of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
to God by sanctification doth with himself devote all that he hath and virtually all that ever he shall have And if he understand himself he will do it actually And hence it is that the Seed of Believers yea of one Believer are said to be Holy Not only or chiefly because they are yours born of your bodies nor meerly from a promise of God that hath no presupposed reason from the subject But because they are the children of one that hath devoted himself and all that he hath to God and if he understand himself doth actually offer devote and dedicate his child to God in the solemn Baptism Ordinance and Covenant And God will sure accept all that upon his own invitation is consecrated and offered to him 5. See that you submit them heartily to the dispose of God So that whatever he do with them for sickness or health for poverty or riches for honour or dishonour for life or death you can patiently bear it and say as Eli It is the Lord let him do as seemeth him good 1 Sam. 3. 18. Murmur not if God afflict and take them away even at once as he did the sons of Job or if he should afflict you in them as he did David in Amnon and Absalom Remember that as the Resignation of Life it self is the point by which Christ under the Gospel doth try mens faith so it was the resignation of an only son which was next to life by which he would try Abraham the Father of the faithful before the Incarnation of Christ If therefore you will be children of Abraham you must walk in the steps of faithful Abraham and remember that your children are not your own and be content that God do with his own as he pleases 6. Make God their portion as much as in you lieth and seek more for a spiritual than temporal felicity for them and acquaint them with their Creator in the days of their youth as believing that those of them that are the Holiest are the Happiest 7. Devote your children to such callings and imployments in which they are likeliest to be most serviceable to God Consider their dispositions and parts and then never ask what kind of life is the most honourable or gainful for them but in what way and course of life they may most serve God and be most useful to his Church And to that let them be devoted 8. Favour them not in sin and suffer them not to dishonour God that they are devoted to Remember Eli's example Gentle reproofs instead of necessary severe correction is called by God A despising him and preferring his sons before him 1 Sam. 2. 29 30. even because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not 1 Sam. 3. 13. Take heed as you love your selves or them of taking their parts against God or against correction and excusing the sins by which they do dishonour him 9. Give them not for their carnal advancement in the world that part of your estate which is due to God You owe it all to him and in the disposing of it he hath limited you to begin at home provide so for your children that they may have their daily bread and so much more as they are in likelyhood the fittest stewards to improve for God But if you see the publick state of the Church or Commonweal to stand in need of your assistance and you shall then give almost all to your children to make them rich and great in the world and put off the works of greater moment with some poor inconsiderable alms or Legacy this is to prefer self before the Lord even as it is imagined to survive in your progeny even when natural self can no longer enjoy it It 's a wonder how so many men seeming holy and devoted to God can quiet their consciences in such a palpable sin as this If one of them have two hundred or three hundred pound a year it 's a wonder if he leave an hundred a year of it to any pious or charitable use but if he leave forty or fifty pound to the poor or build some small Almes-house he thinks he hath done well all the rest must go to leave his son in equal dignity and riches in the world as himself But of this I spoke before 10. Lastly be sure that you be very suspicious of self when the case of your children or any dear Relation is before you For self is near you and will stick close and will not easily be thrust out of your Counsels nor â—â—aken off And therefore in your own case and your Childrens case or the case of your near friends you will have much ado to overcome the cunning and strong temptations to Partiality if you were the holiest Saint on earth though overcome them you will in the main if you have true grace But if you are dead professors it 's twenty to one but they will overcome you and you will shew the world that you are selfish hypocrites and more for your Children and Friends than God Let me here give a few instances in this warning 1. How oft have we seen it here and elsewhere that people that make some shew of Religion and are forward to have vice punished and discipline exercised yet when it falls on any children or near relations of their own they are as much against it as they are for it on others yea rise up with passion and bitter reproaches of Officers Ministers or others that are the causes of it As one Hypocrite is tried when he denieth to suffer for Christ himself so others shew themselves Hypocrites sooner by preferring their children yea their sinful children yea the present ease or profit or credit of their children before their duty and the honour of God And they will rather have God provoked sin unpunished and their childrens own salvation hazarded than they will have them justly and regularly chastised yea some of them rise up as malignant enemies against them that do it 2. Again When God hath convinced you of duty if a carnal friend a husband or a parent do but contradict it and perswade you from a known duty or a holy life how commonly do men obey because forsooth they are their friends that do perswade them 3. Moreover When the case falls out that a man cannot follow God and his duty and be true to his soul but he is like to lose his friends how commonly is God denied that friends may not be denied and conscience wounded and duty bawk'd that the favour of friends may not be lost O saith one they are the friends that I live by my livelihood is in their hands I am undone if they cast me off Well! take them and make thy best of them and keep them as long as thou canst if thou canst live better without God than them or canst spare Gods favour better than theirs and they are better friends to thee than Christ is and would be take
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
against Nature to consent to die but when it is for him that is the Lord and end of life it is agreeable to Nature that is though it be against our natural inclination as we are Animate and Sensitive yet is it agreeable to our true nature as reasonable And therefore lay all together it is to be said to be agreeable to Nature simply in such a case because it is agreeable to the Principal part in nature which should be predominant It is agreeable to nature also that Reason should dispose of the inferiour powers of the soul Object But when you have said all that you can as long as you plead against my nature I cannot consent to what you say words are but wind To perswade me to consent to die is as much as to perswade me not to feel when I am hurt or to be hungry or thirsty or sleepy which are not in my power because these things are Natural Answ 1. Though hunger and thirst and other natural and sensitive appetites or passions be not in your power yet a consent of the will to deny these is in your power As natural as it is to hunger and thirst your superiour faculty of Reason can prevail with you to suffer hunger and thirst in a Siege or sickness when the suffering of it will save your life You will be ruled by your Physician to forbear not only many a dish but many a meal which your appetite desireth And your Reason can perswade you to suffer the opening of a vein and the drawing out of your own blood yea or the cutting off a member when it is to save your life for all that feeling and self-love is natural to you And you are not acquainted with the nature of Friendship if you would not suffer much for a friend nor with humane affections if you would not suffer much for parents or children or your Country so that your will is free though your sense be not free nor your natural appetite Though you cannot choose but feel when you are hurt you might consent to that feeling for a greater good 2. And according to the tenour of this Objection you may as wisely and honestly plead for most of the wickedness of the world and say It is natural to me to lust and therefore I may play the Adulterer and fulfil it It is natural to me to desire meat and drink and therefore I may eat and drink as long as I desire it It is natural to me to seek to hurt those that I am much angry with or hate and therefore I may beat or kill them If you must deny the Passions and sensitive appetite and the inferiour faculties of nature in one thing why not in another These lower powers were made to be ruled by reason as beasts are made to be ruled by men and more And therfore seeing this Argument from Nature is but from the bruitish part of Nature it is but a brutish Argument And if yet you say that for all these words Death is so great an enemy to you that you cannot choose it I answer that is because your reason is not illuminated and elevated by faith to see the Necessity of choosing it and to see those higher and better things which by this means you may obtain Had you that heavenly life of faith and love which the spirit worketh in the Saints it would carry you above this present life and take you up with higher matters and shew you that and so shew it you as should procure your own consent to die But because this is the great point that Christ doth purposely here try our self-denial by and a point of such great necessity to be look'd after I shall stay a little longer on it while I give you first some Reasons to move you and 2. Some Directions to assist you to get a self-denying submission to Death when Christ requireth it The many lamentable defects in grace which the inordinate fear of death doth intimate I have already opened in the fourth part of the Saints Rest and therefore may not now repeat them but shall add some few Considerations more CHAP. XXXVIII Twenty Reasons for denying Life 1. COnsider that Our Lives are not our Own but God that doth require them is the Absolute Lord of them More truly than you are owner of any thing that you have in the world is he the Owner of your lives and you And therefore both in Reason and Justice we should be content that he dispose of his own If he may notfreely dispose of you your lives you may as well deny him the dispose of any thing and so deny him to be God for he hath the same right to you as to any thing else and the same power over you And therefore if you consent that he shall be God for which he needs not your consent you must consent that he be the Owner and Disposer of all and of you as well as all things else Otherwise he is not God 2. You can be content that the lives of others yea that all the world be at Gods dispose In reason you cannot wish it should be otherwise You are content that the lives of Emperors and Kings that are greater than you should be at his Dispose And is there not the same Reason that he dispose of your life as of theirs Are you better than they or more your own or hath the world more need of you than them or rather is it not unreasonable selfishness that makes so unreasonable a difference with you If Reason might serve the case is plain 3. You are contented that far greater matters than your lives should be at Gods dispose The Sun in its course the frame of nature Heaven and Earth and all therein are at his dispose and would you wish it otherwise Days and Nights and Summer and Winter and times and seasons are at his dispose and you dare not murmur that all the year is not Summer or day-light and that there is any Night or Winter The Angels of Heaven are at his dispose to do his will and are content to be used on earth for your service and they desire not to be from under his dispose And should you desire it or rather desire that his will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven If you would not have the Crowns and Kingdoms of the world at his Dispose and Heaven and Earth are at his Dispose you would not have him to be God But if you would have these greatest things at his dispose what are you then that your lives should be excepted 4. Whom would you have to be the Disposer of mens Lives but God Is any other fit for the undertaking No other can give life but he And no other can preserve and continue it but he If your life had been in any creatures hand you had been dead long ago For no creature is able to uphold it self much less another also Is
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉
Jewels askt What they were good for Whether they would preserve him from calamity sickness or death and sent themhome when he heard they were of no more use You desire not the biggest shooes or cloathes but the meetest So do by your Dignity and Estate Aâ— you must ask but your Daily bread so must you desire no more Neither Poverty nor Riches but convenient food yet so as to learn to abound and to want and in every state to be content bearing Riches and Dignity if cast upon you without seeking but not desiring or gaping after them nor glorying in them Undergoing them as a burden with patience and self-denial and carefully using all for God but neither desiring nor using them for Carnal self They that will be rich or great fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of money is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows 1 Tim. 6. 9 10. Remember where you begun and where you must end Naked you came into the world and naked you must return to dust You brought â—â— Riches bither and none shall you take hence unless you learn the blessed art of making friends of the unrighteous Mammon and laying up a good foundation against the time to come and laying up a treasure in Heaven by the right improvement of your present mercies Though our life be nor circular but progressive the end as to our naturals is liker to the beginning than to the middle If we die not children yet liker to Children than we live It 's sad that the height and perfection of our Age should be the height of our folly And that childhood and retired Age should be least entangled with these vanities And it 's a lamentable stupidity that alloweth self so confidently to play its game so near eternity where one would think the noise of damned souls and the triumphant joyes of blessed Saints that past to rest by the way of self-denial should mar the sport and turn their pride into shame and trembling and the great things of mortality that are even at hand should drown the noise of pomp and pleasure and make the Greatness of this world appear an inconsiderable thing The Lord grant that you be no less humble and heavenly and true to Christ and above this world than when you and I had our first familiar converse and sure by this time you should be much better It 's said of Agathocles King of Sicilie that having been a Potters Son he would alwayes have together Earthen and Golden Vessels at his Table to remember him of his Original You tread on earth and bear about you such evidences of your fâ—â—â—ty as serve to tell you whence your 〈…〉 and whither it 's going and how it should be used now Remember also your spiritual new birth by what seed you were begotten and by what milk you were nourished and see that you degenerate not and do nothing unworthy that noble birth and the heavenly nature then received II. And remember that self-denial is never right unless it be caused by the love of God and as you deny your self so you entirely and unreservedly devote your self to him To this end I crave your observation of these few unquestionable precepts 1. Take heed of Unbelief and dread all temptations tending to it and live by that faith which maketh absent things to be to you as present and things unseen as if they were seen When Heaven once loseth its interest in the soul the world may play Rex and delude and destroy us at its pleasure 2. Take heed of all intrusions of selfishness Especially ☞ overvalue not your own understanding in the things of God Draw not a great picture of a little man Be not easily drawn to contemn the judgements of those that have searched the holy Scriptures with equal diligence and humility and with much more advantages of retirdeness and time and helps than you 3. Take heed of engaging your hand or tongue or secret thoughts against the faithful Ministers of Christ But further the work of Christ in their hands with all your power I am no Prophet but yet presume to say ☞ that if the reproaches of a faithful Ministry in England be purg'd away without some dreadful judgment of God on the Apostate reproachers or else a desertion of the Nation by a removing of our glory I shall wonder at the patience and forbearance of the Lord. It 's a dreadful observation to see so much of the spirit of Malignity possessing those that once said they fought against Malignants And that the Ministers and servants of the Lord are railed at by many of them as formerly they were by the worst of those that their hands destroyed And with this dreadful aggravation that then it was but some that were reviled and now with many it is all then it was under the name of Puritans and Round-heads and now it is openly as Ministers under the name of Priests and Black-coats and Presbyters and Pulpeteers What have these souls done that they are so far forsaken by the Lord The judge of all the world is at the door that will plead his servants cause in righteousness It is hard kicking against the pricks He that despiseth despiseth not men but God Persecution under pretence of Liberty is heightened with hypocrisie and is one of the greatest sins in the world But men are not catcht in Spiders webs though flies are our Lord will make us a way to escape Persecution never conquered Christ And because he lives we shall live also Here is the faith patience of the Saints I know that malice wants not words to cloak their iniquity He that hath will and power to do hurt hath so much wit as to pretend some reason for it Though I think that malice did never walk more nakedly since the Primitive persecutions than it doth in England at this day Their principles and profound contrivances they can hide but their Malignity goes stark naked and is almost grown past shame They talk against Mercenary Ministers as if they had never read 1 Cor. 9. Mal. 3. and such other Scriptures Or as if they envyed food and rayment to them that watch and labour for their souls to whom they are commanded to give double honour 1 Tim. 5. 17. when they envy not Provender to their Horses nor Fodder to their labouring Ox nor the crums to their very Dogs But the matter is that their wit is too scant and narrow for their malice and therefore the Popish and Malignant enemies have no fairer pretence to cast out the Ministry than by this engaging the Covetousness of the ignorant and ungodly sort against them They talk of our want of a just call But what is it in point of Calling that is wanting Abilities say some Succession
changed in the point of Baptism and these are greatly offended with me for dissenting and giving the Reasons of my dissent what uncharitable dealings some of them have been guilty of I shall not now express Some of them have turned to one opinion and some to another and almost all that make these turns have left their Charity behind them Some of them take up new Causes in the Common-wealth and these are as angry with me as the rest because I cannot follow them in their Changes How many waies hath a man to lose a selfish friend I was once beloved by all these men and now I am either hated or lookt at as a stranger at least when I am where I was when I had their Love If I know my heart I speak not this in any great sense of the loss of my own interest but in the sense of the lamentable Power and Prevalency of Self-love and Self-conceitedness in the world And while I am bitterly censured by almost every party how easily could I recover my interest and reputation with any one of them if I could but be of their mind and side How wise and how honest a man could I be with the Anabaptists if I would but be Rebaptized and turn to them And how much should I be valued by the Papists if I would turn to them The like I may say of all the other fore-named parties For every one of them have by word or writing signified so much to me Even the Grotian Prelatists would wipe their mouths and speak me fairer if I could turn to them Mr. Pierce himself that hath exceeded all men in his late Book abounding with visible falâ—hoods and unchristian abuse of the servants of the Lord whom he calleth Puritans yet telleth me page 212. We contend for your fellowship and daily pray for your coming in if you by name should have occasion to pass this way and present your self with other guests at the holy Supper of our Lord no man on earth should be more welcome but if you and your partners will continue your several separations and shut your selves out from our Communion as it were judging your selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God and excommunicating your selves c. See here the power of Selfishness A man that is painted out as Lazie a Reader a Proud Hypocrite and much more should be as welcome as any man on earth if he will but have communion with them in their way how much more if he were but of their party This would cure Hypocrisie Pride and all these crimes And till we can comply with them we Excommunicate our selves and judge our selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God He that thinks Bishops should not be as now Diocesan and undertake many hundred Parishes and then feed and govern them by others and he that submits not to their mode in a Surplice or some form of Prayer doth therefore judge himself unworthy of the Kingdom of God as if Gods Kingdom were confined to them and lay in meats and drinks and not in Righteousness and Peace And as if we continued in an excommunication of our selves because we are not of their party when yet we deny no Protestants to be our Brethren nor refuse local Communion with them so they will grant it us on Scripture-terms which if they will not we will yet hold communion with them in several Congregations But thus it appeareth how strong self-interest is in the world and how charitable men are to those of their own opinions or parties and how easily many do take liberty to speak their pleasure against any that are not of their mind 8. Observe also how forward men are to Teach and how backward to be Learners and then judge of their Self-denial Why are so many unwilling to enter by the way of Ordination but too commonly because they judge better of their Own abilities than Ordainers do and therefore suspect that they may be rejected by the Ordainers or disgraced at the least while they think highly of themselves But if they were self-denying men they would think the sober faithful Pastors much fitter Judges of their abilities than themselves and would not run before they are sent Many that reproach the Ministers as deceivers will needs be themselves the Teachers of the people As if they should say We silly ignorant souls are wiser and fitter to be Teachers than you come down and let us take your places In conference you may observe that most are forwarder to speak than to hear which shews that they over-value their own understandings And so much are Proud men delighted to be thought the Oracles of the world that if you will but seem to hearken to them and learn of them and yield to their Opinions you win their hearts and shall be the men that have their commendations Insomuch that some late ambitious persons that have thought to rise by the art of dissimulation have found that there is no way for the deceiving of the people and procuring the good will of most like this even to seem to be of every mans opinion that they talk with and to make every Sect and Party believe that they are their friends and of their mind Especially if you will seem to be changed by their arguments and give them the glory of your convictions and illuminations you will then be the dearly beloved of their hearts In all this you may see the rarity of self-denial Yea in the very work of God too many of the most zealous godly Ministers that have been the instruments of converting many souls are toucht a little with the temptation to this selfishness looking too much to their own part in the work 9. Observe but how commonly with men called Christians the interest of Christ is trodden in the dirt when it seemeth to cross any interest of their own An Argument drawn from the commands of God or the necessity of the Church or of the souls of men seems nothing to them if their Honour or Gain or Greatness or safety do stand up against it and be inconsistent with its conclusion Hence it is that the souls of Hypocrites do cheat themselves by a Carnal Religiousness serving God only in subserviency to themselves Hence it is that Hypocrites do most shew themselves in matters of self-interest In the cheap part of Religion they seem to be as good as any as zealous for their party and opinions which they call the Truth and as long and loud in prayer and for as strict a way of Discipline with others But touch them in their Estates or Names Call them to costly works of Charity or to let go their right for peace or publick good or to confess and lament any sin that they commit and you shall then see that they are but common men and Self bears rule instead of Christ Hence also it is that so many persons can bear with themselves in any calling or trade of life
that is but gainful be it never so unjust and will not believe but it is lawful because it is profitable for they suppose that gain is godliness 1 Tim. 6. 5. Hence it is that so many families will be so far Religious as will stand with their commodity but no further Yea that so many Ministers have the wit to prove that most Duties are to them no Duties when they will cost them much labour or dishonour in the world or bring them under sufferings from men And hence it is that so many Carnal Polititians do in their Laws and Counsels alwaies prefer the interest of their bodies before Gods interest and mens souls Yea some are so far forsaken by common reason and void of the Love of God and his Church as to maintain that Magistrates in their Laws and Judgments must let matters of Religion alone as if that self even carnal self were all their Interest and all their God and as if they were of the Prophane Opinion Every man for himself and God for us all or as if they would look to their own cause and bid God look to his From the Power of this selfishness it is that so many ☞ Princes and States turn persecutors and stick not to silence banish and some of the bloodier sort to kill the Ministers of Christ when they do but think that they stand cross to their carnal interests And if you will plead the Interest of Christ and souls against theirs and tell them that the banishment imprisonment silencing or death of such or such a servant of the Lord will be injurious to many souls and therefore if they were guilty of death in some cases they should reprieve them as they do women with child till Christ be formed in the precious souls that they travail in birth with so their Lives be not more hurtful by any contrary mischief which death only can restrain which is not to be supposed of sober men yet all this seems nothing to a selfish Persecutor that regards not Christs interest in comparison of his own ☞ Self is the great Tyrant and Persecutor of the Church 10. Observe also how few they be that satisfie their souls in Gods Approbation though they are mis-judged and vilified by the world and how few that rejoyce at the prosperity of the Gospel though themselves be in Adversity most men must needs have the Hypocrites reward Matth. 6. 2. even some commendation from men and too few are fully pleased with his eye that seeth in seret and will reward them openly Matth. 6. 4 6. And hence it is that injurious censures and hard words do go so near them and they make so great a matter of them Those times do seem best to selfish men which are most for them If they prosper and their party prosper though most of the Church should be a loser by it they will think that it is a blessed time But if the Church prosper and not they but any suffering befall them they take on as if the Church did stand or fall with them Self-interest is their measure by which they judge of times and things 11. Observe also how eagerly men are set to have their Own wills take place in publick businesses and to have their own opinions to be the Rule for Church and Common-wealth and then judge by this of their self-denial Were not self predominant there would not be such striving who should Rule and whose will should be the Law but men would think that others were as likely to Rule with Prudence and Honesty as they How eager is the Papist to have his way by an Universal Monarch How eager are others for one Ecclesiastical National Head How eager are the Popular party for their way as if the welfare of all did lie in their several modes of Government And so confidently do the Libertines speak for theirs that they begin now to make motions that our Parliament-men shall be hanged or beheaded as Traitors if any should make a motion in a free Parliament against the General Liberty which they desire Wonderful that men should ever grow to such an over-weening of themselves and over-valuing their own understandings as to obtrude so palpable and odious a wickedness upon Parliaments so confidently and to take them for Traitors that will not be Traitors or grosly disobedient against the Lord Self-denial would cure these peremptory demands and teach men to be more suspicious of their own understandings 12. Lastly Observe but how difficult a thing it is to keep Peace as in families and neighbourhoods so in Churches and Common-wealths and judge by this of mens self-denial Husbands and Wives brothers and sisters masters and servants live at variance and all through the conflicts that arise between their contrary self-interests If a beast do but trespass on a neighbours grounds if they be but assessed for the State or poor above their expectations if in any way of trading their commodity be crost you shall quickly see where self bears Rule This makes it so difficult a work to keep the Churches from Divisions Few men are sensible of the Universal Interest because they are captivated to their own And therefore it is that men fear not to make parties and divisions in the Church and will tear it in pieces to satisfie their interest or selfish zeal Hence it is that Parties are so much multiplied and keep up the buckler against others because that selfishness makes all Partial Hence it is that people fall off from their Pastors or else fall out with them when they are crost in their opinions reproved for their sins or called to consess or make restitution and perhaps that they may sacrilegiously desraud the Church of Tithes or other payments that are due Hence it is also that members so oft fall out with one another for foul words or differences of judgement or some point or other of self-interest Nay sometimes about their very seats in the place of Worship while every man is for himself the Ministers can hardly keep them in Charity and Peace And is any of this agreeable to our holy Rule and Pattern No man can think so that hath read the Gospel but he that is so blinded by selfishness as not to understand what makes against it And here besides what is largelier spoken after let me tell of a few of the evils of this sin and the contrary benefits of self-denial 1. The Power of selfishness keeps men strangers to themselves They know not their Original nor Actual sins with any kindly humbling knowledge The very nature of Original sin doth consist in these two things Privatively in the want of our Original Love or Propensity to God as God I mean the Privation of the Root or Habit or Inclination to Love God for himself as the Beginning or End of us and all things and the absolute Lord and infinite simple inestimable Good And Positively in the inordinate Propensity or Inclination to our selves as
kept safe and sound and man had not been lost nor his estate thus shattered and overthrown And therefore the returning self-denying convert is brought to an utter distrust of himself and resolved hereafter to trust himself upon nothing below All-sufficiency and Infinite Love He is so offended with himself for his former self-destruction and for undoing himself so foolishly that he calls himself to account and into judgement for it and condemneth himself as a Traytor to God and a Murderer of himself and will no more be in the hands of so treacherous a delinquent But as the eyes of a servant are on the hand of his Master so are his eyes on God for all supplies And this is the part of the work of the spirit of Adoption who teacheth us to cry Abba Father and as Children not to be very careful for our selves but to run to our Father in all our wants and tell him what we stand in need of and beg relief and to be careful for nothing but in every thing by prayer with supplication and thanksgiving to make knownour requests to God Phil. 4. 6. And this acquiescence of the soul in the love of God is it that keepeth our hearts and minds in that Peace of God which passeth understanding vers 7. so that the more self-denyal the less is a man dependant on himself or troubled with the cares of his own preservation and the more doth he cast himself on God and is careful to please him that is his true Preserver and then quietech and resteth his mind in his All-sufficiency and infinite wisdom and love and so is a meer dependant upon God 7. Moreover It is the Prerogative of God as absolute Owner of us to be the sole Disposer of man and of all the other Creatures and to choose them their condition and give them their several Talents and determine of the events of all their affairs as pleaseth himself And innocent man was contented with this order and well pleased that God should be the absolute Disposer of him and all But when man turned from God to self he presently desired to be the Disposer of himself and not of himself only but of all the Creatures within his reach How fain would selfish corrupted man be the chooser of his own condition His will is against the will of God and he usually disliketh Gods disposal If he had the matter in his own hands almost nothing should be as it is but so cross would they be to God that all thing would be turned upside down If it were at their will there 's scarce a poor man but would be Rich and scarce a Rich man but would be richer The Servant would be master The Tenant would be a Landlord The Husbandman and Tradesman would be a Gentleman the Labourer would live an easier life His house should be better his cloathing should be better his fare should be better his Provision should be greater his credit or honour with men should be more the Gentleman would be a Knight and the Knight a Lord and the Lord would be a King and the King would be more Absolute and have a larger Dominion Nay every man would be a King and learn the doctrine of the Jews and many of this age among us to expect that the world should be ruled by them and they should reign as Lords and Princes in the earth If it were with selfish men as they would have it there 's scarce a man that would be what he is nor dwell where he doth nor live at the rates that now he liveth at The weak would be always strong and the sick would be well and always well and the old would be young again and never taste the infirmities of age and if they might live as long as they would I think there 's few of the unsanctified that would ever die nor look after Heaven as long as they could live on earth O what a brave life should I have thinks the selfish unsanctified wretch if I were but wholly at my own Disposal and might be what I would be and have what I would have What would men give for such a life as this Had they but their own wills they would think themselves the happiest men on earth that is if they could be delivered from the will of God and be from under his disposal and get the reins into their own hands Nay this is not all but the selfish person would be the disposer of all the world within his reach as well as of himself He would have Kingdoms at his dispose and all things carried according to his Will He would have all his neighbours have a dependance upon him Very bountiful he would be if he were the Lord of all For he would be the great Benefactor of the world and have all men beholden to him and depend upon him If he see things that little concern him he hath a will of his own that would fain have the Disposal of them If he hear of the affairs of other Nations some will he hath of his own which he would have fulfilled in them at least so far as any of his own interest may be involved in the business But when Sanctification hath brought men to self-denyal then they discern and lament this folly They see what silly giddy worms they are to be Disposers of themselves or of the world They see that they have neither wisdom nor goodness nor power sufficient for so great a work They then perceive that it were better make an Ideot the Pilot of a Ship or an Infant to be their Physitian when they are sick or the Disposer of their estates than to commit themselves and the world to their dispose They see how foolishly they have endeavoured or desired to rob God of his prerogative And therefore they return from themselves to him and give up all by free consent to his sole Disposal that so he may do with his own as he list He finds that he hath work enough to do of his own and is become too unfit for that and therefore he dare no more undertake the work of God for which he is infinitely unfit He finds that the more he hath his own will the worse it goes with him and therefore he will give up himself to God and stand to his will If he feels that Providence doth cross his flesh and that he hath Poverty when the flesh would have riches and slame when that carnal self would have honour and labour when the flesh would have ease and sickness when the flesh would have health he would not for all that have the work taken out of the hand of God but truly saith Not my will but thine be done and believeth that Gods disposal is the best and that his Father knows well enough what he doth And if it were put to his choice whether God or he should be the Disposer of his estate and honour and Life he had rather it
the matters of salvation But see what self can do If the same men have but their tithe to gather they will not think it a needless thing to go or send to every family and speak with them all about their own business At least if it were any considerable sum they would not lose it for want of speaking for Our neighbours do many of them think it much that we should call them to be personally Instructed or Catechized and they will not come at us but say What needs all this ado have we not teaching enough at Church Its Children that must be Catechized and we are past Children You see how little interest God and their Ministers and their own salvation hath in them But will you see what carnal self can do more Had I but money enough I would undertake to make them come to me and follow me as a horse will follow his provender Had I but ten pound a piece to give them yea or but ten shillings I do not think I should have any refuse to come and fetch it unless it were those that now are the forwardest in seeking relief for the wants of their souls Had I but the estates or lives of all these men in my power how easily would they be ruled and how diligently and submissively would they attend that now for God and their everlasting life disdain to come and seek instructions And yet these men would scarce believe you if you should tell them that self and the world is made their God and that God himself is denyed and rejected by them Moreover a long time I have been perswading all the families in the Town and Parish to read the Scripture and daily call upon God together I have proved it their duty from Scripture and this doth not prevail But see what flesh and self can do If these men were but sure of ten or twenty shillings a time for every Morning and Evening that they pray together I warrant you what ever the heart did the lips should be taught to do their part O how busie would all the Town and Parish be to learn to pray that now look not after it I do not believe that there is ever a house among them all that would not very shortly set up prayer if they were but paid for it after these rates Judge now whether God or self bear sway among these men and whether soul or body be more regarded Moreover we have too many drunkards in the Town that no means that we can use will restrain and keep sober They love the drink and they cannot forbear and tell them of Gods word that doth threaten them with damnation and they will for all that be drunk the next day But if one of these wretches might have but ten pound a week on condition he would forbear I do not think for all this but he could forbear Or if he were sure that for every cup of drink he should drink after it a cup of piss or gall I warrant you he would soon begin to abate We have abundance of ignorant sensual men that for love of sin refuse Church-Government and will not come under it But if the Magistrate would but make a Law that all men shall he members of a particular Church and submit to discipline or forfeit but twenty shillings a month how few refusers should we have in all the Town or Country We have many that seldom come to hear in the publick Assemblies but let the Parliament make a Law that they shall pay for their resusal and how readily will it bring the most of them unless they have hopes that the Law will not be executed And judge now whether self or God have greater Interests in these mens hearts I see but one piece of self-denyal among this sort of people in this Town and that this Though the officers are to give the money to the poor which they have from swearers drunkards unlicensed and abusive Ale-sellers prophaners of the Lords day c. yet that sort of the poor themselves do hate those officers that are zealous in their duties This is strange that the love of money doth not change them But whether it be that they can deny their flesh for the Devil though not for God and in enmity to godliness though not to further it or whether it be that the officers do use to give their mony to an honester sort of poor and these have none of it I cannot well tell And having given so many sad instances of the power of self and scarcity of self-denyal in others I hope the Magistrates will not take it ill if we help them to discern this enemy in themselves nor be offended that they come last unless it were in a more honourable cause I hear the best and wisest men that I can meet with complain that in most places Ale-houses flourish under the Magistrates Noses and that whoredom swearing prophaning the Lords days shall seldom be punished but when they are very much urged to it nor then neither if it will but displease a neighbour or friend especially if it be a worshipful swearer or drunkard that is to be punished We see in most places that it s more than the Justice can do to put down one Ale-house of many that they consess should be suppressed and I doubt but few can keep them from increasing Men say that there is so much ado before they can have Justice from many of them and those that seek it are counted but for busie troublesome fellows that many are ready to let all alone And whence is all this that men in Power can do so little against those that have no Power to resist them Why Alas the cause is plain Self is against it They have none but God and Ministers and a few precise fellows to perswade them to it and they have no greater motives than what is fetcht from Heaven and Hell to move them to it and these are but small matters with them I speak of the unsanctified It must be one that hath greater interest in them than God that must perswade them to it It must be more powerful matters than the promises of Heaven and the Threatnings of damnation that must prevail with such moderate Gentlemen as these And who is it that can do this that God and their salvation may not do Why even self carnal self If you know but how to engage their own self-interest in the business I warrant you it will go better on Let but every informer be well pâ—â—d for his pains and every Justice have a hâ—â—drâ—d pound from the Exchâ—quer for every due execâ—â—ion of such laws and how roundly would the work go on Then they would not say We cannot do it or We are not bound to look after them Do you think I wrong them or speak without proof I will leave it to your judgement when I have given you but these few instances Let but the Plague
and say as Zachaeus Luke 19. 8. Behold Lord the half of my goods I give to the poor and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation I restore him four fold Nay let us instance in a duty of lesser self-denyal than this of Restitution If two do but fall out and one give railing words to the other or if one slander his neighbour and do him wrong though it be undoubtedly the will of Christ that he penitently ask him forgiveness that he hath wronged Luke 17. 34. yet proud-hearted selfish men will refuse it What! will they stoop to such a fellow and ask him forgiveness specially if it be their inferior No they scorn it never talk to them of it more they will never do it And why so would not God have them do it Hath not he said He that humbleth himself shall be exalted Yea but what tell you them what God saith and what Scripture saith as long as self and flesh and pride are against it Judge now by these ten duties that I have named whether God or self be King with most CHAP. VII Mens exceeding tenderness of Self in case of any suffering 4. ANother Discovering instance of the Dominion of self and the scarcity of self-denyal is The exceeding tenderness of our selves in any case of suffering and the great matter that we make of it and our displeasure against all that are the causes of it be it never so just I shall here also give you some more particular instances 1. When did you ever see an offender at least very few that Justified the Judge and heartily confesseth that his punishment is due unless some few at the Gallows when the sight of death takes down their pride But at most every one that suffereth for his fault doth repine at it and at them that caused it and think they have wrong or are hardly dealt with If all the Swearers Cursers Prophaners of the Lords day Drunkards or Ale-sellers that reset them or are otherwise guilty were accused by their Neighbours and punished by the Magistrate but according to the Law how many of all these is there that would not be displeased with the accusers and with the Magistrate and think himself wronged and bear them a grudge in his mind that did it And why so Is it not just and according to the Laws of God and man Must we make a stir in choosing Parliament-men and must they sit there moneth after moneth and use their utmost skill and diligence to make such Laws as are necessary for the common good and when all is done must not these Laws be executed why then it were better spare the Parliament-men the labour of sitting about them and our selves the trouble of choosing us Parliament-men than do all this for nothing What is every Ale-seller or Drunkard or Swearer or Prophane person wiser than all the Parliament and the Prince or are they all better and juster and honester than they No but its self that stands up against all It s in vain to tell them of Kings or Parliaments or Laws or common good as long as you go about to cross the flesh and trouble them in their private interest set but self against all and all goes down before it as nothing There 's scarce a Thief or Murderer that 's hanged but thinks he hath hard measure because it is against himself 2. Nay it is not only penalties but words that men are very sensible of if they be but against themselves An angry or disgraceful speech or any contempt or disrespect doth seem a great matter against them and they have aggravations enough to lay upon it So tender are they of themselves that you may see how little they deny themselves 3. Yea Gods own Corrections do seem so heavy to them that they murmur and are impatient under them A little loss or cross to self doth lye as a mountain on them Poverty or sickness or disgrace or troubles do make them complain as if they were almost quite undone and all this shews how little they have learned to deny themselves CHAP. VIII The partiality of mens practical judgement in their own Case 5. ANother Discovering instance of the Dominion of self is The strange Partiality of mens practical Judgements when the Cause is their own and the equity of their judgements when the Case is another mans For particular instances of this you may take up those that were mentioned before I l'e give you but a few 1. Take but a dull and backward Minister for I know you will expect I begin next home and he that is most averse to particular Instruction and Discipline and Self-denying duties will be content that another man should perform them and will commend and extoll him for a worthy man except he perceive that anothers diligence disgraceth his selfishness and negligence and then indeed he may possibly repine at it 2. A man that will not come near us to be instructed or Catechized will yet let his children or servants come Why what 's the matter doth he more regard their salvation than his own or hath he not a soul to save or lose as well as they and hath he not need of teaching Yes but they are not himself If they learn a Catechism it is no trouble to him If their ignorance be opened he takes it to be less dishonour to him than if he shew his own He can yield to their submission without self-denyal but not to his Own 3. Take a common glutton or drunkard that cannot forbear but must needs have that which the flesh desires and they can be content that another man be temperate and sober and if a neighbour should have the Cup before him as they have or a provocation to their appetite they could be content that they let it alone yea they can tell them that it is the best way and give them good counsel and yet when the case is their own it is otherwise I have known drunkards that would perswade their children to take heed of it and swearers that would whip their children for swearing and persons that would not read or pray that would be content to have their children do it And why is all this why that which goes by their own throats must cost them self-denyal in the displeasing of their greedy appetites but that which goes by the throat of another doth cost them nothing self is not so much against their childrens abstinence and reformation as their own 4. The same Magistrate that will not trouble himself and displease his neighbours by suppressing Ale-houses and punishing vice will perhaps be content if it were done by another so that self might have none of the trouble and ill will 5. Some men that will not instruct their families nor pray with them morning and night will confess it is well done of others that do it Yea some that will not be perswaded to an holy heavenly life will confess
And from each of them we partake of an answerable Nature As is the Earthy such are they that are earthy even all of us in our fleshly state having earthy bodies from an earthy Adam and natural bodies from the natural Adam And as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly for Christ makes men like himself even first gracious and then glorious as Adam begets us like himself that is natural and sinful And therefore all those that have followed Christ in the Regeneration shall follow him into Glory and having conquered by him shall reign by him and with him and having received the holy nature here which is the seed of glory they shall receive the glorious nature there which is the perfection of that Grace And so as Christ hath an heavenly spiritual body and â—â—â— an earthy natural body so shall his Members have that they may be like him And as we have here born the image of the earthy in having first a natural fleshly body we shall also bear the Image of the Heavenly Adam in having a spiritual body that is not fleâ—â— Now lest any doubt of it saith the Spirit of God this I say that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither doth Corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 42. to 51. Object If there were but as much likelihood of a Resurrection as there is of the Reviving of the plants in the Spring I could believe it for there is a life remaining in the Root or Seed but the body of man hath neither Root nor seed of life and therefore it 's contrary to nature that it should revive Answ 1. If it be above nature that is all it is not contrary to it Or not so contrary as to be above the power of the Lord of nature Will you allow no greater works for God than such as you can see a reason of and can assign a natural cause of what did Nature in the creation of nature It was not certainly any cause of it self If Christ rose without a natural cause even so shall we 2. But why may I not say that the dead body of man hath a living Root as truly as the plants in winter The soul is the Root of the body and the soul is still alive And Christ is the Root of the soul and he is still alive For though we are dead yet our Life is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life shall appear at the Spring of Resurrection then we shall also appear with him in Glory Col. 3. 3 4. And though there be no Physical contact between this living soul and the body yet there is a Relative Union and a deep rooted Love of the soul to its body and inclination to it so that it is mindful of it and waiteth with longing for that hour when the command of God shall send it to revive that body It is not incredible that a silly snail should by its natural life and power make for it self a beautiful habitation Or that the life of a Rose-tree that was buried in the root should fabricate a sweet and beauteous Rose by which it may make an ostentation of its invisible self to the world In how small a room doth the life of a silk-worm lie of which I spoke before in the winter That little grain or seed is such as yields no sign of life to the beholder yet doth it form it self a larger body and that body spin its silken web out of its own substance and in that house it self in a husk and take to it self another shape and thence become a winged Fly and so generate more But nearer us in the generation of man the vital principle in the seed doth quickly with concurrent causes form it self a body The warmth of the body of the Hen or other Bird can turn the egge into a Chicken Why then may not the living sâ—ul that is the Root and life of the body in the dust be the instrument of God to reform its own body as certainly it will be the principle that shall reinform it But you say the body being dead hath no natural root nor way of recess to life again because the privation is total To which I answer First the Relative union between the soul and it and the souls disposition to the Return into its body is as potent a cause of its reviving as the natural union of the Root and branches if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul Rational agents if perfect will work as certainly as Natural For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause even God himself Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all will have it to be so Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him Christ is still living and resolved and engaged by promise and enclined by Love to revive that body And as Christ is the life of the soul so the soul is the life of the body and this soul as I said is waiting to be sent again into it And when the hour comes what can hinder The Love of the soul to its body and its desire to be reunited is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection A candle not lighted is as far from light and as much without it as a dead body is without life And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before And so may one touch of the living soul that 's now with Christ put life into the body that lieth in the dust And as the lighted candle makes the other like it and communicateth of its own nature to it so doth the glorified soul communicate a new kind of excellency to the body which it never had before even to be a spiritual glorious incorruptible and immortal body In the first creating of man the new formed body as to the matter of it was no better than the body of a Beast or any common piece of earth But the soul made the difference when a Rational Soul was breathed into that Body it advanced the very body to a dignity beyond the bodies of brutes even such as the natural body of man had before sin When Christ was about to repair faln man it was the spirit of Christ informing the soul that caused the renewed soul to communicate again a dignity to the bodies of sanctified men above other bodies And so when the body was dead because of sin having the root of sin and death within it and being mortal therefore yet the spirit was life because of Righteousness being the Root of holy and Righteous dispositions and the new life in man himself Rom. 8. 10. For Christ the principal root of life and the spirit and holiness are first in order of nature in the soul and but by
the more you should desire to be there where there is no strangeness This is not the time or place of most intimate acquaintance If you would be acquainted you should draw nearer and not draw back It 's death that must open you the door into that presence where strangeness will be no more And if it be the doubts of your interest in Christ and life that makes you shrink and loth to die Consider that to refuse to die for Christ is the way above all to increase those doubts but to give up your lives for him or chearfully to surrender your souls to him at his call is the readiest surest way in the world to prove you at present in a state of grace besides that you will be hastened into a state of glory where you shall be quickly and fully past all doubts of your state of former grace In a word as all the fears and sorrows of this life will then be at an end so with the rest will our fears of death And therefore death should be the more welcome because it is the end as of all other troubles so of these disturbing fears 14. Consider also what a multitude have trod this bloody way before you Almost all that ever were born have died and are now in the world that you are passing to You are not the first that entred at this narrow gate The dearest Saints of God have died If Abraham Moses Joshua David Peter and Paul could not escape the stroak of death what are you that you should murmur to follow such and so many that have gone before you You need not fear being solitary in heaven There are millions and millions more of Saints than there are on earth Many that you knew and millions more that will then be as dear to you as if you had known them Is it not better be among innocent souls than a defiled guilty world Is it not better be where no sin entreth and never a hâ—st or passion comes than to live as among Wild beasts with furious unreasonable sinners Is it not better be where Light is perfect and all your doubts are fully resolved than in darkness and perplexity and among an ignorant blind generation that are enemies to the light which you desire Is it not better be where is nothing but the perfect love of the Infinite God in perfect Saints and blessed Angels than to live among perverse ungodly men that make you almost weary of your lives If it be a delight to us to read the writings of the illuminated Saints of God and we think them such Jewels and Ornaments in our Libraries what a pleasure would it be to converse with them that wrote these Books and that in their celestial perfection where they have attained a thousand times more light than before they had and where all the doubts are resolved which their books could not resolve O blessed Society in comparison of that we now converse with 15. Nay more lest the bloody way of death should seem too strange and terrible to us the Lord Jesus our Head hath trod that path and that of purpose to conquer death by taking away the sting and principal cause of terrors and making that a passage to felicity that was a passage to everlasting misery So that ever since Christ hath gone this way there is no such danger in it to his followers Where the Captain of our salvation goeth his Souldiers may boldly follow him For asmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part with them that he might destroy by death him that had the power of death that is the Devil and might deliver them that through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage Heb. 2. 14 15. He hath cleared our way and taken out of it the forest thorns and hath prepared us an habitation with himself And shall we fear to go the way that Christ hath gone and purposely gone to clear it for us 16. Moreover Consider that the Celestial inhabitants have purposely made themselves familiar with us in this lower world that they might acquaint us with themselves and lead us upto their blessed habitation and fit us for it No man of common reason can doubt but that those more capacious glorious parts of the Universe are stored with inhabitants answerable to their glory when we see every corner of the lower world to be replenished with inhabitants And Scripture and some experience tells us that those Angels of God are conversant here about us men They bear us up in their hands that we dash not our foot against a stone they pitch their tents and encamp about us as an appointed guard for our security It is their very office for what are they but ministring spirits sent forth to minister for them that shall be heirs of salvation Heb. 1. 14. They converse with us though we see them not and are about us night and day They are among us in our holy assemblies observing our behaviour before the Lord 1 Cor. 11. 10. and they are witnesses of our good and evil Eccles 5. 6. From them as the Servants of God was the Law received Acts 7. 53. Gal. 3. 19. Heb. 2. 2. They read our books and study with us the Mysteries of the Gospel 1 Pet. 1. 12. And as near as they are to God they are glad to make the Church their book in which to read his manifold wisdom and know it by beholding it in us as in a glass Ephes 3. 10. The Nations have their Angels The Churches have their Angels and the particular Saints also have their Angels Dan. 10. 13 20 21 Rev. 1. 20. Acts 12. 15. Mat. 18. 10. They are not strangers with us but have charge of us to keep us in all our ways Psal 91. 10 11 12. They rejoyce in our conversion Luke 15. 10. They are part of the heavenly Society that we are already listed in Heb. 12. 22. They ascend and descend as ordinary passengers between heaven and earth Gen. 28. 12. They are round about us and we live as in their Camp Psal 34. 7. Before them we must be confessed or denied Luke 12. 8 9. They convoy our departed souls to Christ Luke 16. 22. They shall attend Christ at his second coming as they prcolaimed his first and attended him on earth Matth. 25. 31. Mar. 8. 38. They shall be his Heralds to call up the dead to judgement Mat. 13. 39 49. 24. 31. And at last we shall be their companions and equal to them Luke 20. 36. So that you see we have the same Society invisible which we shall have in heaven Yea and sometime when God is pleased they manifest their presence by visible or audible apparitions And shall we fear to remove into the presence of these blessed spirits that now attend us and are still about us and the instruments of so much of our good Yea the Lord Jesus Christ came
withall unsanctified hearts are ordinarily transported with this odious vice A strong wit and a voluble tongue and learning to furnish it with matter are notable servants to Pride of heart where that spiritual illumination and holiness is wanting that should abase the Proud and turn mens Parts a better way To all that are apt to be tainted with this odious vice I would recommend these following considerations 1. Consider what a dangerous sign it is of a graceless hypocritical heart where Pride of Gifts doth much prevail It is as inseparable from a child of God to be humble and little in his own esteem as from a new-born Child to be really lesser than men at age No more sincerity than humility in any 2. Consider what cause of deep humiliation you carry about you in every duty Besides all the wants and loathsom corruptions of your souls which follow you wherever you go the very sins of your duties one would think should humble you Oh to have such low conceptions such dull apprehensions such heartless unreverent poor expressions of such a God such a Christ such a glory and such holy truth should make us ashamed to open our Lips before the Lord and wonder that he doth not tread us into hell instead of regarding us or our services and that fire doth not come forth from his jealousie and consume us It should make us so far from glorying in our performances that it should drive us to Christ in every duty to take him with us to shelter us from the flames of holy jealousie so that we should not dare to go any further than he goes before us and stands between us and the wrath of God nor to speak a word but in his name nor to expect any welcome but on his account Shall a wretch be Proud of that performance whose failings deserve everlasting torments Must you be beholden to Christ to save you from the Hell that the sins of your performances deserve and yet dare you be proud of them Let a Papist run that desperate path that rails at us for saying that our best duties are mix'd with sin and that this sin deserves the wrath of God Let them refuse a Physician that think not themselves sick and let them tell Christ they will not be beholden to him for a pardon for the sins of their prayers and other duties but for shame let not us be guilty of this who profess to be better acquainted with our infirmities 3. Consider also that you have to do with so Holy and Glorious a God that to be Proud before Him and that in and of our very service of him is a sin whose greatness surpasseth our apprehensions Had you to do with a man like your selves you might better lift up your selves against him There is nothing comparatively in the presence of the greatest Prince to humble and abase you But to be Proud before the God of heaven and that in and of our lamentably weak addresses to him O what an horridly impious unreasonable thing is this O man if thy eyes were opened to see a little a very little of the glory of that blessed God thou speakest to how flat wouldst thou fall down how wouldst thou fear and tremble and cry out as the Prophet Isa 6. 5. Wo is me for I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts Or as Job 40. 4. Behold I am vile what shall I answer thee I will lay my hand upon my mouth And Chap. 42. 5 6. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee wherefore I abhor my self and repent in dust and ashes One glimpse of Gods Majesty would take down thy self-exalting thoughts and humble thee with a witness 4. Consider the examples of the holiest of Gods servants The example of Job and Isaiah I have now mentioned Moses himself did think himself unmeet to speak in Gods message Exod. 4. 10. He said unto the Lord I am not eloquent neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken to thy servant but I am of slow speech and of a slow tongue And ver 13. He said O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send When God sent Jer. 1. 6. he said Ah Lord God behold I cannot speak for I am a child And Paul cries out Who is sufficient for these things 2 Cor. 2. 16. So that it hath been the course of the most Seraphical Prophets and holy Apostles to have low thoughts of their own abilities for duty And yet have you enough to be Proud of 5. And consider that the Nature of the holy employment that you are upon one would think should be enough to humble you It is a confessing of sin unworthiness and guilt and will you be Proud of this It is a confessing that you deserve everlasting torment And will you be Proud of such a confession as this The Lord be merciful to us and save us from this unreasonable vice who would think that it should be thus with a man in his wits To confess that he deserveth Hell-fire And to be Proud of that Confession your Petitions are all humbling if they be according to the word you are beggars for your lives for pardon of many and hainous sins and should come as with the rope about your necks you beg for deliverance from eternal misery and should you be proud of such requests should beggars be Proud yea such needy miserable beggars and be proud of their very begging Nay your very thanksgiving it self is humbling For what do you give thanks for but for salvation from these odious sins and the damnation which you have deserved And shall a thief be proud that he is pardoned and taken from the gallows Pride is contrary to the very Nature and meaning of all those holy duties that you are Proud of 6. Yea the Gifts themselves that you are Proud of should humble you For 1. They are from God and not your selves 1 Cor. 4. 7. For who maketh thee to differ and what hast thou that thou didst not receive Now if thou didst receive it why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it 2. You received them not for your selves but for God and therefore have no reason your selves to be lifted up by them 3. All Gifts are for labour and duty and must be once accounted for and therefore should keep you in humility and fear To be Proud of Gods Gifts is to be Proud of that which is given you to destroy Pride in your selves and others For this is the End of them 7. And it is a sign that you want exceeding much of that which you are Proud of You are Proud of Knowledge when as if it were not for want of Knowledge of that which should humble you you would not be so Proud You are Proud
be most odious to you it is Dishonour and not Error or Schism that you are against Had you rather part with Truth and Religion or with the name Reputation of them If you set so much by self and so little by Truth as to let go Truth for fear of being thought to let it go for shame do not take on you to be Lovers of Truth but of your selves nor haters of Error but of Dishonour And consider further that you may lose the Reputation of being Orthodox and Catholick and of the right Religion without losing any of the favour of God nay it may be a suffering for his sake that may advance you in his favour and assure you of the Reward of Martyrs For saith Christ Mat. 5. 11 12. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsly for my sake Rejoyce and be exceeding glad for great is your Reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets that were before you So that you see the thing that you so abhor is matter of exceeding joy Even to be falsly counted an Heretick or Erroneous for the sake of Christ and Truth we are blessed when we are falsly reviled as Erroneous and have all these evil sayings against us But to be such indeed is to be accursed Though the name of Heresie will stand with the special Love of God yet Heresie it self he utterly abhors And whether do you think it is better to part with truth and the Favour of God with it or with the name and Reputation of Truth while we keep both Truth and the favour of God Deny your selves then even as to the Reputation of Faith and Orthodoxness For you will certainly deny the Faith if you cannot deny the name of it to preserve it CHAP. XLIX Reputation of Godliness and Honesty how far 9. ANother piece of Honour that self must be denied in is The Reputation of Godliness and Honesty Concerning both the former and this I must say by way of caution that the Reputation both of Faith and Godliness is a great Mercy and not to be despised nor prodigally cast away by our own negligence or miscarriages nor unthankfully to be received But yet 1. It is not to be desired for it self but for God that it may help and advantage us to serve him or as it is a Mercy that brings the report of his love 2. And the greater the Mercy is the greater is our temptation when it would deprive us of a far greater mercy than it self I have oft thought it was a very high passage for an Heathen to say as Seneca did that No man doth shew a higher esteem of goodness than he that can let go the Name or Reputation of being a good man rather than let go his goodness it self The world is so much unacquainted with goodness that they know it not when they see it but call it by those odious names that least agree with it Their Judgements follow their Natures dispositions and interests And therefore they cannot take that to be good which is contrary to these A feather-bed is no better to a swine than a mire-lake A banquet is not so good to a Cow as a green pasture As the person is himself so do all things seem good or evil to him The Toad or Snake hath no such odious apprehensions of it self as men have And hence it is that to ungodly men the best men and best actions seem to be the worst And hence also it is that in all Ages Godliness haâ—h been matter of reproach and the best have been laden with the he aviest calumnies David had enemies that laid to his charge the things that he never thought of And it seems by the strain of Shimei in his railing that they took him to be but a Traitor because King Saul was against him and to be a bloody man because he had been engaged in the wars 2 Sam. 16. 7 8. Come out come out thou bloody man and thou man of Belial the Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul in whose stead thou hast raigned See what a wicked person David was esteemed by such fellows as this And yet he so far denied himself here as that he would not hear of revenge upon the railer but makes it as a tryal sent from God And two special reasons moved him to bear it One was the remembrance of that sin against God and his Servant Uriah which he knew God was now chastising him for And therefore being under the rod of the Lord he durst not think of revenge upon the instrument and being sensible that he had brought all this upon himself he durst not let fly too much at others The other was that God had raised up by permissive providence the Son of his bowels against him and therefore he thought it an unseemly thing to be much offended with a stranger for less And such Reasons as these have we also to perswade us to Patience and Self-denial in the like Case The Lord Jesus himself who had no sin at all escaped not these censures of malicious men He was esteemed a friend or Companion of Publicans and Sinners yea a gluttonous person and a wine bibber yea a deceiver yea a conjurer that did his works by the help of the Devil Mat. 11. 19. Luk 7. 34. Mat. 27. 63. Job 7. 12. Mat. 12. 27. What usage the holy Apostles themselves had and how they behaved themselves under all you may conjecture by that one passage to mention no more 1 Cor. 4. 9 10 11 12 13. For I think God hath set forth us the Apostles last as it were men appointed to death For we are made a spectacle to the world and to Angels and to men we are fools for Christs sake but ye are wise in Christ we are weak but ye are strong ye are honourable but we are despised Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst and are naked and are buffeted and have no certain dwelling place and labour working with our own hands being reviled we bless being persecuted we suffer it being defamed we intreat we are made as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things to this day The like usage had the Christians after the Apostles days They were slandered by the Pagans as if they sacrificed and eat their own children and putting out the lights had commonly been unclean together after their holy exercises And when they cast them to the Lions to be devoured and many wayes tormented them it was as ungodly men for preaching against the Heathen Gods and refusing to offer sacrifice to them And therefore the rabble was wont thus to cry for Judgement against them Tollite impios Tollite impios Away with the ungodly Christians The wicked multitude that were drowned in filthiness and ungodliness did think themselves Religious men and the Christians to be ungodly
So that they were fain to live and die under a Reputation as contrary to the truth as darkness is contrary to light And this usage hath still been the attendant of true Godliness When the Papists burn Gods servants at the stake it is for supposed Heresie and impiety they put a painted cap and coat upon them made of paper on which the Images of Devils are pictur d to make the people believe that they are ungodly persons the servants of the Devil and possessed by him already and unworthy to live any longer among men When they butchered the poor Waldenses and Albigenses by thousands it was under the name of ungodly hereticks The ignorant ungodly rabble among us now that hate and revile those that seek after God more diligently than themselves have yet more devilish wit than to oppose them directly under the name of honest godly men but they first make the world believe that they are Hypocrites and Proud and Self-conceited and Covetous and secretly are as bad as others and these are the things if you will believe them that they hate and speak against them for But then how comes it to pass that it is their Praying and Preciseness that is so much in the scorners mouths Doth that signifie Hypocrisie or Pride Why do they not commend the good while they speak against the evil and joyn with them in the holy Worship and ways of God while they oppose their supposed viciousness Doth the name Puritan signifie a covetous man or a vicious person or rather one that will not be content to venture his soul in the common impure ungodly courses of the world And how comes it to pass that a man may quietly enough follow such vices if he will but forbear the profession of Godliness But to leave these wretches in the dirt where we find them by this you may see the common measure that is to be expected from the world If you will be truly godly you must be taken for ungodly or for hypocrites that seem to be godly when you are not But it 's easie to bear this charge when it falls upon a whole society and takes us but in the crowd among the rest and when we have so much honourable company to suffer with us But it goes nearer us when we are singled out by name and noted and talk'd of all about as Hypocrites or Proud or worse than others But that also must be born by those that will be Christians But the greatest trial of all is when the Servants of God that should help us in our suffering have got a hard report of us and by misinformation we have lost our credit even with them Under all these false and injurious reports direct and stablish your own minds by the help of these Considerations following 1. It may be there is some special cause that you should try and judge your selves and so God doth suffer other men to judge you to awaken you to self-judging However make this use of it and you are sure to be no losers by the reproach Enter into your hearts and search them throughly as before the Lord and see if there be any way of wickedness in them which hitherto you have not discovered Try whether there be Hypocrisie and Pride or not Especially when it is the servants of God that think hardly of you and above all if it be wise impartial men that are acquainted with you it 's then your duty to be very jealous of your hearts and ways and to fear lest you are guilty and to search the more diligently and not be quiet till you either find out your sin or be sure that you are clear And if you be clear in that point yet suspect and search lest there be some other secret or allowed sin which God would detect to you or excite you against by the injurious censures of those that have reproached you 2. When you have search'd and cleared your own Consciences then consider further that though you are not such as you are censured to be yet sinners you are and you know your sins in other kinds are so many and so great that you should bear the more patiently to be hardly thought of when you know your selves to be so bad If indeed you are godly you have seen a sink of uncleanness in your selves and have condemned your selves oft and loathed your selves for your abominations and bewailed them before the Lord. And is it suitable for such a spirit to be eager after the Reputation of sincerity and to be much troubled that you are taken by others to be naught 3. And consider also that your Case may be as Davids was and God may possibly make this reproach a chastisement for some former sin and a means to humble you for it more throughly and to reclaim you from it Perhaps he bids by permissive providence some Shimei curse you It may be the voice of a slanderer must do that which the voice of a Preacher could not do And then it is your work to look behind you and within you more than without you and to hearken more to the voice of God and Conscience than of the slanderer and to take it as the rod of God and a call to a more serious Repentance 4. And consider that when you are under the false Censures of the world you may have the inward peace of a good conscience which is better than all the applause of men And this being a continual feast they cannot do much against your quietness as long as they cannot deprive you of this 5. Yea moreover you have the Approbation of God himself and that should satisfie against the censure of all the world Even a Proud man if he have any wit can bear the Contempt of the ignorant vulgar if he have but the applause of great and wise and learned men As that Orator that valued the judgement of Socrates above all the rest of his auditory But all the wisest men in the world are fools in comparison of God Having his Approbation you have the Greatest the Best and the Wisest on your side and a Judgement for you that will weigh down the judgement of ten thousand worlds 7. And if you value not Gods approbation above mans it 's a sign that you are hypocrites indeed and so the censure is not unjust But if you do then you will acquiesce in it though man condemn you and say as the Apostle Rom. 8. 33 34. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect It is God that Justifieth who is he that condemneth And as 1 Cor. 4. 3 4. With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of mans judgment but he that judgeth me is the Lord. And remember that the great day of Judgment is near at hand that will set all straight which the slanderous tongues of men made crooked Stay but a while and the Glory of Christ and the
Unworthiness by reason of this sin But self is not easily so far abased as to be heavy-laden and sick of sin nor is it easily drawn to value Grace or feel how much you are unworthy of it or need it nor easily driven to renounce all sufficiency and conceits of a Righteousness of your own and wholly to go out of your selves to Christ for life Self cannot spare sin for it is its darling and play-fellow its food its recreation and its life You must daily pray to be saved from temptation and delivered from Evil even the Evil of sin as well as of punishment But self doth Love the sin and therefore cannot long to be delivered from it and therefore Loveth the temptation that leadeth to it indeed is a continual tempter to it self Would the Covetous worldling be delivered from his worldliness Would the Ambitious Proud person be delivered from his Pride or Honours or the sensual person from his sensual delights No they do not Love the Preacher or people that are against them in these ways nor the holy self-denial that is contrary to them nor the Scripture that condemneth them nor indeed the Lord himself that forbids them and is the author of all these Laws and holy ways which they abhor So that you see how self is an enemy to every Petition in the Lords Prayer 3. And it is a violation of all the ten Commandments The first and second it is most directly against and is the very thing forbidden in them and all the rest it is against consequentially and is the virtual breach of them as disposing and drawing the soul thereunto The two Tables have two Great Commands which are the sum of the whole Law and all the other Commandments are consequents or particulars from these The sum of the first Table is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart or above all This is the first Commandment Thou shalt have none other Gods before me which is put first as being the Fundamental Law commanding subjection it self to the soveraign Power of God which necessarily goes before all actual obedience to particular precepts But self is directly against this and sets up man as a God to himself And all the unsanctified Love themselves better than God and therefore cannot Love him above all And therefore neither second third or fourth command can be sincerely kept by such For when self is set up and God denied in stead of the right worshipping of God they are worshipping themselves or suiting God worship to the conceit and will of self Instead of the Reverent use of his name they are setting up their own names and will venture on the grossest abuse of Gods name rather than self shall suffer or be crossed And instead of hallowing the Lords day they devote both that and every day to themselves The sum of the second Table is Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self and this is the meaning of the tenth Commandment which forbiddeth us to covet any thing from him to our selves that is that we set not up self and its interest against our neighbour and his good and be not like a bruised or inflamed part of the body that draweth the blood or humors to it self or like a Wen or other Tumor that is sucking from the body for its own nutrition so that it is but plainly this Be not selfish or drawing or desiring any thing to thy self which is not thy due but belongeth to another but let Love run by even proportions between thy neighbour and thy self in order to God and the publick good And this Commandment brings up the rear that it may summarily comprehend and gather up all other particulars that be not instanced in in the foregoing Commandments Now selfishness being the very sin that is here forbidden I need to say no more to tell you that self is the breaker of this Law Next to this summary concluding Precept the greatest in the second Table if not one of the first is the fifth Commandment which requireth the preservation of Relations and Societies and the duties of those Relations especially of inferiors to superiors for the Honour of God and the Common good And this is set before the rest because the publick good is preferred to the personal good of any and Magistrates and Superiors being Gods Officers and for the Publick good are to be prefered before the subjects But what an enemy selfishness is to this Commandment I intend anon to shew you distinctly and therefore now pass it by And for the following Commandments who ever murdered another but out of some inordinate respect to himself either to remove that other 〈…〉 of his selfish Ends or to be revenged on â—…riving self of profit or honour or somâ—… it would have had or in some way or other â—…in your Own Ends by anothers blood And what is it but the satisfaction of your Own â—â—â—thy lusts that causeth Adultery and all uncleanness And what is it but the furnishing and providing for self that provoketh any man to Rob another And what is it but some selfish End that causeth any man to pervert Justice or slander or bear false witness against his neighbour so that nothing is more plain than that selfishness is all sin and villany against God and man comprized in one word And therefore you need not ask me which Commandment it is that doth forbid it For it is forbidden in every one of the ten Commandments The first condemneth self as it is the Idol set up and Loved trusted and served before God the second condemneth it as the Enemy of his worship and the third condemneth it as the Prophaner of his Name and the fourth as the Prophaner of his Hallowed time The second Table in the tenth Commandment condemneth self as it is the Tumor and gulf that is contrary to the Love of our neighbour and would draw all to it self The fifth Commandment condemneth it as the Enemy of Authority and Society the sixth as the Enemy to our Neighbours life the seventh eighth and ninth condemn it as the enemy to our neighbours chastity Estates and Cause or Name So that if you see any mischief done in Persons Families Towns Countrys Courts Armies or any where in the world you need not send out Hue and Cry to find out and apprehend the actor It is selfishness that is the Author of all If the poor be oppressed by the rich and their lives made almost like the life of a labouring Ox or Horse till the Cry of the oppressed reach to heaven who is it that doth all this but self The Landlords and rich men must Rule and be served by them I warrant you they would not do thus by themselves If the poor be discontented and murmur at their condition and steal from others who is it that is the cause of this but self If another were in poverty they would not murmur nor steal for him It is selfishness
that blemisheth Judges and Justices and Officers with the stains of partiality avarice and injustice It is this that disturbeth the peace of Nations that will not let Princes Rule for God and consequently overthrows their Thrones that will not let subjects Obey them in the Lord but le ts in wars and miseries upon them that sets the Nations together by the ears and so continueth them yea it is self that will not let neighbours live together in Peace that provoketh people to disobey their Teachers and Teachers to be man-pleasers and neglect the people that will not let Masters and Servants Parents and Children Husband and Wife live peaceably and lovingly one with other It is the common make-bate and troubler of the world Nay it is self that causeth most of the new Opinions and practises in Religion that sets up Popery and most other Sects and causeth the Pastors to contend for superiority to the troubling of the Church after all the plain prohibitions of Christ In a word selfishness is the grand enemy of God and man the Disease of Depraved lapsed nature the very heart of Original sin and the old man the root of all the Iniquity in the world the breach of every Commandment of the Law the enemy of every Article of Faith and every Petition in the Lords Prayer and by that time we have added the rest of its deformity you will see whether it be not the very Image of the Devil as the Love of God and our neighbour which is its contrary is the image of God But now on the contrary side Self-denial complyeth with all Divine Revelations and disposeth the soul to all holy Requests and to the observation of every Command of God It humbly stoopeth to the mysteries of Faith which others proudly quarrel with in the dark It makes a man say O what am I that I should set my wit against the Lord and make my Reason the Touch-stone of his truth and think to Comprehend his judgements that are incomprehensible It causeth a man to sit as a little child at the feet of Christ to learn his will and say Speak Lord for thy servant heareth It silenceth the carpings of an unsatisfied understanding and limiteth the enquiries of a busie prying presumptuous wit and subdueth the contradictions of flesh and blood It casteth off that Pride and self-conceitedness that hindreth others from believing In Prayer it bringeth an emptied soul that is not stopped up against the grace and blessings of God It layeth us low in a receiving posture It emptieth us of our selves that we may be filled with God It hath nothing to say against any one of those Requests which Christ hath put into our mouths but subscribeth to them all It is the highest ambition the greatest desire of a self-denying soul that Gods Name may be hallowed and honoured whatever become of his own Name or honour and that the Kingdom of God may flourish in which he desireth to be a subject and that the will of God may be done and the will of himself and all the world conformed and subjected to it And so of the rest of the Petitions Self-denial is half the life of Prayer And it is a dutiful observer of all the Commandments It giveth up our Love to God as his Own and consequently worshippeth him in Love and Reverenceth his name and observeth his time and indeed is wholly devoted to him And it giveth our neighbour that part of our Love which belongeth to him and therefore will not dishonour superiors or encroach upon the possessions of others or injure them for his own ends And indeed what should draw a self-denying man to sin were he but perfect in self-denial when the poise is taken off the wheels all stand still Self-denial doth frustrate Temptations and leave them little to work upon What should move a self-denying man to be Proud or covetous or injurious to others no man doth evil but it seemeth good and for some good that he imagineth it will do him And this seeming good is to carnal self And therefore a self-denying man hath taken off the byass of sin and turned out the deceiver and when Satan comes he hath little in him to make advantage of O how easily may you take sin out of the hands of the self-denying and make them cast it away with lamentation when other men will hold it as fast as their lives O try this speedy way of Mortification Would you but destroy this Original breeding sin you would destroy all All the sins of your lives are the fruits of your selfishness kill them at the heart and root if you would go the nearest way to work What abundance of sin doth self-denial kill at once Indeed it is the sum of mortification And therefore be sure that you deny your selves CHAP. LXV Contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness 3. MOreover Selfishness is contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness contrary to every grace and contrary to the life of Glory For it is the use of all grace to recover the soul from selfishness to God that God may be Loved and Self-love may be overcome that God may be trusted and pleased and his service may be our care and business when before our care was to Please our selves And the very felicity of the soul consisteth in a closing and communion with God The soul that will be happy must be conscious of self-insufficiency and must go out of it self and seek after life in God It must forsake it self and apply it self to him Men lose their labour till they deny themselves by going to a broken empty cistern and forsaking the fountain of living waters The nearer men are to God and the more fully they are conformed to him and close with him and know him and love him the happyer they are Glory it self is but the nearest and fullest intuition and fruition of God And he that hath most of him here in his soul and in the creatures providences and ordinances is the happiest man on Earth and likest to the glorified And there is no approach to God but by departing from carnal self I know self-seeking men do think of finding more peace and comfort in that way but they are alway deceived of their hopes It is self-denial that is the way to peace and comfort While we rest on our selves or are taken up with anxious caring for our selves we are but tost up and down as on a tempestuous sea and are seeking Rest but never find it but when we retire from our selves to God we are presently at the harbour and find that Peace which before we sought in vain I confess in the too-little experience that I have my self of the way of peace and quiet to the soul I must needs say there is none to this There is none but this Never can I step out but self meets with somewhat that is vexatious and displeasing to it This business goes cross
your lungs to breathe your stomach to turn your meat to nourishment and that nourishment into blood and spirits and strength Is it God or you Who is it that causeth the Sun to rise upon you in the morning to light you to your labours and to set upon you at night that the Curtains of darkness may be drawn about you and you may quietly repose your selves to rest Who giveth you strength to labour in the day and refeâ—â—eth you with sleep at night and provideth all the creatures for your assistance Is it you or God O Sirs me thinks such silly worms that cannot live a minute of themselves and cannot fetch a breath of themselves should easily see that they should not live to themselves but to him from whom and by whom they live Direct 7. If you would live in self-denial be sure that you keep the mastery of your senses and do not let them be ungoverned but shut them up when reason doth require it It is your Appetite and senses that feed this carnal selfish vice but reason and faith are both against it Whenever you consult with sense you may know what brutish advice you may expect Ask not therefore what is delightful nor what is for your carnal ease and peace but what is necessary to please the Lord and for your everlasting peace And if the tempter tell you This is the easier and the broader way tell him that it is not the honester nor the safer way And the question is not which is the fairest way but which is the way to Heaven It 's better go the hardest way to glory than the smoothest to damnation If you cannot keep under your sensitive appetite and subdue the eager desires of the flesh and learn to want as well as to abound to be empty as well as to be full you will never attain to self-denial Direct 8. To promote your self-denial me thinks it should be effectual to understand the great advantage that you have by the Communion and Society which you enter into when you deny your selves Though a Prince or Lord would be loth to enter into a Colledge or Monastery where there 's no Propriety and yet withal no care or want yet a poor labouring man or a beggar would be glad of such a life So you that cannot live of your selves me thinks should be glad of such a Community 1. Consider that the Lord Jesus is the Head of the Society who hath undertaken to make provision for the whole and is engaged for their security and to save them harmless and all the Riches of his grace and love belong to that Society and will be yours which is more than all that you can part with of your own yea more than all the treasures of the world It is therefore the noblest and richest Society in the world that you shall live in communion with if you will deny your selves 2. And the Saints that are the Members of that Society are the Brethren of Christ and the Heirs of Heaven And all these are your Brethren endeared in special love to you engaged to assist you by prayers and counsel and pains and purse and every way that you can so that well might Christ say that he that forsaketh any thing for him shall receive even an hundred fold in this life and in the world to come eternal life For this one sorry self that you forsake and it 's poor accommodations you have God for your Father and Christ for your Head and the Holy Ghost for your Sanctifier and Comforter and the Sripture for your guide and Saints for your Brethren Companions and Assistants engaged to you in truer and dearer love than your unsanctified friends that cast you off for the sake of Christ And had you rather be toiling and caring for your selves than let go self and enter into so blessed a Community where you may cast all your care away upon God who hath promised to care for you and may feed your selves in the daily delightful fore-thoughts of life eternal Direct 9. And me thinks it should much promote your self-denial to study well the self-denying example of Christ and his eminent servants that have troden in his steps Christ had no sinful self to deny nor any corrupted flesh to mortifie or subdue And yet he had a self-denial in which we must imitate him Rom. 15. 3. For even Christ pleased not himself but as it is written The reproaches of them that reproached thee are faln upon me We are told therefóre by Christs example that it is not only the pleasing of self as corrupted by sin but also a pleasing of natural self in things where God may lay a restraint on it or put it to the tryal that we must avoid and in which we must deny our selves Even as Adam was to have denyed his natural appetite before sin had corrupted it and Christ had an innocent natural will of which yet he saith Not my will but thine be done His whole life was a wonderful example of self-denial He lived in a low estaâ—â— and denyed himself of the Glory and Riches of the world and became poor though he were Lord of all that by his poverty we might be made rich 2 Cor. 8. 9. He lived under the reproach of sinners of sinners that he created of sinners whom he dyed for He would wear no Crown but a Crown of Thorns He would wear no Robes but the Robes of their reproach He yielded his cheeks to be smitten and his face to be spit upon by the vilest sinners whom he could with a word have turned into Hell And at last he gave himself for us on the Cross in suffering a reproachful cursed death Heb. 7. 27. Tit. 2. 14. Eph. 5. 2. 2. 25. Gal. 1. 4. And can you read such an example of self-denial given you by the Lord of glory and not be transformed into the image of it I think the study of a self-denying Christ is one of the most excellent helps to self-denial Take it from the Apostle himself Phil. 2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Fulfil ye my joy that ye be like-minded having the same love being of one accord of one mind let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him Look therefore unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the