than as it effects obedience nor can we any otherwise confide in it Hereby alone says S t John we know that we know him in that sence of knowledge whereto God has promised life and pardon if we keep his Commandments But he that saith I know him and for all that keepeth not his Commandments he is a lyar and the truth is not in him 1 Joh. 2.3 4. And then as for Faith no man is interpreted to have that Faith which is made the condition of our pardon and acceptance but he who is acted by it and in his works is obedient to it The Faith says S t Paul which in Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion availeth any thing to that Righteousness which all Christians hope for is that only which worketh by Love Gal. 5.5 6. It begins the change within by purifying of our hearts and desires Acts 15.9 and thence goes on to perfect it in our outward works and actions And unless it proceed to this it will never be able to bear us out and to justifie us at Gods Bar for there as S t James tells us by our works we must all be justifyed and not by a Faith only which works nothing Jam. 2.24 Such alas will be wholly useless and of no consideration in that Court it will not any way profit and then certainly it cannot save us For what doth it profit my Brethren though a man be able to say either here or hereafter he hath Faith and hath not works will that be allow'd a sufficient plea in Gods Judgment shall that Faith save him no surely it never will Jam. 2.14 This unworking Faith is not that effectual Faith which the Gospel encourages but its worthless shell and liveless carkass For wilt thou know O vain man that faith without works is dead Even as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without works is dead also vers 20 26. It is Faith only in an imperfect degree and a weak unprofitable measure for it is not arrived to a perfect pitch to that compleat state whereto the Gospel doth at present promise Life and Christ will at the last Day award it till it shows it self in action and our lives express the power of it Our Father Abraham says S t James was justified by works produced by Faith when in an unstagger'd belief that God would make good his promise of a numerous issue by his Son Isaac though it were by raising him up again from the dead he would obey his command which seemed quite to overthrow it and offered up his Son upon the Altar Seest thou how his Faith in Gods Power and Promise wrought prevalently over all opposition to the production of that his strange work and by this justifying work upon it was his Faith made perfect vers 21 22. So that when all is done we see that there is no Life or Pardon promised to any Faith or knowledge which are separate from Obedience but to such only as cooperate to them and imply them There is no belief wherewith our Judge at the last day will be satisfyed or wherein we are safe which either he will accept or we may trust to if our dutiful works are wanting So that this is and ever will be as S t Paul says a faithful saying and such as every good Christian man ought constantly to receive or affirm that they who have Faith or have believed in God be careful to maintain obedience and good works because it is they which at the last day must do all men good are good and profitable unto men Tit. 3.8 Secondly This condition of our acceptance whereto the Gospel promises a happy sentence of Life and Pardon in the last judgment is sometimes called Being in Christ. There is no condemnation says S t Paul to them who are in Christ Jesus Rom. 8.1 The word Christ we must know many times in Scripture signifies the Religion of Christ. Thus the Law is said to be a Schoolmaster to bring us to Christ i. e. the imperfect rule of the Mosaick Religion was fitted for the minority of the world and intended to train men up as Children are by School Discipline for the more perfect and manly institution of the Christian Gal. 3.24 And thus we read of Preaching Christ that is the Christian Religion Phil. 1.15 And S t Paul tells the Ephesians of their learning Christ and hearing him i. e. his Gospel and Doctrine Ye have not so learned Christ if so be ye have heard him and been taught by him or in him Eph. 4.20 21. Heard him and been taught by him i. e. not by his person for he never went beyond Judea being sent as he said to none but the lost sheep of the house of Israel Mat. 15.24 and therefore never travelled so far as Ephesus but by and in his Doctrine or Religion And this is a most usual form of speech to call any institution or profession by the name of its first Author The Doctrine and Religion which was delivered to the Jews by Moses is called by his Name For S t Paul speaks of Moses being read i. e. the Law of Moses 2 Cor. 3.15 and of the Israelites being baptized into Moses i. e. the Mosaick Religion 1 Cor. 10.2 And our Lord himself tells the Jews in the Parable of the Rich Man that they have Moses and the Prophets and bids them hear them Luk. 6.29 where he cannot mean their persons in regard they were dead long before and got without the reach of their hearing but their Writings and Religion And as Christ many times signifies the Christian Religion so is being in Christ the very same with being of his Religion or being a Christian. Thus S t Paul tells us of Andronicus and Junia who embraced the Christian Doctrine whilst he persecuted and opposed it that they were in Christ i. e. in Christs Religion before him Rom. 16.7 They who dyed in the profession of the Christian Faith are said to be fallen asleep in Christ 1 Cor. 15.18 The veil of Moses is done away in Christ 2 Cor. 3.14 The veil of Moses i. e. the types and obscure shadows of the Mosaical Religion are done away in Christ i. e. by the plain clearness of the Christian. Thus I knew a man in Christ is no more than I knew a Christian man 2 Cor. 12.2 and the Churches of Judea in Christ are the very same as the Christian Churches among the Jews Gal. 1.22 So when we read that in Christ Jesus neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor Vncircumcision but a new Creature Gal. 6.15 the meaning is only this that what price soever the Religion of Moses put upon this outward Rite of Circumsion and those other Jewish observances whereof it was the federal undertaking yet the Religion of Christ doth not regard them at all but that all which can avail us in it is only a new Creature And to the same sence S t Peter speaks
temptations or to lusts and desires of evil This Point summed up 63â— CHAP. V. Of two other causes of groundless Scruple to good Souls The Contents A second cause of scruple is their uâ—affectedness or distraction sometimes in their prayers Of the necessity of fixedness and fervency in Devotion when we can and of Gods readiness to dispense with them when we cannot enjoy them Attention disturbed often whether we will or no. A particular cause of it in fervent prayers Fervency and affection not depending so much upon the command of our wills as upon the temper of our Bodies Fervency is unconstant in them whose temper is fit for it God measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or the warmth of our tempers but by the choice of our wills and the obedience of our lives Other qualifications in prayer are sufficient to have our prayers heard when these are wanting Yea those Vertues which make our prayers acceptable are more eminently shown in our Obedience so that it would bring down to us the blessings of prayer should it prove in those respects defective A third cause of scruple is the danger of idle or impertinent words mentioned Mat. 12.36 The scruples upon this represented The practical errour of a morose behaviour incurred upon it This discountenanced by the light of Nature and by Christianity The benefits and place of serious Discourse Pleasurable conversation a great Field of Vertue The idle words Mat. 12 not every vain and useless but false slanderous and reproachful words this proved from the place 664 CHAP. VI. Of the sin against the Holy Ghost which is a fourth cause of scruple The Contents Some good mens fear upon this account What is meant in Scripture by the Holy Ghost Holy Ghost or Spirit is taken for the gifts or effects of it whether they be first ordinary either in our minds or understandings or in our wills and tempers or secondly extraordinary and miraculous Extraordinary gifts of all sorts proceed from one and the same Spirit or Holy Ghost upon which account any of them indifferently are sometimes called Spirit sometimes Holy Ghost Holy Ghost and Spirit are frequently distinguished and then by Holy Ghost is meant extraordinary gifts respecting the understanding by Spirit extraordinary gifts respecting the executive powers The summ of the explication of this Holy Ghost What sin against it is unpardonable To sin against the Holy Ghost is to dishonour him This is done in every act of sin but these are not unpardonable What the unpardonable sin is Of sin against the ordinary endowments of the Holy Ghost whether of mind or will the several degrees in this all of them are pardonable Of sin against the Spirit Blaspheming of this comes very near it and was the sin of the Pharisees Mat. 12 but it was pardonable Of sinning against the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost the last means of reducing men to believe the Gospel that Covenant of Repentance The sin against it is unpardonable because such Sinners are irreclamable All dishonour of this is not unpardonable for Simon Magus dishonoured it in actions who was yet capable of pardon but only a blaspheming of it in words No man is guilty of it whilst he continues Christian. 681 CHAP. VII The Conclusion The Contents Some other causless scruples The Point of growth in Grace more largely stated A summary repetition of this whole Discourse They may dye with courage whose Conscience doth not accuse them This accusation must not be for idle words distractions in Prayer c. but for a wilful transgression of some Law of Pieey Sobriety c. above mentioned It must further be particular and express not general and roving If an honest mans heart condemn him not for some such unrepented sins God never will 700 THE INTRODUCTION ROM viij 1 There is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit The Contents Religious men inquisitive after their future State Three Articles of Christian belief cause such inquisitiveness The Articles of Eternal Life and the Resurrection make men desire satisfaction The Article of the last Judgment encourages the search and points out a way towards it A proposal of the present design and the matters treated of in the ensuing Discourse AMong all those things which employ the minds of Religious and Considerate men there is none that is so much a matter of their thoughtful care and solicitous enquiries as their Eternal happiness or Misery in the next World For in Christs Religion there are three great Articles which being believed and seriously considered by a nature restlessly desirous of its own happiness and such ours is must needs render it very inquisitive after some security of its future good estate and they are these The Immortality of the Soul the Resurrection of the Body and the great Day of Doom or last Judgment Whosoever is firmly perswaded of these three as every man is or at least pretends to be who professes himself a Christian he assuredly believes that when this Life is over both his Body and Soul shall live again and be endlessly Delighted or Tormented Comforted or Distressed in the next world according as their condition is when they leave this For by the Doctrine of Eternal Life he is assured that his Soul shall live and be adjudged to an Eternal bliss or misery By the Article of the Resurrection he is perswaded that his Body with all its powers shall spring out of the dust and be again enlivened with its ancient Soul to be a sharer of its state and joyntly to undergo an endless train of most exquisite woes or pleasures And since it is the very frame and fundamental principle of our Natures studiously to pursue Pleasure and to fly as fast from Pain to seek good and to avoid evil These states of future Happiness and Misery are such as no man who sees and believes them can possibly be unaffected with or unconcern'd in But whosoever in his own thoughts views and beholds them must needs find all his faculties awake and through an innate care and natural instinct solicitously inquisitive after that lot which shall fall to their own share Now if this endless happiness and misery both of Soul and Body in the next world were only casual and contingent the gift of blind chance or partial and arbitrary favour then would the belief of it perplex us indeed with fears and misgiving thoughts but never encourage us on to any exact care or diligent enquiry It would be in vain for us to seek what we could never find and downright folly to endeavour after satisfaction and certainty in things which are utterly casual and Arbitrary For what comes by chance is neither foreseen by us nor subject to us And what is given arbitrarily without all rule or reason is as fickle and unconstant as Arbitrary will it self is It cannot be prevented by any endeavours because it doth not
Of Pardon promised to Repentance Regeneration a New Nature a New Creature The Nature of Repentance it includes amendment and Obedience The Nature of Regeneration and a New Creature It s fitness to produce Obedience Some mens Repentance ineffectual The folly of it Pardon promised to Repentance and Regeneration no further than they effect Obedience In the case of dying Penitents a change of mind accepted without a change of practice That only where God sees a change of Practice would ensue upon it This would seldom happen upon death-bed resolutions and Repentance The general ineffectiveness of this shown by experience Two reasons of it 1. Because it proceeds ordinarily upon an inconstant temporary principle viz. nearness of Death and present fears of it Though it always begins there yet sometimes it grows up upon a principle that is more lasting viz. a conviction of the absolute necessity of Heaven and a Holy Life 2. Because it is ordinarily in a weak and incompetent degree All TRVE resolution is not able to reform Men. Sick-bed resolutions generally unable Such ineffective resolutions unavailing to mens Pardon THirdly That condition which the Gospel exacts of us as the terms whereupon we must hope to find Life and Pardon at the last day is oft-times called Repentance Regeneration a New Creature or a New Nature Christs fore-runner John the Baptist came preaching Repentance for the remission of sins Luk. 3.3 And when Christ himself commissions his Apostles to publish his Gospel over all the world their instructions are to preach Repentance and remission of Sins in his Name to all Nations beginning at Jerusalem Luk. 24.47 And according to this order they practised Repent says S t Peter in his first Sermon and be baptized for the remission of sins Acts 2.38 And again Repent that your sins may be blotted out Acts 3.19 And then as for Regeneration a New Creature and a New Nature they are such qualifications as fit us for Eternal Life and without which we shall never be admitted to it It is says our Saviour to Nicodemus a mans being born again that must capacitate him to enter into the Kingdom of God Joh. 3.3 In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion saith S t Paul neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor Vncircumcision but a NEW CREATVRE Gal. 6.15 The condition required of all men to Life and Pardon as the truth is in Jesus is this that they put off the OLD MAN and be RENEWED in the spirit of their mind and that they put on the NEW MAN which after the similitude of God is Created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.21 22 23 24. Repentance in the constant and plain notion of the Scriptures is such a vertuous alteration of the mind and purpose as begets a like vertuous change in the life and practice It begins in our thoughts and resolutions and is made perfect in our works and actions It first casts all false principles and foolish judgments of the desireableness of sin and the dreadfulness of vertue all opinions that hinder a good life and encourage wickedness all inveagling thoughts and bewitching imaginations all firm purposes and studied contrivances of evil out of our minds and thereby purges all wickedness and disobedience out of our lives and actions It implies a change of mind as is well noted by the Greek name for Repentance which is very expressive of its nature For it signifies an alteration of the mind a transformation of our thoughts and counsels and is the same that S t Paul calls a being renewed in the spirit of our mind Eph. 4.23 And this God expressly calls for when he summons the wicked to repentance Isa. 55. Let the wicked man forsake his thoughts and turn them from his sin unto the Lord and then he will have mercy upon him vers 7. It includes also an alteration of the life and practice a forbearing to repeat the sin which we repent of And this is a natural effect of the former in as much as our works and actions will still go along with our studies and contrivances our purposes and resolutions Now this part of repentance from sin viz. a leaving or forsaking of it is its prime ingredient and the chief thing which the Scriptures express by it it is the main end whereto the former serves only as the principle and instrument Godly sorrow or the grief and trouble of our minds for having offended God working as S t Paul says that Repentance which will never fail us nor ever need to be repented of 2 Cor. 7.10 And that Repentance includes this alteration of our lives as well as that other of our minds the Scriptures plainly express to us when they stile it a Repentance FROM dead works Heb. 6.1 a TVRNING away from all transgressions and doing that which is lawful and right Ezek. 18.27 30. A CONVERSION FROM darkness unto light Acts 26.18 a putting AWAY the evil of our DOINGS by ceasing to DO evil and learning to DO well Isa. 1.16 17. These two changes a change of mind and a change of practice make up the essence and integrate the nature of a saving Repentance It implies first a change in our minds and tempers and upon that a correspondent change in our lives and actions Now as for the former of these this change of our minds and tempers in new thoughts new counsels new desires and resolutions this vertuous alteration both in our wills and understandings which are those two powers that make up our rational nature is that which the Scriptures call our new nature the begetting of which in us is called our regeneration or our being born again For the tempers and inclinations of our souls are usually in our common discourse called our nature A man of a loving condescensive disposition is called a man of a good nature and one of a sowr revengeful temper is called a man of an ill nature And the change from one to the other is called a change of Nature a making of him a new Creature and a new man And thus we are daily wont to say of any person who from wicked and sinful inclinations is changed to a disposition which is vertuous and holy that he is become a new man And as this is our language so is it the Scriptures too For our putting on the tempers and habitual inclinations of righteousness and true holiness is called our putting on the new man Eph. 4.24 The alteration from an unbelieving and uncharitable to a believing loving temper to a Faith that worketh by love S t Paul calls a New Creature Gal. 5.6 compared with Chap. 6. vers 15. And as for the renovation it self it is called a regeneration or new birth the Author of it a Father and the persons so renewed his Sons or Children All which are expressed to us by S t John when he tells us of all those which have received such vertuous and holy dispositions from God as make them resemble him
returning Repent and TVRN to God and do works meet for Repentance Acts 26.20 Repent and turn from all your transgressions and so iniquity shall not be your ruine Ezek. 18.30 For it is only when the wicked man TVRNETH away from his wickedness that he hath committed and in his works DOTH that which is lawful and right that he shall save his soul alive vers 27. Let no man therefore think that he ever savingly repents of any damning sin so long as he perseveres to practise and repeat it â—his Repentance must deliver him from sin before it rescue him from suffering for 't is then only when the wicked man forsakes his way and returns unto the Lord that God will have mercy upon him and abundantly pardon Isa. 55.7 And as for that part of Repentance viz. Regeneration a New Nature or a New Creature God tells us plainly that he accepts of them no further than they are principles of a new service and we obey with them The new Creature in Christs Religion is a being Created as St. Paul speaks unto good WORKS which God hath before ordained for us that we should walk in them Eph. 2.10 It is our actions which must evidence our nature the tree says our Saviour is known by its fruits so that we must either make the fruit good as well as the tree is good or if the fruit be evil the tree will be known to be so too Matt. 12.33 For do men gather Grapes of Thorns or Figs of Thistles Even so a good tree CANNOT bring forth evil fruit neither CAN a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit by their fruits therefore you shall know them Matt. 7.16 17 18. Nothing less than a good life will be allowed either by God or Men for a sufficient proof of a good heart nor any thing below a new Conversation and Obedience will pass for a good evidence of a new Nature Doth a Fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter saith S t James can the Fig-tree bear Olive-berries or a Vine Figs Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you Let HIM show out of a good CONVERSATION his works with meekness of wisdom Jam. 3.11 12 13. Let no man therefore dare to think himself regenerate and born of God so long as he is disobedient and his works are sinful For whosoever is born of God doth not COMMIT sin because his seed his new nature remaineth in him and through the determining power and strength of that he is almost come to this that he cannot sin it is become the bent of his nature to do otherwise he is born of God Joh. 3.9 If any man therefore would pass a true judgment upon his nature whether it be the new or old Man from God or from the Devil let him consult his works and actions those undissembling effects of it and from thence he may have a sure evidence which will not deceive him For in this as S t John goes on in the next words is manifested who are Children of God and who are Children of the Devil whosoever DOTH not Righteousness is not of God vers 10. So that when Christ comes to judge us according to his Gospel we see plainly that no repentance will bear us out nor any pretended regeneration or new Nature avail us unto life but that only which either implies or ends in our Obedience For no man can with any show of reason hope to be acquitted and rewarded at that Bar but he that repents unto amendment that is Created unto good works and is born again to a new practice and obedience One case indeed there is wherein a new birth will surely save a man without a new practice and that is when a man is forthwith called away upon the change before any opportunities of action come Some men are listed into Gods service late at the eleventh hour of the day Matt. 20.6 They have just time to become obedient in will and purpose but not in life and practice they have no leisure left them to work in but the night comes suddenly upon them when all the time of labour is at an end And this is the case of all dying Penitents And here indeed the will shall be accepted for the deed For in heart and mind such Penitents are become Gods honest servants their desires are in great strength and their inward purposes are come up to effectual degrees that want nothing but time wherein to show themselves and are sufficient whensoever an opportunity should occur to beget a change of life and to make their actions answer them So that if they are destitute of an entire obedience and have not as yet evidenced their change of nature in their change of practice that is not for want of inward readiness but of outward opportunities and therefore it is not so ' much their fault as their unhappiness And when God sees it is thus he takes the inward will and choice for the outward service and performance He judges us by our wills which are in our own power and not by chance and fortune which are utterly without it This he doth in evil actions as shall be shown afterwards the will in them is taken for the deed and if once our hearts are effectually resolved and fully set upon them in his account we are guilty of them though by some intervening accidents we are hindred from committing them And since as S t Bernard argues undeniably in this matter he is much more prone to pity than he is to punish and had far rather interpret things to our profit than to our prejudice we may be sure that our obedient purposes shall have as much force to the full as our disobedient have and that an effectual will in them when nothing but time is wanting to perform in shall pass for the deed likewise God is by no means forward to seek our hurt and to take advantages of our necessities but in this and all other cases where there is first an effectually willing mind and nothing but opportunity is wanting to an answerable practice he takes as S t Paul says the will for the deed and accepts men according to that sufficient and effectual desire which they have and not according to that outward performance which through some unhappy and preventing accidents they have not 2 Cor. 8.12 And of this we have a clear instance in one dying Penitent the Thief upon the Cross. His return was late indeed he begun not to befit himself for the next world till he was in his departure out of this His conversion was in his very last hour under the pangs of Death and at the instant of Execution But when Christ saw that his change of heart was true full and sufficient and needed nothing but opportunity to show it self effectual he tells him that it should serve his turn and secure his happiness Because he would have been obedient in his practice
way to your bliss and happiness said Samuel to the Israelites only fear the Lord and in vertue of that fear serve him 1 Sam. 12.24 25. This fear has given right to pardon in all times and will eternally secure it For Gods mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation Luke 1.50 From everlasting to everlasting Psal. 103.17 So that well might Solomon say The Fear of the Lord is a Fountain of life Prov. 14.27 and that he surely knew it will go well with them that fear the Lord Eccles. 8.12 And then as for our Hope or Trust in God great things are spoken of it Blessed is he saith the Psalmist who maketh the Lord his Trust Psal. 40.4 He is secure from all effects of his wrath and anger for the Lord taketh pleasure in them that hope in his mercy Psal. 147.11 In particular our relying on Christ and confiding in him for our pardon and eternal salvation is said to be that which will never fail or deceive us For he that hopeth or believeth on him says S t Paul shall never be ashamed by a misplaced confidence or expectation Rom. 10.11 Now our fear of God and our hope or trust in his mercy are of all our passions the most active Causes and powerful Springs of our good works and obedience As for our fears no passion puts us upon so much pains and industry as they do They make us act to the utmost of our power and do all that is to be done to get protection from that evil which excites them For fear has the deepest root in our natural self-love and desire of our own preservation being raised in us by the nearness of such things as either utterly destroy or in some degree impair it And therefore in them the activity of our self-love is shown to the utmost as vehemently as we desire and endeavour to preserve ourselves and our own ease so vehemently must we desire and endeavour likewise to remove the matter of our fears which hangs over us to destroy or to torment us The most natural effect of fear then is a most vigorous endeavour by all means to remove that evil which we are afraid of And according as this may be done several ways so doth our passion of fear exert it self after several manners If we think the evil may be conquered it pushes us on to fight and subdue it If it be above our strength but may yet for all that be avoided it puts us upon all means of concealment or escape and makes us seek either to lye hid or to fly from it But if there is neither any prospect of withstanding the power nor of escaping the eye of him who is ready to inflict it as there never can be when God who is both Almighty and Al-seeing is the Person feared then it hurries us on by all means to regain his favour and good will that thereby we may prevent it And in Times of Ignorance when men had great fears and little knowledg when they were grievously afraid of God but knew not what things he loved and delighted in nor wherewith they might please him this fear of God put them upon all the nonsensical services and foolish propitiations of Superstition But where God has plainly and clearly revealed his will and manifested to all that it is their obedience alone that can continue them in his favour or restore them to it after they have lost it here the only effect of fear must needs be that which is known to be the only means of favour viz. our keeping of his Commandments or obedience So that our fear of God is a most sure principle and effectual means of our serving and obeying him And then as for our hope or trust in Gods mercy it is a most natural cause of our doing our Duty likewise For all hope implies both desire and a likelihood of getting that which is desired which two are all that is at any time needful to make us vigorously endeavour after it For if men will be at no pains for a thing it is either because they have little or no desire of it or no probability of succeeding in it But when once they are push'd on by an eager desire it is only despair that can dull their endeavours in pursuit of it So that if we hope for mercy we shall be at some pains for it and by an active service and obedience seek to procure it Indeed when the good thing that is hoped for needs no labour of ours but our naked trust and reliance is all that on our sides is required to it our hope will effect no endeavour after it because none is necessary to obtain it But as for that eternal life and pardon which Christs Gospel proposeth to our hopes they are offered us only upon certain Terms and Conditions and will never be attained by us without our Service and Obedience And seeing obedience here is the necessary means to the acquisition of that which we desire the same desire and hope which carries us on towards mercy and life must spur us on withal to works of duty and obedience also They must be a Spring of industry and good endeavour because they make us resolve to procure that which is not to be got without them And in regard our fear of God and our hope or trust in his mercy are such powerful Principles of our obedience to his Laws therefore are Pardon and Life which are the rewards of Obedience so frequently promised to them God never intends to reward an idle fear or an unactive and careless trust but such only as are industrious and obedient 'T is true indeed the generality of men have taken up a dangerous errour especially in the latter of these and are bold and presumptuous in their hopes at the same time that they are most wicked and disobedient in their lives and practice They find no service of their own works wherein they may be confident and therefore they fly from them to Gods Goodness They know this full well by themselves that they are wicked but they know withal that God is gracious and their hope is that He will be merciful to them notwithstanding their sins They find themselves condemned indeed by his Gospel but their trust is to be relieved by his Nature they are punishable and wretched by his Laws but they expect to be saved by his pity and kindness The Revelations of his Word 't is true breathe out nothing to them but Death but their hope is that he will be better than his Word and that through the infiniteness of his mercy they shall at last be adjudged to pardon and eternal life But such bold hopes and presumptuous confidences as these are the ready way to provoke and offend God but by no means to attone and appease him For thus to hope in his Mercy against the plain Declarations of his Will is to chashier those measures of life
general word and mens great backwardness to it rendring them very slow to run it out into all those Particulars which are contained in it to bring this Discourse yet nearer and set it home upon their Consciences I proceed in the second Book to show what those Laws are in particular which we are bound to obey what is the nature of those several vertues and vices which are enjoined or forbidden by them and from what expectations and under what forfeitures we are bound to obey them This indeed I found to be a toilsome work and the most tedious part of this whole enquiry but I thought it extreamly needful to a thorow piety and a well-grounded peace and that made me that I would not pass it over For in the business of Duty and Obedience men will ordinarily go no further than they needs must but stand their ground and dispute it out so long as they have any post in reserve to which they can still retreat First They do not believe that this or that particular vertue which is urged upon them is a Law of God or if they are forced to believe that they think it is not so necessary that Heaven and eternal life should depend upon it or if at last they are made to see that too yet still they are in ignorance or errour about the nature of it and so have no sense of guilt or remorse of mind when they transgress and act against it And therefore to make every particular Law have a full force upon them both its nature and necessity must be evidently laid before them They must be shewed what that is which it requires and under what penalties it requires it And then their Consciences are awakened and their fears are raised and so the Law is set in its full force to oblige them to its performance Thus necessary is such a particular Discourse upon the several Laws of God and Instances of Duty to a pious performance of them and it is no less necessary to a peaceable assurance in them that do For unless a man knows the several instances of Duty and understands what is meant by them he cannot discern when he keeps or when he breaks them and so can have no comfort or promise himself any reward upon his performance of them In the third Book I proceed to shew what sort of obedience is indispensably required of us to all the particular Laws which are described in the Second And the necessary qualifications of it I reduce to two viz. sincerity and integrity In discoursing upon which I endeavour to set out all the Parts and state the just bounds of this obedience and to examine those pretences and confute those false grounds whereby men who are unwilling to perform it seek to evade or undermine it And having in the three first Books proceeded thus far in asserting the necessity and setting out the true compass and just extent of piety I go on to consult more directly the interests of peace in those two that follow In the fourth Book I shew what defects are consistent with that indispensable pitch of piety before described and what destroy it And this being a Point whereupon the peace of Consciences so nearly depends I have been particular in the explication of it and large in the proof Those sins which are inconsistent with it and destroy a state of Grace are such as are voluntary and wilful whereof some only destroy the state of acceptance for the present but others either greatly wound or utterly extinguish that habitual Vertue which should restore us to it for the time to come But others there are which are allowed by it and do not overthrow it viz. all such defects as are involuntary whether they be sins of innocent unwilled ignorance or inconsideration In discoursing whereupon as I have been studious to explain them so particularly that no honest heart might fall into fears and doubts about them so have I been careful withal to adde such marks and limitations to them that no wilfully ignorant or inconsiderate Sinners may take encouragement thence to presume In the fifth Book I shew what is the remedy for all sin and the Gospel-instrument of reconciliation that so when at any time men are possessed with just fears by being fallen into real danger they may again be restored to peace in their own minds by being first restored to Gods pardon And having proceeded thus far in shewing what measures and degrees of piety God will exact of us what failings he will connive at in us and upon what terms when once we have offended him he will be again reconciled to us I have gone in the last place to remove several causeless grounds of scruple which make good men fear where no fear is and condemn themselves when God will graciously acquit them These are the matters treated on in the ensuing Discourse which was at first drawn up to serve the spiritual necessities of a truly pious soul and which I have now sent abroad into the world being made to believe it will not be altogether unserviceable to the Publick If thereby I may promote the great end of my Lord and Saviour in contributing to the growth of piety and the peace of consciences I shall think my self most happy in having been a Furtherer though in a low degree of so noble and excellent a Design But whatever the success in that be I am sure I shall have the reward of a religious Design and an honest endeavour from him who estimates our pains not by their events which are not in our own power but by their natural tendency and our intentions which are In which confidence I send it out into the world depending upon his Grace to set it home upon the Conscience and make it effectual to guide the practice and secure the comfort both of thee and me For which end I hope I shall have the hearty prayers of all good men especially of those if any such there be who shall receive benefit by this Treatise THE CONTENTS The INTRODUCTION The Contents Religious men inquisitive after their future state Three Articles of Christian belief cause such inquisitiveness The Articles of Eternal Life and the Resurrection make men desire satisfaction The Article of the last Judgment encourages the search and points out a way towards it A proposal of the present Design and the matters treated of in the ensuing Discourse page 1 BOOK I. Of the indispensable Condition of happiness in the general CHAP. I. Of Obedience the general Condition of happiness The Contents OBedience the indispensable Condition of happiness The Laws of the Gospel are given as a Rule to it The Promises are all upon condition of it and intended to encourage it All the threatnings are now denounced and will be executed upon the disobedient Of those other things whereto pardon is promised as well as to Obedience Of Metonymy's Of the Principles Of humane actions Of Principles of Obedience
For every Man at the last day will be declared a Child of wrath who is a son of disobedience and he shall most certainly be Damned who dyes without amendment and Repentance in works which are wilfully and deliberately sinful Christs Gospel has already judged this long before-hand and at that day he will confirm it When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels i. e. when he shall come with his Royal attendance to judge the world He will take vengeance says S t Paul on all them that OBEY not his Gospel who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 2 Thess. 1.7 8 9. When he comes in state with the ten thousands of his Saints it will be to execute Judgment upon all that are ungodly for all the ungodly DEEDS which they have committed Jude 14 15. And when our Lord himself gives a relation of his proceedings at that day he tells us that whosoever they be or whatsoever they may pretend if their works have been disobedient they shall hear no sentence from him but what consigns them to Eternal Punishment I will profess thus unto them says he I never knew you Depart from me ye that WORK iniquity Matt. 7.23 This will be the method of Christs Judgment and these the measures of his Sentence he will pronounce Mercy and Life upon all that are obedient but Death and Hell to all that disobey And indeed it were hight of folly and madness to expect he should do otherwise and to fancy that when he comes to judge us as S t Paul says according to the Laws of his Gospel he should absolve and reward us when in our works and actions we have transgressed them For this were to thwart his own rule and to go cross to his own measures it were to encourage those whom his laws threaten to acquit such as they condemn and in one word not to judge according to them as he has expresly declared he will but against them If we would know then what condition we shall be adjudged to in the next world we must examine what our obedience has been in this We can have no assurance of a favourable Sentence in that Court but only the doing of our duty Our last doom shall turn not upon our knowing or not knowing our willing or not willing but upon our obeying or disobeying It is in vain to cast about for other marks and to seek after other evidences nothing less than this performance of our duty can avail us unto life and by the merits of Christ and the grace of his Gospel it shall And thus we see in the general what those terms and that condition are which to mete out our last doom of Bliss or Misery the Gospel indispensably exacts of us It is nothing less than a working service and obedience the enquiry to be made at that day being only this whether we have done what was commanded us If we have performed what was required of us we shall be pronounced Righteous and sentenced to Eternal Life but if we have wilfully transgressed and wrought wickedness without amendment and repentance we shall then be declared incorrigible Sinners and adjudged to Everlasting Death This indeed is a very great truth but yet such as very few are willing to see and to consider of For obedience is a very laborious service and a painful task and they are not many in number who will be content to undergo it And if a man may have no just hopes upon any thing less than it the case of most dying men is desperate But as men will live and dye in sin so will they live and dye in hopes too And therefore they catch at softer terms and build upon an easier condition And because the Gospel promises Salvation and a happy sentence to faith love repentance our being in Christ our knowing Christ and other things besides obedience they conclude that they shall be acquitted at that Bar upon the account of any or all of these though they do not obey with them They make Faith Love Repentance and the rest to be something separate from obedience something which will save them when that is wanting So that if they be in Christ if they know and believe with the mind and love and repent in their hearts their hope is to be absolved at the last day be their lives and actions never so disobedient But this is a most dangerous and damning errour For it makes men secure from danger till they are past all possibility of recovering out of it and causes them to trust to a false support so long till it lets them drop into Hell and sink down in damnation And although it be sufficiently evident from what has been already said that our obedience is that only thing which will be admitted as a just plea and as a qualification able to save us in that Court yet because I would fully subvert all these false grounds whereupon men support their pernicious hopes and sinful lives together I will go on to prove it still further And this will be most plainly effected by shewing that all those other terms and conditions whereto the Gospel sometimes promises pardon and happiness concenter all in this and save us no otherwise than by being springs and principles of our obedience They are not opposed to our doing of our duty and keeping the Commandments but imply it For when pardon is promised to Faith to Love to Repentance or any thing else it is never promised to them as separate from obedience but as containing it Obedience is that still for which a man is saved and pardoned it is not excluded from them but expressed by them In order to a clearer apprehension of the truth of this I think fit to observe that there is an ordinary figure and form of speech very usual both with God and men which the Rhetoricians call a Metonymie or Transnomination and that is a transferring of a word which is the particular Name of one thing to express an other The use of it is this that in things which have a near relation and dependance upon each other as particularly the cause and its effect have the particular name of either may many times signifie both so that when the name only of one is expressed yet really both are meant and intended And then by that word which in its proper sence stands only for the effect we are to understand not it alone but together with it the cause also that produced it and by that which properly signifies the cause we are to mean not the bare cause alone but besides it the effect which flows from it likewise As for the latter of these the bare naming of the cause when we intend together with it to express its natural consequent and effect too because it is that which chiefly concerns our present business I will set down some instances of it which daily
as a good plea at that Bar when they are separate from Obedience but then only when they effect and work it But when he says that Faith Repentance Love or any other thing shall save us he means not all or any but only a working Faith an obedient Repentance an active Love a Faith Love and Repentance which do not overlook Obedience but accompany and produce it So that first or last Obedience is still that wherein all the rest must concenter and agree that alone condition which our judge will accept and which we may safely trust to And this will fully appear by running over the particulars CHAP. II. Of Pardon promised to Faith Knowledge and being in Christ. The CONTENTS Of Pardon and happiness promised to Faith and Knowledge Of the nature of Faith in general Of natural Jewish and Christian Faith Of this last as justifying and saving Of the fitness of Christian Faith and Knowledge to produce Obedience Pardon promised to them no further than they are productive of it Of Pardon promised to being in Christ. Christ sometimes signifies the Christian Religion sometimes the Christian Church Being in Christ is being of Christs Religion or a member of Christs Church The fitness of these to effect Obedience Pardon promised to them no further than they do FIRST this condition of our acceptance which is to mete out to us our last doom of Bliss and Mercy and whereto Life and Pardon are promised at the last day is sometimes called knowledge or what is only a more particular way of knowing a knowing upon witness or testimony Faith By or upon the account of his knowledge or the knowledge of him shall my Righteous Servant when he sits to judge them justifie many says God of our Judge and Saviour Christ by the Prophet Isaiah Isa. 53.11 And this is Life Eternal says our Lord himself to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent Joh. 17.3 And then as for Faith which is the particular way of knowledge among us Christians who owe all that we know in order to Heaven and happiness to the witness and testimony of Jesus Christ the places which promise Life and Pardon unto it are to be met with in abundance Whosoever believes on me says our Saviour shall not perish but have Everlasting Life Joh. 3.15 16. And again This is the will of him that sent me that whosoever believes on me may have Everlasting Life Joh. 6.40 And when he sends out his Apostles after his Resurrection to proclaim the terms of Mercy and Salvation to all the world he bids them say Whosoever believeth and is Baptized shall be saved Mar. 16.16 Faith or belief in the general is a thinking something to be true upon the testimony of those persons who declare it And herein it differs from other sorts of knowledge because in them we believe upon the evidence and apparent reason of the things themselves but in this upon the witness and authority of those persons who reveal them For then we are said to know when we assent upon the Authority of things but then to believe when we assent upon the Authority of persons when not the evidence of the things revealed but the word and testimony of the revealer make us give credit to his Revelation This is the nature of Faith in general it is a giving credit to a thing or taking it to be true upon the testimony or authority of such persons as declare it And according to the difference of this testimony our Faith upon it is differenced and distinguished also For if we believe any thing upon the bare word of a man it is an Humane if upon the bare word and testimony of God it is a Divine Faith Divine Faith then is nothing else but a belief of Divine Revelations a taking any thing to be true because God has told us it is so And therefore we may be said to have Divine Faith of as many things as God has any way attested or revealed to us And for Gods Revelations they have been derived to us in several ways and by several instruments For some things God has revealed to us by the light of Nature That light came from him and is his Revelation For the spirit of a Man is the Candle of the Lord which as S t John saith in another case of our Saviour enlightens every man that cometh into the world Joh. 1.9 And in this general sence of Faith for a natural Faith or a belief of all natural Revelations all matters of knowledge are likewise matters of Faith because at last all natural light and evidence of things rests upon Gods Revelation that very evidence being no otherwise a proof to us that things are true than we are assured that God is the Author of it and that it is his Testimony and declaration to them that they are so And by this way of Revelation this natural light God has declared to us two great foundations of all Religion his own existence and his Providence that there is a God and that he will love and reward all such as serve and worship him The belief of which Articles so testified S t Paul affirms to be a part of Faith yea a part so fundamental as is absolutely necessary to our pleasing of God and to all Religion without Faith saith he it is impossible to please God for he who comes to God must believe that HE IS and that he is A REWARDER of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11.6 Other things God has revealed not by the light of nature seeing they are such things as that alone could never have discovered to us but either by his own immediate voice or inspiration or by the mediation and message of inspired men By the former he revealed to Noah the Drowning of the old world Gen. 6.13 the belief whereof is called Noah's Faith Heb. 11.7 To Abraham his having a numerous Issue by his Wife Sarah when as yet they had no Child and in all appearance were too old ever to expect one Gen. 15.5 6 and Chap. 17.17 19. the belief whereof is likewise call'd Abraham's Faith Heb. 11.17 18 19. To Moses his passing over all the houses of the Israelites where he should see the Blood of the Paschal Lamb sprinkled for a Token when he would slay all the First-born throughout all the Land of Egypt Exod. 12.12 13. the belief of which Revelation is also call'd the Faith of Moses Heb. 11.28 By the latter he reveal'd his will more largely to the whole people of Israel by the mouth and mediation of his Servant Moses and because both God and Man concurr'd in this Testimony their belief of his message was their Faith not in God only but together with him in his Servant Moses too For because the Law and Religion which they received though it came originally from God was yet derived down to them immediately by his Ministry and they knew no otherwise what
of a good conversation in Christ i. e. in Christs Religion 1 Pet. 3.16 And to name no more instances in a case so evident we read not only of men but likewise of bonds in Christ i. e. of mens being bound for the Religion and Faith of Christ. My bonds in Christ says S t Paul are manifest in all the Palace and in all other places Phil. 1.13 But besides this sence of the words our being in Christ for our being of the Christian Religion there is another very near it which it is pertinent to our present business to observe and that is our being in the Christian Church Thus S t Paul says that we being many members are yet one body or Corporation in Christ or in the Society and Church of Christians wherein we are every one members one of another Rom. 12.5 And Gods gathering together all particular Christians scatter'd over the world into one Catholick Church or Society is called his gathering together in one all things in Christ Eph. 1.10 Thus our admission into Christs Church by baptism is called our being engraffed or implanted into him We have been planted together says the Apostle in the likeness of his death or in Baptismal immersion which is a representation of burial after death Rom. 6.5 As for our Being in Christ then which sets us beyond the reach of danger and condemnation it is the same as our being of the Christian Religion and members of the Christian Church And this Communion and membership of Christs Church and profession of his Religion is a most ready and effectual means to make men practise and obey it For to be in the Church of Christ is to live under the preaching of his word the solemn return of Holy Prayers the Administration of Blessed Sacraments the counsel and direction of wise Guides the Authority of good examples the correction and discipline of Church Governours and all the other outward means of Grace and Obedience And then the profession and owning of his Religion if it be true and undissembled implies our Faith and belief of it which is the great and only expedient that Christ could think of for the reformation of a wicked world and which as we have already seen is a most effectual means and sure principle of good life and practice And because our being in Christ i. e. our profession of Christs Religion and Communion and Society with Christs Church is so powerful a principle of our obedient service therefore has God promised to it that Life and Pardon which is the inseparable reward of Obedience it self He doth not in any wise intend that every man who bears the Name of Christ and is of his retinue that will make a bare profession of his service in calling of him Lord Lord without any real works and performance shall have right to these Rewards when he comes to Judgment Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he only who doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Matt. 7.21 Nay in the next verse he goes higher Many will say unto me in that day Have we not done more than barely professed thy Name have we not done thee high and honourable service viz. prophesied in thy Name and in thy Name cast out Devils and in thy Name done many wondrous works And then will I profess unto them I never knew you depart from me you are no such Christians as I own for whatsoever your names and professions be ye are of their number that in their lives work iniquity vers 22 23. When God assures us by S t Paul therefore that there is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ or in Christs Church and Religion he means to them that are so in them as thereby to become obedient He speaks metonymically and implies our works and actions as well as that Communion and profession which signifies them and ought to produce them And in this the Scriptures are express He that KEEPS his Commandments dwells in Christ and Christ in him says S t John 1 Ep. 3.24 It is nothing less than our fulfilling of his Laws who is head of that body whereunto we joyn our selves as members and our being indeed what we pretend and obeying the rules of that Religion which we profess that will at the last day be interpreted for our being in him in such sort as qualifies us to be saved by him Whoso KEEPETH his word says the same Apostle in him is the love of God made perfect and hereby by this perfection of love in Obedience we know that we are in him So that whosoever he be that saith he abideth in him he ought himself also so to walk even as he walked 1 Joh. 2.5 6. The necessity of connexion between these two viz. being a member of Christs Church and a good Man between professing of Christs Religion and obeying it was so evident and so well known and allowed of in the first times of Christianity that both were understood when either was mentioned To put on Christ in the Apostles days was the same as to make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Rom. 13.14 And to learn Christ was but another phrase for to put off concerning their former CONVERSATION the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful Lusts and to put on the new man which after the similitude of God is created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.20 22 24. A Christian and a keeper of Gods Laws were then only two words for the same thing For they thought nothing could be a greater contradiction than for a man to profess himself a servant of Christ and yet to pay him no Obedience to own the Name of a Christian and yet to lead the life of a Heathen The time past of our lives says S t Peter or that time before we became Christians must suffice us wherein to have wrought the will of the Gentiles 1 Pet. 4.3 But when once we have listed our selves in Christs service and are called upon by his Name we must renounce all our former ways and depart from all iniquity 2 Tim. 2.19 So that in the language of those first times and in the meaning of the Scriptures mens being in Christ is by no means separate from obedience but implies it To talk of an interest in him without fulfilling of his Laws is but vain Cant and unprofitable speech It is to talk without Book and to use a Scripture phrase but against the Scriptures meaning For at the last day when Christ comes to expound his own Gospel we shall hear him pronounce what it has already in plain words declared to us that no man is savingly in Christ who is out with his Laws but that he only is so in him as to be secure from all Condemnation who has kept his Commandments and faithfully obey'd him CHAP. III. Of Pardon promised to Repentance The CONTENTS
and like unto him that they are the Sons of God 1 Joh. 3.2 and born of him 1 Joh. 5.1 4. In like manner as the Disciples of the Prophets among the Jews because they received those qualifications from their institution whereby they were made like unto them are usually in the Old Testament called Sons of the Prophets Now this first part of Repentance or this inward change of mind and purpose which is called a New Creature and a New nature is a most direct cause and natural Author of a like change in our outward works and of an obedient service For it cuts off the very root of all Transgression and plants that of Obedience instead of it It makes us now in obeying to follow our own temper and inclination and our doing of Gods will to become our desire as well as it is our duty So that now when we perform Gods commands we do nothing more than follow the natural tendencies of our own souls our duty is become our choice and delight and it is not without pains and difficulty that we can either omit or transgress it For it is an equal force and violence to a renewed and obedient nature to act sin as it is for a wicked and debauched one to work obedience He whose nature carries him on to love and pity can as hardly be rigorous and cruel as he on the contrary can abstain from cruelty whose nature is harsh and revengeful To act against nature any way is not without difficulty and to follow it is always easie And if it be changed from sin and disobedience to obedience and holiness it is then as truly a self-denial to sin and transgress as it was before to perform and obey Nay if this alteration gets up to a full growth and obedience become perfectly our nature it is then not only uneasie but even almost impossible to sin against it For then we shall be arrived to that pitch which S t Johns words express when he says that he who is born of God or formed into this new nature which makes him like unto and comes from God CANNOT sin 1 Joh. 3.9 So that if Obedience has got this hank of us if by this first part of Repentance or this new nature it be engraffed in our tempers and inclinations and become the employment of our thoughts the desire of our hearts and the matter of our firm purposes and resolutions it cannot miss of our works and actions It has won the principles that command them so that nothing more is needful to be done towards their procurement but they will be sure to follow after them Now because Repentance in its whole nature implies Obedience as its chief ingredient and because the first part of it viz. a change of mind which is called a new nature or a new creature is so natural a principle and so powerful a cause to work and effect it therefore and upon no other reason doth God in the Scriptures so far encourage them He means not in any wise at the last day to acquit and reward men upon such repentance and new birth as is void of obedient works and actions but upon such only as include or effect them 'T is true indeed the wicked and disobedient who will not reform and obey but would notwithstanding have right to Life and Pardon call something else repentance which is void of all amendment and obedience If they confess their sin and are sad upon it if they wring their hands and beat their breasts and then giving it hard names and reproachful titles beg God to forgive them they think they have done an acceptable service and sufficiently repented of it They take no care to keep off from it provided they continue to bewail and confess it For although they bring in before God large Catalogues of sins yet they never strive to lessen them But when they profess to him how they have deserved his wrath and Eternal judgment they want nothing but opportunity still further to provoke it When they acknowledge how vilely they have affronted him in the breach of his Laws they are still ready to repeat it All the hard names which they give their sins are false and forced expressions they mean no hurt to them all the while For although they revile them in their words yet they honour and applaud them in their practice They are still in love with them at their next meeting and for all the ill language which they gave them when they spake of them before God they will embrace them upon the first occasion and repeat them upon every return of temptation But can any considerate man think that such a Repentance as this shall avail him before God and save him from perishing when Christ comes to judgment Surely he must know nothing either of Gods nature or of his word who can be imposed upon so grossly For God by the necessity of his very nature perfectly hates all sin and so can never be reconciled to any man barely for telling him that he is a sinner To inform him only that we have rebell'd against him is to acquaint him that we are his enemies whom to vindicate himself and the Authority of his Government he should destroy and ruine not cherish and protect The Gospel declares that he will take severe and endless vengeance on all that dye unreformed and finally disobedient and then to own our disobedience to his face without a true turn and a firm purpose of reformation is to bid him maintain his Law and execute his Sentence to provoke justice and not to appease it to hasten and assure our misery but by no means to prevent or retard it But that Repentance whereupon God will Pardon us and that Regeneration which he will eternally Reward is such only as either includes or ends in Obedience and reformation When he graciously proclaims that whosoever repenteth him of his former sins and is born again shall be saved he means whosoever doth the one and is the other and obeys with them His speech is metonymical he intends obedience and the thing implies it although his words do not express it For all the while it is only a repentance which is obedient and a new Nature that is operative which in the last judgment he will eternally reward and pronounce for ever Blessed For of repentance he tells us plainly how that which he means when he promises Life and Pardon to it is such only as implies a forsaking in our works and actions those Sins which we repent of It is a Repentance FROM dead works Heb. 6.1 A forbearing to act what we confess is evil They repented not says he of the works of their hands in making and worshipping Idols that they should not ANY LONGER worship them Rev. 9.20 And because it includes a turn and a change of our works and actions from Sin and Transgression to Vertue and Obedience therefore is it expressed by forsaking and
of the elect of God holy and beloved humbleness of mind Col. 3.12 It is this poverty and lowliness of Spirit which must prepare us for eternal happiness Blessed are the poor in Spirit Matth. 5.3 For as our Saviour says 't is by learning of him who is meek and lowly that we shall find both here and hereafter rest to our souls Matth. 11.29 And for all the rest their Sanction is expressed in these ensuing places Labour not for the meat that perisheth but for that which endureth to everlasting life John 6.27 This is a necessary evidence of our being risen with Christ now at present If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth Col. 3.1 2 and a necessary condition to our being blessed with him for ever hereafter the blessedness which our Saviour pronounces being to those which hunger and thirst after righteousness Matth. 5.6 Add to temperance patience for he that lacketh these is blind and shall not be looked on as a new man seeing he has forgot that he was purged from his old sins 2 Pet. 1.6 9. The fruit of the Spirit saith S t Paul is temperance or continence and it is against this among others that there is no Law to condemn it Gal. 5.23 And to the Hebrews he says that they have need of patience to inherit the promises of life and happiness Heb. 10.36 and therefore they must not cast away but hold fast their confidence or couragious and open owning even of a suffering Religion which hath great recompence of reward ver 35. It bring to them only who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality that God will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 Dearly Beloved I beseech you as Strangers and Pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul to vanquish and destroy it 1 Pet. 2.11 This abstinence is one chief thing which we were called to at our Call to Christianity God hath not called us to uncleanness saith S t Paul but unto holiness or purity and cleanness For this is the will of God which you are first to perform before you expect his reward your purity or sanctification and particularly in one instance wherein you are so generally defective that you abstain from fornication and every one of you possess his Vessel or Body in purity or sanctification and honour And this Commandment you know we gave you by the Lord Jesus's order so that whosoever among you despiseth it despiseth not man but God 1 Thess. 4.2 3 4 7 8. For the wisdom which cometh from above and which must carry us thither is in the first place pure or chast James 3.17 Love not the world nor the things of the world for if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 For the esteem and friendship of the world is in very deed downright enmity with God Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God James 4.4 Godliness if it be joined with contentment is great gain saith S t Paul 1 Tim. 6.6 And our being content with such things as we have is reckoned a part of that Grace whereby we must serve God acceptably and be secured from his wrath who where he is angred is a consuming fire Heb. 12.28 to the fifth Verse of the thirteenth Chapter Christ said unto them all If any man will come after me and be accounted one of my Disciples let him deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me Luke 9.23 If ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body saith S t Paul you shall live Rom. 8.13 Yea its affections and desires as well as its sinful actions are to be deaded and brought under For they that are Christ's whom he will own for his at the last Day and reward accordingly have crucified the Flesh with the affections and lusts or desires thereof Gal. 5.24 They who would not be accounted in Gods judgment as Children of the night and of darkness S t Paul says plainly must watch and be sober 1 Thess. 5.5 6. For watching is necessary unto bliss Blessed is that Servant whom his Lord when he cometh shall find watching Luke 12.37 And give diligence to make your calling and election sure saith S t Peter for this is one of those things which if you do you shall never fall either from your duty or your reward 2 Pet. 1.10 Thus are all the particular Laws recited in the first Class sobriety expresly bound upon us by all our hopes of Heaven and our obedience to them plainly necessary to our life and pardon when we come to be judged according to them And the Sanction is the same for all the Particulars of the second Class our piety towards God as will appear by the following Scriptures Them that honour me saith God I will honour or make honourable but they who despise me shall on the other hand be as lightly set by 1 Sam. 2.30 And if any man be a worshipper of God him said the man who had received his sight most truly he heareth John 9.31 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved but he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 For this is the will of him that sent me saith our Saviour that whosoever believeth on me may have everlasting life John 6.40 And what we hear of Faith is also said of Knowledge For this is life eternal saith Christ to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent John 17.3 The good things which neither eye hath seen nor ear hath heard i. e. the joys of Heaven are laid up for those who love God 1 Cor. 2.9 And if any man love God the same is known or accepted by him 1 Cor. 8.3 It is he who believes Christs promises or hopes on him that shall never be ashamed Rom. 10.11 And we trust in God saith S t Paul who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe or trust in him 1 Tim. 4.10 And a cheerful dependence upon Gods Providence for our food and maintenance c. and not being sollicitous about them is one of the Particulars of Christ's Law Matth. 6.25 the sanction whereof is expressed in the fifth Chapter in these words He who breaks the least oâ— these Commandments shall be least in the Kingdom oâ— Heaven i. e. according to the Hebrew manner of speaking he shall be none at all ver 19. Pray without ceasing 1 Thess. 5.17 It is this that must bring all blessings down upon us For the promise is Ask and you shall have Matth. 7.7 But no Petition being put up no Grant can in reason
of death Rom. 1.29 30 32. The Servant that shall begin to eat and to drink with the drunken shall have his portion appointed with Hypocrites in the place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Matth. 24.49 51. Many are enemies of the Cross of Christ whose God is their Belly which they carefully serve in voluptuous eating who are altogether worldly and mind earthly things whose end is destruction Phil. 3.18 19. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton or ye have lived deliciously and fared luxuriously Ye Ye have nourished or fed your hearts as men use to do Cattle which they intend for the Shambles against or in a day of slaughter Weep therefore and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you James 5.1 5. Love not the world nor covet and ambitiously pursue the rich and splendid things of the world But if any man do love the world I declare this concerning him that the Love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me or not scandalized and turned out of the way and profession of my Religion through any difficulties or persecutions that befal him in it Matth. 11.6 For he who will save his life in this world by fleshly policy and wicked compliances against his Duty shall lose it in the world to come but whosoever shall lose his life or other temporal enjoyments for my sake or for an honest owning of my Laws and Religion that same man shall find it Matth. 16.25 And for the prohibitions of the second Class impiety we have their penalty expressed in the Texts ensuing The works of the Flesh are manifest idolatry witchcraft of which I tell you that they who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 20 21. But the unbelievers and sorcerers and idolaters shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death Rev. 21.8 The wicked man hath said in his heart God hides his face he will never see what men do and therefore he will not require an account of it But thou Lord dost behold mischief and spite and that too to punish and requite it with thy hand Psal. 10.11 13 14. Being haters of God without understanding or foolish which in the judgment of God are worthy of death Rom. 1.30 31 32. In the last days perillous times shall come for men shall be Blasphemers unthankful unholy heady and these are men of corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the faith 2 Tim. 3.1 2 4 8. They that despise and dishonour me shall be lightly set by 1 Sam. 2.30 Because thou hast no zeal for me but art lukewarm and neither hot nor cold I will spew thee as men do warm water which the Stomach loaths and nauseates out of my mouth Rev. 3.16 If we deny him he also will deny us 2 Tim. 2.12 And our being ashamed of and not owning and maintaining him and his Religion although it be at a time when impiety is barefaced in an adulterous and sinful Generation is intepreted by him for such damnable denial of him For what is called denying me and my words Matth. 10.33 is upon another occasion repeated in S t Mark and expressed by being ashamed of them Mark 8.38 Ye have heard that it hath been said in old time Thou shalt not forswear or perjure thy self but shalt perform unto the Lord thy Vows But in addition to this I say unto you Swear not at all in your common converse but let your communication or ordinary discourse be yea yea and nay nay for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil Matth. 5.33 34 37. And these Precepts are of the number of those whereof Christ had expresly said ver 19. He who breaks the least of these Commandments shall be least or none at all in the Kingdom of Heaven The Law with its terrors and severe sanctions is not made for a righteous man who would do what it requires without them but for the lawless and disobedient for ungodly for unholy and prophane for perjured persons that by means of its dreadful punishments it might either fright them from sinning or take vengeance on them after they should have sinned against it 1 Tim. 1.9 10. Wo unto him that strives through contumacious and repining carriage with his Maker Isai. 45.9 And for the necessity of observing the prohibitions of the third Head injustice towards men take these places The works of the Flesh are manifest adultery murther of which I tell you that they who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 21. Being filled with all unrighteousness covetousness deceit covenant-breakers or perfidious who in the judgment of God are worthy of death Rom. 1.29 30 31 32. This is the will of God That no man go beyond and defraud his Brother in any matter or way whatsoever whether it be extortion oppression or plain couzenage for the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also have forwarned you and testified 1 Thess. 4.3 6. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Be not deceived neither thieves nor covetous shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. In the last Days perillous times shall come for men shall be Truce-breakers false Accusers or Slanderers and Calumniators from such turn away for they are men of corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the faith 2 Tim. 3.1 2 3 5 8. Out of the heart proceed thefts false witness murthers these defile or pollute the man and so exclude him from Heaven where nothing can ever enter that is unholy and unclean Matth. 15.19 20. Thou hast greedily gained of thy Neighbour by extortion therefore I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain Can thy heart endure or thy hands be strong in the day when I shall deal with thee Ezek. 22.12 13 14. All Lyars shall have their part in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death Rev. 21.8 And as for all the Particulars of uncharitableness we have their sanction in these Scriptures following Being filled with wickedness maliciousness full of envy malignity whisperers back-biters despightful or contumelious implacable unmerciful who in the judgment of God are all worthy of death Rom. 1.29 30 31. Recompence to no man evil for evil avenge not your selves but rather instead of that give place unto wrath Rom. 12.17 19. For if ye forgive not but revenge upon men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses Matth. 6.15 Deal thus therefore with your enemies not rendring evil for evil or railing for railing but contrariwise blessing or benediction knowing this That hereunto are ye
with all thy heart or will and with all thy soul or affections and with all thy strength or executive and bodily powers and with all thy mind or understanding Luke 10.25 26 27 28. Obedience with all these powers and with our whole Nature is the means of life and the indispensable condition of our eternal happiness First We must keep all Gods Commandments with our minds or understandings It is a dangerous conceit for any man to phansie that he may be as sinful as he will in his thoughts so long as he only loves and chuses projects and contrives for the forbidden instance in his mind but doth not proceed so far as to obey it in his outward practice For at the last Day we must be called to account and justified or condemned by the counsels and imaginations of our minds as well as by the works of our lives For not only the works and practice but also the thoughts of the wicked or of wickedness are an abomination to the Lord Prov. 15.26 The thought of foolishness is sin Prov. 24.9 And since God forbids and hates them as ever we hope for his favour we must repent of them and forsake them Let the wicked man forsake his thoughts saith the Prophet and turn them from his sin unto the Lord and then he will have mercy upon him and abundantly pardon him Isai. 55.7 For the warfare that God has set us after which we are to attain the reward of eternal happiness is a casting down imaginations as the Apostle tells us and bringing into captivity every rebellious thought to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10.4 5. In particular this obedience of our minds to the Law of God must be as a doing what he enjoins so likewise a keeping off from every thing which he forbids First In our imaginations We must not phansie it in our minds with love and delight nor indulge to any thoughts of it with such pleasure as may be a bait to our choice and weaken our aversation and hatred of it and thereby ensnare us into the practice of it Our warfare as we have heard from the Apostle must not be against actions only but against imaginations also and insnaring phancies of evil casting down rebellious imaginations and making every thought obedient to the Laws of Christ 2 Cor. 10.4 5. And in the old world when the imaginations of mens thoughts were always evil it repented the Lord that he had made man insomuch as he resolved to destroy him Gen. 6.5 6 7. Secondly In our counsels and contrivances We must not study what means are fittest what times are best and what manner is most advantageous for the acting of our sins They must no more have our care and contrivance than our service and obedience For if we cast about in our thoughts and consult about the most commodious way of committing any sin although all our designs be defeated before we come to any effect yet shall we be damned for our contrivance as well as we should for the compleat action And this our Lord himself has plainly determined in one instance and the Case is the same in all the rest For of the contrivances and machinations of murther he assures us That they as well as murther it self are of the number of those things which pollute a man and so utterly unfit him for Heaven where nothing can ever enter that is polluted or unclean Out of the heart saith he proceed evil thoughts or murtherous machinations and besides them compleat murthers adulteries c. and these defile the man Matth. 15 19. And as for that particular sort of contriving for sin which is the height and perfection of villany viz. the inventing of new and before unknown ways of transgressing it of all others is sure to meet with the severest punishment and to thrust men down into the deepest Abyss of Hell Of this sort are all invention of new Oaths new Nick-names or evil speakings new frauds and methods of couzenage new incentives of lust new modes of drinking and arts of intemperance But of these and of all others that are like unto them God will one day exact a most rigorous and terrible account For he that deviseth to do evil saith Solomon although he himself doth not act but only devise it he shall be called and dealt with as a mischievous and wicked person Prov. 24.8 And S t Pauls words are full to this purpose For he tells us expresly that in the judgment of God inventers of evil things shall be declared worthy of death Rom. 1.30 32. As for our minds or understandings then they are one faculty which is plainly implied in the Integrity of our service and without the obedience whereof at the last day God will not accept us And another faculty implied in it likewise is Secondly Our Soul or Affections It is a vain thing for any man to love and set his heart upon any particular sin and yet for all that to expect that God should love and reward him If I regard iniquity in my heart saith the Psalmist the Lord will not hear me Psal. 66.18 No man as our Saviour sayes can serve two masters for if he love the one for his sake when their interests enterfere he will hate the other so that we cannot serve God if with our affections we continue to serve sin Mat. 6.24 To pretend obedience to God and yet to love what he sorbids to make a show of his service and yet in our very hearts to hanker after his vilest enemies whom above all things his soul abhors this surely is not honestly to serve but grosly to collogue and slatly to dissemble with him For in very deed if any man love sin he sides with Gods enemy but for the service and fear of the Lord it is to hate evil Prov. 8.13 If ever we expect that God should accept our works we must offer up our affections with them For if our hearts go along with our lusts whilst our practice is against them we serve God only against our wills we submit to him as a slave doth to a tyrannous Lord not through any kindness for him but through a hatefull fear of him We utterly dislike what he bids us but yet we do it only because we dare not do otherwise But now this is such a way of performing obedience as God will never endure to accept of For he scorns to be served by a slavish fear and an unwilling mind he will never look upon a heartless sacrifice but it is the affection that we do it with which makes him set a price upon any thing that we do and our love that he regards more than our performance For this is that very thing which was thought fit to be mentioned in the command it self Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart with all thy soul and with all thy mind Mat. 22.37 'T is true indeed we do not find our affection so quick and
take up with their leavings Nay what is yet more by such a partial and squeamish belief as this we do not only give or take at our own liking from that attribute of his which in believing we would be thought to honour viz. his Truth but even where we seem to submit to it we wrong and pervert it For we wrest his sense and spoil his meaning and undermine all that he intends So that even that which we do believe is not his mind but our own For the true meaning of his Promises which run all upon condition of our Obedience we pervert the force of all his threatnings which denounce woes to every sin and transgression we cancel We do as much as in us lies to corrupt his Word and to belie his very Gospel We make his whole Religion signifie another thing than what he intended For we make it allow what he forbids and encourage such as he threatens and save those whom at the day of Judgment he will condemn And since this perverse faith and knowledge which believes what it likes and is infidel to all the rest which sets up one part of his Word against another by making his Promises to undermine his Precepts and the Truth of his Doctrines to render all his threatnings false and useless I say since such an untowardly partial and gainsaying knowledge and belief as this is in very deed so plain a Libel to his Person so hateful a violence to his Truth and such a contradicting piece of Infidelity to his Gospel it can never be thought to be that Obedience which he commands and encourages but such a piece of contumelious flattery and fawning disobedience as he will most severely punish and condemn But if we believe his whole Gospel and besides the faith of his Doctrines and Promises take moreover all his Precepts to be such as he injoyns and all his threatnings in their true meaning to be such as he will execute and yet for all that in our works and practice despise and sin against them then is such our faith and knowledge so far from rendring our condition safe and comfortable that in very deed it makes it quite desperate and utterly bereft of all colour and excuse For it takes from us all plea for disobedience and leaves us not so much as the common refuge of all misdoing the pretence that we did offend but did not know it It makes every sin which we commit to be acted with a high hand and all our offences to become contempt our disobedience rebellion and our transgressions presumptuous For we sin then with open eyes we know Gods Commands but refuse to practise them we discern our duty but despise it It makes us not only to renounce his Authority but also to defie his Power For we know his Almighty Strength but we will not fear it we see his dreadfull threatnings but yet dare to commit the things which he has threatned in despite of them We see and believe that our Death is entailed upon our disobedience but for all that we choose and run upon it We contemn all his Commands and set light by all his Promises and despise all his Threatnings We see and believe them all but prefer the pleasure of our sins before them and transgress in open affront to them And such a state as this every man must needs see is so far from gaining his favour and ascertaining his acceptance that in reality it is a continued heightning of every provocation an habitual hostility and state of crying sin But if ever our Orthodox Faith and Professions avail us unto Life and Pardon they must end in our Obedient Works and Actions We must do that which we know God requires and practise that Pure Religion which we profess If ye know these things sayes our Saviour happy are ye if ye do them Joh. 13.17 It is not every verbal Professor every one that saith unto me or calls me Lord Lord that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he only that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Mat. 7.21 We are condemn'd out of our own mouths if we commend Christs Religion whilst we contemn and disobey it Every word which we speak in its behalf is a charge against our own selves and every Plea which we make for it is to us an accusation For if it be a Religion so pure so good so worthy of God and so beneficial to men as we profess it is the more unpardonable wretches we that transgress and act against it All the praises which we heap upon our Duty are a most bitter invective upon our own practice and the more we commend Christs Religion and Laws the more we condemn our own transgressions so that now God in exacting the punishment be it as severe as it well can only executes our own sentence We are made the worse for our knowledge if our Actions are not ruled by it for it shews plainly that our Lusts are most obstinate and our wills most wicked when for all we are clearly shewed the Laws the Promises and the threats of God we can yet despise them all and for the short pleasure of a silly sin transgress and act against them And since it doth thus enhanse our Sin we may be sure that it will proportionably encrease our punishment For he that knows his masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes Luk. 12.47 And thus we see that this thinking to be saved by the labour of our minds without any works of our lives and practice and coming to Heaven barely by a True Belief and Orthodox Opinions and Right Professions without ever obeying in our works and actions is one of those false and delusive grounds whereupon men shift off the necessity of this service with all their strength the service of their Actions And another false ground of shifting off the same service is 2. The delusive confidence which wicked men have of being saved at the last Day for an obedience of idle desires and ineffective wishes It is a strange conceit which some people have been taught viz. that the desire of Grace is Grace and that God will at the last Day judge men to have obeyed although they have not wrought but only desired it There is a complaisant sort of Casuistry and a much easier than ever God made that has been brought into the World which bids men to hope well though they do nothing so long as they find in themselves a desire that they could do it They wish they were what God expects and that they performed what he commands but they do no more but wish it They sit still and work no more now they have wished it than they did before Theirs is a weakly infant-desire it just lives but that is all it can effect nothing For the smallest lust is too strong for it and the least temptation over-bears it the desire of the Vertue is hush'd when
the opportunity of the Sin returns for notwithstanding all the contrary desire this is acted at the next offer Obedience is not desired so much as their ease for they love it not so well as to be at the necessary pains for it It is a squeamish delicate desire it would obey if that could be without trouble but it will undergo nothing for obedience But this is a conceit as strange as it is destructive and such wherewith the simplest of men suffer themselves to be imposed upon in no other matters but only this which most of all requires their care and caution viz. the eternal welfare of their souls and the truth of their obedience For who ever took his desire of gain to be gain his desire of ease to be ease his desire of meat to be food his desire of cloaths to be rayment or his desire of knowledg to be knowledg And why then must that be true in Religion which is always false in common life and the desire of Grace be said to be Grace and the desire of obedience obedience Our desires are one thing but the thing desired is another Our desires are within but the object desired is without us Our desires are our own but the thing desired is wanting For so far is our desire of any thing from being the very thing it self which is desired that it is not always joined with it but we possess one whilst we are without the other For alas we find that those things which we need and have a mind to do not come at the beck of a desire nor are procured by a wish but we must do more than desire them endeavour after them and work or act for them or else we shall sit without them A man doth not presently possess meat because he is hungry or is Owner of a great Estate because he is covetous no he must labour and seek as well as desire both for the one and the other or else let him desire what he will he shall get neither 'T is true a desire of money is a great preparative to get money and a desire of knowledg a good disposition to attain knowledg because our appetites and desires are of all the passions the great and most immediate Spring of our outward works and operations For delight begets love and love ends in desire and desire carries us on to work and labour for the thing desired We seek after a thing because we long for it and take pains about it because we desire it And thus our desires of Grace and Obedience are Grace and Obedience That is Our desire of Grace is not Grace it self nor our desire of Obedience Obedience but a good step and degree towards them It is so metonymically it is the Principle and the Cause of it For therefore we acquire Grace and perform Obedience because we desire them We should take no pains about them were it not for our desires of them but because we have a mind to them therefore we labour after them But till our desires come on to this effect they have no title to the rewards of it Because although they are a gift of Gods Grace 't is true as well as Obedience it self is yet are they not that Grace which in the Judgment shall entitle us to pardon and happiness For the promise to the Desire of Obedience is one but the promise to Obedience it self is another If we sincerely desire to do Gods will i. e. if we desire it so as according to the best of our power to endeavour after it the promise to that is That we shall be inabled to do it For one promise of the New Covenant is That God will grant unto us to serve him in holiness and righteousness Luke 1.74 75 which he will then do when we desire it of him by giving his holy Spirit to them that ask him Luke 11.13 But if we do indeed obey it the promise to that is That we shall be saved by it For Christ is become the Authour of eternal salvation to them that obey him Heb. 5.9 And it is said expresly of them that obey That they shall have right to the tree of life Rev. 22.14 So that to the honest desire of obedience all that God promises is the power to perform and work obedience but that whereunto mercy and life is promised is nothing less than obedience it self For to the working out our salvation it is required as S t Paul says that we be wrought upon not only to will what God commands but also to do it Phil. 2.12 13. The great pretence whereby men of idle unworking desires would plead for their unfruitfulness and support their hopes of a happy Sentence under a life of disobedience is a mistaken sence of these words of S t Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh so that ye cannot do the things that ye would Gal. 5.17 Which words they interpret thus The Spirit in all good men lusteth against the Flesh but not so far as to prevail over it for although they may will and desire with the Spirit yet they cannot do those things which they would And if this be so 't is plain that we have warrant enough to hope for mercy notwithstanding we only desire but are not able to perform But this is a plain perverting of the Apostles words from the Apostles own meaning For although he says that the lusting is on both sides both of the Flesh against the Spirit and of the Spirit against the Flesh yet as for the ineffectiveness or not doing what is willed and desired that he charges only upon one He leaves it purely and solely to the Fleshes share which can indeed lust and desire evil things even in regenerate men but is not able to prevail so far as to work and effect them because the over-ruling will of the Spirit checks and restrains it Through the victorious lusting of the Spirit against the Flesh saith he it comes to pass that you cannot do or do not those things which from the instigation of your Flesh you desire and would do And to shew this to be his sense I need do no more than set down his words in that order wherein they stand which is as follows This I say then Walk in the Spirit and you shall not work and fulfil the lusts of the Flesh. Not work and fulfil them I say notwithstanding you will still feel an ineffective and unconquering stirring of them For the Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these two are contrary one to the other So that in walking or working as I said after the lustings and desires of the Spirit you fulfil not the lusts of the Flesh which are contrary to it ye cannot do or you do not the things that your Flesh lusts after which yet through its lusting ye would ver 16 17. Whereas
prohibited not being forbidden universally but some being excepted here again is room for ignorance and mistake about the particular action after we have known the general Duty For we may take that to be a case excepted which is indeed a case prohibited and venture upon an action as an exempted liberty which in truth and reality is a forbidden sin 3. In other actions although we know the general Law yet many times we are in ignorance about the particular action because there are several actions which are not directly forbidden by any Law but are alwayes innocent and indifferent unless when some Law takes hold of them indirectly The action is usually allowed except when it is committed in such a manner as that the transgression of some Law accompanies it There is no Law against it self but only against some thing that is annexed to it For God has not given a particular Law for every sort of actions but has left us in several to govern our selves by other motives and inducements of pleasure honour or interest and not by virtue of a Commandment But although these unrestrained actions are no matter of a particular Law which expresly names them and directly binds us up to one side either in chusing or refusing the whole kind of them yet in our use and exercise of them they may at one time or other fall under the power of several For to illustrate this by an instance there is no Law which directly and expresly either enjoyns or forbids us to play at cards or other pastime but yet several Laws commanding or forbidding other things may be transgressed in our use of them For even in a game at cards we may incur the sin of Covetousness by our desire of money the sin of Injustice by our endeavours to cheat and cozen and the sins of passionateness impatience and unpeaceableness by our repining at our ill luck our quarrelling and contending and the like might be shewn in other cases Now seeing several actions which in themselves are thus innocent and under no Law may yet at one time or other by reason of some thing concomitant and annexed to them be indirectly a transgression of a Law here is still a further reason why when we know the general Law we yet are ignorant of our present actions being forbid by it For the Law doth not look upon it directly but takes a compass before it comprehends it They lie not in the same line and so one may be particularly seen and considered of and much more known and understood in the general without seeing of the other 4. In other actions although we know the General Law which we sin against yet we do not believe that our present action is included in it or forbid by it because another Law happens to clash with it in some instance and seems to injoyn and justifie what we do although that be transgressed by it For it often happens in a Christians Life that two Laws interfere and command differently in the same instance Our Duty is at variance with it self so that when we pursue obedience in one particular another is disobeyed by us How obvious and usual is it for him who would avoid the passion and impatience of discourse to fall into a fault of the opposite extream by fullenness and unsociable moroseness What is more common than for men to be over censorious and troublesomly rigid in conversation who aim at nothing but to be severely virtuous and piously austere It is an obvious errour for any whilst they intend a charitable feasting to run into some small intemperance for inoffensiveness and kind compliance to justle out the due severities of reproof for severity to exceed into ungentleness for affection to degenerate into fondness and which is the great instance of errour upon this score for our zeal for God to disturb the peace and transgress the bounds of charity towards men I do not mean such zeal as transgresses notorious and weighty Laws for disputable nay even for clear and evident Doctrines and Opinions A zeal that will stick at nothing but bursts through all Gods Commands to propagate an Article and ventures upon murders tumults lying slander wars blood-shed and other instances of a most notorious and damning disobedience in practice to promote an Orthodox belief For these are such instances of offence as no honest heart can overlook but if a man has not debauched his Conscience they must needs appear to be of a frightful guilt and of a damning nature Any virtuous temper must abhor and every good conscience utterly condemn them So that no man of an honâ—st and obedient heart can ever hope to serve God by them or think any pretence whatsoever of force enough to justifie the practice of them But then there are other sins which are of a smaller guilt or of a more alterable nature such as either are not greatly or not alwayes evil but only when they happen to have ill effects or are in an exorbitant degree and these an eager zeal doth many times drive men to and they think all is obedience even when they proceed so far in them as to disobey Mens 〈◊〉 for those Opinions which they account Religious 〈…〉 them daily into estrangedness of mind and 〈◊〉 of behaviour into passione disputes and 〈◊〉 reflections into animosities and disquietness and a great breach of mutual charity and love And all these though really they are breaches of their Duty are looked upon as innocent nay praise-worthy they judge them to come from an honest Principle and therefore doubt not but that they will end in an happy reward The duty of pious zeal is the spring although it contract much of humane passion in the passage and that they hope will be acceptable to God which goes under cover of a Commandment and comes to serve him And this was the case in that hot and sinfull contest which happened betwixt those two great lights of Virtue and Learning Epiphanius and Chrysostome For it was a zeal for publick good and against such things as were likely in their opinion to corrupt the Faith or disturb the Peace or pervert the practice of the Church which transported them into that warm contention that ended in an uncharitable breach and passionate imprecation when Epiphanius wrote to Chrysostome That he hoped he would lose his See and never dye a Bishop and Chrysostome replyed to him that he hoped he would come to an untimely end and never return safe into his own city And a real transgression of one Law being thus through the clashing and enterfering of two Laws of Christ in fair appearance an act of laudable and necessary obedience to another Here again is a further reason why when we know the Law which we sin against we yet think that our action is not sinfull because we take it to be justified nay what is more commanded by another 5. In other actions although we know the General Law
For they who will live wickedly will quickly bring their minds to think wickedly Their lusts and vices will soon insinuate themselves into their judgments and apprehensions they will dispose their souls for such perswasions as are most serviceable to them and win them with ease into a belief of evil things by making them willing first and eagerly desirous to believe them For our belief of any opinion is produced in us by our diligent search and consideration of all such Arguments as can get credit to it by overlooking or clearing such difficulties or industriously considering and improving all the answers to such exceptions as are made against it As on the contrary our disbelief of any opinion is effected by overlooking or weakening all those reasons which are brought to prove it by darkening it with difficulties perplexing it with doubts and raising such exceptions as may shake or overthrow it But now as for the employing of our wit and industry in either of these it is plainly in our own choice and we deal indifferently and impartially between both or espouse either part as we stand affected If then we are earnestly desirous and strongly enclined for one way we can overlook or answer all that makes against it and throw by difficulties clear up doubts invent reasons to justifie and prove it So that the will and pleasure of our hearts will quickly draw after it the judgment of our understandings and if once we are resolved upon a way we shall soon find reasons to avow it When therefore our lusts and vices have got our hearts and give Laws to our wills and appetites they will quickly bear Rule in our understandings also We shall quickly believe that any of their gratifications are lawful when once we are greatly desirous to have them so Nothing being a more probable and ordinary effect in the nature of things as well as in the just judgment of God of a disobedient and rebellious heart than a reprobate mind or a mind void of Judgment Rom. 1.18 21 28. So long then as men have wicked hearts it cannot be expected but that they will have debauched consciences for whilst they retain unmortified lusts and vices they will justifie them in their own thoughts by damnably sinful and disobedient opinions They will take up prejudices and a wrong belief not to direct and guide but to defend their wicked practice The factious and unpeaceable man will easily perswade himself into that belief which disturbs Peace and opposes Government The covetous soul will favour any Tenet which promotes gain and advances interest The licentious Libertine will snatch at any opinion that gratifies the flesh and pleads the Cause of sensuality and softness Mens pride and ambition their fierceness and cruelty their malice and revenge their contentiousness and faction their sensuality and covetousness will make them overlook the humble and lowly the meek and gentle the patient and merciful the quiet and peaceable the generous and self-denying Laws of Christ and greedily imbibe such wicked prejudices and erroneous conceits as evacuate and overthrow them To illustrate this business let us consider it in some instances That execrable Sect of men the Gnosticks who were so famous for their impure and lawless consciences were not more notorious for their vile opinions than for their evil lives I will consider both that it may from thence more clearly appear how influential their lusts were upon their minds in begetting suitable perswasions As for their lives they were infamous for covetousness cowardice and softness in heaping up wealth and avoiding all loss of Goods and bodily pains though by means never so wicked and dishonourable and for the greatest luxury and unnaturalness in their lusts and unclean pleasures They were notoriously infamous for their covetousness and abominably soft and irreligious compliances For they are described as men that have their hearts exercised with covetous practices 2 Pet. 2.14 that do any thing because of advantage Jude 16 that forsake the right way of Worship and Religion and go astray from it into the by-paths of idolatry and prophaneness when they are like to suffer by it being thus far fitly compared to Balaam the Son of Bozor that they professing true Christianity join in idol-worship with the idolatrous Gentiles as he being a true Prophet did in the idolatrous worship of the King of Moab Numb 22.40 41 and also in that they sort and combine with the Jewish and Gentile Persecutors of the Christians as he did in cursing first and afterwards in fighting against the Israelites in the Army of Midian Numb 31.8 upon which accounts his way or errour they are said to follow 2 Pet. 2.15 Jud. 11. Their Character is to desert the publick Assemblies by reason of the heat of persecution against all that dare frequent them Heb. 10.25 to deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ when they are in danger to suffer for the owning of them Jud. 4. They were also equally notorious for abominable luxury and unnaturalness in their lusts and unclean pleasures For they are set out to us as men that are sensual Jud. 19 that account it a pleasure to riot in the day time 2 Pet. 2.13 that defile the flesh Jud. 8 that walk after the flesh in lusts of uncleanness 2 Pet. 2.10 in pernicious or as it is rendred from other Copies in the Margin of our Bibles lascivious ways vers 2 that have eyes full of adultery ver 14 and that are not content to riot in these abominable filthinesses themselves but use them as baits to decoy and draw in others alluring through the lusts of the flesh and through much wantonness those who really or for a little while had escaped from such an abominable life of errour ver 18. Thus was their life and temper over-run with covetousness basely cowardous and sinful compliances and with most filthy lusts and unnatural uncleannesses Both which S t Peter setting himself against requires all men who would be thought to have that true and saving knowledge which is opposite to that false and spurious one which they pretended to to give all diligence in adding to it these two Duties which are directly contrary to their vile lusts viz. vertue or courage and constancy which is opposite to their base arts of tergiversation and sinful compliances and continence or chastity which is contrary to their unclean practices Give all diligence to adde to virtue or valorous courage knowledge and to knowledge temperance or continence 2 Pet. 1.5 6. Now these men having such a Scene of debauchery in their lives they quickly became as lewd and debauched in their consciences When once for all their professions of knowing God they began as S t Paul says in works to deny him they quickly made their Consciences to be as filthy and polluted as were their practices To these defiled Wretches saith he is nothing pure their very mind and conscience is
noble and excellent reward we are in a safe state and have no need to disquiet our Souls with fears and jealousies lest they should eternally miscarry If any person then has used Gods Grace and improved his Talents to this measure he has not been unprofitable and useless but has profited so far as is necessary to his happiness He is bound indeed still to advance higher and in every instance of Vertue to improve further but this he is not under the loss of Heaven but only under the danger of falling back into such a state of sin as would destroy the hopes of it again and the forfeiture of greater glory and rewards there when an intire obedience in all chosen instances and a particular reformation and repentance of all wilful sins is once secured there is so much growth in grace as is absolotely necessary an exalted pitch and compleat measures of this obedience with more ease and pleasure constancy and evenness with less mixture of voluntary sins which need particular repentance and with a greater freedom from innocent and unwilled infirmities is necessary to more absolute degrees and greater hights of glory but till that can be had this is sufficient to a mans salvation Several other scruples there are which are wont to disquiet and perplex the minds of good and honest people who are safe in Gods account although their Case seems never so hazardous in their own And of this sort are their fears that their obedience is unsincere because they have an eye at their own good and a respect to their own safety since they serve God in hopes to be better by him and out of a fear should they disobey of suffering evil from him They are afraid also that it is defective in a main Point for they cannot love and serve him in that comprehensive latitude which the Commandment requires viz. With all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind They doubt they are past Grace and Pardon because they have sinned after that they have been enlightned and that wilfully and the Apostles affirms that for such there remains no more Sacrifice for sins Heb. 10.26 These doubts are still apt to disturb their peace and make sad their hearts and some others of like nature But of these and several others I have given sufficient Accounts above such as I hope may satisfie any reasonable man who is capable to read and to consider of them and thither I refer the Reader not thinking fit here to repeat them And thus at last we have seen when an honest and entire obedience is taken care for in the first place how plainly groundless those fears are which are wont to perplex the thoughts of good and safe yet ignorant and misguided people about their state of happiness and salvation And now I have done with all those points which I thought necessary to be enquired into to the end that I might shew every man now before-hand how he stands prepared for the next world and which at the beginning of this whole Discourse I proposed to treat of I have shown what that condition is of bliss or misery which the Gospel indispensably exacts of us and that as I take it so particularly that no man who will be at the pains to read and consider of it can overlook or mistake it what those defects are which it bears and dispenseth with what those remedies and means of reconciliation are which it has provided for us and when all these are taken care for how groundless all those other scruples are which are wont to disquiet honest minds about the goodness of their present state and their title to eternal salvation And upon the whole matter the sum of all amounts to this that when Christ shall come to sit in judgment at the last day and to pass sentence of life or death upon every man according to the direction of his Gospel he will pronounce upon every man according to his works If he has honestly and entirely obey'd the whole will of God in all the particular Laws before-mention'd never willfully and deliberately offending in any one instance nor indulging himself in the practice of any thing which he knows to be a sin he is safe in the Accounts of the last Judgment and shall never come into Condemnation Nay if he has been a damnable offender and has willfully transgressed either in one instance or in many in frequent repetitions of his sin or in few yet if he repent of it before death seize him and amend it ere he is haled away to Judgment he is safe still For he shall be judged according as his works then are when God comes to enquire of them so that if ever he be found in an honest obedience observing everything which he sees to be his duty and willfully venturing upon nothing which his Conscience tells him is sinful he is found in the state of Grace and Pardon and if he die in it he shall be saved All his unwill'd ignorances and innocent unadvisednesses upon his Prayers for pardon and his mercifulness and forgiveness of other men shall be abated all his other causes of fear and scruple shall be overlooked they shall not be brought against him to his Condemnation but in the honest and entire obedience which he hath performed in that shall he live If then we have an honest heart and walk so as our own Conscience has nothing whereof to accuse us we may meet Death with a good Courage and go out of the World with comfortable Expectations For if we have an honest and a tender heart whensoever we sin willfully and against our Consciences our own Souls will be our Remembrancers They will be a witness against us both whilst we are in this World and after we are taken out of it and brought to Judgment Mens Consciences says the Apostle shall accuse or excuse them in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my Gospel Rom. 2.15 Indeed if men have harden'd their hearts in wickedness and sin'd themselves out of the belief of their duty having come to call evil good and good evil then their Consciences having no further sense of sin will have no accusations upon it But if they really believe the Gospel and study to know their duty and desire to observe it and are afraid to offend in any thing which they see is sinful whilst thus their heart is soft and their Conscience tender they cannot venture upon any sin with open Eyes but that their own hearts will both check them before and smite them afterwards They will have a witness against them in their own bosoms which will scourge and awake them so that they cannot approach death without a sense of their sin nor go out of the World without discerning themselves to be guilty If our own Conscience then cannot accuse us of the wilful and presumptuous breach of any of Gods Commandments and we know