and instruction 3. If they may do so in the Psalms in Metre there can no reason be given but they may lawfully do so in the Psalms in prose For saying them and singing them are but modes of utterance both are the speaking of Prayer and praise to God And the ancient singing was liker our saying than to our tunes as most judge 4. The primitive Christians were so full of the zeal and Love of Christ that they would have taken it for an injury and a quenching of the spirit to have been wholly restrained from bearing their part in the praises of the Church 5. The use of the tongue keepeth awake the mind and stirreth up Gods graces in his servants 6. It was the decay of zeal in the people that first shut out Responses while they kept up the ancient zeal they were inclined to take their part vocally in the Worship And this was seconded by the pride and usurpation of some Priests thereupon who thought the people of God too prophane to speak in the assemblies and meddle so much with holy things Yet the very remembrance of former zeal caused most Churches to retain many of the words of their predecessours even when they lost the Life and spirit which should animate them And so the same words came into the Liturgies and were used by too many customarily and in formality which their ancestors had used in the fervour of their souls 6. And if it were not that a dead hearted formal people by speaking the Responses carelesly and hypocritically do bring them into disgrace with many that see the necessity of seriousness I think few good people would be against them now If all the serious zealous Christians in the assembly speak the same words in a serious manner there will appear nothing in them that should give offence If in the fulness of their hearts the people should breakout into such words of prayer or confession or praise it would be taken for an extraordinary pang of zeal and were it unusual it would take exceedingly But the better any thing is the more loathsome it appeareth when it is mortified by hypocrisie and dead formality and turned into a mockery or an affected scenical act But it is here the duty of every Christian to labour to restore the Life and spirit to the words that they may again be used in a serious and holy manner as heretofore 7. Those that would have private men pray and prophesie in publick as warranted by 1 Cor. 14. Ye may all speak c. do much contradict themselves if they say also that Lay man may say nothing but Amen 8. The people were all to say Amen in Deut. 27. 15 16 18 19 20 c. And yet they oftentimes said more As Exod. 19. 8. in as solemn an Assembly as any of ours when God himself gave Moses a Sermon in a form of words to Preach to the people and Moses had repeated it as from the Lord it being the Narrative of his mercies the command of obedience and the promises of his great blessings upon that condition all the people answered together and said All that the Lord hath spoken we will do The like was done again Exod. 24. 3. And Deut. 5. 27. And lest you should think either that the Assembly was not as solemn as ours or that it was not well done of the people to say more than Amen God himself who was present declared his approbation even of the words when the speakers hearts were not so sincere in speaking them as they ought vers 28 29. And the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spake unto me and the Lord said unto me I have heard the voice of the words of this people They have well said all that they have spoken O that there were such a heart in them Obj. But this is but a speech to Moses and not to God Answ. I will reciâ—e to you a form of prayer which the people themselves were to make publickly to God Deut. 26 13 14 15. Then shalt thou say before the Lord thy God I have brought away the ☞ hallowed things out of my house and also have given them to the Levite and to the stranger to the fatherless and the Widow according to all thy Commandments which thou hast commanded me I have not transgressed thy Commandments neither have I forgotten them I have not eaten thereof in my mourning neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use nor given ought thereof for the dead but I have â—earkened to the voice of the Lord my God and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me Look down from thy holy habitation from Heaven and bless thy people Israel and the Land which thou hast given us as thou swarest unto our Fathers a Land that floweth with milk and honey Is not here a full form of Prayer to be used by all the people And remember that Ioseph and Mary and Christ himself were under this Law and that you never read that Christ found fault with the peoples speech nor spake a word to restrain it in his Churches In Lev. 9. 24. When all the people saw the Glory of the Lord and the fire that came out from it and consumed the burnt Offering they shouted and fell on their faces which was an acclamation more than bare Amen 2 King 23. 2 3. King Iosiah went up into the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah c. And the Priests and the Prophets and all the people both small and great and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the Covenant And the King stood by a pillar and made a Covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his Commandments c with all their heart and all their soul c. and all the people stood to the Covenant Where as a King is the speaker it 's like that the people used some words to express their consent 1 Chron. 16. 35 36. When David delivered a Psalm for a form of praise in which it is said to the people v. 35. And say ye save us O God of our salvation and gather us together and deliver us from the Heathen that we may give thanks to thy holy name and glory in thy praise blessed be the Lord God of Israel for ever and ever All the people said Amen and praised the Lord. Where it is like that their praising the Lord was more than their Amen And it is a command Psal. 67. 3 5. Let all the people praise thee O God let all the people praise thee And he that will limit this to single persons or say that it must not be Vocally in the Church or it must be only in metre and never in prose or only in tunes and not without must prove it lest he be proved an adder to Gods word But it would be tedious to recite all the repeated sentences in the Psalms
rend us Much more if it be some potent enemy of the Church who will not only rend us but the Church it self if he be so provoked Reproving him then is not our duty 3. Particularly When a man is in a passion or drunk usually it is no season to reprove him 4. Nor when you are among others who should not be witnesses of the fault or the reproof or whose presence will shame him and offend him except it be only the shaming of an incorrigible or malicious sinner which you intend 5. Nor when you are uncertain of the fact which you would reprove or uncertain whether it be a sin 6. Or when you have no witness of it though you are privately certain with some that will take advantage against you as slanderers a reproof may be omitted 7. And when the offenders are so much your superiours that you are like to have no better success than to be accounted arrogant A groan or tears is then the best reproof 8. When you are so utterly unable to manage a reproof that imprudence or want of convincing reason is like to make it a means of greater hurt than good 9. When you foresee a more advantageous season if you delay 10. When another may be procured to do it with much more advantage which your doing it may rather hinder In all these cases that may be a sin which at another time may be a duty § 18. But still remember 1. That pride and passion and slothfulness is wont to pretend such reasons falsly upon some sleight conjectures to put by a duty 2. That no man must account another Gen. 20. 36. a Dog or Swine to excuse him from this duty without cogent evidence And it is not every wrangling opposition nor reproach and scorn which will warrant us to give a man up as remediless Job 31. 13. Heb. 13. 22. 2 Pet. 1. 13. 2 Tâ—m 2. 25 26. and speak to him no more but only such 1. As sheweth a heart utterly obdurate after long means 2. Or will procure more suffering to the reprover than good to the offender 3. That when the thing is ordinarily a duty the reasons of our omission must be clear and sure before they will excuse us § 19. Quest. Must we reprove Infidels or Heathens What have we to do to judge them that are without Answ. Not to the ends of excommunication because they are not capable of it which is meant Deut. 22. 1. 1 Cor. 5. But we must reprove them 1. In common compassion to their souls What were the Apostles and other Preachers sent for but to call all men from their sins to God 2. And for the defence of truth and godliness against their words or ill examples CHAP. XVII Directions for keeping Peace with all men § 1. PEace is so amiable to Nature it self that the greatest destroyers of it do commend it and those persons in all times and places who are the cause that the world cannot enjoy it will yet speak well of it and exclaim against others as the enemies of peace as if there were no other name but their Own sufficient to make their adversaries odious As they desire salvation so do the ungodly desire Peace which is with a double error one about the Nature of it and another about the Conditions and other Means By Peace they mean the quiet undisturbed enjoyment of their honours wealth and pleasures that they may have their lusts and will without any contradiction And the Conditions on which they would have it are the complyance of all others with their opinions and wills and humble submission to their domination passions or desires But Peace is another thing and otherwise to be desired and sought Peace in the mind is the delightful effect of its internal harmony as Peace in the body is nothing but its pleasant health in the natural position state action and concord of all the parts the humours and spirits And Peace in Families Neighbourhoods Churches Kingdoms or other Societies is the quietness and pleasure of their order and harmony and must be attained and preserved by these following means § 2. Direct 1. Get your own hearts into a humble frame and abhor all the motions of Pride and Direct 1. self exalting A humble man hath no high expectations from another and therefore is easily pleased or quieted He can bow and yield to the pride and violence of others as the Willow to the impetuous winds His language will be submissive his patience great he is content that others go before him He is not offended that another is preferred A low mind is pleased in a low condition But Pride is the Gun-powder of the mind the family the Church and State It maketh men ambitious and setteth them on striving who shall be the greatest A proud mans Opinion must alwayes go for truth and his will must be a Law to others and to be sleighted or crossed seemeth to him an unsufferable wrong And he must be a man of wonderful complyance or an excellent artificer in man-pleasing and flâ—ttery that shall not be taken as an injurious undervaluer of him He that overvalueth himself will take it ill of all that do not also overvalue him If you forgetfully go before him or overlook him or neglect a complement or deny him something which he expected or speak not honourably of him much more if you reprove him and tell him of his faults you have put fire to the Gun-powder you have broke his peace and he will break yours if he can Pride broke the Peace between God and the apostate Angels but nothing unpeaceable must be in Heaven and therefore by self-exâ—lting they descended into darkness And Christ by self-humbling ascended unto Glory It is a matter of very great difficulty to live peaceably in family Church or any society with any one that is very Proud They expect so much of you that you can never answer all their expectations but will displease them by your omissions though you never speak or do any thing to displease them What is it but the lust of Pride which causeth most of the wars and bloodshed throughout the World The Pride of two or three men must cost many thousands of their subjects the loss of their Peace Estates and Lives Delirant Reges plectuntur Achivi What were the Conquests of those Emperours Alexander Caesar Tamerlane Machumet c. but the pernicious effects of their infamous Pride Which like Gun-powder taking fire in their breasts did blow up so many Cities and Kingdoms and call their Villanies by the name of Valour and their Murders and Robberies by the name of War If one mans Pride do swell so big that his own Kingdom cannot contain it the Peace of as much of the World as he can conquer is taken to be but a reasonable sacrifice to this infernal vice The lives of thousands both Subjects and Neighbours called enemies by this malignant spirit must be cast
innumerable that it is far harder methinks to remember them than to answer them whereby it came to pass that some of the Ecclesiastical Cases are put out of their proper place because I could not seasonably remember them For I had no one Casuist but Amesius with me But after about twelve years separation having received my Library I find that the very sight of Sayrus Fragoso Roderiquez Tâ—lâ—t c. might have helpt my memory to a greater number But perhaps these will be enough for those that I intend them for 2. And by the same cause the Margin is unfurnished of such citations as are accounted an Ornament and in some cases are very useful The scraps inserted out of my few trivial Books at hand being so mean as that I am well content except about Monarchy Par. 4. that the Reader pass them by as not worthy of his notice And it 's like that the absence of Books will appear to the Readers loss in the materials of the Treatise But I shall have this advantage by it that he will not accuse me as a plagiary And it may be some little advantage to him that he hath no transcript of any mans Books which he had before but the product of some experience with a naked unbyassed perception of the Matter or Things themselves 7. Note also that the third and fourth parts are very much defective of what they should contain about the Power and Government of Gods officers in Church and State of which no Readers will expect a reason but strangers whose expectations I may not satisfie But as I must profess that I hope nothing here hath proceeded from Disloyalty or disrespect to Authority Government Unity Concord Peace or Order or from any opposition to Faith Piety Love or Iustice so if unknown to me there be any thing found here that is contrary or injurious to any one of these I do hereby renounce it and desire it may be taken as non-scriptum II. The Ends and Uses for which I wrote this Book are these 1. That when I could not Preach the Gospel as I would I might do it as I could 2. That three sorts might have the benefit as followeth I That the Younger and more unfurnished and unexperienced sort of Ministers might have a promptuary at hand for Practical Resolutions and Directions on the subjects that they have need to deal in And though Sayrus and Fragoso have done well I would not have us under a necessity of going to the Romanists for our ordinary supplies Long have our Divines been wishing for some fuller Casuistical Tractate Perkins began well Bishop Sanderson hath done excellently de Iuramento Amesius hath exceeded all though briefly Mr. David Dickson hath put more of our English Cases about the state of Sanctification into Latine than ever was done before him Bishop Ier. Tailor hath in two Folio's but begun the copious performance of the work And still men are calling for more which I have attempted Hoping that others will come after and do better than we all If any call it my Pride to think that any Ministers or Students are so raw as to need any thing that I can add to them let him but pardon me for saying that such demure pleadings for a feigned Humility shall not draw me to a confederacy with Blindness Hypocrisie and Sloth and I will pardon him for his charge of Pride It is long ago since many forreign Divines subscribed a request that the English would give them in Latine a sum of our Practical Theologie which Mr. Dury sent over and twelve great Divines of ours wrote to Bishop Usher as Dr. Bernard tells you in his Life to draw them up a form or Method But it was never done among them all And it 's said that Bishop Downame at last undertaking it he dyed in the attempt Had this been done it s like my labour might have been spared But being undone I have thus made this Essay But I have been necessitated to leave out much about Conversion Mortification Self-denyal Self-acquaintance Faith Justification Judgement Glory c. because I had written of them all before II. And I thought it not unuseful to the more Judicious Masters of Families who may choose and read such parcels to their Families as at any time the case requireth And indeed I began it rudely with an Intention of that Plainness and Brevity which Families require But finding that it swelled to a bigger bulk than I intended I was fain to write my Life of Faith as a Breviate and Substitute for the Families and persons that cannot have and use so large a Volume presupposing my Directions for sound Conversion for weak Christians and for pâ—ace of Conscience printed long ago III. And to private Christians I thought it not in vain to have at hand so Universal a Directory and Resolution of Doubts not expecting that they remember all but may on every occasion turn to such particulars as they most need But I must expect to be assaulted with these Objections And it is not only prophane deriders and malignant enemies that are used by Satan to â—ilifie and oppose our service of God Object I. You have written too many Books already Who do you think hath so little to do as to read them all Is it not Pride and self-conceitedness to think that your scriblings are worthy to be read and that the world hath need of so much of your instructions as if there were no wise men but you You have given offence already by your writings you should write less and Preach more Answ. 1. I have seldome if ever in all my Ministry omitted one Sermon for all my Writings I was not able to Live in London nor ride abroad But through Gods mercy I seldom omitted any opportunities at home 2. And if I Preach the same Doctrine that I write why should not men be as angry with me for preaching it as for writing it But if it be good and true why is it not as good Preach by the Press to many thousands and for many years after I am dead as to Preach to a Parlour full for a few hours Or why is not both as good as one 3. I will not take the Reverend Objector to be ignorant that Writing and publishing the Word of God by it is preaching it and the most publick preaching And hath the example of the Apostles and Evangelists as well as speaking And one is no more appropriate to them than the other though the Extraordinaries of both be proper to them And do you not perceive what self-condemning contradiction it is at the same time to cry out against those that disswade you from preaching or hinder you and tell you it is needless and you are proud to think that the world needeth your preaching and yet your selves to say the very same against your brethrens preaching by the Press I know an ignorant illiterate Sectary might say Writing is no preaching and you are
God and from a holy life when you run but into sin and Hell § 60. Tempt 30. Another great Temptation is in making them believe that their sins are but such Tempt 30. common infirmities as the best have They cannot deny but they have their faults but are not all men sinners They hope that they are not reigning unpardoned sins § 61. Direct 30. But O how great a difference is between a converted and an unconverted sinner Direct 30. between the failings of a Child and the contempt of a Rebel between a sinner that hath no gross or mortal sin and hateth bewaileth and striveth against his infirmities and a sinner that loveth his sin and is loth to leave it and maketh light of it and loveth not a holy life God will one day shew you a difference between these two when you see that there are siners that are justified and saved and sinners that are condemned § 62. BUt here are many subordinate Temptations by which Satan perswades them that their sins Tempt Temp. 1. are but infirmities One is because their sin is but in the heart and appeareth not in outward deeds And they take restraint for sanctification § 63. Direct 1. Alas man the Life and Reign of sin is in the Heart That is it's Garrison and Direct 1. Throne The life of sin lyeth in the prevalence of your lusts within against the Power of Reason and Will All outward sins are but acts of obedience to the reigning sin within and a gathering Tribute for this which is the King For this it is that they make provision Rom. 13. 14. On this all is consumed Iames 4. 3. Original sin may be reigning sin as a King may be born a King Sin certainly reigneth till the soul be converted and born again § 64. Tempt 2. The Devil tells them it is but an infirmity because it is no open gross disgraceful Tempt 2. sin It 's hard to believe that they are in danger of Hell for sins which are accounted small § 65. Direct 2. But do you think it is no mortal heinous sin to be void of the Love of God and Direct 2. holiness to Love the flesh and the world above him to set more by Earth than Heaven and do more for it However they shew themselves these are the great and mortal sins Sin is not less dangerous for lying secret in the heart The root and heart are usually unseen Some Kings as in China Persia c. keep out of sight for the honour of their Majesty Kings are the spring of Government but actions of State are executed by Officers When you see a man go or work you know that it is something within which is the Cause of all If sin appeared without as it is within it would lose much of its Power and Majesty Then Ministers and friends and every good man would cast a stone at it but its secresie is its peace The Devil himself prevaileth by keeping out of sight If he were seen he would be less obeyed So is it with the Reigning sins of the heart Pride and Covetousness may be Reigning sins though they appear not in any notorious disgraceful course of life David's hiding his sin or Rachel her Idol made them not the better It is a mercy to some men See Jer. 4. 14. Hos. 7. 6 7. that God permitteth them to fall into some open scandalous sin which may tend to humble them who would not have been humbled nor convinced by heart-sins alone An Oven is hottest when it is stopped § 66. Tempt 3. Satan tells them they are not unpardoned reigning sins because they are common Tempt 3. in the world If all that are as bad as I must be condemned say they God help a great number § 67. Direct 3. But know you not that Reigning sin is much more common than saving holiness Direct 3. and that the gate is wide and the way is broad that leadeth to destruction and many go in at it Salvation is as rare as holiness and damnation as common as Reigning sin where it is not cured This sign therefore makes against you § 69. Tempt 4. But saith the Tempter they are such sins as you see good men commit You play Tempt 4. at the same games as they you do but what you see them do and they are pardoned § 68. Direct 4. You must judge the man by his works and not the works by the man And there Direct 4. is more to be lookt at than the bare matter of an act A good man and a bad may play at the same game but not with the same end nor with the same love to sport nor so frequently and long to the loss of time Many drops may wear a stone Many stripes with small twigs may draw blood Many mean men in a Senate have been as great Kings You may have many of these little sins set all together which plainly make up a carnal life The power of a sin is more considerable than the outward shew A poor man if he be in the place of a Magistrate may be a Ruler And a sin materially small and such as better men commit may be a sin in Power and Rule with you and concur with others which are greater § 70. Tempt 5. But saith the Tempter they are but sins of Omission and such are not reigning Tempt 5. sins § 71. Direct 5. Sins of Omission are alwayes accompanied with some positive sensual affection Direct 5. to the creature which diverteth the soul and causeth the omission And so Omission is no small part of the Reigning sin The not using of Reason and the Will for God and for the mastering of sensuality is much of the state of ungodliness in man Denying God the heart and life is no small sin God made you to do good and not only to do no harm Else a Stone or Corpse were as good a Christian as you for they do less harm than you If sin have a Negative Voice in your Religion whether God shall be worshipped and obeyed or not it is your King It may shew its power as well by commanding you not to pray and not to consider and not to read as in commanding you to be drunk or swear The wicked are described by omissions such as will not seek after God God is not in all his thoughts Psal. 10. 4. Such as know not God and call not on his name Jer. 10. 25. That have no truth or mercy or knowledge of God Hos. 4. 1. That feed not cloath not visit not Christ in his members Matth. 25. that hide their Talents Matth. 25. Indeed if God have not your hearts the creature hath it and so it is omission and commission that go together in your reigning sin § 72. Tempt 6. But saith the Tempter they are but sins of ignorance and therefore they are not reigning Tempt 6. sins At least you are not certain that
set up some kind of service to him performed by a base sort of Priests they feared the Lord and served their own Gods thinking it was safest to please all 2 Kings 17. 25 32 33. Affliction maketh bad men likest to the good § 80. 5. Good education and company may do very much It may help them to much knowledge and make them professors of strict Religion and constant companions with those that fear sin and avoid it and therefore they must needs go far then as Ioash did all the dayes of Iehojada 2 Chron. 24. 2. As plants and fruits change with the soil by transplantation and as the Climate maketh some Blâ—â—kmoors and some White so education and converse have so great a power on the mind that they come next to grace and are oft the means of it § 81. 6. And God giveth to many internally some grace of the Spirit which is not proper to them that are saved but commâ—n or preparatory only And this may make much resistance against sin though it do not mortifie it One that should live but under the convictions that Iudâ—s had when he hang'd himself I warrant him would have strivings and combats against sin in him though he were unsanctified § 82. 7. Yea the interest and power of one sin may resist another As covetousness may make much resistance against sensuality and pride of life and pride may resist all disgraceful sin § 83. Tempt 8. But saith the Tempter it is not unpardoned sin because thou art sorry and dost repent Tempt 8. for it when thou hast committed it and all sin is pardoned that is repented of § 84. Direct 8. All the foresaid causes which may make some resistance of sin in the ungodly may Direct 8. cause also some sorrow and repenting in them There is repenting and sorrow for sin in Hell All men repent and are sorry at last but few repent so as to be pardoned and saved When a sinner hath had all the sweetness out of sin that it can yield him and seeth that its all gone and the sting is left behind no marvel if he repent I think there is scarce any Drunkard or Whoremonger or Glutton that is not a flat Infidel but he repenteth of the sin that 's past because he hath had all out of it that it can yield him and there is nothing left of it that 's lovely But yet he goeth on still which sheweth that his Repentance was unsound True Repentance is a through change of the heart and life a turning from sin to a holy life and such a sorrow for what is past as would not let you do it if it were to do again If you truly Repent you would not do so again if you had all the same temptations § 85. Tempt 9. But saith the Tempter it is but one sin and the rest of thy life is good and blameless Tempt 9. and God judgeth by the greater part of thy life whether the evil or the good be most § 86. Direct 9. If a man be a Murderer or a Traytor will you excuse him because the rest of his Direct 9. life is good and it is but one sin that he is charged with One sort of poyson may kill a man and one stab at the heart though all his body else be whole you may surfeit on one dish One leak may sink a Ship Jam. 2. 10. Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all Sâ—e Ezek. 18. 10 11. Indeed God doth judge by the bent of thy heart and the main drift and endeavour of thy life But canst thou say that the bent of thy heart and the main endeavour of thy life is for God and Heaven and Holiness No if it were thou wert Regenerate and this would not let thee live in any one beloved chosen wilful sin The bent of a mans heart and life may be sinful earthly fleshly though it run but in the channel of one way of gross sinning As a man may be covetous that hath but one Trade and a Whoremonger that hath but one Whore and an Idolater that hath but one Idol If thou lovedst God better thou wouldst let go thy sin And if thou love any one sin better than God the whole bent of thy heart and life is wicked For it is not set upon God and Heaven and therefore is ungodly § 87. Tempt 10. But saith the Tempter it is not reigning unpardoned sin because thou believest in Tempt 10. Iesus Christ And all that Believe are pardoned and justified from all their sins § 89. Direct 10. He that savingly believeth in Christ doth take him entirely for his Saviour and Direct 10. Governour and giveth up himself to be saved sanctified and ruled by him As Trusting your Physicion implyeth that you take his Medicines and follow his advice and so trust him and not that you trust to be cured while you disobey him by bare trusting so is it as to your faith and trust in Christ It is a belief or trust that he will save all those that are ruled by him in order to salvation He is See more of Temptations Chap. 3. Dir. 9. the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him Heb. 5. 9. If you believe in Christ you believe Christ And if you believe Christ you believe that except a man be converted and born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven John 3. 3 5. Matth. 18. 3. and that he that is in Christ is a new creature old things are past away and all is become new 2 Cor. 5. 17. And that without holiness none shall see God Heb. 12. 14. And that no fornicator effeminate thieves covetous drunkards revilers extortioners murderers lyars shall enter into or have any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ 1 Cor. 6. 9 10. Ephes. 5. 4 5 6. Rev. 21. 27. 22. 14 15. If you believe Christ you must believe that you cannot be saved unless you be converted It is the Devil and not Christ that telleth you you may be pardoned and saved in an unholy unregenerate state And it 's sad that men should believe the Devil and call this a Believing in Christ and think to be saved for so believing as if false faith and presumption pleased God Christ will not save men for believing a lye and believing the Father of lyes before him Nor will he save all that are confident they shall be saved If you think you have any part in Christ remember Rom. 8. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his CHAP. II. I have siâ—ce written a Book on this subject to which I refer the Reader for fulâ—er Direction Directions to young Christians or Beginners in Religion for their establishment and safe proceeding BEfore I come to the Common Directions for the Exercise of Grace and walking with God containing the common duties of Christianity I shall
but also that you may Use it And it is fit that we Direct you how to Use it before we direct you how to know that you have it because it is Grace in exercise that you must discern and Habits are not perceived in themselves but by their Acts And the more lively and powerful the exercise is the more easily is Grace perceived So that this is the nearest and surest way to a Certainty of our own sincerity He that Useth Grace most and best hath most Grace And he that hath most and useth it most may most easily be Assured that he hath it in sincerity and truth In these Directions I shall begin with those great internal duties in which the very Life of all Religion doth consist and the General Practice of these Principles and Graces and all these Generals shall be briefly set together for the easiness of Understanding and Remembring them And then I shall give you such Particular Directions as are needful in subordination to those Generals DIRECT I. Labour to understand well the Nature Grounds Reason and Order of Faith and Gr. Dir. 1. Godliness and to Believe upon such grounds so well understood as will not suffer For a well-grounded Faith you to stagger or entertain a contrary belief § 1. IGnorance and ungrounded or ill-grounded perswasions in matters of Religion are the cause that abundance of people delude themselves with the empty name and dead profession of a Faith and Religion which they never were indeed possessors of I know there are low degrees of knowledge comparatively in many that are true believers and that there may be much Love and Holiness where knowledge is very small or narrow as to the objective extent of it And that there is a knowledge that puffeth up while Charity edifieth And that in many that have the narrower knowledge there may be the fastest faith and adherence to the truth which will conquer in the time of tryal But yet I must tell you that the Religion which you profess is not indeed your own Religion if you know not what it is and know not in some measure the true Grounds and Reasons why you should be of that Religion If you have only learnt to say your Creed or repeat the words of Christian Doctrine while you do not truly understand the sense or if you have no better Reasons why you profess the Christian faith than the custom of the Countrey or the command of Princes or Governours or the Opinion of your Teachers or the example of your Parents friends or neighbours you are not Christians indeed You have a humane belief or opinion which objectively is true but subjectively in your selves you have no true divine belief I confess there may be some insufficient yea and erroneous Reasons which a true Believer may mistakingly make use of for the proof of certain fundamental truths But then that same man hath some other Reason for his reception of that truth which is more sound and his faith is sound because of those sound infallible principles though there be a mixture of some other Reasons that are unsound The true Believer buildeth on the Rock and giveth deep rooting to the holy seed Matth. 7. 24. 13. 5 8. Though some deluded men may tell you that Faith and Reason are such enemies that they exclude each other as to the same object and that the less Reason you have to prove the truth of the things believed the stronger and more laudable is your faith yet when it cometh to the tryal you will find that Faith is no unreasonable thing and that God requireth you to believe no more than you have sufficient reason for to warrant you aâ—â— bâ—â—r you out and that your faith can be no more than is your perception of the Reasons why you should believe and that God doth suppose Reason when he infuseth Faith and useth Reason in â—â—e usâ— of faith They that Believe and know not why or know no sufficient Reason to warâ—ant their Belief do take a fansie an Opinion or a dream for faith I know that many honest hearted Christians are unable to dispute for their Religion or to give to others a satisfactory account of the Reasons of their faith or hâ—pe But yet they have the true apprehension of some solid Reasons in themselves and they are not Christians they know not why And though their knowledge be small as to the number oâ— propositions known yet it doth alwayes extend to all that is essential to Christianity and Godliness and they do not believe they know not what And their knowledge is greater intensively and in its value and operation than the knowledge of the learnedst ungodly man in the world § 2. Though I may not here digress or stay so long as largely to open to you the Nature Grounds Reason and Method of Faith and Godliness which I am perswading you to understand yet I shall first â—â—y before you a few Propositions which will be useful to you when you are enquiring into these things and then a little open them unto you Prop. 1. A life of Godliness is our living unto God as God as being absolutely addicted to him 2. A life of Faith is a living upon the unseen everlasting Happiness as purchased for us by Christ with all the necessaries thereto and freely given us by God 3. The contrary life of sense and unbelief is a living in the prevalency of sense or flesh to this present world for want of such believing apprehensions of a better as should elevate the soul thereto and conquer the fleshly inclination to things present 4. Though man in innocency needing no Redeemer might live to God without faith in a Redeemer yet lapsed man is not only unable to Redeem himself but also unable to live to God without the grace of the Redeemer It was not only necessary that he satisfie Gods justice for us that he may pardon and save us without any wrong to his Holiness Wisdom or Government but also that he be our Teacher by his Doctrine and his Life and that he Reveal from Heaven the Fathers will and that Objectively in him we may see the wonderful condescending Love and Goodness of a Reconciled God and Father and that effectually â—e illuminate sanctifie and quicken us by the operations of his Word and Spirit and that he protect and govern justifie and glorifie us and be the Head of Restored Man as Adam was the Root of lapsed man and as the lapsed Spirits had their Head And therefore we must wholly Live upon him as the Mediator between God and man and the only Saviour by Merit and by â—fficacy 5. Faith is a knowledge by certain credible Testimony or Revelation from God by means supernatural or extraordinary 6. The knowledge of things naturally revealed as the cause by the effect c. is in order before the Knowledge or Belief of things revealed supernaturally 7. It is matter of natural Revelation
thy most comprehensive odious sin and observe this as the life of all thy particular sins and hate it above all the rest This is the very death and greatest deformity of the soul the absence of Gods Image and Spirit and objectively of himself I never lothe my heart so much as when I observe how little it loveth the Lord. Methinks all the sins that ever I committed are not so lothsome to me as this want of Love to God And it is this that is the venom and malignity of every particular sin I never so much hate my self as when I observe how little of God is within me and how far my heart is estranged from him I never do so fully approve of the Justice of God if he should condemn me and thrust me for ever from his presence as when I observe how far I have thrust him from my heart If there were any sin which proceeded not from a want of Love to God I could easilier pardon it to my self as knowing that God would easilier pardon it But not to Love the God of Love the Fountain of Love the felicity of souls is a sin unfit to be pardoned to any till it be repented of and partly cured Christ will forgive it to none that keep it And when it is uncurable it is the special sin of Hell the badge of Devils and damned souls If God will not give me a heart to Love him I would I had never had a heart If he will give me this he giveth me all Happy are the poor the despised and the persecuted that can but live in the Love of God O miserable Emperours Kings and Lords that are strangers to this Heavenly Love and love their lusts above their Maker Might I but live in the fervent Love of God what matter is it in what Countrey or what Cottage or what Prison I live If I live not in the Love of God my Countrey would be worse than banishment a Palace would be a Prison a Crown would be a miserable comfort to one that hath cast away his comfort and is going to everlasting shame and woe Were we but duly sensible of the worth of Love and the odiousness and malignity that is in the want of it it would keep us from being quiet in the daily neglect of it and would quicken us to seek it and to stir it up § 23. Direct 6. Improve the principle of self-love to the promoting of the Love of God by considering Direct 6. what he hath done for thee and what he is and would be to thee I mean not carnal inordinate self-love which is the chiefest enemy of the Love of God But I mean that rational Love of Happiness and self-preservation which God did put into innocent Adam and hath planted in mans nature as necessary to his Government This natural innocent self-love is that remaining principle in the Heart of man which God himself doth still presuppose in all his Laws and Exhortations and which he taketh advantage of in his works and word for the conversion of the wicked and the perswading of his servants themselves to their obedience This is the common principle in which we are agreed with all the wicked of the world that all men should desire and seek to be happy and choose and do that which is best for themselves or else it were in vain for Ministers to preach to them if we were agreed in nothing and we had not this ground in them to cast our seed into and to work upon And if self-love be but informed and guided by understanding it will compell you to Love God and tell you that nothing should be so much Loved Every one that is a man must Love himself We will not intreat him nor be beholden to him for this And every one that Loveth himself will Love that which he judgeth Best for himself And every wise man must know that he never had nor can have any good at all but what he had from God Why do men Love lust or wealth or honour but because they think that these are good for them And would they not Love God if they practically knew that he is the Best of all for them and instead of all Unnatural unthankful heart Canst thou Love thy self and not Love him that gave thee thy self and gives thee all things Nature teacheth all men to love their most entire and necessary friends Do we deserve a reward by loving those that love us when Publicans will do the like Matth. 5. 46. Art thou not bound to love them that hate thee and curse and persecute thee ver 44 45. What reward then is due to thy unnatural ingratitude that canst not love thy chiefest friend All the friends that ever were kind to thee and did thee good were but his messengers to deliver what he sent thee And canst thou love the bearer and not the giver He made thee a man and not a beast He cast thy lot in his visible Church and not among deluded Infidels or miserable Heathens that never heard unless in scorn of the Redeemers name He brought thee forth in a Land of light In a Reformed Church where Knowledge and Holiness have as great advantage as any where in all the world and not among deluded ignorant Papists where ambition must have been thy Governour and Pride and Tyranny have given thee Laws and a formal Ceremonious Image of Piety must have been thy Religion He gave thee Parents that educated thee in his fear and not such as were prophane and ignorant and would have restrained and persecuted thee from a holy life He spoke to thy Conscience early in thy childhood and prevented the gross abominations which else thou hadst committed He bore with the folly and frailties of thy youth He seasonably gave thee those Books and Teachers and company and helps which were fittest for thee and blest them to the further awakening and instructing of thee when he past by others and left them in their sins He taught thee to pray and heard thy prayer He turned all thy fears and groans to thy spiritual good He pardoned all thy grievous sins and since that how much hath he endured and forgiven He gave thee seasonable and necessary stripes and brought thee up in the School of affliction so moderating them that they might not disable or discourage thee but only correct thee and keep thee from security wantonness stupidity and contempt of holy things and might spoil all temptations to ambition worldliness voluptuousness and fleshly lust By the threatnings of great calamities and death he hath frequently awakened thee to cry to Heaven and by as frequent and wonderful deliverances he hath answered thy prayers and encouraged thee still to wait upon him He hath given thee the hearty prayers of many hundreds of his faithful servants and heard them for thee in many a distress He hath strangely preserved thee in manifold dangers He hath not made thee of the
basest of the people whose poverty might tempt them to discontent nor set thee upon the pinnacle of worldly honour where giddiness might have been thy ruine and where temptations to pride and lust and luxury and enmity to a holy life are so violent that few escape them He hath not set thee out upon a Sea of cares and vexations worldly businesses and encumberances but fed thee with food convenient for thee and given thee leisure to walk with God He hath not chained thee to an unprofitable profession nor used thee as those that live like their beasts to eat and drink and sleep and play or live to live But he hath called thee to the noblest and sweetest work when that hath been thy business which others were glad to taste of as a recreation and repast He hath allowed thee to converse with Books and with the best and wisest men and to spend thy dayes in sucking in delightful knowledge And this not only for thy pleasure but thy use and not only for thy self but many others O how many sweet and precious truths hath he allowed thee to feed on all the day when others are diverted and commonly look at them sometimes a far off O how many precious hours hath he granted me in his holy Assemblies and in his honourable and most pleasant work How oft hath his Day and his holy uncorrupted Ordinances and the communion of his Saints and the mentioning of his Name and Kingdom and the pleading of his cause with sinners and the celebrating of his praise been my delight O how many hundreds that he hath sent have wanted the abundant encouragement which I have had When he hath seen the disease of my despondent mind he hath not tryed me by denying me success nor suffered me with Ionas according to my inclination to overrun his work but hath ticed me on by continued encouragements and strowed all the way with mercies But his mercies to me in the souls of others have been so great that I shall secretly acknowledge them rather than here record them where I must have respect to those usual mercies of believers which lye in the common road to Heaven And how endless would it be to mention all All the good that friends and enemies have done me All the wise and gracious disposals of his providence in every condition and change of life and change of times and in every place whereever he brought me His every dayes renewed merciâ—s His support under all my languishings and weakness his plentiful supplies his gracious helps his daily pardons and the Glorious Hopes of a blessed Immortality which his Son hath purchased and his Covenant and Spirit sealed to me O the mercies that are in One Christ one Holy Spirit one Holy Scripture and in the Blessed God himself These I have mentioned unthankful heart to shame thee for thy want of Love to God And these I will leave upon record to be a witness for God against thy ingratitude and to confound thee with shame if thou deny thy Love to such a God Every one of all these mercies and multitudes more will rise up against thee and shame thee before God and all the world as a monster of unkindness if thou Love not him that hath used thee thus Here also consider what God is for your future good as well as what he hath been hitherto How all sufficient how powerful merciful and good But of this more anon § 24. Direct 7. Improve the vanity and vexation of the Creature and all thy disappointments and Direct 7. injuries and afflictions to the promoting of thy Love to God And this by a double advantage First By observing that there is nothing meet to divert thy Love or rob God of it unless thou wilt Love thy trouble and distress Secondly That thy Love to God is the comfort by which thou must be supported under the injuries and troubles which thou meetest with in the world And therefore to neglect it is but to give up thy self to misery Is it for nothing O my soul that God hath turned loose the world against thee That Devils rage against thee and wicked men do reproach and slander thee and seek thy ruine and friends prove insufficient and as broken Reeds It had been as easie to God to have prospered thee in the world and suited all things to thy own desires and have strawed thy way with the flowers of worldly comforts and delights But he knew thy proneness to undo thy self by carnal loves and how easily thy heart is enticed from thy God And therefore he hath wisely and mercifully ordered it that thy temptations shall not be too strong and no creature shall appear to thee in an over-amiable tempting dress Therefore he hath suffered them to become thy enemies And wilt thou love an enemy better than thy God What! an envious and malicious world A world of cares and grief and pains a weary restless empty world How deep and piercing are its injuries How superficial and deceitful is its friendship How serious are its sorrows What toyish shews and dreams are its delights How constant are its cares and labours How seldome and short are its flattering smiles Its comforts are disgraced by the certain expectation of succeeding sorrows Its sorrows are heightned by the expectations of more In the midst of its flatteries I hear something within me saying Thou must dye This is but the way to rottenness and dust I see a Winding-sheet and a Grave still before me I foresee how I must lye in pains and groans and then become a lothesome corpse And is this a world to be more delighted in than God What have I left me for my support and solace in the midst of all this Vanity and Vexation but to look to him that is the All-sufficient sure never failing good I must love him or I have nothing to love but enmity or deceit And is this the worst of Gods design in permitting and causing my pains and disappointments here Is it but to drive my foolish heart unto himself that I may have the solid delights and happiness of his Love O then let his blessed will be done Come home my soul my wandering tired grieved soul Love where thy love shall not be lost Love him that will not reject thee nor deceive thee nor requite thee as the world doth with injuries and abuse Despair not of entertainment though the world deny it thee The peaceable region is above In the world thou must have trouble that in Christ thou maist have peace Retire to the harbour if thou wouldst be free from storms God will receive thee when the world doth cast thee off if thou heartily cast off the world for him O what a solace is it to the soul to be driven clearly from the world to God and there to be exercised in that sacred Love which will accompany us to the world of Love § 25. Direct 8. Labour for the truest
soul came from him and therefore naturally should tend to him It is from him and for him and therefore must Rest in him or have no Rest. We delight in the house where we were born and in our Native country and in our parents and every thing inclineth to its own Original And so should the soul to its Creator § 8. Direct 7. Corrupt not your Minds and appetites with contrary delights Addict not your selves to fleshly pleasures Tast nothing that is forbidden Sorrow it self is not such an enemy to spiritual Delights as sensual sinful pleasures are O leave your beastly and your childish pleasures and come and feast your souls on God Isa. 55. 1 2 3. Away with the Delights of lust and pridâ— and covetousness and vain sports and gluttony and drunkenness if ever you would have the solid and durable Delights Think not of joyning both together Bethink your selves Can it be any thing but the disease and wickedness of thy heart that can make a play or a feast or drunken wanton company more pleasant to thee than God What a heart is that which thinketh it a toil to meditate on God and Heaven and thinks it a pleasure to think of the baits of pride and covetousness What a heart is that which thinks that sensuality wantonness and vanity are the pleasure of their families which must not be turned out and that Godliness and Heavenly discourse and exercises would be the sadness and trouble of their families which must not be brought in lest it maâ—r their mirth That think it an intollerable toil and slavery to Love God and Holiness and Heaven and to be imployed for them and thinks it a delightful thing to Love a whore or excess of meat or drink or sports Can you say any thing of a man that is more disgraceful unless you say he is a Devil It were not so vile for a child to Delight more in a Dog than in his Parents or a Husband to delight more in the ugliest Harlot than in his Wife as it is for a man to delight more in fleshly vanities than in God Will you be licking up this dung when you should be solacing your souls in Angelical pleasures and foretasting the delights of Heaven O how justly will God thrust away such wretches from his everlasting presence who so abhor his ways and him Can they blame him for denying them the things which they hate or set so light by as to prefer a lust before it If they were not haters of God and Holiness they would never be so averse even to the Delights which they should have with him § 9. Direct 8. Take heed of a Melancholy habit of body For Melancholy people can scarce delight Direct 8. in any thing at all and therefore not in God Delight is as hard to them as it is to a pained member to find pleasure or a sick stomack to delight in the food which it loaths They can think of God with trouble and fear and horror and despair but not with delight § 10. Direct 9. Take heed of an impatient pievish self-tormenting mind that can bear no cross and Direct 9. of overvaluing earthly things which causeth impatience in the want of them Make not too great a matter of fleshly pain or pleasure Otherwise your minds will be called to a continual attendance on the flesh and taken up with continual desires or cares or fears or griefs or pleasures and will not be permitted to solace themselves with God The soul that would have pure and high Delights must abstract it self from the concernments of the flesh and look on your body as if it were the body of another whose pain or pleasure you can choose whether you will feel when Paul was rapt up into the third Heaven and saw the things unutterable he was so far freed from the prison of sense that he knew not whether he was in the Body or out of it As the separated souls that see the face of God and the Redeemer do leave the Body to be buried and to rot in darkness and feel not all this to the interrupting of their joys so faith can imitate such a Death to the world and such a neglect of the flesh and some kind of elevating separation of the mind to the things above If in this near conjunction you cannot leave the Body to rejoyce or suffer alone yet as it self is but a servant to the soul so let not its pain or pleasure be predominant and controll the high operations of the soul. A manly valiant believing soul though it cannot abate the pain at all nor reconcile the flesh to its calamity yet it can do more notwithstanding the pain to its own delight than strangers will believe § 11. Some women and passionate weak-spirited men especially in sickness are so pievish and of such impatient minds that their daily work is to disquiet and torment themselves One can scarce tell how to speak to them or look at them but it offendeth them And the world is so full of occasions of provocation that such persons are like to have little quietness It is unlike that these should delight in God who keep their minds in a continual ulcerated galled state uncapable of any delights at all and cease not their self-tormenting § 12. Direct 10. It is only a life of faith that will be a life of holy heavenly Delight Exercise your Direct 10. selves therefore in believing contemplations of the things unseen It must not be now and then a glance of the eye of the soul towards God or a seldom salutation which you would give a stranger but a walking with him and frequent addresses of the soul unto him which must help you to the Delights which Believers find in their communion with him § 13. Direct 11. Especially let faith go frequently to Heaven for renewed matter of delight and Direct 11. frequently think what God will be to you there for ever and with what full everlasting delight he will satiate your souls As Heaven is the place of our full delight so the foresight and foretast of it is the highest delight which on earth is to be attained And a soul that is strange to the foresight of Heaven will be as strange to the true Delights of faith § 14. Direct 12. It is a great advantage to Holy Delight to be much in the most Delightful parts of Direct 12. worship as in Thanksgiving and Praise and a due celebration of the Sacrament of the Body and blood of Christ Of which I have spoken in the foregoing Directions § 15. Direct 13. A skillful experienced Pastor who is able to open the treasurie of the Gospel and Direct 13. publickly and privately to direct his flock in the work of self-examination and the heavenly exercises of faith is a great help to Christians spiritual delight The experiences of believers teach them this How oft do they go away refreshed and
20. Insomuch as it sâ—â—mâ—th one of the greatest impediments to the Conversion of the Heathen and Mahomâ—tan world and the chiefest means of confirming them in their Iâ—â—â—â—delity and making them hate and scorn Christianity that the Romish and the Eastern and Southern Churches within their view do worship God so dishonourably as they do as if our God were like a little Child that must have pretty toyes bought him in the Fair and brought home to please him Whereas it the unreformed Churches in the East West and South were Reformed and had a Learned Pious Able Ministry and clearly preached and seriously applyed the Word of God and worshipped God with understanding gravity reverence and serious spirituality and lived a holy heavenly mortified self-denying conversation this would be the way to propagate Christianity and win the Infidel world to Christ. § 43. Direct 12. If you will glorifie God in your lives you must be above a selfish private narrow Direct 12. mind and must be chiefly intent upon the publick good and the spreading of the Gospel through the world A selfish private narrow soul brings little honour to the cause of God It s alwayes taken up about it self or imprisoned in a corner in the dark to the interest of some Sect or Party and seeth not how things go in the world Its desires and prayers and endeavours go no further than they can see or travel But a larger soul beholdeth all the earth and is desirous to know how it goeth with the Cause and Servants of the Lord and how the Gospel gets ground upon the unbelieving Nations and such are affected with the state of the Church a thousand miles off almost as if it were at hand as being members of the whole body of Christ and not only of a Sect. They pray for the Hallowing of Gods Name and the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his will throughout the Earth as it is in Heaven before they come to their own necessities at least in order of esteem and desire The prosperity of themselves or their Party or Countrey satisfieth them not while the Church abroad is in distress They live as those that know the Honour of God is more concerned in the welfare of the whole than in the success of any party against the rest They pray that the Gospel may have free course and be glorified abroad as it is with them and the Preachers of it be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men 2 Thess. 3. 1 2. The silencing the Ministers and suppressing the interest of Christ and souls is the most grievous tydings to them Therefore they pray for Kings and all in authority not for any carnal ends but that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty 1 Tim. 2. 1 2 3. Thus God must be glorified by our Lives DIRECT XVI Let your life on Earth be a conversation in Heaven by the constant work of Gr. Dir. 16. Faith and Love even such a faith as maketh things future as now present and the unseen world as if it were continually open to your sight and such a Love as makes you long to see the glorious face of God and the glory of your dear Redeemer and to be taken up with blessed Spirits in his perfect endless Love and Praise MY Treatise of The Life of Faith and the fourth Part of The Saints Rest being written wholly or mostly to this use I must refer the Reader to them and say no more of it in this Direction DIRECT XVII As the soul must be carried up to God and devoted to him according to all the Gr. Dir. 17. foregoing Directions so must it be delivered from carnal selfishness or flesh-pleasing I pass not this by as a small matter to be passed by also by the Reader For I take the Love of God kindled by Faith in Christ with the full Denyal of our carnal selves to be the sum of all Religion But because I would not injure so great a duty by saying but a little of it And therefore desire the Reader who studieth for Practice and needeth such helps to peruse the mentioned Books of Self-denyal and Crucifying the World which is the grand enemy to God and Godliness in the world and from the three great branches of this Idolatry viz. the Love of sensual pleasures the Love of worldly wealth and the proud desire and Love of worldly honour and esteem And the mortifying of these must be much of the labour of your lives OF this also I have written so much in a Treatise of Self-denyal and in another called The Crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ that I shall now pass by all save what will be more seasonable anon under the more Particular Directions in the fourth Tome when I come to speak of Selfishness as opposed to the Love of others I Have now given you the General Grand Directions containing the very Being and Life of Godliness and Christianity with those particular sub-directions which are needful to the performance of them And I must tell you that as your life and strength and comfort principally depend on these so doth your success in resisting all your particular sins And therefore if you first obey not these General Directions the more particular ones that follow will be almost useless to you even as branches cut off from the Stock of the Tree which are deprived thereby of their support and life But upon supposition that first you will maintain these Vital parts of your Religion I shall proceed to Direct you first in some particulars most nearly subordinate to the forementioned duties and then to the remoter branches APPENDIX The true Doctrine of LOVE to GOD to HOLINESS to OUR SELVES and to OTHERS opened in certain Propositions Especially for resolving the Questions what self-love is lawful What sinful Whether God must be loved above our own felicity And how Whether to Love our felicity more than God may stand with a state of saving grace Whether it be a middle state between sensuality and the Divine nature to Love God more for our selves than for Himself Whether to Love God for our selves be the state of a Believer as he is under the promise of the New Covenant And whether the spirit and sanctification promised to Believers be the Love of God for himself and so the Divine nature promised to him that chooseth Christ and God by him out of self-love for his own felicity How God supposeth and worketh on the principle of self-love in mans Conversion With many such like To avoid the tediousness of a distinct debating each Question THough these things principally belong to the Theorie and so to another Treatise in hand called Methodus Theologiae yet because they are also Practical and have a great influence upon the more Practical Directions and the right understanding of them may help the Reader himself to determine a multitude of Cases of Conscience the
they shall be sure to be accounted Proud and Hypocrites And yet they accuse not that child or servant of Pride who excelleth all the rest in pleasing them and doing their work Nâ—r do they take a sick man to be proud if he be carefuller than others to recover his health But he that will do mosâ— for Heaven and most carefully avoideth sin and Hell and is most serious in his Religion and most industrious to please his God this man shall be accounted Proud 3. He that will not forsake his God and betray the truth and wound his conscience by willful sin but will do as Daniel and the three confessors did Dan. 6. 3. and answer as they answered will be accounted Proud But it is no Pride to prefer God before men and to fear damnation more than imprisonment or death The army of Martyrs did not in Pride prefer their own judgements before their superiors that condemned them but they did it in obedience to God and truth when that was revealed to babâ—s which was hid from the wise and prudent and great and noble of the world 4. When those that are faithful to the honour of Christs soverainty dare not approve of Papâ—l usurpations against his Laws and over his Church and the Consciences of his Subjects they shall by the Popish usurpers be called Proud and despisers of Government as if a Usurper of the Kingly power should call us proud because we dare not consent to his pride or call us Traytors for not being Traytors as he is himself 5. When a man that hath the sense of the matters of God and mens salvation upon his heart is zealous and diligent to teach them to others and if he be a Minister be servent and laborious in his ministry he is called Proud as one that must needs have all men of his mind Though compassion to souls and aptness to teach and Preaching instantly in season and out of season be his necessary duty required of God And what is the Ministry for but to change mens minds and bring them to the full obedience of the truth 6. If a man understandeth the truth in any point of Divinity better than most others and holdeth any truth which is not there in credit or commonly received he shall be accounted Proud for presuming to be so singular and seeming wiser than those that think they are wiser than he But Humility teacheth us not to err for company nor to grow no wiser when once we arrive at the common stature nor to forsake the truth which others understand not nor to forbear to teach it because it is not known allready If some of the Pastors in Abassia Syria Armenia Russia Greece or Italy or Spain were as wise as the Ministers in England are it were no evidence of their Pride 7. If a man that understandeth any thing contrary to the judgement of another cannot forsake it Siquid agere instituis lenâ—e progredere in eo autem quod elegeâ—â—s firmiter persiste Bias in Laâ—rt and think or say as another would have him especially if you contradict him in disputation he will take it to be your pride and overvaluing your own understanding and being too tenacious of your own conceits Erroneous men that in their Pride are over eager to have others of their mind will call you Proud because you yield not to their pride They think that the evidence is so clear on their side that if you were not Proud you could not choose but think as they do 8. Some humble men are naturally of a warm and earnest manner of discourse and their natural Pertinaâ—ior tamen erat Chrysanthius nec de sententia â—acile discedebat inquit Eunapius humilitatem ejus laudans heat and eagerness of speech is frequently mis-judged to come from pride till fuller acquaintance with their humble lives do rectifie the mistake It is written of Bishop Hooper the Martyr that those that visited him once condemned him of over-austerity they that repaired to him twice only suspected him of the same those that conversed with him constantly not only acquitted him of all morosity but commended him for sweetness of manners So that his ill nature consisted in other mens little acquaintance with him Tho. Fullers Church Hist. lib. 7. pag. 402. and Godwin in Glocest. Bishops The same is true of very many worthy men Bullingero ob eruditionem non contemnendam morumque tam sanctitatem quam suavitatem percharus fuit pag 591. 9. If we zealously contend for the saith or the Peace of the Church against Heretical or Dividing persons and their dangerous waies they will call us Proud though God command it us Iud. 2. 3. especially if we avoid them and bid them not Good speed Tit. 3. 10. 2 Joh. 10. 10. When a man of understanding openeth the ignorance of another and speaketh words of pity concerning him though it be no more than truth and charity command they will be taken to be the words of supercilious pride 11. That plain dealing in reproof which God commandeth especially to his Ministers towards high and low great and small and which the Prophets and Servants of God have used will be misjudged as arrogancie and Pride Amos 7. 12 13. 2 Chron. 25. 16. Acts 23. 4. As if it were Pride to Gen. 19. 8 9 10. be true to God and to pity souls and seek to save them and tell them in time of that which conscience will more closely and terribly tell them of when it is too late 12. Self-idolizing Papists accuse their inferiors for Pride if they do but modestly exercise a judgement Cum humilitatis causa mentiris si non eras peccator antequam mentiris mentiendo efficiens quod evitaâ—as Augustin de Verb. Apost of discretion about the matters that their salvation is concerned in and do not implicitly believe as they believe and forbear to prove or try their sayings and swallow not all without any chewing and offer to object the commands of God against any unlawful commands of men As if God were contented to suspend his Laws when ever mens commands do contradict them or humility required us to please and obey men at the price of the loss of our salvation They think that we should not busy our selves to enquire into such matters but trust them with our souls and that the Scriptures are not for the laity to read but they must wholly relie upon the clergie And if a lay man enquire into their Doctrine or Commands they say as Davids brother to him 1 Sam. 17. 28. With whom hast thou left the sheep in the wilderness I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart 13. If a zealous humble preacher of the Gospel that preacheth not himself but Christ be highly esteemed and honoured for his works sake and crowded after and greatly followed by those that are 1 Thes. 5. 12 13. edified by him it is ordinary for the envious
and the enemies of Godliness to say that he is Proud and preacheth to draw disciples after him and to be admired by men for they judge of the hearts of others by their own As if they knew not that Christ and his most excellent servants have been crowded after without being thereby lifted up or chargeable with pride As the Sun is not accusable for being beheld and admired by all the world nor fire and water earth and air food and rest for being valued by all Little do they know how deep a sense of their own unworthiness is renewed in the hearts of the most applauded Preachers by the occasion of mens estimation and applause and how much they desire that none may over-value them and turn their eye from the doctrine upon the person And how oft they cry out with the laborious Apostle who is sufficient for these things And how oft they are tempted to cast off all through fear and sense of their unfitness when the envious dullards fearlesly utter a dry discourse and think that they are wronged because they are not commended and followed as much as others they think the common sense of all the faithful and the love of truth and care of their salvation must be called Pride because it carrieth men to prefer the means which is fitted best to their edification and salvation 14. If a humble Christian have after much temptation and a holy life attained to well-grounded perswasions of his salvation and be thankful to God for sanctifying him and numbring him with his little flock when the world lyeth in wickedness he will be taken for Proud by ungodly men that cannot endure to hear before hand of the difference which the judgement of God will declare between the righteous and the wicked As if it were Pride to be happy or to be thankful 15. If a man that is falsly accused or slandered shall modestly deny the charge and use that lawful means which he oweth to his own vindication he will be accused of Pride because he contradicteth proud accusers and consenteth not to belie himself yea though the dishonour of Religion and the hinderance of mens salvation be the consequent of his dishonour 16. Many of the poor do mistake their Superiours to be proud if their apparel be not in fashion and value almost like their own though it be sober and agreeable to their rank 17. Some are of a more rustick or careless disposition unfit for complement and some are taken up with serious studies and employments so contrary to complement that they have neither â—â—â—â— a incessu adâ—o gestuoâ—u compoâ—iâ—â—s ut vel â—â—nde supâ—rbissimi animi contrarerit infamiam Callimach Exper. de Attil p. 341. time nor mind for the observance of the humours of complemental persons who because they expect it and think they are neglected do usually accuse such men of Pride 18. Some are of a silent temper and are accused for Pride because they speak not to others as oft as they expect it 19. Some are naturally unapt to be familiar till they have much acquaintance and are so far from impudent that they are not bold enough to speak much to strangers and take acquaintance with them no though it be with their inferiours and therefore are ordinarily mis-judged to be proud 20. Some have contracted some unhansome customes in their speech or gestures which to rash censurers seem to come from Pride though it be not so By all these seemings the humble are judged Quod â— magnaâ—um ac procâ—â—um congressu abstinuerit Chrysanthius alieniotque â—uerit non arrogantiae aut fastui tribuendum est quin potius rusticitas quaedam aut simplicitas existimari debet in eo qui quid esset potestas ignorabat ita vulgariter minime dissimulanter cum illis verba factitabat Eâ—â—aâ—ius in Châ—â—sâ—st by many to be Proud § 8. III. There are also many counterfeits of Humility by which the Proud are taken to be Humble As 1. An accusing of themselves and bewailing their vileness through meer terror of Conscience as Iudas or the constraint of affliction as Pharaoh or of the face of death 2. A customary confessing of such sins in prayer or in speech with others which the best are used to confess and the confessing of them is taken rather to be an honour than a disgrace 3. A Religious observance of those Commandments and Doctrines of men which the Apostle speaketh of Col. 2. 18 19 20 21 22 23. which have a shew of wisdom in Will-worship and humility and neglecting of the body not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh 4. A holding of those Tenets which doctrinally are most to mans abasement but yet never humbled themselves at the heart 5. A discreet restraint of boasting and such a discommending of themselves as tendeth to procure them the reputation of modesty and humility 6. An affected condescension and familiarity with others even of the lower sort which may seem humility when the poorest have their smiles and courtesie and yet may be but the humility of â— Sam. 15. 3 4 5 6. Absolom the fruit of pride designed to procure the commendations of the world 7. A choosing to converse with their inferiours because they would bear sway and be alwayes the greatest themselves in the company Like Dionysius the Tyrant that when he was dethroned turned Schoolmaster that he might domineer among the boyes 8. A constrained meanness of apparel provisions and deportment when poverty forceth men to speak and live as if they were humble whereas if they had but wealth and honours they would live as high as the proudest of them all How quiet is the Bear when he is chained up and how little doth serve a Dog or a Fox when he can get no more 9. An affected meanness and plainness in apparel while pride runs out some other way He that is odiously proud of his supposed wisdom or learning or holiness or birth or great reputation may in his very pride be above the womanish and childish way of pride in apparel and such other little toyes 10. A loathing and speaking against the pride of others while he overlooks his own perhaps because the pride of others cloudeth him as the covetous hate others that are covetous because they are the greatest hinderers of their gain as Dogs fight for the bone which both would have Many more counterfeits of Humility may be gathered from what is said before of the seemings of Pride whereto it is contrary § 9. Direct 2. Observe the motions and discoveries of pride toward God and Man that it may not Direct 2. like the Devil prevail by keeping out of sight Because this is the chief part of my work I shall here distinctly shew you the signs and motions of it in its several wayes against God and Man Signs of the worst part of PRIDE against GOD. § 10. Sign 1. Self-idolizing Pride doth cause men to glory in their
Setting his mind on the Thoughts of men and desiring more of their esteem than he can attain and that which is unsatisfying vanity when he hath obtained it He is still under fruitless vâ—xatious desires and frequent disappointments Every thing that he sâ—â—th and every word allmost that he heareth or every complement omitted can disturb his peace and break his sleep and cast him into a feaver of passion or revenge This wind that swelleth him is running up and down and disquieting him in every part Who would have such a fire in his breast that will not suffer him to be quiet 3. Pride bringeth sufferings and then maketh them seem intollerable It makes the sinâ—er more vex and gall his mind with striving and impatient aggravating his afflictions than the suffering oâ— it self would ever do 4. Pride is a deep-rooted and a self preserving sin And therefore harder to be killed and rooted up than other sins In hindereth the discovery of it self It driveth away the light It hateth râ—prooâ— It will not give the sinner leave to see his pride when it is reproved Nor to confess it iâ— he see iâ— nor to be humbled for it if he do confess it noâ— to loath himself and forsake it though conviction and terror seems to humble him Even while he heareth all the signs oâ— pride he will not see it in himself When he feeleth his hatred of reproof and knoweth that this is a sign of pride in others yet he will not know it in himself If you would go about â—o cure him of this or any other fault you shall feel that you are handling a wasp or an adder Yet when he is spitting the venom of pride against the reprover he perceiveth not that he is proud This venom is his nature and thereforâ— is not felt nor troublesom If all the Town or Congregation should note him as notoriously proud yet he himself that should best know himself will not observe it It is a wonder to see how this â—in keepeth strength in persons that have long taken pains for their souls and seem to be in all other respects the most serious mortyfied Christians Yet let them but be touched in their interest or reputation or seem â—o be slighted or see another preferred before them while they are neglected and they boyl with envy malice or discontent and shew you that the Heart of â—in even SELFISHNESS and PRIDE is yet alive unbroken and too strong Especially if they are not persons of a natural gentleness and mildness but of a more passionate temper than Pride hath more â—yl and fewel to kindle it into these discernable flames He is a Christian indeed that hath conquered Pride 5. Pride is the defence not only of it self but of every other sin in the heart or life For it â—ateth reproof and keepeth off the remedie It hideth and extenuateth and excuseth the sin and thinketh well of that which should be hated 6. Pride hindereth every means and duty from doing you good and oft-times corrupteth them and turneth them into sin Sometimes it keepeth men â—rom the duty and sometime it keepeth them from the benefit of the duty It makes men think that they are so whole and well as to have little need of all this physick yea or of their daily necessary food They think all this is more ado than needs What need of all this preaching and praying and reading and holy conference and meditation and heavenly mindedness One is ashamed of it and another wants it not and another is above it and they ask you where are we commanded to pray in our family and to pray so oft and to hear so oft and read any book but the Holy Scriptures c. For they feel no obligation from General commands 1 Thes. 5. 17. Iuâ—e 18. 1. â—al 6. 9. â—â—h 5. 16. 1 â—or 14. 26. Rom. 12. 11. as to pray continually and allways and not wax faint nor be weary of well doing to redeem the time and do all to edification and be â—ervent in spirit serving the Lord c. Because they â—eâ—l not that need or sweetness which should help them to perceive that frequency is good or necessary for them If the Physicion bid two men eat often and one of them hath a strong appetite and the other hath none he that is hungry will interprâ—t the word often to signifie tâ—riâ—e a day at least and he that hath no appetite will think that once a day is often Healthful mâ—n do not use to ask How prove you that I am bound to eat twice or thrice a day Feeling the need and benefit they will be satsfied with an allowance without a command They will rather ask How prove you that I may not do it For they feel reason in themselves to move them to it iâ— God restrain them not So it is with an humble soul about the means of his edification and salvation It feeleth a need of preaching and prayer and holy spending the Lords day and family duties c. Yea it feeleth the need and benefit of frequency in duties and is glad of leave to draw neer to God and feels the bond of Love constrain Whereas the Proud are full and sensless and could easily be content with little in Religion if the Laws of God or man constrained them nâ—t and will do no more than needs they must Yea some of late have been advanced by Pride above all Ordinances that is above obedience to God in the use of his appointed means but not above the need of means nor above the plagues prepared for the proud and disobedient Humility secureth men from many such pernicious opinions § 86. Direct 4. To the conquering of Pride its necessary that you perceive that indeed it is in your selves and is the radical sin and the very poyson of your hearts and that you set your selves matchfully to mark its motions and make it a principal part of your Religion and business of your lives to overcome it and to walk in Humility with God and man For if you see not that it is your sin you will let it alone and little trouble your selves about it Pride liveth in men that seem Religious because they perceive it noâ— or think they have but some small degree which is not dangerous And they see it not in themselves because they mark not its operations and appearances The life in the root must be perceived in the branches in the leaves and fruit If you saw more evil in this than in many more disgraceful sins and set your selves as heartily and diligently to conquer it as you do to cast ouâ— the sins which would make you be judged by men to be utterly ungodly no doubt but the work would more happily go on and you would see more excellent fruits of your labour in the work of mortification than most Christians sâ—e § 86. Direct 5. Be much in humbling exercises but so as to take heed of mistaking the
a continual suâ—vitv affording still fresh delights though thou meditate on him a thousand years or to all eternity Thou maist better say that the Ocean hath not water enough for thee to swim in or that the Earth hath not room enough for thee to tread upon than that there is not matter enough in God for thy longest Meditations and most delighting satisfying thoughts The blessed Angels and Saints in Heaven will find enough in God alone to employ their minds to all eternity O horrid darkness and atheism that yet remaineth on our hearts that we should want matter for our thoughts to keep them from feeding upon air or filth or want matter for our delight to keep our mindâ— from begging it at the creatures door or hungring for the husks that feed the Swine when we have the Infinite God Omnipotent Omniscient most good and bountiful our life and hope and happiness to think on with delight § 3. Direct 3. If you have but an eye of faith to see the things of the unseen world as revealed Direct 3. in the sacred Word you cannot want matter to employ your thoughts Scripture is the glass in which 3. The world to come you may see the other world There you may see the Antient of Dayes the Eternal Majesty shining in his Glory for the felicitating of holy glorified Spirits There you may see the humane nature advanced above Angels and enjoying the highest Glory next to the uncreated Majesty and Christ reigning as the King of all the world and all the Angels of God obeying honouring and worshipping him you may see him sending his Angels on his gracious messages to the lowest members of his body the little ones of his flock on earth you may see him interceding for all his Saints and procuring their peace and entertainment with the Father and preparing for their reception when they pass into those mansions and welcoming them one by one as they pass hence There you may see the glorious celestial society attending admiring extolling worshipping the Great Creator the Gracious Redeemer and the Eternal Spirit with uncessant glorious and harmonious Praise you may see them burning in the delicious flames of holy Love drawn out by the Vision of the face of God and by the streams of Love which he continually powreth out upon them you may see the magnetick attraction of the uncreated Love and the felicitating closure of the attracted Love of holy Spirits thus united unto God by Christ and feasting everlastingly upon him you may see the ravishments of joy and the unspeakable pleasures which all these blessed Spirits have in this transporting Sight and Love and Praise You may see the extasies of Ioy which possess the souls of those that are newly passed from the Body and escaped the sins and miseries of this world and find there such sudden ravishing entertainment unspeakably beyond their former expectations conceivings or belief You may see there with what wonder what pity what lothing and detestation those holy glorified souls look down upon earth on the negligence contempt sensuality and profaneness of the dreaming and distracted world You may see there what you shall be for ever if you be the holy ones of Christ and where you must dwell and what you must do and what you shall enjoy All this you may so know by sound believing as to be carried to it as sincerely as if your eyes had seen it Heb. 11. 1. 2 Cor. 5. 7. And yet can your thoughts be idle or carnal or worldly and sinful for want of work Are your meditations dry and barren for want of matter to employ them Doth the fire of Love or other holy affections go out for want of fuell to feed it Is not Heaven and Eternity spatious enough for your minds to expatiate in Is not such a world as that sufficient for you to study with fresh and delectable variety of discoveries from day to day or that which is more delightful than variety Would you have more matter or higher and more excellent matter or sweeter and more pleasant matter or matter which doth nearlier concern your selves Get that faith which all that shall be saved Live by which makes things absent as operative in some measure as if they were present and that which will be as if it now were and that which is unseen as if it were now open to your eyes and then your Thoughts will want neither matter to work upon nor altogether an actuating excitation If this were not enough I might tell you what Faith can see also in Hell which is not unworthy See in my Tract on Heb 11. 1. called The Life of Faith of your serious Thoughts What work is there what direful complaints and lamentations what self-tormentings and what sense of Gods displeasure and for what But I will wholly pass this by that you may see there is delightful work enough for your thoughts and that I set you no unpleasant task § 4. Direct 4. Get but the Love of God well kindled in your Heart and it will find employment Direct 4. even the most high and sweet employment for your Thoughts Your selves shall be the Judges whether 4. The work of Love your Love doth not for the most part rule your thoughts assigning them their work and directing them when and how long to think on it See but how a lustful lover is carried after a beloved silly piece of flesh Their thoughts will so easily and so constantly run after it that they need no spur Mark in what a stream it carrieth them how it feedeth and quickneth their invention and elevateth an ordinary fancy into a Poetical and passionate strain What abundance of matter can a Lover find in the narrow compass of a dirty Corpse for his thoughts to work on night and day And will not the Love of God then much more fill and feast your thoughts How easily can the Love of money find matter for the thoughts of the worldling from one year to another It s easie to think of any thing which you love O what a happy spring of Meditation is a rooted predominant Love of God Love him strongly and you cannot forget him You will then see him in every thing that meets you and hear him in every one that speaketh to you If you miss him or have offended him you will think on him with grief If you taste of his Love you will think of him with Delight If you have but hope you will think of him with Desire and your Minds will be taken up in seeking him and in understanding and using the Means by which you may come to enjoy him Love is ingenious and full and quick and active and resolute It is valiant and patient and exceeding industrious and delighteth to encounter difficulties and to appear in labours and to shew it self in advantageous sufferings and therefore it maketh the mind in which it reigneth exceeding busie and findeth the
thy meditations And though these thoughts be not the sweetest 8. 〈…〉 and wants yet thy own folly hath made them necessary If thou be dangerously sick or but painfully sore thou canst scarce forget it If poverty afflict thee with pinching wants thy Thoughts are taken up with cares and trouble day and night If another wrong thee thou canst easily think on it And hast thou so often wronged thy God and Saviour and so unkindly vilified his mercy and so unthankfully set light by saving Grace and so presumptuously and securely ventured on his wrath and yet dost thou find a scarcity of matter for thy meditations Hast thou all the sins of thy youth and ignorance to think on and all the sins of thy rashness and sensuality and of thy negligence and sloth and of thy worldliness and selfishness ambition and pride thy passions and thy omissions and all thy sinful thoughts and words and yet art thou scanted of matter for thy thoughts Dost thou carry about thee such a body of death so much selfishness pride worldliness and carnality so much ignorance unbelief averseness to God and backwardness to all that is spiritual and holy so much passion and readiness to sin and yet dost thou not find enough to think on Look over the sins of all thy life see them Thus Evil may be made the object and occasion of good It is good to meditate on evil to hate it and avoid it Keep acquaintanâ—â— with Conscience and read over its Books and it will furnish your thoughts with humbling matter in all their aggravations as they have been committed against knowledge or means and helps against mercies and judgements and thy own vows or promises in prosperity and under affliction it self in secret and with others in thy general and particular calling and in all thy relations in every place and time and condition that thou hast lived in thy sins against God directly and thy injuries or neglects of man sins against holy duties and sins in holy duties in prayer hearing reading Sacraments meditation conference reproofs and receiving of reproofs from others thy negligent preparations for death and judgement the strangeness of thy soul to God and Heaven Is not here work enough for thy Meditations certainly if thou think so it is because thy heart never felt the bitterness of sin nor was ever yet acquainted with true Repentance but the time is yet to come that Light must shew thee what sin is and what thou art and what thou hast done and how full thy heart is of the Serpents brood and that thy sin must find thee out Dost thou not know that thy sins are as the Sands of the Shore or as the hairs upon thy head for number and that every sin hath deadly poyson in it and malignant enmity to God and holiness and yet are they not enough to keep thy Thoughts from being idle Judge by their language whether it be so with penitents Psal. 51. 2 3. Wash me throughly from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin for I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me Psal. 40. 12. For innumerable evils have compassed me about mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up they are more than the hairs of my head therefore my heart faileth me Psal. 119. 57. I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies True Repentance is thus described Ezek. 36. 31. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways and your doings that were not good and shall loath your selves in your own sight for your own iniquities and for your abominations Yea Gods forgiving and forgetting your sins must not make you forget them Ezek. 16. 60 61 62 63. I will establish to thee an everlasting Covenant Then thou shalt remember thy ways and be ashamed And I will establish my Covenant with thee That thou maist remember and be confounded and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done saith the Lord God of Hosts § 9. Direct 9. Be not a stranger to the methods and subtleties and diligence of Satan in his Temptations Direct 9. to undo thy soul and thou wilt find matter enough to keep thy thoughts from idleness He is 9. Satans Temptations thinking how to deceive thee and destroy thee and doth it not concern thee to think how to defeat him and escape and save thy self If the hare run not as fast as the dog he is like to dye for it O that thy eyes were but opened to see the snares that are laid for thee in thy nature in thy temperature and passions in thy interests thy relations thy friends and acquaintance and ordinary company in thy businesses and possessions thy house and goods and lands and cattel and tenants and servants and all that thou tradest with or hast to do with in thine apparel and recreations in thy meat and drink and sleep and ease in prosperity and adversity in mens good thoughts or bad thoughts of thee in their praise and in their dispraise in their benefits and their wrongs their favour and in their falling out in their pleasing or displeasing thee in thy thinking and in thy speaking and in every thing that thou hast to do with Didst thou but see all these temptations and also see to what they tend and whither they would bring thee thou wouldst find matter to cure the idleness or impertinencies of thy thoughts § 10. Direct 10. The world and every creature in it which thou daily seest and which revealeth to Direct 10. thee the great Creator might be enough to keep thy Thoughts from idleness If Sun and Moon and Stars if Heaven and Earth and all therein be not enough to employ thy thoughts let thy idleness have some excuse I know thou wilt say that it is upon some of these things that thou dost employ them Yea but dost thou not first destroy and mortifie and make nonsense of that on which thou meditatest Dost thou not first separate it from God who is the life and glory and end and meaning of every creature Thou killest it and turnest out the soul and thinkest only on the Corps or on the Creature made another thing as food for thy sensual desires As the Kite thinketh on the Birds and Chickens to devour them to satisfie her greedy appetite Thus you can think of all Gods works so far as they accommodate your flesh But the World is Gods book which he set man at first to read and every Creature is a Letter or Syllable or Word or Sentence more or less declaring the name and will of God There you may behold his wonderful Almightiness his unsearchable Wisdom his unmeasurable Goodness mercy and compassions and his singular regard of the sons of men Though the ungodly proud and carnal wits do but play with and study the shape and comeliness and order
of Christs Body and Blood aright But besides all these what a deal of duty have you to perform to Magistrates Pastors Parents Masters and other superiours to subjects people children servants and other inferiours to every neighbour for his soul his body his estate and name and to do to all as you would be done by And besides all this how much have you to do directly for your selves for your souls and bodies and families and estates Against your ignorance infidelity pride selfishness sensuality worldliness passion sloth intemperance cowardize lust uncharitableness c. Is not here matter for your thoughts § 15. Direct 15. Overlook not that life full of particular mercies which God hath bestowed on your Direct 15. selves and you will find pleasant and profitable matter for your thoughts To spare me the labour of 15. All our particular Mercies repeating them look back to Chap. 3. Dir. 14. Think of that mercy which brought you into the world and chose your Parents your place and your condition which brought you up and bore with you patiently in all your sins and closely warned you of every danger which seasonably afflicted you and seasonably delivered you and heard your Prayers in many a distress which hath yet kept the worst of you from death and Hell and hath Regenerated justified adopted and sanctified those that he hath fitted for eternal life How many sins he hath forgiven How many he hath in part subdued How many and suitable helps he hath vouchsafed you From how many Enemies he hath saved you how oft he hath delighted you by his word and grace what comforts you have had in his Servants and ordinances in your relations and callings His mercies are innumerable and yet do your meditations want matter to supply them If I should but recite the words of David in many thankful Psalms you would think Mercy found his Thoughts employment § 16. Direct 16. Foresee that exact and righteous judgement which shortly you have to undergo Direct 16. and it will do much to find you employment for your thoughts A man that must give an account to 16. The account at Judgement God of all that he hath done both good and evil and knoweth not how soon for ought he knows before to morrow me thinks should find him something better than vanity to think on Is it nothing to be ready for so great a day To have your justification ready your accounts made up Your Consciences cleansed and quietted on good grounds To know what answer to make for your selves against the accuser To be clear and sure that you are indeed Regenerate and have a part in Christ and are washed in his blood and reconciled to God and shall not prove hypocrites and self-deceivers in that trying day when it is a sentence that must finally decide the question whether we shall be saved or damned and must determine us to Heaven or Hell for ever and you have so short and uncertain a time for your preparation will not this administer matter to your Thoughts If you were going to a Judgement for your lives or all your estates you would think it sufficient to provide you matter for your thoughts by the way How much more this final dreadful judgement § 17. Direct 17. If all this will not serve the turn it 's strange if God call not home your thoughts Direct 17. by sharp afflictions and methinks the improvement of them and the removal of them should find some 17. Our Afflictions employment for your thoughts It 's time then to search and try your ways and turn again unto the Lord Lam. 3. 4. To find out the Achan that troubleth your peace and know the voice of the rod and what God is angry at and what it is that he calleth you to mind To know what root it is that beareth these bitter fruits and how they may be sanctified to make you conformable to Christ and partakers of his holiness Heb. 12. 10. Besides the exercise of holy patience and submission there is a great deal of work to be done in sufferings to exercise faith and honour God and the good cause of our suffering and to humble our selves for the evil cause and to get the benefit And if you will not meditate of the Duty you shall meditate of the pain whether you will or not and say as Lam. 3. 17 18 19 20. I forgate prosperity and I said My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord Remembring mine affliction and my misery the wormwood and the gall My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me Put not God to remember you by his spur and help your meditations by so sharp a means Psal. 78. 33 34 35. Therefore did he consume their days in vanity and their years in trouble when he â—lew them then they sought him and they returned and enquired early after God and they remembred that God was their Rock and the high God their Redeemer § 18. Direct 18. Be diligent in your callings and spend no time in idleness and perform your labours Direct 18. with holy minds to the glory of God and in obedience to his commands and then your thoughts will 18. The business of your Calling have the less leisure and liberty for vanity or idleness Employments of the body will employ the Thoughts They that have much to do have much to think on For they must do it prudently and skillfully and carfully that they may do it successfully and therefore must think how to do it And the urgency and necessity of business will almost necessitate the thoughts and so carry them on and find them work Though some employments more than others And let none think that these Thoughts are bad or vain because they are about worldly things For if our Labours themselves be not bad or vain then neither are those thoughts which are needful to the well-doing of our work Nor let any worldling please himself with this and say My thoughts are taken up about my calling For his calling it self is perverted by him and made a carnal work to carnal ends when it should be sanctified That the thoughts about your labours may be good 1. Your Labours themselves must be good performed in obedience to God and for the good of others and to his glory 2. Your Labours and thoughts must keep their bounds and the higher things must be still preferred and sought and thought on in the first place And your Labours must so far employ your thoughts as is needful to the well-doing of them but better things must be thought on in such labours as leave a vacancy to the Thoughts But diligence in your calling is a very great help to keep out sinful thoughts and to furnish us with thoughts which in their place are good § 19. Direct 19. You have all Gods spiritual helps and holy ordinances to feed your meditations Direct 19. and
little harm to most men if they do but by convenient interposed bodily labour keep all the humours in their just temperament when by a sluggish walk now and then instead of labour and sweat they defraud themselves If the world knew but the benefit of TEMPERANCE and LABOUR to the maintaining of mans health and life and the mischiefs of EXCESS of meat and drink and IDLENESS the love of health and life would do that with them which Gods authority will not do § 12. 8. Labour and diligence do keep the mind upon a lawful employment and therefore keep out many dangerous temptations and keep the thoughts from vanity and sin And also keepeth out vain words and preserveth the soul from many sins which a life of idleness and sloth doth cherish It helpeth even unlearned persons more effectually to restrain their thoughts and words from sin than the greatest knowledge and diligent watchfulness can do in an idle kind of life § 13. 9. Diligent labour mortifieth the flesh and keepeth under its luxurious inclinations and subdueth that pride and lust and brutish sensuality which is cherished by an idle life § 34. 10. Lastly It is Gods appointed means for the getting of our daily bread And as it is a more reall honour to get our bread our selves than to receive it by the gift of our friends or Parents so is it more comfortable to a well informed mind We may best believe that we have our food and provisions in mercy and that they shall be blest to us when we have them in Gods appointed way who hath said If any man will not work neither should be eat 2 Thess. 3. § 15. Direct 2. As labour is thus necessary so understand how needful a stated Calling is for the Direct 2. right performance of your labours A Calling is a stated ordinary course of labour This is very needful for these Reasons 1. Out of a Calling a mans labours are but occasional or unconstant and so more time is spent in idleness than in labour 2. A man is best skilled in that which he is used to 3. And he will be best provided for it with instruments and necessaries 4. Therefore he doth it better than he could do an other work and so wrongeth not others but attaineth more the ends of his labour 5. And he doth it more easily when a man unused and unskilled and unfurnished toyleth himself much in doing little 6. And he will do his work more orderly when another is in continual confusion and his business knoweth not its time and place but one part contradicts another Therefore some certain Calling or Trade of life is best for every man § 16. Quest. 1. May not a man have a Calling consisting of occasional uncertain works Answ. He that Quest. 1. can have no better may do thus so be it they are consistent works which he is able for As a Footman may go of various Errands and a Day-labourer may do many sorts of works But great variety will be a great inconvenience to him § 17. Quest. 2. May a man have divers Trades or Callings at once Answ. Yes no doubt if it be for Quest. 2. the common good or for his own and no injury to any other nor so inconsistent as that one shall make him unfaithful in the other Then God forbids it not The Question Whether a man may change his Calling I answered before Chap. 3. Direct 10. § 18. Direct 3. Think not that a Calling can be lawful when the work of it is sin nor that you or Direct 3. your labour or your gain in an unlawful Calling shall be blest An unlawful act is bad enough But an unlawful Calling is a life of sin To make sin a mans Trade and Work and Living is a most horrid desperate course of life As mercinary Soldiers that for their pay will fight against authority right or innocency and murder men for half a Crown a day and those that live by cheating stealing oppressing whoring or by resetting such or upon the sin of such or of Drunkards Gamesters or other sensual vices which they knowingly and willingly maintain § 19. Direct 4. Think not that because a work is lawful that therefore it is lawful to make a Direct 4. Calling of it It is lawful to jeast in time and measure but not lawful to be a Ieaster as a Trade of life If in some cases it should prove lawful to act a Comoedy or Tragoedy it will not follow that therefore it is lawful to be by Trade a Stage player If a Game at Cards or Dice may be in some cases lawful it follows not that it is lawful to be a Gamester by Trade The like I may say of many others § 20. Direct 5. It is not enough that the work of your Calling be lawful nor that it be necessary Direct 5. but you must take special Care also that it be safe and not very dangerous to your souls The Calling of a Vintner and Ale-seller is lawful and needful and yet it is so very dangerous that unless it be in an extraordinary place or case a man that loveth his soul should be loth to meddle with it if he can have a safer to get his bread by They get so little by sober people and their gain dependeth so much upon mens sin that it is a constant temptation to them to be the maintainers of it And frail man that can so hardly stand on firm ground should be loth for a little money to walk still upon the Ice and to venture his soul in a life of such temptations For its twenty to one but they will prevail § 21. Direct 6. The first and principal thing to be intended in the choice of a Trade or Calling for your Direct 6. selves or children is the service of God and the publick good And therefore caeteris paribus that Calling which most conduceth to the publick good is to be preferred The Callings most useful to the publick good are the Magistrates the Pastors and Teachers of the Church Schoolmasters Physicions Lawyers c. Husbandmen Plowmen Grasiers and Shepheards and next to them are Marriners Clothiers Booksellers Taylors and such other that are employed about things most necessary to mankind And some Callings are employed about matters of so little use as Tobacco-sellers Lace-sellers Feather-makers Periwig-makers and many more such that he that may choose better should be loth to take up with one of these though possibly in it self it may be lawful It is a great satisfaction to an honest mind to spend his life in doing the greatest good he can and a prison and constant calamity to be tyed to spend ones life in doing little good at all to others though he should grow rich by it himself § 22. Direct 7. When two Callings equally conduce to the publick good and one of them hath the Direct 7. advantage of riches and the other is more advantagious
knoweth what he is and what he hath done and what he hath deserved and in what a dangerous case his soul yet standeth must needs have his soul habituated to a humble frame Every penitent soul is vile in its own eyes and doth loath it self for its inward corruptions and actual sins And he that loatheth himself as vile will not be very desirous to have his sinful corruptible body seem fine nor by curious ornaments to attract And no wonder when the light of Nature reduced the serious sort of Philosophers to so plain a Garb no Socrates Zenocrates with almost all the Stâ—icks and Cyâ—â—ks and many of the Academicks and Pythagoreans the eyes of vain spectators How oft have I seen a proud vain Gallant suddenly cast off their bravery and gawdy gay attire and clothe themselves in plainness and sobriety as soon as God hath but opened their eyes and humbled their souls for sin and made them better know themselves and brought them home by true Repentance So that the next week they have not seemed the same persons And this was done by meer Humiliation without any arguments against their fashions or proud â—ttire As old Mr. Dod said when one desired him to preach against long hair Preach them once to Christ and true Repentance and they will cut their hair without our preaching against it As Pride would be seen in Proud apparel so humility will appear in a dress like it self though it desire not to be seen Maâ—k 1 Pet. 3. 3 4 5. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair or of wearing of Gold or of putting on of apparel that is curious dressing for adorning the body beyond plain simplicity of attire But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet Spirit which in the sight of God is of great price For after this manner that is with inward Holiness and outward plainness in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection to their own husbands O that God would print those words upon your hearts 1 Pet. 5. 5. Yea all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility For God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble Plainness among Christians is a greater honour than fine clothing Jam. 2. 2 3 4 5. 1 Tim. 2. 9 10. In like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefasteness and sobriety not with broidered hair or Gold or Pearl or costly array but which becometh women professing godliness with good works I intreat those that are addicted to bravery or curiosity to read Isa. 3. from ver 16. to the end § 21. Direct 12. Make not too great a matter of your clothing but use it with such indifferency as a Direct 12. thing so indifferent should be used Set not your hearts upon it For that is a worse sign that the excess in it self Take no thought wherewith ye shall be cloathed but remember how God clotheth the Lillies of the field Matth 6. 28. If you have food and rayment be therewith content though it be never so plain 1 Tim. 6. 8. § 22. Direct 13. Be not too censorious of others for different fashions of apparel Be as plain and Direct 13. modest your selves as you can But lay no greater stress on the fashions of others than there is cause If they be grosly impudent disown such fashions and seek to reform them But to carp at every one that goeth â—â—â—â—â— than your selves or to censure them as proud because their fashions are not like yours may be of worse signification than the fashions you find fault with I have oft observed more pride in such censures than I could observe in the fashions which they censured When you have your eye upon every fashion that is not according to your breeding or the custom of your rank or place and are presently branding such as proud or vain it sheweth an arrogant mind that steppeth up in the judgement seat and sentenceth those that you have nothing to do with before they are heard or you know their reasons Perhaps their fashion was as common among the modest sort where they have lived as your fashion is among those that you have converst with Custom and common opinion do put much of the signification upon fashions of apparel I Should next have given you special Directions about the Using of your Estates about your Of the proportion of our Estates to be given see my Letter to Mr. Goâ—ge Dwellings about your Meat and Drink and about your Honour or good Name But being loth the Book should prove too tedious I shall refer you to what is said before against Covetousness Pride and Gluttony c. and what is said before and after of Works of Charity and Family-Government AS to Sacred Habits and the different Garbs Laws Orders of Life Dyet c. of those called Religious Orders among the Papists Regular and Secular whether and how far such are lawful or sinful they are handled so largely in the Controversies of Protestants and Papists that I shall pass them by Only remembring the words of the Clergy of Ravenna to Carolus Iunior King of France inter Epist. Hincmari Rhemensis Discernendi à plebe vel caeteris sumus doctrina non veste conversatione non habitu mentis puritate non cultu Docendi enim potius sunt populi quam ludendi nec imponendum est eorum oculis sed mentibus praecepta sunt infundenda The End of the first Tome A Christian Directory Or A SUMM of PRACTICAL DIVINITY THE SECOND PART VIZ. Christian Oeconomicks OR THE FAMILY DIRECTORY Containing Directions for the true Practice of all Duties belonging to Family Relations with the Appurtenances By RICHARD BAXTER Josh. 24. 15. And if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord choose you this day whom you will serve But as for Me and my House we will serve the Lord. Deut. 6. 6 7 8. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy Children and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy House and when thou walkest by the way and when thou lyest down and when thou risest up c. Dan. 6. 10. When Daniel knew that the Writing was signed he went into his House and his Window being open in his Chamber towards Jerusalem he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and Prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime Acts 10. 1. 2. Cornelius a devout man and One that feared God with all his House which gave much Alms to the people and Prayed to God alwayes Ephes. 6. 4. Ye Fathers provoke not your Children to wrath but bring them up in the Nurture and Admonition of the Lord. Psal. 101. 6 7. He that walketh in a perfect way
Rich men may want great sums or larger provisions which the poor can easily be without And their condition lifting them up to greater pride doth torment them with greater discontents How few in all the world that have families are content with their estates § 24. 4. Hereupon a married life containeth far more temptations to worldliness or covetousness than a single state doth For when you think you need more you will desire more And when you find all too little to satisfie those that you provide for you will measure your estate by their desires and be apt to think that you have never enough Birds and Beasts that have young ones to provide for are most hungry and rapacious You have so many now to scrape for that you will think you are still in want It is not only till Death that you must now lay up but you must provide for children that survive you And while you take them to be as your selves you have two Generations now to make provisions for And most men are as Covetous for their posterity as if it were for themselves § 25. 5. And hereupon you are hindred from works of Charity to others Wife and Children are the devouring gulf that swalloweth all If you had but your selves to provide for a little would serve And you could deny your own desires of unnecessary things and so might have plentiful provision for good works But by that time Wife and Children are provided for and all their importunate desires satisfied there is nothing considerable left for pious or charitable uses Lamentable experience proclaimeth this § 26. 6. And hereby it appeareth how much a married state doth ordinarily hinder men from honouring their profession It is their vows of single life that hath occasioned the Papists to do so many works of publick charity as is boasted of for the honour of their Sect For when they have no Children to bequeath it to and cannot keep it themselves it is easie for them to leave it to such uses as will pacifie their Consciences most and advance their names And if it should prove as good a work and as acceptable to God to educate your own Children piously for his service as to relieve the children of the poor yet is it not so much regarded in the world nor bringeth so much honour to Religion One hundred pound given to the poor shall more advance the repution of your liberality and virtue than a thousand pound given to your own children though it be with as pious an end to train them up for the service of the Church And though this is inconsiderable as your own honour is concerned in it yet it is considerable as the honour of Religion and the good of souls is concerned in it § 27. 7. And it is no small patience which the natural imbecility of the female sex requireth you to prepare Except it be very few that are patient and manlike women are commonly of potenâ— fantasies and tender passionate impatient spirits easily cast into anger or jealousie or discontent and of weak understandings and therefore unable to reform themselves They are betwixt a man and a child Some few have more of the man and many have more of the child but most are but in a middle state Weakness naturally inclineth persons to be froward and hard to please as we see in children old people and sick persons They are like a sore distempered body You can scarce touch them but you hurt them With too many you can scarce tell how to speak or look but you displease them If you should be very well verst in the art of pleasing and set your selves to it with all your care as if you made it your very business and had little else to do yet it would put you hard to it to please some weak impatient persons if not quite surpass your ability and skill And the more you love them the more grievous it will be to see them still in discontents aweary of their condition and to hear the clamorous expressions of their disquiet minds Nay the very multitude of words that very many are addicted to doth make some mens lives a continual burden to them Mark what the Scripture saith Prov. 21. 9. It is better to dwell in a corner of the house top than with a brawling woman in a wide house Vers. 19. It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman So 25. vers 24. And Prov. 27. 15. A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike Eccles. 7. 28. One man among a thousand have I found but a woman among all those have I not found § 28. 8. And there is such a meeting of faults and imperfections on both sides that maketh it much the harder to bear the infirmities of others aright If one party only were froward and impatient the stedfastness of the other might make it the more tolerable But we are all sick in some measure of the same disease And when weakness meeteth with weakness and pride with pride and passion with passion it exasperateth the disease and doubleth the suffering And our corruption is such that though our intent be to help one another in our duties yet we are apter far to stir up one anothers distempers § 79. 9. The business care and trouble of a married life is a great temptation to call down our thoughts from God and to divert them from the one thing necessary Luk. 10. 42. and to distract the mind and make it indisposed to holy duty and to serve God with a divided heart as if we served him not How hard is it to pray or meditate with any serious fervency when you come out of a crowd of cares and businesses Hear what St. Paul saith 1 Cor. 7. 7 8. For I would that all men were as I my self I say to the unmarried and the widows It is good for them if they abide even as I. 26 27 28. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress that it is good fâ—r a man so to be such shall have trouble in the flesh 32 33. But I would have you be without carefulness He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord how he may please the Lord But he that is married careth for the things of the world how he may please his wife 34 35. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and in Spirit but she that is married careth for the things of the world how she may please her husband And this I speak for your own profit not that I may cast a snare upon you but for that which is comely and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction 37 38. He that standeth stedfast in his heart having no necessity but hath power over his own will and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his
beg his guidance and his blessing and run not without him nor before him Reckon upon the worst and foresee all temptations which would diminish your affections or make you unfaithful to each other and see that you be fortified against them all § 57. Direct 11. Be sure that God be the ultimate end of your marriage and that you principally Direct 11. choose that state of life that in it you may be most serviceable to him and that you heartily devote your selves and your families unto God that so it may be to you a sanctified condition It is nothing but making God our Guide and End that can sanctifie our state of life They that unfeignedly follow Gods counsel and aim at his Glory and do it to please him will find God owning and blessing their relation But they that do it principally to please the flesh to satisfie lust and to increase their estates and to have Children surviving them to receive the fruits of their Pride and Covetousness can expect to reap no better than they sow and to have the Flesh the World and the Devil the masters of their family according to their own desire and choice § 58. Direct 12. At your first conjunction and through the rest of your lives remember the Direct 12. day of your separation And think not that you you are settling your selves in a state of Rest or felicity or continuance but only assuming a companion in your travels Whether you live in a married or an unmarried life remember that you are hasting to the everlasting life where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage You are going as fast to another world in one state of life as in the other 1 Cor â— 29 30. You are but to help each other in your way that your journey may be the easier to you and that you may happily meet again in the Heavenly Hierusalem When worldlings marry they take it for a settling themselves in the world And as Regenerate persons begin the world anew by beginning to lay up a treasure in Heaven so worldlings call their Marriage their beginning the world because then as engaged servants to the world they set themselves to seek it with greater diligence than ever before They do but in marriage begin as seekers that life of foolery which when he had found what he sought that Rich man ended Luk. 12. 19 20. with a This I will do I will pull down my barnes and build greater and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods And I will say to my soul Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thine ease eat drink and be merry But God said unto him Thou fool this night shall thy soul be required of thee then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided If you would not dy such fools do not marry and live such worldlings Tit. 2. Cases of Marriage Quest. 1. WHat should one follow as a certain Rule about the prohibited degrees of Consanguinity or Quest. 1. affinity Seeing 1. The Law of Moses is not in force to us 2. And if it were it is very The case of Pâ—lâ—gamy is â—â— fully and â—â—ainly resolved by Christ that I take it not to be necessary to decide it especially while the Law of the Land doth make it death dark Whether it may by parity of reason be extended to more degrees than are named in the text 3. And seeing the Law of nature is so hardly legible in this case Answ. 1. It is certain that the prohibited degrees are not so statedly and universally unlawful as that such marriage may not be made lawful by any necessity For Adams sons did lawfully marry their own Sisters 2. But now the world is peopled such necessities as will warrant such marriages must needs be very rare and such as we are never like to meet with 3. The Law of nature is it which prohibiteth the degrees that are now unlawful And though this Law be dark as to some degrees it is not so as to others 4. The Law of God to the Jews Lev. 18. doth not prohibit those degrees there named because of any reason proper to the Jews but as an exposition of the Law of nature and so on reasons common to all 5. Therefore though the Jewish Law cease yea never bound other nations formally as that political national Law yet as it was Gods exposition of his own Law of nature it is of use and consequential obligation to all men even to this day For if God once had told but one man This is the sence of the Law of nature it remaineth true and all must believe it and then the Law of nature it self so expounded will still oblige 6. The world is so wide for choice and a necessity of doubtful marriage is so rare and the trouble so great that prudence telleth every one that it is their sin without flat necessity to marry in a doubtful degree And therefore it is thus safest to avoid all degrees that seem to be equal to those named Lev. 18. and to have the same reason though they be not named 7. But because it is not certain that indeed the unnamed cases have the same reason while God doth not acquaint us with all the reasons of his Law therefore when the thing is done we must not censure others too deeply nor trouble our selves too much about those unnamed doubtful cases We must avoid them before hand because else we shall cast our selves into doubts and troubles unnecessarily But when it is past the case must be considered of as I shall after open Quest. 2. What if the Law of the Land forbid more or fewer degrees than Lev. 18. doth Quest. 2. Answ. If it forbid fewer the rest are nevertheless to be avoided as forbidden by God If it forbid more the forbdiden ones must be avoided in obedience to our Rulers Quest. 3. Is the marriage of Cousin Germanes that is of brothers children or sisters children or brothers Quest. 3. and sisters children unlawful Answ. I think not 1. Because not forbidden by God 2. Because none of that same rank are forbidden that is none that on both sides are two degrees from the Root I refer the Reader for my Reasons to a Latin Treatise of Charles Butler on this Subject for in those I rest As all the Children of Noahs Sons did marry their Cousin Germanes for they could not marry in any remoter degree so have others since without reproof and none are forbidden 3. But it is safest to do otherwise because there is choice enough beside and because many Divines being of the contrary opinion may make it matter of scruple and trouble afterwards to those that venture upon it without need Quest. 4. What would you have thâ—se do that have married Cousin Germanes and now doubt whether it Quest. 4. be lawful so to do Answ. I would have them cast away such doubts
to your souls and bodies to be bred too high and fed too full and daintily than to be bred too low and fed too hardly One tendeth to pride and gluttony and wantonness and the overthrow of health and life and the other tendeth to a humble mortified self-denying life and to the health and soundness of the body Remember how the earth opened and swallowed all those rebellious murmurers that grudged against Moses and Aaron Num. 16. Read it and apply it to your case And remember the story of rebellious Absâ—lom and the folly of the Prodigal Luke 15. and desire not to be at your own dispose nor be not eager to have the vain desires of your hearts fulfilled While you contentedâ—y submit to your Parents you are in Gods way and may expect his blessing but when you will needs be Carvers for your selves you may expect the punishment of Rebels § 5. Direct 5. Humble your selves and submit to any labour that your Parents shall appoint you to Direct 5. Take heed as you love your souls lest either a proud heart make you murmur and say This work is too low and base a drudgery for me Or lest a lazy mind and body make you say This work is too hard and toilsome for me Or lest a foolish playful mind do make you weary of your Book or labour that you may be at your sports and say This is too tedious for me It is little or no hurt that is like to befall you by your labour and diligence but it is a dangerous thing to get a habit or custome of idlâ—ness and voluptuousness in your youth § 6 Direct 6. Be willing and thankful to be instructed by your Parents or any of your Teachers but Direct 6. especially about the fear of God and the matters of your salvation These are the matters that you are born and live for These are the things that your Parents have first in charge to teach you Without knowledge and hâ—liness all the riches and honours of the world are nothing worth and all your pleasures Read Mâ— Tâ—o Wâ—iâ—s 〈…〉 e book for â—ittle Children Maâ— 9 36. 1â— 14. 16. will but undo you O what a comfort is it to understanding Parents to see their children willing to learn and to love the Word of God and lay it up in their hearts and talk of it and obey it and prepare betime for everlasting life If such children die before their Parents how joyfully may they part with them as into the arms of Christ who hath said that of such is the Kingdom of Heaven Matth. 19. 14. And if the Parents die first how joyfully may they leave behind them a holy seed that is like to serve God in their generation and to follow them to Heaven and live with them for ever But whether they live or die what a hear-breaking to the Parents are ungodly children that love not the word and way of God and love not to be taught or restrained from their own licentious courses § 7. Direct 7. Patiently submit to the correction which your Parents lay upon you Consider that Direct 7. God hath commanded them to do it and that to save your souls from Hell and that they hate you if they correct you not when there is cause and that they must not spare for your crying Prov 13. 24. 22. 15. 29. 15. 23. 13 14. 19. 18 It is not their delight but for your own necessity Avoid the fault and you may escape the correction How much rather had your Parents see you obedient than hear you cry It is not long of them but of your selves that you are corrected Be angry with your selves and not with them It is a wicked child that instead of being better by correction will hate his Parents for it and so grow worse Correction is a means of Gods own appointment and therefore go to God on your knees in prayer and intreat him to bless and sanctifie it to you that it may do you good § 8. Direct 8. Choose not your own company but use such company as by your Parents is appointed Direct 8. you Bad company is the first undoing of a Child When for the love of sport you choose such play-fellows as are idle and licentious and disobedient and will teach you to curse and swear and lie and talk filthily and draw you from your Book or duty this is the Devils High-way to Hell Your Parents are fittest to choose your company § 9. Direct 9. Choose not your own Calling or Trade of life without the choice or consent of your Parents Direct 9. You may tell them what you are most inclined to but it belongeth more to them than to you to make the choice And it is your part to bring your wills to theirs Unless your Parents choose a Calling for you that is unlawful and then you may with humble submissiveness refuse it But if it be only inconvenient you have liberty afterward to change it for a better if you can when you are from under their dispose and government § 10. Direct 10. Marry not without your Parents consent Nay if it may be let their choice determine Direct 10. first of the person and not your own Unexperienced youth doth choose by fancy and passion when your experienced Parents will choose by judgement But if they would force you to joyn your selves to such as are ungodly and like to make your lives either sinful or miserable you may humbly refuse them But you must remain unmarried while by the use of right means you can live in chastity till your Parents are in a better mind But if indeed you have a flat necessity of marrying and your Parents will consent to none but one of a false Religion or one that is utterly unfit for you in such a case they forfeit their authority in that point which is given them for your edification and not for your destruction And then you should advise with other friends that are more wise and faithful But if you suffer your fond affections to contradict your Parents wills and pretend a necessity that you cannot change your affections as if your folly were uncurable this is but to enter sinfully into that state of life which should have been sanctified to God that he might have blest it to you § 11. Direct 11. If your Parents be in want it is your duty to relieve them according to your ability Direct 11. yea and wholly to maintain them if there be need For it is not possible by all that you can do that ever you can be on even terms with them or even requite them for what you have received of them It is base inhumanity when Parents come to poverty for children to put them off with some short allowance and to make them live almost like their servants when you have riches and plenty for your selves Your Parents should still be maintained by
Mr. Perkins and Mr. Boltons Works and many the like § 5 Direct 5. Next these read over those Books which are more suited to the state of young Christians for their growth in grace and for their exercise of Faith and Love and Obedience and for the mortifying of selfishness pride sensuality worldliness and other the most dangerous sins My own on this subject are my Directions for weak Christians my Saints Rest a Treatise of Self-denyal another of the Mischiefs of Self-ignorance Life of Faith of Crucifying the World the Unreasonableness of Infidelity of Right Rejoycing c. To this use these are excellent Mr. Hildershams Works Dr. Prestons Mr. Perkins Mr. Boltons Mr. Fenners Mr. Gurnalls Mr. Anthony Burgesses Sermons Mr. Lockier on the Colossiâ—ns with abundance more that God hath blest us with § 6. Direct 6. At the same time labour to methodize your knowledge and to that end read first and Direct 6. learn some short Catechism and then some larger as Mr. Balls or the Assemblies larger and next some Body of Divinity as Amesius his Marrow of Divinity and Cases of Conscience which are Englished And let the Catechisme be kept in memory while you live and the rest be throughly understood § 7. Direct 7. Next read to your selves or families the larger Expositions of the Creed Lords Direct 7. Prayer and Ten Commandments such as Perkins Bishop Andrews on the Commandments and Dod c. that your understanding may be more full particular and distinct and your families may not stop in Generals which are not understood § 8. Direct 8. Read much those Books which direct you in a course of daily communion with God and Direct 8. ordering all your conversations As Mr. Reyners Directions the Practice of Piety Mr. Palmers Mr. Scudders Mr. Boltons Directions and my Divine Life § 9. Direct 9. For Peace and Comfort and encrease of the Love of God read Mr. Symmonds Deserted Direct 9. Soul c. and his Life of Faith All Dr. Sibbs Works Mr. Harsnets Cordials Bishop Halls Works c. my Method for Peace and Saints Rest c. § 10. Direct 10. For the understanding of the Text of Scripture keep at hand either Deodates or Direct 10. the Assembly of Divines or the Dutch Annotations with Dr. Hammonds or Dicksons and Hutchinsons brief Observations § 11. Direct 11. For securing you against the Feavor of uncharitable Zeal and Schism and contentious Direct 11. wranglings and erâ—elties for Religion sake read diligently Bishop Halls Peacemaker and other of his Books Mr. Burroughs Irenicon Acontius Stratagems of Satan and my Catholick Unity Catholick Church Universal Concord c. § 12. Direct 12. For establishing you against Popery on the soundest grounds not running in the Direct 12. contrary extream read Dr. Challoners Credo Ecclesiam c. Chillingworth Dr. Field of the Church c. and my True Catholick and my Key for Catholicks and my Safe Religion and Winding-sheet for Popery and Disputation with Mr. Johnson § 13. Direct 13. For special preparation for affliction sufferings sickness death read Mr. Hughs Direct 13. Rod Mr. Lawrence Christs power over sicknesses Mr. S. Rutherfords Letters c. my Treatise of Self-denyal The Believers Last Work the Last Enemy Death and the fourth Part of my Saints Rest. I will add no more lest they seem too many CHAP. XXII Directions for the right Teaching of Children and Servants so as may be most likely to have success I Here suppose them utterly untaught that you have to do with and therefore shall direct you what to do from the very first beginning of your Teaching and their learning And I beseech you study this Chapter more than many of the rest for it is an unspeakable loss that befalls the Church and the souls of men for want of skill and will and diligence in Parents and Masters in this matter § 1 Direct 1. Cause your younger Children to learn the words though they be not yet capable of Direct 1. understanding the matter And do not think as some do that this is but to make them Hypocrites and to teach them to take Gods Name in vain For it is neither Vanity nor Hypocrisie to help them first to understand the words and signs in order to their early understanding of the matter and signification Otherwise no man might teach them any language nor teach them to read any words that be good because they must first understand the words before the meaning If a child learn to read in a Bible it is not taking Gods Name or Word in vain though he understand it not For it is in order to his learning to understand it And it is not vain which is to so good a Use If you leave them untaught till they come to be twenty years of age they must then learn the words before they can understand the matter Do not therefore leave them the children of darkness for fear of makeing them hypocrites It will be an excellent way to redeem their Time to teach them first that which they are capable of learning A child of five or six years old can learn the words of a Catechisme or Scripture before they are capable of understanding them And then when they come to years of understanding that part of their work is done and they have nothing to do but to study the meaning and use of those words which they have learnt already Whereas if you leave them utterly untaught till then they must then be wasting a long time to learn the same words which they might have learnt before And the loss of so much time is no small loss or sin § 2. Direct 2. The most natural way of teaching children the Meaning of Gods Word and the Direct 2. Matters of their salvation is by familiar talk with them suited to their capacities Begin this betimes with them while they are on their Mothers laps and use it frequently For they are quickly capable of some understanding about greater matters as well as about less And knowledge must come in by slow degrees Stay not till their minds are prepossest with vanity and toyes Prov. 22. 6. § 3. Direct 3. By all means let your children learn to read though you be never so poor whatever Direct 3. shift you make And if you have servants that cannot read let them learn yet at spare hours if they be of any capacity and willingness For it is a very great mercy to be able to read the holy Scripture and any good Books themselves and a very great misery to know nothing but what they hear from others They may read almost at any time when they cannot hear § 4. Direct 4. Let your children when they are little ones read much the History of the Scriptures Direct 4. For though this of it self is not sufficient to breed in them any saving knowledge yet it enticeth them to delight in reading the Bible and then they
and Sanctifier of souls and in what order he doth all this by the Ministry of the Word 12. In the next open to them the office and use and duty of the ordinary Ministry and their duty toward them especially as Hearers and the nature and use of publick Worship and the nature and Communion of Saints and Churches 13. In the next open to them the Nature and use of Bâ—pâ—ism and the Lords Supper 14. In the next open to them the shortness of life and the state of souls at death and after death and the day of Judgement and the Justification of the Righteous and the Condemnation of the wicked at that day 15. In the next open to them the Joyes of Hâ—aven and the miseries of the damned 16. In the next open to them the vanity of all the pleasure and profits and honour of this World and the method of Temptations and how to overcome them 17. In the next open to them the reason and use of suffering for Christ and of self denyal and how to prepare for sickness and death And after this go over also the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments § 13. Direct 13. After all your instructions make them briefly give you an account in their own Direct 13. words of what they understand and remember of all or else the next time to give account of the fâ—rmer And encourage them for all that is well done in their endeavours § 14. Direct 14. Labour in all to keep up a â—akened serious attention and still to print upon their Direct 14. hearts the greatest things And to that end For the Matter of your teaching and discourse let nothing be so much in your mouths as 1. The Nature and Relations of God 2. A Crucified and a Glorified Christ with all his grace and priviledges 3. The operations of the spirit on the soul. 4. The madness of sinners and the vanity of the world 5. And endless Glory and Joy of Saints and misery of the ungodly after death Let these five points be frequently urged and be the life of all the rest of your discourse And then for the Manner of your speaking to them let it be alwayes with such a mixture of familiarity and seriousness that may carry along their serious attentions whether they will or no Speak to them as if they or you were dying and as if you saw God and Heaven and Hell § 15. Direct 15. Take each of them sometime by themselves and there describe to them the work Direct 15. of Renovation and ask them whether ever such a work was wrought upon them Shew them the true Marks of Grace and help them to try themselves Urge them to tell you truly whether their Love to God or the Creature to Heaven or Earth to Holiness or Flesh-pleasing be more and what it is that hath their hearts and care and chief endeavour And if you find them regenerate help to strengthen them If you find them too much dejected help to Comfort them And if you find them unregenerate help to convince them and then to humble them and then to shew them the remedy in Christ and then shew them their duty that they may have part in Christ and drive all home to the end that you desire to see But do all this with Love and gentleness and privacy § 16. Direct 16. Some pertinent Questions which by the answer will engage them to teach themselves Direct 16. or to judge themselves will be sometimes of very great use As such as these Do you not know that you must shortly dye Do you not believe that immediately your souls must enter upon an endless life of joy or misery Will worldly wealth and honours or fleshly pleasures be pleasant to you then Had you then rather be a Saint or an ungodly sinner Had you not then rather be one of the holiest that the World despised and abused than one of the greatest and richest of the wicked When Time is past and you must give account of it had you not then rather it had been spent in holiness and obedience and diligent preparation for the life to come than in pride and pleasure and pampering the flesh How could you make shift to forget your endless life so long Or to sleep quietly in an unregenerate state What if you had died before conversion what think you had become of you and where had you now been Do you think that any of those in Hell are glad that they were ungodly or have now any pleasure in their former merriments and sin What think you would they do if it were all to do again Do you think if an Angel or Saint from Heaven should come to decide the Controversie between the Godly and the Wicked that he would speak against a Holy and Heavenly life or plead for a loose and fleshly life or which side think you he would take Did not God know what he did when he made the Scriptures Is he or an ungodly scorner to be more regarded Do you think every man in the World will not wish at last that he had been a Saint what ever it had cost him Such kind of Questions urge the Conscience and much convince § 17. Direct 17. Cause them to learn some one most plain and pertinent text for every great Direct 17. and necessary duty and against every great and dangerous sin and often to repeat them to you As Luk. 13. 3 5. Except ye Repent ye shall all perish Joh. 3. 5. Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven So Mat. 18. 3. Rom. 8. 9. Heb. 18. 14. Ioh. 3. 16 Luk. 18. 1 c. So against lying swearing taking Gods name in vain flesh-pleasing Gluttony pride and the rest § 18. Direct 18. Drive all your Convictions to a Resolution of Endeavour and amendment and Direct 18. make them sometime promise you to do that which you have convinced them of And sometimes before witnesses But let it be done with these necessary Cautions 1. That you urge not a promise in any doubtful point or such as you have not first convinced them of 2. That you urge not a promise in things beyond their present strength As you must not bid them promise you to Believe or to Love God or to be tender-hearted or heavenly-minded but to do those duties which tend to these as to hear the Word or read or pray or meditate or keep good company or avoid temptations c. 3. That you be not too often upon this or upon one and the same strain in the other methods lest they take them but for words of course and custome teach them to contemn them But seasonably and prudently done their promises will lay a great engagement on them § 19. Direct 19. Teach them how to pray by formes or without as is most suitable to their â—ase and Direct 19. parts And either your self or
be guilty of the blood and calamities of an unjust War that a wise man will rather be abused as a Neuter than run himself into the danger of such â— case § 4. Direct 4. When Necessity forceth you to go forth in a just War do it with such humiliation Direct 4. and unwillingness as beseemeth one that is a Patient a Spectator and an Actor in one of the sorest of Gods temporal judgements Go not to kill men as if you went to a Cock-fight or a Bear-baiting Make not a sport of a common calamity Be not insensible of the displeasure of God expressed in so great a judgement What a sad condition is it to your selves to be imployed in destroying others If they be good how sad a thought is it that you must kill them If they are wicked how sad is it that by killing them you cut off all their hopes of mercy and send them suddenly to Hell How sad an employment is it to spoil and undo the poor inhabitants where you come To cast them into terrors to deprive them of them of that which they have long been labouring for To prepare for famine and be like a consuming pestilence where you come Were it but to see such desolations it should melt you into compassion much more to be the executioners your selves How unsuitable a work is it to the grace of Love Though I doubt not but it is a service which the Love of God our Countrey and our Rulers may sometimes justifie and command yet as to the Rulers and Masters of the business it must be a very clear and great necessity that can warrant a War And as to the Souldiers they must needs go with great regret to kill men by thousands whom they Love as themselves He that Loveth his neighbour as himself and blesseth and doeth good to his persecuting enemy will take it heavily to be employed in killing him even when necessity maketh it his duty But the greatest calamity of War is the perniciousness of it to mens souls Armies are commonly that to the soul as a City infected with the Plague is to the body The very Nurseries and Academies of pride and cruelty and drunkenness and whoredome and robbery and licentiousness and the bane of Piety and common Civility and Humanity Not that every Souldier cometh to this pass the hottest Pestilence killeth not all But O how hard is it to keep up a life of faith and godliness in an Army The greatness of their business and of their fears and cares doth so wholly take up their minds and talk that there is scarce any room found for the matters of their souls though unspeakably greater They have seldome leisure to hear a Sermon and less to pray The Lords Day is usually taken up in matters that concern the lives and therefore can pretend necessity So that it must be a very resolute confirmed vigilant person that is not alienated from God And then it is a course of life which giveth great opportunity to the Tempter and advantage to temptations both to errors in judgement and vitiousness of heart and life He that never tryed it can hardly conceive how difficult it is to keep up piety and innocency in an Army If you will suppose that there is no difference in the Cause or the Ends and Accidents I take it to be much more desirable to serve God in a Prison than in an Army and that the condition of a Prisoner hath far less in it to tempt the foolish or to afflict the wise than a military Excepting those whose life in Garrisons and lingring Wars doth little differ from a state of peace I am not simply against the lawfulness of War Nor as I conceive Erasmus himself though he saw the sinfulness of that sort of men and use to speak truly of the horrid wickedness and misery of them that thirst for blood or rush on Wars without necessity But it must be a very extraordinary Army that is not constituted of Wolves and Tygers and is not unto common honesty and piety the same that a Stews or Whore-house is to chastity And O how much sweeter is the work of an honest Physicion that saveth And though I ignore not that it is a much more fashionable and celebrated practice in young Gentlemen to kill men than to cure them and that mistaken mortals think it to be the noblest exercise of vâ—rtue to destroy the noblest workmanship of nature and indeed in some few cases the requisiteness and danger of destructive vaâ—ouâ— may makâ— its actions become a virtuous Patriot yet when I consider the character given of our great Master and Exemâ—lar that he went ab uâ— doing good and healing all manner of sicknesses I cannot but think such an employment worthy of the very noblest of lâ—â— Discipâ—es Mr. Boyles Experiment Philos p. 303 304. mens lives than of a Souldier whose vertue is shewed in destroying them Or a Carpenters or Masons that adorneth Cities with comely buildings than a Souldiers that consumeth them by fire § 5. Direct 5. Be sure first that your cause be better than your lives and then resolve to venture Direct 5. your lives for them It is the hazarding of your Lives which in your Calling you undertake And therefore be not unprepared for it but reckon upon the worst and be ready to undergo what ever you undertake A Souldiers life is unfit for one that dare not dye A Coward is one of the most pernicious murderers He verifieth Christs saying in another sense He that saveth his life shall lose it While men stand to it it is usually but few that dye because they quickly daunt the enemy and keep him on the defensive part But when once they rowt and run away they are slain on heaps and fall like leaves in a windy Autumn Every Coward that pursueth them is emboldned by their fear and dare run them through or shoot them behind that durst not so near have looked them in the face and maketh it his sport to kill a fugitive or one that layeth down his weapons that would flye himself from a daring presence Your cowardly fear betrayeth the cause of your King and Countrey It betrayeth the lives of your fellow Souldiers while the running of a few affrighted dastards lets in ruine upon all the rest And it casteth away your own lives which you think to save If you will be Souldiers resolve to conquer or to dye It is not so much skill or strength that conquereth as boldness It is Fear that loseth the day and fearlesness that winneth it The Army that standeth to it getteth the Victory though they fight never so weakly For if you will not run the enemy will And if the lives of a few be lost by courage it usually saveth the lives of many Though wisdom still is needful in the Conduct And if the cause be not worth your lives you should not meddle with it § 6. Direct 6. Resolve
Quest. 7. Answ. No not by private assault or violence But if the crime be so great that the Law of the Land doth punish it with death if that Law be just you may in some cases seek to bring the offendor to publick justice But that is rare and otherwise you may not do it For 1. It belongeth only to the Magistrate and not to you to be the avenger 2. And killing a man can be no meet defence against calumny or slander For if you will kill a man for prevention you kill the innocent If you kill him afterward it is no Defence but an unprofitable revenge which vindicateth not your honour but dishonoureth you more Your patience is your honour and your bloody revenge doth shew you to be so like the Devil the destroyer that it is your greatest shame 3. It is odious Pride which maketh men over-value their reputation among men and think that a mans life is a just compensation to them for their dishonour Such bloody Sacrifices are fit to appâ—ase only the blood-thirsty Spirit But what is it that Pride will not do and justifie CHAP. XI Special Directions to escape the guilt of persecuting Determining also the case about Liberty in matters of Religion THough this be a subject which the guilty cannot endure to hear of yet the misery of persecutors the blood and grones and ruines of the Church and the lamentable divisions of profâ—ssed Christians do all command me not to pass it by in silence but to tell them the truth whether they will hear or whether they will forbear though they were such as Ezek. 3. 7 8 9 11. § 1. Direct 1. If you would escape this dreadful guilt Understand well what Persecution is Else Direct 1. you may either run into it ignorantly or oppose a duty as if it were persecution § 2. The Verb Persequor is often taken in a good sence for no more than continuato motu vel ad extremum sequor and sometime for the blameless prosecution of a delinquent But we take it here as the English word Persecute is most commonly taken for inimico affectu insequor for a malicious or injurious hurting or prosecuting another and that for the sake of Religion or Righteousness For it is not common injuries which we here intend to speak of Three things then go to make up Persecution 1. That it be the Hurting of another in his Body liberty relations estate or reputation 2. That it be done injuriously to one who deserveth it not in the particular which is the cause 3. That it be for the cause of Religion or of Righteousness that is for the Truth of God which we hold or utter or for the worship of God which we perform or for obedience to the will of God revealed in his Laws This is the cause on the sufferers part what ever is intended by the Persecuter § 3. There are divers sorts of Persecution As to the Principles of the Persecutors 1. There is a Persecution which is openly professed to be for the cause of Religion As Heathens and Mahometans persecute Christians as Christians And there is an Hypocritical Persecution when the pretended cause is some odious crime but the real cause is mens Religion or obedience to God This is the common Persecution which nominal Christians exercise on serious Christians or on one another They will not say that they Persecute them because they are Godly or serious Christians but that is the true cause For if they will but set them above God and obey them against God they will abate their Persecution Many of the Heathens thus persecuted the Christians too under the name of Ungodly and evil doers But the true cause was because they obeyed not their commands in the Worshipping of their Idol Gods So do the Papists persecute and murder men not as Professours of the truth which is the true cause but under the name of Hereticks and Schâ—smaticks or Rebels against the Pope or what ever their malice pleaseth to accuse them of And prophane nominal Christians seldome persecute the serious and sincere directly by that name but under some Nickname which they set upon them or under the name of Hypocrites or self-conceited or factious persons or such like And if they live in a place and Age where there are many Civil Wars or differences they are sure to fetch some odious name or accusation thence Which side soever it be that they are on or if they meddle not on any side they are sure by every party whom they please not to hear Religion loaded with such reproaches as the times will allow them to vent against it Even the Papists who take this course with Protestants it seems by Acosta are so used themselves not by the Heathens but by one another yea by the multitude yea by their Priests For so saith he speaking of the Parish Priests Priests among the Indians having reproved their Diceing Carding Hunting Idleness Lib. 4 c. 15. pag. 404 405. Itaque is cui Pastoralis Indorum cura committitur non solum contra diaboli machinas naturae incentiva pugnare debet sed jam etiam confirmatae hominum consuetudini tempore turba praepotenti sese objicere ad excipienda invidorum ac malevolorum tela forte pectus opponere qui siquid à profano suo instituto abhorrentem viderint proditorem hypocritam hostem clamaâ—t that is He therefore to whom the Pastoral care of the Indians is committed must not only fight against the Engines of the Devil and the incentives of nature but also now must object or set himself against the confirmed custome of men which is grown very powerful both by time and by the multitude and must valiantly oppose his breast to receive the darts of the envious and malevolent who if they see any thing contrary to their profane fashion or breeding cry out A Traitor An Hypocrite an Enemy It seems then that this is a common course § 4. 2. Persecution is either done in Ignorance or Knowledge The commonest persecution is that which is done in Ignorance and errour when men think a Good cause to be bad or a bad cause to be good and so persecute Truth while they take it to be falshood or good while they take it to be evil or obtrude by violence their Errours for Truths and their evils as good and necessary things Thus Peter testifieth of the Jews who killed the Prince of life Act. 3. 13 14 17. I know that through Ignorance you did it as did also your Rulers And Paul 1 Cor. 2. 8. which none of the Princes of this world knâ—w for had they known it they would not have Crucified the Lord of glory And Christ himself saith Joh. 16. 3. These things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father or me And Paul saith of himself Act. 26. 9. I thought verily with my self that I ought to do many things contrary to the name
Son and Holy Ghost when they have in Baptism vowed themselves unto his service Of all men on earth these men will have least to say for their sin or against their condemnation § 22. 12. Lastly Remember that Christ taketh all that is done by persecutors against his servants for his cause to be done as to himself and will accordingly in judgement charge it on them So speaketh he to Saul Acts 9. 5 6. Saul Saul why persecutest thou me I am Iesus whom thou persecutest And Matth. 25. 41. to 46. Even to them that did not â—eed and clothe and visit and relieve them he saith Verily I say unto you in as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it not to me What then will he say to them that impoverished and imprisoned them Remember that it is Christ reputatively whom thou dost hate deride and persecute § 23. Direct 3. If you world escape the guilt of persecution the cause and interest of Christ in the Direct 3. world must be truly understood He that knoweth not that Holiness is Christs end and Scripture is his Word and Law and that the Preachers of the Gospel are his messengers and that preaching is his appointed means and that sanctified believers are his members and the whole number of them are his mystical body and all that profess to be such are his visible body or Kingdom in the world and that sin is the thing which he came to destroy and the Devil the world and the flesh are the enemies which he causeth us to conquer I say He that knoweth not this doth not know what Christianity or Godliness is and therefore may easily persecute it in his ignorance If you know not or believe not that serious Godliness in heart and life and serious preaching and discipline to promote it are Christs great cause and interest in the world you may fight against him in the dark whilst ignorantly you call your selves his followers If the Devil can but make you think that Ignorance is as good as Knowledge and Pharisaical formality and hypocritical shews are as good as spiritual worship and rational service of God and that seeming and lip-service is as good as seriousness in Religion and that the strict and serious obeying of God and living as we profess according to the principles of our Religion is but hypocrisie pride or faction that is that all are hypocrites who will not be hypocrites but seriously Religious I say if Satan can bring you once to such erroneous malignant thoughts as these no wonder if he make you persecutors O value the great blessing of a sound understanding For if Error blind you either impious error or factious error there is no wickedness so great but you may promote it and nothing so good and holy but you may persecute it and think all the while that you are doing well John 16. 2. They shall put you out of the Synagogues yea the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth God service What Prophet so great or Saint so holy that did not suffer by such hands Yea Christ himself was persecuted as a sinner that never sinned § 24. Direct 4. And if you would escape the guilt of persecution the cause and interest of Christ Direct 4. must be highest in your esteem and preferred before all worldly carnal interests of your own Otherwise the Devil will be still perswading you that your own interest requireth you to suppress the interest of Christ For the truth is the Gospel of Christ is quite against the interest of carnality and concupiscence It doth condemn ambition covetousness and lust It forbiddeth those sins on pain of damnation which the proud and covetous and sensual love and will not part with And therefore it is no more wonder to have a proud man or a covetous man or a lustful voluptuous man to be a persecutor than for a Dog to fly in his face who takes his bone from him If you love your pride and lust and pleasures better than the Gospel and a holy life no marvel if you be persecutors For these will not well agree together And though sometimes the providence of God may so contrive things that an ambitious hypocrite may think that his worldly interest requireth him to seem religious and promote the preaching and practice of godliness this is but seldome and usually not long For he cannot choose but quickly find that Christ is no Patron of his sin and that Holiness is contrary to his worldly lusts Therefore if you cannot value the Cause of Godliness above your lusts and carnal interests I cannot tell you how to avoid the guilt of persecution nor the wrath and vengeance of Almighty God § 25. Direct 5. Yea though you do prefer Christs interest in the main You must carefully take Direct 5. beed of stepping into any forbidden way and espousing any interest of your own or others which is contrary to the Laws or interest of Christ. Otherwise in the defence or prosecution of your cause you will be carryed into a seeming Necessity of persecuting before you are aware This hath been the ruine of multitudes of great ones in the world When Ahab had set himself in a way of sin the Prophet 1 Kings 22. 8 27. 1 King 13. 2 4. must reprove him and then he hateth and persecuteth the Prophet because he prophesied not good of him but evil When Ieroboam thought that his interest required him to set up Calves at Dan and Bethel and to make Priests for them of the baâ—est of the people the Prophet must speak against his sin and then he stretcheth out his hand against him and saith Lay hold on him If Asa sin and 2 Chron. 16. 10. the Prophet tell him of it his rage may proceed to imprison his reprover If Amaziah sin with the Idolaters the Prophet must reprove him and he will silence him or smite him And silenced he is 2 Chron. 15. 16. and what must follow 2 Chron. 15 16. The King said to him Art thou made of the Kings counsel forbear why shouldst thou be smitten This seemeth to be gentle dealing Then the Prophet forbore and said I know that God hath determined to destroy thee because thou hast done this and hast not hearkned to my counsel It Pilate do but hear If thou let this man go thou art not Caesars friend he thinketh John 19. 12. it his interest to crucifie Christ As Herod thought it his interest to kill him and therefore to kill so many other Infâ—nts when he heard of the birth of a King of the Jews Because of an Herodias Matth. 2. 16 17 18. Matth. 14. 6 7 8 9. Mar. 6. 19. 21 22. Acts 12. 2 3 4. and the honour of his word Herod will not stick to behead Iohn Baptist And another Herod will kill Iames with the Sword and imprison Peter because he seeth that it pleaseth
escape Direct 6. that need or poverty which is the temptation to this sin of theft Idleness is a crime which is not to be tollerated in Christian Societies 2. Thess. 2. 6 8 10 11 12. Now we command you brethren in the name of our Lord Iesus Christ that ye withdraw your selves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us For you know how ye ought to follow us for we behaved not our selves disorderly among you neither did we eat any mans bread for nought but workt with labour and travail night and day that we might not be chargeable to any of you Not because we have not power but to make our selves an ensample to you to follow us For when we were with you this we commanded you that if any would not work neither should he eat For we hear that there are some among you which walk disorderly working not at all but are busie bodies Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Iesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread Eph. 4. 28. Let him that stole steal no more but rather let him labour working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth He that stealeth to maintain his Idleness sinneth that he may sin and by one sin getteth provision for another You see here that you are bound not only to work to maintain your selves but to have to give to others in their need § 8. Direct 7. Keep a tender conscience which will do its office and not suffer you to sin without Direct 7. remorse A feared sensless Conscience will permit you to lye and steal and deceive and will make no great matter of it till God awaken it by his grace or vengeance Hence it is that servants can deceive their masters or take that which is not allowed them and buyers and sellers over-reach one another because they have not tender Consciences to reprove them § 9. Direct 8. Remember alwayes that God is present and none of your secrets can be hid from him Direct 8. What the better are you to deceive your neighbour or your master and to hide it from their knowledge as long as your Maker and Judge seeth all When it is him that you most wrong and with him that you have most to do and he that will be the most terrible avenger What blinded Atheists are you who dare do that in the presence of the most righteous God which you durst not do if men beheld you § 10. Direct 9. Forget not how dear all that must cost you which you gain unlawfully The reckoning Direct 9. time is yet to come Either you will truly Repent or not If you do it must cost you remorse and sorrow and shameful confession and restitution of all that you have got amiss And is it not better forbear to swallow that morsel which must come up again with heart-breaking grief and shame But if you Repent not unfeignedly it will be your damnation It will be opened in Judgement to your perpetual confusion and you must pay dear for all your gain in Hell Nâ—ver look upon the gain therefore without the shame and damnation which must follow If Achan had foreseen the stones and Gehezi the Leprosie and Ahab the mortal arrow and Iezebel the licking of her blood by Dogs and Iudas the hanging or precipitation and Ananias and Saphira the sudden death or any of them the after misery it might have kept them from their pernicious gain Usually even in this life a curse attendeth that which is ill gotten and bringeth fire among all the rest § 11. Direct 10. If you are poor consider well of the mercy which that condition may bring you and Direct 10. let it be your study how to get it sanctisied to your good If men understood and believed that God doth dispose of all for the best and make them poor to do them good and considered what that good is which poverty may do them and made it their chief care to turn it thus to their gain they would not find it so intolerable a thing as to seek to cure it by fraud or thievery Think what a mercy it is that you are saved from those temptations to overlove the world which the Rich are undone by And that you are not under those temptations to intemperance and excess and pride as they are And that you have such powerful helps for the mortification of the flesh and victory over the deceiving World Improve your poverty and you will scape these sins § 12. Direct 11. If you are but willing to escape this sin you may easily do it by a free Confession Direct 11. to those whom you have wronged or are tempted to wrong He that is not willing to forbear his sin is guilty before God though he do forbear it But if you are truly willing it is easie to abstain Do not say that you are willing till necessity pincheth you or you see the bait For if you are so you may easily prevent it at that time when you are willing If ever you are willing indeed take that opportunity and if you have wronged any man go and confess it to him in the manner as I shall afterward direct And this will easily prevent it For shame will engage you and self preservation will engage him to take more heed of you Or if you have not yet wronged any but are strongly tempted to it if you have no other sufficient remedy go tell him or some other fit person that you are tempted to steal and to deceive in such or such a manner and desire them not to trust you If you think the shame of such a Confession too dear a price to save you from the sin pretend no more that you are truly willing to forbear it or that ever you did unfeignedly repent of it Tit. 2. Certain Cases of Conscience about Theft and Injury § 1. Quest. 1. IS it a sin for a man to steal in absolute necessity when it is meerly to save his Quest. 1. life Answ. The case is very hard I shall 1. Tell you so much as is past controversie and then speak to the controverted part 1. If all other unquestionable means be not first used it is undoubtedly a sin If either labouring or begging will save our lives it is unlawful to steal Yea or if any others may be used to intercede for us Otherwise it is not stealing to save a mans life but stealing to save his labour or to gratifie his pride and save his honour 2. It is undoubtedly a sin if the saving of our lives by it do bring a greater hurt to the Common-wealth or other men than our lives are worth 3. And it is a sin if it deprive the owner of his life he being a person more worthy and useful to the common good These cases are
the cost which is laid out for needless pomp and Inst. 6. oâ—tentation of greatness or curiosity in keeping a numerous retinue and in their gallantry and in keeping many Horses and costly furniture and attendance Quest. 7. When is a costly retinue and other pompous furniture to be accounted Prodigality Quest. 7. Answ. Not when they are needful to the honour of Magistracy and so to the Government of the Common-wealth Nor when it is made but a due means to some lawful end which answereth the cost But when it is either the fruits and maintenance of Pride or exceedeth the proportion of mens estates or especially when it expendeth that which better and more necessary uses call for It is a most odious and enormous crime to waste so many hundred or thousand pounds a year in the vanities of pomp and fruitless curiosities and need-nots while the publick uses of the State and Church are injured through want and while thousands of poor families are rackt with cares and pinched with necessities round about us § 13. Inst. 7. Another way of Prodigality is that which is called by many keeping a good house Inst. 7. that is in unnecessary abundance and waste of meat and drink and other provisions Quest. 8. When may great house-keeping be accounted prodigality Quest. 8. Answ. Not when it is but a convenient work of charity to feed the poor and relieve the distressed or entertain strangers or to give such necessary entertainment to equals or superiours as is before described But when the truest relief of the poor shall be omitted and it may be poor Tenants wracked and opprest to keep up the fame and grandeur of their abundance and to seem magnificent and praised by men for great house-keepers The whole and large estates of many of the rich and great ones of the world goeth this way and so much is devoured by it as starveth almost all good works § 14. Inst. 8. Another way of Prodigality is Cards and Dice and other gaming in which whilest Inst. 8. men desire to get that which is anothers they lose and waste their own § 15. Inst. 9. Another act of Prodigality is giving over-great portions wiâ—h children It being a Inst. 9. sinful waste of our Masters stock to lay it out otherwise than he would have us and to serve our pride and self-interest in our children instead of him Quest. 9. When may our childrens portions be accounted prodigality or too great Quest. 9. Answ. Not when you provide for their comfortable living according to your estates and give them that due proportion which consisteth with the discharge of other duties But when all that men can get is thought little enough for their children and the business of their lives is to live in fulness themselves as long as they can and then to leave that to their posterity which they cannot keep themselves When this gulf of self-pampering and providing the like for children devoureth almost all that you can gather and the poor and other needful uses are put off with some inconsiderable pittance And when there is not a due proportion kept between your provision for your children and the other duties which God requireth of you Psal. 49. 7 8 9 11 13. Their inward thought is that their houses shall be perpetuated and their dwelling places to generations they call their Lands after their own names This their way is their folly yet their posterity approve their sayings Psal. 73. 12. Behold these are the Ungodly who prosper in the world they increase in riches Psal. 17. 14. They have their portion in this life They are full of children or their children are full and they leave the rest of their substance to their babes A Parent that hath an heir or other children so wise religious and liberal as that they are like to be more charitable and serviceable to good uses than any other whom he can trust with his estate should not only leave such children sufficient for themselves but enable them as much as he can to do good For they will be more faithful Trustees to him than strangers But a Parent that hath but common and untrusty children should do all the good he can himself and what he would have done when he is dead he must commit to them that are more trusty and allow his children but their proper maintenance And Parents that have debauched wicked ungodly children such as God commanded them to cause to be put to death Deut. 21. should allow them no more than their daily bread if any thing at all which is their own to dispose of § 16. Inst. 10. Also to be careless in many small expences or losses because they are but little things Inst. 10. and to let any such thing be cast away is sinful prodigality Quest. 10. How far is it a duty to be frugal in small matters and the contrary a sin Quest. 10. Answ. We must not over-value any thing great or small nor be sparing out of covetousness nor yet in an imprudent way which seemeth to signifie baseness and worldliness when it is not so Nor must we be too tinking in bargaining with others when every pâ—â—ny which we get by it is lost to one that needeth it more But we must see that nothing of any â—â—â—â— be lost through satiety negligence or contempt For the smallest is part of Gods gifts and talents given us not to cast away but to use as he would have us And there is nothing that is good so small but some one hath need of it or some good use or other may be made of it Even Christ when he had fed thousands by a miracle yet commanded his Disciples to gather up the broken bread or fragments that nothing be lost John 6. 12. which plainly sheweth that it is a duty which the richest man that is is not exempted from to be frugal and a sin in the greatest Prince to be wasteful of any thing that is good But this must not be in sordid covetousness but in obedience to God and to do good to others He is commendable who giveth liberally to the poor out of his abundance But he is much more commendable who is a good husband for the poor as worldlings are for themselves and frugally getteth and saveth as much as he can and denyeth all superfluities to himself and all about him that he may have the more to give to pious and charitable uses § 17. Inst. 11. Idleness also and negligence in our Callings is sinful wastefulness and prodigality Inst. 11. When either the pride of Gentility maketh people think themselves too good to labour or to look after the matters of their families or slothfulness maketh them think it a life too toilsome for their flesh to bear Prov. 18 9. He that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster These drones consume that which others labour for but are no
gatherers themselves § 18. Quest. 11. Is every one bound to labour in a Calling Quest. 11. Answ. This is answered before in its due place Tom. 1. Every one that is able rich or poor must live in some profitable course of pains or labour § 19. Quest. 12. Is it a duty to desire and endeavour to get and prosper and grow rich by our labours Quest. 12. when Solomon saith Labour not to be rich Prov. 23. 4. Answ. It is a sin to desire Riches as worldlings and sensualists do for the provision and maintenance of fleshly lusts and pride But it is no sin but a duty to labour not only for labour sake formally resting in the act done but for that honest increase and provision which is the end of our labour And therefore to choose a gainful calling rather than another that we may be able to do good and relieve the poor Eph. 4. 28. Let him labour working with his hands the thing that is good that he may have to give to him that needeth § 20. Quest. 13. Can one be prodigal in giving to the Church Quest. 13. Answ. Yes if it be in a blind zeal to maintain a useless pomp or superstition Or if he give Reâ—d Eâ—as us Collo â— Pâ—regrin Relig. Ergo. that which should be used or given otherwise But this is a sin that few in these dayes are in much danger of § 21. Quest. 14. Can one be prodigal in giving to the poor Quest. 14. Answ. Yes when it is blindly done to cherish idleness in wandring beggars or with a conceit of meriting in point of Commutative Justice from God Or when that is given to the poor which should be given to other uses as in publick tribute maintenance of children furtherance of the Gospel c. But this is a sin that few have need to be restrained from § 22. Quest. 15. May a rich man expend any thing upon otherwise lawful pomp or conveniences Quest. 15. or pleasures at such a time when there are multitudes of poor families in extremity of want As now when the flames which consumed London have left many thousands in distress Answ. Doubtless every man should spare as much for the relief of others as he can And therefore should not only forbear all needless expences but those also that are needful but to such conveniences and accommodations as may be spared without a greater hurt than is the want of such as that charges would relieve To save the lives of people in want we must spare any thing from our selves which our own lives can spare And to relieve them in their deep poverty we must abate much more than our superfluities To expend any thing on pride and lust is a double sin at such a time when Lazarus is at our doors in want If that Luke 16. were well studied wherein it was that the Rich mans sin and danger lay in being clothed in Purple and Silk and faring sumptuously every day while Lazarus wanted it would make some sensualists wiser than they are But yet it must be confessed that some few persons may be of so much worth and use to the Common-wealth as Kings and Magistrates and some of so little that the maintaining of the honour and succours of the former may be more necessary than the saving of the lives of the later But take heed lest Pride or Cruelty teach you to misunderstand this or abuse it for your selves § 23. There are divers other wayes of Prodigality or sinful waste which I pass by because they are such as few are concerned in And my purpose is not to say all that may be said but all that is needful As in needless Musick Physick Books which Seneca handsomely reproveth Gifts to Servants which need not in meer ostentation of pride to be well spoken of and many the like And in unlawful Wars which is the greatest sinful waster in all the world And as for expences in debauchery and gross wickedness as Whoredome Revenge in sinful Law Suits c. I here pretermit them § 24. Direct 2. Understand well the Aggravations of this sin of Prodigality viz. Direct 2. 1. It is a wasting of that which is none of our own and a robbing God of the use or service due to him in the improvement of his gifts They are his and not ours and according to his pleasure only must be used 2. It is a robbing the poor of that which the common Lord of the world hath appointed for them in his Law And they will have their Action in Heaven against the prodigal 3. It is an inhumane vice to waste that upon pleasures pride and needless things which so many distressed persons stand in need of 4. It is an injury to the Common-wealth which is weakned by the wasteful And the covetous themselves that are not oppressors are much better members of publick societies than the prodigal 5. It seedeth a life of other vice and wickedness It is a spending Gods gifts to feed those lusts which he abhorreth 6. It usually engageth many others in Trades and labours which are unprofitable that they may serve the lusts of these sensual prodigals 7. And in the conclusion it prepareth a sad account for these wretches when they must answer at the Bar of God how they have used all his gifts and talents Remember all these aggravations § 25. Direct 3. Carefully mortifie that greedy fancy and fleshly lusts which is the wasting sin and Direct 3. the devouring gulf Quench the fire and you may spare all this fuell Cure the Feavor or Dropsie and you may spare both your drink and life A greedy throat and a diseased fancy are never satisfied till they have wasted the peace of your consciences with your estates and brought you to the end of brutish sinners Wisdome and duty and real benefit are contented with a little But lust is unsatiable The voluptuous bruit saith I must have my cups my lusts my pleasure And the effeminate vicious fancy of those empty souls that mind no great and solid things is still ranging after some vanity or other and like children crying for every thing that they see another have And the most needless yea burdensome things seem necessary to such They say I must needs have this and I must needs have that there is no being without it when nothing needeth it but a diseased mind which much more needeth a Cure by grace and true mortification Subdue pride and sensuality and fancy and you may escape prodigality § 26. Direct 4. Remember the nearness of your account and ask your consciences what way of expences Direct 4. will please you best in the review Whether at death and judgement it will be to your comfort to find on your account So much laid out on needless bravery to set out this carkass which is now turning into dust Item So much upon proud entertainments of great ones Item So much on Cards
them speedily Luk. 18. 7 8. what need you be so forward to justifie and avenge your selves Obj. If God will have their names to rot and spoken evil of when they are dead why may I not do it while they are alive Answ. There is a great deal of difference between a true Historian and a self-avenger in the reason of the thing and in the effects To dishonour bad Rulers while they live doth tend to excite the people to rebellion and to disable them to govern But for Truth to be spoken of them when they are dead doth only lay an odium upon the sin and is a warning to others that they follow them not in evil And this no wicked Prince was ever so Great and powerful as to prevent For it is a part of Gods resolved judgement Yet must Historians so Sâ—rt Aâ—râ—l Victor de Calig De quo nescio an decuerit memoriae prodi nisi forte quia juvat de principibus nosse omnia ut improbi saltem famae metu talia declinent open the faults of the person as not to bring the office into contempt but preserve the reverence due to the authority and place of Governours § 29. Direct 7. By all means overcome a selfish mind and get such a Holy and a publick spirit as Direct 7. more regardeth Gods honour and the publick interest than your own It is SELFISHNESS that is the great Rebel and Enemy of God and of the King and of our Neighbour A selfish private spirit careth not what the Common-wealth suffereth if he himself may be a gainer by it To revenge himself or to rise up to some higher place or increase his riches he will betray and ruine his King his Countrey and his nearest friends A selfish ambitious covetous man is faithful to no man longer than he serveth his ends nor is he any further to be trusted than his own interest will allow Self-denyal and a publick spirit are necessary to every faithful subject § 30. Direct 8. Wish not evil to your Governours in your secret thoughts but if any such thought Direct 8. would enter into your hearts reject it with abhorrence Eccles. 10. 20. Curse not the King no not in thy thought and curse not the rich in thy bed-chamber for a bird of the air shall carry the voice and that which hath wings shall tell the matter A feaverish misguided Zeal for Religion and a passionate discontent for personal injuries do make many greatly guilty in this point They would be much pleased if God would shew some grievous judgement upon persecutors and take no warning by Christs rebukes of Iames and Iohn but secretly are wishing for fire from Heaven not knowing what manner of spirit they are of They cherish such thoughts as are pleasing to them though they dare not utter them in words And he that dare wish hurt is in danger of being drawn by temptation to do hurt Obj. But may we not pray for the cutting off of persecutors And may we not give God thanks for it if he do it himself without any sinful means of ours Answ. Every Ruler that casteth down one sect or party of Christians and setteth up another perhaps as true to the interest of Christianity as they is not to be prayed against and his destruction wished by the suffering party 2. If he be a persecuter of Christianity and Piety it self as Heathens and Infidels are yet if his Government do They are dangerous passages which Petrarch hath though a good and learned and moderate man Dial. 49. Non tot passim essent Domini nec tam late â—urerent nisi populi insanirent cuique civium pro se charior â—oret res privata quam publica voluptas quam gloria pecunia quam libertas Vita quam Virtus Et statim Et sane si vel unum patria civem bonum habeat malum Dominum diutius non habebit The meaning is too plain Abundance of the most learned writers have such passages which must be read with caution Though I would draw none to the other extream Pâ—trarchs 68. Dial 85. Dialog de boâ—o Domino is as smart as the former but yet speaketh not all that contra Reges which be doth contra Dominos However he say that Inter Regem Tyrannum non discernunt Gâ—aii c. So Sr. Thoâ— More in his Poems Regibus è multis Regnum bene qui â—egat unum Vix tamen unus erit si tamen unus erit And that of Senec. Trag. ult Tantum ut noceat cupit esse potens more good than his persecution doth harm you may not so much as wish his downfall 3. If he were a Nero or a Iulian you must pray first for his conversion and if that may not be then next for his restraint and never for his destruction but on supposition that neither of the former may be attained which you cannot say 4. You must pray for the deliverance of the persecuted Church and leave the way and means to God and not prescribe to him Hurtful desires and prayers are seldom of God 5. You may freelyer rejoyce afterwards than desire it before because when a Iulian is cut off you know that Gods righteous will is accomplished when before you knew not that it was his will Yet after it is the deliverance of the Church and not the hurt of a persecuter as such that you must give thanks for Be very suspicious here lest partiality and passion blind you § 31. Direct 9. Learn how to suffer and know what use God can make of your sufferings and think Direct 9. not better of prosperity and worse of suffering than you have cause It is a carnal unbelieving heart that maketh so great a matter of poverty imprisonment banishment or death as if they were undone Bias interrogatus quidnam esset difficile Ferre inquit fortiter mutationem rerum in deterius Laert. p. 55. if they suffer for Christ or be sent to Heaven before the time As if Kingdoms must be disturbed to save you from suffering This better beseems an infidel and a worldling that takes his earthly prosperity for his portion and thinks he hath no other to win or lose Do you not know what the Church hath gained by suffering How pure it hath been when the fire of persecution hath refined it and how prosperity hath been the very that that hath polluted it and shattered it all to pieces by letting in all the ungodly world into the visible Communion of the Saints and by setting the Bishops on contending for superiority and overtopping Emperours and Kings Many thousands that would be excellent persons in adversity cannot bear a high or prosperous state but their brains are turned and pride and contention maketh them the scorn of the adversaries that observe them § 32. Direct 10. Trust God and live by faith and then you will find no need of rebellions or any Direct 10. sinful means
Do you believe that both the Hearts and Lives of Kings and all their affairs are in the hand of God If not you are Atheists If you do then do you not think that God is fitter than you to dispose of them He that believeth will not make haste Deliverance from persecutions must be prayed and waited for and not snatcht by violence as a hungry dog will snatch the meat out of his masters hands and bite his fingers Do you believe that all shall work together for good to them that Love God Rom. 8. 28. And do you believe that the godly are more than Conquerours when they are killed all day and counted as sheep unto the slaughter v. 32 33 34 35. And do you believe that it is cause of exceeding joy when for the sake of righteousness you are hated and persecuted and all manner of evil is falsly spoken of you Matth. 5. 10 11 12. If you do not you believe not Christ If you do will you strive by sinful means against your own good and happiness and joy Will you desire to conquer when you may be more than Conquerours Certainly the use of sinful means doth come from secret unbelief and diffidence Learn to Trust God and you will easily be subject to your Governours § 34. Direct 11. Look not for too great matters in the world Take it but for that Wilderness Direct 11. which is the way to the promised land of rest And then you will not count it strange to meet with hard usage and sufferings from almost all 1 Pet. 4. 12 13. Beloved think it not strange concerning the fiery tryal which is to try you as if some strange thing happened to you but rejoyce in that ye are Phil. 3. 7 8 11 12. partakers of the sufferings of Christ. Are you content with God and Heaven for your portion If not how are you Christians If you are you have small temptation to rebell or use unlawful means for earthly priviledges Paul saith he took pleasure in persecutions 2 Cor. 12. 10. Learn you to do so and you will easily bear them § 35. Direct 12. Abhor the popular spirit of envy which maketh the poor for the most part think odiously Direct 12. of the Rich and their superiours because they have that which they had rather have themselves I Univers Histor. p. 140. Dicas Imperatorem Orbâ—s Eâ—â—ctetum Neronem Mâ—ncipium irrisum esse summo fastigâ—o cum serviret dignus imperaret indignus nullumque esse malum quin aliqua boni gutta condiatur have long observed it that the poor labouring people are very apt to speak of the Rich as sober men speak of drunkards As if their very estates and dignity and greatness were a vice And it is very much to flatter their own Conscience and delude themselves with ungrounded hopes of Heaven When they have not the spirit of Regeneration and holiness to witness their title to eternal life they think their Poverty will serve the turn And they will ordinarily say that they hope God will not punish them in another world because they have had their part in this But they will easily believe that almost all Rich and Great men go to Hell And when they read Luke 16. of the Rich man and Lazarus they think they are the Lazarus'es and read it as if God would save men meerly for being poor and damn men for being Great and Rich when yet they would themselves be as Rich and Great if they knew how to attain it They think that they are the maintainers of the Common-wealth and the Rich are the Caterpillars of it that live upon their labours like drones in the hive or mice and vermine that eat the honey which the poor labouring Bees have long been gathering For they are unacquainted with the Labours and cares of their Governours and sensible only of their own This envyous spirit exceedingly disposeth the poor to discontents and tumults and rebellions but it is not of God Iam. 3. 15 16 17. § 36. Direct 13. Keep not company with envious murmurers at Government for their words fret Direct 13. like a canker and their sin is of an infecting kind What a multitude were drawn into the Rebellion Numb 16. of Corah who no doubt were provoked by the leaders discontented words It seemeth they were for Popularity Numb 16. 3 13 14. Ye take too much upon you seeing all the Congregation are holy every one of them and the Lord is among them wherefore then lift you up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey to kill us in the Wilderness except thou make thy self altogether a Prince over us Wilt thou put out the eyes of these men What confidence and what fair pretenses are here so probable and plausible to the people that it is no wonder that multitudes were carryed to rebellion by it Though God disowned them by a dreadful judgement and shewed whom he had chosen to be the Governours of his people § 37. Direct 14. Keep humble and take heed of Pride The humble is ready to obey and yield Direct 14. and not only to be subject to Magistrates but to all men even voluntarily to be subject to them that cannot constrain them 1 Pet. 5. 5. Be all of you subject one to another It is no hard matter for a twig to bow and for a humble soul to yield and obey another in any thing that is lawful But the Proud take subjection for vassalage and obedience for slavery and say Who is Lord over us Psal. 12. 6 7. Prov. 16. 18. 29. 23. Our tongues are our own what Lord shall controll us will we be made slaves to such and such Only from Pride cometh contention Prov. 13. 10. By causing impatience it causeth disobedience and sedition § 38. Direct 15. Meddle not uncalled with the matters of superiours and take not upon you to censure Direct 15. their actions whom you have neither ability fitness or authority to censure How commonly will every tradesman and labourer at his work be censuring the Counsels and Government of the King and speaking of things which they never had means sufficiently to understand Unless you had been upon the place and heard all the debates and consultations and understood all the circumstances and reasons of the business how can you imagine that at so great a distance you are competent judges Fear God and judge not that you be not judged If busie-bodies and medlers with other mens Maâ— 7. 1 2 3 matters among equals are condemned 2 Thes. 3. 11. 1 Tim. 5. 13. 1 Pet. 4. 15. much more when they meddle and that censoriously with the matters of their Governours If you would please God know and keep your places as Souldiers in an Army which is their comly order and their strength § 39. Direct 16.
measures every man on earth is a false Worshipper that is he offereth God a worship some way faulty and imperfect and hath some sin in his worshipping of God And sin is a thing that God requireth not but forbiddeth even in the smallest measures Quest. 9. Which must I judge a true Church of Christ and which a false Church Quest. 9. Answ. The Universal Church is but one and is the whole society of Christians as united to Christ their only Head And this cannot be a false Church But if any other set up an Usurper as the Universal Head and so make another Policy and Church this is a false Church formally or in its policy But yet the members of this false Church or policy may some of them as Christians be also members of the true Church of Christ And thus the Roman Church as Papal is a false Catholick Church haveing the Policy of an Usurper but as Christians they may be members of the true Catholick Church of Christ. But for a particular Church which is but part of the Universal that is a true Church considered meerly as an ungoverned Community which is a true part of the Catholick prepared for a Pastor but yet being without one But that only is a true Political Church which consisteth of Professed Christians conjoyned under a true Pastor for Communion in the profession of true Christianity and for the true worshipping of God and orderly walking for their mutual assistance and salvation Quest. 10. Whom must we judge true Prophets and Pastors of the Church Quest. 10. Answ. He is a true Prophet who is sent by God and speaketh truth by immediate supernatural revelation or inspiration And he is a false Prophet who either falsly saith that he hath Divine revelations or inspiration or prophesieth falshood as from God And he is a true Pastor at the bar of God who is 1. Competently qualified with abilities for the Office 2. Competently disposed to it with willingness and desire of success And hath right ends in undertaking and discharging it 3. Who hath a just admission by true Ordination of Pastors and Consent of the flock And he is to be accounted a true Pastor in foro Ecclesiae in the Churches judgement whom the Church judgeth to have all these qualifications and thereupon admitteth him into possession of the place till his incapacity be notorious or publickly and sufficiently proved or he be removed or made uncapable Tit. 2. Directions for the Cure of sinful Censoriousness Direct 1. MEddle not at all in judging of others without a call Know first whether it be any Direct 1. of your work If not be afraid of those words of your Judge Matth. 7. 1 2 3 4 5. Iudge not that ye be not judged For with what judgement you judge you shall be judged c. And Rom. 14. 4. Who art thou that judgest another mans servant To his own Master he standeth or falleth And vers 10. 13. But why dost thou judge thy brother Or why dost thou set at nought thy brother We shall all stand before the judgement seat of Christ Every one of us shall give account of himself to God Let us not therefore judge one another any more 1 Cor. 4. 3 4 5. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of mans judgement Therefore judge nothing before the time till the Lord come who both will bring to light the bidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts Col. 2. 16. Let no man judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of an holy day or of the new Moon or Sabbath Quest. But when have I a call to Iudge another Answ. You may take the answer to this from the answer to Quest. 10. Chap. 23. Tit. 1. 1. If your Office or place require it as a Magistrate Pastor Parent Master Tutor c. 2. If the safety of the Church or your neighbour do require it 3. If the good of the sinner require it that you may seek his repentance and reformation 4. If your own preservation or welfare or any other duty require it Direct 2. Keep up an humble sense of your own faults and that will make you compassionate to Direct 2. others He that is truly vile in his own eyes is least inclined to vilifie others And he that judgeth himself with the greatest penitent severity is the least inclined to be censorious to his brother Pride is the common cause of censoriousness He that saith with the Pharisee I fast twice a week and pay tythe of all that I have I am no adulterer c. will also say I am not as other men nor as this Publican when the true penitent findeth so much of his own to be condemned that he smiteth on his own breast and saith God be merciful to me a sinner The prouder self-conceited sort of Christians are ever the most censorious of their neighbours Direct 3. Be much therefore at home in searching and watching and amending your own hearts Direct 3. and then you will find so much to do about your selves that you will have no mind or leisure to be censuring others Whereas the superficial hypocrite whose Religion is in externals and is unacquainted with his heart and Heaven is so little employed in the true work of a Christian that he hath leisure for the work of a censorious Pharisee Direct 4. Labour for a deep experimental insight into the nature of Religion and of every duty Direct 4. For no men are so censorious as the ignorant who know not what they say whilest experienced persons know those difficulties and other reasons which calm their minds As in common business no man will sooner find fault with a Workman in his work than idle praters who least understand it So is it commonly in matters of Religion Women and young men that never saw into the great mysteries of Divinity but have been lately changed from a vicious life and have neither acquaintance with the hard points of Religion nor with their own ignorance of them are the common proud censurers of their brethren much wiser than themselves and of all men that are more moderate and peaceable than themselves and are more addicted to Unity and more averse to Sects and separations than they Study harder and wait till you grow up to the experience of the aged and you will be less censorious and more peaceable Direct 5. Think not your selves fit Iudges of that which you understand not And think not proudly Direct 5. that you are liker to understand the difficulties in Religion with your short and lazy studies than those that in reading meditation and prayer have spent their lives in searching after them Let not pride make you abuse the Holy Ghost by pretending that he hath given you more wisdome in a little time and with little means and diligence than your betters have by the
holy industry of all their lives Say not God can give more to you in a year than to others in twenty For it is a poor argument to prove that God hath done it because he can do it He can make you an Angel but that will not prove you one Prove your wisdome before you pretend to it and overvalue it not Heb. 5. 11 12 sheweth that it is Gods ordinary way to give men wisdom according to their time and means unless their own negligence deprive them of his blessing Direct 6. Study to keep up Christian Love and to keep it lively For Love is not censorious but Direct 6. is inclined to judge the best till evidence constrain you to the contrary Censoriousness is a Vermine which crawleth in the carkass of Christian Love when the life of it is gone Direct 7. Value all Gods graces in his servants And then you will see something to love them Direct 7. for when hypocrites can see nothing Make not too light of small degrees of grace and then your censure will not overlook them Direct 8. Remember the tenderness of Christ who condemneth not the weak nor casteth Infants Direct 8. out of his family nor the diseased out of his Hospital but dealeth with them in such gracious gentleness as beseemeth a tender-hearted Saviour He will not break the bruised reed He carryeth his Lambs in his arms and gently driveth those with young He taketh up the wounded man when the Priest and Levite pass him by And have you not need of the tenderness of Christ your selves as well as others Are you not afraid lest he should find greater faults in you than you find in others And condemn you as you condemn them Direct 9. Let the sense of the common corruption of the world and imperfection of the godly moderate Direct 9. your particular censures As Seneca saith To censure a man for that which is common to all men is in a sort to censure him for being a man which beseemeth not him that is a man himself Do you not know the frailty of the best and the common pravity of humane nature How few are there that must not have great allowance or else they will not pass for currant in the ballance Elias was a man subject to passions Ionah to pievishness Iob had his impatiency â—â—ul saith even of the Teachers of the primitive Church They all that were with him seek their own and not the things of Iesus Christ. What blots are charged on almost all the Churches and almost all the holy persons mentioned throughout all the Scriptures Learn then of Paul a better lesson than censoriousness Gal. 6. 1. Brethren if a man be overtaken in a fault ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness considering thy self lest thou also be tempted Bear ye one anothers burdens and so fulfill the Law of Christ. Let every man prove his own work and then be shall have rejoycing in himself alone c. Direct 10. Remember that Iudgement is Gods prerogative further than as we are called to it for Direct 10. the performance of some duty either of Office or of private Charity or self-preservation And that the Judge is as at the door And that judging unmercifully maketh us lyable to judgement without mercy The foresight of that near universal Judgement which will pass the doom on us and all men will do much to cure us of our rash censoriousness Direct 11. Peruse and observe all the Directions in the last Chapter against evil-speaking and backbiting Direct 11. that I may not need to repeat them Especially avoid 1. The snare of selfishness and interest For most men judge of others principally by their own interest He is the good man that is good to them or is on their side that loveth and honoureth them and answereth their desires This is the common false judgement of the corrupted selfish world who vilifie and hate the best because they seem unsuitable to them and to their carnal interest Therefore take heed of your judgement about any man that you have any falling-out with For its two to one but you will wrong him through this selfishness 2. Avoid passion which blindeth the judgement 3. Avoid Faction which maketh you judge of all men as they agree or disagree with your opinions or your side and party 4. Avoid too hasty belief of censures and rebuke them 5. Hear every man speak for himself before you censure him if it be possible and the case be not notorious Direct 12. Keep still upon your mind a just and deep apprehension of the malignity of this sin of Direct 12. rash censuring It is of greatest consequence to the mortifying of any sin what apprehensions of it are upon the mind If religious persons apprehended the odiousness of this as much as they do of swearing drunkenness fornication c. they would as carefully avoid it Therefore I shall shew you the Malignity of this sin Tit. 3. The evil of the Sin of Censoriousness § 1. 1. IT is an usurpation of Gods Prerogative who is the Judge of all the world It is a stepping up into his Judgement Seat and undertaking his work as if you said I will be God as to this action And if he be called The Antichrist who usurpeth the Office of Christ to be the Universal Monarch and Head of the Church you may imagine what he doth who though but in one point doth set up himself in the place of God § 2. 2. They that usurp not Gods part in judging yet ordinarily usurp the part of the Magistrate or Pastors of the Church As when mistaken censorious Christians refuse to come to the Sacrament of Communion because many persons are there whom they judge to be ungodly what do they but usurp the Office of the Pastors of the Church To whom the Keys are committed for admission and exclusion And so are the appointed Judges of that case The duty of private members is but to admonish the offender first secretly and then before witnesses and to tell the Church if he repent not and humbly to tell the Pastors of their duty if they neglect it And when this is done they have discharged their part and must no more excommunicate men themselves than they must hang Thieves when the Magistrate doth neglect to hang them § 3. 3. Censoriousness signifieth the absence or decay of Love which inclineth men to think evil and judge the worst and aggravate infirmities and overlook or extenuate any good that is in others And there is least Grace where there is least Love § 4. 4. It sheweth also much want of self-acquaintance and such heart-employment as the sincerest Christians are taken up with And it sheweth much want of Christian humility and sense of your own infirmities and badness and much prevalency of Pride and self-conceitedneâ—s If you knew how ignorant you are you would not be so peremptory in