bleeding Innocence of a Saviour than with the Tragical Chimaeras of a Dramatick Poem How great and manifold is the guilt of being niggardly and cold in our love to him whom to love is so easy so advantageous nay whom 't is hard not to love What a sin against nature not to love them that love us What a sin against Reason not to love such an object as we confess is most lovely What a sin against Grace not to love even Him who hath poured out upon us the Spirit of love and so hath offer'd us at least the Grace to love him What a sin against Gratitude not to love Him who so loves us as that he loves to forgive us the scandalous littleness of our Love What a sin to be wanting in love to Him who dyed to expiate our want of love to him What a barbarous sin is it to love him lamely and with indifference who stands knocking at our Door and importunes us to open with much Intreaty and that from morning till midnight until his Head is fill'd with Dew and his locks with the drops of the night what an amazing sin is it and almost incredible to love our Saviour any whitless than we love our sins To have a much weaker love for the Proper object of our love than we are wonted to bestow on the proper object of our Hatred Yet is there any thing more usual than for many not to love Christ who are called Christians and to demonstrate they do not love him by their not keeping his Commandments So very great reason there is to put a strong Emphasis on the Particle If that even the best of us perhaps may call our love into Question whether it is such as will serve the turn whether such as does employ us in the due keeping of the Commandments Sect. 9. And therefore for a conclusion let us thus reckon within our selves That in as much as without Faith it is impossible to please God and seeing no Faith is true but that which worketh by love and seeing no love will prove effectual but that which brings forth obedience to the Commandments of Christ in which respect 't is called fitly the fulfilling of the Law seeing also we must know that Christ is in us or among us which we can very hardly do but by the love we bear to him as well as by the love which he bears to us Shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which he hath given us And seeing by consequence that our love appears to be one of the greatest Hinges upon which the very Door of our Hope does turn it concerns us as much as Salvation comes to that we raise up our hearts to things invisible and future and that we work up our affections towards the right hand of God where Jesus sitteth and is inthron'd by all the Instruments and Engines to be imagin'd Never must we cease from our work of Faith which is obedience from our labour of love which is Industry and diligence in that obedience from our Patience of Hope which is indurance unto the end in that industrious way of obedience until the Flame of our Affection has burnt up all unclean Fires obstructing the passage 'twixt us and Christ and made its way to Immortality in contempt of all Ifs or Peradventures that it may never more be said If we love him but because we love him and because we cannot but love him we are resolv'd not to be able not to keep his Commandments Sect. 10. For by the Custom of our obedience that I may touch before hand on what will properly be handl'd in other places we shall contract unto our selves so great an easiness to obey that 't will be difficult and hard to be disobedient We shall be ready to object to any masterful temptation what Ioseph did to his tempting Mistress how can we do this great wickedness and sin against God wilful sin will become such a stranger to us we shall so lose its acquaintance by discontinuing to commit it that we shall neither have the heart nor the Face to own it I say by a long and constant practice in the keeping of the Commandments and going on a great while in the path of Righteousness we shall forget the way back to our old Rebellions and shall arrive at an averseness to those enticements with which we were wont to converse with Pleasure Ever saying when we are tempted with the spouse in the Canticles we have cast off our coat how shall we put it on We have washt our feet how shall we defile them An inveterate habit of the soul like such an habit of the Body as it is not quickly gotten so when it is it is hardly lost And as the habit of living wickedly turns our wickedness into our nature that to cease from doing wickedly all things in us must become new so the habit of doing well does so rivet and ingrain the love of Piety in our hearts that 't is well nigh as difficult to raze it out as for a Leopard to change his spots or an Aethiop his skin Is there any among us who has been so accustom'd to any sin as that it has got the dominion over him let him but have the Curiosity to make an obvious experiment for the sole want of which he understands not the pleasures of vertuous living and my life for his it will set him free Let him accustom himself as much to the keeping of the Commandments as he has don unto the Breach and Transgression of them and he will find himself as perfectly an humble servant unto Righteousness as before he was a servant and slave to sin Righteousness will get the Dominion over him 't will Rule and Reign in his mortal body it will so lift up his reason above his Passions and so bring down his Appetite to a subjection under his Will as that the law in his members will but timorously war against the law in his mind He will be passionately in love both with the Burthen and the yoke as with the Beauty and the Love of his master Christ. And like the Bondman in Exodus at the great year of Manumission will rather be bored through the ear than be free from Christ. The Apostles word is He will be a new Creature and even those which heretofore were his most formidable Duties will now at last so become his supream delights that as he will not indure to do the things which he abominates so as little will he be able to abstain from the duties he so much loves Thus at last he will be brought into that blessed disability of wilful sinning of which S. Iohn speaks in his first Epistle He that is born of God sinneth not neither can he saith the Apostle and that because he is born of God That is he cannot sin wilfully so as still to be regenerate
evidenc'd by charity and the keeping of the Commandments All agreeable to the words of our Blessed Saviour that men do not gather grapes from Thorns and every Tree is known by its fruit But the fruit of all Graces is the keeping of the Commandments and therefore by that we may know them all Now then let us consider that if the keeping of the Commandments is the true Touchstone of our Love whereby alone we may prove it to be sincere and withal the great Requisite for the making of our Callling and Election sure then is the keeping of the Commandments the sum and upshot of all that is call'd Duty So that when Solomon being penitent turned his Throne into a Pulpit and of a King became a Preacher He was not able with all his wisdom either to teach or to learn either a plainer or higher lesson than Fear God and keep his Commandments For this saith he in the next words is the whole Duty of Man Men may spend their whole lives in inventing Sermons and Systems and other discourses of Divinity both from the Pulpit and from the Press But the sum and conclusion of all is This Fear God and keep his Commandments It concerns us therefore extreamly to make a strict examination whether we find within our selves such a sincere love of Christ as does not only shew it self in our mouths and fancies but especially in our Hearts and our Conversations Such a love as carries with it a ready obedience to his Commands and does by consequence amount unto the whole Duty of Man It being so natural for a Lover to seek the benefit or pleasure and satisfaction of his Beloved by doing that which he desires that obedience and love disobedience and hatred are promiscuously used in holy Scripture For what S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Corinthians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments the same S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Galatians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but Faith which worketh by Love So that Faith is all in all as it worketh by Love And Love is all in all as it brings forth Obedience to the Commandments of Christ. But obedience to his Commandments is all in all as including and supposing both Faith and Love Christianity it self is nothing worth without Faith nor Faith it self without Love nor Love it self without obedience to the Commandments of Christ. For being not kept they must needs be broken And they that break his Commandments are said to hate him as they that keep them are said to love him Exod. 20. 5 6. So the carnal mind of man is called enmity to God Rom. 8. 7. And that for this very reason in the next words following Because it is not subject to the law of God And This may prompt us to descend unto a second consideration that seeing love and obedience disobedience and hatred are terms equivalent put the one for the other in holy Writ then as we hope not to be reckoned amongst the enemies and haters of God in Christ we must employ our utmost study upon the keeping of his Commandments And keep them we must with the greater care because like Porcellane they are of very great worth and the soonest broken Besides which they have a property of being so wholsom or so destructive that whilst we keep them intire they keep us too in our integrity and if we customarily break them they grind us certainly to powder The Prophet David had so smarted by having broken two of the number the one with Bathshebah and the other against Uriah as to have made a new Covenant with God Almighty that if he would teach him once more the way of his statutes he would not fail for the future to keep them whole unto the end And to the end he might keep them the more exactly he laid them up in a sure place wherein the serpents piercing eye should not be able to find them out He lock't them up in a Cabinet of which God only could keep the key For so we have him speaking to God himself Psal. 119. 11. Thy word have I hid within my heart that I might not sin against thee Exactly so did blessed Mary by the sayings of Christ her Son and Lord too which she kept saith the Text and laid them up in her heart After the very same manner let us manifest the love which we bear to Christ and demonstrate the esteem which we pretend to his Commandments first by keeping them in our eyes that we may evermore see and be mindful of them next by fixing them in our Heads that we may rightly apprehend them lastly by hiding them in our Hearts that no thievish lust may deprive us of them Let our love be the ingraver to carve his Commandments in our Souls to carve them in such deep and indelible characters as no kind of Engin or Tool of Satan may be able to efface them or raze them out Are not they bold people who dare be damn'd who take the confidence to sleep amidst the breaches of the Commandments whilst their Calling and Election are not only not ensur'd but even neglected and undervalued as if so cheap and so easie as to be got only by gaping that is by saying Lord Lord or upon any cheaper terms than those of keeping his Commandments Let us religiously beware that we be none of their number And because S. Iames tells us that whosoever will be a Friend of this present world is not only not the Friend but the Enemie of God Tremble we most at those Felicities which are most generally courted Take we heed of nothing more than of our living too much at ease If we are serious lovers of Christ let us not laugh and be merry with them that hate him but rather shut up ourselves in such a solitude and silence as in which we may enjoy him without disturbance or interruption Whenever we suffer in his behalf from our selves or others let this be one of our Rewards that he tells our sighs and counts the number of our attritions puts our Tears into his Bottle and enters our sorrows into his Book Let our Ambition be to please him by all means possible by observing his precepts by accusing our selves before him for any precept unobserv'd by importuning him incessantly for ghostly strength and by thanking him for that which we now injoy by hating our Rebellions already pass't and by making him vowes of new obedience Which Vowes having made let us not fail to pay them all how deerly soever they may cost us Let 's not reckon it enough to be almost-Christians with King Agrippa nor yet with King Saul to give God the Refuse of what we owe him But as we are debtors to him for all so let us not niggardly withhold the least things from him which he expects much
that such a thing should be suppos'd as that a Christian should not love the Lord Iesus Christ Let us examin if you please how very natural 't is to love him that so our wonder may be the less at the severity of the Curse which our Apostle thunders out against as many as love him not Sect. 6. First 't is natural for us as men to love the gifts of the Almighty because by them we have the pleasure of staying our hunger and our thirst the pleasure of giving Satisfaction to all our Appetites and Needs Next 't is every whit as natural to love that Love of the Almighty from whence those gifts are derived to us And then how natural is the Transition from our love of his Love unto a yet greater love of Him that loves us For such a free Lover of Souls must needs Himself be more lovely than all his Love as much as the Agent than the Act or the Cause than the Effect Sect. 7 Again be we never so debauch't we cannot possibly abstain from being kind unto ourselves And as little from being kind unto the benefits and Blessings which we injoy And being so kind unto the benefits we should as little methinks abstain from being kind to the Benevolence from which those Benefits must needs proceed How much less should we be able to abstain from being kind to the Benefactor who is the Sourse and the Fountain of that Benevolence Certainly nothing can be viler than to love the meer Gifts above the Giver nothing more contumelious to him that Gives them Sect. 8. And if 't is natural for us as men to love our God as God only or at least as the Giver of our Injoyments how much more as God in Christ Reconciling us all unto Himself He is the Maker and the Preserver and so at least the Benefactor of all things else but the Redeemer the Restorer the Reconciler only of us As God Incarnate he conversed with men on Earth and as such in special manner we still converse with him in Heaven I therefore say in special manner because to address our selves to God as he is Infinite and Invisisible a self-subsisting Existence from everlasting to everlasting is not only apt to dazzle but to distract our understandings Our Thoughts are lost in this Ocean as the drops of a Bucket And where our Thoughts are hardly fixt 't is hard to fasten our Affections But now to address ourselves to God in the man Christ Iesus as he is manifest in the Flesh and hypostatically united to human Nature to settle our Affections and Thoughts upon him both as our Sacrifice and our Priest our Elder Brother and our Advocate as one incessantly pleading for us and reconciling us to Himself This is to take him at the advantage of his descending to our Infirmities and as it were to lay hold both on his Majesty and his Mercy whilst he is thus stooping down to our low embraces And therefore if any man shall be found so void of Grace and good Nature as not to love the God of Heaven both as a Bridegroom and a Redeemer who never had bought but to espouse us and courts our kindness under the Title of The Lord Iesus Christ he cannot deserve a milder Curse than that of Anathema Maranatha Which though the frightful'st and the most dismal that any poor Caitiff can undergo is yet the mildest and the most gentle that our Apostle could in Conscience condemn Them to who should be found NOT TO LOVE the Lord Jesus Christ. Should the very Souls of men be wholly dissolv'd into Love â—…twould be no more than He deserves for the excess of whose Love to the Souls of men the Holy Ghost hath affirmed that He is Love And considering how much the Cause is more noble than the Effect as I said before 't is very evident that our Saviour should be much dearer to us than our Salvation The name of Iesus a Saviour how delicious to our mouths ought it to be when e're we speak it How melodious to our Ears when e're we hear it And what a Iubily to our Hearts whensoever we do ruminate or think upon it Having therefore such a name as is above every name the name of Iesus a Saviour nor that temporal but eternal he needs must challenge such a Love as is above every Love not only of our Sins but of our selves too And therefore well might S. Paul upon the foulest supposition that can be made of a Malefactor pronounce the formidabl'st Sentence that can be uttered by any Iudge If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha Sect. 9. These words of the Apostle which I have thought a fit Subject for the second Part of my Design are first of all to have a general and then a more special Consideration Their Parts in the General are briefly Three First the necessary Duty which is incumbent on a Christian and that is the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Next the Latitude or Extent of the obligingness of the Duty which does not reach only to some but to all in general And this is imply'd in the Indefinite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If any man love him not Thirdly the dreadfulness of the Danger to whosoever shall despise or neglect the Duty And this is expressed in the sentence of esto Anathema Maranatha So that in order to the more plain and useful handling of the Text which is propos'd only to profit and not to please us we are to fasten our present Thoughts upon these three subjects of Meditation First the Nature of the Love which is here requir'd Next the Quality of the Curse which is here denounc't Thirdly the means we are to use to attain the first and in consequence of that to escape the second CHAP. I. Sect. 1. TO understand the first aright we are to view the Grace of Love by several steps of Gradation First of all we are to view it as it is fasten'd upon God and so is contradistinguish't to all other Love Such as is the love of men whether our Neighbours or our selves the love of our Bodies and of our Souls and so of all other Creatures not only such as are unlawful and under a special prohibition but also such as are commanded and of necessity to be lov'd It must be opposite to the former and hugely transcendent unto the later And then it is the Grace of Love as fastned in general upon God But we are secondly to consider it in its particular application I mean its Appropriation to the Lord Iesus Christ. And this again in a threefold respect as he is Dominus the Lord who is to rule and reign over us and as Iesus the Saviour who is like Ioshua and the Iudges at once to deliver and to conduct us and as Christ the Messias in all his Offices at once in that of Teaching and Blessing and Swaying his Scepter
we love the brethren 1 Joh. 3. 1 4. Hereby we know we are of the Truth and have Confidence towards God if we keep his Commandments And this is his Commandment that we love one another v. 19. to v. 23. Sect. 18. Hence we see it is evident There is not a clearer Demonstration of our loving God with all our hearts than the loving our Neighbour as our selves From whence it follows that every sin must needs argue some want of Love For if against the first Table it is through a want of some love to God And if against the second it must needs be for want of some love to Men. Again it follows on the contrary that where Love is perfect and entire no Commandment can be broken For loving God with all our hearts we shall keep the first Table and loving our Neighbour as our selves we shall not fail to keep the second Sect. 19. What I have shew'd in the Great I can easily shew in the Retail too to wit that Love is the fulfilling of the Law For if we love God as we ought to do we shall certainly have no God but Him Much less shall we worship a Graven Image We shall not lift up his Name in vain Nor shall we fail to keep holy his Holy Dayes And if we love our Neighbour as Christ requires we shall be sure to render to every man his Due And so by consequence we shall honour all our Parents and Superiors whether publick or private Ecclesiastical or Civil Then for the Neighbour who is equal or in any degree inferiour to us we shall be sure not to injure him in any kind From whence it follows we shall not kill for that were to injure him in his Life Nor commit Adultery for that were to injure him in his Wife Nor steal or Plunder for that were to injure him in his Goods Nor bear false Witness for that were to injure him in his good Name And as we shall not thus injure him either in Deed or in Word so if we love him as our selves or as Christ lov'd us we shall not do him any injury no not so much as in our Thoughts we shall not covet or be desirous of any thing that is our Neighbours Thus the four Precepts of the first Table and the six Precepts of the second or if there is any other Precept besides these Ten they all are briefly comprehended in this one word Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Sect 20. And now I do not doubt but we are all of one mind as touching the Character and Badge by which we may be known to be Christ's Disciples The peculiar Note of Distinction by which we are taken from out the world as it were sever'd and set apart from all exorbitant societies and sorts of men whether their Ring-leaders and Masters are Jews or Gentiles First for the Gentiles we may know the Disciples of Zoroastres by their belief of two gods and Incestuous wedlocks We may know the Disciples of the Brachmans by their unparallel'd self-denials in food and rayment We may know the Disciples of Pythagoras by their Reverence to the numbers of four and seven The Disciples of Plato by their fanciful Idaea's in the concave of the Moon The Disciples of Zeno by their Dreams of Apathie and Fate The Disciples of Mahomet as well by the filthiness of their Paradise as by their desperate Tenet of God's decrees And then for the Iews we may know the Disciples of the Scribes by their Traditional corruptions and Expositions of the Law We may know the Disciples of the Pharisees by their Form of godliness and their appearing righteous unto men We may know the Disciples of the Sadduces by their denial of Providence and dis-belief of the Resurrection We may know the Disciples of the Esseni by their overstrict Sabbatizing The Disciples of the Nazarites by their abstinence from the flesh of all living creatures And the Disciples of the Hemerobaptists by their every day washings from Top to Toe We may know the Disciples of Iohn the Baptist by their remarkable Fastings and other Austerities of Life But by this shall all men know that we are all the Disciples of Iesus Christ If we love one another even as Christ hath loved us CHAP. II. Sect. 1. WHilst I am thinking what proper Lessons we are to draw from Christ's words the words of S. Paul which he writ to Timothy do straight occur to my remembrance All Scripture saith he is by divine Inspiration and is profitable for Doctrin for Reproof for Correction for Instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be furnished unto all good wooks 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. For were there no other Scripture than that which hath given me my present subject I should think it very profitable for each of those ends and think the workman well furnished for every good work Sect. 2. First 't is profitable for Doctrin because it teacheth such as are ignorant the true importance of Christianity which does not consist as some would have it in our being born of godly Parents believing the History of the Gospel making profession of zeal to Christ posting up and down from Sermon to Sermon making many and long prayers or whatsoever is comprehended under the Form of Godliness that is the Image the Picture the Counterfeit of Devotion as the word in the Original does very naturally import 2 Tim. 3. 5. For many profess to know God who in their works deny him And let a mans profession be what it will yet if he acts in contradiction to the Commandments of Christ that very acting is nothing better than a Denial of the Faith And so 't is call'd by the Apostle 1 Tim. 5. 8. Christianity does not consist then in such a sanguin presumption as some call Faith in such a carnal security as some call Hope in such a parcel of fair words as some call Charity in such a worldly sorrow as some call Repentance but it consist's in such a Faith as worketh by Love in such an Hope as does cleanse and purifie in such a Charity as worketh no ill to his Neighbour but is on the contrary the fulfilling of the Law and in such a Repentance as shew's it self by amendment and change of life bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance Whatever some Mockers are wont to say we find by the Tenor of the Gospel that a material part of Godliness is moral honesty The chief ingredients in a Christians life are acts of Iustice and works of Mercy than which there was nothing more conspicuous in the life of Christ. The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first Our chiefest duty towards God is our duty towards our Neighbour God will have Iustice and Mercy to be perform'd to one another before he accepts of any sacrifice which can be offer'd unto
to Think on these things And the very God of Peace sanctifie us wholly that the whole of each of us both body soul and spirit may be kept blameless unto the coming of our Lord Iesus Christ. Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to raise us when we are down and to present us being risen before the presence of his Glory with exceeding Ioy To the only wise God our Saviour even to God the Father who hath created us in love by his mighty power to God the Son who hath redeemed us in love by his precious Bloud to God the holy-Holy-Ghost who hath prepared us in love by his sanctifying Grace and thereby given us a Pledge of our future Glory to the holy individual and Glorious Trinity three Persons and one God be ascribed by us and by all the world Blessing and Glory and Honour and Power and Wisdom and Thanksgiving from this day forwards for evermore THE END ERRATA'S of the Signal Diagnostick Page 86. line 29. read Jer. 23. 26. Pag. 76. line 11. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pag. 111. line 3. in marg read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Books Printed since the Fire for R. Royston A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lords Supper to which are added two Sermons by R. Cudworth D. D. A Disswasive from Popery in two parts 4 o by Jer. Taylor Lord Bishop of Down and Connor A Friendly Debate between a Conformist and a Non conformist in two parts 8 o. The buckler of State and Iustice against the Design maâ—…ifestly discovered of the Universal Monarchy under the vain Pretext of the Queen of France her Pretensions 8 o The Unreasonableness of the Romanist 〈◊〉 â—…quiring our Communion with the present Romish Câ—…rch 8 o. * Jer. 4. 3. ‖ Jer. 10. 12. Matt. 9. 37. Luke 10. 2. 1 Cor. 3. 9. Jer. 10. 12. 1 Cor. 3. 6 7. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 365. Rom. 10. 20. ‖ Luke 13. 24. Deut. 11. 29. Ex. 19. 18 20. Heb. 12. 19 20 * Heb. 13. 13. Mat. 7. 14. Mat. 5. 3 4 c. to verse 12. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Apollin John 14. 15. I. II. III. 1. 2. 3. * 1 John 3. 24. ‖ John 14. 23. ch 17. 23. * 2 Pet. 1. 10. Acts 21. 12 13. John 6. 67. Verse 6â—… John 21. 17. 1 John 3. 1. 1 John 4. 19. Matth. 5. 46. Matth. 12. 24. Cant. 8. 6. * Acts 5. 31. Eph. 5. 29 30. * Rev. 3. 20. Cantic 5. 2. ‖ Heb. 11. 6. * Gal. 5. 6. ‖ Matt. 7. 22 24 26. John 14 21 23 24. * Rom. 13. 10. ‖ 2 Cor. 13. 5. * John 14. 23. ch 17. 23. 1 John 3. 24. ‖ Heb. 12. 2. * 1 Thes. 1. 3. Cant. 5 3. Jer. 13. 23. Rom. 6. 12 14. chap. 7. 23. Exod. 21. 6. 2 Cor. 5. 17. 1. John 3. 9. Tit. 2. 12. 1 John 5. 3. Psal. 19. 11. Levit. 18. 5. Ezek. 20. 11. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 127. 128. * Est alia in hoc seculo obtemperantibus merces cùm penitùs à nobis evulsis Peccati radicibus caleatoque Mundi Fastu atque edomitâ carnis petulantiâ virtutibus ditamur nihilque non agimus quo ex hominibus Dii efficiamur Folengius in Psalm 19. 11. * Deut. 10. 13. Mat. 10. 30. 1. Tim. 4. 8. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 351. Mat. 6. 31 33. * v. Torquat apud Cic. de Fin. l. 1. 2. Gatakeri Praeloquium quod Antonino Imperatori à se edito praemisit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 769 770. Praeceptum est pythagoricum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vide Philonem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 670. Hinc paradoxa sunt plerumque quae docent Pythagorai sc. exules esse qui in mediâ urbe Magistratûs obeunt è contrà Divitlis scatentem Egenum esse vice versâ Psal. 119. 92. verse 19. * verse 50. verse 99. 100. verse 14. 16. 20. 97. 131. 143. verse 3. 162. 72. verse 80. verse 32. Amicitia est inter pares 1 John 3. 24. * Joh. 14. 13 14 John 15. 7. John 16. 23. ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist. Eth. * Matth. 7. 2. * Sinner Impleaded part 1. ch 1. Sect. 6. Luk. 10. 40 41. Rom. 13. 8. 9 10. Gal. 5. 14. 2 Cor. 6. 10. 1 John 3. 18. verse 17. Jam. 2. 15. 16. Rom. 13. 9 10. Heb. 6. 6. ch 10. v. 29. Mark 4. 39. 1 Cor. 15. Deut. 5. 29. Deut. 32. 39. Psal. 81. 13. Isa. 48. 18. * Sinner Impleaded part 2. ch 3. Sect. 6 7 8 9 10. 2 Cor. 8. 12. Hoâ—… 11. 4. Rom. 6. 16. Luke 16. 13. â—… Cor. 5. 14. 2 Cor. 5. 6 7. Rom. 10. 10. Rom. â—… Psal. 39. 3. Cant. 8. 6 7. The Application 2 Cor. 2. 15. Eph. 5. 2. Cant. 4. 10 11 12 13 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rev. 21. ult 1 Esdr. 4. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian Matt. 5. 44. Matt. 5. 12. Mark 10. 21. Matt. 16. 24 Luke 14. 26. * Matt. 10. 37 38. Luke 14. 26 27 33. Psa. 1â—… 1. 12 3. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristot. â—…thic l. 10. cap. 1. ‖ Virtutes coluit non tanquam per se bonas sed in quantum aptissimas ad quietè vivendum vel quia vitam tutiorem voluptatem efficiunt pleniorem Nec justitiam censuit per se optubilem sed quia jucunditatem afferret Torquatus apud Cic. de Fin. l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epic. apud Laert. l. 10. 2 Cor. 13. 5. Jer. 17. 9. Compare Isa. 5. 20 23. with Jer. 23. 14. 33. a Prov. 30. 12. b Deut. 29. 19. c Job 8. 13 14. d Mic. 3. 11 See the Confession of Faith by the Assembly of Divines ch 18. p. 31. See the Penitent Murderer in the Account of Thomas Parson 2 Thess. 2. 11. Philip. 2. 12. 1 Cor. 7. 9. Confession of Faith chap. 18. Art 2. 3. * 1 Cor. 13. 9 12. * Ubi supra Heb. 11. 11. Heb. 6. 10 1 Cor. 9. Rom. 8. 10 11 13. 1 Tim. 1. 5. Luk. 6. 44. The Application Eccles. 12. 13. 1 Cor. 7. 19. Gal. 5. 6. Psal. 119. 33. Jam. 4. 4. Psal. 56. 8. Mal. 3. 16. Act. 26. 26. 1 Sam. 15. 9. 1 Sam. 25. 41. 1 John 4â—… * Per se placet propter se non requirit causam non Fractum S. Bernard super Cantic Cant. Serm 83. Nam cùm amaâ—… non vult aliud quam amari Id. ibid. Non ad aliud amat Deus nisi ut ametur sciens ipso Amorâ—… Beatos qui se amavâ—… Id. ib. Iussisti ô Domine ut diligam te aut mihi Infernum minariâ—… Sed mihi magnus satis infernus est quod te dignè amare non valâ—…o August Confess l. 10 c. 28 29 30. Quid vitius â—… quaÌ„
very same measure of our Affection Does he not send us to our obedience as the manifestation of our Love He does not say If ye love me believe the Truth of my Promises and strongly rely upon my Merits Be sure to honour me with your lipps and call your selves by my Name But If ye love me do the things that I say If ye love me perform my Will If ye love me keep my Commandments Men may talk what they please of their Love to Christ and praise themselves as they do Him as far as words and phrases come to But if they are Lovers of the World and make it their Business to get its Favour if they either defraud or persecute and seek to build their own Greatness upon the Ruins of other men if they are Servers of the Times and lick themselves for that Cause into every shape and have mens persons in admiration because of Advantage they are as far from loving Christ as from keeping his Commandments And so they are as distant from it as Sincerity is from Dissimulation Which may be farther made appear by the Rule of contraries For Sect. 5. That must needs be granted to us as the greatest Expression of our Love the contrary to which is the greatest expression of our Hatred And suppose we hated Christ as much as a Iulian or a Iew could we do him a greater Injury than that of breaking his Commandments we cannot whip him at a post or nail him again unto a cross or thrust a Launce into his Side for which we are not thankworthy because we cannot His Body being out of our reach and lifted up above our malice at the right hand of God But that which is dearest to him on earth is the whole Body of his Commandments Which whosoever breaks wilfully would be as ready to break his bones too had he but Power and Opportunity as well for the one as for the other His Commandments at the worst can be but voluntarily broken And the Devil himself can do no more And yet how many are call'd Christians who do no less Now what are all his Commandments but Exhibitions of his Will And therefore to violate the former what less can it be than to make Head against the later And sure when Christians are Antichristians by living in absolute opposition to the declared will of Christ they do not only labour to put him privately to the Blush but they paradigmatize him and cast a publick disgrace upon him or in the words of the Apostle they even tread him under their feet and put him to an open shame And this being clearly the greatest expression of their Hatred 't is plain the contrary to This is the greatest expression of their Love Sect. 6. Shall I then give you the character of one that truely Loves Christ that we may judge of our selves in relation to him The truest character I can give him is briefly this He who does not so profess and own the Godhead of Christ in words as to deny it in his works with the antient Gnosticks he who does not fall down and worship the Idols and Images of opinion which either Haeresy or Schism would have ingraven within his Head he who takes not his name in vain either by preaching for a pretence or by the Hypocrisy of his Prayers He who breaks not the Sabbath by his preferring Acts of Sacrifice to works of Mercy or by the cheap and easy way of appearing Righteous unto men He who honoureth his parents both publick and private Ecclesiastical and Civil and cannot swallow the least Rebellion though in pretence of the greatest liberty He who commits not any Murder under pretense of an Holy war but is so very far from that as not to be angry with his Neighbour without a just cause and an equal measure he who commits not an Adulterie no not so much as in his eye nor admits of any whoredom with his Inventions He who neither screws himself into another mans Right by secret Fraud nor breaks in upon it by open violence But chooses rather to be defrauded and tamely delivers up his Coat to him that takes his Cloak from him He who instead of being an anxious heaper up against hereafter contents himself with his daily bread and trusts Providence for the morrow He who does not smite his Neighbour no not so much as with the Tongue does not invade his Neighbours Goods no not so much as in his wish but does in all things to others as he would that others should do to him 't is he that truly loves Christ because 't is he that truly keepeth his Commandments Sect. 7. But here perhaps an Antinomian may thus object If the case does stand thus that none can truly love Christ who do not keep his Commandments and that his Friends are they alone who do impartially perform WHATSOEVER he does Command them to use the words of Christ himself Ioh. 15. 14. None by consequence are the Friends and the true lovers of Christ but such an irrational sort of Creatures as Wind and Water For whilst the best men on earth are a kind of Rebels either by doing what he forbids or by omitting what he requires These irrational things are doing WHATSOEVER he Commands them We know the Waters at his Command did very readily drown the world and as readily at his Command did they retreat into their Channels At his Command they stood up and made a Wall of Defence on either side of his People Israel yet at his contrary Command too they over-ran and swallow'd up the Aegyptian Host. When he said unto the Wind which threatned an Hurrican in the sea Peace be still whereupon the wind ceased and there was a great calm Mar. 4. 39. What manner of man is this said his Disciples in a Fright that even the wind and the sea obey him v. 41. Sect. 8. The Answer to this is extreamly obvious For Christ directed those words Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you and if ye love me keep my Commandments to Creatures capable of Friendship because indued with a principle of choice and Reason Not only subjects of a natural but of a voluntary obedience an obedience sweetly streaming from the generous Fountains of Love and Gratitude But to the Wind and the Sea he could not speak in such language Because however they were punctual in whatsoever he did command them yet it was not out of choice but out of meer Necessitation And so their punctual obedience was but an Argument of their weakness 'T is true indeed that in respect of our Saviours speaking unto the sea with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Peace be still we may by a figure at least aver he gave it a Law or a Commandment And in as much as that sea did do exactly as he had bid it we may figuratively call it the sea 's obedience But in as much as our blessed Saviour did bring to
is that loves to live a sober and righteous and godly life is most affectionately a servant to the Lord Iesus Christ and does bestow his whole Time in doing the things that he Commands Let the object of our Love be what it will whether God or the World the Flesh or the Spirit still the Rule of the Apostle will be unalterably true That to whom we yield our selves servants to obey His servants we are to whom we obey whether of Sin unto Death or of Obedience unto Righteousness Love is ever so sure to beget obedience that when our Saviour would give a reason why no one man can serve two masters meaning those two call'd God and Mammon he made his reason to stand in this that no one man can love two Masters For either he will hate the one and love the other or will hold to the one and despise the other So that if we love God we shall be sure to hate Mammon and if again we hold to Mammon we shall rebel against God Whereas if it were possible to love them Both it would also be as possible to serve them Both because by the persons whom we love we cannot but love to be employ'd The love of Christ doth constrain us saith our Apostle to his Corinthians And as Christ's love of us so ours of Him doth even press upon us and urge us to keep his Commandments and to do those things which are pleasing in his sight But let us farther make it appear by a fourth way of arguing For Sect. 4. Whatsoever we love the most is either present or absent And as when it is present we most delight in it so whilst it is absent we do long the most after it But the Apostle tells us expresly that whilst at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by Faith and not by sight So that if we love Christ we shall long after his presence and if we truly long for it we shall indeavour its attainment And if we indeavour to reach the end there will be nothing more natural than to inquire after the means And finding the means to be obedience we shall undoubtedly obey The Helkesaitae prov'd nothing but that themselves were stupid sinners in conceiving it possible to deny Christ with the Mouth and yet to love him with the Heart For the Heart in a Man like the Spring in a Watch is that that sets all on work both Tongue and Eyes and Hands and Feet too If with the heart a man believeth unto righteousness 't is very certain that with the mouth he will confess unto Salvation He will obey his dear Master in every kind both by speaking and living and dying for him If he is but once mounted on the wing of pure Love he cannot choose but be transported by the wing of desire too and will incessantly be flying in every errand upon which his Beloved shall please to send him Which may once more appear by a fifth way of arguing For Sect. 5. Carnal fear is the greatest and strongest Barr to our Obedience But there is no fear in love perfect love casteth out fear 1 Iohn 4. 18. And as it casteth out fear so it establisheth a Hope too And Hope is evermore a Spur by which we are urged to our Obedience from its expectance of our Reward It was this Love and Hope which made S. Paul follow Christ through every rough passage by sea and land He was so amorous of his Saviour and so piously ambitious of the Glory to be reveal'd that he rejoyc'd in his afflictions and was readier to dye for the name of the Lord Jesus than to fail in any point of yielding Obedience to his Commands Nor is it truer of S. Paul than of all the meanest Souldiers in the Army of Martyrs That neither distress nor persecution nor nakedness nor famin nor peril nor sword nor life nor death nor any other Creature had any power to step in betwixt their Love and their Obedience The reason of it is obvious as t is to say that they were Members of Jesus Christ not only reputed but real members And 't is natural for a member as to love its own Head so to live in Obedience to its Direction Sect. 6. Thus I seem to my self to have made it evident that Love is ever that cause of which Obedience is the most natural and most inseparable effect 'T is still as ready to obey as water is to wet or fire to Burn. Nor can it better be represented than by the nature of that active and subtle Element Knowledge we may say is a kind of light but Love is more properly a sort of Fire and with that when the Heart is once sufficiently inflam'd it cannot but send up those sparks of Zeal and devotion to its Beloved which do inkindle a special Pleasure in doing the things that he commandeth The Psalmists Heart was hot within him so hot that he tells the fire was kindled and though he long held his Peace yet his love did so burn he was not able to suppress it and so at last he spake with his Tongue We may say therefore of Love what the spowse in the Canticles doth say of Iealousie which is but one of Loves Daughters The Coals thereof are Coals of Fire which hath so vehement a Flame that many waters cannot quench it neither can the flouds drown it Love indeed is such a flame as must evaporate or expire or burn out its way through all that labours to keep it in A thing so busie and industrious as that in truth it can no longer be called Love than it is doing somewhat or other in complaisance and compliance with its Beloved Sect 7. Having now passed through the Proof proceed we briefly to the use we are to make of this Inference And first of all let us consider that if Love and Obedience are two inseparable Companions the former as the Cause and this later as the Effect It concerns us as much as our Souls are worth to take a care that our Love be rightly fixt and directed For it transforms us into the Image of whatsoever thing it is that we love the most And according as our object is good or evil It either put 's us upon the noblest or meanest offices in the world If its object is right we are the best sort of men but if it is wrong the worst of monsters It being with love as it is with fire which in proportion to the matter on which it feeds doth send up the sweetest or noysom'st vapours If it feeds on such matter as Grass and Tallow it cannot choose but have a noxious and stinking breath if on Cinnamon and storax it fills the Air with a perfume And just thus it is with the flame of Love If it fixes upon Christ it breaths forth nothing but pure obedience and so abounds with good works which are
a sweet-smelling savour such a sacrifice of Incense as with which God is well pleas'd In which respect alone it is that the Bridegroom in the Canticles is thus exprest to court his spouse How fair is thy love my sister my spouse How much better is it than wine and the smell of thy garments than all spices A garden inclos'd is my sister my spouse Thy plants are an Orchard of Pomgranates with pleasant Fruits Camphire and Spikenard Calamus and Saffron with trees of Frankincense Myrrh and Aloes Thus our Saviour is suppos'd in Solomons elegant Hypotyposis to set out the Graces of his Church and so of every Soul in it espousing Christ for her Bridegroom and his Commandments for her guide Whereas if our Love does fix and feed upon the Creature it seâ—… forth a dangerous and loathsome stench a stench so odious to God Almighty that sin for this reason only is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Scripture which does equally signify what is abominated and stinks Yet in this very mire men of swinish affections delight to wallow For whatsoever 't is we love be it as ugly as the Devil we paint it hansom in our thoughts and blot out all its deformities with our Imaginations and so we love it not as it is but rather as it is disguis'd and sancyed by us And hence it is that we are able to be so passionately in love with some Bosom sins though so much uglier than the Devil that sin alone hath been able to make him ugly For when our Spirits are so unworthy as to ask Counsel of our Flesh our flesh presents it to us as lovely And from that instant forwards we look upon it with a Fleshly that is to say with a Lovers eye And sure the Eye of a Lover sees no defect in its Beloved The blackest Crow in the world is much more doated on by a Crow than whatsoever we can commend in the whitest Turtle But this is only a similitude cannot deserve to be a Proof For we as Sinners do owe to Industry what the Crow does to Nature Being naturally unable to doat on sin as it is sin we are fain to dress it up with some Turtles Feathers And having so don we are fain to use our wits to make ourselves become stupid Speaking no better of sin than this that it has comeliness in its kind and is proportionably hansom and comparatively good too Not good in itself nor good in others but yet the Flesh represents it as good for us Avarice is good to increase our Treasure Ambition is as good to advance our Credit Luxury good to banish Melancholy and Sadness Another mans Avarice is flat Idolatry but our own is Good-husbandry because our own Another mans Knavery deserves a Gallows but when it lyes in our Bosom 't is a most necessary Prudence We hate the Proud and the Aspiring the most that may be whereas in us 't is but Bravery to be Ambitious Another man's Excess is a scandalous Sin whilst our own is but an Argument of the Right which we have to the Creature-comforts Now by what are we betray'd to all these mischiefs but by the meer misapplying of our Affections And what then have we reason to be more afraid of than of setting our Affections upon the Earth We find by evident Experience and in all manner of Cases that such as is our Love such will be our Submissions whether to that which is above or which is infinitely below us 'T is This hath made so many womanish uxorious Husbands so many childish indulgent Parents so very many servile obedient Masters 'T was this made Ahab I do not say the Husband but the Wife of Iezebel and Eli a slave unto both his Sons Herod though a King an humble servant to Herodias Darius though an Emperor meanly gaping upon Apame and Hercules though an Hero submitting tamely to the blowes of a feeble Omphale Nor will it be otherwise with ourselves who are called Christians who having the Earthiness of their Love shall not be able not to stoop to their Idols too If we love Herod as He Herodias we shall keep his Commandments as He did Hers though this be one of his Commandments that we slay our own Infants put to flight the child Iesus and joyn ourselves with a Pilate to plot his Death too But if we love the same Iesus as much as Herod did Herodias we shall obey him as exactly as He did Her For we shall turn the right cheek to him that strikes us on the left To him that takes away our cloak we shall yield our coat also When we do well and are beaten we shall not threaten but intreat We shall lay up our Treasure not in earth but in Heaven And whethersoever Christ calls us to Herod's Court or Pilate's Hall to the Garden or the Cross we shall esteem it our greatest Riches To leave all we have and to follow Him Sect. 8. Seeing therefore 't is so evident that wheresoever there is Love there cannot choose but be obedience and that our obedience cannot choose but be agreeable to our Love our first Indeavour is to be this that we beware what we love And since t is natural for us to love the individuals of our own species who do carry God's Image as well as we and betwixt whom notwithstanding there is very great difference let it be our next Indeavour that we beware whom we love Lastly because we are commanded to love our enemies and therefore more than permitted to love our Friends let it be our third Indeavour that we beware how we love We must love one another or else we cannot love Christ not at least in such sort as to keep his Commandments one of the chief of which is this that we love one another Our love is to abound more and more towards all men especially towards all the houshold of Faith But we must love them in measure not at all in perfection not in such an high pitch as to keep their Commandments without exception We are in some cases oblig'd to call no man Master upon Earth and to obey him that saith be ye not the Servants of men We are to love one another for Christ's sake only and only Christ for his own Now to prevent our being careless whether we love him or love him not or whether so as will suffice for the due keeping of his Commandments Sect. 9. Let us secondly consider the unspeakable danger of our Defect As first the perfect impossibility of ever entring into his Glory without the keeping of his Commandments next the equal impossibility of ever keeping his Commandments whilst we are cold in our Affection to Him or Them One of the chief of his Commandments which he deliver'd to us as Christians and by which we are distinguish't from Iews and Gentiles is love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and
one side and pleasure on the other he hardly knows how to be more voluptuous His Fasting and Praying Mortification and self-denyal Meditation and Solitude are grown agreeable to his Temper and Frame of mind He is gratified by his strictness and very much pleas'd with his Severitieâ—… He is delighted with the thing which carnal Cowards are afraid of and vitious persons cannot indure Has fought so long as a Souldier under the Captain of his Salvation that fighting is one of his Recreations Fighting I mean against the enemies of Christ against the world and the Flesh and the Powers of Hell T is one of the highest of all his Pleasures to be above the Pleasures of Sin and one of his innocent ambitions to tread ambition under his feet All he covets is contentment and all he lusts after is a Dominion over his Flesh. The greatest of his aims is to be victor of all he fights with and the greatest of his victories is that he gets over himself So beneficial is the duty of being habituated in vertue that as I said once before it makes the glorious Work of Grace become a kind of second Nature For as the Love we bear to Christ begets the keeping of his Commandments so does our keeping those Commandments as much improve and cherish in us our love of Christ. We shall not be able to abstain from the love of Christ when there is something in ourselves to which the Nature of Christ himself does hold conformity and agreement and our keeping his Commandments will beget such a conformity It will I say beget in us such an Harmonie with Him as must needs infer in Him an equal Harmonie with us too And wheresoever there is Harmonie there will be Love in things rational As wheresoever there is Love there will be keeping of Commandments Sect. 11. We may know therefore by this whether or no our Hearts deceive us when they make us believe that we love our Saviour And so by consequence 't is a Transition to the fifth and last Inference the Text affords us CHAP. V. That our obedience to the Precepts of Iesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his person And because by the force of our love to Christ there is a mutual Cohabitation 'twixt Him and Us this will also be a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us in what it most of all concerns us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Sect. 1. AMongst the several sorts of men who are commonly wont to call on the name of Christ and upon whom his name is call'd there are not Two of Ten Thousand who will not challenge him for a Saviour and make Profession of as much Love as if they could prove it by their Obedience But we may say of God himself as of most great men that his admirers are very many but he hath very few Friends It is agreed upon by all that they all ought to love him but 't is agreed upon by all too that of the all who ought to love few do love him as they ought For how many are there of them who do most of all profess to be lovers of him who yet do reckon their very Rebellions amongst the Arguments of their Loyalty and special Tokens of their Affection As if our Lord had said to Them in a direct contrariety to what he said to his Disciples If ye love me break my Commandments Such as are keepers of Christs Commandments with a Belief that 't is the way whereby to enter into life and that in this they are to work out their own Salvation are not allowed a better character than that of good legal and moral men And the good works of such as These are but glittering sins in the opinion of those projectors who are such Niggards as to ingross the work of Redemption to themselves But such as break Christ's Commandments with a Belief that they cannot or need not keep them whilst they can break them so securely as not to fall into a doubt of their being sav'd yea that they ought not so to keep them as of necessity to Salvation these they peremptorily reckon amongst the Vessels of Election And are not they very sufficiently misconceipted of themselves and their love to Christ who rather than acknowledge any want of love to him will ascribe their foulest crimes to the overflowings of their Affection So very easie a thing it is for men to be flatterers of themselves and quite mistaken in their Affections that as they who flung stones at their Heathen God Hermes made no doubt but they did it in pure Devotion so there are Christians who seem to think that they can break Christ's Commandments with every whit as good a zeal as Moses brake the two stones wherein the Commandments were but written And therefore in this consideration it does concern us very neerly to bring our Love to the Touch-stone before we pass it for currant in our esteem We are to follow that advice which S. Paul gave to his Corinthians That we examin our selves whether we be in the Faith and that we try our own selves It being so ordinary a thing for Devils to be transformed into Angels of light and for the worst kind of vices to look like the greatest and fairest vertues that the most talkative Professors of Christian Purity and Knowledge are seldom able to distinguish betwixt Hypocrisy and Love betwixt Attrition and Contrition worldly sorrow and Repentance betwixt Presumption and lively Faith betwixt Security and Assurance or a downright Stupidity and Peace of Conscience which shews the use and the necessity of bringing them all unto the Test that so we may not be in danger to take them for more than they are worth nor persevere in those Habits of which we cannot too soon be stript That we may not overgreedily catch hold on a Fish which will prove in conclusion to be a Scorpion nor please ourselves with an opinion of our great Love to Christ which will be found after Death to have been but a great Dissimulation By what hath hitherto been spoken I do not doubt but 't will be easily agreed by all that men are apt to be mistaken in the nature and measure of their Affections and that by consequence it concerns them to make a Tryal whether their Affections are right or wrong All the difficulty will be how to agree upon the Touch-stone by which the Tryal is to be made And seeing the world is to be divided about the choice of this Touch-stone some liking one thing and some another I think it fit in proportion that I divide my Discourse too Speaking first of the Negative by shewing what it is not and then in the Affirmative by shewing clearly what it is A method the rather to be admitted because to refuse that which is False is in itself of great vertue to discover
that which is True The vulgar sort of professed Christians who are the speculative Solifidians will not submit to any Tryal unless their own Fansie may sit as Iudge And being destitute of obedience to the Commandments of Christ which should be a witness from without of the love they bear to him whereby they might prove it to other men they appeal to the strength of their own perswasion call'd a witness from within of their Love to Christ and whereby they pretend to prove it inwardly to themselves But this is an Error so full of danger and indeed so void of sense that I know not if I may judge it more extravagant in itself or more pernicious in its effects For 't is apt to place presumption on the right hand of Faith and does make the sanguin'sts Hypocrites to pass in disguise for the holiest men Mistake's a callous and a sear'd for a quiet Conscience and sets up every mans heart as the great Touchstone of his Affections though itself needs a Touchstone the most of any For what saith God by the Prophet Ieremie The Heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Touching our heads and our hands and other parts of our composition we may be easily supposed to have some knowledge But God alone is the searcher of all our hearts Ier. 17. 10. And are not they in a goodly way of being rectified in judgment both concerning themselves and their love to Christ who take their measures from the Fountain of all deceit God was never more angry in the Times of the Law than with them who were Prophets of the deceit of their own Heart Ier. 23. 25. Those Plaisterers of Satan whose custom 't was to dawb with untemperd morter and to heal the wounds of the people slightly speaking peace to their Consciences before their Consciences had Peace with God And t is as evident from the words of the wise King Solomon Prov. 24. 24. that nothing but Woes and Imprecations belong to those Temporizing and Popular Teachers who do nourish themselves with the peoples Favour by nourishing the people with their deceits For there is no higher way whereby to gratifie the Devil and make him glad than by lulling poor souls into carnal security Nor can a speedier course be taken to make them carnally secure than by making them believe that let their Sins be what they can be they may be lovers of Christ and vessels of absolute Election and can never fall totally much less finally from Grace and that for this reason because they think so because they are inwardly perswaded because 't is set upon their Hearts as they use to word it because they take it for granted and do not make the least doubt A way of reasoning I cannot tell whether more common or more irrational For to say they are assured because they stedfastly believe or that they know they shall be sav'd because they are strongly perswaded of it is to argue that they know even because they know not For Faith and Knowledge in the proper acception of the words cannot be conversant at once about the very same object And that men may take that for the voice of Conscience or else for the whisper of God within them which yet is nothing in the world but either a forgerie of the Head or a Deceitfulness of the Heart is very evident from the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament For there we read of a Generation who are pure in their own eyes yet are not washed from their filthiness Who bless themselves in their own Hearts saying we shall have peace even whilst they persevere in adding Drunkenness to Thirst. We read of the Hypocrites having an Hope but we read too that it shall perish We read of Priests teaching for hire and Magistrates judging for reward whilst yet they lean upon the Lord and say is not the Lord among us none evil can come upon us Many will plead their great merit who yet shall be damn'd in the day of Judgment Matth. 7. 22 23. And even the children of the Devil may think that God is their only Father Ioh. 8. 11. All which being consider'd I cannot approve of their skill or kindness whereof we have an account in Print who taught an horrible Malefactor to please himself with this Syllogism after his sentence of Condemnation for wilful murder God hath said whosoever repenteth and believeth shall find mercy and be saved My Conscience telleth me and witnesseth to me that I repent and believe and am one of those whosoever therefore Christ is mine I shall find mercy and be saved Now admit that this Murderer was in a very safe state yet sure he took not the way to prove it but only the way that he had been taught For what he took to be the dictate or suggestion of his Conscience might be possibly nothing more than the delusion of his Phansie or the pleasant deceit of his Imagination And this is certain that unless by Repentance he meant Amendment which he could not well discover as he was hastening to the Gallows and unless by believing he meant an Operative Faith such as worketh by love and by such a love too as is the fulfilling of the law which he could not well be sure of as he was going into his Grave there was not so much as a possibility that he should prove himself sure of having an interest in Christ. The murderer should therefore have argued thus Whosoever believeth and repenteth and does both sincerely so as to lead a new life and to bring forth fruits meet for Repentance He hath an interest in Christ and is in a state of Salvation But I believe and repent and I hope sincerely and also hope that if I live I shall lead a new life therefore I humbly hope I have an interest in Christ and in consequence of that am in a state of Salvation In the mean time he should have pray'd and his Teachers should have helpt him both by their Prayers and their advice that God would deliver him from the danger of being deceived by his own Heart into security and presumption which would only have betray'd him into a mischievous consolation he having deserved by his Impieties to be one of their number who are delivered up unto strong delusions and wholly left to believe a lye This I say should have been don because there is nothing more agreeable to the condition of such a Penitent as had been lately by his Confession at once a Robber and a cheat a fornicator and a blasphemer and even a murderer of his brother sleeping innocently by him in the very same bed than to mingle his Faith with pious Fear and his Hope with that holy trembling wherewith we all are to work out our own Salvation Now having hitherto made an Amulet for the contagion of the Times by the negative part
of my undertaking which hath been only to discover how we must not examin our love to Christ and which is not the true Touch-stone whereby our state is to be try'd I am next in the Affirmative to recommend that authentick and only warrantable Touch-stone which is approv'd for the purpose in holy writ And first the words of my Text may serve to be their own proof Because our Saviour did not say as he was going out of the world if ye love me make it appear by being sorry for my departure for they might easily be sorry meerly in love unto themselves Nor if ye love me make it appear by your inward perswasion that ye love me for such a perswasion is often false and when it is true is not also Scientifical Nor if ye love me make it appear by your outward perswasion that ye love me for every Hypocrite is a Professor and every one that hates him can love in Tongue They who crucified their Saviour did give him very fine words too Hail King of the Iews when yet they cloathed him in the Purple of his own Heart bloud But the saying of our Master was briefly this If ye love me keep my Commandments which is as if he should have said make it appear by your Obedience Let me see the solid Issue let me feel the good effects and taste the fruits of your Affection We may know the true Test of our love to Christ by what we find to be the tryal of one mans love unto another which cannot possibly be made by an inward perswasion in the one or an outward profession in the other But he who gives us the richest presents and is readiest to do us the greatest good is most unweariedly delighted in our converse and most sensibly toucht in our Reputation joys the most in our welfare and most condoles in our affliction is not sparing of cost or care when he thinks he can spend them to our Advantage and is ambitious to indear us on all occasions although it be at the hazard of Life and Fortune He is the person of all the world whom we do reckon as our truest and solidst Friend And by the very same measures are we to judge of that love which we bear to Christ. If the beauty of his Goodness is really enter'd into our Souls and hath ingraven in our Breasts the Image of him it does not only inkindle in us the fire of Love but rouzeth it up into Desire too and apply's it to the Object which the fair Image does represent thence we are fixed with Attention in contemplation of his beauty and take such pleasure in that attention as to distaste the very things with which we were wont to be delighted and that for this reason because they offer to divert and as it were pluck us from our injoyment For we are pleas'd with his presence in every thing that represents him be it the strictest of his Praecepts the poorest of his Members the most despised of his Messengers We love to think and speak of him when we consider him as he is absent The very Remembrance of him is sweet and therefore frequently recurr's And this our Love is still improv'd by him by whom it is begun For we love him still the more the more we love him At last the soul is set on fire which burns up all the dross in us devours our love of the Creature becomes Praedominant and unquenchable the loss of our Bloud cannot extinguish or make it cooler It makes us sick of a pleasant Feavour that is of Love as the spowse in the Canticles sets forth her love unto the Bridegroom Being once sick of love we are sick of life too and therefore desire to be dissolv'd that we no longer may believe in but be with Christ. The desire of this Union makes us to go out of our selves as 't were ejaculating our Souls by fervent Prayers and Thanksgivings and all other acts of our obedience expressed here in one word by the keeping of Commandments These I say are the Fruits and therefore the tryals of our Affection and as well of its nature as its degrees This is that natural kind of Dialect in which our love of Christ speaks and makes probation of it self where there is not such obedience there cannot be possibly such a love for an affectionate Rebel is a contradiction in adjecto Let the profession of our Religion be as right as it will and our Iudgment as Orthodox as any can be yet all is nothing without obedience And this I take to be the meaning of S. Pauls words to the Corinthians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments That is something to the purpose and with our Saviour all in all For being told by the company that his Mother and his Brethren stood without to speak with him He immediately return'd who is my Mother and who are my Brethren even He that doth the Will of my Father which is in Heaven and 't is the Will of the Father that we keep the Commandments of the Son the same is my Brother my Sister and Mother Nay by the keeping of the Commandments we do not only know our love but we know our very knowledge our affinity to the Truth our being in Christ and Christ in us And last of all it is by this continued in unto the end that we make our Election and Calling sure The first of these is very evident from Iohn 14. 21 23. and 1 Iohn 2. 5. The second is as plain from 1 Iohn 2. 3 4. The third is as plain from 1 Iohn 3. 19. The fourth is so too from 1 Iohn 3. 24. Where we have two wayes of knowing whether Christ abideth in us and we in Him To wit by our keeping his Commandments and by the Spirit which he hath given us Not by this without that because it is no longer in us than we keep his Commandments The first and last is most conspicuous in the 2 Pet. 1 5 6 7 8 9 and 10 verses where the Apostle does exhort us to give all diligence to make our Calling and Election sure How then can our diligence and all our diligence be employ'd unless in the keeping of the Commandments and in the keeping of them all too For so he seems to explain himself in the very next words If ye do these things ye shall never fall And what is meant by these things but that long chain of Moral and Theological Graces in the 5 6 and 7 verses of that chapter which in effect are nothing else but several Habits of Obedience to the Commandments of Christ And by these S. Peter teacheth us how we must judge of our condition For if these things be in us and abound they make us fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Iesus Christ. v. 8. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see a farr off and hath forgotten that
he was purged from his old Sins v. 9. Which is as much as to say that the keeping of the Commandments is all in all for if we keep them we are happy and if we break them we are undon I say we are happy in case we keep them because by keeping them we make our Election sure I do not say we make our selves infallibly sure of our Election and that by ordinary means too without immediate Revelation as an Assembly of Divines have made profession of their Belief For as Faith is a good man's so infallible assurance is God's peculiar And it implyes a contradiction to say a man may be infallible in what he does but yet believe For as infallibity implyes a knowledge in perfection so belief implyes strongly a knowledge only in part that is in some measure a want of knowledge Which infers a fallibility in him that wants it When we say we do believe we shall never fall and that we do believe we are vessels of Election our meaning is we do not doubt it not at all that we cannot or may not err When Adam stood in a state of Innocence he did believe without doubt he should so continue When Lucifer stood in a state of Glory he did not doubt in the least of his being safe But the event does shew plainly in Him and Adam the possibility of their falling before they fell So as long as we stand in a state of Grace and do so love our Saviour as to keep his Commandments we have reason to be confident of our Election but not infallibly assur'd because we are not omniscient yea do not know our own Hearts and cannot tell what a Day or what an hour may bring forth Whilst we are militant here on Earth we do Hope for Heaven but shall then only be sure when we shall take it into possession They who urge S. Peter's words for an infallible assurance 2 Epist. chap. 1. ver 10. where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and notes the sureness of the Election not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implying assurance in the Elect do prove no more from that Text than that they quite mistake its meaning Not through an Ignorance of the original but a forgetfulness to consult it It may suffice for our comfort that God himself is infallible though we may err And though we know not what we are much less what we shall be yet this we know surely That all the paths of the Lord are Mercy and Truth unto such as keep his Covenant and his Testimonies Psal. 25. 10. We are infallible in our knowledge that God is faithful so as he cannot fail possibly to make good his promise if we shall manfully persevere in our performance of the condition And sure the sum of the Condition is briefly this that we love him so farr as to keep his Comandments Again that this is the Test of our Love to Christ and the means whereby to make our Election sure may be as easily collected from Heb. 6. 10 11 12. Where the Apostle having premis'd the work and labour of their love which they had shew'd to Christ's Name in their ministring to the Saints v. 10. He does immediately desire them to shew the same diligence to the full assurance of Hope unto the end v. 11. And not to be slothful but followers of them who through Faith and Patience inherit the promises v. 12. From which words of the Apostle we are to gather four things First that he does not say infallible but full assurance of Hope Nor is it He but our Translation which saith so much For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but a fulness of Hope not at all a full assurance unless by full assurance is mean't a fulness and nothing else Next a diligence is requir'd for the attainment of this Hope and this must be unto the end The promise that we shall reap is on condition that we faint not We must therefore so run that we may obtain Thirdly Our diligence must be shew'd too that men may see it and be the better and glorifie God in our behalf It must be shew'd in a laborious and working Love a Love exhibited to Christ by being employ'd upon his Members The Love of Christ if it is true will be shew'd in this that instead of being idle or empty-handed it hath its work and its labour is ever diligent and industrious in the keeping of his Commands Lastly the promises are not inherited through Faith alone which S. Iames calls a dead and a worthless Faith but through Faith mixt with patience which is not a barren but a fruitful not an idle but working Faith Such as worketh by Love impartial obedience to the Commandments And such as worketh by patience with perseverance unto the end Thus we prove by our obedience the real solidity of our Love and by our Permanency in both make our Calling and Election sure It were easie for me to argue from a very great number of such like Topicks of which the old and new Testament afford much plenty But that the proof of this Doctrin may not keep us too long from the Application I shall conclude with what I find in the 8 th chapter to the Romans And thence the Point I am upon may be irrefragably evicted For they are true lovers of Christ and real vessels of Election to whom there is no condemnation There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus v. 1. They alone are in Him who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit And what other can they be than such as keep his Commandments That this indeed is the evidence of our being in Christ does farther appear by the three Ifs in the 10 11 and 13 verses of that chapter If Christ be in you the Body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of Righteousness And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Iesus from the Dead dwell in you he also shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit which dwelleth in you And if ye live after the Flesh ye shall dye but if through the Spirit ye mortifie the Deeds of the Body ye shall live Now by the Deeds of the Body are meant the Breaches of the Commandments And how are they mortified but by obedience We have the same in S. Iohn but a little more plainly Hereby we know that we know him even by keeping his word 1 John 2. 5. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as he walked v. 6. Now we know that Christ Jesus was so subjected to the Law that that was constantly the Path wherein he walked And when 't is said by S. Paul that the end of the Commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned The Heart is imply'd to be impure the Conscience evil and the Faith but hypocritical which is not
less the greatest which he requires Our obedience unto Christ like Christ's obedience unto the Father must not only be paid to some but to all his Commandments without exception All that Abigail could but say Christ Jesus acted For she desir'd to wash the feet of the servants of her Lord but He de facto did wash the feet of the servants of Himself who yet was their Lord and Davids too So very low went our Saviour in the Active part of his Obedience but his passive was lower yet not only to the Death which is the wages of disobedience but to the Death of the Cross too the worst of Deaths and the most terrible whether we consider its shame or torment By such incomparable Obedience both active and passive did the love of our Saviour express it self And shall not our love to Him express it self in our being clean In the keeping of our selves unspotted from the world Shall we adventure to be the worse for his goodness to us or violate his precepts with peace and comfort because we know he dyed our Sacrifice and is our Advocate with the Father and the propitiation for all our Sins No let us strive against sin though we resist it unto Bloud And resist it so much the rather because obliged to it by Him who is a God ready to pardon If He was prodigal of his life when he could spend it to our advantage why should we niggardly keep our Lives when 't is the thrivingst course to lose them That there is a certain case wherein we may save them to our loss and that again there is a case wherein we may lose them to our advantage is the peremptorie assertion of Christ himself He that will save his life shall lose it and he that will lose his life for my sake the same shall save it Now till we come to this pitch of being able in time of trial to lose a life for Christ's sake we have not satisfied the Text in its full Importance and by consequence till we have we stand in need of being taught from another Topick I mean we ought to be persuaded by seeing the terrors of the Lord or at least to be frighted by them And considering that S. Paul hath comprehended them all at once in that short pandect of Imprecations his dreadful Anathema Maranatha as also considering that the sins by which those Curses are all incurr'd do all arise from this Fountain a most unnatural want of love to the Lord Iesus Christ I cannot think of a fitter Text whereon to continue my Meditations than that Sentence of S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha And this I mean shall be the subject of the second part of my Design THE INTRODUCTION TO The Second Part. Sect. 1. AMongst the many obliging Titles which God in reference to Man vouchsafes to take upon Himself there is not any so apt to melt us as that of Eridegroom For whilst in other Relations to us he is the object of our Fear our Adoration our Admiration and the like still in the quality of a Bridegroom all he draws from us is Love And if we weigh the chief ingredients which are prescrib'd to make up and compound a Christian every grain of pure love will go as far as many pounds of our Awe and wonder Faith and Hope are great vertues but Love is greater And that as for many other reasons so in particular also for This that God was never yet said to be Faith or Hope nor is it possible for him to be so but S. Iohn hath said plainly that God is Love And therefore Love of all Graces makes us most to resemble the God that made us 'T is true indeed that Faith and Hope must help to carry us into Heaven But holy Love besides that will keep us company when we are there Our Love indeed shall there be perfected but only perfected into Love that though it shall cease to be incomplete it shall not cease to be it self Whereas our Faith and our Hope shall be for ever don away For that shall dy into experience and so shall this into Fruition Sect. 2. To fear and honour Him that made us is a most acceptable service Mal. 1. 6. But very passionately to love him does please him far beyond both It being absolutely in vain that we do honour him as a Father or that we fear him as a Lord unless we Love him as a Bridegroom who hath betrothed us to Himself Take away Love and Fear hath Torment Or take away Love and Honour degenerates into Hypocrisy Both are servil in themselves until our Love does manumit them and make them free Our Fear and our Honour are only welcom for our Loves sake whereas our sole or single Love is welcome to him for its own Sect. 3. Nor may you think that I have nam'd the utmost privilege of Love above other Graces For Love alone is that Motion or Affection of the Soul by which we render back to God though not ex aequo yet de simili a noble kind of Retaliation If he is Angry we are to Tremble not to be angry with him again If he Commands we must obey and if he censures we must adore him But by no means presume to return the like Nay if he saves us or sets us free we cannot thank him for it in kind we cannot make him a Retribution either of safety or of deliverance But when he condescends to love us we can and must love him without the Arrogance of taking too much upon us For to this very end does he begin to us in Love that though we never can requite yet at least we may pledge him with Love for Love Sect. 4. Again of all the Emanations or Affections of the Soul the Love of God is that alone which carries with it its own Reward I mean a Pleasure and Satisfaction which cannot admit of an allay by either Repentance or Satietie Indeed to love him for somewhat else is to receive no greater Pleasure than somewhat else has the luck to affect us with But to love him for himself is to possess the very end because the object of our Love For the greatest injoyment of such a Lover is still to love what he injoyes Hence it was that S. Austin did argue thus in his Confessions Thou hast commanded me Lord to love thee and dost threaten me with Hell if I love thee not Whereas 't is Hell enough to me that I cannot love thee enough For to love thee as I ought as thou deservest and I desire would be at once the greatest Duty and highest Reward to be imagin'd It would not only be my Task but my Heaven to love thee Sect. 5. Now when Interest and Honour conspire with Pleasure and Satisfaction to make us kind may it not seem a great wonder
over our Hearts This is properly the love of our Lord Iesus Christ. And this again must be considerâ—…d in that degree of perfection wherein 't is taken in the Text. As a love of Christ unto the Death a love which casteth out Fear and such as does not wax cold in the sharpest winter of Tribulation For the curse which here follows seems to relate unto the Gnosticks and to as many of their posterity as should at any time be infected by their opinion Such as were Prodicus and the Adamites and the Sect of the Helkesaitae who were totally for a prosperous not for a persecuted Religion zealous Followers of Christ in Times of Peace but in Times of Persecution Forsakers of him Sect. 2. The sum and upshot of all is this The Love of Christ which is requir'd for the escaping of the Curse is such a Love of his Person as is attended with a Love of his precepts too And such a love of his precepts as shews it self in an Obedience without Exception or Reserve and obedience both active and passive too Nor with respect only to some but in the words of the Psalmist unto all his Commandments Our love of Christ must be set off with a comparative detestation of all below him For if any man come to me saith Christ himself to his Disciples and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 26. There we see though we are bound to love our livelihood and our Lives yet we are bound to hate Both in comparison of the Love which we owe to Christ. And that so high a degree of love is indispensably required many parallel words of Christ do put it out of all Question As He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Whosoever shall deny me before men him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven Is any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross daily and follow me For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words of him shall the son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his own Glory and in his Fathers and of the holy Angels And when 't is said by the Apostle If we suffer we shall reign it is imply'd we shall not if we do not suffer As therefore he who puts to sea let his design be what it will is to resolve before hand to run the risque of the foulest weather and not to go but to be carried nor so much whither the Pilot shall please to steer him as whither the wind and the waves shall be pleased to drive him so before we do resolve to ingage our selves in Christianity we ought in prudence to make a Reckoning as well of the Price that it will cost us as of the Profit and Advantage 't will bring us in If we conceive that our Reward though yet but future and invisible will yet prove at last an abundant Recompence for whatsoever we can do or suffer here for Christ's sake then resolve we with S. Paul to reckon all things but Dung for the winning of it Ever pressing towards the mark by Mortifications and Self-denials and laying aside the every weight which doth so easily beset us by a fellowship with his sufferings and a conformity to his Death for the Prize of the high Calling of God in Christ Iesus But if on the other side we esteem it too hard a bargain which Christ hath made in the New Testament And that to drink of his deadly Cup will be a bitterer potion than all his Love and his Promises will be able to sweeten then let us never so much as enter into a Covenant with Christ but rather than begin and only begin to do him service fairly leave it unto those who have the patience and the courage to go quite through it He is a mad kind of chapman who makes a contract with Christ for a participation of his Kingdom without resolving upon his Cross too Himself hath told us what 't is like Luke 14. 31. It is just like a King who going to war against another King doth not first sit down and consult whether he be able with Ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with Twenty thousand For even so saith our Saviour at the 33. verse of that chapter whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath be it his Pleasure his Reputation his livelihood or his life he cannot be my Disciple Sect. 3. Yet let not any man here object against his hope of Salvation and ground of Comfort Infoelix ego sum infausto tempore natus sad and evil is my Condition because I live in good times I cannot possibly be a Martyr for want of a Nero or a Domitian a Dioclesian or a Cromwel whereby to evidence my Love of the Lord Jesus Christ and to exercise my Faith with a fiery Trial. For that I may take him out of the Agony which he possibly may be in whilst he considers how great a Love is indispensably requir'd for the escaping of the Curse which is here denounced any man living however prosperous may be a Confessor or Martyr by a generous Resistance of his Prosperities by being under a persecution he wisely brings upon Himself by destroying his wicked Appetites though dearer to him than his Eyes and by retrenching those darling habitual lusts which are as hardly parted with as his hands and feet Be not therefore like King Polycrates too much afflicted with thy Prosperityes nor like the Emperor Mauritius so much terrified from within for want of Troubles from without as to conclude thy self a Bastard in God's account through a defect of that chastisement which is the character of a Son For if thou usest those Talents of Grace and Reason which God hath given thee thy Ambition may be the Nero whom thou resistest unto Bloud Or thy Avarice the Domitian by whom thou art plagu'd for thy Non-compliance Or thy lust the Dioclesian from whom thou suffer'st for thy Dissents Or thy Cruelty may be the Cromwel whom thou refusest to obey at thy great Expense Wilt thou know by what martyrdom thy Love to Christ may be expressed in Times of Peace and how to suffer for God though never persecuted by men Be but contented with all Events and ever rise with an Appetite from the most warrantable Injoyments Envy no mans preferment nor ambitiously covet to make it Thine pay Obedience to thy Superiours though they may seem never so froward do whatever God bids thee though it shall seem never so hard resist the Dalliance of the Flesh though never so pleasant or Importuning and then in all these together thou art a Martyr of Patience with holy Iob of Abstinence with Daniel
create within our selves a passionate Love of the Lord Jesus by any Stratagems or Engines of Will or Reason If we do already love him in that degree that is requir'd all this Preaching might have been spar'd or at least have been spent to another purpose And if we want of such love in such a measure as is needful what can we do unto ourselves whereby to make our selves love him Or what can any man do to us for the increasing of the love which we bear unto him who is he that can add one cubit to our stature or make an hair of our heads grow white or black Nor are these the more peculiar Effects of Nature than Faith and Love are the Fruits of Grace which Grace if he denies us we cannot love him though we desire it and which Grace if he will give us we shall not be able either to quench or resist our Love Can a man preach us into Affections which we bring not with us to Church or dispute us into a Love of what we see not nor comprehend we come not hither with a Belief that we can possibly be the better for whatsoever can be spoken by any skilful Ecclesiastick but only because 't is a commanded and so a commendable performance to which by custom and duty we stand oblig'd For as touching our Affection and Love to Christ that can neither be more nor less than was decreed to be given us from all Aeternity even according as we are destin'd to Heaven or Hell Which decree of our End being unconditional infers the means conducing to it as unconditionally decreed too And therefore let us not be told of winding up our Affections to things above For we deny the Possibility of being made to love Christ by such human means There is not a Science or an Art of habits insused and divine Nor is the Grace of God acquir'd by the Dexterities or diligence of learned men Sect. 6. Thus indeed it may be easily and succesfully objected against a sort of well-meaning but erring Christians who conceiving that the Regenerate have Grace irresistible from which they say it is impossible for them to fall and that none besides them have Grace enough to do them good but only enough to make them utterly unexcusable do unawares inferr Preaching to be a thing of no use Of none at least unto the People who are but Hearers of the word preach't however temporally useful to them that preach it And in good earnest could we believe as not a few in their writings contend to have us that all things are as they must be and that they must be as they are through the eternal Necessitation of a most peremptory Decree we should conclude it wholly useless as to the future state of Souls either to give or to take advice And rather than continue to preach in vain that is to say without the hope because without the possibility of winning Souls we would betake our selves straight to some other Calling as judging nothing more sordid than to sell our Instruction for Tithes or Stipends or for any thing less precious than the Glory of God and the good of Souls But we do seriously believe the blessed Apostle was in earnest when he exhorted his Philippians both to work and work out their own Salvation Nor can we think he was impertinent in charging Timothie to stir up the Gift of God which was in him But that S. Peter spake sense when he exhorted all Christians to give all diligence for the making of their Calling and Election sure And that God to good purpose gave command unto his Rebels to turn themselves from their evil wayes And accordingly we our selves are extremely serious in our exhortations to the love of the Lord Iesus Christ. And though our labour is very often yet we believe it is not always or unavoidably in vain when we excite mens Indeavours of loving Christ in such a measure as to escape the dreadful Sentence of Anathema Maranatha For though we cannot so love him untill it is given us from above through the sanctifying Grace of the Holy Ghost yet 't is a Duty incumbent on us to use the means which God hath given us to seek his Grace when it is absent and to receive it when it is offer'd and to retain it when it is given and to improve it being retain'd and to recover it when it is lost and lastly to keep it when 't is recover'd with perseverance unto the end The ground and bottom of this Assertion 't is very obvious to observe in several passages of Scripture Repent saith S. Peter to graceless Simon the Sorcerer and pray to God And to what purpose should such a Person be so exhorted by S. Peter if 't were impossible for a Magician to seek for Grace when it is absent Let us have Grace saith the Apostle to the Hebrews And what is that but to receive it when it is offer'd Be strong in Grace saith S. Paul to Timothy And what can that be but to retain it when it is given Grow in Grace saith S. Peter And what is that but to improve it being retain'd Be reconciled unto God saith S. Paul to the Corinthians and wash ye make you clean Return ye Return ye saith God to Israel And what is that but to recover it when it is lost Now that ye are clean abide in me saith our Blessed Saviour Nay 't is said of Paul and Barnabas that speaking to the Christians who dwelt at Antioch they perswaded them to CONTINUE in the Grace of God And what else can that imply but perseverance unto the End Sect. 7. Now from all this together it seems to follow that to attain to such an Habit and Pitch of Grace as to be cordially affectionate to the Lord Jesus Christ we may not reckon it sufficient that we speak to him in our Prayers and hear him speaking in his word and feed upon him in his Sacrament unless we also make use of all other means that we have heard of and employ our best wits to discover more and begg the help of our Teachers in this Inquiry For though indeed we cannot add one cubit to our Stature or make an hair of our heads grow white or black yet we are taught by our Experience that we can add unto our Industry and put a Bridle upon our Wills and set a trig to the Cariere of our vile Affections It is we know as unavoidable that we should be both of the Stature and the Complexion that we are of as that the Fire should tend upwards or water down But 't is not sure as unavoidable to hear a Sermon or give an alms or to have any degree of love to the Lord Iesus Christ. Of which what reason can be render'd so plain and satisfactory as this that the former is proper to us as we are Natural Agents only but the later
spending upon our sins both to nourish and to adorn them with Food and Rayment Let us spend upon our Saviour in a more liberal proportion and that in such manner as he directs us Let us spend out of our Treasures to feed and cloath him in his members Let us spend to pay him Homage in as many of his members as under Him are our Heads And let us be spent for him as freely like Epaphroditus and S. Paul both by watching and fasting by meditating and praying by suffering paines and persecutions whensoever he shall call or expose us to them not by the leaving of our lives for the paying unto Nature her common Debt but by the laying of them down for the paying to our Saviour our Debt of Grace And as we may help to shame our selves into a love of the Lord Iesus by reflecting on our love to inferiour things so our love to the Lord Iesus just as our love to other things is very apt both to be bred and to be very much nourish't by conversation For Ignoti nulla Cupido We cannot possibly desire him whilst we are ignorant of his beauty And of that we must be ignorant whilst we are strangers to his converse So that the reason why most Professors are wont to love Christ so little doth seem especially to be This their having so little of his Acquaintance Enough of that will so charm us as to beget in us a loathing of all that makes a separation 'twixt Him and us Unto how many things and persons are many men passionately addicted if not absolutely enslav'd for which they can give us no better reason than that of their having been wonted to them let us but wont our selves as much unto an heavenly conversation and we shall find it just as harsh to be weaned from it Hence it follows that we must read and not only read but strictly search into the Scripture not only resting in its literal but also diving into its moral and soaring up too into its mystical significations whereby to acquaint ourselves throughly with the Lord Jesus Christ and more and more to comprehend the great variety of his Perfections And then to the end that his Perfections may so affect us as they deserve nor only float in our Brains but deeply sink into our Bowels we must imprint them within our selves by mental Prayer and Meditation To each of which we must be resolute to be so wonted and inur'd as not to be able without regret to admit of any long Avocation from them Nor can we pardonably excuse our gross neglects of conversing with Jesus Christ by alledging our Inability of taking delight in his converse For conversation must be made easie ere it can possibly be delightful And the easiness of any thing must come by use First 't is the diligence of our converse by which we come to love Christ and then 't will be natural for our Love to make us delight in his converse It argues a shallowness of Reason and a great want of perspicacity to think there are not any Pleasures upon the Mount of Contemplation as Gerson calls it because we cannot yet perceive them at the Foot of the Hill or in the Act of contending to climb up thither 'T is as great weakness as to conclude against the Pleasure of reaping a goodly Harvest from the labour of Cultivation and charge of seed Or to inferr there is no contentment in inhabiting a pleasant and well-built house from the cost of the Materials and Care of putting them together Nemo Montis Cacumen uno faltu conscendit The Hill of Sion is a fair place and Mount Tabor is a delicious one But we must not think to reach the Top of either at a Leap For as the lower and more earthy our pleasures are they must needs be attain'd with the greater ease so we must use the greatest patience and we must take the greatest paines to overcome the steep ascent of the highest pleasures All the Duties of a Christian I mean the Acts and not the Habits are so many steps and degrees to the Hill I speak of Which Acts of Duty whilst they are yet but Acts only will cost the natural man Pain and make him see he hath need of patience But after a competent tract of Time as soon as the Acts have been so numerous as to produce their respective Habits the Acts arising from those Habits will requite the said Patience with ease and pleasure Shall I exemplifie what I say by any one important duty which at first gives us Trouble and after rewards us with Delight I cannot instance in a fitter than that of Prayer because 't is one of the chiefest means whereby to enter and to continue and to complete our conversation with him that bought us How many are there in the world who turn their backs on this Duty upon no better Ground than their erroneous Imagination that 't is of no use to pray till they can do it with Devotion A way of reasoning as irregular as if a man who is very cold should conclude it wholly useless to make a Fire till he is warm Want we Devotion in our Prayers we are to pray for Devotion and Devotion is apt to grow from our customary Praying for other things From when in spite of our Indifferency and perhaps our Averseness to such a Duty we use the Empire of our Wills in the work of Prayer and casting our selves upon our Knees are very resolutely bent to perform the Duty how much soever against the stream of our Inclinations God will reward our Resolution by turning our Labour into delight and so will make it as great a Pleasure in time to come as it has been in time pass't a self-denial If any man shall here ask how we can possibly converse with things invisible or have a Languor after him whom we never saw let them answer saith S. Ierom who have read the answer to it in the Book of Experience and have not been able to forbear crying out with David Wo is me that I am constrained to dwell in Mesech O that I had wings to fly away and be at rest my soul is athirst for the living God And even panteth after Him as the Hart panteth after the water-Brooks O when shall I appear before the Presence of God! Devout S. Bernard himself confess 't that in the beginning of his Conversion he was frequently of an hard and frigid Heart who yet being accustomed to converse with Christ by Grace could not but thirst with great impatience to injoy him also in his Glory Yea that love which of necessity does begin in the Flesh may saith he by Degrees be well consummated in the Spirit For not to mention the seven degrees which are assign'd by Ubertinus as being too nice to be truly useful First 't is natural for a man as he is carnal and depraved to love himself above all things and above
all things for himself Next when he see 's that of himself he cannot be or be happy and that he depends upon his maker not more for his being than for his bliss he then begins to love God though yet 't is only for himself and his private Interest But when in time upon occasion of his several exigences and wants he is compell'd to seek God for several comsorts and supplies his conversation with the Almighty becomes so customary and natural by his frequenting God's house by his addresses to God in Prayer by getting knowledge out of God's word and by admiring him in his works that what was hitherto but easy does now grow pleasant And so at last having tasted how good and gracious his Maker is he does advance to love God for God's sake only So as nothing does now remain but that degree of perfection in loving God at his being bid to enter into the joy of his Lord when 't is for God's sake alone that he loves Himself And though 't is hard if not impossible whilst we are in this world to love ourselves for God only and not at all for ourselves yet 't is a duty indispensable to love Him especially for himself and far above the consideration that 't is our interest to love him The Reason of it does stand in This that whosoever loves God not especially for God but more especially for himself does by a necessary consequence love himself above God Because in such a case as that God is only one of the objects and himself the final cause or the end of love For if God were that end he would rather love himself for God than God for himself And that for which we love any thing must needs be lov'd by us the most of any because it is the very cause meritorious or final for which we love it For propter quod unumquodque tale illud magis is the maxim made use of by S. Austin himself upon this occasion And therefore he that loves God not so much for Gods sake as for the sake of somewhat else which either comes from or depends upon him such as the comforts of this life or the Promises of the next does indeed but use God and injoy the Creature And how much soever he may appretiate or put a value in his judgment on what he uses yet no doubt he loves most what he most injoyes Bonaventure made it a wonder how 't was possible for a man not to love that Creator with all his Heart who when he might have left him without a being or have made him either a Toad or any other sort of Animal was rather pleas'd to make him capable to understand and to love and injoy his Maker yea and when man had even forfeited all his Interest in God by an abuse of those Favors conferred upon him was farther pleas'd to reconcile and appease himself not by accelerating our miserie but by providing for our Amendment suppose saith Bonaventure thou hadst but lost one of thine Eyes which is a very small part of thy outward man couldst thou abstain from loving Him with a perfect love who should not only find it out but put it again into thine Head too and not only so but make it as useful to thee as ever How then canst thou forbear to love the Lord Iesus Christ with an equal Love who when thou hadst lost thy whole self both Soul and Body had both the kindness and the skill to find thee out and to restore thee and to make thee as much as ever a Vessel of Honour and Immortality Certainly nothing can make thee able not to love him for himself and with all thy soul unless thy want of converse and Acquaintance with him For as the Fire of thy Affection if fed with any unclean Fewel produces nothing with its ardour but smoak and stentch so if the fewel it feeds upon shall be pure and spiritual it will yield both a bright and refreshing Flame And if the love converts the Lover into the Nature of the thing that is dearly lov'd 't is plain that such as is the object such must also be the Act and the Agent too To fix thy love upon the world is ipso facto to be a worldling To fix thy love upon Christ is ipso facto to be a Christian. And to be really a Christian is to be such a one as Christ. For both he that Sanctifieth and they that are Sanctified are all of one And thence He is not ashamed to call them Brethren Heb. 2. 11. Nay he is not asham'd to own them in a more intimate Relation than that of Brethren For by vertue of that unitive and inebriating love which our mystical Theologists are wont to speak of real Christians and Christ do interchangeably inhabit the one the other They do dwell and abide not only with but in each other They in Him and He in Them as both Himself and S. Iohn that Disciple of his Bosom do oft assure us And since 't is so that our Bodies are call'd his Members 1 Cor. 6. 15. Sure our Souls cannot want much of being transfus'd into Himself For S. Paul saith expresly to shew how Christ is to the Christian just as the Bridegroom to the Bride that as the Husband and the wise are made one flesh so he that is joyned to the Lord is ipso facto one spirit 1 Cor. 6. 17. The Apostles word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that is caemented or solder'd ferruminated or glued that is to say he that cleaveth to the Lord Iesus Christ as fast as one board of Firr cleaves to another to which 't is glued in so much that you may burn them but can never break them asunder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is one and the same spirit as his own Blessed spirit is pleas'd to phrase it that is he minds the same things which his beloved Lord minds desires the same things that his Lord desires Injoyes and suffers after the measure that his Lord suffers and Injoyes In a word he hath such an union as is expresst by an Identity since he that cleaveth to the Lord is not only said to have but to B E one spirit S. Bernard speaks it more than once in a very bold Paraphrase Divino ebriatus amore animus oblitus sui factusque sibi ipsi tanquam vas perditum totus pergit in Deum adhaerens Deo unus cum eo spiritus fit The mind saith he being drunk with the love of God and grown forgetful of itself yea wholly lost unto itself and all its secular concernments does so pass over into God as to become one spirit not only one in itself but one with God 'T is true the Father there speaks touching that last degree of Love whereby the Soul is so transported with the converse of its beloved as to be emptied out of itself and in a manner quite annull'd
are thirdly to observe the important Lesson which here is Taught and which is now of all Lessons the most worth learning especially if we reflect on the Times we live in by what certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or way of proof we may make men to know we are Christs Disciples This is deliver'd in the first and last words of the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it even by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye bear love to one another From these three parts there are as many Propositions into which the whole Text is very naturally resolv'd That all who are Auditors of Christ or all to whom he is reveal'd do stand oblig'd by that means to be really his Disciples That their Discipleship if it be real will be eminent also and exemplary so far forth as to be known and taken notice of by All. That the surest Testimony and Proof of sincere Discipleship under Christ and the principal Instance or effect wherein its eminence doth consist and that which by Christ is here pronounced as an unerrable mark or Criterion of it is this Divine Qualification of mutual Love And this alone must be the Subject upon which I am to fasten the following part of my Design because it seems to comprehend I say not only the prime but whole Importance of the Text as we may judge by comparing the proposition with the fourfold Emphasis which may be put upon the words For first our Saviour does not say Men shall guess or conjecture that ye are mine but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it Nor secondly does he say Your Discipleship shall be known as a special Secret to very few but as the Sun in his Meridian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men shall know it Nor thirdly does he say All men shall know ye seem to be by a Disguise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye are my Disciples without a fiction Last of all he does not say Your Discipleship shall be known by such deceivable Tokens as your Assembling your selves in the House of Prayer your crying Lord Lord your doing wonders in my name your being Orthodox in Judgment and jumping together in Opinions but by This it shall be known as by a Token which never fails 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye have Love for one another CHAP. I. Sect. 1. THE Proposition to be consider'd though last in order is first in dignity And being as the Heart of the whole Body of Christianity deserves to be like the Heart in the body of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first thing that lives and the last that dyes in our consideration For can there be any thing in the world of greater consequence than This which gives us a Token whereby to know we have an Interest in Christ and such a sure token too as cannot possibly deceive us yet even such is that Love of which I am now about to treat and which if we take into our hearts as well as into our memories It will I doubt not carry with it that peace of Conscience which is to all that feed on it an endless Feast Sect. 2. But since there is hardly any word that is more equivocal than this I must Anticipate an Objection by shewing what Love it is which our Saviour meant when he appointed it for the measure by which his Scholars are to be scann'd Sect. 3. And to shew the better what it is I must first shew what it is not For all sorts of men pretend to Love not only Christians but the professed Enemies of Christ and the nominal as well as real Christians Nay in one kind or other they all have Love in their possession and many times the worst in the greatest measure For greater Love than this our Saviour tells us there is none that a man lay down his life for his friend And plentiful store of this Love we commonly find in our reading amongst the Heathen Their great Philosophers did prescribe it and not a few of their people obeyâ—…d the Precept Sect. 4. To save a Friend ready to perish we find Episthenes in Xenophon ready to lay down his life And such was the love of Artapates to Cyrus Iunior that he perfectly hated his own life as soon as Cyrus had quitted His. Nor would Lucius Petâ—…onius out-live his friend Pomponius Laetorius dyed a couple of Martyrs for Caius Graâ—…chus And Titus Volumnius followed Lucullus into his grave Terentius preferrâ—…d the life of Brutus by many degrees before his own And Valerius tells us of divers servants who for the saving of their Masters destroyed themselves What transcendent lovers of one another were Menedemus and Hipsides Cleonymus and Archidâ—…mus Agasias and Xenophon Bagooâ—… and Mentâ—…k Hippoclides and Polystratus Asclâ—…piodotus and Soranus 'T were easie to name as many more as would make a man weary to heart them nam'd Nor do I speak only of Couples but of Societies and Sects whose astonishing Love to one another hath rais'd them Monuments in story will last as long as the Sun and Moon Such as the Cimbri and Celtiberians in Valerius Maximus the friends of Cyrus in Xenophon the Athonians in Thucydides the Megalopolitans in Polybius the men of Saguntum and Petellia the many Societies reckon'd up by Alexander ab Alexandro who had all things in common of every kind and as well their Sufferings as their Injoyments Insomuch that if one did lose a limb by any accident all the rest were to cut off theirs that in every Circumstance of Adversity they might all be equall and alike Sect. 25. Thus there were multitudes of men who lov'd each other unto the Death and some beyond it as far as Hell Yet very far were those Pagans from being known by such love to have been either the Disciples of Christ or Moses 'T was little better than the love of King Porus his Elephant and other generous beasts which have expos'd their own lives to save their Rider's There is a natural kindness and Generosity which is common to men with the meanest Creatures and so hath nothing of affinity with what is intended in the Text. Sect. 6. Nay if we reflect upon our selves upon whom the name of Christ is call'd we must not imagin we have attain'd unto that excellent Love which is here requir'd because we find upon inquiry that we are loving to our friends or because we have often our solemn meetings or stand fast to one another as drivers-on of a design For as there are many sorts of love which are not rational and pure as not proceeding from a right principle so there are many things too which are but the Counterfeits of love and yet are call'd by that Name because they look extremely like it The Devils themselves have their combination are still
are to argue à minori ad majus For if our Love must extend thus to Enemies how much more to such as are friends friends to our Persons and to our God too The love of Christ had degrees and so must ours As the Apostle tells us of Christ he is the Saviour of all but especially of them that believe so the very same Apostle does also tell us of our selves we must do good unto all men but especially to them who are of the houshold of faith And even of those that are faithful a primary care is to be taken for them that are of our own Countrey It was not only for Gods sake that David was kind unto Ierusalem but for his Brethren and Companions sake he prayed to God for her and did his utmost to do her good Psal. 122. 8. Our Saviour being himself an Israelite did ‖ prefer the lost sheep of the House of Israel How kind was Moses to His Countreymen when he became for their sakes extremely cruel unto Himself Lord saith he if thou wilt forgive their Sin and if not blot me I pray thee out of the book which thou hast written Exod. 32. 32. As if salvation it self could hardly please him unless his Countreymen might have it as well as He. Nor was the passion of S. Paul inferiour to it who for the love he bare unto His Countreymen whom he calls his brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh was ready to wish himself accursed and utterly c̄ut off from the body of Christ. Rom. 9. 2. As if he car'd not what became of him so that his Countreymen might be sav'd Sect. 12. But many times our neerest Countreymen may become our worst Neighbors and in respect of their Religion dwell farthest off too To a man born in Iudaea a good Samaritan ought to be dearer than an hard-hearted Iew. S. Paul and the Christians of Thessalonica were never us'd with more rigour than by the men of their own Countrey And our Saviours words are very remarkable that except it be in his own Countrey a Prophet is never without honour Matt. 13. 57. But let him be in his own Countrey and he hath no honour at all John 4. 44. Christ himself had least there and there he did the fewest Miracles but that he did not more there than in other places the only Cause was their unkindness Sect. 13. This is therefore the firmest Bond whereby to hold us together in peace and love not that we are of one Countrey but that we are of one Christ And can say of our selves with better reason than it was anciently said of the Lomnini that in all our bodies there is no more than one soul or to express it with S. Paul that we have all but one Faith one Baptism one Spirit one Lord one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all Eph. 4. 4 5 6. If we will manifest to the world and prove convincingly to our selves that we are really the Followers and Friends of Christ. It must be by a burning and shining Love A love of men and not of God only And a Love of men it must be in which the true Love of God is not excluded but presuppos'd Not a love of our selves only condemn'd so much by the Apostle but a Love of others as our selves if not as much yet as well if not in that measure yet in the very same manner in which we are obliged to love our selves And it must be Dilectio Amoebaea a mutual Love a giving and taking of affections Indeed rather than fail we must pledge them in Love who do begin to us in hatred But to make up such a Love as is especially here requir'd such as with which the blessed Apostles did once adorn both the Doctrin and the Discipleship of Christ It must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love interchanged with one another For in how many things soever there may be a seemingness of Religion S. Iames assures us that it's Purity does consist in these two the relief of the needy in their Afflictions and the keeping our selves unspotted from the world Nor can we be told a better course either for brevity or clearness whereby to be possessed of both together than that of measuring and dealing our love to others by such a natural proportion as we have commonly for ourselves For this is perfectly the scope of that Law to which as Christians we must be subject I say we must so much the rather because what soever a man soweth that shall he reap And with what measure we mete it shall be measur'd to us again As 't is the mercy of good men which is said to triumph over Gods Iudgment so there is Iudgment without mercy for them that shew little or none Sect. 14. The chiefest requisites of our Love must be Sincerity and Fervour As S. Paul speaks to the Romans we must be kindly affectioned one towards another so as our love may be brotherly and without dissimulation Rom. 12. 9 10. we must not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 double-sould men Jam. 1. 8. but carry our meaning in our foreheads and hold our hearts in our hands Not love in word neither in Tongue but in deed and in Truth We must not look every man at his own things only but every man at the things of others Phil. 2. 4. If we are owners of such a love as is a Testimony and proof of our real Discipleship under Christ The same mind will be in us which was in Christ Iesus Phil. 2. 5. And if so we shall be ready to stoop as he did to the meanest offices of love even to wash and to wipe the very feet of our Inferiors we shall willingly bear one anothers burdens Gal. 6. 2. by love serving one another Gal. 5. 13. And in honour preferring one another Rom. 12. 10. Nay if the same mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus as S. Paul tells us it ought to be our love will be so Intensive as to make us lay down our lives for the Brethren And so S. Iohn tells us we ought to do 1 Iohn 3. 16. Sect. 15. If no diviner love of one another were meant by our Saviour under the Gospel then what was so frequently exacted under the paedagogie of Moses our Saviour certainly would have said An Old Commandment I give unto you it having been said to them of old Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Levit. 19. 18. But here he calls it a New Commandment which we cannot imagin he would have don had there been nothing in its subject but what was old No he might very well call it a New Commandment not only for that reason which I find given by S. Austin because it prescribes us such a love as by which we cast off the old man and put on the new but because it prescribes
that part of Christendom where Christ is most talkt of Amongst the many who are followers of the name of Christ how few are followers of his Example how far are they from giving all to the poor who grind their faces as it were meal and eat them up as it were Bread how unlikely are they to indure the bearing of the Cross who lay it so heavily upon other mens shoulders how do They leave all and follow Christ who take away all from them that follow him how do they wrestle against powers and principalities who flatter and syncretize with every thing that is mightiest how do they abstain from all appearance of evil who have nothing of good but in appearance Where are those pieces of Christianity which are the grand characteristicks whereby a Christian should be distinguisht from Iew and Gentile I fear the places are very few though God be thanked some there are where Christ may be known by solid Love to have real Disciples upon the earth Thus we see how this Scripture does furnish matter for Reproof Sect. 4. And as for Reproof so withal for correction and instruction in righteousness Because it serves to reduce such as are wandering out of the way and to build up such as have begun or as it were set out in the way of righteousness Whereby it brings me neerer and neerer to the principal end of this Discourse which we are not only concern'd in as a people born in the very same Countrey but as a people brought up too in the very same School and deservedly dear to one another not so much by being Countrey-men as Condisciples Not Disciples under the Law which was a rigid School-master to drive us on unto Christ but Disciples under Christ who was a gracious Schoolmaster to lead us on unto God Sect. 5. Our Saviour's last Will and Testament a part of which I am upon was certainly made for the behoof as well of us and of our children upon whom the ends of the world are come as for that dozen of Disciples to whom 't was given by parole and with whom the Depositum was left in Trust. They were the Witnesses Overseers and Executors in chief But we the remotest of the Legataries have equal Right with the most Immediate For this Testament like the Sun is so communicated to All that every Christian in partiticular hath a full right unto the whole The reason of it is briefly this The true intent of the Testator was to make us rich in good works rich towards God and to one another But I may say of Right in such a Legacy what Aristotle saith of the soul of man that the whole is in the whole and the whole in every part too Nor is it left as other Legacies to be accepted or refused without offence For what is allowed to be our priviledge is also injoyned to be our duty In such a Legacy as this we are not only permitted but strictly obliged to claim our portions For so run the words A new COMMANDMENT give I unto you His Command of our Acceptance was one part of the the Gift and made his Testament of force not only after but before his death Sect. 6. Thus we see our obligation to fulfil the intent of the Testator And to the end we may see it the will is registred by S. Iohn in this indelible Record It lies upon us as we are Christians to give a proof unto the world of our Discipleship under Christ. Every man of us must endeavour as S. Paul exhorts his son Titus to shew himself a Pattern of good works Our love as well as our moderation must be known unto all men Our light of love like the Sun must cast a glory round about it though not to this end that men may see us and glorifie us yet at least to this end that men may see our good works and glorifie our Father which is in heaven Or that all men may know we are Christs Disciples We must not walk after them who open their meeting with a Sermon and shut it up with a Surfet But as often as we begin with Acts of Sacrifice so often should we end in works of mercy very far from being followers either of Herod or the Israelites who sate down like Brutes to eat and drink and then like wantons rose up to play Exod. 32. 6. our way to pass the time away merrily must not be by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or heathenish Feast of good fellowship but by a Christian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Feast of love Sect. 7. If we will know what that means we must consult the second Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles where we shall find in the conclusion that they did not only continue daily in the Temple but they did also break bread from house to house They did injoy their merry meetings of love and charity for so it follows in the Text They did eat their meat with gladness as well as with singleness of heart From whence I take out this Lesson That Christianity is not a sullen thing making every mans life a continual Lent as the Heretick Montanus would fain have had it There is a difference very sufficient betwixt the Church of a Christian and a Stoick ' s Porch But withal let us ruminate on the two Verses going before where they had all things in common the rich distributing to the poor to every man his proportion just according as they had need Sect. 8. Neither was it upon a sudden that charity grew to that coldness in which we find it For Tertullian tells us that in his dayes they had all things in common except their wives I do not press for an equality I think the Age will not bear it I only plead for a similitude with what we find was the practice of better times I do not urge our being liberal beyond your power like the Primitive Christians of Macedonia nor our parting with our Riches in exchange for deep Poverty that through our poverty poorer men may grow Rich as S. Paul speaks of our Saviour v. 9. For when the Age is all Iron we cannot hope to find ourselves of such golden Humours as to admit of being purged of so much Dross Sect. 9. All I press for is but this That we will be but as ingenuous as the Heathen Emperor Severus that is that we will do as we would be don by and at least be liberal to our power and that we will so shew mercy as we hope to find it We cannot call any a Feast of Love where some are drunk whilst some are hungry as it seems at Corinth some such there were A true Feast of Love must be for all comers as well for the poor as for the rich or rather for the poor before the rich For mark the words of our Saviour to one who invited
so it was in his Accompt their withdrawing themselves from publick Business and refusing the honours of the Court or the Commonwealth Origen answers that they did it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as keeping themselves for a diviner and a more honourable employment For seeing Christ was the Master whom 't was their Pride and their Glory and their Happiness to serve they were most ambitious of that Quality which made them fittest for their obedience Sect. 25. Thus have I shew'd in some particulars how the Goodness of every Action is very sufficient for the Reward too And how obedience to the Commandments were it not itself an abundant Recompense hath enough of Heaven in it to give us happiness without one In so much that our Saviour might well have said not if ye love me but If ye love your own selves keep my Commandments even because the keeping of them can add no otherwise to His than as it makes for Our advantage And having hitherto consider'd our Saviours Precept touching the keeping of his Commandments as the greatest expression of his love to us I am next to consider the keeping of them as the greatest expression of ours to Him And so by consequence am to proceed to the third Inference I propos'd CHAP. III. That as the greatest expression of Christ's Love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto ourselves so the greatest expression of ours to him is to do those things which he enjoyn's us Sect. 1. ANd sure the Truth of this Inference will not need much labour to make it evident For all expressions of our Love however many or great in point of number or degree are comprehensively reducible unto one of these Heads either Formal or Real In shew or in substance in word or deed And in respect of these two our Blessed Saviour does distinguish betwixt his flatterers and his Friends We have an example of the former Luke 6. 46. Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not the things that I say We have an example of the later 1 Iohn 15. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you And an example of both together Mat. 21. 28 29 30 31. Where the servant that said he would not go but went is more justified than the other who said he would but went not Our Saviour's flatterers then are they who make Profession of their Love who give him very good words who in their Prayers and Predications breath out nothing less than kindness and Admiration but not proceeding any farther than the bare wording and professing and breathing out of their Affection they cannot challenge a better character than that they love him from the teeth outwards and this because their Expressions are meerly verbal Whereas the Friends of Christ are they who add the Proof of Love to the due Profession study to live by his Example and in obedience to his Commands espowse a Fellowship with his Death and a conformity to his Sufferings are rather for Christ though at the Barr than for a Pilate though on the Bench very much rather for the oppressed than for the persecuting side Which evinceth that their Love must needs be Real and from the Heart because they are sturdily at the cost and the pains to prove it Sect. 2. That this indeed is the difference betwixt the flatterers and Friends of Christ as betwixt a meer verbal and Real Love we have a full confirmation from the words of S. Iohn My little children saith he Let us not love in word neither in Tongue but in Deed and in Truth That is let our Love be without dissimulation let it be legible in our Actions not only audible in our Voice Let us demonstrate our love to Christ by shewing our love unto his Members Nor that by speaking them fair and paying Civility to persons But by opening the Bowels of our compassion to their needs S. Iames in his Epistle hath set it out to the life If a brother or sister saith he be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you say unto him depart in peace be ye warmed and filled but ye give him not those things which are needful to the Body what doth it profit There we have in S. Iames by way of Instance what we found in S. Iohn by way of Advice and Exhortation For he that saith go in Peace be ye Warm or full he expressly is the man that loves in word and in tongue But he that gives those things which are needful to the Body he is properly the man that loves in Deed and in Truth Sect. 3. Now that which is the greatest proof of our Love to Christs Members does carry with it the greatest Proof of our Love to Christ. Who what is don unto his Members does take as don unto Himself He that persecutes and plunders his Fellow-Christian does persecute and plunder his Master Christ. And Christ hath said what he will say to such as these in the Day of Judgment In as much as ye have don it unto one of the least of these ye have don it unto me Mat. 25. 40. So that the reason is very evident why S. Paul sets out our Love as the fulfilling of the Law And summ's up all the Commandments into this one Precept Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Because the Proof of our obedience to the Commandments of the Law is our doing unto others in Acts of Justice and works of Mercy as we would that others should do to us In a word so very strict is the Connexion betwixt the Love we have to God and our love to one another as well as betwixt the Love of Both and the keeping of the Commandments that S. Iohn sets them down as the Marks and Tokens of one another 1 Iohn 5. 1 2 3. The Love of our Neighbour is a sign of our Love to God v. 1. Our Love to God is a sign that we love our Neighbour v. 2. And our keeping his Commandments is the clearest Diagnostick and Sign of Both. v. 3. Sect. 4. To make it yet more apparent that our Obedience is the best Argument and highest Expression of our Love let us compare the way of reckoning by our Saviour in the Text with that most general way of reckoning which we observe amongst our selves Do we not ever reckon Him the lovingst Subject to his Soveraign whom we find the most exact in keeping the Oath of his Allegiance And who in reverence to his Loyalty despiseth his Livelihood and his Life too Do we not worthily reckon Him the lovingst Son unto his Parents who obey's them in all things without Exception And conforms to their will however cross unto his own Do we not justly reckon Him the lovingst Servant to his Master who goes as soon as he is sent and comes as soon as he is call'd and does exactly as he is bid And does not our Saviour in the Text take the
That God in Christ may be All in All which how can he be saith the holy Father if any thing of man be left in man If the Souls of the just are not drown'd and drunk up in the fathomless Sea of Aeternal light If humane affections do not dissolve and melt away from themselves and become so transfus'd into the sole will of God as to be like a drop of water in a great quantity of wine wherein departing from it self it wholly puts on the colour and taste of wine or as an Iron red-hot does make a defection from itself by putting on the whole Nature and Form of fire if I say it is not thus after the general Resurrection in what sense can it be said and said it is by S. Paul that God in that day shall be All in All But in the place before cited from 1 Cor. 6. 17. S. Paul does not speak however S. Bernard apply's his words touching the union we shall injoy after the general Resurrection through the perfection of our love to the Lord Iesus Christ. For when he saith he that cleaveth to the Lord is one spirit he seems to mean no other cleaving than was commanded even by Moses Deut. 10. 20. where to * fear and * serve God is to cleave unto him And so we are properly said to cleave unto the Lord Iesus Christ when the Caement of our union is an indissoluble Affection and such an obstinate Resolution not to depart from his Commandments that Death it self cannot seperate 'twixt us and them This alone is the Love which Saints are capable of on Earth and here is exacted under the penalty of Anathema Maranatha The other is competent to none but Saints Beatified in Heaven Sic affici Deificari est in the bold Dialect of S. Bernard This Love is our Duty whereof that other is our Reward And therefore this is commanded but that is promised For this we are prays'd for that admir'd This is difficultly had in a state of Grace whilst that we cannot but have in a state of Glory For as this does not expire but rather is perfected into that so by the Tenor of the New Covenant it does entitle us to its Fruition And therefore stoutly let us resolve so to cleave in our Affection to the Lord Iesus Christ and so to express our cleaving to him by keeping close to his Commandments as that before we have possession we may not fail to have a Right to the Tree of Life That in the day when the Lord Iesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels in flaming fire when the Elements shall melt with fervent heat and the Heavens be shrunk up like a scrowl of Parchment when every Valley shall be filled up and every Mountain brought low we may be able to appear before the Judge with great boldness and whilst they that would not love the Lord Iesus in sincerity shall send forth weepings and wailings and gnashings of Teeth all alluded to in the sentence of Anathema Maranatha we may be called to bear a part in the quire of Angels and with the ten thousand times ten thousand which are round about the Throne of the Lord Iesus Christ who hath redeemed us to God unto whom he hath made us both Kings and Priests we may never rest from singing with unimaginable delight Blessing Honour Glory and Power to Him that liveth forevermore THE INTRODUCTION TO The Third Part. WHAT hath hitherto been praemis'd touching Christ's Love to us and ours to Him cannot better be succeeded in point of pertinence or use than by that which now follows touching our Love to one another A subject which is the rather to have its place in this Volume because our Love to one another is recommended to us in Scripture as much as God's love to us and ours to God And as that which does make us most like our Maker 'T was recommended to us by Christ in his last Will and Testament and that as one of the richest Legacyes that he was able to bequeath us The ever-blessed Testator as the Author to the Hebrews does fitly call him being to take his last leave in a farewel Sermon to his Disciples and having prepar'd them with an assurance that the time of his leaving them was at hand to make them ponder what he was speaking and lay it up as the speech of a Dying man And being resolv'd not to leave them without some Legacy some special Token of his Solicitude both for their present Consolation and future Bliss Peace saith he I leave with you my peace I give unto you not as the world a few good words in Civility or at the most a kind wish and therefore let not your heart be troubled at the sudden departure of my Person for as a supplement of That I leave you my cordial and solid Peace But knowing well that His peaee could never quietly rest with them in case of War and Division amongst themselves and being not able to indear them with a greater Testimony of His love than by obliging them strictly to the constant loving of one another He therefore bequeathed this Royal Precept as a previous part of their Patrimony whereby to fit them for all the rest That their reciprocal kindness should be like His that they should all be so affected as they had Him for an Example that just as He had been to All they should be All to one another for so runs the Instrument whereby he convey'd his good Pleasure to them a new Commandment I give unto you that ye love one another even as I have loved you But then to gain their Acceptance of his Bequest and their religious Execution of what he commanded them to observe He shew'd them the value of such a Legacy as did accordingly tye them to such a Love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. By this all men shall know ye are my Disciples if ye love one another In which words of our Saviour there are two things suppos'd and a third is Taught First of all it is suppos'd that All to whom the words are spoken either are or ought to be Christs Disciples And that not only in profession but in singleness of heart not only verbally and by name but very really such This is easily collected from three words in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye are my Disciples It is secondly suppos'd that such as are really Christs Disciples not in hypocrisy but in deed ought to endeavour to make it known to all THE WORLD that they are such Their light must shine before men by their Procope and Growth in the SCHOOL of Christ. This is apparent from two words more 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men shall know it And were it not so in good earnest the Master would never have directed them as here he does to the infallible means of it's attainment For We
at agreement among themselves but from a principle of Policy and not of Love Even Rebells and Schismaticks the greatest enemies of Church and state are wont to hold together and keep themselves close but from a principle of Faction and not of Love We read of Pilate and Herod that they were solemnly made friends but from a principle of Hatred to an innocent Christ not of love to one another The world is full of such Merchants as keep a good correspondence and are punctual Dealers with one another but from a principle of Traffick and not of true love The friends of Ceres and Bacchus have their times of Feasting and good-fellowship their times of injoying the Creature-Comforts but from a principle of loosness and not of Love Many love the merry meeting but not the men whom they meet Or if they are Lovers of the men 't is from a principle of Nature and not of Grace It being a meer Self-love which makes them so to love Others Nay farther yet a man may do the very things which are the principal offices and works of Love for which not his Love but only his vanity is to be thank't He may bestow his whole substance to feed the poor and yet may perish for want of Love May dare to dye a pretended Martyr by giving his body to be burnt and yet may be frozen for want of Love So I collect from the Apostle 1 Cor. 13. 3. Sect. 7. It concerns us therefore to know what love this is having seen what it is not by which a man may be known to be Christs Disciple And the shortest way to know this is to reflect a little while on the Love of Christ. For such as was his Love to us such must ours be to Him and to one another We have his word for it in several places If ye keep my Commandments ye shall abide in my love And this is my Commandment that ye love one another even as I have loved you Now we know the Love of Christ was both Extensively and Intensively great and proposed in both respects not more to our Wonder than Imitation First it was so Extensively Great as as that it reached to all in general 1 Tim. 4. 10. to every man in particular Heb. 2. 9. not to a world of men only as that may signifie a part but to all the whole world without exception 1 Ioh. 2. 2. without exception of the ungodly Rom. 5. 6. without exception of enemies Rom. 5. 10. without exception of them that perish 2 Pet. 2. 1. And so Intensively great was the Love of Christ that it made him empty himself of glory and become of no reputation it made him a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief indeed an Intimate Acquaintance of the most heart-breaking grief that ever was suffered on this side Hell It put him upon the vassalage of washing and wiping his servants feet It made him obedient unto the Death and to seek the lives of his Enemies whilst his enemies sought his He in order to their safety as they in order to his Ruin It made him once our Priest after the order of Aaron and our Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedeck For us he descended into Hell for us he ascended into Heaven for us he maketh intercession at the right hand of God Rom. 8. 34. Sect. 8. Thus Christ as our Master hath set us a Copy of His Love to the end that we as his Disciples might do our utmost to take it out Our Love must be so extensive that it must reach even to All. It must reach unto our Enemies and of them to all sorts too not only to those without the pale of the Church who do us little or no hurt even Iews Turks Infidels and Hereticks for whom we pray once a year in our English Liturgy but to our Crueller sort of Enemies within the Church our particular Persecutors and Slanderers for whom we pray in our Liturgy three times a week Sect. 9. Indeed the Hypocrites of the Synagogue did constrain the word Neighbor to signifie nothing but a Friend esteeming it Godliness and Zeal to hate an Enemy And some there are even in Christendom who feigning God from all Eternity to have hated more than he lov'd think they acquit themselves fairly and look upon it in themselves as a God-like property if they are much less inclinable to Love than Hatred They know they need not love more than the Saviour of the world was pleas'd to dye for and easily taking it for granted that he dyed only for some they think they need not exhibit their love to all Sect. 10. Such men must be minded that even our Enemies are to be treated as one sort of friends and that the Scripture-word Neighbor extends to both 'T was so extended even by Moses and so by Solomon if by Moses and Solomon much more by Christ who having first commanded us to love our Enemies to bless them that curse us to oblige them that hate us and to pray for them that are spiteful to us gives us his reason in these words because God also is kind to the unthankful and to the evil Which is as much as to say that in the Extension of our kindness we must be Imitators of God For so he tells us in the very next words be ye merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful And when a Jew askt the Question Who is my Neighbor Our Saviour answer'd him by the Parable of a Iew and a Samaritan not of a Iew and a Iew. Whereby we are given to understand that all are our Neighbors who stand in Need. Let that need be what it will a need of our Pardon or of our Purse we must not only forgive them in case they reduce us to want of Bread but we must give them our Bread too in case they want it We must pray for them and pity them and labour to melt them to reconcilement must do them all the good offices within our power excepting such as are apt to hurt them we must shew them such favours as may help to raise them out of the Pit not such as may sink them the faster in we must not be so rudely civil so discourteously complaisant as to suffer their sins to be upon them without disturbance but must rather oblige them with our rebukes lest for want of such favours they go down quietly to destruction For so runs the precept Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart on the contrary thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy brother and shalt not suffer Sin upon him Although a man be so scandalous as to be shut out of our company by the direction of the Apostle yet the same Apostle tells us we must not count him as an Enemy but admonish him as a Brother 2 Thes. 3. 15. Sect. 11. And from hence we