can have all the world but he may have a mind that can contemn all the world No man can have all that he will but he may be content to be without it The disease is within you and there must be the Cure Direct 2. Be sure to fix with a serious faith upon the Inivsible glory as your portion and then look at all things in this world as good or bad as they respect your end and judge of them as they help or hinder you in the main Nothing but a truly heavenly mind is the saving cure of an earthly mind No man will rightly let go earth till he have the powerful Light that hath shewed him the greater good and given him a taste of the world to come Had you not been strangers to God and heaven in heart whatever you were in tongue and fancy you could never have so fallen in love with earth None are so much disposed to travail into other Countries as they that are fallen out with their own Remember that you have not one penny or pennies worth in the world but what you had from God and must be accountable to God for and must employ with an eye upon his will and your salvation I do not call you to cast away your Riches but to see that you use all that ever you have as will be most comfortable to you in your last review I know as Seneca saith He is a wise man that can make use of earthen vessels as if they were all silver and he is wise too that can make use of silver vessels as if they were but earth Infirmi est animi pati non posse divitias but it s one thing to Bear Riches and Use them for God and another thing to Enjoy them with delight I neither take the Monasticks to be the only or the highest in perfection nor yet do I condemn necessitated retirements For I know it is hard to most to converse with God in tumults and to hear the still voice of his Spirit in the murmuring noise of a crowd I know that the commons are usually more barren and fruitless then inclosures and that the fruit-tree that groweth by the high-way side shall have many a stone and cudgel thrown at it which those that are in your Orchard scape But still look to your end and secure the main Dream not that you have any full Propriety Remember that you are Gods Stewards Set therefore your Masters name and not your own upon every penny-worth you possess Let Holiness to the Lord be written upon all Possess nothing but what is Devoted to him to be used as he would have you Put him not off with scraps and leavings that gave you all So much as you save from him you lose and worse then lose and so much as you lose for him and surrender to him and improve for him you save and more then save For Godliness with content is great gain And he that is faithful in a little shall be made ruler over much It s thus that all things are sanctified with the Saints Direct 3. Think not that your Riches are given you to fulfill the least inordinate desire of the flesh Or that you may take ever the more sensual ease or pleasure if you had all the world But remember that better wages obligeth you to more work And therefore rise as early and labour as hard in your own employment the more for the common good the better yea and deny your flesh a◠much as if you had but food and rayment If you have much give the more and use the more but enjoy never the more and let not your sensual desires find ever the more provision A rich man that is wise and a faithful Steward may live in as much self-denyal and labour as hard and humble his flesh as much as he hat hath but his daily bread God sent you not in provision for his enemy All that is made the food of sin or that doth not help you up to God is employed contrary to the end that you received it for Direct 4. Be sure that you deal with the world as a Deceiver Be very suspicious of all your Riches and Honours and Delights Feed not on these luscious summer-fruits too boldly or without fear Remember how many millions the world hath deceived before you None come to Hell but those that are cheated thither by the flesh and the world With what exceeding vigilancy then have you need to deal with such a dangerous deceiver when all your happiness and all your hopes is at the stake and if you be deceived you are undone Its force is nothing so perillous as its fraud Ubi vincere aperte Non datur insidias armaque recta parat They that have to do with such a cheater in a case of such everlasting consequence should be suspicious of every thing and trust the world as little as is possible when Qui cavet ne decipiatur vix cavet cum etiam cavet Et cum cavisse ratus est saepè is cautor captus est ut Plaut As Bucholcer was went to say when his friends extolled him terreri se etiam laudationibus illis ut fulminibus So should you possess your Honours and Riches in the world And as the same Bucholcer said to Hubner when he went to be a Courtier Fidem diabolorum tibi commendo credere contremiscere viz. promissionibus aulicis credere sed cautè sed timidè So should you be affected to the world Trust and tremble or rather Trust it not all Nay have you not been deceived by it already And will you be more foolish then the silly fish that will scarcely take the hook that he was once pricked by or then the silly fowls that will be afraid of the net that once they have escaped from and of the Kite that once hath had them in her claws Tranquillas etiam naufragus horret aquas Nay at the present if you take any heed of your souls you may easily perceive what a clog the world is We are commonly better when we have least of it or are leaving it then when we have it at our will A man may see the utmost visible part of the earth and the Horizon at once but if he look on the earth that is near him he cannot see the heavens at that time much less the Zenith Our Own Riches our Present Riches our Nearest and Dearest temporal good is the greatest averter of the mind from heaven We are commonly like Antigonus sick souldier that fought well because he lookt to die but grew a Coward as soon as he was cured So that most of us have need of the counsel which the Bishop of Colen gave the Emperour Sigismund that askt him What he should do to be happy Live saith he as you promised to do when you were last sick of the stone and gowt Even the most notorious sinners seem Saints when they see the world is
use the means and there must we partake of the success of our Endeavours You may better expect that God should give you a Crop at harvest who refused to plow and â—ow your Land or that your children should be men before they are born then that he should be your Happiness in the life to come if you finally reject him in this life and choose to your selves a secular happiness Such as you now make choice of such and no other shall you have Heaven and Earth were set before you You knew that earthly happiness was short If yet you would choose it think not to have heaven too For if you do you will prove deceived at the last SECT XII The Uses BEloved Hearers I suppose you will give me leave to take it for granted that you are all the rational creatures of God made subject to him and capable of enjoying him and such as must be happy or miserable for ever as also that you are all unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy and that this life is the time for the use of those means on which your everlasting life dependeth and that Judgement will turn the scales at last as Grace or Sin shall turn them now I hope also that I may suppose that you are agreed that Christianity is the only way to happiness and consequently that you are all professed Christians And one would think that where men are so far satisfied of the End and of the Way we might conceive great hopes of their sincerity and salvation But when we see that mens lives do nullifie their professions and that while they look towards God they row towards the world and while they Hope for Heaven their daily travel is towards Hell and while they plead for Christ they work against him our Hopes of them are turned to necessary lamentation But how comes this to pass that reasonable men yea men reputed wise and learned yea many that seem Religious to others and to themselves should be so shamefully over seen in a matter that so concerneth their everlasting state As far as I am able to discover the causes of this Calamity are these two 1. One part of the Professed Christians of the world understand not what Christianity is and so profess but the empty name when indeed the thing it self which is in their conception and which they mean in that profession is nothing like to true Christianity 2. The other part of miscarrying professors though they do conceive of the Christian Religion as it is yet not with an apprehension intensively answerable to the thing which they apprehend Though their conceptions of the Christian verities have a morall Truth in them it being not false but True which they conceive yet there is no â—irmness and solidity in the Act and so they do not effectually appâ—â—â—â—nded them Nothing more easie more common and more dangerous then to make a Religion either of Names and Words which he that useth doth not understand or of meer speculations and superficial conceits which never became practical habituate and predominant nor were the serious effectual apprehensions of the man A right Object and a sincere and serious Act do essentially constitute the Christians faith If either be wanting it is not that faith whatever it may pretend to be Nothing but the Gospel objects will suffice to a mans salvation were it never so firmly apprehended And nothing but a firm and serious Belief of those objects will make them effectuall or saving to the Believer Were we able to cure the two fore-mentioned defects and to help you all to these two requisites we should make no question but you would all be saved We cannot expect that men should let go their sensual delights till they hear of somewhat better to be had for them and till they firmly and heartily give credit to the report And because the matter before us in my Text is sitted to both these needfull works and containeth those very truths which must rectifie you in both these points I shall draw them forth and distinctly apply them hereunto Use 1. AND in the first place you are here informed that the Crosâ— of Christ is the Crucifier of the world Which containeth in it these two parts which make up the point 1. That this is the use of the Cross and one great end of the Doctrine of Christianity to Crucifie the world to us and us to the world 2. That where the Cross of Christ and his Doctrine are effectuall this work is alwaies actually done In all true Christians the world is thus crucified O that these truths were as plainly or truly transcribed upon your hearts as they are plainly and truly contained in my Textâ— 1. For the first that This is the End of Christ Crucified and of his Doctrine I shall briefly shew 1. The Necessity of this Information And 2. the certain â—â—â—â—h of it 1. Both the Commonne's and the Dangerousness of erring in this point do shew the Necessity of this Information It is not only the contemners of Religion but also too many that go among us for very godly men that know not where their happiness lyeth nor what the Christian Religion is Almost all the apprehensions which they have of Happiness are sensual as if it were but a freedom from sensible punishments and the possession of some delights of which they have meerly sensual concerts And so they think of Christ as one that came to free them from such punishments and help them to such an happiness as this And as for the true knowledge and fruition of God in Love and Heavenly delights they look upon these either as insignificant means or as certain appurtenances and fruits of Religion which we ought to have but may possibly be without though we be true Believers A confidence that Christ hath freed them from torments and made them righteous by imputation of his obedience unto them they take to be all that is essentiall to their Christianity And the rest they call by the name of Good works which if it be not with them a term of as low importance as the name of Works alone or Works of the Law is taken to be in Paulâ— Epistles yet at least they take it for that which doth not constitute their Religion So that true Sanctification is either not understood or taken to be of less Necessity then it is A man that makes a great deal of talk and stir about Religion and is zealous for his opinions and pious complements goes currant with many for a true Believer though the Interest of his flesh and of the world be as near and dear to him in this way of Religiousness as other mens is to them in a way of more open professed sensuality And is it possible for a man to be a Christian indeed that so far mistaketh the very Nature and Ends of Christianity it self It is not possible By what is said already and will be by and
taken is wonderful There are unsearchable wonders of Love and wonders of Iustice wonders of Wisdom and wonders of Power It s the admiration of Angels the study of all Saints to know the height and breadth and length and depth and when they have all done they find that the Love of Christ surpasseth knowledge As all other knowledge of arts creatures languages is nothing in comparison of the knowledge of a Crucified Christ so our own knowledge is too narrow to comprehend the greatness and too dull to reach to the bottom of the mysterie of this design of the heavenly Love Eph. 3. 17 18 19. When Christ hath posed men and Angels with wonders in our Redemption And when we have done nothing in it our selves its easie to perceive in whom we should Glory 2. Consider also that it is Christ that God hath advanced to this Glory and it is the magnifying of him that is designed by God and not of such as you It s true that he intendeth to Glorifie us with Christ and that in some participation of his Glory But that is not by ascribing merit and power and wisdom to us nor by praising us for that which indeed we have not but it is by communicating some of the Spirit of Christ unto us and letting us see the glory of our head Though we may see the brightness of the Sun and have the comfort of its raies yet that doth not make us Suns our selves So though we shall be where Christ is and behold his Glory 1 Iohn 17. 24. and exercise our selves in his eternal praise yet all this is but a derived dignity communicated to us by the aspect of our Lord and therefore it will not be our work to praise our selves but him Rev. 5. 9. Him hath God advanced to be a Prince and a Saviour Acts 5. 31. and made him head over all things to the Church Eph. 1. 22. and delivered all things into his hand 1 Joh. 13. and given him all power in heaven and earth Mat 28. 18. a name above every name that at the name of Iesus every knee shall bow Phil. 2. 9 10. and to this end he dyed rose and revived that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living Rom. 14. 9. So that the exalting of the Redeemer is a more principall end in the work of Redemption then our exaltation and in ours we are passive receiving the dignity which from him is communicated to us but Christ with his Father is the fountain and end of his own glory 3. Consider also your Debasement in condemnation and humiliation is the designed way to the glory of your Redeemer and in it your own glory This is his honour that when the Law had condemned you he absolved you by his Ransom and when you were dead in trespasses and sins he quickned you through the riches of mercy and the great Love wherewith he loved you Eph. 2. 4 5. you must be sick before he can have the honour of curing you He will â—ay you at the feet of God in shame crying out Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called a son make me one of thy hired servants You shall call your selves foolish disobedient even mad and the greatest of sinners Tit. 3. 3. Acts 26. 11. 1 Tim. 1. 15. If therefore you begin to glory in your selves you contradict the glory of Christ and consequently hinder the glory you should receive from him You have but the benefit of receiving his alms and therefore must stand in the posture of beggars but it is he and not you that must have the honour of giving it You must be Nothing that he may be All or else you will be Nothing indeed You must not Live but Christ in you or else you will not Live indeed Gal. 2. 20. You must be found in him not having your own Righteousness which is of the Law or works but the Righteousness which is of Christ by faith or else you will lose your selves and your righteousness Phil. 3. 9. And thus the just being dead in themselves must live by faith but if any be lifted up his soul is not upright in him Heb. 2. 4. Christianity therefore teacheth you to glory in Christ and not in your selves 4. Consider it is Christ and not you that revived your souls when you were dead in sin and Crucified you to the world to which you were alive You might have rotted and stunck in the grave of sin if he had not called you out You saw the spectacles of Mortality before your eyes and you could say The world is vain before But yet it lived in your hearts till power came from Christ to kill it Words were but wind you would never have let go your bone of present worldly pleasure if Christ had not taken it out of your jaws by shewing you the hopes of greater things Long might you have heard Sermons and yet have been carnal still if his Spirit had not entered into your hearts Seeing then it is he that hath done the cure so far as it â—is done it is in him that you must glory and not in your selves 5. Consider if yet he should deal with you according to your deservings the remnants of your sin would bring you to damnation If yet he did not hide your nakedness and by his intercession procure you a daily pardon you would every day be your own distroyers nay you would not be an hour longer out of hell If he did not bring you before his Father you could have no access to him in any of your addresses Your sacrifices would be cast back into your faces as dung if the merit of his sacrifice made them not accepted So that by this you may see in whom you must still glory 6. Now you have a little grace you cannot keep it of your selves Now you are made alive you cannot keep your selves alive If you be not preserved by him that did revive you and kept by his mighty power to salvation and if he be not the finisher of your faith who was the author of it how speedily how certainly would you prove apostates and undo all that hath been so long a doing If then you stand not on your own legs but are carryed in his arms you may see in whom it is that you should glory 7. Nay more if you were left to your selves but to resist one temptation it would bear you down You now think of many sins with an holy scorn But the filthyest of those sins would become your pleasure if you were forsaken by Christ. You now look on whoredom and gluttony and drunkenness and ambition as dirt and dung But if Christ should forsake you this dung would you feed upon and as dogs you would eat up the filthyest vomit that ever you did disgorge your selves of and as swine you would choose that mire for your bed and rest in it till hell awaked
and to proceed and persevere in an enmity to the world and a Believing Crucifixion of it if you will be saved from it and restore it to its proper use and captivate it that captivateth so many As some help hereunto I crave your Perusal of this Treatise And that it may do you good and the many Blessings promised to the charitable may rest upon you and on your Yoak-fellow that hath learned this Crucifying of the world and upon your posterity shall be the prayers of Feb. 20. 165â— â— Your fellow soldiour against the flesh and world Rich. Baxter The Preface To the Nobilty and Gentry and all that have the Riches of this world Honourable Worshipfull c. HAving written here of a subject that nearly concerneth you I have thought it my duty to give you a place and according to your Dignity the first place in the Application of it Of which I shall first tender you my Reasons and then set before you the matter of this address 1. You are among us the most eminent and honoured persons and therefore not to be neglected and past by you are first and therefore should first be served You hold your selves most worthy of any temporal honour that 's to be had and therefore I shall honour you so much more as to judge you fit to be first spoken to by the Ministers of Christ in a case that doth much more concern you As you have and would have the precedency in worldly matters here also you shall have the precedency Its pitty that you shall be first in Hell that are first in a Christian State on earth or that you should be least in the Kingdom of Heaven that are Greatest in that which is esteemed in the world 2. You are Pillars in the Common-wealth and the stakes that bear up the rest of the hedge Your influence is great in lower bodies You sin not to your selves only nor are you Gracious only to your selves The spots in the Moon are seen by more and its Ecclipses felt by more then the blemishes or changes of many of us inferiour wights You are our first figures that stand for more in matters of publick concernment then all that follow You are the Copies that the rest write after and they are more prone to Copy out your vices then your graces You are the first sheets in the Press you are the Stewards of God who are entrusted with his talents for the use of many You are the noble members of the Body Politick whose health or sickness is communicated to the rest If you be ungodly the whole body languisheth If you live and prosper it will go the better with us all For your Wisdom and Holiness and Iustice will be operative and your station alloweth them great advantage to work upon many and to emulate a kind of universal Causality Interest is the worlds byas and all Power hath respect to use You that have possession of the Treasure that is so commonly and highly esteemed may do much to lead the sensual world by it which way you please Be it better or be it worse they will follow him that bears the purse If money can do wonders you may do wonders As money can perswade the blind to part with God and life everlasting and to renounce Religion and Reason it self so no doubt but it might do something were it faithfully used though not directly to sanctifie the heart yet somewhat to incline it to the means by which it may be sanctified You that have Power to Help or Hurt to make it Summer or Winter to your subjects and to promote or cross the interest of the flesh are hereby become a kind of Gods in the eyes of them that mind this Interest as in higher respects you are unto Believers Especially seeing they want that eye of faith by which they should know the Soveraign Majesty who at his pleasure doth dispose both of you and them these purblind sinners can reach no further but are contented to be Ruled by you as terrestrial Deities They see you but they see not God they know you and perceive the effects of your favour and displeasure but being dead to God and savouring only fleshly things they scarce observe his smiles or frowns They see that which is visible to the eye which they have the use of but the Objects of faith are to them as Nothing because they have no eye to see them And seeing you have such publick interest and influence it is our duty first to look after your souls and to see that you receive the heavenly impress 3. To which I may add that no men have usually more need of advice and help then you For your temptations are the strongest The world killeth by its flatteries It is not the having it but the Loving it that undoes men And he is much liker to over-love it that hath what he would have and liveth in plentiful provisions for his flesh then he that hath nothing from it but trouble and vexation It is not poverty and prisons and sickness that are the flattering pandors of the world but prosperity and content to the flesh Though I know that many of the poor do most of all over-value the world because they never tryed so much of its vanity but standing at a distance from prosperity do think it a greater felicity then it is For those are most in Love with the world that least know it as those that least know him are least in Love with God and eternal glory But yet it is pleasing and not displeasing flattering rather then buffeting that is the means of deceiving filly souls and stealing their hearts from God to the world Your mountains lie open to stronger winds then our vallies do And your gulfs and greater streams are not so foordable as our more shallow waters He never studyed God and Heaven nor his own heart that knoweth not that it is a very difficult thing to have an heavenly mind in earthly prosperity and to live in the desires of another world while we feel all seem to go well with us in this How hard to be weaned from the world till we suffer in it yea till we are plunged into an utter despair of ever receiving here the satisfaction of our desires 4. And truly we have too much sad experience of the sensuality and ungodliness of most of the Rich to suffer us to think that you have least need of our admonitions Which leadeth me up to the Matter of my Address which is first to complain of you to your selves and then to Admonish you and lastly to Direct you 1. I know I speak to those for the most part that profess to believe a Life to come but O that you had the honesty to live as you do profess You durst not put it into your Creed that you believe that earth is more desirable then Heaven and that its better seek first after Carnal prosperity and delight then for
know most certainly that the world will serve you but a little while You know the day is hard at hand when it will turn you off and you shall say I have now had all that the world can do for me Naked you came into it and naked you must go out of it Haud ullas portabis opes Acherontis ad undas And then you shall more sensibly know what you now so overvalued and what you preferred before God and your salvation then now I am able to make you know O what low thoughts will every one of you have of all your pomp and pleasure your vain-glory and all your fleshly accommodations when you perceive that they are gone and leave your souls to the â—ustice of that God whom for the love of them you wilfully neglected If poor men of mean and low education were so soâ—â—ish as not to know these things me thinks it should not be â—…ith you that are bred to more understanding then they 12. Lastly you sin against the most plain and terrible passages of Scripture seconded with dreadful judgements of God inflicted either upon your selves or at least on others of your rank before your eyes You have read or heard the words of Christ Luk 9. 25. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself and be cast away And Luke 12. 33 34. Sell all that you have and give alms provide your selves baggs which wax not â—ld a treasure in the heavens that faileth not where no thief approacheth neither moth corrupteth For where your treasure is there will your hearts be also You have heard there the terrible Parable of the Rich man Luke 12. 16 17 18 19 20. which endeth with Thou fool this night thy soul shall be required of thee and then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided with this general application So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not Rich towards God And you have heard that more dreadful Parable Luke 16. of the Rich man that was cloathed in purple and fared sumptuously and what was his endless end You have heard the difficulty of the salvation of the Rich. Luke 18. 24 25. How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God Because they are so hardly kept from loving them inordinately and trusting in them You have heard how fully Christ is resolved that no man can be his Disciple that forsaketh not all that he hath for him Luke 14. 33 26 27. And if you go never so far in your Obedience and yet lack this one thing to part with all in affection and resolution and practise when he requireth it and follow Christ in sufferings and wants in hope of a treasure in heaven its certain that Christ and you must part Luke 18. 22. You have heard the terrible passages in Jam. 5. 1 2 c. and abundance such in the word of God And yet are you not afraid of worldliness or sensuality You have seen in England the Riches of abundance quickly scattered that were long in gathering and God knows how many lost their souls to build that which a few years wars pull'd down And yet when you have but a little breathing time you are at it again as eagerly as ever as men that knew no greater good and are acquainted with no better and more gainful an employment Gentlemen do you know indeed what it is that you make so great a stir for which you value at so high a rate which you hold so fast which you enjoy so delightfully You do not know I dare say by your using of it that you do not know it Or else you would soon have other thoughts of it and use it in another manner Come nearer and see it through and look into the inside Consult not with blind and partial sense but put on a while the spectacles of faith go into the Sanctuary and see the end Nay Reason it self may tâ—ll you much of it When you must part with it you 'l wish it hang'd loose from you and not been so glued to you as to tear your hearts You feel not what the Devils lime-twigs have done till you are about to take wing either by an heavenly contemplation or by death and then youâ—l find your selves entangled The world is like to bad Physitians quoâ—um successus Sol intuetur errores autem Tellus operit The earth beareth yet all the good it doth you but Hell hath hidden from you the mischief that it hath done to millions of your Ancestors and therefore though this their way was their folly yet do their posterity approve their sayings Psal. 19. 13. Dic miâ—i saith Bernard ubi sunt amatores mundi qui ante pauâ—a tâ—n pâ—…nobiscum fuerunt Nihil ex ejâ— remaâ—sit nisi cinâ—â—â—s vermes Attende diligenter qui sunt suerunt siâ—…ru commederunt biberunt riserunt duxerunt in bonis dies suos in puncto ad inferna descenderunt Hic caro eorum vermibus illic anima eorum slammis deputatur donec rursus infelici collegio colligati sempiternis ignibus in volvantur Who would so value that which he must eternally complain of and not only say It hath done me no good but also say It hath deceived me and undone me I would not thank you to make me the Owner of all your Lands and Honours to day and take it from me all to morrow What the better now are your Grand fathers and great Grandfathers for living in those houses and possessing those lands and honours and pleasures that you possess Vnless they used them spiritually and holily for God and heaven and the common good they are now in hell for their sensuality upon earth and are reaping as they have sown Gal. 6 7 8. and paying dear for all their pleasures Their bones and dust do give you no notice of any remnants of their honours or delights and if you saw their souls you would be further satisfied It may be there stands agilded Monument over their rottenness and dust and it may be they have left an honourable name with those that follow them in their deceit and so might the tormented Rich man with his Brethren Luke 16. who were following him towards that place of torment A just judgement of God it is to to give up men that choose deceit to be thus befooled That they should not only despise the durable Riches and choose a dream of honour wealth and pleasure here but also that their end may answer their beginning they should also take up with a picture of honour and felicity when they are dead That their deceived posterity may see a guilded Image bearing an honourable mention of their names and hear them named with applause and so may be allured thee more boldly to go after them And so a shadow of wisdom and vertue hath a shadow of surviving Honour for its Reward which alas neither soul nor body
not yet gasping under the pangs of death nor laid in the dust as still as stones You see their beauty and glittering attire but you see not the pale and ghastly face that death will give them nor the skulls that are stript of all those ornaments you smell their perfumes but you smell not their putrefaction you see their lands and spacious houses and sumptuous furniture but you see not how narrow a room will serve them in the grave nor how little there they differ from the most contemptible of men Nay more you see them with Ahab going forth to battle and leaving the Prophets with the bread and water of affliction but you see them not yet returning with the mortal blow you see them in their honours and abundance but see them not on Christs left hand in judgement you see them cloathed richly and faâ—ing deliciously every day but you see them not in bell torments wishing in vain for a drop of water to abate their flames you hear them honoured and hear their words of pride and ostentation but you hear them not yet crying out of their folly and bewailing their loss of present time and lamenting in vain the unhappy choice that now they make Sirs believe it future things are as sure as present These things are no fables because they are not visible yet You see not God and yet he is the Principal Intelligible object you see not your own Intellectual souls and yet you know you have them by the Intellection of other things You see not your own eye-sight and yet you know that an eye-sight you have by the seeing of other things If there were not an Invisible God there would have been no visible creatures Visibles are more vile and are for I visibles that are more noble Our visible Bodies are for our Invisible Souls This visible life is the womb of everlasting life that is Invisible we are hatched by the Spirit in this shell till we are ready to pass forth into that glorious light that here we see not I beseech you Gentlemen awake and be not so lamentably deceived as to think that your honourable Pleasant Dreams are the only Realities O no! it is the last awaking hour that will shew you the now unconceivable Realities You are now but as in jest in your pomp and pleasure but you shall then be in good sadness in your pains and loss if Sanctifying Grace do not prevent it by putting you out of your feasting vein and making you in good sadness to be men of Real Faith and Holiness and lay about you for the Real Ioies Believe it Sirs the life of Christianity is not a bare Opinion It is a living by faith upon a life invisible and so serious resolving a Belief of the Truth of the everlasting blessedness as purchased and given bâ— Iesus Christ to persevering Saints as effectually turneth the affections and endeavours of the man to the Loving and seeking it above all this world It s one thing to take God and heaven for your portion as Believers do and another thing to be desirous of it as a reservè when you can keep the world no longer It s one thing to submit to Heaven as a Lesser evil then hell and another thing to desire it as a greater Good then earth It s one thing to lay up your Treasure and Hopes in heaven and to seek it first and another thing to be contented with it in your Necessity and to seek the world before it and give God that the flesh can spare Thus differeth the Religion of serious Christians and of Carnal worldly hypocrites But I shall break off my Admonition and end with some Advice Direct 1. Look upon this world and all things in it with the fore-seeing eye of Faith and Reason and vallue it but as it deserves And then you will neither be eager after it nor too much delighted in it nor puft up by it nor will it so prevalently entice you to venture or neglect eternal things Did you know and well consider but what an empty fading thing it is you could never be satisfied with so poor a portion nor quiet your souls till you had assurance or sound hopes of better things Nor would you take such pleasure in childish trifles nor debase your selves to be so inordinately imployed about such low and sordid matters while God and your eternal happiness are laid by You take not your selves for the basest of men much less for bruits or ideots O then do not make your selves the basest and do not unman your selves and brutifie your immortal souls A heathen could say Nemo alius est Deo dignus nisi qui opes contempsit If you would be Rich choose that which will make you Rich indeed make sure of his favour that is the absolute Lord of all and then you can want nothing whatever you may be without And if yet you thirst for worldly Riches or inordinately Love them and tenaciously keep them from your Masters use remember that this discovereth your disease and therefore should mind you rather to cure it then to feed it It is not money nor any thing in this world that will cure such an empty depraved soul. As Seneca saith If a sick man be carried about whether in a bed of gold or a bed of wood his disease is carried with him It is not a golden bed that will cure a diseased man Nor is it all the gold or honour in the world that will help such a deluded soul as thinks this world will make him happy Get but the cure of your Carnal minds and a little will serve you For it is your sinful fancy that would have much and not your nature that needs much Saith Seneca Si ad naturam vives nunquam eris pauper si ad opinionem nunquam eris dives Exiguum natura desiderat Opinio immensum He is not the poor man that hath but little but he that would have more Nor is he the Rich man that hath much but he that is content with what he hath If you pray but for your daily bread be not such hypocrites as by the bent of your desires to cross your prayers The nearest way to Riches saith the Moralist is the contempt of Riches and saith the Christian to be Rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which God hath promised all that Love him Jam. 2. 5. The greatest Riches are got proportionably on the easiest terms Loving the world will not procure it but Loving God will procure the everlasting fruition of his Love Millions love the world that miss of it but no man misseth of God that Loveth him above the world Buy not these gawds then at a dearer rate then you may have the Kingdom If you have not enough make sure of heaven and that will be enough for you and get a cure for your diseased minds which is easier and more profitable then to fulfill them No man saith Seneca
obstinately unreformed And is the case so altered think you now as that you are bound to make such children rich that parents then were bound to put to death 3. I am not bound to give unnecessary provisions to an enemy of God to mis-employ it and strengthen him to do mischief and be more able to oppress Gods servants or oppose his Truth or serve the Devil I for bear to mention the proportions of mens estates that I think they are ordinarily bound to alineate but shall leave you to Prudence and the General Rules lest I seem to you to go beyond my line But in general I must say that it is a selfish and an hainous errour to think that men should lay up all that they can gather for their posterity and all to leave them rich and honourable and put off God and all charitable uses with the crums that fall from their Tables or with some inconsiderable driblets If the Rich man in Luke 18. might have followed Christ on such terms as these he would hardly have gone sorrowfully from him 1. By this men shew that they prefer their children before God 2. And that they prefer them before the Church and Gospel and the Common-wealth When an herâ—ick Heathen would have confessed that his estate and children and his life were not too good to be sacrificed to his Countrey as the case of the Decii and many other Romans that gave their lives for their Countrey witnesseth 3. These men prefer the worldly riches of their children before the souls of men When they have so many Calls to employ their wealth to the furthering of mens salvation and put by all that their children may be rich 4. They prefer their childrens Riches before their own everlasting good Or else they would not deny themselves the Reward of an holy improvement of their talents and cast themselves upon the terrible sentence that is past upon unprofitable servants and all to leave their children wealthy 5. They prefer the bodily prosperity of their children before their spiritual Or else they would not be so eager to leave them that Riches which Christ hath told them is such a snare and hindrance to mens salvation 6. They would teach all the world the easie art of never doing good in life or death For if all must follow their principles then the Parents must keep almost all for their children and the children must do the like by their children and so it must run on to all generations that their posterity may be kept as rich as their predecessors 7. How unlike is this to the antient Saints and how unlike to the general precepts of self-denyal and doing good to all while we have time c. which Christ hath left us in the Gospel Enable your children to be serviceable in the Church and Common-wealth as far as you may but prefer them not before the Church or Common-wealth Wrong not God nor your own souls nor the souls or bodies of other men to procure your children to be rich It will not ease your pains in hell to think that you have left your children Rich on earth It s few of the great and noble that are Called They will have an easier way to heaven in a mean estate Their Nurses milk contented them when first they lived in the world and will nothing but Lands and Lordships and superlative matters now content them when they have a shorter time to use it Poor men can sing as merily as the Rich and sleep as quietly and live as comfortably and die as easily Cantabit vacuus They are free from abundance of your cares and fears The Philosopher that had received a great gift of Gold from a Prince sent it back to him the next morning and told him that he loved no such gifts as would not let him take his sleep for thinking what to do with it Direct 7. Lastly Study the Art of doing Good and making your selves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when you go hence you may be received into the everlasting habitations Remember how much of your Religion doth consist in the Devoting of your selves and all to God and improving his stock and being Rich in good works ready to distribute and communicate 1 Tim. 6. 18. And how much will be laid upon this at Iudgement Matth. 25. God doth not call upon you for your charity as if he would be beholden to you or needed any thing that you can give him but because he will thus difference his hearty followers from complementing hypocrites The poor you shall have alwayes with you and the Church shall alwayes want your help and Christ will be still distressed in his members to try the reality of mens professions whether they love him above all or else dissemble with him and wheeher they have any thing that they think too good for him It is a certain mark of an hypocrite to have any thing in this world so dear to you that you cannot spare it for Christ. Remember then that it is your own concernment If you would be ever the better for all your wealth nay if you would not be undone by it study how you may be most serviceable to God with it Cicero could say that to be Rich is not to possess much but to use much And Seneca could rebuke them that so study to encrease their wealth that they forget to use it If really you be Christians heaven is your portion and your end And if so you can love nothing else nor use any thing else rationally but as a means to attain that end See therefore in all your expences how you attain or promote your end Alas men are so busily building in their way that they shew us that they take not themselves for travellers They are so familiar with the world that they shew us they are not strangers but at home They make their garments so fine and lay such mountains on their backs that we see they mean not to be serious Runners in the Christian race The thorny cares that choak Christs seed do shew that they are barren and nigh to burning If you gather Riches for your selves Luke 12. 21. you are standing pits If you are Rich to God you will be running springs or cisterns There is a blessed Art of sending all your Riches to Heaven before you if you could learn it and were willing to be happy at those rates It is not for your Riches that God will either condemn or save you but for the Abasing or improving them Though Lazarus was a beggar yet Abraham had been rich whose bosom he was in Rich men must know saith Ambrose that the fault is not in Riches but in them that know not how to use them Nam divitiae ut impedimenta sunt improbis ita bonis sunt adjumenta virtutum O that you could but be sensible of the difference betwixt them that can say at last We have used our stock for the
service of our Lord We studied his Will and Interest and accordingly employed all that we had in the world and them that must say We gave now and then an alms to the poor but for the substance of our estates we spent it carnally for the flesh to bear up our pomp and greatness in the world and then we left it to our children to do the like when we were dead There is as wide a difference between the end of these two waies as there is betwixt Heaven and Hell And surely the way is connexed to the end Think not either that you can serve God and Mammon or that you may live to the world and die to God When one was asked whether he had rather be Craesus or Socrates he answered that he had rather be Craesus while he lived and Socrates when he came to die But dream not you of such a choice Gal. 6. 7 8. Be not deceived God is not mocked Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap If you sow to the flesh of the flesh you shall reap corruption but if you sow to the Spirit of the Spirit you shall reap everlasting life And this much more let me add that if you intend your wealth for God you must not think of evil getting it For God will not accept a sacrifice that is got by falshood rapine or injustice Nay if you intended it indeed for God you would not dare to procure it by sin For God needeth not fraud perfidiousness or injustice to promote his service Pietas sua federa servat As Austinâ—aith â—aith Ream linguam non faciâ— nisi rea mens So I say here Your mind is first guilty of denying God whatever you pretend when you dare thus by your deeds deny him Yea let me add that so far should you be from yielding to any temptation to be covetous for God for your family or any good end that may be offered you that you should make an advantage of such temptations to watch the world and your deceitful hearts the more narrowly hereafter And if in all temptations to worldliness you could turn them to a gain and duty and over-shoot the tempter in his bow it were a point of singular zeal and Prudence When he would put any covetous motion into your mind or work it into your hands give then more liberally or do more good then you did before Let this be all that the deceitful flesh and world shall get by you Fallite fallentes Et in laqueos quos posuere cadant I know that flesh and blood will stand in your way with abundance of disswasives and make you believe that this so plain and great a duty is no duty In the verbal part of godliness it would allow God but little but in the more costly practical part much less Sometime it will tell you that men are so naught that they deserve not your charity But Christ deserveth it give it therefore to him Sometime it will tell you of mens unthankfulness but satis est dedisse you have done your duty God accepteth it Other mens thankfulness is not your Reward You are more unthankful your selves to God You are called to imitate him that causeth his Sun to shine and his rain to fall on the just and on the unjust and that daily bestoweth his mercies on the unthankful Sometime it will tell you of the uncertainty of reaching the end of your Charity That if you maintain Schollars to Learning they may prove ungodly if you leave any considerable gift to pious uses sacriledgious and rapacious hands may alienate it But you are sure of succeeding in your ultimate end which is the pleasing of God and your own salvation It is not lost to you if it be to others Cast your bread upon the waters if you cannot trust God you cannot obey him Do your part and leave his part to himself It s your part to Give and its Gods part to succeed it for the attainment of the end He that is worst is likest to fail And whether think you is better God or you and which should be more suspected He is unworthy the name of a servant of God that will run no hazard for him Venter your charity in a way of duty or pretend not to be charitable Will you not sow your Masters corn till you are certain of a plentious increase And do you think that he will take this for a good account This is the foolish excuse that Christ hath told you shall have a terrible sentence you will hide Gods talent for fear of losing it but wo to such unprofitable servants Sometime the flesh will tell you that you may want your selves or your posterity at least and that you were best gather till your stock arise to so much or so much and then God shall have some A fair bargain Iust like ungodly men by their Repentance and Conversion they will sin till they are old and then they will turn But few turn that delay with such resolutions If God have not right to all he hath right to none If he have right to all will you give him none but your leavings A swine will let another eat when his belly is full What if you are never richer will you never do good therefore with what you have And for the impoverishing of your self if you fear being a loser by God you may keep your Riches as long as you can and try how you can save your self and them A mans life consisteth not in the abundance that he possesseth Do not imagine that you need more then you do If Monasticks think it their perfection to be wilfully poor and Seneca thought it the Cynicks wisdom quod effecit nequid sibi eripi posset you may much more rejoyce in such an estate if God bring you to it by or for well-doing You live in dangerous times Wars and thieves may soon levell your estates Can there be greater wisdom then to send it all to heaven and lay it up with God and put it into the surest hands and put it to the only usury Aut ego fallor aut regnum est inter avaros circumscriptores latrones plagiarios unum esse cui noceri non possit Cannot a man live think you without wealth and honour Siquis de talium faelicitate dubitat potest idem dubitare de deorum immortalium statu an parum bearè degant quod illis non praedia nec horti sint c. Sen. As it is the honour of God the first mover omnia movere ipse non motus So it is the honour of the greatest Benefactors omnia dare nihil habentes He that hath it to Give hath it more transcendently then he that hath it but to Use. He that hath most hath most care and trouble and envy and danger and the greatest reckoning Neither Poverty nor Riches was the wise mans wish but Convenient food Optimus pecuniae modus est qui nec in paupertatem
God the things that are his own It is not a proper Donation that we call you to You cannot give him a propriety who hath it already nor alienate it from your selve who never had it in respect to God But yet you may Give it to him by tradition You may deliver him his own in the way that he requires it and lay out your Masters stock for his service And if he will so far honour your fidelity as to call this a giving or a lending to him me thinks this should encourage you to liberality but I see not how it can excuse your denying him his own Obj. But it is but to satisfie the covetousness of the Priests that we are called on to Give to God as if they were God or God had that which they have Answ. Adding reproach to covetousness will prove one day but a sad excuse for sin If this age understood the fift Commandment and the hainousness of ingratitude to God and man for the greatest mercies and how it is that Christ Teacheth and Ruleth and how he is Obeyed or Despised in the world they would tremble to think of the scorn and contempt of a faithful Ministry The eye that mocketh at his Father and despiseth to obey a Mother the Ravens of the valley shall pick it out and the young Eagles shall eat it Prov. 30. 17. Who so curseth his Father or Mother his Lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness Prov. 2â— 20. And he shall die the death Exod. 21. 17. And for your Objection The Priests of the Lord under the Law were not God the Apostles and Gospel Ministers were not God nor any that serve at the Altar who yet must live upon the Altar The poor themselves be not God and yet you shall understand one day that in as much as you did it not to one of these you did it not to Christ and in despising them you despised him Mat. 25. Luke 10. 16. The vanity of your fond pretence was sufficiently told you by Christ himself Mat. 25. 45. where he tells you how he will answer your companions that shall use it In as much as you did it not to one of these you did it not to me And yet will you say Lord when did we see thee hungry naked c. when you have your answer before hand Worldly wretches you would not part with your wealth if you could help it to Christ himself if he should come and ask it of you For you read in his word that it is he that asketh it and commandeth it from you now But if you will not believe that it is Christ that requireth it till he come himself in person to demand it and if you are such faithfull Stwards that you will part with none of your Masters stock till he ask you for it face to face for fear of mis-imploying it be patient awhile and he will come and seek his own with advantage but to the eternal woe of unprofitable servants You can spare God the tithe of your words in formal duties when the devil and the world have had the rest but not so much as the old legal proportion of your estates much less the Evangelical All. What makes you drop prayers so much thicker then Alms or Distributions Do you think that God doth not as strictly require the one as the other If speaking were not cheaper to you then giving your prayers and religious talk would be so seldom and so short as that it would be as your distributions are next to none If words cost money your tongues would be as strait as your purses are and the world should scarce hear whether you were of any Religion or none Do these men glory only in the Cross of Christ and is the world by it crucified to them and they to the world We have their answer in their actions what need we any more They are dead in and by the world but not to the world They are its slaves though they are called the servants of Christ. SECT XVII HOnourable Worshipfull and all well beloved it is a weighty imployment that occasioneth your meeting here to day The estates and lives of men are in your hands But it is another kind of Judgement which you are all hasting towards when Judges and Justices the Accusers and Accused must all appear upon equal terms for the final decision of a far greater Cause The case that is then there to be determined is not whether you shall have Lands or no Lands Life or no Life in our natural sense but whether you shall have Heaven or Hell Salvation or Damnation an endless life of Glory with God and the Redeemer and the Angles of Heaven or an endless life of Torment with devils and ungodly men As sure as you now sâ—t on those seats you shall shortly all appear before the Judge of all the world and there receive an irreversible sentence to an unchangeable state of Happiness or Misery This is the great business that should presently call up your most serious thoughts and set all the powers of your souls on work for the most effectuall preparation that if you are men you may quit your selves like men for the preventing of that dreadful doom which unprepared souls must there expect The greatest of your secular affairs are but dreams and toyes to this Were you at every Assize to determine causes of no lower value then the Crowns and Kingdoms of the Monarchs of the earth it were but as childrens games to this If any man of you believe not this he is worse then the Devil that tempteth him to unbelief and let him know that unbelief is no prevention nor will put off the day or hinder his appearance but ascertain his condemnation at that appearance And if you all do believe this you will sure be content that I speak to you of it as one that also do believe it Faith is the evidence of things not seen by it we may fore see the Judgement set the world appearing and your selves there waiting for your final doom And because we clearly find before-hand who then shall die and who shall live I shall desire of you that you would presently improve the discovery Some think we cannot know in this life what will become of us in the next But God hath not bid us try in vain nor in vain delivered us so many signs by which it may be known nor is the difference between the saved and the damned so small as to be undiscernable Our own reason may tell us that the righteous God would not send some to Glory with Angels and others to endless misery with Devils and make such a difference between men hereafter if there were not a considerable difference here He that knows the Law and the fact may know before your Assizes what will become of every prisoner if the proceedings be all just as in our case they will certainly be Christ will Judge
according to his Laws Know therefore whom the Law condemneth or justifieth and you may know whom Christ will condemn or justifie And seeing all this is so doth it not concern us all to make a speedy tryal of our selves in preparation to this final tryal I shall for your own sakes therefore take the boldness as the Officer of Christ to summon you to appear before your selves and keep an Assize this day in your own souls and answer at the Barr of Conscience to what shall be charged upon you Fear not the tryal for it is not conclusive final nor a peremptory irreversible sentence that must now pass Yet slight it not for it is a necessary preparative to that which is final and irreversible Consequentially it may prove a justifying Accusation an Absolving Condemnation and if you proceed to Execution a saving quickning death which I am now perswading you to undergo The whole world is divided into two sorts of men One that Love God above all and live to him and the other that Love the flesh and world above all and live to them One that lay up a treasure in earth and have their heart there The other that lay up a treasure in heaven and have their heart there One that seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness another that seek first the things of this life One that mind and savour the things of the flesh and of man the other that mind and savour most the things of the Spirit and of God One that account all things dung and dross that they may win Christ another that make light of Christ in comparison of their business and riches and pleasures in the world One that live by sight and sense upon present things Another that live by faith upon things invisible One that have their conversation in Heaven and live as strangers upon earth Another that mind earthly things and are strangers to heaven One that have in resolution forsaken aâ— for Christ and the hopes of a treasure in heaven Another that resolve to keep somewhat here though they venture and forsake the heavenly reward and will go away sorrowful that they cannot have both One that being born of the flesh is but flesh The other that being born of the Spirit is Spirit One that live as without God in the world The other that live as without the seducing world in God and in and by the subservient world to God One that have Ordinances and Means of Grace as if they had none The other that have houses lands wives as if they had none One that believe as if they believed not and love God as if they loved him not and pray as if they prayed not as if the fruit of these were but a shadow The other that weep as if they wept not for worldly things and rejoyce as if they rejoyced not One that have Christ as not possessing him and use him and his name as but abusing them The other that buy as if they possessed not and use the world as not abusing it One that draw near to God with their lips when their hearts are far from him The other that Corporally converse with the world when their hearts are far from it One that serve God who is a Spirit with Carnall service and not in Spirit and Truth The other that use the world it self spiritually and not in a carnall worldly manner In a word One sort are children of this world and the other are the children of the world to come and heirs of the heavenly Kingdom One sort have their Portion in this life And the other have God for their Portion One sort have their Good things in this life time and their Reward here The other have their Evil things in this life and live in Hope of the Everlasting Reward I suppose you know that all this is from the word of God and therefore I need not cite the Texts which do contain it But lest any doubt I will lay them all together that you may peruse them at leisure Matth. 22. 37. 10. 37. 6. 19 20 21. 6. 33. Iohn 6. 27. Isa. 55. 1 2 3. Rom. 8. 5 6 7 13. Phil. 3. 9 10 11. Mat. 22. 5. 2 Cor. 4. 18. Heb. 11. 1. throughout Phil. 3. 19 20 21. Psalm 119 19. Heb. 11. 13. Luke 14. 33. 18. 22. Iohn 3. 6. Ephis 2. 12. 1 Cor. 10. 31. Psalm 16. 8. Ezek. 33. 31 32. 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. Iohn 2. 23 24. Psalm 78. 35 36 37. Iohn 15. 2. 1. 9 10 11. Mat. 15. 8. Psalm 73. 23 24 25. 1 Thes. 5. 17 18. Phil. 3. 21 Matth. 15. 9. Iohn 4. 22 23. 1 Gor. 10. 31. Luke 10. 8. 20. 34. Rom. 8. 16 17. Psalm 17. 14. 16. 5. 73. 26. Luke 16 25. Mat. 6. 5. 5. 12. Luke 18. 22. In these Texts is plainly contained all that I have here said to you Well then Beloved Hearers seeing you that sit here present are all of one of these two sorts let conscience speak which is it that you are of These are the two sorts that shall stand on the right and left hand of Christ in Judgement They that gave Christ his own with advantage and lived to him and studiously devoted their Riches and other Talents to his use as men that unfeignedly made God their End these are they that are set on the right hand and adjudged as Blessed to the Kingdom which they so esteemed And those that hid their talents by keeping or expending them to their private use denying them to Christ and living to themselves these are they that are set on the left hand and adjudged to the everlasting fire with the Devils whom they served It is a desperate mistake of self-deceiving men to think that a state of Holiness consisteth only in external worship or that a state of wickedness consisteth only in some gross sins I tell you from the word of God the difference is greater and lyeth deeper then so If you would know whether you are Christians indeed and shall be saved the first and great question is What is your End What take you for your portion And what is it that hath the prevalent stream of your desires and endeavours As it is not every step that we set out of the way to heaven that will prove us ungodly so is it not any Religiousness whatsoever that standeth in a subserviency to the world that will prove you godly Would you know then what you are And whether you are in the way to Heaven or Hell And what God will judge of you if you so continue Why then deal faithfully with your selves and answer this question without deceit What is it that hath your Hearts your very Hearts What is it that is the matter of your dearest Love And what the matter of your chiefest care What is it that is the very bent and scope of your life Is it for this world or
with that which should be your food you turn your daily blessings to your bane by dropping your Poyson into the cup of Mercies which bountiful providence putteth into your hands There is not a surer way in the world to undo you then by Turning to the creature and forsaking God You cry for more of the world and you are unsatisfied till you have it and when you have it you do but destroy your souls with it by giving it your hearts which must be given only unto God What a stir do men make for temptation and destruction What cost and pains are men at to purchase them an Idol and to make provision for the flesh to satisfie its desires when they confess it to be the greatest enemy of their souls Like a man that would give all that he hath for a coal of fire to put into the thatch even such is your desires after the world and the use you make of it 8. What abundance of precious time and labour do you lose which might and should be better spent Doth not this world take up the most of your care and strength and time You are about it early and late It is first and last and almost alwaies in your thoughts It findeth you so much to do that you have scarce any time so much as to mind the God that made you or to seek to escape the everlasting misery which is near at hand It hath taken up so much of your hearts that when God should have them in any holy duty or service for his Church you are heartless When you shall see your accounts cast up to your hands as shortly you shall see it though you will not now be perswaded to do it your selves and when you shall there see how many thoughts the world had in comparison of God and how many hours were laid out upon the world when Gods service was cast by for want of time and how near the creature was to your heart while God as a stranger stood at the door And in a word how the world was your daily business while the matters of God stept in but now and then upon the by you will then confess that you laboured in vain and that your life and labour should have been better employed Hath God given you but a short uncertain life and laid your everlasting life upon it and will you cast all away upon these transitory delights How short a time have you for so great a work and shall the world have all Oh that you did but know to how much greater advantage you might have spent this time and labour in seeking God and an endless Glory One thing is needful make sure of that and waste not the rest of your daies in vanity What wise man would spend so precious a thing as Time is upon that which he knows will leave him in Repentings that ever it was so spent The world doth rob poor sinners of their time but when they see it is gone and they would fain have a little of that time again to make preparation for their everlasting state it is not all the world then that can bring them back one hour of it again Certainly such a loss of time and labour is no small aggravation of a worldlings sin 9. You are also guilty of the high contempt of the Kingdom of Glory while you prefer these transitory things before it Your hearts and lives speak that which you are ashamed to speak with your tongues You are ashamed to say that Earth is better for you then Heaven or that your sin is better for you then the favour of God but your lives speak it out If you think not your present condition better for you then heaven why do you choose and prefer it and why do you more carefully and laboriously seek the things of earth then the Heavenly Glory If your child would sell his inheritance for a cup of Ale you would think he set light by it And if he would part with father and mother for the company of a beggar or a thief you would say he had no great love to you And if you will venture your part in heaven for the pleasures of sin and will part with God for the matters of this world would you have him think that you set much by his Kingdom or his love O the unreasonableness of sin the madness of worldly fleshly men Is it indeed more desirable to prosper in their shops their fields and their pleasures for a few daies or years then everlastingly to live in the presence of the Lord Shall Christ purchase a Kingdom at the price of his blood and offer it us freely and shall we prefer the life of a bruit before it Shall God offer to advance so mean a creature to an heavenly station among his Angels and shall we choose rather to wallow in the dung of our Transgressions Take heed lest as you are guilty of Esau's folly you also meet with Esau's misery and the time should come that you shall find no place for Repentance that is for Recovery by Repentance though you seek it with tears Contempt of kindness is a provoking thing For it is the height of ingratitude And especially when it is the greatest kindness that is contemned As it will be the everlasting imployment of the Saints to enjoy that felicity and to admire and praise that infinite Love which caused them to enjoy it So will it be the everlasting misery of the damned to be deprived of that felicity and to think of their solly in the unthankful contempt of it and of the excellency of that Kingdom which thus they did contemn God sets before you Earth and Heaven If you choose earth expect no more And hereafter Remember that you had your choice 10. To make short of the rest of the aggravation of your sin and sum it up in a word Your Love of the world is the sum of all iniquity It virtually or actually containeth in it the breach of every command in the Decalogue The first Commandment which is the foundation of the Law and especially of the first Table is broken by it while you make it your Idol and give it the Esteem and Love and Service that is due to God The second third and fourth Commandments it disposeth you to break While your hearts and ends are carnal and worldly the manner of your service will be so and you will suit your Religion to the will of men and your carnal Interest and not to the will and word of God The name and holy nature of God is habitually contemned by you while you more set by your worldly matters then by him His holy daies you ordinarily violate and his Ordinances you do hypocritically abuse while your hearts are upon your covetousness or sensual delights and are far from him while you draw near him with your lips Worldlinys will make you even break the bonds of natural obligations and be
heaven with God The worldling is rich for himself and all that he parteth with for Gods service or the poor is but the leavings of the flesh and that which it can spare when it s own desires are satisfied for so much an Epicure may part with to good uses But the sanctified doth employ his riches for God as being Rich to him and not to his Carnal self You see by this time who they be that are the fools in Gods account And that though the children of this world are wiser in their Generation then the children of light Luke 16. 8. yet the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God and the foolishness of God is wiser then men 1 Cor. 3. 19. 1. 20 25. And you know that it is Christ that requireth you to forsake all that you have for him and dare you say that Christ commandeth you to be fools Is not that the wisest way which he requireth Obj. But Christ would not have us cast away that which he giveth us but only rather to forsake it then to forsake him and that I would do Answ. But if you forsake it not first in Affection and Resolution you will never forsake it actually when he calls you to it though you may be confident you should while you look not to be put to it In your hearts all must be now forsaken though you may keep some in your hands till God require it 2. And even in prosperity you must devote your wealth to God and use it more for him then for your selves if you will prove your selves to be his servants Quest. 2. MY second Question to you is this You that are so loath to part with the world and be Crucified to it tell me What hath it done for you that you should be so fond of it and that it should seem worthy of such estimation and affection Hath it not put you to more care and sorrow then it is worth It never gave you solid Peace it never made you acceptable to God! You are not a jot better when you are rich then when you are poor unless grace do that for you that riches cannot nay and grace must do it not only without but against your riches All that the world can do for you is but to satisfie your sensual appetite and by the superfluity to please a Covetous mind And is this a matter of so great worth A beast may have his sensual delight as well as you And if man be better then a beast do you think he is not capable of a better and higher delight then beasts Will you call your selves Men and Christians and yet take up with the pleasures of a bruit and there place your happiness If the drunkâ—rd have an hundred barrels of Ale or Wine more then he can drink this doth not so much as please his appetite but only his faâ—â—â— So if you have never so much riches more then your flesh â—â— self hath use for this only pleaseth a covetous fancy All that you enjoy is but so much as may satisfie the luâ—â—s of your flesh And I pray you tell me Whether you do not your selves believe that a sober temperate heavenly Christian doth live as comfortable a life as you And Whether they have not more peace in their minds without your sinful sensual delights then you have with them Indeed it is but the distemper of your minds that makes that so pleasant to you which another that is well in his wits would be weary of As the swine takes pleasure to tumble in the mire which a wise man would not do Do you not sin against your own experience Have you not found that the world is an unsatisfactory thing and cannot help you in a day of trouble And yet will you stick to it Quest. 3. MY next Question is What hath the world done for any other that should perswade you to set so much by it as you do Did it ever save a soul or heal a soul or make a man truly happy at the last Look back in any credible Records to the beginning of the world and down to this day and tell me where is the man that is made happy by the world And Consider what it hath done for them all He that had most of it and made the best of it for the pleasing of his flesh had but a short taste of sonsual pleasures which quickly left him worse then he was before like cold drink to a man in the fit of an Ague And will you so far lay by your reason as to go against the Experience of all the world Do they all cry out against it as Vanity and yet will you take no warning Can you think to find that by it that no man ever found before you What art have you to extract such comforts from the creature that never man could do till now It is the shame of them that spend so much cost and time and labour in seeking that seed of Gold which they call the Philosophers stone because never any that sought it could find it but have all lost their labour So is it your far greater shame to run an hazard so much greater for that which never man from the beginning of the world could find till now â—olomon went as far as any in the pleasing of his flesh with the fulness of the world and in the Conclusion he passeth this sentence on it that All is vanity and vexation of spirit Quest. 4. MY next Question to you is this What is it that you do seriously expect from the world for the time to come that should perswade you to stick so close to it as you do Some great matter sure you think it will do for you or else you would never so esteem it I pray you tell me what it is Do you think verily that it will make you truly happy Do you expect that it should bring you to heaven I suppose you do not What then will it do for you It will neither prevent a sickness nor remove it It cannot take away a tooth-ake nor a fit of the gout or stone It will not save you from the jaws of death nor keep your bodies from rotting in the grave nor bribe the worms or corruption from devouring them When your Physitian tells you that your disease is uncurable and you see that there is no way but one with you and you must be gone there 's no remedy if then you cry for help to the world it cannot help you Friends cannot save you Riches and Honours Houses and Lands cannot preserve you Death will obey his will that sendeth it and you must away O who would love that and love it at so dear a rate which cannot help you in the time of your necessity Who would serve such a Master such an Idol God as cannot relieve you in the day of your distressâ—â— When conscience is awakened and begins to stir and gripe you and the wrath
of sensual things and so must be drowned in unprofitable cares What he shall eat or drink and wherewith he shall be cloathed What matter is it to a wise man Whether his meat be sweet or bitter or whether his drink be strong or small or whether his cloaths be fine or homely or whether he be honoured or derided or past by save only as these things may have relation to greater things and as the body must be kept in a serviceable plight and we must value that capacity most in which we may best do our Masters work Keep under the flesh and you will easily overcome the world Otherwise you strive against the the stream While you have unmortified raging appetites and corrupted fancies and sensual minds you are byassed to the world and if the rub of a Sermon or sickness may turn you out of your way awhile the byass will prevail and you will quickly be on it again If you dam up the stream of these unmortified affections they will rage the more and if you stop them for a while by good company or some restraint yet will they shortly break over all and be more violent then before All your striving by waies of meer restraint are to little purpose till the flesh it self be subdued It is but as if you should strive with a greedy dog for his bone and with an hungry Lyon to bereave him of his prey be sure they will not easily part with it It s the case of many deluded people that have some knowledge of Scripture enough to convince them and tip their tongues and strive to restrain them from their sensual waies but not enough to mortifie the flesh and change their souls O what a combate is there in their lives The flesh will have its prey and pleased it must be Their conscience tells them It will cost thee dear Their flesh like an hungry dog is ready to seize upon that which it desires And conscience doth as it were stand over it with a staff and saith Meddle with it if thou dare And sometime the poor sinner is restrained and sometime again he ventureth upon the prey and he that had condemned himself for his sin doth turn to his former vomit and once more he must have his whore or his cups and then conscience takes him by the throat and terrifieth him and makes him forbear a little while again And thus the poor sinner is tost up and down and Satan leads him captive at his will And because he findeth a combate within him he thinks it is the combate between the flesh and the sanctifying Spirit when alas it s no more but the combate between the flesh and an inlightened conscience assisted with the motions of common grace which because they resist and trample underfoot their condemnation will be the greater Would you then have the boiling of your corruptions abated Put out the fire that causeth them to boil or else you trouble your selves in vain Mortifie the flesh once and get it under and scorn to be a slave to a sensual appetite but let it be all one to you to displease it as to please it and leave such trifles as pleasant meats and drinks and dwellings and fine cloathes to children and fools that have no greater things to mind and use the flesh as a servant to the soul supplying it with necessaries but correcting it if it do but crave superfluities Do this and you will easily Crucifie the world For the world is only for the flesh For saith Iohn 1 Iohn 2. 16. All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and pride of life which are not of the Father but of the world And the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever Remember that he that saith in my text that he is Crucified to the world doth say also Gal. 5. 24. that They that are Christs have Crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts This is to kill the world at the Root for it is Rooted in the fleshly Interest When otherwise you will but lop off the branches and they will quickly grow again Direct 4. BE sure to keep your minds intent upon the Greater matters of Everlasting life and all your Affections imployed thereupon Diversion must be your cure Especially to so powerful and transcendent an object Be once acquainted with Heaven by a life of faith and it will so powerfully draw you to it self that you will be ready to forget earth and take it as a kind of Nothing Get up to God and fix the eye of your soul on him and his glory will darken all the world and rescue you from the mis-leadings of that false fire that did delude you Come near him daily and taste how good he is and the sweetness of his love will make you marvail at them that think the world so sweet and marvail at your selves that you were ever of such a mind You cannot think that the world will be cast out of your Love but by the appearance of somewhat better then it self You must go to Heaven therefore for a Writ of ejectment You must fetch a beauty a pleasure from above that shall abase it and silence it and shame its competition O what is earth and all things in it to him that hath had a believing lively thought of Heaven Nothing below this will serve the turn You may think long enough of the troubles of the world and long enough confess its vanity before you can Crucifie it if you see not where you may have something that is better The poorest life will seem better then none and a little in hand will be preferred before uncertain hopes Till faith have opened Heaven to you as being the Evidence of the things invisible and have shewed you that they are not shadows but substances which the promise revealeth and Believers do expect you will be still holding fast that little that you have and you will say in your hearts as some do with their tongues I know what I have in this world but I know not what I shall have in another But the knowledge of God will soon make you of another mind Let in God into the soul and he will fill it with himself and leave no room for earth and flesh Learn what it is to walk with him and to have a conversation in heaven and it will cure you of your earthly mindedness Phil. 3. 18 19. There is no consistence between Earth and Heaven All men are either Earthly or Heavenly minded None therefore but the truly Heavenly Believer hath Crucified the world But because I have said more of this elsewhere I now forbear Direct 5. VNderstand well the right use and end of all creatures and make it your business accordingly to improve them I have told you before that they are all for God and glasses wherein we may see his face and
callings and about all the creatures Think with your selves Here is now a lesson in my hands if I can but learn it Here is somewhat that may shew me both God himself and my duty if I could but skilfully open it and understand it And so bethink your selves What it is that God would teach you or command you by that creature and especially to what use he requireth you to put it And remember that if you should think of God all the day long and yet not intend him and refer your labours and your riches to his service and give them up to his use this is not sanctifying God in the creature but hypocriticall abusing of him For it is not all thinking of God that will serve the turn 6. As you use to take account of your servants how they do your work so I would advise you every night or as often as you can to take an account of your selves as you are the servants of the God of heaven and ask your Consciences What have I done this day for God and how have I observed and sanctified him in his works So much for the fifth Direction Direct 6. REmember alwaies that the world is the enemy of your salvation and that if you be damned it is like to be through its enticements and therefore labour to be alwaies sensible that you go in continual danger of it And this will make you use it as an enemy and walk in a constant fear least it should over-reach you And see also that you endeavour as clearly as you can to find out wherein its enmity doth consist and then you will perceive that it is especially in seeming more Lovely then it is as it is the fewel of concupiscence and the provision of the flesh And when you understand this you will perceive that your danger lyeth in over-loving it and that it killeth by its embracements And this will direct you which way to bend the course of your opposition and what you must do to be saved from its snares To call the world an enemy is easie and common but so far as your very hearts apprehend it as an enemy so far you are out of danger of it An easie enemy that is conquered by understanding that it is an enemy And the way of its conquest is by enticing men to take it for a friend And also remember how great a part of your Christian life consisteth in keeping up the comâ—ate with this enemy and how certainly and miserably you will perish if you be overcome Direct 7. TO â—e much in the house of mourning and see the end of all the living will help us towards the Crucifying of the world Go among the sick and hear what they say of the world Stand by the dying and see what it will do for them and think now whether God or the world be better Look on the corpses of your deceased friends and think now Whether the soul be ever the better for all the riches and pleasures of the world Take notice of the graves and bones of the dead and think what a worthless thing is the world and all the glory and delights that it affords which will so turn us off and leave our bodies in such a plight as that Take notice of the frailties and diseases of your own flesh that tell you how shortly it must lie down in the dust And then compare this world and that to come where your abode will be everlasting It s a shame for a wise man to live as a stranger to so great a change and to look so much after a world that he is leaving and so little after the world that he shall abide in Direct 8. IT will much avail to the Crucifying of the world to you that you study the improvement of all your Afflictions Do not repine at them and think them a greater evil then they are but believe that they are a special advantage to your souls for the mortifying of your inordinate affections to the world and if you have but the wisdom and hearts to make use of them they may do you more good then all the prosperity of your lives hath done If you fall into poverty or fall under slanders or reproach from men if your friends prove false to you if those that you have done good to prove unthankful if the wickedness and frowardness of men do make you even weary of the world remember now what an advantage you have for Mortification When you have experience it self to disgrace the creature to you and your very flesh doth seem to be convinced Now see that you observe the teachings of this providence and come off from the world when you see it is so little worth and set as light by it as it doth by you Bethink you now that God doth this to lead you to himself and thankfully accept his call and close with him as your portion and be content with him alone and let them take the world that can get no better You see that adversity will make even a worldling speak hardly of the world as men will do of their friends when they fall out with them How much more should it help the gracious soul to a fuller sense of its vanity and nothingness and of the necessity and excellency of more certain things It s a great sin and folly in us that we strive more to have afflictions removed then sanctified and so we lose the gain that we might have got Though affliction alone will do little good yet grace doth make such use of affliction that thousands in heaven will have cause to bless God for them that before they were afflicted went astray and were deceived by the flatteries of the world as well as others Abundance that have been convinced of the vanity of the world have lingered long before they would forsake it till affliction hath rowsed their sleepy souls and by a lowder voice hath called them away Direct 9. BE very suspicious of a prosperous state and be more afraid of the world when it smiles then when it frowns Some are much perplexed for fear left they should not stand in adversity that too little fear being ensnared by prosperity They are afraid what they should do in a time of tryal and do not consider that prosperity is the great tryal Adversity doth but shew that love of the world which was in mens hearts in time of prosperity When men forsake Christ for fear of suffering and because they will not forsake the world they do but shew the effects of that disease which they had catcht long before When the world pleased them they fell so deep in love with it that now they will venture their souls to keep it It is prosperity that breeds the disease though adversity shew it Love not the world and you will easily part with it and so will easily suffer for Christ And prosperity is liker to tice your Love to it then
whose discourse and prayers and daily examples will help to draw up your minds to God and to affect them with things that nearlyer concern you then all the profits or pleasures of the world I Have now told you how you should Crucifie the world and be Crucified to it but which of you will be so happy as to practise these Directions I cannot tell I have brought you the armour and weapons by which this mortal enemy must be conquered but it is not in my power to give you couragious hearts to use them I can certainly tell you what a safe and comfortable life you might live if you had but this enemy under your feet and what an easie and happy death you might die if you were first dead to the world But to make you so happy is not in my power I can foresee the certain damnation of all unconverted sensualists and worldlings and how sad a farewell they must shortly take of all their felicity But to prevent it is not in my power For I cannot make you willing to prevent it It s a greater work then bare information that is here to be done If it were but to give the world a few contemptuous words and to call it vanity and a worthless thing I should make no doubt of prevailing with the most But to kill it in your hearts is an harder work And with some kind of men it prospers most when it is hardlyest spoken of It s easie to tell a man why and how he should lay down his life for Christ if he be called to it But there 's more to be done before it will be practised Till an heavenly light possess your minds and shew you the better things to come and assure you of more to be had in Christ then the world can afford you I cannot look you should lose your hold nor that an hundred Sermons should make you willing to seek the death of that which hath your heart Sense is tenacious and unreasonable When you have knockâ— it off an hundred times yet still it will be sense and will be eager after its delights again Some will be still thinking that Mortification and heavenly mindedness is so rare a thing that God will be more merciful then to condemn all that are without them And some will be inconsiderate and sensless when the clearest reason is set before them and will venture their salvation rather then become dead to all their worldly lusts and hopes So that with sorrow I must say that now I have said all and delivered my Message I fear the most will still be the same and reject the counsel of God to their perdition For this is a grace that accompanieth salvation and therefore will be the portion only of the heirs of salvation Though our hearts dâ—e â—ire and prayer and endeavour must be that the professed Is ' raelites may be saved yet we must take up our comfort shorter that the Elect shall obtain it though the rest are hardened For its Gods will and not ours that must be done If Christ be satisfied in the salvation of his little flock as seeing in them the travail of his soul even so must we and though as Samuel did over Saul so we may mourn over the rest that God hath forsaken yet that sorrow must know its season and its measure For my part I must needs say to you that though it may seem an high extraordinary thing to some of you for a man to be thus Crucified to the world I have no more hope of the salvation of any of you except it shall be thus with you then I have of the salvation of Cain or Iudas And as great and wonderful a work as this is if ever God mean to save your souls it will be done on you I shall therefore according to my duty beseech you to review and practise the Directions which are given you and to use the world as the heirs of Heaven that have laid up their hope and treasure there But if you will not hear and take warning it is because the Lord will destroy you and because you are not the sheep of Christ 2. Chron. 25. 16. 1 Sam. 2. 25. Iohn 10. 26 27. SECT XXI Use last I Have been all this while Perswading and Directing you to be Crucified to the world and the world to you I doubt not but God hath done this work already upon the souls of many of you even upon all that truly believe in a Crucified Christ. To such therefore I shall next address my speech and in general this is my earnest request to you That you would use the world as a Crucified thing and as men that are Crucified to it should do I will not lengthen this discourse in using many motives to you One would think that which way ever you look you should have forcible motives before your eyes If you look downward on earth you may see enough to wean you from it and if seeing will not serve your most wise and gracious Father will make you feel and put the case beyond dispute If you look upwards you may perceive a better and more enduring substance and an inheritance so much more glorious and enduring as should suffice to take your minds from earth If you look within you what foot-steps of the Spirit may you there trace what graces in act and habit may you find which are all at mortal enmity with the world You may read there a Law engraven upon your hearts which condemneth the world to subjection and contempt And many an obligation you may there find wherein you are deeply bound against it For I hope you have not cancelled them all and forgot all the promises which you made to God All your Professions and all your blessed Priviledges and Hopes do engage you to another world and to the hearty renouncing and forsaking of this You say you are Crucified and Risen with Christ If you be then seek the things that are above set your affections on the things that are above and not on the things that are on earth For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God When Christ who is your life shall appear then shall you also appear with him in glory Mortifie therefore your members which are on earth fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which is idolatry For which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience Col. 3. 1. to 7. It doth not beseem the members of a Crucified Christ to be earthly minded nor the members of a Glorified Christ to set their minds oâ— things so low It ill bâ—seems the Heirs of an incorruptible rown of Glory to make too great a matter of these trifles It is the Enemies of the Cross of Christ and not those that are Crucified with him whose God is their belly and who glory in their shame and who mind earthly things but the Saints conversation must
the way to that Mat. 5. 3. Blessed are the poor in Spirit It is not Blessed are the worldly rich Nor Blessed are the Glorified only But the reason is For theirs is the Kingdom of heaven that is in title but not in possession ver 2. Blessed are they that mourn And why are mourners blessed For they shall be comforted Luk. 6. 24 25. Wo unto you that are Rich for ye have received your consolation Wo unto you that are full for you shall hunger Wo unto you that laugh now for you shall mourn and weep Wo unto you when all men speak well of you c. that is Wo to you that place your comfort and felicity in Riches and Fulness and Mirth and the Applause of men Yea though you possess the things you desire yet wo to you because you shall miss of the true and durable felicity Thus also run all the rest of the blessings in Matth. 5. Blessed are the meek Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the peace-makers Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsly for my sake that is When you are so firm in the faith and so far in love with me and the heavenly reward that you can bear all these revilings and slanders and persecutions you are Blessed even when the troubles are upon you So that you see here that our present Blessedness consisteth in Mortification to present things and Hope of future And from the future the Reason of our present blessedness is fetcht They which hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled The merciful shall obtain mercy The pure in heart shall see God The peace makers shall be called the children of God The persecuted shall have the Kingdom of heaven Indeed to the meek it is promised in present that they shall inherit the earth as Psal. 37. 11. had before said that is It shall afford them accommodations for a travailer which is all that is desirable in it or can be expected from it For godliness hath the promise of this life and of that to come 1 Tim. 4. 8. Yea moreover there is a special promise to the meek above those godly persons that are most wanting herein For their passage through this world to heaven shall ordinarily be more peaceable and quiet to them then other mens They do not so molest their own minds and vex themselves nor make themselves troubles nor provoke others against them as the passionate do and commonly they are either loved or pittyed or easilyer dealt with by all So that you may see throughout the Gospel that our present blessedness is in Mortification and Hope as the way to our future blessedness which consisteth in fruition And therefore it is a a very great errour in Believers when they overlook the blessedness of a Mortified state and can see little in any thing but sensible fruition and rejoycings When you are low in afflictions and grieved for your corruptions and fill the ears of God and men with your complaints though you have not then the joyful sense of the Love of God yet me thinks you might easily perceive your Mortification And will that afford you no refreshing Do you not feel that you are Crucified to the world and your desires after it are languid and life-less Can you not truly say that the world is Crucified to you and that you look on it but as a Carkass as an empty lifeless and unsatisfactory thing Would you not gladly part with it for more of Christ Could you not let go credit and wealth and friends so that the Kingdom of God might be more advanced within you and you might live more in the Spirit by a life of faith Could you not be content to be poor in the world so that you might but be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him Why do you not then consider what a blessed condition you are in and that your Mortification is a Mercy that leadeth to salvation and as sure a token of the Love of God as your most sensible joyes Did you ever mark and conscionably practise that command of Christ Mat. 5. 12. to the persecuted reviled slandered Believers Rejoyce and be exceeding glad mark what a frame your Saviour would have you live in for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you So when you are poor and afflicted and have hearts that set light by earthly things in comparison of God and Glory you have cause to Rejoyce and be exceeding glad though you live under sufferings for thus it hath been with the true Believers that have gone before you SECT XXVI I Come now to the second Branch of the Observation which is that When Believers Glory in their own Mortification it must be as it is the fruit of the Cross of Christ that so all their Glorying may be principally and ultimately in Christ and not in themselves They must take heed of ascribing the honour to themselves or of resting in themselves but all their observation of the graces that are in them must be in pure respect to him that is the fountain and the end that we may thankfully acknowledge our receivings and admire the eternall Love which did bestow them and the compassions and merits of our Crucified Redeemer and the powerfull operations of his Spirit in our souls and so may be carried out to Love and Duty in the sense of our receivings and may live to the praises of him that hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light And that you may see how great reason there is for this and so may be kept from glorying in your selves I shall open the cause to you as it lyeth both on Christs part and on ours What he is to us and what we are to our selves Consider 1. It was Christ and not we that wrought our deliverance by the wonderfull work of our Redemption Long enough might we have layen in prison before we could have paid the utmost farthing and long might we have born the wrath which we deserved before we could have done any thing to merit or any way procure our deliverance Had we wept out our eyes and prayed our hearts out and never committed sin again this would not have made satisfaction to God for the sin that was past Long enough might we have lain in our blood if this compassionate Redeemer had not taken us up and undertaken the cure Had he turned us off to any creature we had been left helpless Had we looked on the right hand for some to deliver us or on the left we should have found none Besides him there is no Saviour Isaiah 43. 11. Acts 4. 12. And moreover the way he hath
you whether all must be referred and how little you are beholden for it to your selves Meet every thought of self-exalting with abhorrenceâ— and give it no other entertainment in your souls then you would give the Devil himself who is the Father of it For casting down Christ will prove the casting down of your selves and he that exalteth himself shall be abased SECT XXVII I Come now to the third and last branch of the Observatition viz. that To Glory in any thing save the Cross of Christ and our Crucifixion thereby is a thing that the soul of a Christian should abhor Here I shall shew you what it is that is not excluded from our glorying in these words And then what it is that is excluded and conclude with some Application 1. It is none of the Apostles meaning in these words that we may not Glory in God the Father For his love to the world was the cause of their Redemption And his pleasure and glory is the end of Redemption and was intended by Christ and must be intended by us As Iustine Martyr saith he would not have believed in Christ himself if he had led them to any but the true God So I may say Christ had not done the work of Christ if he had intended any End but God and had not brought up all to God 2. When it is said that we must Glory only in the Cross of Christ the meaning is not that we must not also Glory in his Incarnation and holy Life and Resurrection and Intercession and every part of his Mediatorship For the Cross is not here put as Contradistinct from these but all these are implyed in his Cross as having their share as well as it in the work of our salvation 3. Nor is it the meaning of the Apostle to forbid us to Glory in the promise that Christ hath made us and in the glad tidings of the Gospel For this brings the blessed news to our ears this is the joyful sound the voice of Love the Charter of our inheritance and therefore sweet to all the sons of Life 4. Nor is it any of the Apostles sense that we may not Glory in the Spirit of Christ as magnifying him for the work of illumination and Sanctification As it was an high sin in Ananias and Sapphira to lye to the Holy Ghost and as it is the unpardonable sin to blaspheme the Holy Ghost So it must be a great duty to honour and magnifie the Holy Ghost And therefore it should make us tremble to hear some prophane men abuse the Holy Ghost in deriding his works saying These are the Holy Brethren these are the Saints these have the Spirit 5. Nor yet are we forbidden to Glory in the effects of the Cross of Christ upon us for these you find are included in the Text even our Crucifixion to the world thereby And the other effects of it even our Justification Adoption and the rest may be Gloried in as well as this that is here named as the Apostle doth Rom. 8. 30 31 32 33. to the end yet still referring all to God in Christ. 6. Nor are we forbidden to Glory in the helps of our salvation the Ordinances of God and means of Grace so we give no more to them then their due and look at them but as the appointed means of God that can do nothing but by him 7. No nor is it unlawfull so far to Glory in our Teachers as God hath sent them and qualified them for our good and as they are the Messengers of God and instruments of the Spirit So did Cornelius glory in Peter Acts 10. and when the Apostles brought the Gospel to Samaria there was great joy in that City Acts 8. 8. And the Apostle commandeth the Churches to know them that are over them in the Lord and submit themselves and esteâ—â— them highly in love for their works sake 1 Thes. 5. 12. 8. Nay we may Glory even in honour and riches and other outward things as they are the effects of the Love of God and the blood of Christ and as they reveal God to us or furnish us for his service and the relief of his people and any way further the Ends of our holy Faith In a word we may glory in any thing that is good as it stands in its due subordination to Christ ascribing to it no more then belongs to it in the relation and not separating it in our thoughts or affections from Christ but carrying all the Glory ultimately to God and making the creature but the means thereto And thus we may not only praise the Physitian but the Medicine the Apothâ—caâ—y the handsom administration the glass that it is brought in the silver spoon in which we take it and all this without any wrong to the Physitian or danger of displeasing him if we respect every thing but as it stands in its own place So much to shew you what is not exexcluded 2. But what is it then that we may not Glory in As I told you in the beginning not in our selves or any creature as opposite to Christ or separate from him or any way pretending to be what it is not or do what it cannot But let us enter into some particulars 1. Have you dignities and honours and high places in the world Do others bow to you and have you power to crush them or exalt them at your pleasure Glory not in it as any part of your felicity A horse is stronger then a man The great Mogal and the Turkish Emperour and many another Infidel Prince is a thousand fold beyond the greatest of you in Power and earthly dignity and yet what are they but miserable wretches Your power will not conquer death nor keep off sickness nor keep the stoutest of your Carkasses from corruption When a man shall see you gasping for breath and yielding your selves prisoners to unresistible death and closing those eyes that look so haughtily then who can discern the Glory of your greatness Who then will fear you or honour or regard you further then your deserts or their interests lead them Your flatterers will then forsake you and seek them a new Master When they are winding your Carkass and laying it up for rottenness in the dust what signs of your power will then appear Will your corpse have any reverend aspect How many have been spurned when they were dead that were bowed to while they were alive There are many in Hell and there will be for ever that were greater men then you on earth The higher you clime the lower you have to fall If the breath of a thousand applaud you now perhaps a million may reproach you when you are dead However it is not the applause of men that will carry you to heaven or abate the least of your pain in Hell Glory not then in worldly honours or greatness But rather rejoyce that you have enough without all this in God How well thinks the
be in Heaven from whence it is that he expecteth his Saviour to change his vile earthly body and make it like to his glorious body Phil. 3. 17 18 19 20 21. If indeed you have laid up your treasure in heaven where rust and moath corrupt not and where thieves do not break through and steal let it appear then by the effects For where your treasure is there will your heart be and where your heart is that way the Labours of your lives will tend I shall reduce my Exhortation to some particulars 1. IF you are Crucified to the world be sure that you seek it not nor any thing in it for its own sake but only as a means to higher things The sincerity of your hearts doth lie much in this and the life of your souls depends much upon it Labour in your lawful callings and spare not so you exclude not your spiritual work It is not your Labour that we find fault with But if the creature be the end of any Labour you may better â—it still and spare your pains or rather speedily change your intentions If you overtake the hastyest traveller in his journey and ask him why he takes all that pains he will not say it is For Love of the way that he travaileth in but for Love of the place to which he is going or the persons or things which â—e there expects So must it be with you if you are the heirs of heaven I blame you not to be glad of a fair way and to love it rather then a foul one but it is not for the love of the way that you must travail He that runs in a race doth not bestow all that pains for the Love of the path which he runs in but for Love of the Prize which he expecteth at the end And he that plougheth and soweth doth it more for Love of the crop which he hopeth for then for Love of his labour He that saileth through the dangerous Seas performeth not his voyage for Love of the Sea or of his Ship but for Love of the Merchandize and Gain which he seeketh The Carryer that goeth weekly to London with your wares doth not take all that pains for Love of the carriage or of the way but of the gain which he deserveth So must it be with you in all your worldly business When you seek for credit or pleasure or maintenance in the world it must not be finally for the Love of these but for the End which they are given for and which your hearts and lives and all must be devoted to Your hearts will as soon deceive you in this as in any thing if you do not watch them with jealousie and diligence How quickly will the heart begin to Love the creature for it self that seemed once to Love it but for God Look in what measure you love your wealth your houses your recreations your friends for themselves and because they accommodate the flesh so far you wrong God and abuse them to â—dolatry And if your Love do begin in greater purity if you be not watchful it will quickly degenerate to a carnal Love Many a Scholar that at first desired Learning to fit him for the service of God and his Church doth by suffering carnality to insinuate and prevail lose much of the purity of his first affections and in time grow more cold and regardless of his first ends and loveth common Learning meerly for it self and for the delight of knowing or which is worse to get him a name among men It s common with men that need recreation for their health when they set upon it as they think but to fit them for their duty to fall in love with it afterwards to the perverting of their hearts the wounding of their consciences the wasting of their time and the neglect of that work of God for which it should be used We should take our meat and drink and cloathes but to strengthen and â—it us for the service of our Master but how quickly do we turn them to the gratifying of our flesh and so the service of another Master It s too frequent for young persons of different sexes to Love each other at first as Christians only with a chast and necessary Love but when they have been tempted awhile to an imprudent familiarity their Love doth degenerate and that which was Spiritual becometh Carnal and the Serpent deceiveth them to the corrupting of their minds and it s well if it proceed not to actuall wickedness and the undoing of each other Many a poor man thinks with himself If I were but out of debt or could but live so as to serve the Lord without distractions and had such and such necessities supplyed I would not desire any more or care any further for the world But if their desires be granted them they find themselves entangled and their hearts deceived and they thirst more after fulness then before they did after necessaries And many a one thinks I care not for riches or honours but only to do good with and if I had them I would so use them But when they have their desires the case is altered the flesh then hath need of it and can spare for God as little as other men because it loves it better then before and pretendeth to have more use for it then formerly it had Watch therefore over your deceitful hearts and be sure to keep up the Love of God and actually intend him in all that you have or do and be not withdrawn to carnal affections 2. IF you are Crucified to the world be not too eager for it As God hath promised it you but as an appendix to your felicity and as an overplus to the great blessings of the Covenant so must you desire it but as such And as God hath promised it you but with certain limitations so far as he shall see it good for you and agreeable to his greater ends so you must desire it but with such limitations I observe many to have so much reason as to put up their prayers for outward blessings with those limitations and will not for shame express themselves in absolute peremptory language when yet there is apparent cause to fear that they limit not their desires as they do their words nor do they submit so freely to the disposal of God in their hearts as they seem to do in their expressions and so they make their words to be modest while their desires are inordinate their language to be chast while their hearts are committing adultery with the world their expressions are pious while their affections are idolatrous And so their prayers are made monstrous while the soul of them is so disagreable to the body Be ashamed and afraid to desire that which you are ashamed and afraid to ask You dare not say to God in your prayers Lord I must needs have a fuller estate I would fain be rich and be somebody in the
MOreovor where the world is Crucified A great deal of self-tormenting care and trouble of mind will be prevented You will not live such a perplexed miserable life as worldlings do Even in your outward troubles you will have less inward trouble of soul then they have in their abundance They are like a man that is hanged up in chains alive that gnaws upon his own flesh a while and then must famish What else do worldlings but tear and devour themselves with cares and sorrows and scourge themselves with vexatious thoughts and troubles If others did but the hundredth part as much to them against their wills as they wilfully do against themselves they would account them the cruellest persons in the world Paul saith of men that are in love with money that while they covet after it they do not only err from the faith but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they pierced themselves through and through and stab'd their own hearts with many sorrows A worldly mind and a melancholly are some kin The daily work of both is self-vexation and they are wilfully set upon the stabbing and destroying of themselves But it is not thus with the Believer so far as he is mortified Will he vex himself for nothing Will he be troubled for the loss of that which he disregardeth The dead world hath not power thus to disquiet his mind and to toss it up and down in trouble When it hath power on his body it cannot reach his soul. As the soul of a dead man feeleth no pain when the corpse is cut in pieces or rotteth in the grave So in a lower measure the soul of a Believer being in a sort as it were separated from the body by faith and gone before to the heavenly inheritance is freed from the sense of the calamities of the flesh So far as we are Dead we are insensible of sufferings Benefit 7. ANother Benefit that followeth upon the former is this We shall be far better able to suffer for Christ because that sufferings will be much more easie to us when once we are truly Crucified to the world What is it that makes men so tender of suffering and startle at the noise of it and therefore conform themselves to the times they live in and venture their souls to save their flesh but only their over-valuing fleshly things and not knowing the worth and weight of things everlasting They have no soul within them but what is become carnal by a base subjection to the flesh and therefore they savour nothing but the things of the flesh All Life desireth a suitable food for its sustentation A Carnal Life within hath a Carnal appetite and is most sensible of the miss of Carnal commodities But a Spiritual Life hath a Spiritual appetite And as Carnal minds can easily let go Spiritual things so a spiritual mind so far as it is such can easily let go carnal things when God requireth it When you are Dead to the world you will easily part with it For all things below will seem but small matters to you in comparison of the things which they are put in competition with If you are scorned or accounted the off scouring of the Town you can bear it because with you it is a very small matter to be judged of man 1 Cor. 4. 3. If you must endure abuses or persecutions for Christ you can do it because you reckon that the sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed Rom. 8. 18. You can let go your gain and account it loss for Christ yea and account all things loss for the knowledge of him and suffer the loss of all things for him accounting them but as dung that you may win him Phil 3. 7 8. If you knew that bonds and afflictions did abide you yet none of these things would move you neither would you account your life it self dear to you so that you may finish your course with joy Acts 20 23 24. So far as you are dead to the world and alive to God it will be thus with you When they that are alive to the world are so far from being able to dye for God that every cross doth seem a death to them I have many a time heard such lamentable complaints from people that are â—aln into poverty or disgrace or some other worldly suffering that hath given me more cause to lament the misery of their souls then of their bodies When they take on as if they were quite undone and had lost their God and hope of heaven doth it not too plainly shew that they made the world their God and their heaven Benefit 8. MOreover if indeed you are Crucified to the world your hearts will be still open to the motions of the Spirit and the motions of further Grace And so you will have abundant advantage both for the exercise and encrease of the graces which you have received The earthly minded have their hearts locked up against all that can be said to them Never can the Spirit or his Ministers make a motion to them for their good but some worldly interest or other doth contradict it and rise up against it But what have you to stop your ears when the world is dead The word then will have free access to your hearts When the Spirit comes your thoughts are ready your affections are at hand and all are in a posture to entertain him and attend him and so the work goes on and prospers But when he comes to the worldly mind the thoughts are all from home the affections are abroad and out of the way and there is nothing for his entertainment but all in a posture to resist him and gainsay him O what work would the preaching of the Gospel make in the world if there were not a worldly principle within to strive against it But we speak against mens Idols against their Jewels and their Treasure and therefore against their hearts and natures And then no wonder if we leave them in the jaws of Satan where we found them till irresistible merciful violence shall rescue them But so far as you are mortified the enemy is dead contradictions are all silenced opposition is ceased the Spirit findeth that within that will befriend its motions and own its cause the soul lyeth down before the word and gladly heares the voice of Christ And thus the work goes smoothly on Benefit 9. MOreover when once you are Crucified to the world you are capable of the true spiritual use of it which it was made for Then you may see God in it and then you may savour the blood of Christ in it Then you may perceive a great deal of Love in it And that which before was venemous and did endanger your souls will now become a help to you and may be safely handled when the sting is thus taken out Before it was the road to Hell and now there is some taste
of heaven in it The stones and earth are useful for you to tread upon though they are unfit for you to feed on or too hard to rest upon So though the world be unfit to Rest or feed your souls it may be made a convenient way for you to travail in It is unmeet to be Loved but it is meet to be Used when you have learned so to use it as not abusing it When self is throughly down and denyed and God is exalted and your souls brought over so clearly to him that you are nothing but in him and would have nothing but in and with him and do nothing but for him then you shall be able to see that glory and amiableness in the creature that now you cannot see I or you shall see the Creator himself in the creature Benefit 10. WHEN once you are truly Crucified to the world You will have the honour and the comfort of an heavenly life Your thoughts will be daily steeped in the Coelestial delights when other mens are steept in Gall and Vinegar You will be above with God when your carnal neighbours converse only with the world Your thoughts will be higher then their thoughts and your waies then their waies as the heaven where you converse is higher then the earth When you take flight from earth in holy Devotions they may look at you and wonder at you but cannot follow you for whither you go they cannot come till they are such as you You leave them groveling here on earth and feeding on the dust and striving like children or rather like swine or dogs about their meat When you are above in the Spirit on the speedy wings of Faith and Love beholding that face that perfecteth all that perfectly behold it and tasting that Joy which fully reconcileth all that fully do enjoy it which we must here contend for but none do there contend about it What a noble employment have you in comparison of the highest servants of the world How sweet are your delights in comparison of the Epicures O happy souls that can see so much of your eternal happiness and reach so near it Were I but more in your condition I would not envy Princes their glory nor any sensualists and worldlings their contents nor desire to be their partner I could spare them their troublesom dignities and their burdensom Riches and the unwholsom pleasures which they so often surfet on and the wind of popular applause which so swelleth them Yea what could I not spare them if I might be more with you O happy poverty sickness or imprisonment or whatever is called misery by the world if it be nearer Heaven then a sensual life and if it will but advantage my soul for those contemplations which are the imployment of mortified heavenly men Yea if it do but remove the impediments of so sweet a life I know by some little too little experience I know that one hours time of that blessed life will easily pay for all the cost and one believing view of God will easily blast the beauty of the world and shame all those thoughts as the issues of my dotage that ever gave it a lovely name or turned mine eye upon it with desire or caused me once with complacency to behold it or ever brought it near my heart O Sirs what a noble life may you live and how much more excellent work might you be employed in if the world were but dead to you and the stream of your souls were turned upon God Had you but one draught of the Heavenly consolations you would thirst no more for the pleasures of the world Yea did you but taste of it as Ionathan of the honey from the end of his rod 1 Sam. 14. 27. your eyes would be enlightened and your hearts revived and your hands would be so strengthened in your spiritual warfare that your enemies would quickly perceive it in your more resolute prevailing opposition of their assaults And experience will tell you that you will no further reach this heavenly life then you are Crucified to earth and flesh God useth to shew himself to the Coelestial inhabitants and not to the Terrestrial And therefore you will see no more of God then you get above and converse in Heaven And if faith had not this elevating power and could not see further then sense can do we might talk long enough of God before we had any saving knowledge of him or relish of his Goodness And doubtless if we must get by faith into Heaven if we will have the reviving sight of God then we must needs away from earth For our hearts cannot at once converse in both Believe it Sirs God useth to give his heavenly Cordials upon an empty stomack and not to drown them in the mud and dirt of sensuality When you are emptyest of creature-delights and love you are most capable of God And fasting from the world doth best prepare you for this heavenly Feast Let Abstinence and Temperance be imposed upon your senses but command a totall Fast to your Affections And try then whether your souls be not fitter to ascend and whether God will not reveal himself more clearly then before It may seem a paradox that the vallies should be nearer Heaven then the Hills But doubtless Stephen saw more of it then the high Priests And Lazarus had a fairer prospect thither from among the dogs at the Rich mans gate then the Master of the house had at his plentiful table And who would not rather have Lazarus's sores with a fore-sight of Heaven then the Rich mans fulness without it yea with the fears of after misery A Heavenly life is proper to the mortified Benefit 11. MOreover those that are Crucified to the world are most fruitfull unto others and blessings to all within their reach They can part with any thing to do good with They are rich to God and their Brethren if they be rich and not to themselves If a mortified man have hundreds or thousands by the year he hath no more of it for himself then if he had a meaner estate He takes but necessary food and rayment he shunneth intemperance and excess Nay he often pincheth his body if needfull that he may tame it and bring it into subjection to the Spirit and the rest he layes out for the service of God so far as he is acquainted with his will Yea his necessary food and rayment which he receiveth himself is ultimately not for himself but for God Even that he may be sustained by his daily bread for his daily duty and fitted to please his Master that maintaineth him If they have much they give plenteously If they have but little they are faithfull in that little And if they have not silver and gold they will give such as they have where God requireth it But the unmortified worldling is like some spreading trees that by drawing all the nutriment to themselves and by dropping on the rest