might have all power to finish the work of mans salvation and his possession might be a pledge of our future possession 21. Most wisely also is it ordered of God that man might not be left under the Covenant of Works or of entire nature which after it was broken could never justifie him and which was now unsuitable to his lapsed state and that God should make a New Covenant with him as his Redeemer as he made the first as his Creatour and that an Act of general pardon and oblivion might secure us of forgiveness and everlasting life And that as we had a Rule to live by for preventing sin and misery we might have a Rule for our duty in order to our recovery 22. And what more convenient conditions could this Covenant have had than a believing and thankful Acceptance of the mercy and a penitent and obedient following of our Redeemer unto everlasting life 23. And how convenient is it that when our King is to depart from earth and keep his residence in the Court of Heaven he should appoint his Officers to manage the humane part of his remaining
these things and to expound all these Solemnities Laws and Ceremonies to them so that the frame of Church and State and Families was a preservative hereof 5. But to pass by all the rest in the Old Testament the Incarnation of Christ was such a work of Omnipotent Love as caâ—not by us be comprehended That God should be united to humanity in person that humanity should thus be advanced into union with the Deity and Man be set above the Angels that a Virgin should conceive that men from the East should be led thither to worship an Infant by the conduct of a Star which Caesarius thinketh was one of those Angels or Spirits which are called a flame of fire Psal 104.4 That Angels from Heaven should declare his nativity to the Shepherds and celebrate it with their praises that John Baptist should be so called to be his forerunner and Elizabeth Zachary Simeon and Anna should so prophesie of him That the Spirit should be seen descending on him at his Baptism and the voice be heard from Heaven which owned him that he should fast forty daies and nights and that he should be transfigured before his three Disciples on the Mount and Moses and Elias seen with him in that glory and the voice from Heaven again bear witness to him These and many such like were the attestations of Divine Omnipotency to the truth of Christ 6. To these may be next joyned the whole course of miracles performed by Christ in healing the sick and raising the dead and in many other miraculous acts which are most of the substance of the Gospel-history and which I have recited together in my Reasons of the Christian Religion see Heb. 2.2 3 4. 7. And to these may be added the Power which was given over all the creatures to Christ our Mediatour All power in Heaven and Earth was given him Joh. 17.2 13.3 Mat. 28.19 Rom. 14.9 Ephes 1.22 23. He was made Head over all things to the Church and all principalities and powers were put under him And this was not barely asserted by him but demonstrated He shewed his power over the Devils in casting them out and his power over Angels by their attendance and his power of life and death by raising the dead and his power over all diseases by healing them and his power over the winds and waters by appeasing them and his power over our food and natures by turning water into wine and by feeding many thousands miraculously yea and his power over them into whose hands he was resolved to yield himself by restraining them till his hour was come and by making them all fall to the ground at his name and his power over Sun and Heaven and Earth by the darkening of the Sun and the trembling of the Earth and the rending of the Rocks and of the Vail of the Temple Mat. 27.45 51. And his power over the dead by the rising of the bodies of many Mat. 27.52 And his power over the Saints in Heaven by the attendance of Moses and Elias and his power to forgive sins by taking away the penal maladies and his power to change hearts and save souls by causing his Disciples to leave all and follow him at a word and Zacheus to receive him and believe and the thief on the cross to be converted and to enter that day into Paradise 8. And his own Resurrection is an undoubted attestation of Divine Omnipotency If God gave him such a victory over death and raised him to life when men had killed him and rolled a stone upon his Sepulchre and sealed and guarded it there needeth no further evidence of the Power of God impressing and attesting the Christian Religion than that which ascertaineth to us the truth of Christs Resurrection For he was declared to be the Son of God by POWER by resurrection from the dead Rom. 1.4 9. And his bodily appearance to his congregated Disciples when the doors were shut his miracle at their fishing his walking on the Sea his vanishing out of their sight Luke 24. when he had discoursed with the two Disciples his opening their hearts to understand his Word c. do all shew this part of Gods Image on our Religion even his Power 10. And so doth his bodily ascending into Heaven before the face of his Disciples Acts 1. 11. But especially the sending down the Holy Ghost upon his Disciples according as he promised To cause them that were before so low in knowledge to be suddenly inspired with languages and with the full understanding of his own will and with unanimity and concord herein this made his Disciples the living monuments and effects of his own Omnipotency Acts 2. 12. And accordingly all the miracles which they did by this power recorded partly in the Acts of the Apostles or rather the Acts of Paul by Luke who was his companion which you may there read and no doubt but other Apostles in their measures did the like as Paul though they are not recorded for they had all the same Promise and Spirit This is another impression of POWER 13. Whereto must be added the great and wonderful gifts of communicating the same Spirit or doing that upon which God would give it to those converted Believers on whom they laid their hands which Simon Magus would fain have bought with money Acts 8. To enable them to speak with tongues to heal diseases to prophesie c. as they themselves had done which is a great attestation of Omnipotency 14. And the lamentable destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans foretold by Christ was an attestation of Gods POWER in the revenge or punishment of their unbelief and putting Christ to death 15. And so was the great fortitude and constancy of Believers who underwent all persecutions so joyfully as they did for the sake of Christ which was the effect of the corroborating Power of the Almighty 16. And so was the Power which the Apostles had to execute present judgements upon the enemies of the Gospel as Elimas and Simon Magus and on the abusers of Religion as Ananias and Saphyra and on many whom they excommunicated and delivered up to Satan 17. The same evidence is found in Christs Legislation as an universal Soveraign making Laws for heart and life for all the world Taking down the Laws of the Jewish Polity and Ceremonies which God by Moses had for a time set up Commanding his Ministers to proclaim his Laws to all the world and Princes and people to obey them And by these Laws conferring on Believers no less than forgiveness and salvation and binding over the impenitent to everlasting punishment 18. But the great and continued impress of Gods Power is that which together with his Wisdom and Love is made and shewed in the conveâ—sion of mens souls to God by Christ You may here first consider the numbers which were suddenly converted by the preaching of the Apostles at the first And in how little time there were Churches planted
though we must not with Fanatical persons put first our own interpretation upon Gods works and then expound his Word by them but use his works as the fulfilling of his Word and expound his Providences by his Precepts and his Promises and Threats Direct 7. Mark well Gods inward works of Government upon the soul and you shall find it very agreeable to the Gospel There is a very great evidence of a certain Kingdom of God within us And as he is himself a Spirit so it is with the Spirit that he doth most apparently converse in the work of his moral Government in the world 1. There you shall find a Law of duty or an inward conviction of much of that obedience which you owe to God 2. There you shall find an inward mover striving with you to draw you to perform this duty 3. There you shall find the inward suggestions of an enemy labouring to draw you away from this duty and to make a godly life seem grievous to you and also to draw you to all the sins which Christ forbiddeth 4. There you shall find an inward conviction that God is your Judge and that he will call you to account for your wilful violations of the Laws of Christ 5. There you shall find an inward sentence past upon you according as you do good or evil 6. And there you may find the sorest Judgements of God inflicted which any short of Hell endure You may there find how God for sin doth first afflict the soul that is not quite forsaken with troubles and affrightments and some of the feeling of his displeasure And where that is long despised and men sin on still he useth to with hold his gracious motions and leave the sinner dull and senseless so that he can sin with sinful remorse having no heart or life to any thing that is spiritually good And if yet the sinner think not of his condition to repent he is usually so far forsaken as to be given up to the power of his most bruitish lust and to glory impudently in his shame and to hate and persecute the servants of Christ who would recover him till he hath filled up the measure of his sin and wrath be come upon him to the uttermost Ephes 4.18 19. 1 Thes 2.15 16. being abominable and disobedient and to every good work reprobate Titus 1.15 16. Besides the lesser penal withdrawings of the Spirit which Gods own servants find in themselves after some sins or neglects of grace 7. And there also you may find the Rewards of Love and faithful duty by many tastes of Gods acceptance and many comforts of his Spirit and by his owning the soul and giving out larger assistance of his Spirit and peace of conscience and entertainment in prayer and all approaches of the soul to God and sweeter forecasts of life eternal In a word if we did but note Gods dreadful Judgements on the souls of the ungodly in this age as well as we have noted our plagues and flames and if Gods servants kept as exact observations of their inward rewards and punishments and that in particulars as suited to their particular sins and duties you will see that Christ is King indeed and that there is a real Government according to his Gospel kept up in the consciences or souls of men though not so observable as the rewards and punishments at the last day Direct 8. Dwell not too much on sensual objects and let them not come too near your hearts Three things I here perswade you carefully to avoid 1. That you keep your hearts at a meet distance from all things in this world that they grow not too sweet to you nor too great in your esteem 2. That you gratifie not sense it self too much and live not in the pleasing of your taste or lust 3. That you suffer not your imaginations to run out greedily after things sensitive nor make them the too frequent objects of your thoughts You may ask perhaps what is all this to our faith why the life of faith is exercised upon things that are not seen And if you live upon the things that are seen and imprison your soul in the fetters of your concupiscence and fill your fancies with things of another nature how can you be acquainted with the life of faith Can a bird flye that hath a stone tyed to her foot Can you have a mind full of lust and of God at once Or can that mind that is used to these inordinate sensualities be fit to rellish the things that are spiritual And can it be a lover of earth and fleshly pleasures and also a Believer and lover of Heaven Direct 9. Vse your selves much to think and speak of Heaven and the invisible things of Faith Speaking of Heaven is needful both to express your thoughts and to actuate and preserve them And the often thoughts of Heaven will make the mind familiar there And familiarity will assist and encourage faith For it will much acquaint us with those reasons and inducements of faith which a few strange and distant thoughts will never reach to As he that converseth much with a learned wise or godly man will easilier believe that he is learned wise or godly than he that is a stranger to him and only now and then seeth him afar off So he that thinketh so frequently of God and Heaven till his mind hath contracted a humble acquaintance and familiarity must needs believe the truth of all that excellency which before he doubted of For doubting is the effect of ignorance And he that knoweth most here believeth best Falshood and evil cannot bear the light but the more you think of them and know them the more they are detected and ashamed But truth and goodness love the light and the better you are acquainted with them the more will your belief and love be increased Direct 10. Live not in the guilt of wilful sin For that will many waies hinder your belief 1. It will breed fear and horrour in your minds and make you wish that it were not true that there is a day of Judgement and a Hell for the ungodly and such a God such a Christ and such a life to come as the Gospel doth describe And when you take it for your interest to be an unbeliever you will hearken with desire to all that the Devil and Infidels can say And you will the more easily make your selves believe that the Gospel is not true by how much the more you desire that it should not be true 2. And you will forfeit the grace which should help you to believe both by your wilfull sin and by your unwillingness to believe For who can expect that Christ should give his grace to them who wilfully despise him and abuse it Or that he should make men believe who had rather not believe Indeed he may possibly do both these but these are not the way nor is it a thing which we can expect
and use the language the motives and the employments of the Country and people where they live so he that is most familiar with such as live by Faith upon things unseen and take Gods promise for full security hath a very great help to learn and live that life himself Heb. 10.24 25. 1 Thes 4.17 18. Phil. 3.20 21. Direct 20. Forget not the nearness of the things unseen and think not of a long continuance in this world but live in continual expectation of your change Distant things be they never so great do hardly move us As in bodily motion the mover must be contiguous And as our senses are not fit to apprehend beyond a certain distance so our minds also are finite and have their bounds and measure And sin hath made them much narrower foolish and 〈◊〉 sighted than they would have been A certainty of dying 〈◊〉 last should do much with us But yet he that looketh to live long on earth will the more hardly live by Faith in Heaven when he that daily waiteth for his change will have easily the more serious and effectual thoughts of the world in which he must live next and of all the preparations necessary thereunto and will the more easily despise the things on earth which are the employment and felicity of the sensual Col. 3.1 2 3. Phil. 1.20 21 22 23. 1 Cor. 15.31 As we see it in constant experience in men when they see that they must presently die indeed how light then set they by the world how little are they moved with the talk of honour with the voice of mirth with the sight of meat or drink or beauty or any thing which before they had not power to deny and how seriously they will then talk of sin and grace of God and Heaven which before they could not be awakened to regard If therefore you would live by faith indeed set your selves as at the entrance of that world which faith foreseeth and live as men that know they may die to morrow and certainly must be gone ere long Dream not of I know not how many years more on earth which God never promised you unlâ—ss you make it your business to vanquish faith by setting its objects at a greater distance than God hath set them Learn Christs warning to one and all To watch and to be alwaies ready Mark 13.33 35 37. 1 Pet. 4 7. Mat. 24.44 Luke 12.40 He that thinketh he hath yet time enough and day-light before him will be the apter to loiter in his work or Journey When every man will make haste when the Sun is setting if he have much to do or far to go Delaies which are the great preventers of Repentance and undoers of the world do take their greatest advantage from this ungrounded expectation of long life When they hear the Physician say He is a dead man and there is no hope then they would fain begin to live and then how religious and reformed would they be whereas if this foolish errour did not hinder them they might be of the same mind all their lives and might have then done their work and waited with desire for the Crown and said with Paul For I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the Righteous Judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to them also that love his appearing 2 Tim. 4.6 7 8. And so much for the General Directions to be observed by them that will live by Faith I only add that as the well doing of all our particular duties dependeth most on the common health and soundness of the soul in its state of grace so our living by Faith in all the particular cases after instanced doth depend more upon these General Directions than on the particular ones which are next to be adjoyned CHAP. I. An Enumeration of the Particular Cases in which especially Faith must be used 1. How to live by Faith on GOD. THE General Directions before given must be practised in all the Particular Cases following or in order to them But besides them it is needful to have some special Directions for each Case And the particular Cases which I shall instance in are these 1. How to exercise Faith on GOD himself 2. Upon Jesus Christ 3. Upon the Holy Ghost 4. About the Scripture Precepts and Examples 5. About the Scripture Promises 6. About the Threatnings 7. About Pardon of sin and Justification 8. About Sanctification and the exercises of other Graces 9. Against inward vices and temptations to actual sin 10. In case of Prosperity 11. In Adversity and particular Afflictions 12. In Gods Worship publick and private 13. For Spiritual Peace and Joy 14. For the World and the Church of God 15. For our Relations 16. In loving others as our selves 17. About Heaven and following the Saints 18. How to die in Faith 19. About the coming of Christ to Judgement GOD is both the object of our knowledge as he is revealed in Nature and of our Faith as he is revealed in the holy Scriptures He is the first and last object of our Faith It is life eternal to know him the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent Ye believe in God believe also in me was Christs order in commanding and causing Faith Joh. 14.1 Seeing therefore this is the principal part of Faith to know God and live upon him and to him I shall give you many though brief Directions in it Direct 1. Behold the glorious and full demonstrations of the Being of the Deity in the whole frame of nature and especially in your selves The great argument from the Effect to the Cause is unanswerable All the caused and derived Beings in the world must needs have a first Being for their cause All Action Intellection and Volition all Power Wisdom and Goodness which is caused by another doth prove that the cause can have no less than the total effect hath To see the world and to know what a man is and yet to deny that there is a God is to be mad He that will not know that which all the world doth more plainly preach than words can possibly express and will not know the sense of his own Being and faculties doth declare himself uncapable of teaching Psal 14.1 49.12 20. Isa 1.2 3. It is the greatest shame that mans understanding is capable of to be ignorant of God 1 Cor. 15.34 and the greatest shame to any Nation Hos 4.1 6.6 As it is the highest advancement of the mind to know him and therefore the summ of all our duty Prov. 2.5 Hos 6 6· 2 Chron. 30.21 22. Isa 11.9 2 Pet. 2.20 Rom. 1.20 28. Joh. 17.3 Direct 2. Therefore take not the Being and Perfections of God for superstructures and
that ever will be committed is forgiven absolutely 6. The kind of our presenâ— Justification is imperfect it being but in Covenant-title and some part of execution the full and peâ—fâ—ct sentence and execution being at the day of Judgment I leave them therefore to say Christs Righteousness imputed to us is perfect therefore we are as perfectly just and justified as Christ who know not what Imputation here is nor that Christs personal Righteousness is not given to us as proprietors in it self but in the effects and who know not the difference between believing and blaspheming and making our selves as so many Christs to our selves and that know not what need they have of Christ or of Faith or Prayer or of any holy endeavour for any more Pardon and Righteousness or Justification than they have already Or who thinke that David in his Adultery and Murder was as perfectly pardoned and justified as he will be in Heaven at last And in a word who know not the difference between Earth and Heaven Errour 12. That Christ justifieth us only as a Priest Or say others only as obeying and satisfying Contr. Christ merited our Justification in his state of humiliation as the Mediator subjected to the Law and perfectly obeying it and as a sacrifice for sin But this is not justifying us Christ offered that sacrifice as the High Priest of the Church or world But this was not justifying us Christ made us the New Covenant as our King and as the great Prophet of the Father or Angel of the Covenant Mal. 3.1 And this Covenant giveth us our pardon and title to impunity and to life eternal And Christ as our King and Judge doth justifie us by a Judiciary Sentence and also by the execution of that sentence so that the relations most eminently appear in our Justification are all excluded by the foresaid errour Errour 13. That we are justified only by the first act of Faith and all our believing afterwards to the end of our lives are no justifying acts at all Contr. Indeed if the question be only about the Name of Justifying if you will take it only for our first change into a state of righteousness by pardon it is true But the following actâ— of Faith are of the same use and need to the continuing of our Justification or state of Righteousness as the first act was for the beginning of it Errour 14. That the continuance of our Justification needeth no other conditions to be by us performed than the continuance of that Faith on which it was begun Contr. Where that first Faith continueth there our Justification doth continue But that Faith never continueth without sincere obedience to Christ and that obedience is part of the condition of the continuance or not losing our Justification as is proved before and at large elsewhere The Faith which in Baptism we profess and by which we have our first Justification or Covenant-right is an accepting of Christ as our Saviour and Lord to be obeyed by us in the use of his saving remedies and we there vow and covenant future obedience And as our marriage to Christ or Covenant-making is all the condition of our first right to him and his benefits without any other good works or obedience so our Marriage-fidelity or Covenant keeping is part of the condition of our continuance herein or not losing it by a divorce John 15. Col. 1.23 c. Errour 15. That Faith is no condition of our part in Christ and our Justification but only one of Gods gifts of the Covenant given with Christ and Justification Errour 16. That the Covenant of Grace hath no conditions on our part but only donatives on Gods part Errour 17 That if the Covenant had any conditions it were not free And that every condition is a meritorious cause or at least some cause Contr. All these I have confuted at large elsewhere and proved 1. That Faith is a proper condition of those benefits which God giveth us by the conditional Covenant of Grace but not of all the benefits which he any other way giveth us It was not the condition of his giving Christ to live and die for us nor of his giving us the Gospel or this Covenant it self nor of his giving us Preachers or of the first motions of his Spirit nor was Faith the condition of the Faithâ—â—â—elf â—â—â—elf because all these are not given us in that way by that Covenant but absolutely as God shall please 2. That some Promises of God of the last mentioned gifts have no condition The promises of giving a Saviour to the world and the promise of giving and continuing the Gospel in the world and of converting many by it in the world and of making them Believers and giving them new hearts and bringing them to salvation c. have no conditions But these are promises made some of them to Christ only and some of them to fallen mankind or the world in general or predictions what God will do by certain men unborn unnamed and not described called the Elect. But all this giveth no title to Pardon or Justification or Salvation to any one person at all Remember therefore once for all that the Covenant which I still mean by the Covenant of Grace is that which God offereth men in Baptism by the acceptance whereof we become Christians 3. That Gods gift of a Saviour and New Covenant to the world are so free as to be without any condition But Gods gift of Christ with all his benefits of Justification Adoption c. to individual persons is so free as to be without and contrary to our desert but not so free as to be without any condition And that he that will say to God Thy grace of pardon is not free if thou wilt not give it me but on condition that I accept it yea or desire it or ask it shall prove a contemner of grace and a reproacher of his Saviour and not an exalter of free grace There is no inconsistency for God to be the giver of grace to cause us to believe and accept of Christ and yet to make a deed of gift of him to all on condition of that Faith and acceptance no more than it is inconsistent to give Faith and Repentance and to command them of both which the objecters themselves do not seem to doubt For he maketh both his command and his conditional form of Promise to be his chosen means and most wisely chosen of working in us the thing commanded 4. That a condition as a condition is no cause at all much less a meritorious cause But only the non-performance of it suspendeth the donation of the Covenant by the will of the Donor Or râ—â—her it is the Donors will that suspendeth it till the condition be done And some conditions signifie no more than a term of time and some in the matter of them and not in the form are a not-demeriting or not-abusing the Giver or not-despising the gift
this Trinity also of Relations towards Man 1. Their Owner 2. Their Ruler 3. Their Benefactor The Father also as the first principle of Redemption acquiring a second title besides the first by Creation to all these and towards God Christ continueth the Relation of a heavenly Priest 30. In order to the works of these Relations for the future we must consider of Christs exaltation 1. Of his Justification and Resurrection 2. Of his Ascension and Glorification And 3. Of the delivering of All Power and All Things into his hands 31. The work of Redemption thus fundamentally wrought doth not of it self renew mans nature and therefore putteth no Law of Nature into us of it self as the Creation did And therefore we must next proceed to Christs Administration of this office according to these Relations which is 1. By Legislation or Donation enacting the New Covenant where this last and perfect edition of it is to be explained the Preceptive the Promisory and the Penal parts with its effects and its differences from the former Edition and from the Law of Nature and of Works 32. And 2. By the promulgation or publication of this Covenant or Gospel to the world by calling special Officers for that work and giving them their commission and promising them his Spirit his Protection and their Reward 33. And here we come to the special work of the Holy Ghost who is 1. To be known in his Essence and Person as the third in Trinity and the eternal Love of God 2. And as he is the grand Advocate or Agent of Christ in the world where his works are to be considered 1. Preparatory on and by Christ himself 2. Administratory 1. Extraordinary on the Apostles and their helpers 1. Being in them a spirit of extraordinary Power by gifts and miracles 2. Of extraordinary Wisdom and Infallibility as far as their commission-work required 3. And of extraordinary Love and Holiness 2. By the Apostles 1. Extraordinarily convincing and bringing in the world 2. Settling all Church-Doctrines Officers and Orders which Christ had left unsettled bringing all things to their remembrance which Christ had taught and commanded them and guiding them in the rest 3. Recording all this for posterity in the holy Scriptures 2. His Ordinary Agency 1. On Ministers 2. By sanctification on all true Believers is after to be opened 34. And here is to be considered the Nature of Christianity in fieri Faith and Repentance in our three great Relations to our Redeemer as we are his Own his Disciples and Subjects and his Beneficiaries with all the special benefits of these Relations as antecedent to our duty and then all our duty in them as commanded And then the benefits after to be expected as in promise only 35. Next must distinctly be considered the preaching and converting and baptizing part of the ministerial Office 1. As in the Apostles 2. And in their successors to the end with the nature of Baptism and the part of Christ and of the Minister and of the baptized in that Covenant 36. And then the description of the universal Church which the baptized constitute 37. Next is to be described the state of Christians after Baptism 1. Relative 1. In Pardon Reconciliation Justification 2. Adoption 2. Physical in the Spirit of Sanctification 38. Where is to be opened 1. The first sanctifying work of the Spirit 2. It s after-helps and their conditions 3. All the duties of Holiness primitive and medicinal towards God our selves and others 39. Our special duties in secret reading meditation prayer c. 40. Our duties in Family Relations and Callings 41. Our duties in Church Relations where is to be described the nature of particular Churches their work and worship their ministry and their members with the duties of each 42. Our duties in our Civil Relations 43. What temptations are against us as be to be overcome 44. Next is to be considered the state of Christians and Societies in the world How far all these duties are performed and what are their weaknesses and sins 45. And what are the punishments which God useth in this life 46. And what Christians must do for pardon and reparation after falls and to be delivered from those punishments 47. Of Death and the change which it maketh and of our special preparation for it 48. Of the coming of Christ and the Judgement of the great day 49. Of the punishment of the wicked impenitent in Hell 50. And of the blessedness of the Saints in Heaven and the everlasting Kingdom These are the Heads and this is the Method of true Divinity and the order in which it should lye in the understanding of him that will be compleat in knowledge II. And as this is the Intellectual Order of knowledge so the order which all things must lye in at our hearts and wills is much more necessary to be observed 1. That nothing but GOD be loved as the infinite simple good totally with all the heart and finally for himself And that nothing at all be loved with any Love which is not purely subordinate to the Love of God or which causeth us to love him ever the less 2. That the blessed person of our Mediatour as in the Humane Nature glorified be loved above all creatures next to God Because there is most of the Divines Perfections appearing in him 3. That the heavenly Church or Society of Angels and Saints be loved next to Jesus Christ as being next in excellence 4. That the Vniversal Church on earth be loved next to the perfect Church in Heaven 5. That particular Churches and Kingdoms be next loved and where ever there is more of Gods Interest and Image than in our selves that our Love be more there than on our selves 6. That we next love our selves with that peculiar kind of love which God hath made necessary to our duty and our happiness and end with a self-preserving watchful diligent love preferring our souls before our bodies and spiritual mercies before temporal and greater before less 7. That we love our Christian Relations with that double Love which is due to them as Christians and Relations and love all Relations according to their places with that kind of Love which is proper for them as fitting us to all the duties which we must perform to them 8. That we love all good Christians as the sanctified members of Christ with a special Love according to the measure of Gods Image appearing on them 9. That we love every visible Christian that we cannot prove hath unchristened himself by apostacy or ungodliness with the special Love also belonging to true Christians because he appeareth such to us But yet according to the measure of that appearance as being more confident of some and more doubtful of others 10. That we love our intimate suitable friends that are godly with a double Love as godly and as friends 11. That we love Neighbours and civil Relations with a Love which is suitable to
they are the sins of those faculties over which the will hath not a despotical power As a man may be truly willing to have no sluggishness heaviness sleepiness at prayer no forgetfulness no wandering thoughts no inordinate appetite or lust at all stirring in him no sudden passions of anger grief or fear he may be willing to love God perfectly to fear him and obey him perfectly but cannot These latter are the ordinary infirmities of the godly The former sort are if at all his extraordinary falls Rom. 7.14 to the end 6. Lastly The true Christian riseth by unfeigned Repentance when his conscience hath but leisure and helps to deliberate and to bethink him what he hath done And his Repentance much better resolveth and strengtheneth him against his sin for the time to come To summ up all 1. Sin more loved than hated 2. Sin wilfully lived in which might be avoided by the sincerely willing 3. Sin made light of and not truly repented of when it is committed 4. And any sin inconsistent with habitual Love to God in predominancy is mortal or a sign of spiritual death and none of the sins of sanctified Believers CHAP. XIV How to live by Faith in Prosperity THE work of Faith in respect of Prosperity is twofold 1. To save us from the danger of it 2. To help us to a sanctified improvement of it 1. And for the first that which Faith doth is especially 1. To see deeper and further into the nature of all things in the world than sense can do 2 Cor. 4.17 18. 1 Cor. 7.29 30 31. To see that they were never intended for our Rest or portion but to be our wilderness provision in our way To foresee just how the world will use us and leave us at the last and to have the very same thoughts of it now as we foresee that we shall have when the end is come and when we have had all that ever the world will do for us It is the work of Faith to cause a man to judge of the world and all its glory as we shall do when death and judgment come and have taken off the mask of splendid names and shews and flatteries that we may use the world as if we used it not and possess it as if we possest it not because its fashion doth pass away It is the work of Faith to crucifie the world to us and us to the world by the Cross of Christ Gal. 6.14 that we may look on it as disdainfully as the world looked upon Christ when he hanged as forsaken on the Cross That when it is dead it may have no power on us and when we are dead to it we may have no inordinate love or care or thoughts or fears or grief or labour to lay out upon it It is the work of Faithâ—o â—o make all worldly pomp and glory to be to us but loss and dross and dung in comparison of Christ and the righteousness of Faith Phil. 3.7 8 9. And then no man will part with Heaven for dung nor set his God below his dung nor further from his heart nor will he feel any great power in temptations to honour wealth or pleasure if really he count them all but dung nor will he wound his conscience or betray his peace or cast away his innocency for them 2. Faith sheweth the soul those sure and great and glorious things which are infinitely more worthy of our love and labour And this is its highest and most proper work Heb. 11. it conquereth Earth by opening Heaven and shewing it us as sure and clear and near And no man will dote on this deceitful world till he have turned away his eyes from God and till Heaven be out of his sight and heart Faith saith I must shortly be with Christ and what then are these dying things to me I have better things which God that cannot lye hath promised me with Christ Titus 1.2 Heb. 6.18 I look every day when I am called in The Judge standeth before the door James 5.9 The Lord is at hand Phil. 4.5 And the end of all these things is at hand 1 Pet. 4.7 And shall I set my heart on that which is not Therefore when the world doth smile and flatter faith setteth Heaven against all that it can say or offer And what is the world when Heaven stands by Faith seeth what the blessed souls above possess at the same time while the world is alluring us to forsake it Luke 16. Heb. 11. 12.1 2. c. Faith setteth the heart upon the things above as our concernment oâ—r only hope and happiness It kindleth that Love of God in the soul and that delight in higher things which powerfully quencheth worldly love and mortifieth all our carnal pleasures Matth. 6.20.21 Col. 3.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.5 6 7. Phil. 30.20 21. 3. Faith sheweth the soul those wants and miseries in it self which nothing in the world is able to supply and cure Nay such as the world is apter to increase It is not gold that will quench his thirst who longs for pardon grace and glory A guilâ—y conscience a sinful and condemned soul will never be cured by riches or high places by pride or flâ—shly sports and pleasures James 5.1 2 3. This humbling work is not in vain 4. Faith looketh to Christ who hath overcome the world and carefully treadeth in his stâ—ps John 16.33 Heb. 12.2 3 4 5. It looketh to his person his birth his life his cross his grave and his resurrection to all that strange example of contempt of worldly things which he gave us from his manger to his shameful kind of death And he that studieth the Life of Christ will either despise the world or him He will either vilifie the world in imitation of his Lord or vilifie Christ for the pleasures of the world Faith hath in this warfare the surest and most onourable guide the ablest Captain and the most powerful example in all the world And it hath with Christian unerring Rule which furnisheth him with armour for every use Yea it hath through him a promise of Victory before it be aâ—tained so that in the beginning of the fight it knows the end Rom. 16.20 John 16.33 It goeth to Christ for that Spirit which is our strengâ—h Ephes 6.10 Câ—l 2.7 And by that it mortifieth the desires of the flesh and when â—he flesh is mortified the world is conquered for it is loved only as it is the provision of the flâ—sh 5. Moreover Faith doth observe Gods particular Providence who distributeth his talents to every man as he pleaseth and disposeth of their estates and comforts so that the Race is not to the swift nor the Victory to the strong nor Riches to men of understanding Eccles 9.11 Therefore it convinceth us that our lives and all being in his hand it is our wisdom to make it our chiefest care to use all so as is most pleasing unto him 2 Cor. 5.8
2. It setteth you at enmity with God and holiness because God controlleth and condemneth your beloved lusts and because it is contrary to the carnal things which have your hearts 2. By this means it maketh men malignant enemies of the godly and persecutors of them because they are of contrary minds and waies As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit even so it is now Gal. 4.29 The world cannot love us because we are not of the world John 15.19 20. Pride covetousness and sensuality are the matter which the burning Feaver lodgeth in which hath consumed so much of the Church of Christ 4. It is the sin that hath corrupted the sacred Office of the Ministry throughout most of the Christian Churches in the world And thereby caused both the Schisms and Cruelties and the decay of serious godliness among them which is their present deplorable case Ignorant persons are like sick men in a Feaver They lay the blame on this and that and commonly on that which went next before the paroxism and know not the true cause of the disease We are all troubled or should be to see the many minds the many waies the confused state of the Christian Churches and to hear them cry out against each other And one layeth the blame on this party or opinion and another on that But when we come to our selves we shall find that it is The worldly mind that causeth our calamity Many well meaning friends of the Church do think how dishonourable it is to the Ministry to be poor and low and consequently despicable and what an advantage is it to their work to be able to relieve the poor and rather to oblige the people than to depend upoâ— them and to be above them rather than below them And supposing the Pastors to be mortified holy heavenly men all this is true and the zeal of these thoughts is worthy of commendation But that which good men intend for good hath become the Churches bane So certain is the common saying that Constantines zeal did poison the Church by lifting up the Pastors of it too high and occasioning those contentions for grandure and precedency which to this day separate the East and West When well-meaning Piety hath adorned the office with wealth and honour it is as true as that the Sun shineth that the most proud ambitious worldly men will be the most studious seekers of that office and will make it their plot and trade and business how by friends and observances and wills to attain their ends And usually he that seeks shall find when in the mean time the godly mortified humble man will not do so but will serve God in the state to which he is clearly called And consequently except it be under the Government of an admirably wise and holy Ruler a worthy Pastor in such a wealthy station will be a singular thing and a rarity of the age whilst worldly men whose hearts are habited with that which is utterly contrary to holiness and contrary to the very ends and work of their own office will be the men that must sit in Moses Chair that must have the doing and ruling of the work which their hearts are set against And how it will go with the Church of Christ when the Gospel is to be preached and Preachers chosen and Godliness promoted by the secret enemies of it and when ambitiâ—us fleshly worldly men are they that must cure the peoples souls under Christ of the love of the flesh and the world it were easie to prognosticate from the causes if the Christian world could not tell by the effects so that except by the wonderful Piety of Princes there is no visible way in the eye of reason to recover the miserable Churches but to retrive the Pastoral Office into such a state as that it may be no bait to a worldly mind but may be desired and chosen purely upon heavenly accounts And then the richer the Pastors are the better when they are the Sons of Nobles whose Piety bringeth with them their honour and their wealth to serve God and his Church with and they do not find it there to be their end or inducement to the work But instead of invitations or encouragements to pride and carnal minds there may be only so much as may not deter or drive away candidates from the sacred Function 5. Worldliness is a sin which maketh the Word of God unprofitable Mat. 13.22 John 12.43 Ezek. 33.31 prepossessing the heart and resisting that Gospel which would extirpate it 6. It hindereth Prayer by corrupting mens desires and by intruding worldly thoughts 7. It hindereth all holy Meditation by turning both the heart and thoughts another way 8. It drieth up all heavenly profitable Conference whilst the world doth fill both mind and mouth 9. It is a great profaner of the Lords Day distracting mens minds and alienating them from God 10. It is a murderous enemy of Love to one another All worldly men being so much for themselves that they are seldom hearty friends to any other 11. Yea it maketh men false and unrighteous in their dealings There being no trust to be put in a worldly man any further than you are sure you suit his interest 12. It is the great cause of discord and divisions in the world It setteth Families Neighbours and Kingdoms together by the ears and setteth the Nations of the earth in bloody wars to the calamity and destruction of each other 13. It causeth cheating stealing robbing oppressions cruelties lying false-witnessing perjury murders and many such other sins 14. It maketh men unfit to suffer for Christ because they love the world above him and consequently it maketh them as Apostates to forsake him in a time of tryal 15. It is a great devourer of precious time That short life which should be spent in preparing for eternity is almost all spent in drudging for the world 16. Lastly It greatly unfitteth men to die and maketh them loth to leave the world And no wonder when there is no entertainment for worldlings in any better place hereafter Direct 6. If you would be saved from the world and the snares of prosperity foresee death and judge of the world 〈◊〉 it will appear and use you at the last Dream not of long life He that looks to stay but a little while in the world will be the less careful of his provisions in it A little will serve for a little tâ—me The grave is a sufficient disgrace to all the vanities on earth though there must be more to raise the heart to Heaven Direct 7. Mâ—rtifie the flesh and you overcome the world Cure the thirsty disease and you will need none of the worldlings waies to satisfie it When the flesh is mastered there it no use for plenty or pleasures or honours to satisfie its lusts Your daily bread to fit you for your work will then suffice Direct 8.
blessed way in which Christ and all the heavenly Army have passed hence unto their Crown You would say Is the servant greater than his Lord If thus the innocent Lord of life and Master of the house was injured and afflicted am I better than he Though he suffered to save me from Hell yet not to save me from the purifying tryals here on earth Doubtless you would count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ and count them but dung that you might win him and that you might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death Phil. 3.8 10. Direct 8. Keep the eye of Faith still fixed on the eternal glory that you may understand what affliction is when you take it with its end Remember what eternal Joyes it leadeth to and what thoughts you will have of all your pain when you find your selves in the everlasting rest Remember where all tearâ— shall be wiped from your eyes and who dare blame that way as narrow or soul which bringeth us to such an end Psal 126.5 6. They that sâ—w in tears shall reap in joy He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoycing bringing his sheaves with him Mat. 5.4 Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Is not eternal joy sufficient for you When you are suffering with the Church militant look up to the Church triumphant and remember that they were lately as low as sad as sorrowful as you and you shall shortly be as high as glad as joyful as they Look into Heaven and see what you suffer for and think whether that be not worthy of harder terms than any you can undergo Rom. 8.17 18. If we suffer with him that we may be also glorified together For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us 2 Cor. 4 16 17 18. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light afflâ—ction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory While we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens Heaven well believed will enable us patiently and chearfully to bear all things He will account the very reproach of Christ to be greater riches than the treasures of the world who looketh believingly to the recompence of reward Heb. 11.26 Direct 9. Learn to die and then you have learned to suffer He that can bear death by the power of faith can bear almost any thing And he that is well prepared to die is prepared for any affliction and he that is not is unprepared for prosperity Direct 10. Remember still that life being so very short the afflictions of Believers are as short We have so little a time to live that we have but a little while to suffer And if thou faint in the day of adversity when it is so little a while to night thy strength is small Prov. 24.10 Direct 11. Remember that thou bearest but the common burden of the Sons of Adam who are born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward And that thou in like to all the members of Christ who must take up their cross and suffer with him if they will reign with him And that thou art but going the common way to Heaven which that heavenly society hath trod before thee And canst thou expect to be exempted both from the lot of humane lapsed nature and from the lot of all the Saints If thou wouldest be carryed to Heaven in the Chariot of Elias and couldest expect to escape the jaws of death yet must thou endure the persecution weariness and hunger of Elias before such a change Direct 12. Think also how unreasonable it is for one that must have eternal glory to grudge at a little suffering in the way and for one that is saved from the torments of Hell to think it much to be duly chastened on earth For a Lazarus that must be comforted in Abraham's bosom to murmure that he waiteth a while in poverty at the rich mans doors Shall a wicked worldling venture into endless pains and put himself out of the hopes of Heaven and all this for a short and foolish pleasure And will you grudge to suffer so small and short a chastisement in the way to an endless rest and joy Direct 13. Think why it is that Christ hath so largely commended and blest a suffering state and chosen such a life for those that he will save And why he so often pronounceth a woe to the prosperous world It is not for want of love to his Disciples nor for want of power to secure their peace Matth. 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Luke 6.24 25 26. Woe to you that are rich for you have received your consolation Woe to you that are full for ye shall hunger Woe unto you that laugh now for ye shall mourn and weep Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you for so did their Fathers to the false Prophets James 1.2 3. My Brethren count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations that is trying afflictions knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience James 5.1 2. Go too now ye 〈◊〉 men weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you All these words are not for nothing And judge how he should think of adversity who believeth them Direct 14. Mark well whether you find not that your selves and others are usually much better in affliction than in prosperity And whether there be not something in the one to make you better and in the other to delude men and make them worse O look and tremble at the dangers and dolâ—ful miseries of most that are lifted high how they are blinded flattered captivated in sin and are the shame of nature and the calamity of the world And mark when they come to die or lie in sickness how inlightened how penitent how humble how mortified and reformed they then seem to be and how much they condemn all sin and justifie a holy life And observe your selves whether you be not wiser and better more penitent and less worldly in an afflicted state And will you think that intollerable which so much bettereth almost all the world Alas were it not for affliction
Stand in awe and sin not Offer the sacrifices of righteousness Psal 51.17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit Matth. 9.13 12.7 Learn what this meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice Eccles 5.1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God and be more ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools for they know not that they do evil All this telleth us that fools and hypocrites while they disobey Gods Law do think to make up all with sacrifice or to appease God with offering him something that is excellent But the acceptable Worshipper cometh to God as a penitent a learner resolving to obey as a Receiver of mercy and not a meriter Direct 2. Over-value not therefore the manner of your own Worship and over-vilifie not other mens of a different mode And make not men believe that God is of your childish humour and valueth or vilifieth words and orders and forms and ceremonies as much as self-conceited people do If one man hear another pray only from the habits of his mind and present desires he reproacheth him as a rash presumptuous speaker that talketh that to God which he never fore-considered As if a beggar did rashly ask an alms or a corrected child or a malefactor did inconsiderately beg for pardon unless they learn first the words by rote or as if all mens converse and the words of Judges on the Bench were all rash or the counsel of a Physician to his Patient because they use not books and forms or set not down their words long before And if another man hear a form of prayer especially if it be read out of a Book and especially if it have any disorder or defect he sticketh not to revise it and call it false Worship and mans Inventions and perhaps Idolatry and to fly from it and make the world believe that it is an odious thing which God abhorreth And why so Are your words so much more excellent than the words of others Or doth the Book or Press or Pen make them odious to God Or are all words baâ— which are resolved on before-hand Is the Lords Prayer and the Psalms all odious because they are book-forms Or doth the command of other men make God hate them Let Parents take heed then of commanding their children prescribed words Nay rather let them take heed lest they omit such prescripts Or is it the disorder or defects that makes them odious Such are not to be justified indeed where-ever we find them But woe to us all if God will not pardon disorders and defects and accept the prayers that are guilty of them Many a time I have heard such forms of prayers whose disorders and defects I have much lamented and done my part to have cured and yet I durst not so reproach them as to say God will not accept and hear them Or that it is unlawful to joyn in communion with them And many a time I have heard as sad disorder in extemporate prayers sometimes by wrong methods or no method at all sometimes by vain repetitions sometimes by omitting the chiefest parts of prayer and sometimes in the whole strein by turning a prayer into a Sermon to the hearers or a meer talk or narrative to God that had little of a prayer in it save very good matter and honest zeal And though this prayer was more disorderly than the forms which perhaps in that prayer were accused of disorder yet durst I not run away from this neither nor say it is so bad that God will not hear it nor good men should have no comunion in it It is easie but abominable to fall in love with our own and to vilifie that which is against our opinion and to think that God is of our mind and is as fond of our mode and way as we are and as exceptious against the way or words of other men as childish pievish Christians are Look on your Book and read or learn your prayer in words saith one or else God will not hear you Look off your Book and read not or learn not the words saith another or God will not hear you But oh lamentable that both of them tremble not thus to abuse God and add unto his Word and to prophesie or speak falsly against their brethren in his Name nor to reproach the prayers which Christ presenteth from his servants to the Father and which notwithstanding their defects are his delight Direct 3. Offer God nothing as worship which is contrary to the perfection of his Nature as far as you can avoid it And yet feign not that to be contrary to his nature which he commandeth For then it is certain that you misunderstand either his nature or command Direct 4. Never come to the Father but by the Son and dream not of any immediate access of a sinner unto God but wholly trust in Christs mediation Receive the Fathers will from Christ your Teacher and his commands from Christ your King and all his mercies from Christ your Head and the Treasury of the Church and your continual Intercessor with God in Heaven And put all your prayers praises duties alms into his hand that through him alone they may be accepted of God Direct 5. Understand well how far the Scripture is a particular Rule as to the substance of Gods Worship and how far it is only a general Rule as to the circumstances that so you may neither offer God a Worship which he will not accept nor yet reject or oppose all those circumstances as unlawful which are warranted by his general commands Of which I have said enough elsewhere Direct 6. Look first and most to the exercise of inward grace and to the spiritual part of Worship for God will be worshiped in spirit and in truth and hateth the Hypocrite who offereth him a carkass or empty shell and ceremony and pomp or length of words instead of substance and draweth neer him with the lips without the heart And yet in the second place look carefully also to your words and order and outward behaviour of the body For God must be honoured with soul and body And order and reverend solemnity is both a help to the affections of the soul and a fit expression of them Never forget that hypocritical dead formality and ignorant self-conceited fanatical extravagancies are the two extreams by which the Devil hath laboured in all ages to turn Christs Worship against him and to destroy the Church and Religion by such false Religiousness The poor Popish Formalists on one side mortifie Religion and turn it into a carkass and a comely Image that hath any thing save life And the Fanaticks on the other side do call all the enormities of their proud and blustering fancies by the name of spiritual devotion and do their worst to make Christianity to seem a ridiculous fancy to the world Escape both these extreams as ever you will escape the dishonouring of God the dividing and
a word or two or none at all in the daily prayers of most Professors And it is rare to hear any to pray with any importunity for their conversion Is this mens love to mankind Is this their love to the Kingdom of Christ or to God and Godliness Is God of as narrow a mind as you Are you and your party all the world or all the Church or all that is to be regarded and prayed for Direct 2. Do not only pray for them but study what is within the reach of your power to do for their conversion For though private men can do little in comparison of what Christian Princes might do who must not be told their duty by such as I. Yet somewhat might be done by Merchants and their Chaplains if skill and zeal were well united and somewhat might be done by writing and translating such books as are fittest for this use And greater matters might be done by training up some Scholars in the Persian Indostan Tartarian and such other languages who are for mind and body fitted for that work and willing with due encouragement to give up themselves thereto Were such a Colledge erected natives might be got to teach the languages and no doubt but God would put into the hearts of many young men to devote themselves to so excellent a service and of many rich men to settle Lands sufficient to maintain them and many Merchants would help them in their expedition But whether those that God will so much honour be yet born I know not Direct 3. Pray and labour for the Reformation and Concord of all the Christian Churches as the most probable means to win to Christ the world of Heathens and Vnbelievers If the Protestant Churches were more pure and peaceable more holy and more unanimous and charitable to each other it would do much to win the Papists that are near them And if the Papists and Greeks and Armenians and Abassines were more reformed wise and holy it would do much to win the Heathens and Mahometanes round about them They would be the salt of the earth and the lights of the world and the leaven which must leaven the whole lump The neighbouring Mahometanes and Heathens would see their good works and glorifie God Matth. 5.16 A holy harmless loving conversation is a Sermon which men of all languages can understand Thus as Apostles we might preach to men of several tongues though we have but one O that the sanctifying Spirit would teach Christians this art and reform and unite the Churches of Christ that they might be no longer a scandal to hinder the saving of the world about them It is the sense of Christs prayer before his death John 17.21 22 23 25. that they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that the world may believe that thou hast sent me I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in One and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me Direct 4. Be sure at least that your holy loving and blameless loves be an example to these that are about you If you cannot convert Kingdoms nor get other men to do their duty towards it be sure that you do your part within your reach And believe that your lives must be the best part of your labours and that good works and love and good example must be the first part of your doctrine Direct 5. When you see that the world lyeth still in wickedness and there seemeth to be no possibility of a cure yet search the Scripture and so far as you can find any Prophecy or Promise of their conversion believe that God in his time will make it good Direct 6. But take heed that on this pretence you plunge not your selves into any inordinate studies or conceited expositions of the Revelations and other Scripture Prophecies as many have done to the great wrong of themselves and the Church of God By inordinate studies I mean 1. When you begin there where you should end and before you have digested the necessary greater truths in Theology you go to those that should come after them 2. When an undue proportion of your zeal and time and study and talk is bestowed upon these Prophecies in comparison of other things 3. When you are proudly and causlesly conceited of your singular expositions That when of ten of the learnedest and hardest studied Expositors of the Revelation perhaps in many things scarce two are of a mind yet when you differ from them all or all save one you can be as peremptory and confident in your opinion as if you were far wiser or more infallible than they 4. When you place a greater necessity in it than there is as if salvation or Church-communion lay upon your conceits Whereas God hath made the points that are of necessity to salvation to be few and plain Direct 7. When you look on the sin and misery of the world and see small hope of its recovery look up by Faith to that better world where all is Light and Love and Peace And pray for that coming of Christ when all this sin shall be brought to Judgment and wisdom and godliness be fully justified before all the world Let the badness of this world drive up your hearts to that above where all is better than you can wish Direct 8. When you are ready to stumble at the consideration of Gods desertion of so great a part of the world quiet your minds in the implicite submission to his infinite wisdom and goodness Dare you think that you are more gracious and merciful than God Or that it is meet you should know all the secrets of his providence who must not know the mysteries oâ— Government in the State or Kingdom where you live He that cannot rest in the wisdom will and mercies of infinite Goodness it self but must have all his own expectations satisfied shall have no rest And think withall how little a spot of Gods Creation this earthly world is and how incomprehensibly vast the superiour Regions are in comparison of it And if all the upper parts of the world be possessed with none but holy Spirits and even this lower earth have also many millions of Saints prepared here for the things above we have no more reason to judge God to be unmerciful because this lower world is so bad than we have to judge the King unmerciful when we look into the common Jayle nor to judge of his government by the Rogues in a Jayle but by his Court and all the subjects of his Kingdom If God should forsake no place but Hell of all his Creation you could not grudge at him as unmerciful And it is a very hard question whether this earth and the air about it be not the place of Hell when you consider that the Devils are cast down from Heaven and yet that they dwell and rule in
fully shew so also shall the Saints And it is not likely that this is wholly deferred till the resurrection but as they have a Glory before that with Christ and his Angels so they have now their part in this Superintendency before though both will be greater at the Resurrection If any say what use will there be of our superiority after the world is destroyed I answer 1. The Apostle Peter plainly telleth us though some would force his words into the dark that we according to his promise expect a new Heaven and a new Earth in which dwelleth righteousness And the Creation groaneth to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Rom. 8.21 And the Heavens must contain Christ till the times of Restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy Prophets since the world began Acts 3.21 2. And he that said the Saints shall judge the Angels seemeth so intimate that the Devils with the wicked will be in a state of subjection or servitude to them hereafter Certain it is that Michael and his Angels shall be the conquerours of the Dragon and his Angels Rev. 12.7 9. And that the Serpents head shall be bruised by all the womans seed though chiefly by the Captain of our salvation But this shall now suffice concerning their employment 3. Behold also by Faith what the departed Saints are now enjoying And what is said of their place and work will tell you that They enjoy the fight of their glorified Head Joh. 17.24 They are with him in Paradise and therefore also enjoy the sight of the Glory of God Being absent from the body they are present with the Lord 2 Cor. 5.8 They see not as in a glass as here they did but with open face They enjoy the pleasures of a more perfect knowledge of God and all his wondrous works than this world affords They are happy in their works in the perfect Love and Praises of God and they are filled with the pleasures of his Love to them This is their fruition 4. Let Faith also behold what evils they are delivered from 1. From a heavy drossy body which since the fall hath been an enemy a prison and fetters to the soul and therefore they here groaned to be better cloathed 2 Cor. 5.4 5. Rom. 8.21 2. From the worlds temptations 3. From wicked mens malice and persecutions 4. From sickness pain necessities labours weariness and all the troublesome effects of sin 5. From all troublesome passions desires anger discontent disappointments griefs and cares and fears of evil 6. Specially from the fears of Hell and the doubts of their own sincerity and salvation and from the desertions of God and the terrible sense of his displeasure 7. From the troubles and errours of ignorance and all our natural imperfection 8. From the fears of death which now is more painful than death it self 9. From the suggestions of Satan and his malicious vexing disquieting temptations and from his flattering allurements which are much worse 10. From the company and the tempting or grieving examples of ungodly men 11. From all sin it self and all our moral imperfections and defects 12. And finally from all danger and fear of ever losing the felicity they possess These are the immunities of the blessed 2. When Faith hath seen the Saints in Glory look back and think next what they were lately here on earth that it may help you to compare your state and theirs And here you will see 1. That they were lately in flesh as we now are They had bodies as drossie as vile as frail as burdensome as ours are It cost them as dear not as it doth the sensual but as it doth the temperate person now to keep them up a while for the service to which they were appointed 2. They had pains and sicknesses as we have The souls in Heaven have escaped thither from bodies which have lain as long tormented with the Stone with Stranguries Collicks Gripes Convulsions Consumptions Feavers and other the most tedious painful and lothsome diseases as sober men on earth now feel 3. Satan was as malicious to them as he is to us and to many of them as troublesome he haunted them with as ugly temptations to the greatest sins to unbelief and pride and despair and self-murder and horrid blasphemy as he doth any of us Yea he did so by Christ himself Matth. 4. 4. They met with as many allurements to worldliness sensuality pride and lust in the worlds deceiving baits and flatteries as now we do and were fain to proceed every step towards Heaven by conflict and conquest as we must do 5. They were in as many wants and straits in as poor and low and despised a state as we are now They were tempted to cares and murmurings and discontents through their wants and crosses as well as we 6. They have been in dangers and in fears and many a time at the brink of death before it came and put to cry to God for deliverance in the terrours and anguish of their hearts Their flesh and heart and friends have failed them and all the creatures cast them off 7. They have gone through far greater persecutions for the sake of Christ and righteousness than ever we did So persecuted they the Prophets before you Mat. 5.11 12. Which of the Prophets did not your Fathers kill and persecute even of them for whom their posterity erected Monuments Matth. 23.36 37 38. We have not resisted unto blood as many of them did Heb. 11. The same and greater afflictions which we have undergone were accomplished on our brethren in this world 1 Pet. 5.9 We go through the same conflict as they did Phil. 1.30 We are no more falsly nor odiously slandered in any of our sufferings than they were Mat. 5.11 12. 8. They were men of like passions as we are for so James saith even of Elias that was carryed to Heaven without our kind of death They had their ignorances uncertainties doubts mistakes their dark thoughts of God and that world where they now are Many of them knew as little of it till they saw it as we do now Many a fearful trembling hour many a thought that God had forsaken them and that the day of grace was past have many of them had as well as we 9. Yea they were imperfect in all their graces they had an imperfect faith an imperfect hope an imperfect Love to God and man and many an hour in such groans as ours now are O when shall we be saved from our darkness and unbelief when shall we better love the Lord 10. They had their actual sins also Though none that were regnant after conversion their obedience was imperfect as ours now is Many of their faults and falls are left on record for our warning There is not one humane soul in Heaven besides our Saviours that was not once a sinner They all came thither
by a Redeemer as we must do They had their too great selfishness Phil. 2.21 They had their pusillanimity and fears of men as Peter and the Apostles They had their sinful controversies as Paul and Barnabas and sinful separations in complyance with the censorious as Peter and Barnabas had Gal. 2.16 17. They had their carnal sidings factions and divisions in the Church 1 Cor. 1. 3. Many a time have they been put to groan O wretched man who shall deliver me from this body of death Rom. 7 c. 11. They had as difficult duties to go through as any of us They were put upon as many tears and troubles watchings and travels fastings and self-denyal as the most laborious and suffering Christians now 12. They had as long delayes of the accomplishment of their desires as any of us 13. And lastly they past through death it self as we must do They lay gasping on their beds of languâ—shing and death broke in upon every part and they underwent that separation of soul and body as we must do Their flesh was turned to rottenness and dust and laid out of the sight of man in darkness and remaineth to this day as common earth All this the Saints in Heaven have undergone This was their case a while ago who are now in glory And this was not only the case of some few but of thousands and millions and that in the most of these particulars even of all that are gone before us unto blessedness It is not we that are tempted first that are persecuted or afflicted first that have sinned first that must die first but all this host hath broke the Ice and are safely past through this Red Sea and are now triumphing in felicity with their Saviour Direct 3. Let Faith next look back and see by what way these Saints have come to this felicity I mean by what means they did overcome and win the Crown And briefly you will find 1. That they all came to Heaven by the Mediation the Sacrifice the meritorious Righteousness of a Redeemer Jesus Christ either as promised or as incarnate none of them were justified by the works of the Law or the Covenant of Innocency 2. That their common way was by Faith Repentance Love and Obedience Not by works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed oâ— us abundently through Christ Titus 3.5 Even by the triple Image of the Divine perfections Power Love and Wisdom 2 Tim. 1.7 They lived soberly righteously and godly in the world and were zealous of good works looking for the blessed hope which they have attained Titus 2.14 15. Knowing that Repentance towards God and Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ are the summ of saving doctrine and duty Acts 20.21 And that to fear God and keep his Commandments is the whole duty of man Eccles 12.13 And that the end of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and of faith unfeigned 1 Tim. 1.5 and that Love is the fulfilling of the Law 3. They studied the Word of God or such means of knowing him as God afforded them in order to the attaining and maintaining of these graces Psal 1.2 and sought the Lord with all their hearts while he might be found and called upon him while he was near Isa 55.6 10. And did not presumptuously neglect Gods helps and despise his Word while they trusted for his mercy 4. They lived in a continual conflict against the temptations of the Devil the world and the flesh and in the main did conquer as well as strive They made it their work to mortifie those fleshly lusts which others make it their interest and work to please Gal. 5.17.21 22. 6.14 5. They suffered afflictions and persecutions patiently and being reviled they did not revile They loved their enemies and blest those that curse them and prayed for those that despitefully used and persecuted them Matth. 5.44 45. 1 Cor. 4.11 12 13. 2 Cor. 1.6 7. Heb. 11. They would not accept of deliverance from imprisonment torments and death upon sinning terms 6. They endured to the end and did not fall off and forsake the Covenant of their God Rev. 2. 3. 7. Lastly They did all this by the motive of their hopes of Heaven and by a confidence in the promises of it and in a heavenly mind and conversation as knowing that they did not labour or suffer in vain 1 Cor. 15.58 2 Cor. 4.17 1 Tim. 4.10 Rom. 8.18 Matth. 5.11 2 Thes 1.6 7. Heb. 12.2 This was the way by which the Saints have gone to Heaven the only true successful way Direct 4. Consider next what helps and means God gave them for this work and compare our own with them and see whether ours be not as great 1. We have the same natural capacity as they we are intellectual free agents made for another world and capable of all that they attained There is no difference in our natural faculties 2. We have the same God to shew us mercy 1 Cor. 12.5 There are divers operations but the same God Ephes 4.4 5. There is one God one Lord c. even the Lord over all good to all that call upon him Rom. 10.12 The same mercy which called them and waited on them calleth us even a God who hath no respect of persons but in every Nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him Acts 10.37 Though he be a free benefactor he is a righteous Judge and he is good to all and the Father of every member of his Son 3. They had the same Saviour as we have the same sacrifice for their sins the same Teacher and the same example the same intercessor with the Father For though there be divers administrations there is the same Lord 1 Cor. 12.5 Ephes 4.4 For other foundation can no man lay than him who is the chief corner stone 1 Cor. 3.11 They all did eat of the same spiritual meat and drank of the same rock as we do which is Christ 1 Cor. 10.3 4. It was the reproach of Christ which Moses in Egypt esteemed better than their treasures Heb. 11.26 The same Physician of souls who hath us in cure did cure all them The same Captain who is conducting us to salvation is he that saved them The same Prince of the Covenant and Lord of life who conquered death and all their enemies hath conquered them for us and is preparing us for life with them They had no greater or better High Priest and Mediator with God than we have 4. They had the same Rule to walk by and the same way to go as all we have Gal. 1.7 8. 6.16 Phil. 3.14 15. The same Gospel and Word of God in the main though under various promulgations and administrations Those before the flood were under the Covenant of the promised seed
sufferers it will cause us to possess our souls in patience and to let it have its perfect work 8. It will much overcome the fears of death It is no small abatement of them that Cicero and such honest Heathens had to think of the thousands of their worthiest Ancestors and that they were to go the common way of all mankind But how much more may it encourage a Believer to think that he is not only to go the way of all the world through the gate of mortality but the way also which all Gods Saints have gone save Henoch and Elias who are now in Heaven Thus died all the Prophets and the holy men of God yea Jesus Christ himself before us that death might be conquered when it seemed to have conquered Heb. 2.14 9. It will do much to raise us from hypocritical reserves and temporizings and from lukewarmness and resting in low degrees When our conversation is with the holy ones above we shall have upon our minds an ambition to attain to their degrees and to do Gods will on Earth as it is done in Heaven It will much encline us to the highest and noblest sort of duty which the spirits of the just made perfect do perform He that converseth only with his own sad tempted sinful heart and with tempted faulty mourning Christians may learn to confess and mourn and weep and pray But he that also converseth with glorified spirits will be so rapt up with their heavenly melody that he will learn and long to love God more fervently to praise him more chearfully and to give him thanks more abundantly for his mercies Heaven-work is learnt by a heavenly mind in the use of a heavenly conversation 10. And to look much at our Brethren that are now in glory will also fill our lives with pleasures and make our Religion our continual joy and will help us to a foretaste of Heaven on Earth For we shall as it were take our selves to be almost with then and their melodies will be our delight and love to them will make their joyes to be our own And though it is the sight of God and our Mediatour by faith which must be our chiefest hope and joy yet while we are here men in flesh yea more when we have laid by flesh and blood the presence of all the blessed spirits and heavenly host will be a great though subordinate part of our heavenly felicity and delight Direct 6. When you have gone thus far consider what obligations lie upon you to converse by Faith with your Brethren in Heaven and to look up frequently to their state and work 1. Your necessary Love to God requireth it For as your Love to him must be shewed by your loving his Image in your Brethren so it requireth you to love them most that are likest God or else you love them not for his likeness And it requireth you to love them most whom God loveth most and that is those that are likest him and nearest him And he that loveth God in his creatures and loveth any one truly for God must love the Angels and perfected Spirits best because they love him best and are nearest him and likest to him and are also most beloved by him 2. The common nature of Love and Humanity requireth it For it requireth us to love that best which is best as is said But the blessed ones in Heaven are better than any here on Earth and therefore should be better loved 3. The nature of our Love to the Saints requireth it For if we love them as Saints and Godly we shall love those most that are most holy and that is the blessed ones above And if we love them most we shall certainly mind them and converse with them by Faith and not be voluntary strangers to them 4. It is part of that heavenly conversation which is commended to us Phil. 3.20 21. When it is said that our conversation is in Heaven it signifieth that our Burgeship is there and our interest and great concerns are there and our dwelling is there and our trading and thriving business is there and for it and our friends and fellow-citizens and those that we daily trade and converse with in love and familiarity are there even as our God and our Head and our Inheritance is there He never knew a heavenly conversation that pretending there to know God alone hath no converse with his holy ones that attend him and doth not live as a member of their society in the City of God that doth not with some delight behold their holiness unity and order c. 5. The honouring of God and our Redeemer doth require it that we daily converse with the Saints in Heaven Because it is in them that God is seen in the greatest glory of his Love and it is in them that the Power and Efficacy and Love of our dear Redeemer most appeareth You judge now of the Father by his Children and of the Physician by his Patients and of the Builder by the House and of the Captain by his Victories And if you see no better children of God than such childish crying feeble froward diseased burdensome ones as we are you will rob him of the chief of this his honour And if you look at none of the Patients of our Saviour but such lame and languid pained groaning diseased half-cured ones as we you will rob him of the glory of his skill and cures And if you look but to such an imperfect broken fabrick as the Church on Earth you will dishonour the Builder And if you look to no other Victories of Christ and his Spirit but what is made in this confused dark and bedlam world you will be tempted to dishonour his conduct and his conquests But if you will look to his Children in Heaven who are perfected in his Love and Likeness and to Christs Patients which are there perfectly cured and to his Building in the heavenly unity and glory and to all his Victories as there compleat then you will give him the glory which is his due Rev. 21. 22. 2 Thes 1.10 11 12. 6. So also you will dishonour Religion and the Church if you converse not with the Saints above For the reasons last given For you will judge of the Church and of Religion by such imperfect things as here you see where men turn Religion to the service of their worldly interests and ends and fight for ambition faction tyranny usurpation and worldly lusts under the sacred names of Religion and the Church and for the pretended Love of Christ and one another do tear the Church into shreds and worry and hunt and devour one another You will be tempted to be Infidels if you do not here converse with the sincere humble holy charitable Christians and look up to Heaven to perfect souls And then you will see a Church that is truly amiable holy unanimous and glorious in perfect Love 7. If you look not up to
of the soul in God and the highest praises and thanksgivings with the readiest and chearfullest obedience And what kind of Religious performances are most excellent which we must principally intend Groans and tears and penitent confessions and moans are very suitable to our present state while we have sin and suffering But surely they are duties of the lower rank For Heaven more aboundeth with praises and thanksgiving and therefore we must labour to be fitter for them and more abundant in them not casting off any needful humiliations and penitent complaints but growing as fast as we can above the necessity of them by conquering the sin which is the cause So ask what is it that would make the Church on Earth to be likest to that part which is in Heaven Is it striving what Pastors shall be greatest or have precedency or be called gracious Lords or Benefactors Luke 22.24 25 26. 1 Pet. 5.3 4 5. Or is it in making the flock of Christ to dread the secular power of the Shepherds and tremble before them as they do before the Wolf Or is it in a proud conceit of the peoples power to ordain their Pastors and to rule them and themselves by a major vote Or in a supercilious condemning the members of Christ and a proud contempt of others as too unholy for our communion when we never had authority to try or judge them Is it in the multitude of Sects and divisions every one saying Our party and our way is best Surely all this is unlike to Heaven It is rather in the Wisdom and Holiness and Vnity of all the members When they all know God especially in his Love and Goodness and when they fervently love him and chearfully and universally obey him and when they love each other fervently and with a pure heart and without divisions do hold the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and with one heart and mind and mouth do glorifie God and our Redeemer Leaving that Church-Judgment to the Pastors which Christ hath put into their hands and leaving Gods part of Judgment unto himself This is to be like to our heavenly exemplar and to do Gods Will on Earth as it is done in Heaven Ephes 4.2 3 4 11 12 16. 9. And we must also look back to the examples of their lives while they were on earth and see wherein they are to be imitated as the imitators of Jesus Christ which way went they to Heaven before us 10. Lastly We must give God thanks on their behalf for making them so perfect and bringing them so near him and saving them from sin and Satan and the world and bringing them safe to Heaven through so many temptations difficulties and sufferings For making them such instruments of his glory in their times and shewing his glory upon them and to them in the Heavens For making them such blessings to the world in their generations and for giving us in them such patterns of faith obedience and patience and making them so great encouragements to us who may the more boldly follow them in faith duty and sufferings who have conquered all and sped so well For shewing us by faith their present state of glory with Christ for our confirmation and consolation Thus far in all these ten particulars we must have a heavenly conversation with the glorified by Faith Direct 8. Consider next wherein your imitation of the example of their lives on earth consisteth And it is 1. Not in committing any of their sins nor indulging any such weaknesses in our selves as any of them were guilty of 2. Nor in extenuating a sin or thinking ever the better of it because it was theirs 3. Nor in doing as they did in exempted cases wherein their Law and ours differed as in the marriage of Adams children in the Jews Polygamy c. 4. Nor in imitating them in things indifferent or accidental that were never intended for imitation nor done as morally good or evil 5. Nor in pretending to or expecting of their extraordinary Revelations Inspirations or Miracles 6. Nor in pretending the high attainments of the more excellent to be the necessary measure of all that shall be saved or the Rule of our Church-Communion Our imitation of them consisteth in no such things as these But it consisteth in these 1. That you fix upon the same ultimate Ends as they did That you aim at the same Glory of God and chuse the same everlasting felicity 2. That you chuse the same Guide and Captain of your salvation the same Mediator between God and man the same Teacher and Ruler of the Church and the same sacrifice for sin and Intercessor with the Father 3. That you believe the same Gospel and build upon the same Promises and live by the same Rule the Word of God 4. That you obey the same Spirit and trust to the same Sanctifier and Comforter and Illuminater to illuminate sanctifie and comfort your souls 5. That you exercise all the same graces of Faith Hope Love Repentance Obedience Patience as they did 6. That you live upon the same Truths and be moved by the same Motives as they lived upon and were moved by 7. That you avoid the same sins as they avoided and see what they feared and fled from and made conscience of that you may do the same 8. That you chuse and use the same kind of company helps and means of grace so far as yours and theirs are the same as they have done And think not to find a nearer or another way to that state of happiness which they are come â—o Phil. 3.16 Walk by the same Rule and mind the same things and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you If any preach another Gospel let him be accursed Gal. 1.7 8. Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them Rom. 16.17 Heb. 6.11 We desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope to the end that you be not slothful but followers of them c. 9. That you avoid resist and overcome the same temptations as they did who now are crowned 10. That you bear the same cross and exercise the same faith and hope and patience unto the end 1 Pet. 4.1 Arm your selves with the same mind c. In brief this is the true imitation of the Saints Direct 9. Never suffer your life of sense to engage you so deeply in sensible converse with men on earth as to forget your heavenly relations and society but live as men that unfeignedly believe that you have a more high and noble converse every day to mind If you are Believers indeed let your faith go along with the souls of your departed friends into glory And if you have forgot them by an unfriendly negligence renew your acquaintance with them Think not that those only that live on earth are fit for our
which they do not perform and against many sins which they do not forbear as to forbear an oath or a lye or a cup of drink to go to Church when they go to an Ale-house c. Such a thing therefore there is and such a power mans will hath to do or not do when such a degree only of help is given Therefore we have reason enough to suppose 1. That such a degree of the Spirits help is given under the bare Teachings of the Creature or to them that have no outward light but natural revelation as is necessary to the foresaid ends and uses of that Light or Means that is to convince man that there is a God and what he is as aforesaid and that we are his subjects and benâ—ficiaries and owe him our chiâ—fest love and service and to convince them of the need of some further supernatural revelation Not that every one hath this measure of spiritual help for some by abusing the help which they have to learn the Alphabet of Nature or to practise it do forfeit that help which should bring them into Natures higher forms But so much as I have mentioned of the help of the Spirit is given to those that do not grosly forfeit it by abuse among the Pagans of the world And so much multitudes have attained 2. And so much of the Spirit was given ordinarily to the Jews as was sufficient to have enabled them to believe in the Messiah to come as aforesaid if they did not wilfully reject this help 3. And so much seemeth to be given to many that hear the Gospel and never believe it or that believe it not with a justifying Faith is as sufficient to have made them true Believers as Adams was to have kept him from his fall For seeing it is certain that such a sufficient uneffectual grace there is we have no reason to conceit that God doth any more desert his own means now than he did then or that he maketh Believing a more impossible condition of Justification under the Gospel to them that are in the neerest capacity of it before effectual grace than he made perfect obedience to be to Adam The objections against this are to be answered in due place and are already answered by the Dominicans at large 4. The outward means of grace under Christ are all one frame and must be used in harmony as followeth 1. The Witness and Preaching of Christ and his Apostles was the first and chief part together with their settling the Churches and recording so much as is to be our standing Rule in the holy Scriptures which are now to us the chief part of this means 2. Next to the Scriptures the Pastoral Office and Gifts to preserve them and teach them to us is the next principal part of this frame of means In which I comprehend all their office Preaching for conversion baptizing preaching for confirmation and edification of the faithful praying and praising God before the Church administring the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of communion and watching over all the flock by personal instruction admonition reproofs censures and absolutions 3. The next part conjunct with this is the communion of the faithful in the Churches 4. The next is our holy society in Christian families and family-instructions worship and just discipline 5. The next is our secret duties between God and us alone As. 1. Reading 2. Meditation and self examination 3. Prayer and thanksgiving and praise to God 6. The next part is our improvement of godly mens intimate friendship who may instruct and warn and reprove and comfort us 7. The next is the daily course of prospering Providences and Mercies which express Gods Love and call up ours as provisions protections preservations deliverances c. 8. The next is Gods castigations by what hand or means soever which are to make us partakers of his holiness Heb. 12.9 10. 9. The next is the examples of others 1. Their graces and duties 2. Their faults and falls 3. Their mercies And 4. Their sufferings and corrections 1 Cor. 10.1 10 11. 10. And lastly Our own constant watchfulness against temptations and stirring up Gods graces in our selves These are the frame of the means of Grace and of our receiving duties 2. The next in order to be considered is the whole frame of our returning duties in which we lay out the talents which we receive which lye in the order following 1. That we do what good we can to our own souls that we first pluck the beam out of our own eyes and set that motion on work at home which must go further Therefore all the foregoing means were primarily for this effect though not chiefly and ultimately for this end 2. Next we must do good according to our power to our neer Relations 3. And next to our whole Families and more remote Relations 4. And next them to our Neighbours 5. And next to Strangers 6. And lastly To Enemies of our selves and Christ 7. But our greatest duties must be for publick Societies viz. 1. For the Common-wealth both Governours and People 2. And for the Church 8. And the next part in intention and dignity must be for the whole world whose good by prayer and all just means we must endeavour 9. And the next for the honour of Jesus Christ our Mediatour 10. And the highest ultimate temination of our returning duties is the pure Deity alone For the further opening to you the Order of Christian Practice take these following Notes or Rules 1. Though receiving duties such as hearing reading praying faith c. go first in order of nature and time before expending or returning duties so that the motion is truly circular yet we must not stay till we have received more before we make returns to God of that which we have already But every degree of received grace must presently work towards God our end and as there is no intermission between my moving of my hand and pen and its writing upon this paper so must there be no intermission between Gods beams of Love and Mercy to us and our reflexions of Love and Duty unto him Even as ths veins and arteries in the body lye much together and one doth often empty it self into the other for circulation and not stay till the whole mass hath run through all the vessels of one sort veins or arteries before any pass into the other 2. The internal returns of Love are much quicker than the return of outward fruits The Love of God shed or streamed forth upon the soul doth presently warm it to a return of Love But it may be some time before that Love appear in any notable useful benefits to the world or in any thing that much glorifieth God and our Profession Even as the heat of the Sun upon the earth or trees is suddenly reflected but doth not so suddenly bring forth herbs and buds and blossoms and ripe fruits 3. All truly good works
must have one constant Order of intention which is before opened God must be first intended then Christ then the universal Church in Heaven and Earth c. But in the order of operation and execution there may be a great difference among our duties As God appointeth us to lay out some one way and some another Yet ordinarily as the emitted beams begin from God and dart themselves on the soul of man so the reflected beams begin upon or from our hearts and pass toward God though first beloved and intended by several receptacles before they bring us to the perfect fruition of him 4. Therefore the order of Loving or complacency and the order of doing good or Benevolence is not the same We must Love the universal Church better than our selves But we cannot do them sincere service before we do good to our selves And our neerest Relations must be preferred in acts of Beneficence before many whom we must love more 5. When two goods come together either to be Received or to be Done the greater is ever to be preferred and the chusing or using of the lesser at that time is to be taken for a sin I lately read a denyal of this in a superficial satyre but the thing it self if rightly understood is past all doubt with a rational man For 1. Else good is not to be chosen and done as good if the best be not to be preferred 2. Else almost all wicked omissions might be excused I may be excused for not giving a poor man a shâ—lling whatever his necessity be because I give him a farthing No doubt but Dives Luke 16. did good at such a rate as this at least and else a man might be excused from saving a drowning man if he save his horse that while c. A quatenus ad summum valet consequentia in the case of desiring and doing good But then mark the following explications 6. That is not alwaies to be accounted the greatest good which is so only in regard of the matter simply considered But that is the greatest good which is so consideratis considerandis all things considered and set together 7. When God doth peremptorily tye me to one certain duty without any dispensation or liberty of choice that duty at that time is a greater good and duty than many others which may be greater in their time and place A duty materially lesser is formally and by accident materially greater in its proper season Reaping and baking and eating are better than plowing and weeding the Corn as they are neerer to the end But plowing and weeding are better in their season To make pins or points is not materially so good a work as to pray But in its season as then done it is better And he that is of this trade may not be praying when he should be about his trade Not that he is to prefer the matter of it before praying But praying is to keep its time and may be a sin when it is out of time He that would come at midnight to disturb his rest to present his service to his Lord or King would have little thanks for such unseasonable service 8. He that is restrained by a lower calling or any true restraining reasons from doing a good which is materially greater yet doth that which is greatest unto him Ruling and Preaching are materially a greater good than threshing or digging and yet to a man whose gifts and calling restrain him from the former to the latter the latter is the greatest good 9. Good is not to be measured principally by the Will or Benefit of our selves or any creature but by 1. The Will of God in his Laws And 2. By the interest of his pleasedness and glory But secondarily humane interest is the measure of it 10. It followeth not that because the greatest good is ever to be preferred that therefore we must perplex and distract our selves in cases of difficulty when the ballance seemeth equal For either there is a difference or there is none And if any it is discernable or not If there be no difference there is room for taking one but not for chusing one If there be no discernable difference it is all one to us as if there were none at all If it be discernable by a due proportion of enquiry we must labour to know it and chuse accordingly If it be not discernable in such time and by such measure of enquiry as is our duty we must still take it as undiscernable to us If after just search the weakness of our own understandings leave us doubting we must go according to the best understanding which we have and chearfully go on in our duty as well as we can know it remembring that we have a gracious God and Covenant which taketh not advantage of involuntary weaknesses but accepteth their endeavours who sincerely do their best 11. Meer spiritual or mental duties require most labour of the mind but corporal duties such as the labours of our calling must have more labour of the body 12. All corporal duties must be also spiritual by doing them from a spiritual principle to a spiritual end in a spiritual manner But it is not necessary that every spiritual duty be also corporal 13. The duties immediately about God our end are greater than those about any of the means caeteris paribus And yet those that are about lower objects may be greater by accident and in their season As to be saving a mans life is then greater than to be exciting the mind to the acting of Divine Love or Fear But yet it is God the greatest object then which puteth the greatness upon the latter duty both by commanding it and so making it an act more pleasing to him and because that the Love of God is supposed to be the concurring spring of that Love to man which we shew in seeking their preservation 14. Our great duty about God our ultimate end can never be done too much considered in it self and in respect to the soul only we cannot so love God too much And this Love so considered hath no extream Matth. 22.37 15. But yet even this may by accident and in the circumstances be too much As 1. In respect to the bodies weaknesses if a man should so fear God or so love him as that the intenseness of the act did stir the passions so much as to bring him to distraction or to disorder his mind and make it unfit for that or any other duty 2. Or if he should be exciting the Love of God when he should be quenching a fire in the Town or relieving the poor that are ready to perish But neither of these is properly called A loving God too much 16. The duties of the heart are in themselves greater and nobler than the actions of the outward man of themselves abstractedly considered Because the soul is more noble than the body 17. Yet outward duties are frequently yea most frequently