are set over and you might become a plague to them instead of a blessing and they might wish they had never seen your faces O therefore take heed of your own Judgements and Affections Error and vanity will slily insinuate and seldom come without fair pretences Great distempers and apostacies have usually small beginnings The Prince of darkness doth frequently personate the Angels of light to draw children of light again into his darkness How easily also will distempers creep in upon our affections and our first love and fear and care abate Watch therefore for the sake of your selves and others And more particularly me thinks a Minister should take some special pains with his heart before he is to go to the Congregation if it be then cold how is he like to warm the hearts of the hearers Go therefore then specially to God for life and read some rowsing waking book or meditate on the weight of the subject that you are to speak of and on the great necessity of your peoples souls that you may go in the zeal of the Lord into his house SECT VII 3. MY next particular Exhortation is this Star up your selves to the great work of God when you are upon it and see that you do it with all your might Though I move you not to a constant lowdness for that will make your fervency contemptible yet see that you have a constant seriousness and when the matter requireth it as it should do it the application at least of every Doctrine then lift up your voice and spare not your spirits and speak to them as to men that must be awakened either here or in Hell Look upon your Congregations believingly and with compassion and think in what a state of Joy or Torment they must all be for ever and then me thinks it should make you earnest and melt your heart in the sense of their condition O speak not one cold or careless word about so great a business as heaven or hell What ever you do let the people see that you are in good sadness Truly Brethren they are great works that are to be done and you must not think that trifling will dispatch them You cannot break mens hearts by jesting with them or telling them a smooth tale or patching up a gawdy oration Men will not cast away their deerest pleasures upon a drowsie request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks or to care much whether his request be granted If you say That the work is Gods and he may do it by the weakest means I answer It s true he may do so But yet his ordinary way is to work by means and to make not only the matter that is preacht but also the manner of preaching to be instrumental to the work Or else it were a small matter whom he should imploy that would but speak the truth If grace made as little use of the Ministerial perswasions as some conceive we need not so much mind a Reformation nor cast out the Insufficient A great matter also with the most of our hearers doth lie in the very pronunciation and tone of speech The best matter will scarce move them if it be not movingly delivered Especially see that there be no affectation but that we speak as familiarly to our people as we would do if we were talking to any of them personally The want of a familiar tone and expression is as great a defect in most of our deliveries as any thing whatsoever and that which we should be very careful to amend When a man hath a Reading or Declaming tone like a School-boy saying his lesson or an Oration few are moved with any thing that he saith Let us therefore rowse up our selves to the work of the Lord and speak to our people as for their lives and save them as by violence pulling them out of the fire Satan will not be charmed out of his possession we must lay siege to the souls of sinners which are his garrisons and find out where his chief strength lyeth and lay the battery of Gods Ordinance against it and ply it close till a breach be made and then suffer them not by their shifts to make it up again but find out their common objections and give them a full and satisfactory answer We have reasonable creatures to deal with and as they abuse their reason against the truth so they will expect better reason for it before they will obey We must therefore see that our Sermons be all convincing and that we make the light of Scripture and Reason shine so bright in the faces of the ungodly that it may even force them to see unless they willfully shut their eyes A Sermon full of meer words how neatly soever it be composed while there is wanting the light of Evidence and the life of Zeal is but an image or a well-drest carkass In preaching there is intended a communion of souls and a communication of somewhat from ours unto theirs As we and they have understandings and wills and affections so must the bent of our endeavours be to communicate the fullest Light of Evidence from our understandings unto theirs and to warm their hearts by kindling in them holy affections as by a communication from ours The great things which we have to commend to our hearers have reason enough on their side and lie plain before them in the word of God we should therefore be so furnished with all store of Evidence as to come as with a torrent upon their understandings and bear down all before us and with our dilemma's and expostulations to bring them to a non-plus and pour out shame upon all their vain objections that they may be forced to yield to the power of truth and see that it is great and will prevail SECT VIII 4. MOreover if you would prosper in your work Be sure to keep up earnest desires and expectations of success If your hearts be not set on the end of your labours and you long not to see the conversion and edification of your hearers and do not study and preach in hope you are not likely to see much fruit of it It s an ill sign of a false self-seeking heart that can be content to be still doing and see no fruits of their labour so I have observed that God seldom blesseth any mans work so much as his whose heart is set upon the success Let it be the property of a Iudas to have more regard to the bag then to his business and not to care much for what they pretend to care and to think if they have their Tythes and the love and commendations of the people that they have enough to satisfie them but let all that preach for Christ and mens salvation be unsatisfied till they have the thing they preach for He had never the right end of a Preacher that is indifferent whether he do obtain them and is not grieved when he misseth
if he saw the face of God doth more affect my heart though with common words then an unreverent man with the most exquisite preparations Yea if he bawl it out with never so much seeming earnestness if Reverence be not answerable to fervency it worketh but little Of all Preaching in the world that speaks not stark lyes I hate that Preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh or to move their minds with tickling levity and affect them as Stage-playes use to do instead of affecting them with a holy Reverence of the name of God Saith Hierom. in Epistol ad Nepotian pag. mihi 14. Decente in Ecclesia te non clamor populi sed gemitus suscitetur Lachrymae auditorum laudes tuae sunt We should as it were suppose we saw the Throne of God and the millions of Glorious Angels attending him that we might be awed with his Majesty when we draw neer him in his holy things lest we profane them and take his name in vain To this I annex that all our work must be done spiritually as by men possessed by the Holy Ghost and acted by him and men that savour the things of the Spirit There is in some mens preaching a spiritual strain which spiritual hearers can discern and relish And in some mens this sacred tincture is so wanting that even when they speak of spiritual things the manner is such as if they were common matters Our Evidence also and ornaments must be spiritual rather from the holy Scripture with a tautelous subservient use of Fathers and other Writers then from Aristotle or the authorities of men The wisdom of the world must not be magnified against the wisdom of God Philosophy must be taught to stoop and serve while faith doth bear the chiefest sway And great Schollars in Aristotles School must take heed of too much glorying in their master and despising those that are there below them least themselves prove lower in the School of Christ and least in the Kingdom of God while they would be great in the eyes of men As wise a man as any of them would glory in nothing but the Cross of Christ and desired to know nothing but him crucified They that are so confident that Aristotle is in Hell should not too much take him for their Guide in the way to heaven It s an excellent memorandum that Greg. M. hath left in his Moral l. 33. Deus primo collegit indoctos post modum Philosophos non per oratores docuit piscatores sed per Piscatores subâ—git Oratores The Learnedst men should think of this Let all writers have their due esteem but compare none of them with the word of God We will not refuse their service but we must abhor them as Competitors It s a sign of a distempered heart that looseth the relish of Scripture excellency For there is a connaturality in a spiritual heart to the word of God because this is the seed that did regenerate him The word is that feal that made all the holly Impressions that be in the hearts of true believers and stampt the Image of God upon them And therefore they must needs be like that word and highly esteem it as long as they live Austin tells us in his lib. 10. de Civit. Deic 29. Quod initium sancti Evangelii cui nomen est secundum Joannem quidam Platonicus sicut à sancto sene impliciano qui postea Mediolanensi Ecclesiae praesedit Episcopus sâ—lebamus audire aurâ—is literis consoribendum peromnes Ecclesias in locis eminentiscimis proponendum esse dicehat If he could so value that which suited with his Platonism how should we value the whole which is suitable to the Christian nature and interest God is the best Teacher of his own nature and will 11. The whole course of our Ministery must be carried on in a tender Love to our people we must let them see that nothing pleaseth us but what profiteth them and that which doth them good doth us good and nothing troubleth us more then their hurt We must remember as Hierom saith ad Nepotian That Bishops are not Lords but Fathers and therefore must be affected to their people as their children Yea the tenderest love of a mother should nor surpass theirs We must even travel in birth of them till Christ be formed in them They should see that we care for no outward thing not money not liberty not credit not life in comparison of their salvation but could even be content with Moses to have our names wiped out of the Book of life i. e. to be removed è numero viventium rather then they should perish and not be found in the Lambs book of life in numero salvandorum Thus should we as John saith be ready to lay down our lives for the brethren and with Paul not to count our lives dear to us so we may but finish our course with joy in doing the work of God for their salvation When the people see that you unseignedly love them they will hear any thing and bear any thing and follow you the more easily As Austin saith Dilige dic quicquid voles We will take all things well our selves from one that we know doth entirely love us We will put up a blow that is given us in Love sooner then a foul word that is given us in anger or in malice Most men use to judge of the counsel as they judge of the affection of him that gives it at least so far as to give it a fair hearing O therefore see that you feel a tender love to your people in your breasts and then let them feel it in your speeches and see it in your dealings Let them see that you spend and are spent for their sakes and that all you do is for them and not for any ends of your own To this end the works of charity are necessary as far as your estate will reach For bare words will hardly convince men that you have any great love to them Amicitia a dando accipiendo nascitur Chrysost But when you are not able to give shew that you are willing to give if you had it and do that sort of good that you can Si potes dare daâ— si non potes affabilem tefac Coronat Deus intus bonitatem ubi non invenit facultatem Nemo dicat non habeo Charitas non de sacculo erogatur August in Psal 103. But be sure to see that your love prove not carnal flowing from pride as one that is a suiter for himself rather then for Christ and therefore doth love because he is beloved or that he may be pretendeth it And therefore take heed that you do not connive at their sins under pretence of love for that were to cross the nature and ends of Love Amici vitia siferas facistua Senec. Friendship must be cemented by piety Tu primum exhibe to bonum quaere alterum similem tibi Sen. A
happy Church and Commonwealth The same I mean also along of the Course of Schoolmasters to their scholars But when Languages and Philosophy have almost all their time and diligence and instead of reading Philosophy like Divines they read Divinity like Philosophers as if it were a thing of no more moment then a lesson of Musick or Arithmetick and not the doctrine of Everlasting life this is it that blasteth so many in the bud and pestereth the Church with unsanctified Teachers Hence it is that we have so many worldlings to preach of the invisible felicity and so many carnal men to declare the mysteries of the Spirit and I would I might not say so many Infidels to preach Christ or so many Atheists to preach the living God And when they are taught Philosophy before or without Religion what wonder if their Philosophy be all or most of their Religion and if they grow up into admirations of their unprofitable fancies and deifie their own deluded brains when they know no other God and if they reduce all their Theologie to their Philosophy like Campanella White and other self-admirers or if they take Christianity for a meer delusion and fall with Hobbs to write Leviathans or with the L. Herbert to write such Treatises de veritate as shall shew the world how little they esteem of verity or at best if they turn Paracelsian Behmenists and spin them a Religion from their own inventions Again therefore I address my self to all them that have the education of youth especially in order to preparation for the Ministery You that are Schoolmasters and Tutors begin and end with the things of God Speak daily to the hearts of your Schollars those things that must be wrought into their hearts or else they are undone Let some piercing words fall frequently from your mouthes of God and the state of their souls and the life to come Do not say They are too young to understand and entertain them You little know what impressions they may make which you discern not Not only the soul of that boy but a Congregation or many souls therein may have cause to bless God for your zeal and diligence yea for one such seasonable word You have a great advantage above others to do them good You have them before they are grown to the worst and they will hear you when they will not hear another If they are destinated to the Ministery you are preparing them for the special service of God and must they not first have the knowledge of him whom they must serve O think with your selves what a sad thing it will be to their own souls and what a wrong to the Church of God if they come out from you with common and carnal hearts to so holy and spiritual and great a work Of an hundred Students that be in one of your Colledges how many may there be that are serious experienced godly men some talk of too small a number If you should send one half of them on a work that they are un it for what bloody work will they make in the Church or Countries Whereas if you be the means of their through-sanctification how many souls may bless you and what greater good can you do the Church When once their hearts are savingly affected with the Doctrine which they study and preach they will study it more heartily and preach it heartily their own experience will direct them to the fittest subjects and will furnish them with matter and quicken them to set it home and I observe that the best of our hearers can feel and favour such experimental preachers and usually do less regard others what ever may be their accomplishments See therefore that you make not work for Sequestrators nor for the groans and lamentation of the Church nor for the great Tormenter of the murderers of souls SECT VI. 2. MY second particular Exhortation is this Content not your selves to have the main work of grace but be also very careful that your graces be kept in life and action and that you preach to your selves the Sermons that you studâ— before you preach them to others If you did this for your own sakes it would be no lost labour but I am speaking to you upon the publike account and that you would do it for the sake of the Church When your minds are in a heavenly holy frame your people are like to partake of the fruits of it Your prayers and praises and doctrine will be heavenly and sweet to them They will likely feel when you have been much with God That which is on your hearts most is like to be most in their ears I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience that I publish to my Flock the distempers of my soul when I let my heart grow cold my preaching is cold and when it is confused my preaching will be so and so I can observe too oft in the best of my hearers that when I have a while grown cold in preaching they have cooled accordingly and the next Prayers that I have heard from them hath been too like my preaching We are the Nurses of Christs little ones If we forbear our food we shall famish them they will quickly find it in the want of Milk and we may quickly see it again on them in the lean and dull discharge of their several duties If we let our Love go down we are not so like to raise up theirs If we abate our holy care and fear it will appear in our Doctrine If the matter shew it not the manner will If we feed on unwholsom food either errors or fruitless controversies our hearers are like to fare the worse for it Whereas if we could abound in Faith and Love and Zeal how would it over-flow to the refreshing of our Congregations and how would it appear in the increase of the same graces in others O Brethren watch therefore over your own hearts keep out lusts and passions and worldly inclinations Keep up the life of Faith and Love Be much at home and be much with God If it be not your daily serious business to study your own hearts and subdue corruptions and live as upon God if you make it not your very work which you constantly attend all will go amiss and you will starve your auditors or if you have but an affected servency you cannot expect such a blessing to attend it Be much above all in secret prayer and meditation There you must fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifices Remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone but many will be losers by it as well as you For your peoples sakes therefore look to your hearts If a pang of spiritual Pride should overtake you and you should grow into any dangerous or schismatical conceits and vent your own over-valued inventions to draw away Disciples after you what a wound might this prove to the Church that you
that Jesus Christ the only Son of God and the Redeemer of the world hath recovered it for us by the price of his blood shed and hath made a New Covenant with us assuring us of Life and Salvation if we Repent and believe in him for that life and mortifie our fleshly desires To which end he sendeth forth his holy Spirit to convert all that shall be saved and to turn their hearts from this world to God If ever you mean to be saved therefore it must be thus with you Your formersins must be the grief of your soul and you must fly to a crucified Christ as your only Refuge from the deserved Curse and the Spirit of Christ must Convert you and dwell in you and make you wholly a new Creature or there is no salvation Some such short plain rehearsal of the Principles of Religion in the most familiar manner that you can devise with a brief touch of application in the end will be necessary when you deal with the grosly ignorant And if you perceive they understand you not go over it again and ask them whether they understand it and seek to leave it fixed in their memories Direct 6. Whether they begrosly Ignorant or not if you suspect them to be ungodly fall next upon a prudent enquiry into their states And the best and least offensive way will be this to take your occasion from some Article of the Catechism as the fifth or seventh and then to make way by a word that may demulce their minds by convincing them of the necessity of it as E. g. thus or to this purpose You see in the 7. Article proved by Scripture that the Holy-Ghost doth by the word enlighten mens minds and soften and open their hearts and turn them from the power of Satan to God by faith in Christ and so makes them a Sanctified peculiar people to God and that none but these are made partakers of Christ and life Now though I have no desire needlesly to pry into any mans secrets yet because that it is the office of Ministers to give advice to a people in the matters of salvation and because it is so dangerous a matter to be mistaken where life or death everlasting doth lie upon it I would intreate you to deal truly and tell me Whether ever you found this great change upon your own heart or not Did you ever find the spirit of God by the word come in upon your understanding with a new heavenly life which hath made you a new creature The Lord that seeth your heart doth know whether it be so or not Therefore I pray you see that you speak the truth If he tell you that he hopes he is converted all are sinners but he is sorry for his sins or the like then tell him more particularly in a few words of the plainest notes or by a short description what true conversion is and so renew and enforce the enquiry as thus Because your salvation or damnation lyeth upon it I would fain help you a little in this that you may not be mistaken in a business of such consequence but may find out the truth before it be too late for as God will judge us impartially so we have his word before us by which we may know now how God will judge us then for this word tells us most certainly who they be that shall go to heaven and who to hell Now the Scripture tells us that the state of an unconverted man is this He seeth no great matter of felicity in the Love and Communion of God in the life to come which may draw his heart thither from this present world but he liveth to his carnal self or to the flesh and the main bent of his life is that it may go well with his body here and that religion that he hath is but a little on the by lest he should be damned when he can keep the world no longer so that the world and flesh are highest in his esteem and nearest to his heart and God and Glory stand below them and further off and all their service of God is but a giving them that which the world and flesh can spare This is the true case of every unconverted man and all that are in this case are in a state of misery But he that is truly converted hath had a light shining into his soul from God which hath shewed him the greatness of his sin and misery and made it a heavy load upon his soul and shewed him what Christ is and hath done for sinners and made him admire at the riches of Gods grace in him O what glad news is it to him that yet there is hope for such lost sinners as he That so many and so great sins may be pardoned and that this is offered to all that will accept it How gladly doth he entertain this Message and offer And for the time to come he resigneth himself and all that he hath to Christ to be wholly his and disposed of by him in order to the everlasting glory which he hath promised He hath now such a sight of the blessed state of the Saints in glory that he despiseth all this world as dross and dung in comparison of it and there he layeth up his happiness and his hopes and takes all the matters of this life but as so many helps or hindrances in the way to that so that the very bent and main care and business of his life is to be happy in the life to come This is the case of all that are truly converted and shall be saved Is this your case or not Have you found such a change or work as this upon your soul If he say he hopes he hath descend to some particulars distinctly E. G. I pray you then answer me to these two or three questions 1. Can you truly say that all the known sins of your life past are the grief of your heart and that you have felt that everlasting misery is due to you for them and that in the sense of this heavy burden you have felt your self a lost man and have gladly entertained the news of a Saviour and cast your soul upon Christ alone for pardon by his blood 2. Can you truly say that your heart is so far turned from your former sins that you hate the sins that formerly you loved and love that holy life that you had no mind to before and that you do not now live in the willful practise of any known sin Is there no sin which you be not heartily willing to leave whatever it cost you And no duty which you be not willing to perform 3. Can you truly say that you have so far taken the everlasting enjoyments of God for your happiness that it hath the most of your heart of your love desire and care and that you are resolved by the strength of grace to let go all that you have in the world rather
the godly then the ungodly nor any more befriend them or favour them By how much more we love the persons above others by so much the more must we express it in the opposition of their sins And yet we must look to meet with some tender persons here especially when iniquity hath got any head and made a party and many have fallen in love with it They will be as pettish and impatient of a reproof as some worser men and interest piety it self into their faults and say that a Minister that preacheth against them doth preach against the godly A most haynous crime to make God and godliness accessory to their sins When all the world besides hath not the thousandth part of that enmity and opposition against them But the Ministers of Christ must do their duties for all mens peevishness and must not so far hate their Brother as to forbear the plain rebuking of him or suffer sin to lie upon his soul Levit. 19. 17. Though it must be done with much prudence yet done it must be 3. Another sort that our work is about is Declining Christians that are either fallen into some scandalous sin or else abate their zeal and diligence and shew us that they have lost their former Love As the case of back-sliders is very sad so our diligence must be great for their recovery It s sad to them to lose so much of their Life and peace and serviceableness to God and to become so serviceable to Satan his cause It is sad to us to see that al our labour is come to this and that when we have taken so much pains with men and bad so much hopes of them all should be so far frustrate It is saddest of all to think that God should be so abused by those that he hath so loved and done so much for and that the enemy should get such advantage upon his graces and that Christ should be so wounded in the house of a friend and the name of God evil spoken of among the wicked through such and all that fear God should be reproached for their sakes Besides that partial back-sliding hath a natural tendency to total Apostacie and would effect it if special grace prevent it not The sadder the case of such Christians is the more lieth upon us for their effectual recovery to restore those that are but overtaken with a fault by the Spirit of meekness Gal. 6. 12. and yet to see that the sore be throughly searcht and healed and the joynt be well set again what pain soever it cost and especially to look to the honour of the Gospel and to see that they rise by such free and full confessions and significations of true Repentance that some reparation be thereby made to the Church and their holy profession for the wound of dishonour that they had given it by their sin Much skill is required to the restoring of such a soul 4. Another part of the Ministerial work is about those that are fallen under some great Temptation Much of our assistance is needful to our people in such a case And therefore every Minister should be a man that hath much insight into the Tempters wiles We should know the great variety of them and the cunning craft of all Satans instruments that lie in wait to deceive and the methods and devices of the grand deceiver some of our people lie under Temptations to Error and Heresie especially the young unsettled and most self-conceited and those that are most conversant or familiar with Seducers Young raw ungrounded Christians are commonly of their mind that have most interest in their esteem and most opportunity of familiar talk to draw them into their way And as they are tinder so deceivers want not the sparks of zeal to set them on a flame A zeal for error and opinions of our own is natural and easily kindled and kept alive but it is far otherwise with the spiritual zeal for God O what a deal of holy Prudence and Industry is necessary in a Pastor to preserve the flock from being tainted with heresies and falling into noxious conceits and practices and especially to keep them in Unity and Concord and hinder the rising or increase of Divisions If there be not a notable conjunction of all accomplishments and a skilful improvement of parts and interests it will hardly be done especially in such times as ours when the sign is in the head and the disease is Epidemical If we do not publikely maintain the credit of our Ministery and second it by unblamable exemplary lives and privately meet with Seducers and shame them if we be not able to manifest their folly and follow not close our staggering people before they fall how quickly may we give great advantage to the enemy and let in such an inundation of sin and calamity that will not easily be again cast out Others lie under a temptation to worldliness and others to gluttony or drunkenness and others to iust some to one sin and some to another A faithful Pastor therefore should have his eye upon them all and labour to be acquainted with their natural temperament and also with their occasions and affairs in the world and the company that they live or converse with that so he may know where their temptations lie and then speedily prudently and diligently to help them 5. Another part of our work is to comfort the disconsolate and to settle the Peace of our peoples souls and that on sure and lasting grounds To which end the quality of the Complainants and the course of their lives had need to be known for all people must not have the like Consolations that have the like complaints But of this I have spoken already elsewhere and there is so much said by many especially Mr. Bolton in his Instructions for right Comforting that I shall say no more 6. The rest of our Ministerial work is upon those that are yet strong For they also have need of our assistance Partly to prevent their temptations and declinings and preserve the grace they have partly to help them for a further progress and encrease and partly to direct them in the improving of their strength for the service of Christ and the assistance of their brethren As also to encourage them especially the aged the tempted and afflicted to hold on and to persevere that they may attain the Crown All these are the objects of the Ministerial work and in respect to all these we must Take heed to all the Flock Abundance more distributions of our work with directions how to perform it to rich and poor young and old c. You may find in Gregor M. de cura pastorali worth the reading You may have the Book by it self of Mr. Ier. Stephens Edition SECT V. IV. HAving done with our work in respect of its Objects I am next to speak of the Acts themselves But of this I shall be very brief 1. Because they
beholden to him for his bloodshed and how all your hope and life is in him he will make you see the vanity of this world and all that it can afford you and that all your happiness is with God in that everlasting life where with Saints and Angels you may behold his Glory and live in his loves and praises when those that reject him shall be tormented with the devils And because it is only Christ the Redeemer that can bring you to that glory and deliver you from that torment he will make you look to him as your hope and life and cast your burdened soul upon him and give up your selves to be saved and taught and ruled by him and he will possess you with the spirit of holyness that your heart shall set upon God and heaven as your treasure and the care of your mind and the business of your life shall be to obtain it and you shall despise this world and deny your fleshly interests and desires and cast away the sin with abhorrence which you delighted in and count no pains too great nor no suffering too dear for the obtaining of that everlasting life with God Let me tell you that till this work be done upon you you are a miserable man and if you dye before it s done you are lost for ever Now you have hope and help before you but then there will be none Let me therefore intreat these two or three things of you and do not deny them me as you love your soul First That you will not rest in this Condition that you are in Be not quiet in your mind till you find a true conversion to be wrought Think when you rise in the morning O what if this day should be my last and death should find me in an unrenewed state Think when you are about your labour O how much greater a work have I yet to do to get my soul reconciled to God and possessed of his Spirit Think when you are eating or drinking or looking on any thing that you possess in the world what good will all this do me if I live and die an enemy to God and a stranger to Christ and his Spirit and we must perish for ever Let these thoughts be day night upon your mind till your soul be changed The second thing that I would intreat of you is that you would bethink you seriously what a vain thing this world is and how shortly it will leave you to a cold grave and to everlasting misery if you have not a better treasure then this and bethink you what it is to live in the sight of the face of God and to reign with Christ and be like the Angels and that this is the life that Christ hath procured you and is preparing for you and offereth you if you will accept it in and with himself upon his easie reasonable terms bethink your self whether it be not madness to slight such an endless glory and to prefer these fleshly dreams and earthly shadows before it Use your self to such considerations as these when you are alone and let them dwell upon your mind The third thing that I would intreat of you is that you will presently without any more delay Accept of this felicity and this Saviour close with the Lord Jesus that offereth you this eternal life Joyfully and thankfully accept his offer as the only way to make you happy and then you may believe that all your sins shall be done away by him My fourth request to you is that you will resolve presently against your former sins find out what hath defiled your heart and life and cast it up now by the vomit of Repentance as you would do Poyson out of your stomach and abhor the thought of taking it in again My fifth and last request to you is that you will set your selves close to the use of Gods means till this change be wrought and then continue his means till you are confirmed and at last perfected 1. Because you cannot of your selves make this change upon your heart and life betake your self daily to God for it by prayer and beg earnestly as for your life that he will pardon all your former sins and change your heart and shew you the riches of his Grace in Christ and the Glory of his Kingdom and draw up your heart to himself Follow God day and night with these requests 2. That you will fly from temptations and occasions of sin and forsake your former evil company and betake your selves into the company of those that fear God and will help you in the way to heaven 3. That you will specially spend the Lords day in holy exercises both publike and private and lose not one quarter of an hour of any of your time but specially of that most precious time which God hath given you purposely that you may set your mind upon him and be instructed by him and to prepare your self for your latter end What say you will you do this presently at least so much of it as you can do if you will Will you promise me to think of these things that I before mentioned and to pray daily for a changed heart till you have obtained it and to change your Company and Courses and fall upon the use of Gods means in reading or hearing the Scriptures meditating on them specially on the Lords day And here be sure if we can to get their promise and engage them to amendment especially to use means and change their company and forsake actual sinning because these are more in their reach and in this way they may wait for the accomplishing of that change that is not yet wrought And do this solemnly remembring them of the presence of God that heareth their promises and will expect the performance And when you have afterward opportunity you may remember them of that promise Direction 9. At the dismissing of them do these two things 1. Again lenifie their minds by a deprecation of offence in a word E. G. I pray you take it not ill that I have put you to this trouble or dealt thus freely with you It s as little pleasure to me as to you if I did not know these things to be true and necessary I would have spared this labour to my self and you But I know that we shall be here together but a little while we are almost at the world to come already and therefore its time for us all to look about us and see that we be ready when God shall call us 2. Because it is but seldom that we our selves shall have opportunity to speak with the same persons set them in a way for the perfecting of what is begun 1. Engage the Governor of each family to call all his family to account every Lords day before they go to bed what they can rehearse of the Catechism and so to continue till they have all learned it perfectly and when they