it so wisely and so well as they Men will compass Sea and Land to make a Proselyte and Tares and Weeds are as much inclined to propagation as the Wheat There is a marvellous desire in the Nature of man to make others of their own Opinion and when it is governed by Gods Laws it is greatly beneficial to the World. And even in Affections as well as Knowledge it is so We would have others love those that we love and hate what we hate Though where by the insufficiency of the narrow Creature Men must lose and want that themselves which they Communicate to others selfishness forbiddeth such Communication And doubtless all the Creatures in their several Ranks have some such Impresses from the Creator by which his transcendent perfections may be somewhat observed That God is now so Communicative as to give to all Creatures in the World whatever Being Motion Life Order Beauty Harmony Reason Grace Glory any of them possess is past all question to considering sober reason Which tempted Aristotle to think that the World was Eternal and some Christians to think that though this present Heaven and Earth were Created as in Gen. 1. is said yet that from Eternity some Intellectual World at least if not also Corporeal did flow from the Creator as an Eternal Effect of an Eternal Cause or an Eternal Accident of the Deity Because they could not receive it that a God so unspeakably Communicative now who hath made the Sun to be an Emblem of his Communicativeness should from all Eternity be solitary and not communicative when yet to all Eternity he will be so But these are questions which uncapable Mortals were far better let alone than meddle with unless we desire rather to be lost than to be blessed in the Abyss of Eternity and the thoughts of infinite pregnant LOVE But it is so natural for man and every Animal to love that love and goodness which is beneficent not only to us but to all rather than a meer self-lover that doth no good to others that it must needs conduce much to our love of God to consider that he is good to all and his mercy is over all his works and that as there is no light in the Air but from the Sun so there is no goodness but from God in all the World who is more to the Creation than the Sun is to this lower World. And a Sun that lighteth all the Earth is much more precious than my Candle A Nilus which watereth the Land of Egypt is more precious than a private Well It is the Excellency of Kings and publick Persons that if they are good they are good to many And O what innumerable Animals in Sea and Land besides the far greater Worlds of nobler Wights do continually live by one God of Love Study this Universal Infinite Love. Direct 3. Especially study Divine LOVE and Goodness in the Face of our Redeemer Jesus Christ and all the Grace which he hath purchased and conferreth As we may see that magnitude of the Stars in a Telescope which without it no Eye can discern so may we see that glory of the love of God by the Gospel of Jesus which all common natural helps are insufficient to discover to such minds as ours LOVE is the great Attribute which Christ came principally to manifest as was afore-said Joh. 3.16 1 Joh. 3.1 c. And love is the great Lesson which he came to teach us and love is the new nature which by his Spirit he giveth us And love is the great duty which by Law and Gospel he requireth of us Love hath wrought its Miracles in Christ to the posing of the understandings of Men and Angels There we may see God in the nearest condescending Unity with Man In Christ we may see the divine wisdom and word incorporate in such Flesh as ours conceived in a Virgin by the power of the Spirit of Love by which Spirit this Incorporate Word did Live Preach Converse familiarly with Man work Miracles heal Diseases suffer reproachful Calumnies and Death Rising Triumphing Ascending Interceeding sending the Embassies of Love to the World calling Home the greatest sinners unto God reconciling Enemies and making them the Adopted Sons of God forgiving all sin to penitent Believers quickening dead Souls illuminating the Blind and sanctifying the Wicked by the Spirit of Life and Light and Love and making it his Office his Work his Delight and Glory to rescue the miserable Captives of the Devil and to make Heirs of Heaven of those that were condemned to Hell and had forsaken Life in forsaking God. As this is shining burning love so it is approaching and self-applying love which cometh so near us in ways and benefits so necessary to us and so exceeding congruous to our case as that it is easier for us to perceive and feel it than we can do things of greater distance The clearer the Eye of Faith is by which we look into this mysterious Glass the more the wonders of Love will be perceived in it He never knew Christ nor understood the Gospel that wondered not at Redeeming saving love nor did he ever learn of Christ indeed that hath not learned the Lesson Work and Life of love Direct 4. Keep as full Records as you can of the particular Mercies of God to your selves and frequently peruse them and plead them with your frozen Hearts These are not the chiefest reasons of Christian love because we are such poor inconsiderable Worms that to do good to one of us is a far smaller matter than many things else that we have to think of for that end But yet when love doth chuse a particular Person for its object and there bestow its obliging Gifts it helpeth that Person far more than others to returns of thankfulness and love It 's that place that Glass which the Sun doth shine upon doth reflect its Beams rather than those that are shut up in darkness Self-love may and must be regulated and sanctified to the furthering of higher love It is not unmeet to say with David Psal 116.1 I love the Lord because he hath heard the voice of my supplication We should say as heartily I love the Lord because he hath prospered recovered comforted my Neighbour But this is not all so easie as the other And where God by personal application maketh our greatest duty easie we should use his helps Obj. But if it be selfishness as some tell us to love one that loveth us better than another of equal worth who doth not love us is it not selfishness to love God on so low an account as loving us God may say well I love those that love me Prov. 8.17 because to love him is the highest virtue but to love us is as inconsiderable as we are Ans 1. You may love another the more for loving you on several accounts 1. As it is a duty which God requireth him to perform but so you must love him equally
and comfortable a life is it to live in the Family of such a Father and with a thankful carelesness to trust his will and take that portion as best which he provideth for us And into what misery do foolish Prodigals run who had rather have their portion in their own hand than in their Fathers 5. Thy heavenly Father knoweth with what kind and measure of Tryals and Temptations it is fit that thou shouldst be exercised It is his work to permit and bound and order them It is thy work to beg his grace to overcome them and watchfully and constantly to make resistance and in Tryal to approve thy faithfulness to God Blessed are they that endure Temptations for when they are tryed they shall receive the Crown of life James 1. If he will try thee by bodily pain and sickness he can make it turn to the health of thy Soul Perhaps thy diseases have prevented some mortal Soul-diseases which thou didst not fear If he will try thee by mens malice Injury or Persecution he knoweth how to turn it to thy good and in season to bring thee out of trouble He will teach thee by other mens wickedness to know what grace hath cured or prevented in thy self and to know the need of trusting in God alone and appealing to his desireable Judgment He that biddeth thee when thou art Reviled and Persecuted and loaded with false reports for righteousness sake to rejoyce and be exceeding glad because of the great reward in heaven can easily give thee what he doth Command and make thy sufferings a help to this exceeding joy If he will try thee by Satans molesting Temptations and suffer him to buffet thee or break thy peace by Melancholy disquietments and vexatious thoughts from which he hath hitherto kept thee free he doth but tell thee from how much greater evil he hath delivered thee and make thy fears of Hell a means to prevent it and call thee to thy Saviour to seek for safety and peace in him If it please him to permit the malicious tempter to urge thy thoughts to blasphemy or other dreadful sin as it ordinarily falleth out with the Melancholy it telleth thee from what malice grace preserveth thee and what Satan would do were he let loose It calleth thee to remember that thy Saviour himself was tempted by Satan to as great sin as ever thou wast even to worship the Devil himself And that he suffered him to carry about his body from place to place which he never did by thee It tells thee therefore that it is not sin to be tempted to sin but to consent And that Satans sin is not laid to our charge And though our corruption is such as that we seldom are tempted but some culpable blot is left behind in us for we cannot say as Christ that Satan hath nothing in us Yet no sin is less dangerous to mans damnation than the Melancholy thoughts which such horrid vexatious Temptations cause both because the person being distempered by a disease is not a volunteer in what he doth and also because he is so far from loving and desiring such kind of sin that it is the very burden of his life They make him weary of himself and he daily groaneth to be delivered from them And it is certain that Love is the damning malignity of sin and that there is no more sin than there is will And that no sin shall damn men which they had rather leave than keep and therefore forgiveness is joyned to Repentance Drunkards Fornicators Worldlings Ambitious men love their sin But a poor Melancholy Soul that is tempted to ill thoughts or to despair or terrour or to excessive griefs is far from loving such a state The case of such is sad at present But O how much sadder is the case of them that are Lovers of pleasure more than of God and prosper and delight in sin 6. God knoweth how long it is best for me to live Leave then the determination of the time to him All men come into the word on the condition of going out again Die we must and is it not fitter that God choose the time than we Were it left to our wills how long we should live on Earth alas how long should many of us be kept out of heaven by our own desires And too many would stay here till misery made them impatient of living But our lives are his gift and in his hand who knoweth the use of them and knoweth how to proportion them to that use which is the justest measure of them He chose the time and place of my birth and he chuseth best Why should I not willingly leave to his choice also the time and place and manner of my departure I am known of him and my concerns are not despised by him He knoweth me as his own and as his own he hath used me and as his own he will receive me Psal 37.18 The Lord knoweth the days of the upright and their inheritance shall be for ever And if he bring me to death through long and painful sickness he knoweth why and all shall end in my Salvation He knoweth the way that is with me and when he hath tryed me I shall come forth as Gold Job 23.10 He forsaketh us not in sickness or in death Like as a Father pityeth his Children the Lord pityeth them that fear him For he knoweth our frame he remembreth that we are dust As for man his days are as grass as a flower of the Field so he flourisheth For the wind passeth over it and it is not and the place thereof shall know it no more But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to them that fear him If the Ox should not know his owner nor the Ass his Masters Crib the owner will know his own and seek them That we understand and know the Lord is matter of greater joy and glorying than all other wisdom or riches in the world Jer. 9.24 But that he knoweth us in Life and Death on Earth and in Heaven is the top of our rejoycing The Lord is good and strength in the day of trouble and he knoweth them that trust in him Nah. 1.7 Sickness may so change my flesh that even my Neighbours shall not KNOW ME and Death will make the change so great that even my friends will be unwilling to see such an unpleasing loathsome spectacle But while I am carried by them to the place of darkness that I may not be an annoyance to the living I shall be there in the sight of God and my Bones and Dust shall be owned by him and none of them forgotten or lost 7. It may be that under the temptations of Satan or in the languishing weakness or distempers of my flesh I may doubt of the love of God and think that he hath withdrawn his mercy from me or at least may be unmeet to tast the sweetness of his love or to meditate
a people that truly honour him in the world But O that they were more And O that they were more perfect Alas what a number are there that are otherwise Even among Divines this Plague is most pernicious as being of most publick influence Take him that never had a natural acuteness of wit nor is capable of judging of difficult points if he be but of long standing and grey hairs and can preach well to the people and have studied long he is not only confident of his fitness to judge of that which he never understood but his Reputation of wisdom must be kept up among the people by his Supercilious talking against what he understandeth not Yea if he be one that never macerated his flesh with the difficult and long studies of the matter without which hard points will never be well digested and distinctly understood yet if he be a Doctor and have lived long in a reputation for wisdom his Ignorant flashy Conjectures and hasty superficial apprehensions must needs go for the more excellent Knowledge And if you put him to make good any of his Contradictions to the truth his Magisterial contempt or his uncivil wrath and unmannerly interruptions of you in your talk must go for reason And if he cannot resist the strength of your evidence he cannot bear the hearing of it but like a scold rather than a Scholar taketh your words out of your mouth before you come to the end As if he said Hold your tongue and hear me who am wiser I came to Teach and not to Hear If you tell him how uncivil it is not patiently to hear you to the end he thinks you wrong him and are too bold to pretend to a liberty to speak without interruption Or he will tell you that you are too long he cannot remember all at once If you reply that the sense of the forepart of a Speech usually depends much on the latter part and he cannot have your sence till he have all and that he must not answer before he understandeth you and that if his memory fail he should take notes and that to have uninterrupted turns of speaking is necessary in the order of all sober conferences without which they will be but noise and strife he will let you know that he came not to hear or keep any Laws of Order or Civility but to have a combat with you for the reputation of wisdom or Orthodoxness And what he wants in Reason and Evidence he will make up in ignorant Confidence and Reviling and call you by some ill Name or other that shall go for a Confutation But yet this is not the usual way It is too great a hazard to the reputation of their wisdom to cast it on a dispute The common way is never to speak to the Person himself but if any one cross their conceits or become the object of their envy they backbite him among those that reverence their wisdom and when they are sure that he is far enough out of hearing they tell their credulous Followers O such a man holdeth unsound or dangerous Opinions Take heed how you hear him or read his writings this or that Heresie they savour of when the poor man knoweth not what he talketh of And if any one have the wit to say to him Sir he is neither so sottish nor so proud as to be uncapable of instruction if you are so much wiser than he why do you not teach him He will excuse his omission and his commission together with a further calumny and say These erroneous persons will hear no reason It is in vain If he be asked Sir did you ever try it 's like he must confess that he did not unless some magisterial rebuke once went for Evidence of truth If the hearers which is rare have so much Christian wit and honesty as to say Sir Ministers above all men must be no back-biters nor unjust you know it is unlawful for us to judge another man till we hear him speak for himself If you would have us know whether he or you be in the right let us hear you both together His answer would be like Cardinal Turnon at the conference at Poisie and as the Papists ordinarily is It is dangerous letting Hereticks speak to the People and it agreeth not with our zeal for God to hear such odious things uttered against the Truth In a word There are more that have the Spirit of a Pope in the World than one even among them that cry out against Popery and that would fain be taken for the Dictators of the World whom none must dissent from much less contradict And there are more Idolaters than Heathens who would have their Ignorant understandings to be instead of God the uncontrolled director of all about them But if these men have not any confidence in their self-sufficiency if they can but embody in a society of their minds or gather into a Synod he must needs go for a proud and arrogant Schismatick at least that will set any Reason and Evidence of Truth against their Magisterial Ignorance when it is the Major Vote The very Truth is The great Benefactor of the World hath not been pleased to dispense his Benefits Equally but with marvellous disparity As he is the God of Nature he hath been pleased to give a natural capacity for judiciousness and acuteness in difficult speculations but to few And as he is the Lord of all he hath not given men equal educacation nor advantages for such extraordinary knowledge Nor have all that have leisure and capacity self denyal and patience enough for so long and difficult studies But the Devil and our selves have given to all men Pride enough to desire to be thought to be wiser and better than we are And he that cannot be equal with the wisest and best would be thought to be so And while all men must needs seem wise while few are so indeed you may easily see what must thence follow 2. And it is not Divines only but all ranks of people who are sick of this disease The most unlearned ignorant people the silliest Women if they will not for shame say that they are wiser than their Teachers in the general yet when it cometh to particular cases they take themselves to be always in the right and O how confident are they of it And who more peremptory and bold in their judgments than those that least know what they say It is hard to meet with a person above eighteen or twenty years of age that is not notably tainted with this malady And it is not only these great mischiefs in matters of Religion which spring from self-conceitedness but even in our common converse it is the cause of disorder ruin and destruction For it is the common vice of blinded nature and it is rare to meet with one that is not notably guilty of it When they are past the state of professed Learners 1. It is
ordinary for self-conceited Persons to ruine their own Estates and Healths and Lives When they are rashly making ill Bargains or undertaking things which they understand not they rush on till they find their error too late and their Poverty Prisons or ruined Families must declare their sin For they have not humility enough to seek Counsel in time nor to take it when it is offered them What great numbers have I heard begging relief from others under the confession of this sin And far more even the most of Men and Women overthrow their Health and lose their Lives by it Experience doth not suffice to teach them what is hurtful to their Bodies and as they know not so you cannot convince them that they know not Most Persons by the excess in quantity of food do suffocate Nature and lay the Foundation of future Maladies And most of the Diseases that kill men untimely are but the effects of former Gluttony or Excess But as long as they feel not any present hurt no man can perswade them but their fulness is for their Health as well as for their Pleasure They will laugh perhaps at those that tell them what they do and what Diseases they are preparing for Let Physicians if they be so honest tell them It is the perfection of the nutritive Juices the Blood and nervous Oyl which are the causes of Health in man Perfect Concoction causeth that perfection Nature cannot perfectly concoct too much or that which is of too hard digestion While you feel no harm your Blood groweth dis-spirited and being but half concocted and half Blood doth perform its Office accordingly by the halves till crudities are heaped up and obstructions fixed and a Dunghil of Excrements or the dis-spirited humours are ready to take in any Disease which a small occasion offereth either Agues Feavers Coughs Consumptions Pleurisies Dropsies Colicks and Windiness Head-achs Convulsions c. or till the Inflammations or other Tumors of the inward Parts or the torment of the Stone in Reins or Bladder do sharply tell men what they have been doing A clean Body and perfect Concoction which are procured by Temperance and bodily Labours which suscitate the Spirits and purifie the Blood are the proper means which God in the course of nature hath appointed for a long and healthful Life This is all true and the reason is evident and yet this talk will be but despised and derided by the most and they will say I have so long eaten what I loved and lived by no such rules as these and I have found no harm by it Yea if Excess have brought Diseases on them if Abstinence do but make them more to feel them they will rather impute their illness to the Remedy than to the proper cause And so they do about the quality as well as the quantity Self-conceitedness maketh men uncureable Many a one have I known that daily lived in that fulness which I saw would shortly quench the Vital Spirits and fain I would have saved their Lives but I was not able to make them willing Had I seen another assault them I could have done somewhat for them but when I foresaw their death I could not save them from themselves They still said they found their measures of eating and drinking between Meals refresh them and they were the worse if they forbore it and they would not believe me against both Appetite Reason and Experience And thus have I seen abundance of my acquaintance wilfully hasten to the Grave And all long of an unhumbled self-conceited understanding which would not be brought to suspect it self and know its error 2. And O how often have I seen the dearest Friends thus kill their Friends even Mothers kill their dearest Children and too oft their Husbands Kindred Servants and Neighbours by their self-conceit and confidence in their ignorance and error Alas what abundance empty their own Houses gratifie covetous Landlords that set their Lands by Lives and bring their dearest Relations to untimely ends and a wise man knoweth not how to hinder them How oft and oft have I heard ignorant Women confidently perswade even their own Children to eat as long as they have an Appetite and so they have vitiated their Blood and Humours in their Childhood that their Lives have been either soon ended or ever after miserable by Diseases How oft have I heard them perswade sick or weak diseased Persons to eat eat eat and take what they have a mind to when unless they would Poyson them or cut their Throats they could scarce more certainly dispatch them How oft have these good Women been perswading my self that eating and drinking more would make me better and that it is Abstinence that causeth all my illness when Excess in my Childhood caused it as if every wise Woman that doth but know me knew better what is good for me than my self after threescore years experience or than all the Physicians in the City And had I obeyed them how many years ago had I been dead How ordinary is it for such self-conceited Women to obtrude their skill and Medicines on their sick Neighbours with the greatest confidence when they know not what they do yea upon their Husbands and their Children One can scarce come about sick Persons but one Woman or other is perswading them to take that or do that which is like to kill them Many and many when they have brought their Children to the Grave have nothing to say but I thought this or that had been best for them But you 'l say They do it in love they meant no harm I answer so false Teachers deceive Souls in Love. But are you content your selves to be kill'd by Love If I must be kill'd I had rather an Enemy did it than a Friend I would not have such have the guilt or grief Love will not save mens lives if you give them that which tends to kill them But you 'l say We can be no wiser than we are If we do the best we can what can we do more I answer I would have you not think your selves wiser than you are I would write over this word five hundred times if that would cure you About matters of Diet and Medicines and Health this is it that I would have you do to save you from killing your selves and your Relations 1. Pretend not to know upon the report of such as your selves or in matters that are difficult and beyond your skill or where you have not had long consideration and experience Meddle with no Medicining but what in common easy cases the common judgment of Physicians and common Experience have taught you 2. If you have not Money to pay Physicians and Apothecaries tell them so and desire them to give you their counsel freely and take not on you to know more than they that have studied and practised it all their riper part of their lives 3. Suspect your understandings and consider how much there may be