man is Morally to be reputed and denominated And it is the final Grace which animateth or informeth the rest as means And thus it is true that when you will prove any Grace to be sincere and saving or any evidence certain you must prove it to participate of the love of God and goodness or you have failed and said nothing Yea you must prove it to be conjunct with predominant love which setteth God above all Creatures And if you will prove any good work to be acceptable to God Prayer Praise Alms Justice c. you must prove that it cometh from this predominant love For it is so far and no further acceptable to God. And their ignorance is but to be pitied who tell you that this is to make our love of God to be instead of Christ to us or to set up an acceptable righteousness or merit in our selves For we dream not that our love of God was a Sacrifice for our sins and the Expiatory Atonement and Satisfaction to Justice nor that Merit which procured us Love it self or purchased us the Holy Ghost Our meaning is that goodness is the only proper object of love And God loveth his Essential goodness first and Created goodness next And our Moral goodness which is his Image is holy love produced by and joined with holy wisdom and vitality And so though God love us in Christ or as Related to him it is as holy Members of him and not that he loveth complacentially the haters of God for their Relation to Christ without respect to any goodness in themselves And to say that Christ maketh us acceptable and amiable to God is all one as to say that he procureth us the pardon of Sin and the gift of the Holy Ghost and maketh us holy Lovers of God Or that he is indeed our Saviour He that commendeth health as wrought by his Physician doth not set health instead of the Physician Christ is the Physician the Holy Ghost or Holy Love in us is our health To procure and give us the Holy Ghost is Christs Office. He pardoneth our sin when he pardoneth the punishment The privation of the Holy Ghost and his operations is our principal punishment And therefore not all but the principal part of our pardon lyeth in the giving us the Holy Ghost But some will say That if God love nothing but goodness and love us no further than we are good how then did he love us first and while we were his Enemies Are not Election Creation Redemption and Conversion acts of love And is not our love the fruit of his love Ans Thus Names not opened by confounding Heads are made the matter of a thousand Controversies As our love is nothing but our will so the word love is taken strictly and properly or largely and less properly A mans will is considered as efficient or as final As it respecteth a future effect or a present existent good And so Gods will as it final and respecteth things existent either 1. In esse cognito 2. Or in esse reali is called complacence and only complacence is love in the strict and properest sense But Gods will as efficient of good may in a laxer sense be called love Gods will is the Fountain or efficient cause of all good Natural and Moral in the World. And so you may call Gods causing or making good by the name of love if you please remembring that it is but the name that is questioned But his complacency in good foreseen or existent is strictly called his love And so still God loveth nothing in either sense but good For 1. He causeth nothing but good 2. And he is pleased in nothing but good as good Quest But how then doth God love his Enemies Ans 1. He maketh us men which may be called one act of efficient love And he Redeemeth them and he giveth them all the good things which they possess And he sanctifieth some and maketh them lovers of him that is holy And thus he willeth their good while they are Nothing or Evil which is called Benevolence and Love efficient 2. And he hath true love of complacency in them 1. As they have the good of humane nature 2. And thereby are capable of grace and all the love and service which after they may perform 3. And as they are Related to Christ as his Redeemed ones 4. And as by Relation they are those that God fore-knoweth will love and serve him here and in the perfections of Eternal Glory There is all this good in some Enemies of God to be the matter of his complacency And beyond their goodness he hath no complacency in them 3. And to clear up all this still remember that though mans will is changed by or upon the various objects yet so is not the will of God. And therefore all these words signifie no variety or change in God but only how his simple immutable Essential will is variously related to and denominated from the Connotation of Effects and Objects 4. Also it must be noted as included in the Text that God loveth all that truly love him For to be known of him here meaneth to be known with approbation and love as his peculiar people As Psal 1.6 It is said The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous and so oft And of the wicked Mat. 25.12 Depart from me I know you not God owneth with love all those that love him What Parts what Quality what Degree soever men are of whatever difference else there be among them if they are true lovers of God they are certainly approved and beloved by him This being the very Heart and Essence of the new Creature and the Divine Nature in us must needs prove that man to be Amiable to God that hath it Other things are true marks of a Child of God only so far as they participate of love But love is the primary proper Character which proveth us Adopted directly of it self And here you may resolve the question that seemeth so difficult to many Whether when the Scripture either by describing the godly or by promising Life doth mention some one Grace or Duty as the Character of a Saint or the Condition of Salvation it be to be understood with a caeteris paribus if other Graces and Duties concur as supposing them separable Or absolutely as supposing that one mark infallible because it is never separated from the rest Ans The New Man hath 1. It s Essential parts and 2. Its Integrals and 3. Its Accidents The Essentials are ever infallible marks and are inseparable from each other Any one of them will prove us Holy and will prove the presence of the rest These Essentials are an united Trinity of Graces Holy Life Light and Love where each one hath the common Essence of Holiness which is their objective termination upon God and each is linked by participation to another Holy Vitality is Vital Activity towards God in mind will and practice
even good men may think and speak evil of us as Bernard and others of the Waldenses and many Fathers of many Godly Men that were called Hereticks and many called Hereticks of such Fathers But to us it is a small thing to be judged of man that is not our final judge and knoweth not our cause and is ready to be judged with us We have one that judgeth us and them even the omniscient God who knoweth every Circumstance of our cause 3. Our very Friends know us not No not they that dwell with us In some things they judge us better than we are and in some things worse For they know not our hearts And interests and cross dispositions may deceive them and even our bosom Friends may slander us and think they speak the truth And when they entirely Love us their Love may hurt us while they know not what is for our good But God knoweth us perfectly and knoweth how to Counsel us Conduct us and Dispose of us He seeth the inwards and the outwards the onwards and the upwards of our case which our dearest Friends are utter strangers to 4. We know not our selves throughly nor our own concerns We oft take our selves to be better or worse than indeed we are We are oft mistaken in our own hearts and our own actions and in our interest We oft take that to be good for us that is bad and that to be bad which is good and necessary We long for that which would undo us and fear and fly from that which would save us We oft rejoyce when we are going to the slaughter or are at least in greatest danger and we lament and cry when God is saving us because we know not what he is doing Paul saith I know nothing by my self yet I judge not my own self that is though I have a good Conscience yet that is not my final judge It must go with me as God judgeth of me and not as others or my self Is it not then an unspeakable comfort in all these cases that we are known of God Desiring to know inordinately for our selves was our first sin And this sin is our danger and our constant trouble But to be to God as a Child to his Father who taketh care to Love him and obey him and in all things trusteth his Fathers Love as knowing that he careth for him this is our duty our interest and our only peace Remember then with comfort O my Soul 1. Thy Father knoweth what it is fittest for thee to do His precepts are wise and just and good Thou knowest not but by his word Love therefore and submit to all his Laws The strictest of them are for thy good Thy Guide and not thou must lead the way Go not before him nor without him nor stay behind him In this night and wilderness if thou have not his Light and Presence how forlorn Erroneous and Comfortless wilt thou be He knoweth thy heart and knoweth thy Enemies Temptations and Dangers and therefore best knoweth how to guide thee and what to put into his Laws and into thy duty 2. He knoweth what place what state of Life of Health of Wealth of Friends is best for thee None of these are known to thee He knoweth whether ease or pain be best The flesh is no fit judge nor an ignorant mind That is best which will prove best at last Which he that foreknoweth all events knoweth That therefore is best which infinite Wisdom and Love doth choose Ease and Pain will have their end It is the end that must teach us how to estimate them And who but God can foretell thee the end He knoweth whether Liberty or Imprisonment be best Liberty is a Prison if sin prevail and God be not there A Prison is a Pallace if God by his Love will dwell there with us There is no thraldom but sin and Gods displeasure and no true liberty but his Love. 3. He knoweth whether Honour or Dishonour be best for thee If the esteem of men may facilitate their reception of the saving truth of God which is preached to them God will procure it if he have work to do by it If not how little is it to be regarded What doth it add to me to be highly esteemed or applauded by men who are hasting to the dust where their thoughts of me and all the world are at an end When I see the Skulls of the dead who perhaps once knew me how little doth it now concern me what thoughts of me were once within that Skull And as for the immortal Soul if it be in the world of light it judgeth as God judgeth by his Light If in hell I have no more cause to be troubled at their malice than at the devils And I have little cause to rejoyce that those damned Souls did once applaud me Oh miserable men that have no better than the Hypocrites reward to be seen and honoured of men Gods approbation is the felicitating honour He will own all in me that is his own and all that he owneth is everlastingly honoured The Lord knoweth the way of the Righteous Psal 1.6 For it is his way The way which he prescribed them and in which he did Conduct them Good and evil are now so mixed in me that it is hard for me fully to discern them But the all-seeing God doth discern them and will separate them 4. Thy Heavenly Father knoweth whether it be best for thee to abound or want And with what measure of worldly things it is fittest for thee to be entrusted Abundance hath abundant snares and cares and troubling employments which divert our thoughts from things of real and perpetual worth Provision is desirable according to its usefulness to our work and end It is far better to need little and have little than to have much and need it all For it cannot be got or kept or used without some troublesome and hurtful effects of its vanity and vexation Let the foolish desire to be tired and burdened with Provision and lose the prize by turning their helps into a snare and miss of the end by over-loving the way My Father knoweth what I want and he is always able to supply me with a word It doth not impoverish him to maintain all the World. His store is not diminished by Communication The Lord is my Shepherd what then can I need Psal 23.1 How oft have I found that he careth for me and that it is better to be at his finding and provision than to have been my own Carver and to have cared for my self Blessed be my bounteous Father who hath brought me so near to the end of my Race with very little care for provision in my way and with lesser want Necessaries I never wanted and superfluities are not wanted Blessed be that wise and gracious Lord that hath not given me up to greedy desires nor ensnared and burdened me with needless plenty How safe how easie
they that have much unholy Knowledge Ch. 5. The first Inference By what measures to estimate Knowledge Ch. 6. The second Inference To abate our censures and contempt of the less-learned Christians and Churches Ch. 7. The third Inference How to judge of the Knowledge necessary to Church Communion Ch. 8. The fourth Inference The aptness of the Teaching of Christ to ingenerate the Love of God and Holiness Ch. 9. The fifth Inference What great cause of thankfulness men have for the Constitution of the Christian Religion And how unexcusable they are that will not learn so short and sweet and safe a Lesson Ch. 10. The sixth Inference How little reason ungodly men have to be proud of their Learning or any of their Knowledge Ch. 11. The seventh Inference Why the ungodly World hateth Holiness and not Knowledge Ch. 12. The eighth Inference What is the work of a faithful Preacher and how it is to be done Ch. 13. The ninth Inference Those that know God so far as to Love him truely may have comfort notwithstanding their remaining ignorance Ch. 14. Questions and Objections Answered Qu. 1. If so much Knowledge will save Men as causeth them To Love God may not Heathens be saved who know God to be good and therefore may Love him Qu. 2. May not a Papist or Heretick Love God and be saved Qu. 3. At least you make Ignorant Persons happy that can but Love God though they know not their Catechism Qu. 4. How are Infants saved that have neither Knowledge nor Love Qu. 5. If this hold true Universities and most humane Learning should be cast out as the Turks and Moscovites do and the Armenians Abassines Greeks and Ignorant sort of Papists are the wisest Because multitudes of other Notions must needs divert mens thoughts from God. Ch. 15. Use Exhort I. Deceive not your selves by over-valuing an unholy sort of Knowledge or common Gifts Ch. 16. Exhort II. Love best those Christians that Love God best and live in Love and Peace with others Ch. 17. Exhort III Pretend not your Knowledge against the Love of God or Man or against the Interest of the Church and Souls Ch. 18. Exhort IV. Bend all your Studies to a life of Increased and Exercised Love. How the Love of God must be Exercised and Increased The benefit hereof Ch. 19. Exhort V. Place your Comfort in Health and Sickness in Mutual Divine Love. 1. See that you Love God. How known Doubts Answered Ch. 20.2 But let it be the chief part of your Comfort that you are known of God. What comfort this affordeth What frame of Soul it bespeaketh in us in Life and at our Death PART I. 1 Cor. 8.2 3. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know But if any man Love God the same is known of Him. Chap. I. The Scope and Text opened what Philosophy or worldly Wisdom Paul depresseth and why THE Calamitous Divisions of the Churches of Christ and the Miscarriages and Contentions of too many particular Brethren having been sad upon my thoughts above forty years by this time without imputation of hastiness and rash judging I may take leave to tell the World what I have discovered to be the principal cause which is falsly PRETENDED KNOWLEDGE or IGNORANCE OF IGNORANCE or a proud unhumbled understanding confident that it knoweth that which it knoweth not And consequently what must be the cure if our calamity be here cureable viz. To know as much as we can but withal to know how little we know and to take on us to know no more than we do know nor to be certain of our uncertainties The Text which I have chosen to be the ground of my discourse is so plain notwithstanding some little difficulties that did not the nature of the Disease resist the clearest Remedy so many good people had never here often read their sin described as insensibly as if they read it not The Chapter hath so much difficulty as will not stand with my intended brevity to open it I refer you to Expositors for that whether they were the Nicolaitans or any other sort of Hereticks that the Apostle dealeth with I determine not It is plain that they were Licentious Professors of Christianity who thought that it was the ignorance of others that made them judge it unlawful to eat things offered to Idols and that their own greater knowledge set them above that scruple A mixture of Platonick Philosophy with Christianity made up most of the Primitive Hereticks and for want of a due digestion of each too much corrupted many of the Greek Doctors of the Church The unlearned sort of Christians were so much despised by some of the Philosophical Hereticks that they were not thought worthy of their Communion for as Jude saith they separated themselves being sensual having not the Spirit but more affected Philosophical fancies which made Paul warn men to take heed lest any seduced them by vain Philosophy not using the name of Philosophy for that solid knowledge of Gods works which is desireable but for the Systemes of vain Conceits and Precepts which the Word was then used to signifie as every Sect derived them from their Masters And so the Apostle taketh knowledge in this Text not for solid knowledge indeed but for Gnosticism or Philosophical presumptions such as even yet most Philosophers are guilty of who take a multitude of Precepts some useful some useless some true and some false and all but notionally or to little purpose and joining these do call them Philosophy And Paul tells them that opinionative and notional knowledge were it true like the Devils Faith is of no such excellency as to cause them to shelter their sins under the confidence and honour of it and despise unlearned conscionable Christians for such knowledge by inflation oft destroyeth the Possessors or becomes the Fuel of the Devilish sin of Pride when Love buildeth up our selves and others to Salvation And to conceit that a man is wise because of such knowledge and so to over-value his own understanding is a certain sign that he is destitute of that knowledge in which true wisdom doth consist and knoweth nothing with a wise and saving knowledge as every thing should be known And indeed a mans excellency is so far from lying in vain Philosophical Speculations that the use of all true knowledge is but to bring us up to the Love of God as the highest felicity to be approved and beloved by God And those unlearned Christians that have the Spirit of Sanctification without your vain Philosophy have knowledge enough to bring them to this Love of God which is a thing that passeth all your knowledge or rather to be known of God as his own and loved by him For our felicity lyeth in receiving from God and in his loving us more than in our loving him but both set together to love God and so to be loved of him are the
Heretick a Schismatick disobedient seditious or Away with such a fellow from the Earth it is not fit that he should live Act. 22.22 and 21.26 Or Away with him Crucifie him give us Barabbas or to say We have found this man a pestilent fellow a mover of Sedition a Leader of a Sect that teacheth contrary to the Decrees of Caesar c. But patience till the Cause were fully tryed and all things heard and equally weighed would prevent most of this I know that ignorance and weakness of Judgment is the common calamity of mankind and there is no hope of curing us by unity in high degrees of knowledge And though Teachers are and must be a great stay to ignorant Learners yet alas how can they tell which are the wisest Teachers and whom to chuse When all pretend to Wisdom and no man can judge of that which he neither hath nor knoweth and even the Roman Sect who pretend most to Infallibility have so exceeded all men in their Errour as to make it a part of Religion necessary to our possessions communion dominion and salvation to maintain the falshood of God's Natural Revelations to the senses of all sound men in the world How shall one that would learn Philosophy know in this Age what Sect to follow or what Guide to chuse Hence is our Calamity and the Remedy will be but imperfect till the time of perfection come But yet we are not remediless 1 If men would but well lay in hold fast love and faithfully improve the few necessary Essential Principles 2. If they would make them a Rule in trying what is built upon them and receive nothing that certainly contradicteth them 3. If they would stay think and try till their thoughts are well digested and all is heard before they take in doubtful things 4. If they will carry themselves as humble Learners to those whose wisdom is conspicuous by its proper light especially the concordant Pastors of the Churches 5. And if they will not quarrel with Truth for every difficulty which they understand not but humbly as Learners suspect their own wit till their Teachers have helpt them in a leisurely and faithful tryal by such means the mischief of Errour and Rashness might be much avoided In common matters necessity and undeniable experience doth somewhat rebuke and restrain this vice If Children should set their wits against their Parents or Scholars presently dispute it with their Masters Nature and the Rod would rebuke their pride and folly If they that never used a Trade should presently take themselves to be as wise as the longest practicers who would be Apprentices And if an unskilful Musician Painter Poet or other such like shall be confident that he is as good at his work as any standers by will not easily cherish his folly as being not blinded by his self-self-love A good workman shall have most praise and practice Buyers will convince the ignorant boasters by forsaking such mens shops As it is with self-conceited ignorant Writers who are restrained by the people who will not buy and read their Books And usually Good and Bad Judges Magistrates Lawyers Souldiers Pilots Artificers are discerned by most that are capable of judging because 1. These are matters where the common sense and experience of mankind doth render them somewhat capable of judging and save them from deceit 2. And here is not usually such deep and long Plots and endeavours to deceive as in matters of Speculation and specially Religion and Policy there is 3. And the Devil is not so concerned and industrious to deceive men in matters of so low importance 4. And if one be deceived many are ready to rectifie him 5. And Mens Interest here is better understood in bodily matters and they are not so willing to be deceived A poor man can easily discern between a charitable man and an uncharitable between a merciful and an oppressing Landlord We discern between diligent and slothful Servants but in matters that are above our reach which we must take on trust and know not whom to trust the difficulty is greater Where the Errour and Haste of either party will breed mischief but much more of both If the Physician or other Undertaker be Confident in his Errour and precipitant he will impose ruine on mens health as I have said And if the Patient be self-conceited and rash in his choice he is like to suffer for it But when both Physician and Patient are so what hope of escape And especially when through the great imperfection of mans understanding not one of a multitude is clear and skilful in things that are beyond the reach of sense And if one man after great experience come to be wiser than the rest the hearer knoweth it not and he must cast out his Notions among as many assailing Warriours as there are ignorant self-conceited hearers present and that is usually as there are persons And when every one hath poured out his confidence against it and perhaps reproached the Author as erroneous because he will know more than they and will not reverence their known mistakes alas how shall the person that we would instruct be it for Health or Soul be able to know which of all these to trust as wisest But the saddest work is that forementioned in Churches Kingdoms Families and Souls I must expect that opening the Crime will exasperate the Guilty But what remedy 1. Should I largely open what work this maketh in Families I have too much matter for the complaint If the Wife differ from the Husband she seemeth always in the right If the Servant differ from the Master and the Child from the Parent if a little past infancy they are always in the right What is the Contention in Families and in all the World but who shall have his way and will If they are of several Parties in Religion or if any be against Religion it self if they be foolish erroneous or live in any sin that can without utter impudence be defended still they are able to make it good And except Children at School or others that professedly go to be taught whom can we meet with so ignorant or mistaken that will not still think when even Superiours differ from them and reprove them that they are in the right 2. And what mischiefs doth it cause in Churches When the Papal Tyrannical part are so confident that they are in the right that when they silence Preachers and Imprison and burn Christians they think it not their duty so much as to hear what they have to say for themselves Or if they hear a few words they have not the patience to hear all or impartially to try the cause But they are so full of themselves and over wise that it must seem without any more ado a crime to dissent from them or contradict them And thus proud self-conceitedness smiteth the Shepherds scattereth the flocks and will allow the Church of Christ no Unity or Peace
as bad or worse in some respects Consider 1. I am sure that it doth as much take up and pre-possess the mind which should be employed on God and take up those thoughts and affections which should be holy Tell me why one man should be accounted carnal and ungodly for delighting to see his own Houses Fields Woods Corn Rivers Cattle c. rather than another that hath as much delight to peruse a Map of pleasant Countreys setting aside the covetous desire of having much Do we not justly account it as unfit a work for the Lords day to be for pleasure perusing Maps as to be for pleasure viewing the Woods and Fields Many a poor Student is as long and perilously entangled in his thoughts and affections and kept from God and Heaven and Holiness by deep study of Languages Customs Countreys Chronology Logick Physicks Mathematicks Metaphysicks Law c. as worldlings are by over-minding the World. 2. And it wasteth their precious time as much as other Lusts do One Sensualist spendeth his hours in Gaming Feasting Wantonness idle Courtship Hunting Hawking Bowling and other Excess of Sports Another spends his precious time in hearing Comedies and another in reading Play-Books and Romances and another in reading true and useful History and other parts of useful Learning And though the matter of the latter be better than the former a man may make up the same sensuality in one as in the other in reading Mathematicks or History as in reading or beholding and hearing Comedies 3. And some turn this Learning to as powerful a perversion of the mind as others do their sensual delights Many think so highly of their Languages and Chronology and Philosophy that secretly they are drawn by it to despise the Gospel and to think a holy Life to be but an Employment for Women Persons that live more by Affection than by Judgment So perniciously doth Learning make them Mad. 4. And abundance make it the Fuel of their pride and think that they are excellent Persons because they have got some Ornaments of the mind as vain Women are proud of fine clothes instead of real comeliness and worth I will not dishonour some famous Writers by naming them here lest I seem to take down their due praise But in general I may say that it is more than one of our late famous Philological and Grammatical Criticks who openly shew so much pride of their kind of wordy knowledge as may warn humble men to fear such temptations and to see that this Learning may be made a snare 5. And the worst of all is that while such Learned men think highly of themselves for that they are kept from the knowledge and sense of their sinful corruption and misery and feel not the need of a Saviour and a Sanctifier they cry not for Grace they seek not after God and everlasting happiness they neglect a holy heavenly Life They take up some easie formalities and words to make up an Image of Religion of and then they think that in their unhumbled unsanctified state they have as good right to be esteemed godly as any other and if any question it they are accounted proud self-conceited Phanaticks who appropriate the reputation of holiness to themselves And to question a Learned Formalists sincerity as Martin and Sulpitius Severus did Ithacius his and his Fellow Bishops is to expose himself to the censure of proud Hypocrisie Yea no man is so fit for Church preferment and honour and to be the Governor of all the Religious Persons and Affairs as one of these unsanctified Learned men is in his own Eyes from whence it is that the state of the Churches is so low in the East and West the Roman I mean because those that have truly no Religion must dispose of Religion and the Churches of Christ must be instructed and ruled by his real Enemies and those that hate godliness at the heart must be the Teachers of godliness and the chief managers of the sacred work Lay all this together and think whether our inordinate desire of common Learning which is the knowledge of the Creature be not the fruit of Adams Sin. And if it prove so consider how far it was the work of Christ to cure it Sure he was sent to destroy the works of the Devil Not Learning but this Inordinate desire of it And he was to mortify it in the same way as he mortified other sinful lusts Therefore as he mortified venereous and all sensual Lusts by holy example and by condemning them and calling men off them to spiritual delights And as he mortified Worldliness in men by living himself a life of Poverty and Inferiority in the World and calling men off from the Love of the World to the Love of God and Glory Even so no wonder if he mortified in men the inordinate desire of greater knowledge by calling them up to higher things and shewing them the vanity of this alone And as he saith Love not the World nor the things that are in the World If any man love the World the love of the Father is not in him 1 Joh. 2.15 When yet the ordinate love of the World is lawful And as he saith John 6.27 Labour not for the meat that perisheth when he meaneth Labour not for it inordinately Even so no wonder if Christ omit this common Philosophy and if Paul bid them take heed that none deceive them by vain Philosophy when it is the Inordinacy only which they condemn If you ask me when this desire of common Learning is inordinate I answer 1. When it 's desired most for the phantastical sensual or intellectual Delight of Knowing or from the overvaluing of the thing known Not but a delight in knowledge as such is good and lawful but not as our Chief End. 2. When it is desired as a step to serve a proud aspiring mind that we may be magnified as Learned men or to serve any Worldly Covetous design 3. When it is not duely subordinate and subservient to the Love of God and to his Service and the Common good If God be not first Intended and all our Studies and Learning desired purely as a means to God that is as a means to know him and to love him and to please him and praise him and do him service in the World and enjoy him for ever but be desired for it self or Carnal Ends it is a Carnal lust 4. When it hath a greater measure of our Time and affection and Industry comparatively than its due and the study of higher things is put behind it or neglected by it at least in a great degree 5. When it cometh not in due order but is taken first and in the hours and place which higher things should have In a word God and our duty to him and the common good and our Salvation are the great and necessary things in comparison of which all other things are vain As Riches and Pleasure with its Appetite
that Love or Complacency of the Will which is the more completive part 3. But there is a Knowledge even of God which being separated from Love is sin and misery As the Devils and damned that believe and tremble and hate and suffer are not without all knowledge of God. So much for the first proof fetcht from the order of the faculties of the Soul. II. The second proof is fetcht from the Objects It is not meer Intelligibility that blesseth a man but Goodness which as such is the formal Object of the Will though the material Object of the Understanding It is a pleasant thing for the Eyes to behold the Sun And as pleasant it is good and also as useful to further pleasure of our selves or others Nothing maketh a man Good or Happy but as it is Good. Therefore the Goodness of God his transcendent perfection by which he is first Essentially Good in himself and amiable to himself and then Good and Amiable to us all is the ultimately ultimate object of mans Soul to which his Intelligibility is supposed III. The third proof is from the Constitution of these several 〈◊〉 a Knowledge being but an introductive act supposeth not Love as to its Essence though it produce it as an Effect But Love included knowledge in it as the number of two includeth one when one doth not include two Therefore 〈◊〉 â—ogether must needs be perfecter than one alone IV. The fourth proof is from express Scripture I will only cite some plain ones which need no tedious comment 1. For Love it 's said 1 Joh. 4.16 17 18. We have known and believed the Love that God hath to us God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him Herein is our Love made perfect or in this the Love with us is perfected that we have boldness in the day of Judgment Because as he is so are we in this world There is no fear in Love but perfect Love casteth out fear He that feareth is not made perfect in Love. So that Love is the perfection of man. 1 Cor. 12.31 and 13.2 c. Yet shew I unto you a more excellent way Though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have not Charity I am nothing Charity never faileth 13. The greatest of these is Charity Rom. 8.35 Who shall separate us from the Love of God c. Rom. 13.10 Love is the fulfilling of the Law. Rom. 5.5 The Love of God is poured out on our hearts by the Holy-Ghost which is given to us Gal. 5.6 Faith which worketh by Love. Mat. 22.37 The first and great Commandment is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. Luk. 10.27 Deut. 10.12 and 11.1.13.22 and 19.9 and 13.3 and 30.6.16.20 Josh 22.5 and 23.11 Psal 5.11 and 31.23 and 69.36 and 119.165 and 145.20 Jam. 1.12 He shall receive the Crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that Love him So 2.5 Prov. 8.17 I love them that love me See Joh. 14.21 and 16.27 1 Joh. 4.19 Joh. 21.15 16 17. 1 Joh. 3.22 Heb. 11.6 c. And of Knowledge it is said Joh. 13.17 If ye knew these things happy are ye if ye do them See Jam. 2.14 to the end Joh. 15.24 But now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father Luk. 12.47 Knowing Gods will and not doing it prepareth men for many stripes See Rom. 2. And as barren knowledge is oft made the aggravation of sin so true knowledge is usually made the cause or means of Love and Obedience 1 Joh. 4.8 He that loveth not knoweth not God. 2 Pet. 1.2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God. 2 Pet. 2.20 and many such like I conclude therefore that the knowledge of Creatures is not desirable ultimately for itself but as it leadeth up the Soul to God. And the knowledge of God though desirable ultimately for it self yet not as the perfect but the initial part of our ultimate act or end and as the means or cause of that love of God which is the more perfect part of that ultimate Perfection Chap. II. The End of Knowledge is to make us Lovers of God and so to be known with Love by Him. THis is the second Doctrine contained in the meaning of the Text. Where is included 1. That all knowledge of Creatures called Learning must be valued and used but as a means to the knowledge and love of God Which is most evident in that the whole Creation is the work of God bearing the Image or Impress of his Perfections to reveal him to the Intellectual Creature and to be the means of provoking us to his love and helping us in his service To deny this therefore is to subvert the use of the whole Creation and to set up Gods works as an useless shadow or as an Idol in his place 2. It is included as was afore-proved that all our knowledge of God himself is given us to kindle in us the Love of God. It is the Bellows to blow up this holy Fire If it do not this it is unsound and dead If it do this it hath attained its end which is much of the meaning of James in that Chap. 2. which prejudice hindereth many from understanding 3. This love of God hath its degrees and effects Knowledge first kindleth but some weak initial act of love which through mixtures of fear and of carnal affections is hardly known to be sincere by him that hath it But afterward it produceth both stronger acts and the Holy Ghost still working as the principal cause infuseth or operateth a radicated Habit. So that this holy love becometh like a nature in the Soul even a divine nature And it becometh in a sort natural to us to love God and goodness though not as the brutish nature which is exercised by necessity and without reason And this new nature of holy love is called the new Creature and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us and the Spirit of Adoption and is our New-name the White-stone the Witness in our selves that Christ is the Saviour and that we are the Regenerate Children of God the Pledge the Earnest the First-fruits and the Fore-taste of Life Eternal And all the works of a Christian are so far truly holy as they are the Effects of holy love For 1. Holy love is but a holy will and the will is the man in point of Morality 2. And the love of God is our final act upon the final object and all other gracious acts are some way means subservient to this end And the end is it that informeth all the means they being such only as they are adapted to the end And in this sense it is true which is said in the Schools though many Protestants misunderstanding it have contradicted it that love is the form of all other Graces That is It is the heart of the new Creature or it is that by which the
Love to the blessed God who is Love it self O happy exchange did I part with all the pleasures of the world for one flame one spark more of the Love of God I hate not my self for my ignorance in the common Arts and Sciences But my God knoweth that I even abhor and loath my self because I love and delight in him no more O what a Hell is this dead and disaffected heart O what a foretast of Heaven would it be could I but feel the fervours of Divine Love Well may that be called the First-fruits of Heaven and the Divine Nature and Life which so uniteth Souls to God and causeth them to live in the pleasures of his Goodness I dare not beg hard for more common knowledge But my Soul melteth with grief for want of Love and forceth out tears and sighs and cries O when will Heaven take acquaintance with my heart and shine into it and warm and revive it that I may truly experience the delightful life of holy Love I cannot think them loathsom and unlovely that are unlearned and want the ornaments of Art. But I abhor and curse those hateful sins which have raised the clouds and shut the windows and hindred me from the more lively Knowledge and Love of God. Would God but number me with his zealous Lovers I would presume to say that he had made me wise and initially happy But alas such high and excellent things will not be gotten with a lazy wish nor will holy Love dwell with iniquity in unholy and defiled Souls But if Wisdom were justified of none but her Children how confidently durst I call my self a Son of Wisdom For all my Reason is fully satisfied that the learned ungodly Doctors are meer fools and the Lovers of God are only wise And O that my Lot may be with such however I be esteemed by the dreaming world Chap. VI. The second Inference To abate our Censures and Contempt of the less Learned Christians and Churches upon Earth I Must confess that Ignorance is the great Enemy of Holiness in the world and the Prince of Darkness in his Kingdom of Darkness oppugneth the Light and promoteth the works of Darkness by it And it is found that where Vision ceaseth the People perish even for lack of knowledge And the ignorantest Countreys are the most ungodly But I must recant some former apprehensions I have thought the Armenians the Syrians the Georgians the Copties the Abassines the Greeks more miserable for want of Polite Literature than now I judge them Though I contemn it not as the Turks do and the Moscovites yet I perceive that had men but the knowledge of the holy Scriptures yea of the summaries of true Religion they might be good and happy men without much more If there be but some few among them skill'd in all the Learning of the world and expert in using the Adversaries weapons against themselves as Champions of the Truth the rest might do well with the bare Knowledge of God and a Crucified Christ It is the malice of assaulting Enemies that maketh all other Learning needful in some for our defence But the New Creature liveth not on such food but on the bread of life and living waters and the sincere Milk of the sacred Word The old Albigenses and Waldenses in Piedmont and other Countreys did many Ages keep up the life and comfort of true Religion even through murders and unparallel'd cruelties of the worldly Learned Church when they had little of the Arts and common Sciences But necessary Knowledge was propagated by the industry of Parents and Pastors Their Children could say over their Catechisms and could give account of the Principles of Religion and recite many practical parts of Scripture And they had much Love and Righteousness and little Division or Contention among them which made the moderate Emperor Maximilian profess to Crato that he thought the Picards of all men on Earth were likest the Apostolick Primitive Churches And Brocardus who dwelt among them in Judea tells us that the Christians there that by the Papists are accounted Hereticks as Nestorians or Eutychians were indeed good harmless simple men and lived in Piety and mortifying Austerities even beyond the very Religious sort the Monks and Fryars of the Church of Rome and shamed the wickedness of our Learned part of the World. And though there be sad mixtures of such Superstitions and Traditions as ignorance useth to breed and cherish yet the great devotion and strictness of many of the Abassines Armenians and other of those ruder sort of Christians is predicated by many Historians and Travellers And who knoweth but there may be among their vulgar more love to God and Heaven and Holiness than among the contentious Learned Nations where the Pastors strive who shall be the greatest and Preach up that Doctrine and Practice which is conformable to their own Wills and worldly Interests and where the people by the oppositions of their Leaders are drawn into several Sides and Factions which as Armies Militate against each other Is not the love of God like to be least where Contentions and Controversies divert the peoples minds from God and necessary saving Truths And where men least love one another And where mutual Hatred Cruelty and Persecution proclaim them much void of that love which is the Christian Badge I will not cease praying for the further Illumination and Reformation of those Churches But I will repent of my hard thoughts of the Providence of God as if he had cast them almost off and had few holy Souls among them For ought I know they may be better than most of Europe And the like I say of many unlearned Christians among our selves we know not what love to God and goodness doth dwell in many that we have a very mean esteem of The Breathings of poor Souls towards God by Christ and their desires after greater holiness is known to God that kindleth it in them but not to us Chap. VII The third Inference By what measures to judge of the Knowledge necessary to Church Communion I Know that there are some that would make Christ two Churches one Political and Congregate as they phrase it and the other Regenerate Or one Visible and the other Invisible And accordingly they say that professed Faith is the qualification of a Member of the Church-Congregate and Obedience to the Pope say the Papists and real love is the qualification of the Church-Regenerate But as there is but one Catholick Church of Christ so is there but one Faith and one Baptism by which men are stated as Members in that Church But as Heart-consent and Tongue-consent are two things but the latter required only as the Expression and Profession of the former so Heart-consenters and Tongue-consenters should be the same men as Body and Soul make not two men but one But if the Tongue speak that consent which is not in the Heart that Person is an Hypocrite and is but
Communion to them if they are already in the Covenant And all this is because that the Will is the Man and if any Man truely love Jesus Christ he is a true Believer in Christ and if any Man love God the same Man is known and loved of him and hath so much knowledge as will save his Soul. I confess in private Catechizing and Conference I have met with some ancient Women that have long lived as godly Persons in constant affectionate use of means and an honest godly Life and been of good repute in the Church where they lived who yet have spoken downright Heresie to me through ignorance in answering some questions about Jesus Christ But I durst not therefore suspend their Communion nor condemn their former Communion For as soon as I told them better they have yielded and I could not perceive whether it was from gross ignorance or from unreadiness of notions or from the want of memory or what that they spake amiss before So that I shall be very loth to reject one from Communion that sheweth a love of God and Jesus Christ and Holiness by diligent use of means and an upright Life 7. And he that will impartially be ruled by the Holy Scriptures will be of the same mind For no one was ever taken to be a Church Member at Age without so full a consent as was willingly exprest by devotedness to God in the Solemn Covenant The Jews by the Sign of Circumcision and the Christians by Baptism and both by Covenanting with God were initiated And consent is love But the Articles and objective Degrees of Knowledge and Belief have greatly varied The Jews were to know and profess more than the Gentiles and the Jews since the Egyptian Deliverance more than before And John Baptized upon a shorter Profession than the Apostles did And the Apostles till Christs Resurrection believed not many great Articles of our Faith not knowing that Christ must die and be an Expiatory Sacrifice for Sin and Sin to be pardoned by his Blood nor that he was to rise again and send the Holy Ghost for the work which he was sent for c. And Acts 19. there were Disciples that had not heard that there was a Holy Ghost I confidently think twice Baptized And if we mark how the Apostles Baptized with what Orders for it they received from Christ it will confirm my conclusion For Christ could have given a particular Creed and Profession of Faith if he had pleased but he taketh up with the General three Articles of Believing in the Father Son and Holy Ghost Mat. 28.19 20. lest any should cast out his weak ones for want of distinctness of Knowledge and Belief And he maketh the Covenant-consent in Baptism the necessary Thing as the End and Measure of their Knowledge He that hath Knowledge enough to cause him to thirst may come and drink of the waters of Life Rev. 22.17 And he that hungreth and thirsteth after righteousness shall be satisfied and he that cometh to Christ he will in no wise cast out And the Apostles Baptized so many thousands in a short time that they could not examine each Person about a more particular Knowledge and Belief Acts 2. c. Nor do we read in Scripture of such particular large Professions as go much beyond the words of Baptism And though no doubt they did endeavour to make the ignorant understand what they profest and did and so had some larger Creed yet was it not all so large as the short Creed called the Apostles now is several of its Articles having been long since added I have spoken all this not only to Ministers who have the Keys of Admission but especially for the Religious Persons sakes who are too much enclined to place godliness in words and ability to speak well in Prayer or Conference or answering Questions and that make a more distinct Knowledge and Profession necessary than God hath made Yea if all the Articles of the Creed are professed when the understanding of them is not clear and distinct they deride it and say A Parrot may be taught as much and they separate from those Pastors and Churches that receive such to their Communion Many do this of a godly Zeal lest ignorance and formality be encouraged and the godly and ungodly not sufficiently distinguished But their Zeal is not according to Knowledge nor to the holy Rule and they little know how much Pride oft lurketh unobserved in such desires to be publickly differenced from others as below us and unmeet for our Communion And less know they how much they injure and displease our gracious Lord who took little Children in his Arms and despiseth not the weak and carrieth the Lambs and refuseth no one any further than they refuse him I tell you if you see but true love and willingness in a diligent reformed pious and righteous Life there is certainly there is saving Knowledge and Faith within and if words do not satisfactorily express it you are to think that it is not for want of the thing it self but for want of use and exercise and for want of well studied Notions or for want of natural Parts Education or Art to enable them to act that part aright But if God know the meaning of Abba Father and of the groans of the Spirit in his Beloved Infants I will not be one that shall condemn and reject a lover of God and Christ and Holiness for want of distinct particular Knowledge or of words to utter it aright Chap. VIII The fourth Inference The aptness of the Teaching of Christ to ingenerate the Love of God and Holiness IF Love be the End and Perfection of our Knowledge then hence we may perceive that no Teacher that ever appeared in the World was so fit for the ingenerating of true saving knowledge as Jesus Christ For none ever so promoted the love of God. 1. It was he only that rendered God apparently lovely to sinful man by reconciling us to God and rendering him apparently propitious to his Enemies pardoning sin and tendering Salvation freely to them that were the Sons of Death self-Self-love will not give men leave to love aright a God that will damn them though deservedly for sin But it is Christ that hath made Atonement and is the Propitiation for our sins and proclaimeth Gods love even to the Rebellious Which is more effectually to kindle holy love in us than all the Precepts of Naturalists without this could ever have been His Cross and his Wounds and Blood were the powerful Sermons to Preach Gods winning love to sinners 2. And the benefits are so many and so great which he hath purchased and revealed to man that they are abundant fewel for the Flames of Love. We are set by Christ in the way of Mercy in the Houshold of God under the Eye and special Influence of his love all our sins pardoned our Everlasting punishment remitted our Souls renewed our wounded Consciences healed
our Enemies conquered our fears removed our wants supplied our Bodies and all that is ours under the protection of Almighty love and we are secured by Promise that all our Sufferings shall work together for our good And what will cause love if all this will not When we perceive with what love the Father hath loved us that of Enemies we should be made the Sons of God and of condemned Sinners we should be made the Heirs of endless Glory and this so freely and by so strange a means we may conclude that this is the Doctrine of Love which is taught us from Heaven by love it self 3. And especially this work of love is promoted by opening the Kingdom of Heaven to the foresight of our Faith and shewing us what we shall enjoy for ever and assuring us of the Fruition of our Creators Everlasting Love yea by making us fore-know that Heaven consisteth in perfect mutual endless love This will both of it self draw up our Hearts and engage all our Reason and Endeavours in beginning that work which we must do for ever and to learn on Earth to love in Heaven 4. And besides all these objective helps Christ giveth to Believers the Spirit of Love and maketh it become as a nature in us which no other Teacher in the World could do Others can speak reason to our Ears but it is Christ that sendeth the warming Beams of holy Love into our Hearts If the love of God and holiness were no better than common Philosophical Speculations then Aristotle or Plato or such other Masters of names and notions might compare with Christ and his Apostles and Athens with the Primitive Church and the Schoolmen might be thought the best Improvers of Theology But if thousands of dreaming Disputers wrangle the World into misery and themselves into Hell and are ingenious Artificers of their own damnation and if the love of God and Goodness be the healthful constitution of the Soul its natural content and pleasure the business and end of life and all its helps and blessings the Soder of just Societies the Union of Man with God in Christ and with all the Blessed and the Fore-taste and First-fruits of endless Glory then Christ the Messenger of Love the Teacher of Love the Giver of Love the Lord and Commander of Love is the best Promoter of Knowledge in the World. And as Nicodemus knew that he was a Teacher come from God because no man could do such works unless God were with him so may we conclude the same because no man could so reveal so cause and communicate Love the holy Love of God and Goodness unless the God of Love had sent him Love is the very end and work of Christ and of his Word and Spirit Chap. IX The fifth Inference What great cause men have to be thankful to God for the Constitution of the Christian Religion And how unexcusable they are that will not learn so short and sweet and safe a Lesson SO excellent and every way suitable to our case is the Religion taught and instituted by Christ as should render it very acceptable to Mankind And that on several accounts 1. The brevity and plainness of Christian Precepts greatly accommodateth the necessity of Mankind I say his necessity lest you think it is but his sloth Ars longa Vita brevis is the true and sad complaint of Students Had our Salvation been laid upon our Learning a Body of true Philosophy how desperate would our case have been For 1. Mans great Intellectual weakness 2. His want of leisure would not have allowed him a knowledge that requireth a subtile wit and tedious studies 1. Most men have wits of the duller sort Such quickness subtilty and solidity as is necessary to great and difficult studies are very rare So rare as that few such are found even amongst the Preachers of the Gospel Of a multitude who by hard Studies and honest Hearts are fit to Preach the Doctrine of Salvation scarce one or two are found of so fine and exact a wit as to be fit judiciously to manage the curious Controversies of the Schools What a case then had Mankind been in if none could have been wise and happy indeed but these few of extraordinary capacity The most publick and common good is the best God is more merciful than to confine Salvation to subtilty of wit Nor indeed is it a thing it self so pleasing to him as a Holy Heavenly Heart and Life 2. And we have Bodies that must have Provision and Employment We have Families and Kindred that must be maintained We live in Neighbourhoods and publick Societies which call for much Duty and take up much time And our sufferings and crosses will take up some thoughts Were it but Poverty alone how much of our time will it alienate from contemplation whilst great necessities call for great care and continual labour Can our common poor Labourers especially Husbandmen have leisure to inform their minds with Philosophy or curious Speculations Nay we see by experience that the more subtile and most vacant wits that wholly addict themselves to Philosophy can bring it to no considerable certainty and consistency to this day except in the few Rudiments or common Principles that all are agreed in Insomuch that those do now take themselves to be the chief or only wits who are pulling down that which through so many Ages from the beginning of the World hath with so great wit and study been concluded on before them and are now themselves no higher than new Experimenters who are beginning all anew again to try whether they can retrieve the errours of Mankind and make any thing of that which they think the World hath been so long unacquainted with And they are yet but beginning at the Skin or Superficies of the World and are got no further with all their wit than Matter and Motion with Figure Site Contexture c. But if they could live as long as Methusalem it is hoped they might come to know that besides Matter and Motion there are Essential Virtues called substantial Forms or active Natures and that there is a Vis Motiva which is the cause of Motion and a Virtus Intellectiva and Wisdom which is the cause of the Order of Motion and a Vital Will and Love which is the perfection and end of all In a word they may live to know that there is such a thing in the World as Life and such a thing as Active Nature and such a thing as Sense and Soul besides Corporeal Matter and Motion and consequently that man is indeed man. But alas they must die sooner perhaps before they attain so far and their Successors must begin all anew again as if none of all these great attempts had been made by their Predecessours and so by their method we shall never reach deeper than the Skin nor learn more than our A B C And would we have such a task made necessary to the Common
in unskilful men consist with a Sound Belief of the Things which must necessarily be believed And that Christ and Grace may be thankfully received by many that have false Names and Notions and Sayings about Christ and Grace And I know the great Power of Education and Converse and what advantage an opinion hath even with the upright which is commonly extolled by Learned Godly Religious men especially if by almost all Therefore I make no doubt but God hath many among the Papists and the Antinomians to name no others who are truly Godly though they Logically or Notionally hold such errours as if Practically held would be their damnation and if the consequents were known and held Much more when thousands of the Common People hold not the errours of the Church which they abide in And it shall not be my way of perswading my own Soul or others to Love God by first perswading them that he Loveth but few besides them And when such have narrowed Gods Love and mercy to all save their own party and made themselves easily believe that he will damn the rest of the world even such as are desirous to please God as they are they have but prepared a Snare for their own Consciences which may perhaps when it is awakened as easily believe that he will damn themselves Let us give all diligence to make our own calling and election sure and leave others to the righteous God to whose Judgment they and we must stand or fall Who art thou that judgest anothers Servant As the Covenant of Peculiarity was made only with the Israelites though the Common Law of grace made to Adam and Noe was in force to other Nations of the World So the more excellent Covenant of Peculiarity is since Christs Incarnation made only with the Christian Church though the foresaid Common Law of Grace be not repealed to all others Nor can it be said that they sin not against a Law of Grace or mercy leading to repentance And as the Covenant of Peculiarity was not repealed to the ten tribes though the benefitâ—s were much forfeited by their violation but God had still Thousands among them in Elias time that bowed not the knee to Baal and such as Obadiah to hide the Prophets though yet the Jews were the more Orthodox Even so though the Reformed Churches as the two Tribes stick closer to the truth the Kingdoms where Popery prevaileth have yet many thousands that God will save and notwithstanding their errours and corrupt additions they have the same Articles of Faith and Baptismal Covenant as we And if any man think himself the wiser or the happier man than I for holding the contrary and thinking so many are hated of God more than I do and consequently rendering him less lovely to them I envy not such the honour nor comfort of their wisdom Obj. III. You will thus confirm our Ignorant people in their presumption that tell Professors of Godliness I Love God above all and my Neighbour as my self though I do not know and talk and pray so much as you do Ans Either they do so Love God and Man or they do not If they do they are good and happy men though you call them ignorant Yea he is far from being an Ignorant man that knoweth God and Christ and Heaven and Holiness so well as to be unfeignedly in Love with them But if he do not what say I to his encouragement in presumption But you must take another course to cure him than by calling him to a barren sort of Knowledge You must shew him that the Love of God is an operative principle and where it is will have dominion and be highest in the Soul and that telling God that we Love him while we love not his Law his Service or his Children yea while we love our Appetite our Wealth our Credit and every beastly lust above him and while we cannot abide much to think or hear talk of him this is but odious Hypocrisie which deceiveth the sinner and maketh him more abominable to God. But if really you see a poor Neighbour whom you count ignorant live as one that loveth God and Goodness take heed that you proudly despise not Christs little ones but Love and Cherish those sparks that are kindled and Loved by Christ The least are called by Christ his Brethren and their interest made as his own Mat. 25. And the least have their Angels which see the face of God in Heaven Qu. IV. How then are Infants saved that neither have knowledge nor Love. Ans 1. While they have no Wills of their own which are capable of holy duties they are as members of their Parents whose Wills are theirs and who know God and Love him for themselves and their Infants As the Hand and Foot doth not know or Love God in itself and yet is holy in that it is the Hand or Foot of one that doth know and Love him 2. Sanctified Infants have that Grace which is the seed of holy Love though they have not yet the Act nor proper habit of Love. I call it as seed because it is a holy disposition of the Soul by which it is not only Physically as all are but Morally able to Love God when they come to the use of reason or at least mediately to do that which shall conduce to holy Love. 3. And in this state being Loved of God and known of him as the Children of his Grace and Promise they are happy in his Love to them For he will give their natures their due capacity in his way which we are not yet fit to be fully acquainted with and he will fill up that Capacity with his Love and Glory Obj. V. If this hold away with universities and all our Volumes and Studies of Physicks Mathematicks and other Sciences for they must needs divert our thoughts from the Love of God! And then Turks Muscovites and other contemners of Learning are in the right Ans There is a right and a wrong use of all these As there is of Arts and business of the world One man so followeth his trade and worldly business as to divert distract or corrupt his mind and drown all holy thoughts and Love and leave no due place for holy diligence And another man so followeth his calling as that Heaven hath still his heart and hope and his labour is made but part of his obedience to God and his way to life eternal and all is Sanctified by holy Principles End and Manner And so it is about common Learning Sciences or Arts And I have proved to you that among too many called great Scholars in the world many books and much reading and acquaintance with all the arts of speaking with Grammar Logick Oratory Metaphysicks Physicks History Laws c. is but one of Satans Last and Subtlest means of wasting precious time deceiving Souls and keeping such persons from pursuing the ends of their excellent wit and of life itself that
all those to be wicked Hypocrites Hereticks Schismaticks Factious or Liars that are against them and dare print to the world that most notorious truths in matters of fact are lies and lies are truths and corrupt all History where they are but concerned So that experience hath taught me to give little credit to any History written by men in whom I can perceive this double Character 1. That they are worldly and unconscionable 2. And concerned by a personal Interest especially when they revile their Adversaries And money friends or honour will make any Cause true and just with them and can confute all evidences of truth and innocency Learned Judges are too oft corrupt 9. And in cases of great Temptation how insufficient is Learning to repel the Tempter when it 's easily done by the holy Love of God and Goodness How easily is a man's Judgment tempted to think well of that which he loveth and ill of that which his heart is against Many such Instances I might give you but these fully shew the misery and folly of ungodly Scholars that are but blinded by dead notions and words of Art to think they know something when they know nothing as they ought to know and to hate truth and goodness and speak evil of the things they know not while for want of holy Love these tinkling Cymbals do but deceive themselves and ascertain their own damnation II. I should next have said as much of the vanity and snare of the Knowledge of such Gnosticks as in an over-valuing of their own Religious skill and gifts cry out as the Pharisees This people that know not the Law are cursed But what is said is applicable to them Chap. XVI Love best the Christians that have most Love to God and Man. IF God Love those most that have most Love and not those that have most barren Knowledge then so must we even all that take God's Wisdom as infallible Of whom can we know better whom to Love and Value than of him that is Wisdom and Love it self There is more savoury worth in the experience affections and heavenly tendency of holy Souls than in all the subtilties of Learned Wits When a man cometh to die who savoureth not more Wisdom in the Sacred Scripture and in holy Treatises than in all Aristotle's Learned works And who had not then rather hear the talk and prayers of a holy person than the most accurate Logick or Mathematicks Alas what are these but trifles to a dying man And what they will be to a dying man they should be much to us all our life unless we would never be wise till it is too late And among men seeming Religious it is not the Religious wrangler or disputer nor the Zealous reviler of his Brethren that can hotly cry down on one side These men are Heretical or on the other These are Antichristian that are the Lovely persons Not they that on one side cry out Away with these from the Ministry and Church as disobedient to us Or on the other Away with these from our Communion as not holy enough to join with us It is not they that proudliest persecute to prove their Zeal nor they that proudliest separate from others to prove it but it is they that live in the love of God and Man that are beloved of God and Man. Nature teacheth all men to love those that love them And the Divine Nature teacheth us to love those much more that love God and goodness Though love be an act of obedience as commanded yet hath it a Nature also above meer obedience and bare commanding will not cause it No man loveth God or man only because he is commanded so to do but because he perceiveth them to be good and amiable And the most loving are the most lovely so be it their love be rightly guided Doth it not kindle love in you to others more to hear their Breathings after God and Grace and Glory and to see them loving and kind to all and delighting to do all the good they can and covering tenderly the infirmities of others and practising 1 Cor. 13. and living at peace among themselves and as much as is possible with all men and loving their Enemies and blessing those that curse them and patiently bearing and forgiving wrongs than to come into one Congregation and hear a Priest teach the people to hate their Brethren as Schismaticks or Hereticks or in another and hear a man teach his Followers to hate others as Antichristian or Ceremonious Or to hear silly Men and Women talk against things that are quite beyond their reach and shaking the Head to talk against Dissenters and say Such a one is an erroneous or dangerous man take heed of hearing him Such a one is for or against Reprobation Free Will Universal Redemption Mans Power and such like which they little understand In a word the proudly Tyrannical and the proudly Schismatical with all their pretence of Learning on one side or of the Spirit and Holiness and Gifts on the other are no whit so amiable as the single-hearted honest peaceable Christian who preacheth love and prayeth love and liveth and breatheth and practiseth love Paul saith that all the Law is fulfilled in love and fulfilling is more than knowing it And Christ himself did not in vain sum up all the Commandments in the love of God and Man Nor in vain ask Peter thrice Lovest thou me nor in vain so often charge it on them as his new that is his last Commandment that they love one another Nor doth his beloved Apostle John in vain so earnestly write for love Chap. XVII Exhort Plead not against Love or works of Love upon pretence of a cross Interest of Learning Knowledge Gifts Church-order Discipline c. or any other thing IF LOVE be that which is most amiable in us to the God of Love then as nothing in the World can excuse him that is without it nor render him lovely indeed to God and Man so nothing must be made a pretence against it And no pretence will excuse that man or that Society that is against it Even corrections and severities when they must be used must come from love and be wholly ordered to the ends and interest of love And when necessity calls for destructive Executions which tend not to the good of him that is Executed yet must they tend to the good of the Community or of many and come from a greater love than is due to one or else that which otherwise would be laudable Justice is but Cruelty For the punishment of Offenders is good and just because tending to the common good Debentur Reipublicae the Community have Jus a Right to them as a means to their good So that it is Love that is the Amiableness of Justice it self If any think that Gods Justice is a cross instance let him consider 1. That though the most publick or common good be our end next the ultimate
Love of God You say if such and such men be suffered this and that disorder and inconvenience will follow But is it a greater thing than Love that you would maintain Is it a greater evil than the destruction of Love that you would avoid Did not Christ prefer mercy before Sabbath rest and before the avoiding familiarity with sinners Pretend nothing against Love that is not better than Love. Obj. But what is this to the Love of God which the Text speaketh of Ans As God is here seen as in a Glass so is he loved He that Loveth not his Brother whom he seeth daily how shall he Love God whom he never saw He that saith he loveth God and hateth his Brother is a Liar What you do to his Brethren you do as to Christ If you can find as full a promise of Salvation to those that observe your Canons Ceremonies Orders or are of your Opinion and Sect as I can shew you for them that Love Christ and his Servants then prefer the former before Love. I know that the Love and Good of Church and State and of many must be preferred before the love and good of few But take heed of their hypocrisie that make these also inconsistent when they are not and make publick good and peace a meer pretence for their Persecutions on one side or their Schisms on the other Love is so amiable to nature itself that few of its Enemies oppose it but under pretence of its own interest and name It is as in love to the Church to mens Souls that the Inquisition hath murdered so many and the Laws de Hereticis comburendis have been made and Executed But this Burning Hanging Tormenting and undoing kind of Love needeth very clear proof to make good its name and pretences before impartial men will take it for love indeed Whatever good you seem to do by the detriment of Love to God and Man you will find it will not bear your charges Chap. 18. Exh. Bend all your Studies and Labours to the exercise and increase of Love both of God and Man and all good works THE greatest best and sweetest work should have the greatest diligence This great Commandment must be obeyed with the greatest care The work of love must be the work of our whole life If you cannot learn to pray and preach no nor to follow a worldly trade without study and much Exercise how think you to be proficients in the love of God without them Do this well and all is done O happy Souls that are habituated and daily exercised in this work Whose new nature and life and study and business is holy Love. 1. How Divine how High and Noble is this life To live in a humble friendship with God and all his holy ones All animals naturally Love their like and converse according to their Love And men as men have as much sociable Love to men as the love of sin and inordinate self-self-love will allow them And they that truly love God and Holiness and Saints do shew that they have some connatural suitableness to these excellent Objects of their love Nothing more aptly denominateth any man Divine and Holy than Divine and Holy Love. How else should Souls have Communion with God His common Influx all creatures receive In him all live and move and have their being But when his Love kindleth in us a reflecting Love this is felicity itself Yea it is much nobler than our felicity For though our felicity consist in Loving God and being Beloved of him yet it is a far more excellent thing by reason that God is the Object of our love than by reason that it is our felicity Gods interest advanceth it more than ours And though they are not separable yet being distinguishable we should love God far more as God and perfect goodness in himself than as he or this love is our own felicity 2. This life of love is the true improvement of all Gods Doctrines Ordinances Mercies Afflictions and other Providences whatsoever For the use of them all is to lead us up to Holy Love and to help us in the daily exercise of it What is the Bible else written for but to teach us to Love and to exercise the fruits of Love What came Christ from Heaven for but to demonstrate and reveal Gods love and loveliness to man and by reconciling us to God and freely pardoning all our sins and promising us both Grace and Glory to shew us those motives which should kindle Love and to shew us that God is most suitable and worthy of our Love and to fill us with the Spirit of love which may give us that which he commandeth us What is it that we read books for and hear Sermons for but to kindle and exercise holy Love What joyn we for in the Sacred worship of the assemblies but that in an united flame of holy love we might all mount up in praise to Jehovah What is the Lords day separated to but the tidings of love the Sufferings Victories and Triumphs of our Saviours love the Tasts and Prospects of Gods love to us and the lively and joyful exercise of ours to him and to each other What use are the Sacraments of but that being entertained at the most wonderful Feast of Love we should tast its sweetness and pour out the grateful sense of it in holy Thanksgiving and Praise and the exercise of uniting love to one another What are Church Societies or Combinations for but the loving Communion of Saints Which the primitive Christians expressed by selling all and living in a Community of love and stedfastly continuing in the Apostles Doctrine and Fellowship and breaking of bread and Prayer What are all Gods mercies for but that as by Love tokens we should tast that he is Love and Good and should by that tast be inclined to returns of Love Nay what are Civil Societies but loving Communions if used according to their natures Did they not love each other so many Bees would never hive and work together nor so many Pigeons dwell peaceably in one Dove-house nor fly together in so great flocks What is the whole Christian Faith for but the doctrine of holy love believed for the kindling and exercise of our love what is faith itself but the bellows of love What is the excellency of all good works and gifts and endowments but to be the exercises of love to God and man and the incentives of our brethrens Love Without love all these are dead Carkasses and as nothing and without it we our selves are as nothing yea though we give all that we have to the poor or give our bodies like martyrs to be burnt or could speak with the tongue the Orthodoxness and Elegancy of Angels we were but as sounding brass and as a tinkling Cymbal James knew what he said when he said that Faith without works is dead because without love it is dead which those works are but the
body or the fruit of 3. This life of Love is the perfection of mans faculties as to their intended end and use As all the operations of the lower faculties Vegetative and Sensitive are subordinate to the use and operations of the Intellectual part which is the higher so all the Acts of the Intellect itself are but subservient and Dirigent to the Will or Love and Practice The understanding is but the Eye by which the Soul seeth what to love and choose or refuse and what to do or to avoid Love is the highest act of our highest faculty And complacency in the highest infinite good is the highest of all the acts of Love. This is the State of the Soul in its Ripeness and Mellow Sweetness when it is delightful embracing its most desired object and is blessed in the fruition of its ultimate end All other Graces and Duties are Servants unto this They are the parts indeed of the same new creature but the Hands and Feet are not the Heart 4. For Love is the very foretast of Heaven the beginning of that felicity which shall there be perfect In Heaven all Saints shall be as One and all united to their glorious Head as he is united to the Father disparities allowed Joh. 17.24 And what more uniteth Souls than Love Heaven is a state of Joyful Complacence and what is that but Perfect Love The Heavenly work is perfect Obedience and Praise And what are these but the actions and the breath of Love 5. Therefore they that live this life of Love are fitter to die and readier for Heaven than any others Belief is a foresight of it but Love is a foretast the first fruits and our earnest and pledge He that Loveth God and Christ and Angels and Saints and perfect Holiness and Divine Praise is ready for Heaven as the Infant in the womb is ready for birth at the fulness of his time But other Christians whose Love is true but little to their fears and damped by darkness and too much love of the body and this world do go as it were by untimely birth to Heaven and those in whom the love of the body is predominant come not thither in that state at all The God of Grace and Glory will meet that Soul with his felicitating embracements who panteth and breatheth after him by Love And as Love is a kind of Union with the Heavenly Society the Angels who love us better than we love them will be ready to convey such Souls to God. As the living dwell not in the graves among the dead and the dead are buried from among the living so holy Souls who have this life of Love cannot be among the miserable in Hell nor the dead in sin among the blessed 6. Therefore this life of holy Love doth strengthen our Belief it self Strong Reasons that are brought for the Immortality of Souls and the future Glory are usually lost upon unsanctified hearers yea with the Doctors themselves that use them When they have perswaded others that there is a Heaven for Believers and that by Arguments in themselves unanswerable they have not perswaded their own hearts but the predominant Love of Flesh and Earth doth byass their understandings and maketh them think that they can confute themselves Their gust and inclination prevaileth against Belief And therefore the greatest Scholars are not always the strongest Believers But holy Love when it is the Habit of the Soul as it naturally ascendeth so it easily believeth that God that Glory to which it doth ascend The gust and experience of such a Soul assureth it that it was made for Communion with God and that even in this life such Communion is obtained in some degree and therefore it easily believeth that it is Redeemed for it and that it shall perfectly enjoy it in Heaven for ever Though Glory be here but seminally in Grace and this world be but as the womb of that better world for which we hope yet the life that is in the Embrio and seed is a confirming Argument for the perfection which they tend to O that men knew what holy Love doth signifie and foretel As the seed or Embrio of a man becometh not a Beast or Serpent so he that hath the habitual Love of God and Heaven and Holiness is not capable of Hell no more than the Lovers of worldliness and sensuality are capable of present Communion with God and of his Glory God doth not draw mens Hearts to Himself nor kindle Heavenly desires in them in vain He that hath the Spirit of Christ hath the Witness in himself that Christ and his Promises of Life are true 1 John 5.10 11 12. And what is this Spirit but the Habit of Divine and Heavenly Love and its concomitants May I but feel my Soul inflamed with the fervent Love of the Heavenly Perfection surely it will do more to put me quite out of doubt of the certainty of that blessed state than all Arguments without that Love can do 7. And holy Love will be the surest Evidence of our Sincerity which many old Writers meant that called it The Form of Faith and other graces As means as means are informed by their aptitudinal respect unto the End so Love as it is the Final Act upon God the Final Object thus informeth all subordinate Graces and Duties as they are means And as all Morality is subjected in the Will as the proper primary seat and is in the Intellect executive power and senses only by participation so far as their acts are imperate by the Will so Love and Volition being really the same thing it may accordingly be said that nothing is any further acceptable to God than it is Good and nothing is morally Good any further than it is voluntary or willed and to be willed as Good as End or as Means and to be Loved are words that signifie the same No preaching praying fasting c. no fear of punishment no belief of the Truth c. will prove us sincere and justified any further than we can prove that all this either cometh from or is accompanied with Love that is with a Consenting Will. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness Rom. 10. And If thou believe with all thy heart thou mayest be baptized saith Philip to the Eunuch Acts 8. My Son give me thy heart is Wisdom's invitation All 's nothing without the heart that is without willingness or Love. They that love most are sureliest forgiven and have most holiness or grace how unskifull soever they may be in their expressions The sealing Spirit of Adoption is the Spirit of Love and the Abba Father and the unexpressed groans of filial Love are understood and acceptable to God. A Loving Desire after God and Holiness is a better Evidence than the most taking Tongue or largest Knowledge 8. This life of Holy Love will make all our Religion and Obedience easy to us It will give us an alacrity to the performance and a
pleasure in the practice of it and so our obedience will be hearty willing and universal Who is averse to that which he Loveth unless for something in it which he hateth All men go willingly and readily to that which they truly Love. Therefore it is said that the Law is not made for a Righteous man that is a man that Loveth Piety Temperance and Justice and their several works so far hath no need of Threatning Laws and Penalties to constrain him to it And he that hateth sin so far hath no need of Legal Penalties to restrain him from it Thus is the Law said to be written in our Hearts not as it is meerly in our knowledge and memory but as the matter commanded is truly Loved by us and the sin forbidden truly hated Even our Horses will carry us cheerfully that way which they Love to go and go heavily where they go against their Wills. Win mens Love and the life and lips and all according to power will follow it 9. And such persons therefore are likest to persevere men go unweariedly if they be but able where they go with Love. Especially such a Love which groweth stronger as it draweth nearer the state of perfection which it loveth and groweth by daily renewed experiences and mercies as Rivers grow bigger as they draw nearer to the Sea. We easily hold on in that we Love But that which men loath and their hearts are against they are quickly weary of And the weary person will easily be perswaded to lie down The root of a Apostasie is already in those persons who Love not the end which they pretend to seek nor the work which they pretend to do 10. Lastly holy Love is a pregnant spreading fruitful grace It kindleth a desire to do good to others and to draw men to Love the same God and Heaven and Holiness which we love It made Gods word to be to Jeremy as a burning Fire shut up in his Bones he was weary of forbearing Jer. 20.9 As fire kindleth fire and is the active principle of vegetation as I suppose so Love kindleth Love and is a kind of generative principle of Grace Gods Love is the first cause but Mans Love maketh them meet Instruments of Gods Love For Love will be oft praising the God and Holiness which is loved and earnestly desireth that all others may Love and praise the same The Soul is not indeed converted till its Love is won to God and Goodness A man may be terrified into some austerities superstitions or reformations but he is not further holy than his Heart is won And as every thing that generateth is apt to produce its like so is Love and the words and works of Love. And as Love is the Heart of Holiness so must it be of all fruitful Preaching and conversation whatever the Words or Actions are they are like no farther to win Souls than they demonstrate the Love of God and of Holiness and of the hearers or spectators As among amorous and vain persons strong Love appearing though by a look or word doth kindle the like more than all complements that are known to be but feigned and affected words so usually Souls are won to God as by the Preachers words and works of Love the love and loveliness of God in Christ are fulliest made known Quest But how should we reach this excellent Life of holy Love which doth so far excel all knowledge Ans I have said so much of this in the first part of my Christian Directory and other writings that I must here say but little of it lest I be overmuch guilty of repetitions Briefly Direct I. Believe Gods Goodness to be equal to his Greatness Gods three great primary Attributes are coequal viz. His Power his Wisdom and his Goodness And then look up to the Heavens and think how Great and Powerful is that God that made and continueth such a frame as that Sun and those Stars and those Glorious unmeasureable Regions where they are Think what a World of Creatures God maintaineth in life on this little lower Orb of Earth both in the Seas and on the Land. And then think O what is the Goodness which is equal to all this Power Direct 2. Consider how communicative this Infinite Goodness is Why else is he called LOVE it self Why else made he all the World And why did he make the Sun so Glorious Why else did he animate and beautify the Universe with the Life and Ornaments of Created Goodness All his works shine by the splendor of that excellency which he hath put upon them all are not equal but all are Good and their inequality belongeth to the Goodness of the Universe The Communicative Nature with which God hath endowed all active Beings and the most Noble most is an Impress of the Infinite communicative LOVE Fire would communicate its Light Heat and Motion to all passive objects which are capable of receiving it How pregnant and fertile is the very Earth with plants flowers and fruits of wonderful variety usefulness and beauty What plant is not natured to the propagation of its kind yea to a plenteous multiplication How many Seeds which are Virtual Plants doth each of them bring forth at once and yet the same plant with all its off-spring perhaps liveth many years for further multiplication so that did not the far greatest part of Seeds yearly perish there must be very many such Earths to receive and propagate them This Earth hath not room for the hundredth part To shew us that the Active natures even of Vegetatives do quite exceed in their pregnant communicative activity the receptive capacity of all passive matter which teacheth us to observe that all created Patients are unconceiveably too narrow to receive such Communicative Influences as Infinite pregnant LOVE can communicate were there subjects to receive them It is wonderful to observe in all sorts of Animals the same multiplying communicative inclination and what use the God of nature maketh even of sensual LOVE to all Generation Uniting and Communicative LOVE is in all Creatures the incentive Principle of Procreation And what a multitude of young ones will some one Creature Procreate especially Fishes to admiration So that if other Fishes with Men and other Creatures did not devour them all the Waters on Earth could not contain them Yea our Moral Communicativeness also hath the same indication He that knoweth much would fain have others know the same secret knowledge kept to our selves only hath its excellent use but it satisfieth not the mind nisi te scire hoc sciat alter unless others know that you have such knowledge and unless you can make them know what you know Holy Souls therefore have a fervent but a regular desire and endeavour by communicative Teaching to make others wise But proud Heretical Persons that overvalue their conceits have an irregular Fornicating Lust of Teaching and adulterously invade the charge of others presuming that none can do
it so wisely and so well as they Men will compass Sea and Land to make a Proselyte and Tares and Weeds are as much inclined to propagation as the Wheat There is a marvellous desire in the Nature of man to make others of their own Opinion and when it is governed by Gods Laws it is greatly beneficial to the World. And even in Affections as well as Knowledge it is so We would have others love those that we love and hate what we hate Though where by the insufficiency of the narrow Creature Men must lose and want that themselves which they Communicate to others selfishness forbiddeth such Communication And doubtless all the Creatures in their several Ranks have some such Impresses from the Creator by which his transcendent perfections may be somewhat observed That God is now so Communicative as to give to all Creatures in the World whatever Being Motion Life Order Beauty Harmony Reason Grace Glory any of them possess is past all question to considering sober reason Which tempted Aristotle to think that the World was Eternal and some Christians to think that though this present Heaven and Earth were Created as in Gen. 1. is said yet that from Eternity some Intellectual World at least if not also Corporeal did flow from the Creator as an Eternal Effect of an Eternal Cause or an Eternal Accident of the Deity Because they could not receive it that a God so unspeakably Communicative now who hath made the Sun to be an Emblem of his Communicativeness should from all Eternity be solitary and not communicative when yet to all Eternity he will be so But these are questions which uncapable Mortals were far better let alone than meddle with unless we desire rather to be lost than to be blessed in the Abyss of Eternity and the thoughts of infinite pregnant LOVE But it is so natural for man and every Animal to love that love and goodness which is beneficent not only to us but to all rather than a meer self-lover that doth no good to others that it must needs conduce much to our love of God to consider that he is good to all and his mercy is over all his works and that as there is no light in the Air but from the Sun so there is no goodness but from God in all the World who is more to the Creation than the Sun is to this lower World. And a Sun that lighteth all the Earth is much more precious than my Candle A Nilus which watereth the Land of Egypt is more precious than a private Well It is the Excellency of Kings and publick Persons that if they are good they are good to many And O what innumerable Animals in Sea and Land besides the far greater Worlds of nobler Wights do continually live by one God of Love Study this Universal Infinite Love. Direct 3. Especially study Divine LOVE and Goodness in the Face of our Redeemer Jesus Christ and all the Grace which he hath purchased and conferreth As we may see that magnitude of the Stars in a Telescope which without it no Eye can discern so may we see that glory of the love of God by the Gospel of Jesus which all common natural helps are insufficient to discover to such minds as ours LOVE is the great Attribute which Christ came principally to manifest as was afore-said Joh. 3.16 1 Joh. 3.1 c. And love is the great Lesson which he came to teach us and love is the new nature which by his Spirit he giveth us And love is the great duty which by Law and Gospel he requireth of us Love hath wrought its Miracles in Christ to the posing of the understandings of Men and Angels There we may see God in the nearest condescending Unity with Man In Christ we may see the divine wisdom and word incorporate in such Flesh as ours conceived in a Virgin by the power of the Spirit of Love by which Spirit this Incorporate Word did Live Preach Converse familiarly with Man work Miracles heal Diseases suffer reproachful Calumnies and Death Rising Triumphing Ascending Interceeding sending the Embassies of Love to the World calling Home the greatest sinners unto God reconciling Enemies and making them the Adopted Sons of God forgiving all sin to penitent Believers quickening dead Souls illuminating the Blind and sanctifying the Wicked by the Spirit of Life and Light and Love and making it his Office his Work his Delight and Glory to rescue the miserable Captives of the Devil and to make Heirs of Heaven of those that were condemned to Hell and had forsaken Life in forsaking God. As this is shining burning love so it is approaching and self-applying love which cometh so near us in ways and benefits so necessary to us and so exceeding congruous to our case as that it is easier for us to perceive and feel it than we can do things of greater distance The clearer the Eye of Faith is by which we look into this mysterious Glass the more the wonders of Love will be perceived in it He never knew Christ nor understood the Gospel that wondered not at Redeeming saving love nor did he ever learn of Christ indeed that hath not learned the Lesson Work and Life of love Direct 4. Keep as full Records as you can of the particular Mercies of God to your selves and frequently peruse them and plead them with your frozen Hearts These are not the chiefest reasons of Christian love because we are such poor inconsiderable Worms that to do good to one of us is a far smaller matter than many things else that we have to think of for that end But yet when love doth chuse a particular Person for its object and there bestow its obliging Gifts it helpeth that Person far more than others to returns of thankfulness and love It 's that place that Glass which the Sun doth shine upon doth reflect its Beams rather than those that are shut up in darkness self-Self-love may and must be regulated and sanctified to the furthering of higher love It is not unmeet to say with David Psal 116.1 I love the Lord because he hath heard the voice of my supplication We should say as heartily I love the Lord because he hath prospered recovered comforted my Neighbour But this is not all so easie as the other And where God by personal application maketh our greatest duty easie we should use his helps Obj. But if it be selfishness as some tell us to love one that loveth us better than another of equal worth who doth not love us is it not selfishness to love God on so low an account as loving us God may say well I love those that love me Prov. 8.17 because to love him is the highest virtue but to love us is as inconsiderable as we are Ans 1. You may love another the more for loving you on several accounts 1. As it is a duty which God requireth him to perform but so you must love him equally
for loving others also 2. As he rendereth himself more congruous and obliging to you by chusing you for the special object of his love by which he taketh the advantage of your natural self-self-love to make your love to him both due and easie as is said of the reflection of the Sun-beams before 2. But two things you must take heed of 1. That you under-value not your Neighbours good but love another for loving your Neighbours also and doing them good and he that arriveth at that impartial Unity as to make the smallest difference between his Neighbour and himself doth seem to me to be arrived at the state that is likest to theirs that are One in Heaven 2. And you must not over-love any man by a fond partiality for his love to you as if that made a bad man good or fitter for your love They that can love the worst that love them and cannot love the best that set light by them deservedly or upon mistake do shew that self-self-love overcometh the love of God. But God cannot be loved too much though he may be loved too selfishly and carnally His greatest Amiableness is his Essential Goodness and Infinite Perfection The next is his Glory shining in the Universe and so in the Heavenly Society especially Christ and all his Holy Ones and so in the publick blessings of the World and all Societies And next his goodness to your selves not only as parts of the said Societies but as Persons whose Natures are formed by God himself to a capacity of Receiving and Reflecting Love. Who findeth not by Experience that God is most loved when we are most sensible of his former love to us in the thankful review of all his Mercies and most assured or perswaded of his future love in our Salvation Therefore make the renewed Commemoration of Gods Mercies the incentives of your love Direct 5. But yet could you get a greater Union and Communion not only with Saints as Saints but with Mankind as Men it would greatly help you in your Love to God For when you love your neighbours as your selves you would love God for your neighbours mercies as well as for your own And if you feel that God's Love and special mercies to one person even your selves can do so much in causing your Love what would your Love amount to if thousand thousands of persons to whom God sheweth mercy were every one to you as your selves and all their mercies as your own Thus graces mutually help each other We love Man because we love God and we love God the more for our love to Man. Direct 6. Especially dwell by Faith in Heaven where Love is perfect and there you will learn more of the work of Love. To think believingly that Mutual Love is Heaven it self and that this is our Union with God and Christ and all the holy ones and that Love will be an everlasting employment pleasure and felicity this will breed in us a desire to begin that happy life on Earth And as he that heareth excellent Musick will long to draw near and joyn in the consort or the pleasure so he that by Faith doth dwell much in Heaven and hear how Angels and blessed Souls do there praise God in the highest fervours of rejoycing Love will be inclined to imitate them and long to partake of their felicity Direct 7. Exercise that measure of Love which you have in the constant Praises of the God of Love. For exercise exciteth and naturally tendeth to increase and Praise is the duty in which pure Love to God above our selves and all even as good and perfect in himself is exercised As Love is the Highest Grace or Inward Duty so praise is the Highest Outward Duty when God is praised both by Tongue and Life And as Soul and Body make one Man of whose existence Generation is the cause so Love and Praise of Mouth and Works do make one Saint who is Regenerated such by Believing in the Redeemer who hath power to give the Spirit of Holiness to whom he pleaseth But of this more afterwards Direct 8. Exercise your Love to Man especially to Saints in doing them all the good you can and that for what of God is in them For as this is the fruit of the Love of God and the evidence of it so doth it tend to the increase of its cause Partly as it is an exercise of it and partly as it is a duty which God hath promised to the reward As it is the Spirit of Christ even of Adoption which worketh both the lovâ— of our Father and our Brethren in us so God will bless those that exercise Love especially at the dearest rates and with the fullest devotedness of all to God with the larger measures of the same Spirit Chap. XIX Exh. V. Place your Comforts in health and sickness in Mutual Divine Love. 2. See that you sincerely love God. How known Doubts answered IT is of greatest importance to all Mankind to know what is best for them and in what they should place and seek their comforts To place them most with the Proud in the applauding thoughts or words of others that magnifie them for their wit their beauty their wealth or their pomp and power in the world is to chuse somewhat less than a shadow for felicity and to live on the Air even an unconstant Air And will such a life be long or happy Should not a man in misery rather take it for a stinging deriding mockery or abuse to be honoured and praised for that which he hath not or for that which is his snare or consisteth with his calamity Would not a Malefactor at the Gallows take it for his reproach to hear an Oration of his happiness Will it comfort them in Hell to be praised on Earth This common reason may easily call An empty Vanity To place our Comforts in the delights of Sensuality had somewhat a fairer shew of Reason if Reason were made for nothing better and if these were the noble sort of pleasures that advanced man above the brutes and if they would continue for ever and the end of such mirth were not heaviness and repentance and they did not deprave and deceive mens Souls and leave behind them disappointment and a sting But he is unworthy the honour and pleasures of Humanity who preferreth the pleasures of a beast when he may have better To place our Comforts in those Riches which do but serve this Sensuality with provisions and leave posterity in as vain and dangerous a state as their progenitors were is but the foresaid folly aggravated To place them in Domination and having our Wills on others and being able to do hurt and exercise revenge is but to account the Devils happier than men and to desire to be as the Wolf among the Sheep or as the Kite among the Chickens or as the great Dogs among the little ones To place them in much Knowledge of Arts and Sciences as they
concern only the Interests of the body in this life or as Knowledge is but the delight of the natural phantasie or mind doth seem a little finer and sublime and manly but it is of the same nature and vanity as the rest For all Knowledge is for the guidance of the Will and Practice and therefore meer knowing matters that tend to Pride Sensuality Wealth or Domination is less than the enjoyment of sensual pleasures in the things themselves And the contemplation of superiour Creatures which hath no other end than the delight of knowing is but a more refined sort of vanity and like the minds activity in a dream But whether it be the Knowledge or the love of God that man should place his highest felicity in is become among the Schoolmen and some other Divines a controversy that seemeth somewhat hard But indeed to a considering man the seeming difficulty may be easily overcome The Understanding and Will and Executive activity are not several Souls but several faculties of one Soul And their Objects and Order of operation easily tell us which is the first and which the last which tendeth to the other as its end and which object is the most delightful and most felicitating to the man viz. That Truth is for Goodness and that Good as Good is the amiable delectable and felicitating object And therefore that the Intellect is the guide of the Will and Faith and Knowledge are for Love and its Delight And yet that mans felicity is in both and not in one alone as one faculty alone is not the whole Soul though it be the whole Soul that acteth by that faculty Therefore the later Schoolmen have many of them well confuted Aquinas in this point And it is of great importance in our Christian practice As the desire of more Knowledge first corrupted our nature so corrupted nature is much more easily drawn to seek after knowledge than after love Many men are bookish that cannot endure to be Saints Many can spend their lives in the studies of Nature and Theology and Delight to find increase of Knowledge who are Strangers to the Sanctifying Uniting delightful exercise of holy love Appetite is the pondus or first Spring of our moral actions yea and of our natural though the sense and intellect intromit or illuminate the Object And the first act of natural Appetite Sensitive and Intellectual is necessitated And accordingly the Appetite as pleased is as much the end of our Acts and Objects as the Appetite as Desiring is the beginning Even as si parvis magna c. Gods Will as Efficient is the absolutely first cause and his will as done and pleased is the ultimate end of all things It is Love by which man cleaveth unto God as Good and as our ultimate end Love ever supposeth knowledge and is its end and perfection Neither alone but both together are mans highest State Knowledge as discerning what is to be Loved and Love as our uniting and Delighting adherence to it I. Labour therefore with all your industry to know God that you may love him It is that love that must be your comforting grace both by signification and by its proper Effective Exercise 1. True love will prove that your Knowledge and Faith are true and saving which you will never be sure of without the Evidence of this and the consequent Effects If your expressive art or gifts be never so low so that you scarce know what to say to God or man yet if you so far know God as sincerely to love him it is certainly true saving knowledge and that which is the beginning of eternal life Knowledge Belief Repentance Humility Meekness Patience Zeal Diligence c. are so far and no further sure marks of Salvation as they cause or prove true love to God and Man Predominant It is a hard thing any otherwise to know whether our Knowledge Repentance Patience Zeal or any of the rest be any better than what an unjustifyed person may attain But if you can find that they cause or come from or accompany a sincere Love of God you may be sure that they all partake of sincerity and are certain signs of a Justified Soul. It is hard to know what sins for number or nature or magnitude are such as may or may not consist with a State of saving grace He that considereth of the sins of Lot David Solomon and Peter will find the case exceeding difficult But this much is sure that so much sin may consist with a Justified State as may consist with sincere love to God and Goodness While a man truly loveth God above all his sin may cause Correction but not DAMNATION unless it could extinguish or overcome this Love. Some question whether that the sin of Lot or David for the present stood with justification If it excussed not predominant habitual love it intercepteth not justification If we could tell whether any or many heathens that hear not of Christ have the true love of God and Holiness we might know whether they are saved The reason is because that the will is the man in Gods account And as Voluntariness is essential to sin so a Holy Will doth prove a Holy person God hath the heart of him that loveth him He that loveth him would fain please him glorify him and enjoy him And he that loveth holiness would fain live a holy life Therefore it is that Divines say here that desire of grace is a certain sign of grace because it is an act of Will and Love. And it is true if that desire be greater or more powerful than our Averseness and than our desire after contrary things that so it may put us on necessary duty and overcome the lusts and temptations which oppose them Though cold wishes which are conquered by greater unwillingness and prevailing lusts will never save men 2. And as love is our more comforting Evidence so it is our most comforting Exercise Those acts of religion which come short of this come short of the proper life and sweetness of true religion They are but either lightnings in the brain that have no heat or a feaverish zeal which destroyeth or troubleth but doth not perform the acts of life or else even where love is true but little and opprest by fears and grief and trouble it is like Fire in green Wood or like young green Fruits which is not come to mellow ripeness Love of Vanity is disappointing unsatisfactory and tormenting Most of the Calamities of this life proceed from creature-love The greatest tormentor in this world is the inordinate love of life and the next is the love of the pleasures and accommodations of life which cause so much care to get and keep and so much fear of losing and grief for our losses especially fear of dying that were it not for this our lives would be much easier to us as they are to the fearless sort of brutes And the next tormenting affection is the
love of Children which prepareth men for all the Calamity that followeth their miscarriages in Soul and Body Their unnatural ingratitude their Lewdness and Debauchery and Prodigality their Folly and Impiety would nothing so much torment us were they no more loved than other men And our dearest Friends do usually cost us much dearer than our sharpest enemies But the love of God and Satisfying everlasting good is our very life our pleasure our Heaven on Earth As it is Purest and Highest above all other because of the Object so is it yet more pleasant and contenting because it includeth the hopes of more even of those greater delights of heavenly everlasting love which as a pledge and earnest it doth presignify As in nature conception and the stirring the Child in the womb do signify that same life is begun which must shortly appear and be exercised in the open world So the stirrings of holy love desires towards God do signify the beginning of the heavenly life Humility and Patience and diligent obedience do comfort us by way of Evidence and as removing many hinderances of our comfort and somewhat further they go But Faith Hope and Love do comfort us by way of direct efficiency Faith seeth the matter of our Joy love first tasteth it so far as to stir up desires after it Then Hope giveth some pleasure to us in expecting it And lastly complacential love delightfully embraceth it and is our very Joy itself and is that blessed union with God and holy Souls the amiable Objects of true love which is our felicity it self To work out our comforts by the view of Evidences and Signs is a necessary thing indeed but it requireth a considerate search by an understanding and composed mind and it 's often much hindered and interrupted by mens ignorance of themselves and weakness of grace and darkness or smalness of Evidence and divers passions especially fear which in some is so Tyrannical that it will not suffer to believe or feel any thing that is comfortable But love taketh in the sweetness of that good which is its object by a nearer and effectual way even by immediate taste As we feel in the exercise of our Love to a dear Friend or any thing that is amiable and enjoyed The readiest and surest way therefore to a contented and comfortable life is to keep clear indeed our evidence especially sincere Obedience but especially to bend all our Studies and Religious endeavours to the kindling and exercise of holy love and to avoid all though it may come on religious pretence of humiliation or fear which tendeth to quench or hinder it I. In Health and Prosperity as you live upon Gods love be sure that you do not atheistically overlook it but take all as from it and savouring of it The hand of divine love perfumeth each mercy with the pleasant odour of itself which it reacheth to us Every bit that we eat is a love token and every hour or minute that we live All our health wealth Friends and Peace are the Streams which still flow from the Spring of unexhausted love Love shineth upon us by the Sun love maketh our Land fruitful or Cattel useful our Habitations convenient for us our Garments warm our Food pleasant and nourishing Love keepeth us from a thousand unknown dangers night and day It giveth us the comforts of our Callings our Company our Books our lawful Recreations It blesseth means of Knowledge to our understandings and means of Holiness to our Wills and means of Health and Strength to our bodies Mercies are Sanctified to us when we tast Gods love in them and love him for them and are led up by them to himself and so love him ultimately for himself even for his Infinite Essential Goodness As God is the efficient life of our mercies and all the world without his Love could never give us what we have so is Gods love the Objective life of all our mercies and we have but the Corps or Carkass of them and love them but as such if we love not in them the Love that giveth them II. And even in adversity and pain and sickness whilst Gods love is unchanged and is but changing the way of doing good our thoughts of it should be unchanged also We must not think that the Sun is lost when it is set or clouded we live by its influence in the night though we see not its light unless as reflected from the Moon Our Mother 's brought us into the World in sorrow and yet they justly accounted it a mercy that we were born Our lives are spent in the midst of sorrows yet it is a mercy that we live and though we die by dolour all is still mercy to believers which faith perceiveth contrary to sense And here is the greatest and final victory which Faith obtaineth against the flesh to believe even the ruine of it to be for our good Even Antonine the Emperor could say that it was the same good God who is the cause of our birth and of our death one as well as the other is his work and therefore good It was not a Tyrant that made us and it is not a Tyrant that dissolveth us And that is the best man and the best will which is most pleased with the Will of God because it is his Will. Yet just self-love is here a true coadjutor of our joy for it is the will of God that the Justified be Glorified And Infinite love is saving us when it seemeth to destroy us To live upon the comforts of Divine love in sickness and when death approacheth is a sign that it is not the welfare of the body that we most esteem and that we rejoice not in God only as the preserver and prosperer of our flesh but for himself and the blessings of immortality It is a mercy indeed which a dying man must with thankfulness acknowledge if God have given him a clear understanding of the excellent mysteries of Salvation knowledge as it kindleth and promoteth love is a precious gift of grace and is with pleasure exercised and may with pleasure be acknowledged But all other knowledge is like the Vanities of this World which approaching death doth take down our esteem of and causeth us to number it with other forsaking and forsaken things All the unsanctified learning and knowledge in the World will afford no solid peace at death but rather aggravate natures sorrows to think that this also must be left But love and its comforts if not hindered by ignorance or some strong temptation do then shew their immortal nature And even here we feel the words of the Apostle verified of the vanishing nature of Knowledge and the perpetuity of holy love whilst all our learning and knowledge will not give so much comfort to a dying man as one act of true love to God and Holiness kindled in us by the communication of his love Make it therefore the work of
in a lower sort in the Soul that is Gods Image That is that the understandings most internal act viz. the knowing or perceiving when it knoweth any thing that it knoweth It is not really compounded of an act and an object as the knowledge of distinct objects is but that either its act is not properly to be called its object or that act and object are not two things but two inadequate conceptions of one thing And how doth the Soul perceive its own Volitions To say that Volitions which are acts of the Intellectual Soul must be sensate and so make a Species on the phantasie as sensate things do and be known only in that Species is to bring down the higher faculty and subordinate it to the lower that it may be intelligible while it is certain that we shall never here perfectly understand the solution of these difficulties is it not pardonable among other mens conjectures to say That the noble faculty of Sense because Brutes have it is usually too basely described by Philosophers And that Intellection and Volition in the rational Soul are a superior eminent sort of sensation transcending that of Brutes and that Intelligere Velle are eminenter sentire and that the Intellect doth by understanding other things eminently see or sense and so understand that it understandeth And that the will doth by willing feel that it willeth When I consult my Experience I must either say thus or else that Intellection and Volition so immediately ever move the Internal sense that they are known by us only as acts compounded with that sense But I am gone too far before I was aware IV. The Soul thus knowing or feeling its own acts doth in the next place rationally gather 1. That it hath power to perform them and is a substance so empowered 2. That there are other such substances with the like acts 3. And there is one prime transcendant substance which is the cause of all the rest which hath infinitely nobler acts than ours And thus Sense and Reason concur to our knowledge of God by shewing us and perceiving that Image in which by similitude we must know him The Fiery Ethereal or Solar Nature is at least the similitude of Spirits And by condescending similitude God in Scripture is called LIGHT and the FATHER of LIGHTS in whom is no darkness allowing and inviting us to think of his Glory by the similitude of the Sun or Light. But Intellectual Spirits are the highest Nature known to us and these we know intimately by most near perception By the similitude of these therefore we must conceive of God. A Soul is a self-moving Life or vital Substance actuating the Body to which it is united God is super-eminently Essential-Life perfect in himself as living Infinitely and Eternally and giving Being to all that is and Motion to all that moveth and Life to all that liveth A reasonable Soul is Essentially an understanding power And God is super-eminently an Infinite understanding knowing himself and all things perfectly A reasonable Soul is Essentially a rational Appetite or Will necessarily loving himself and all that is apprehended every way and congruously good God is super-eminently an Infinite Will or Love necessarily loving himself and his own Image which yet he freely made by communicative Love. All things that were made by this Infinite Goodness were made good and very good All his works of Creation and Providence however misconceived of by sinners are still very good All the good of the whole Creation is as the heat of this Infinite Eternal Fire of Love. And having made the World good in the good of Nature and the good of Order and the good of mutual Love he doth by his continual influx maintain and perfect it His Power moveth his Wisdom governeth and his Love felicitateth And man he moveth as man he Ruleth him by Moral Laws as man and he is his perfect Loâ—er and perfect amiable Object and End. As our Creator making us in this natural capacity and Relation as our Redeemer restoring and advancing us to blessed Union with himself and as our Sanctifier and Glorifier preparing us for and bringing us to Coelestial perfection And thus must God be conceived of that we may love him And false and defective conceptions of him as the great impediments of our love And we love him so little much because we so little know him And therefore it is not the true knowledge of God which Paul here maketh a competitor with love II. And as we know God by ascending from his Works and Image in the same order must our love ascend The first acts of it will be towards God in his works and the next will be towards God in his Relation to us and the highest towards God as Essentially perfect and amiable in himself I will therefore now apply this to the Soul that feareth lest he love not God because he perceiveth not himself either to know or love him immediately in the perfection of his Essence 1. Do you truely love the Image of God on the Soul of Man That is a Heavenly Life and Light and Love Do you not only from bare conviction commend but truly love a Soul devoted to God full of his love and living in obedience to his Laws and doing good to others according to his power This is to love God in his Image God is Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness or Love To love true wisdom and goodness as such is to love God in his Works Especially with these two qualifications 1. Do you love to have Wisdom and Goodness and Love as Universal as is possible Do you long to have Families Cities Kingdoms and all the World made truly Holy Wise and united in Love to one another The most Universal Wisdom and Goodness is most like to God and to love this is to love God in his Image 2. Do you love Wisdom and Goodness in your selves and not in others only Do you long to be liker to God in your capacity and more near him and united to him That is Do you long to know him and his will more clearly and to enjoy a holy communion with him and his holy ones in the fullest mutual love loving and being beloved and to delight your Souls in his joyful praises in the communion of Saints This is certainly the love of God. Our union is by love he that would be united to God and his Saints in Jesus Christ that would fain know him more and love him better and praise and obey him joyfully in perfection doth undoubtedly love him And here I would earnestly caution you against two common deceits of men by counterfeit love I. Some think that they love God savingly because they love him as the God of Nature and cause of all the Natural Being Order and Goodness which is in the whole frame of Heaven and Earth This is to love somewhat of God or to love him secundum quid in one respect But if
believer to think that GOD IS Even that such a perfect glorious being is existent As if we heard of one man in another land whom we were never like to see who in wisdom love and all perfections excelled all men that ever were in the world the thoughts of that man would be pleasing to us and we should love him because he is amiable in his excellency And so doth the holy Soul when it thinketh of the infinite amiableness of God. 6. But the highest Love of the Soul to God is in taking in all his amiableness together and when we think of him as related to our selves as our Creater Redeemer Sanctifier and Glorifier and as related to all his Church and to all the world as the cause and end of all that is amiable and when we think of all those amiable works which these Relations do respect his Creation and Conservation of the whole world his Redemption of mankind his Sanctifying and Glorifying of all his chosen ones his wonderful mercies to our selves for Soul and Body his mercies to his Church on earth his unconceivable mercies to the glorified Church in Heaven the Glory of Christ Angels and Men and their perfect Knowledge Love and joyful praises and then think what that God is in himself that doth all this This Complexion of considerations causeth the fullest Love to God. And though unlearned persons cannot speak or think of all these distinctly and clearly as the Scripture doth express them yet all this is truly the Object of their Love though with confusion of their apprehensions of it But I have not yet done nor indeed come up to the point of tryal It is not every kind or degree of Love to God in these respects that will prove to be saving He is mad that thinks there is no God And he that believeth that there is a God doth believe that he is most powerful wise and good and therefore must needs have some kind of Love to him And I find that there are a sort of Deists or Infidels now springing up among us who are confident That all or almost all men shall be saved because say they all men do love God. It is not possible say they that a man can believe God to be God that is to be the Best and to be love itself and the cause of all that is good and amiable in Heaven and Earth and yet not love him The will is not so contrary to the understanding nor can be And say the same men he that loveth his neighbour loveth God for it is for his goodness that he loveth his Neighbour and that goodness is Gods goodness appearing in man He that loveth Sun and Moon and Stars Meat and Drink and pleasure loveth God for all this is Gods goodness in his works and out of his works he is unknown to us and therefore they say that all men Love God and all men shall be saved or at least all that love their Neighbours for God by is us no otherwise to be loved For answer to these men 1. It is false that God is no otherwise to be loved than as in our Neighbour I have told you before undeniably of several other respects or appearances of God in which he is to be loved And he that is not known to us as separate from all Creatures is yet known to us as distinct from all Creatures and is and must be so loved by us Else we are Idolaters if we suppose the Creatures to be God themselves and love and honour them as God Even those Philosophers that took God for the inseparable Soul of the World yet distinguished him from the World which they thought he animated and indeed doth more than animate 2. And it is false that every one loveth God who loveth his Neighbour or his Meat Drink and fleshly Pleasure or any of the accommodations of his sense For Nature causeth all men to love life and self and pleasure for themselves And these are beloved even by Atheists that believe not that there is a God! And consequently such men love their Neighbours not for God but for themselves either because they are like them or because they please them or serve their interest or delight them by society and converse as Birds and Beasts do love each other that think not of a God. And if all should be saved that so love one another or that love their own pleasure and that which serveth it not only all wicked men but most Brute Creatures should be saved If you say they shall not be damned it 's true because they are not Moral Agents capable of Salvation or Damnation nor capable of Moral Government and Obedience and therefore even the Creatures that kill one another are not damned for it But certainly as man is capable of Salvation or Damnation so is he of somewhat more as the means or way than Brutes are capable of and he is saved or damned for somewhat which Brutes never do Many a thousand love the pleasure of their sense and all things and persons which promote it that never think of God or love him And it is not enough to say that even this natural good is of God and therefore it is God in it which they love for it will only follow that it is something made and given by God which they love while they leave out God himself That God is Essentially in all things good and pleasant which they love doth not prove that it is God which they love while their thoughts and affections do not include him 3. But suppose it were so that to love the Creature were to love God is not then the hating of the Creature the hating of God If those same men that love Meat and Drink and sensual Delight and love their Neighbours for the sake of these or for themselves as a Dog doth love his Master do also hate the holiness of Gods Servants and the holiness and justice of his Word and Government and that holiness and order of Heart and Life which he commandeth them do not these men hate God in hating these And that they hate them their obstinate aversation sheweth when no reason no mercy no means can reconcile their Hearts and Lives thereto 4. I therefore ask the Infidel Objector whether he shall be saved that loveth God in one respect and hateth him in another That loveth him as he causeth the Sun to shine the Rain to fall the Grass to grow and giveth Life and Prosperity to the World but hateth him as he is the Author of those Laws and Duties and that holy Government by which he would bring them to a voluntary right order and make them holy and fit for Glory and would use them in his holy Service and restrain them from their inordinate Lusts and Wills How can love prepare or fit any man for that which he hateth or doth not love If the love of fleshly interest and pleasure prepare or fit them to
seek that and to enjoy it the little time that it will endure how should this love make them fit for Heaven for a Life of holiness with God and Saints It is this that they love not and will not love for if they truely loved it they should have it yea it is this that they hate and will not accept or be perswaded to And what a fond conceit then is it to think that they shall have Heaven that never loved it no nor the small beginnings here of the Heavenly Nature and Life and all because they loved the pleasures of the Flesh on Earth and loved God and their Neighbours for promoting it 5. Yea I would ask the Infidel whether God will save men for rebelling against him Their love to their Flesh and to the Creature as it is inordinate and taketh Gods place and shutteth out the love of Holiness and Heaven is their great Sin and Idolatry And shall this be called a saving love of God What gross self-deceit hath sensuality taught these men 6. I grant them therefore that all men that believe that there is a God do love somewhat of God or secundum quid or in some partial respect have some kind of love to God. But it is not a love to that of God which must save felicitate and glorifie Souls Meat and Drink and fleshly Sports do not this but Heavenly Glory Wisdom Holiness and Love to God and Man for God and this they love not and therefore never shall enjoy Nay that of God which should save and felicitate them they hate and hated holiness is none of theirs nor ever can be till they are changed And so much to the Infidels Objection 7. I add therefore in the last place to help men in the tryal of their love to God that their love must have these two qualifications 1. They must love that of God which maketh man happy and is indeed the end of his Nature and Sanctification And that is not only the comforts of this transitory natural Life and Flesh but the fore described Union and Communion with God in perfect knowledge love and praise 2. This love to God must be predominant and prevail against the power of alluring objects which Satan would use to turn our Hearts from him and to keep out holy Heavenly love Damning sin consisteth in loving somewhat that is good and lovely and that is of God but it is not simply in loving it but in loving it inordinately instead of God or greater things and out of its due time and rank and measure and so as to hinder that love which is our holiness and happiness Moral Good consisteth not in meer Entity but in Order and disorderly Love even of real good is sinful Love. Therefore when all is said the old mark which I have many and many times repeated is it that must try the sincerity of your love viz. If 1. in the esteem of a believing mind 2. And in the choice and adherence of a resolved will 3. And in the careful serious endeavours of your lives you prefer the knowing loving obeying and joyful praising of God begun here and perfected in Glory as the benefit of our Redemption by Christ before all the interests of this fleshly life the pleasures profits and honours of this World that is before the pleasures of sin and sensuality for this transitory Season Or in Christs words Mat. 6.33 If you SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS and trust him to superadd all other things This is that love of God and goodness which must save us And he that loveth God even in these high respects a little and loveth his fleshly pleasure so much more as that he will not consent to the regulating of his Lusts but will rather venture or let go his Salvation than his sins hath no true saving love to God. Obj. There is scarce any Fornicator Drunkard Glutton Swearer or other rash and sensual sinner but believeth that God is better than the creature and that it were better for him to live to God in love and holiness than to live in sinful pleasures and therefore though he live in sin against this knowledge it seemeth that with the rational will he loveth God and Goodness best because he judgeth them best Ans 1. It is one thing what the judgment saith and another thing how it saith it A speculative judgment may drowsily say that God and Holiness are best when yet it saith it but as a dreaming opinion which prevaileth not with the will to choose them having at the same time so strong an apprehension of the pleasures of sin as carryeth away the will and practice 2. It is one thing therefore to love God under the notion of being best and another thing to love him best For the will can cross such a notion of the understanding at least by an omission as appeareth by the sin of Adam which began in the will or else had been necessitated The same understanding which sluggishly saith God or Holiness is better yet may more clearly and vehemently say Lust is pleasant or Pleasure of the flesh is good and being herein seconded with the strong apprehensions of sense and fantasie the will may follow this simple judgment and neglect the comparate 3. It is one thing for the understanding to say that God is more amiable to one that hath a heart to love him and a suitable disposition and another thing to say he is now more amiable to me those can say the first that cannot truly say the latter and therefore love not God as best and above all 4. It is one thing for the understanding sometimes under conviction to say God and Holiness are best for me and I ought to love them best and then to lay by the exercise of this judgment in the ordinary course of life though it be not contradicted and to live in the continual apprehension of the goodness of sensual pleasure and another thing to keep the judgment that God and Holiness are best in ordinary exercise For the will doth not always follow the judgment that we had before but that which we have at present and that which we exercise not we have not at that time in act and it is not a meer power or habit of knowledge which ruleth the will but the present act Many a man is said to know that which he doth not think of when indeed he doth not know it at that time but only would know it if he thought of it As a man in his sleep is said to know what he knew awake when indeed he knoweth it not actually till he be awake Obj. But true grace is rather to be judged of by the habit than by the present acts Ans By the habit of the Will it is that is by habitual love for that will command the most frequent acts but I propose it to the consideration of the judicious whether an ordinary habit of
on his truth and mercies But God will not lose his knowledge of me nor turn away his mercy from me The foundation of God standeth sure having this seal the Lord knoweth them that are his and let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity 2 Tim. 2.19 He can call me his Child when I doubt whether I may call him Father He doubteth not of his right to me nor of his graces in me when I doubt of my sincerity and part in him Known unto God are all his works Act. 15.18 What meaneth Paul thus to describe a state of grace Gal. 4.9 Now after ye have known God or rather are known of of God but to notify to us that though our knowledge of God be his grace in us and our evidence of his love and the beginning of life eternal Joh. 17.3 yet that we are loved and known of him is the first and last the foundation and the perfection of our security and felicity He knoweth his Sheep and none shall take them out of his hand When I cannot through pain or distemper remember him or not with renewed Joy or Pleasure he will remember me and delight to do me good and to be my Salvation 8. And though the belief of the unseen World be the principle by which I conquer this yet are my conceptions of it lamentably dark A Soul in flesh which acteth as the form of a body is not furnished with such images helps or light by which it can have clear conceptions of the state and operations of separated Souls But I am known of God when my knowledge of him is dark and small And he knoweth whither it is that he will take me what my state and work shall be He that is preparing a place for me with himself is well acquainted with it and me All Souls are his and therefore all are known to him He that is now the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob as being living with him while they are dead to us will receive my departing Soul to them and to himself to be with Christ which he hath instructed me to commend into his hands and to desire him to receive He that is now making us living Stones for the new Jerusalem and his heavenly temple doth know where every one of us shall be placed And his knowledge must now be my satisfaction and my peace Let unbelievers say How doth God know Psal 73.11 But shall I doubt whether he that made the Sun be Father of lights and whether he know his dwelling and his continued works Be still O my Soul and know that he is God Psal 40.10 and when he hath guided thee by his counsel he will take thee to Glory and in his Light thou shalt have Light And though now it appear not to sight but to Faith only what we shall be yet we known that we shall see him as he is and we shall appear with him in glory And to be KNOWN of God undoubtedly includeth his PRACTICAL LOVE which secureth our Salvation and all that tendeth thereunto It is not meant of such a knowledge only as he hath of all things or of such as he hath of the ungodly And why should it be hard to thee O my Soul to be perswaded of the love of God Is it strange that he should love thee who is Essential Infinite love Any more than that the Sun should shine upon thee which shineth upon all capable recipient objects though not upon the uncapable which through interposing things cannot receive it To believe that Satan or wicked men or deadly Enemies should love me is hard But to believe that the God of love doth love me should in reason be much easier than to believe that my Father or Mother or dearest friend in the World doth love me If I do not make and continue my self uncapable of his complacence by my wilful continued refusing of his grace it is not possible that I should be deprived of it Prov. 8.17 I love them that love me Psal 146.8 The Lord loveth the righteous John 16.27 2. Why should it be hard to thee to believe that he loveth thee who doth good so universally to the World and by his love doth preserve the whole Creation and give all Creatures all the good which they possess When his mercy is over all his works and his Goodness is equal to his wisdom and his power and all the World is beautified by it shall I not easily believe that it will extend to me The Lord is good to all Psal 145.9 Luk. 18.19 None is good essentially absolutely and transcendently but he alone Psal 33.5 The Earth is full of the goodness of the Lord Psal 52.1 The goodness of God endureth continually He is good and doth good Psal 119.68 And shall I not expect good from so good a God the cause of all the good that is in the World 3. Why should I not believe that he will love me who so far loved the World yea his Enemies as to give his only begotten Son that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3.16 Having given me so precious a gift as his Son will he think any thing too good to give me Rom. 8.32 yea still he followeth his Enemies with his mercies not leaving himself without witness to them but filling their hearts with food and gladness and causing his Sun to shine on them and his Rain to fall on them and by his goodness leading them to repentance 4. Why should I not easily believe his love which he hath sealed by that certain gift of love the Spirit of Christ which he hath given The giving of the Holy Ghost is the shedding abroad of his love upon the heart Rom. 5. I had never known desired loved or served him sincerely but by that Spirit And will he deny his name his mark his seal his Pledge and Earnest of Eternal life Could I ever have truly loved Him his Word his Ways and Servants but by the reflection of his love shall I question whether he love those whom he hath caused to love him When our love is the surest gift and token of his love shall I think that I can love him more than he loveth me or be more willing to serve him than he is willing and ready to reward his Servants Heb. 11.6 1 Joh. 3.24 and 4.13 5. Shall I not easily hope for good from him who hath made such a covenant of Grace with me in Christ Who giveth me what his Son hath purchased who accepteth me in his most beloved as a member of his Son Who hath bid me ask and I shall have And hath made to Godliness the promise of this life and that to come and will with-hold no good thing from them that walk uprightly Will not such a Gospel such a Covenant such promises of love secure me that he loveth me while I consent unto his covenant terms 6. Shall I not easily believe
A TREATISE OF Knowledge and Love COMPARED In two Parts I. Of Falsly Pretended Knowledge II. Of True Saving Knowledge and Love. I. Against Hasty Judging and False Conceits of Knowledge and for necessary Suspension II. The Excellency of Divine Love and the Happiness of being Known and Loved of God. Written as greatly needful to the Safety and PEACE of every Christian and of the Church The only certain way to escape false Religions Heresies Sects and Malignant Prejudices Persecutions and Sinful Wars All caused by falsly pretended Knowledge and hasty Judging by Proud Ignorant men who know not their Ignorance By RICHARD BAXTER Who by God's blessing on long and hard Studies hath learned to know that he knoweth but little and to suspend his Judgment of Uncertainties and to take Great Necessary Certain things for the food of his Faith and Comforts and the Measure of his Church-Communion Prov. 14 16. A wise man feareth and departeth from evil But the FOOL RAGETH and is CONFIDENT 2 Cor. 11.3 But I fear lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled EVE by his subtilty so your minds should be CORRVPTED from the SIMPLICITY which is in Christ 1 Cor. 1.25 The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men v. 20. Hath not God made fâ—oliâ—h the wisdom of this world c. 2.6 We speak wisdom among them that are perfect yet not the wisdom of this world 2 Tim. 2.15 Study to shew thy self approved to God a workman that needed not be ashamed rightly DIVIDING the word of Truth 16. But shun profane and vain oâ—â—lings for they will increase unto more ungodliness August Enchirid. cap. 59. De Corporibus Angelorum Cum ista queruntur a sicut potest quisque conjectat non inutiliter exercentur ingenia si adhibeatur disceptantia moderata absit error opinantium se scire quod nesciunt Quod enim opes est ut hec hujusmodi affirmentur vel negentur vel definiantur cum disâ—rimine quando sine crimine nesciuntur LONDON Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheapside near Mercers Chapel 1689. TO THE Right Worshipful Sir HENRY ASHHURST AND THE Lady DIANA HIS WIFE SIR YOur Name is not prefixed to this Treatise either as accusing you of the Sin herein detected or as praising you for those Virtues which good Men are more pleased to possess and exercise than to have proclaimed though they be as Light that is hardly hid But it is to vent and exercise that Gratitude which loveth not the concealment of such Friendship and Kindness as you and your Lady Eminently and your Relatives and Hers the Children of the Lord Paget have long obliged me by And it is to Posterity that I record your Kindness more than for this Age to which it hath publickly notified it self during my publick Accusations Reproaches Sentences Imprisonments and before and since Who knoweth you that knoweth not hereof And it is to renew the record of that Love and Honour which I owed to your deceased Father formerly pthough too slenderly recorded to be the Heir and Imitater of whose Faith Piety Charity Patience Humility Meekness Impartiality Sincerity and Perseverance is as great an Honour and Blessing as I can wish you next to the conformity to our highest pattern And though he was averse to worldly Pomp and Grandeur and desired that his Children should not affect it yet God that will honour those that honour him hath advanced his Children I believe partly for his sake But I intreat you all and some other of my Friends whom God hath raised as a Blessing to their Pious and Charitable Parents and themselves to watch carefully lest the deceitful World and Flesh do turn such Blessings into Golden Fetters and to be sure to use them as they would find at last on their account And as you are a Member of the present House of Commons I think the Subject of this Treatise is not unnecessary to your consideration and daily care That when proof and notorious and sad Experience telleth us what distractions have befaln Church and State by Mens self-conceited erroneous rushing upon sin and falshood as if it were Certainly Good and True and how little Posterity feareth and avoideth this confounding Vice though History tell us that it hath been the Deluge that in all Ages hath drowned the peace and welfare of the World you may be wary and try before you venture in doubtful cases especially where the Sacred and Civil Interest of this and many other Lands doth probably lye on the determination Do you think all that ventured upon the Actions and Changes that have tost up and down both Churches and Kingdoms by Divisions Persecutions and Wars had not done better to suspend their Judgments till they could have more certainly determined Who should proceed more cautelously than Bishops And where rather than in Councils And in what rather than about Faith and Publick Government and Order And had Bishops and Councils torn the Church and Empires and Kingdoms as they have done by aspiring after Superiority and by contentious Writings and condemning each other and by contradictory and erroneous and persecuting Canons or by raising Wars and Deposing Princes ever since 400 or 500 or 600 years after Christ if not sooner if they had known their ignorance and suspended in such dangerous cases till they were sure I know you are none of them who dare pretend to a Certain Knowledge that all those Oaths Declarations Covenants Practices imposed by Laws and Canons on Ministers and People in this Land in the Act of Uniformity the Corporation Act the Vestry Act the Militia Act the five Mile Act of Banishment c. are so Good and Lawful as will justifie the Execution of them and the silencing ejecting ruining and judging to lye from six Months to six in the common Jails till they die 2000 as faithful Ministers of Christ as any Nation hath under Heaven unless they forbear to Preach the Gospel to which they are vowed or venture their Souls on that which they fear to be sins so great as they are loth to name When Christ will sentence them to Everlasting punishment who did not visit feed clothe him in the least of them whom he calls his Brethren Before Men silence conditionally the whole Ministry of such a Kingdom and actually 2000 such while the wounding dividing consequents may be so easily foreseen and before men deliberately and resolutely continue and keep up such Battering Engines on pretence of Uniformity and Obedience to Men and before they venture to own this to that Lord who hath made other terms of Church Unity and Peace it nearly concerneth them to think and think on it a thousand times A suspended judgment is here safer than prefidence and confident rage And also they that desire an Abolition of Episcopacy should a thousand times bethink them first what True and Primitive Episcopacy is
object that is A visible object II. The other extream of some of the same men is that yet Faith is not true and certain if it have any doubtfulness with it Strange That these men cannot only see what is invisible Believe what is inevident as to its truth that is incredible but also believe past all doubting and think that the weakest true believer doth so too Certainly there are various degrees of faith in the sincere All have not the same strength Christ rebuketh Peter in his fears and his disciples all at other times for their little faith When Peters faith failed not it staggered which Abrahams did not Lord increase our Faith and Lord I believe help my unbelief were prayers approved by Christ I will call a prevalent belief which can lay down Life and all this world for Christ and the hopes of Heaven by the name of certainty which hath various degrees But if they differ de nomine and will call nothing certainty but the highest degree they must needs yet grant that there is true saving faith that reacheth to no certainty in their sense Yea no man on Earth then attaineth to such a certainty because that every mans faith is imperfect To conclude Though all Scripture in itself that is indeed the true Canon be equally true yet all is not equally certain to us as not having equal evidence that it is Gods word But of that in the next Chapter of the uncertainties Chap. 6. What are the unknown things and uncertainties which we must not pretend a certain knowledge of SOmewhat of this is said already Cap. 3. But I am here to come to more particular instances of it But because that an enumeration would be a great Volume of it self I shall begin with the more general that I may be excused in most of the rest or mention only some particulars under them as we go I. A very great if not the far greatest part of that part of Philosophy called Physicks is uncertain or certainly false as it is delivered to us in any methodist that I have yet seen whether Platonists Peripateticks Epicureans the Stoicks have little but what Seneca gives us and Barlaam Collecteth I know not whence as making up their Ethicks and what in three or four Ethical writers is also brought in on the by and what Cicero reporteth of them or in our Novelists Patricius Telesius Campanella Thomas White Digby Cartesius Gassendus c. Except those whose modesty causeth them to say but little and to avoid the uncertainties or confess them to be uncertainties To enumerate instances would be an unseasonable digression Gassendus is large in his Confessions of uncertainties I think not his Brother Hobs and his second Spinosa worth the naming Nor the Paracelsians and Helmontians as giving us a new Philosophy but only as adding to the old There needs no other testimony of uncertainty to a man that hath not studied the points himself than their lamentable difference and confutation of each other in so many very many things even in the great Principles of the Science Yet here no doubt there are certainties innumerable certainties such as I have before described We know something certainly of many things even of all sensible objects But we know nothing perfectly and comprehensively not a worm not a Leaf not a Stone or a Sand not the Pen Ink or Paper which we write with not the hand that writeth nor the smallest particle of our bodies not a hair or the least accident In every thing nearest us or in the world the uncertainties and incognita are far more than that which we certainly know II. If I should enumerate to you the many uncertainties in our common Metaphysicks yea about the Being of the Science and our common Logick c. It would seem unsuitable to a Theological discourse And yet it would not be unuseful among such Theologues as the Schoolmen who resolve more of their doubts by Aristotle than by the Holy Scriptures doubtless as Aristotles Predicaments are not fitted to the kinds of beings so many of his distributions and orders yea and precepts are arbitrary And as he left room and reason for the dissent of such as Taurellus Carpenter Jacchaeus Gorlaeus Ritschel and abundance more so have they also for mens dissent from them Even Ramus hath more adversaries than followers Gassendus goeth the right way by suiting verba rebus if he had hit righter on the nature of things themselves Most novel Philosophers are fain to make new Grammars and new Logicks for words and notions to fit their new conceptions as Campanella and the Paracelsians Helmontians and if you will name the Behmenists Rosicrucians Weigelians c. Lullius thought he made the most accurate Art of notions and he did indeed attempt to fit words to things but he hath mist of a true accomplishment of his design for want of a true method of Physicks in his mind to fit his words to As Cornelius Agrippa who is one of his chief commentators yet freely confesseth in his lib. de Vanitate Scientiarum which now I think of I will say no more of this but desire the Reader to peruse that laudable book and with it to read Sanchez his Nihil Scitur to see uncertainty detected so he will not be led by it too far into Scepticism As also Mr. Glanviles Scepsis Scientifica As for the lamentable uncertainties in Medicine the poor world payeth for it Anatomy as being by ocular inspection hath had the best improvement And yet what a multitude of uncertainties remain Many thousands years have millions yearly died of Feavers and the medicating them is a great part of the Physicians work and yet I know not that ever I knew the man that certainly knew what a Feaver is I crave the pardon of the Masters of this noble art for saying it It is by dear experience that I have learnt how little Physicians know having passed through the tryal of above thirty of them on my own Body long ago meerly induced by a conceit that they knew more than they did and most that I got was but the ruine of my own body and this advice to leave to others Highly value those few excellent men who have quick and deep conjecturing apprehensions great reading and greater Experience and Sober Careful Deliberating minds and had rather do too little than too much But use them in a due conjunction with your own experience of your self But for the rest how Learned soever whose heads are dull or temper precipitant or apprehensions hasty or superficial or reading small but especially that are young or of small experience love and honour them but use them as little as you can and that only as you will use an honest ignorant Divine whom you will gladly hear upon the certain Catechistical Principles but love not to hear him meddle with Controversies So use these men in common easie cases if necessary and yet there the less
till you have true evidence to establish them 1. It is only Christians that I am now instructing and if you are Christians you have already received the Essentials of Christianity even the Baptismal Covenant the Creed the Lords Prayer and Decalogue And I need not tell you that moreover you must receive all those Truths in Nature and Scripture which are so plain that all these dissenting sects of Christians are agreed in them And when you have all these and faithfully love and practice them you are sure to be saved if you do not afterward receive some contrary Doctrine which destroyeth them Mark then which is the safe Religion As sure as the Gospel is true he that is meet for Baptism before God is meet for pardon of sin and he that truely consenteth to the Baptismal Covenant and so doth dedicate himself to God is made a Member of Christ and is justified and an Heir of Heaven Your Church Catechism saith truly of all such that in Baptism each one is made a Member of Christ a Child of God and an Heir of Heaven So that as sure as the Gospel is true every true Baptized Christian whose Love and Life doth answer that Faith shall certainly be saved Ask all parties and few of them but impudent designers can deny this Well then the Baptismal Covenant expounded in the Creed Lords Prayer and Commandments is your Christian Religion As a Christian you may and shall be saved that a True Christian is saved all confess But whether a Papist be saved is questioned by the Protestants and so is the Salvation of many other sects by others You are safe then if you take in nothing to endanger you And is it not wisdom then to take heed how you go further and on what grounds lest you over-run your safe Religion Obj. But then I must not be a Protestant For the Papists say that they cannot be saved Ans A Protestant is either one that holdeth to the ancient simple Christianity without the Papists manifold additions Or one that positively also renounceth and opposeth those additions In the first sense a Protestant and a meer Christian is all one and so to say that a Protestant cannot be saved is to say that a Christian as such cannot be saved If it be the meer name of a Protestant that the Papist accounteth damnable tell him that you will not stick with him for the name You are contented with the old name of Christian alone But Protestantism in the second sense is not your Religion but the Defensative of your Religion as flying from the Plague is not my Humanity or Life but a means to preserve it And so Protestants are of many sizes Some oppose some points and some others some more some less which the Papists have brought in And yet they are not of so many Religions But whoever condemneth you if Christ save you he doth but condemn himself as uncharitable Christianity is certainly a State of Salvation but whether Popery be or whether the Greek Opinions be or whether this or that difference and singularity stand with Salvation is the doubt Cast not your self then needlesly into doubt and danger Obj. But then you will have us be still but Infants and to learn no more than our Catechisms and not to learn and believe all that God hath revealed in his Word Ans No such matter This is the sum of what I advise you to 1. Hold fast to your simple Christianity as the Certain terms of Salvation 2. Receive nothing that is against it 3. Learn as much more as ever you can 4. But take not mens words nor their plausible talk for Certifying Evidence And do not think if you believe a Priest that this is believing God nor if his Reasons seem plausible to you and you are of his Opinion that this is Divine Knowledge If you do incline to one mans Opinion more than another tell him that you incline to his Opinion but tell him that you take not this for Divine Knowledge or any part of your Religion If you will needs believe one side rather than another about Church History or the matters of their Parties Interest tell them I believe you as fallible men but this is none of my Divine Faith or Religion To learn to know is to learn Scientifical Evidence and not to learn what is another mans Opinions nor whether they are probable or not much less to read a Councils Decrees or the Propositions of a disputing Systeme and then for the mens sake to say This is Orthodox Nor yet because it hath a taking aspect To learn of a Priest to believe God is one thing and to believe him or his party Church or Council is another thing Learn to know as much as you can and especially to know what God hath revealed to be believed And learn to believe God as much as you can And believe all your Teachers and all other men as far as they are credible in that case with such a humane belief as fallible men may justly require And where Contenders do consent suspect them the less But where they give one another the Lie in matters of Fact try both their Evidences of credibility before you trust them and then trust them not beyond that Evidence But still difference your Divine Faith and Religion from your Opinion and Humane Faith. And let men sollicite you never so long take not on you to know or believe till you do that is not beyond the Evidence I do but perswade you against Presumption and Hypocrisie Shall I say SUSPEND TILL YOU HAVE TRUE EVIDENCE and you are safe why if you do not you will know never the more nor have ever the more Divine Faith For I can mean no more than SUSPEND YOUR PRESUMPTIONS and do not foolishly or hypocritically take on you to know what you do not or to have a Faith which you have not If you can know truly do it with fidelity and be true to the Truth whoever offer it or whatever it cost you But suspend your Profession or hasty Opinions and Conceits of what you know not Obj. But every side almost tells me that I am damned if I do not believe as they do Ans 1. By that you may see that they are all deceived at least save one which ever it be while they differ and yet condemn each other 2. Thereby they do but give you the greater cause to suspect them For by this shall all men know Christs Disciples if they love one another Right Christians are not many Masters as knowing that themselves shall have the greater condemnation else for in many things we offend all And the wisdom which hath envy and strife is not from above but from beneath and is earthly sensual and devilish introducing confusion and every evil work Jam. 3.1 15 16. Christs Disciples judge not lest they be judged 3. By this you may see that unless you can be of all mens minds
you must be damned by the Censures of many And if you can bear it from all the Sects save one why not from that one also 4. But I pray you ask these damning Sectaries Is it believing your Word and being of your Opinion that will save me Or must I also know by scientifical Evidence that you say true and that God himself hath said what you say If he say that believing him and his party though he call it the Church is enough to save you you have then less reason to believe him For unless he can undertake himself to save you he cannot undertake that believing him shall save you If he say God hath promised to save you if you believe me believe that when he hath proved it to you But if it be Knowledge and Divine Faith which he saith must save you it is not your believing his Word or Opinion that will help you to that I would tell such a man Help me to Knowledge and Faith by Cogent or Certifying Evidence and I will learn and thank you with all my Heart But till I have it it is but mocking my self and you to say that I have it Obj. But the Papists herein differ from all other Sects For they will say That if I believe the Church concerning Divine Revelations and take all for Divine Revelation which the Church saith is so and so believe it then I have a Divine Faith. Ans 1. And is this to you a Certifying Evidence that indeed God revealed it because their Church saith so If their Church agree with Greeks Armenians Syrians Copties Abassines Protestants and all other Christian Churches then it will be no part of the contest in question and it is a stronger Foundation of the two to believe it because all say it than because they say it But if they differ from the rest know their proof that their Church can tell Gods mind and not the rest of the Christian World. And that about a third part of the Christians in the World have such a promise which all the rest have not 2. And how doth their Church know that it is Gods Word Is it by any certifying Evidence or by Prophetical Inspiration If by Evidence let it be produced Is it not revealed to others as well as to them Must not we have a Faith of the same kind as the Church hath If so we must believe by the same Evidence as that Church believeth And what is that It is not their own words Doth a Pope believe himself only or a Council believe themselves only Or hath God said You shall be saved if you will believe your selves and believe that I have said all that you say I have said Where is there such a promise But if Pope and Council be not saved for believing themselves how shall I know that I shall be saved for believing them and that one kind of Faith saveth me and another them I ask it of each particular Bishop in that Council Is he saved for believing himself or the rest If no man be saved for believing himself why should another be saved for believing him And the Faith of the Council is but the Faith of the Individual Members set together Obj. But they are saved for believing themselves as consenters and not singly Ans All Consenters know nothing as Consenters but what they know as Individuals And what is the Evidence by which they know and are brought to consent Must not that Evidence convince us also Obj. But the present Church are saved for believing not themselves but the former Church Ans Then so must we It is not the present Church then that I must believe by a saving Faith But why then was the last Age saved and so the former and so on to the first Is any thing more evident than that all men must be saved for Believing God And that his Word must be known to be his Word by the same Evidence by one man and another And that Evidence I have proved in several Treatises to be another kind of thing than the Decree of a Pope and his Council But if it be not Evidence but Prophetical Inspiration and Revelation by which the Council or Church knoweth Gods Word I will believe them when by Miracles or otherwise they prove themselves to be true Prophets till then I shall take them for Phanaticks and hear them as I do the Quakers Should I here stay to bid you ask them as before How you shall be sure that their Council was truly General and more Authentick and Infallible than the second at Ephesus or that at Ariminum or that at Constance and Basil c. And whether the more General Dissent of all the other Christians from them be not of as great Authority as they that are the smaller part and how you shall be sure of that And also how but on the word of a Priest you can know all that the Church hath determined with abundance such Questions of the Meaning of each Council the ambiguity of words the Errour of Printers the forgery of Publishers c. I should help you to see that saying as a Priest saith Is not Knowing the thing nor Believing God. Stop therefore till you have Evidence Follow no Party as a Party in the dark Or if probability incline you more to them than to others call not this Certainty Religion Divine Faith. Thus your Faith will be Faith indeed and you will escape all that would corrupt and frustrate it The business is great God requireth you to refuse no Light But withal he chargeth you to believe no falshood nor put darkness for light Much less to father mens Lies or Errours or Conceits on God and to lay your Salvation on it that they are all God's Word How dreadful a thing is this if it prove false Is it not blaspheming God No man in his wits then but a partial designer can look that you should make haste or go any further than you have assuring or convincing Evidence If you Know that any Sect doth Err you need no Preservative If you do not tell them I am ignorant of this matter I will learn as fast as I can not neglecting greater matters and I will be neither for you nor against you further than I can know And as to the former Objection of being still Infants I further answer that as feigned knowledge is no knowledge so Manhood consisteth not in being of many uncertain Opinions no not so much in knowing many little controverted things as in getting a clearer more affecting powerful practical Knowledge and belief of our Christianity and the great and sure things which we know already and in Love and Obedience practising of them He is the strongest Christian who loveth God best and hath most Holiness and he knoweth God better than any others do By this much you may see that the world is full of counterfeit Faith and Knowledge and Religion even fancy and belief of
ordinary for self-conceited Persons to ruine their own Estates and Healths and Lives When they are rashly making ill Bargains or undertaking things which they understand not they rush on till they find their error too late and their Poverty Prisons or ruined Families must declare their sin For they have not humility enough to seek Counsel in time nor to take it when it is offered them What great numbers have I heard begging relief from others under the confession of this sin And far more even the most of Men and Women overthrow their Health and lose their Lives by it Experience doth not suffice to teach them what is hurtful to their Bodies and as they know not so you cannot convince them that they know not Most Persons by the excess in quantity of food do suffocate Nature and lay the Foundation of future Maladies And most of the Diseases that kill men untimely are but the effects of former Gluttony or Excess But as long as they feel not any present hurt no man can perswade them but their fulness is for their Health as well as for their Pleasure They will laugh perhaps at those that tell them what they do and what Diseases they are preparing for Let Physicians if they be so honest tell them It is the perfection of the nutritive Juices the Blood and nervous Oyl which are the causes of Health in man Perfect Concoction causeth that perfection Nature cannot perfectly concoct too much or that which is of too hard digestion While you feel no harm your Blood groweth dis-spirited and being but half concocted and half Blood doth perform its Office accordingly by the halves till crudities are heaped up and obstructions fixed and a Dunghil of Excrements or the dis-spirited humours are ready to take in any Disease which a small occasion offereth either Agues Feavers Coughs Consumptions Pleurisies Dropsies Colicks and Windiness Head-achs Convulsions c. or till the Inflammations or other Tumors of the inward Parts or the torment of the Stone in Reins or Bladder do sharply tell men what they have been doing A clean Body and perfect Concoction which are procured by Temperance and bodily Labours which suscitate the Spirits and purifie the Blood are the proper means which God in the course of nature hath appointed for a long and healthful Life This is all true and the reason is evident and yet this talk will be but despised and derided by the most and they will say I have so long eaten what I loved and lived by no such rules as these and I have found no harm by it Yea if Excess have brought Diseases on them if Abstinence do but make them more to feel them they will rather impute their illness to the Remedy than to the proper cause And so they do about the quality as well as the quantity Self-conceitedness maketh men uncureable Many a one have I known that daily lived in that fulness which I saw would shortly quench the Vital Spirits and fain I would have saved their Lives but I was not able to make them willing Had I seen another assault them I could have done somewhat for them but when I foresaw their death I could not save them from themselves They still said they found their measures of eating and drinking between Meals refresh them and they were the worse if they forbore it and they would not believe me against both Appetite Reason and Experience And thus have I seen abundance of my acquaintance wilfully hasten to the Grave And all long of an unhumbled self-conceited understanding which would not be brought to suspect it self and know its error 2. And O how often have I seen the dearest Friends thus kill their Friends even Mothers kill their dearest Children and too oft their Husbands Kindred Servants and Neighbours by their self-conceit and confidence in their ignorance and error Alas what abundance empty their own Houses gratifie covetous Landlords that set their Lands by Lives and bring their dearest Relations to untimely ends and a wise man knoweth not how to hinder them How oft and oft have I heard ignorant Women confidently perswade even their own Children to eat as long as they have an Appetite and so they have vitiated their Blood and Humours in their Childhood that their Lives have been either soon ended or ever after miserable by Diseases How oft have I heard them perswade sick or weak diseased Persons to eat eat eat and take what they have a mind to when unless they would Poyson them or cut their Throats they could scarce more certainly dispatch them How oft have these good Women been perswading my self that eating and drinking more would make me better and that it is Abstinence that causeth all my illness when Excess in my Childhood caused it as if every wise Woman that doth but know me knew better what is good for me than my self after threescore years experience or than all the Physicians in the City And had I obeyed them how many years ago had I been dead How ordinary is it for such self-conceited Women to obtrude their skill and Medicines on their sick Neighbours with the greatest confidence when they know not what they do yea upon their Husbands and their Children One can scarce come about sick Persons but one Woman or other is perswading them to take that or do that which is like to kill them Many and many when they have brought their Children to the Grave have nothing to say but I thought this or that had been best for them But you 'l say They do it in love they meant no harm I answer so false Teachers deceive Souls in Love. But are you content your selves to be kill'd by Love If I must be kill'd I had rather an Enemy did it than a Friend I would not have such have the guilt or grief Love will not save mens lives if you give them that which tends to kill them But you 'l say We can be no wiser than we are If we do the best we can what can we do more I answer I would have you not think your selves wiser than you are I would write over this word five hundred times if that would cure you About matters of Diet and Medicines and Health this is it that I would have you do to save you from killing your selves and your Relations 1. Pretend not to know upon the report of such as your selves or in matters that are difficult and beyond your skill or where you have not had long consideration and experience Meddle with no Medicining but what in common easy cases the common judgment of Physicians and common Experience have taught you 2. If you have not Money to pay Physicians and Apothecaries tell them so and desire them to give you their counsel freely and take not on you to know more than they that have studied and practised it all their riper part of their lives 3. Suspect your understandings and consider how much there may be
contexture of many proofs or on any long operous work of Reason men have a natural consciousness of the uncertainty of it Yea though our Doctrines of the Immortality of our own Souls and of the Life of Retribution after this and the Truth of the Gospel have so much certain Evidence as they have yet a Lively certain Faith is the more rare and difficult because men are so conscious of the fallibility of their own understandings that about things unseen unsensible they are still apt to doubt whether they be not deceived in their apprehensions of the Evidence By these twenty instances it is too plain that there is little solid wisdom in the world that wise men are few and those few are but a little wise And should not this suffice to make all men but especially the unlearned half-learned the young and unexperienced to abate their ungrounded confidence and to have humble and suspicious thoughts of their own apprehensions Chap. 17. Inference 5. That it is not the dishonour but the Praise of Christ his Apostles and the Gospel that they speak in a plain manner of the Certain Necessary things without the Vonity of School-uncertainties and feigned unprofitable nations I Have been my self oft Scandalized at the Fathers of the 4th Carthage Council who forbad Bishops the reading of the Heathens Books and at some good old unlearned Christian Bishops who spake to the same purpose and oft reproach Apollinaris Aetius and other Hereticks for their Secular or gentile Learning Logick c. And I wondered that Julian and they should prohibit the same thing But one that is so far distant from the action is not a competent Judge of the reasons of it Perhaps there were some Christian Authors then who were sufficient for such literature as was best for the Church Perhaps they saw that the danger of reading the Heathens Philosophy was like to be greater than the benefit Both because it was them that they lived among and were to gather the Churches out of and if they put an honour upon Logick and Philosophy they might find it more difficult to draw men from that party which excelled in it to the belief of the Scriptures which seemed to have so little of it And they had seen also how a mixture of Platonick notions with Christianity had not only been the Original of many heresies but had sadly blemished many great Doctors of the Churches Whatever the cause was it appeareth that in those days it was the deepest insight into the Sacred Scriptures which was reckoned for the most solid Learning Philosophy was so confounded by Differences Sects Uncertainties and Falshoods that made it the more despicable by how much the less pure And Logick had so many precarious Rules and Notions as made it fitter to wrangle and play with than to further grave men in their deep and serious enquiry in the great things of God and mysteries of Salvation But yet it cannot be denied but that true Learning of the Subservient Arts and Sciences is of so great use to the accomplishing of mans mind with wisdom that it is one of the greatest offences that ever was taken against Christ and the holy Scriptures that so little of this Learning is found in them in comparison of what is in Plato Aristotle Demosthenes or Cicero But to remove the danger of this offence let these things following be well considered I. Every means is to be judged of by its aptitude to its proper use and end Morality is the subject and business of the Scriptures It is not the work of it to teach men Logick and Philosophy any more than to teach them Languages Who will be offended with Christ for not teaching men Latine Greek or Hebrew Architecture Navigation or Mechanick Arts And why should they be more offended with him for not teaching them Astronomy Geometry Physicks Metaphysicks Logick c. It was none of his work II. Nature is presupposed to Grace and God in Nature had before given man sufficient helps to the attainment of so much of the knowledge of Nature as was convenient for him Philosophy is the knowledge of Gods works of Creation It was not this at least chiefly that man lost by his fall It was from God and not from the Creature that he turned And it was to the knowledge of God rather than of the Creature that he was to be restored What need one be sent from Heaven to teach men the order and rules of speaking Or to teach men those Arts and Sciences which they can otherwise learn themselves As it is presupposed that men have reason so that they have among them the common helps and crutches of reason III. The truth is it is much to be suspected lest as an inordinate desire of Creature-knowledge was a great part of our first Parents sin so it hath accordingly corrupted our nature with an answerable vicious inclination thereunto Not that the thing in it self is evil to know Gods works but good and desireable in its place and measure But it is such a good as by inordinacy may become a dangerous evil Why should we not judge of this desire of knowing the Creatures as we do of other Creature-affections It is lawful and meet to love all Gods Creatures His works are good and therefore amiable And yet I think no man is damned but by the inordinate loving of the Creature turning his Heart from the love of God. And as our Appetites are lawful and necessary in themselves and yet Natures pravity consisteth much in the prevalency of them against reason which is by reasons infirmity and the inordinacy of the sensitive Appetite even so a desire to know Gods works is natural and good but its inordinateness is our pravity and a sinful Lust Doubtless the mind and phantasie may find a kind of pleasure in knowing which is according to the nature and use of the thing known When it is vain or low and base the pleasure is vain and low and base When the object is ensnaring and diverting from higher things it doth this principally by delight Verily this inordinate desire of Creature-knowledge is a Lust a vicious Lust I have been guilty of it in some measure my self since I had the use of reason I have lived a Life of constant pleasure gratifying my Intellect and Phantasie with seeking to know as much as I could know And if I could not say truly that I referred it as a means to the knowledge and love of God I should say that it was all sin But because I have loved it too much for it self and not referred it to God more purely and intirely I must confess that it was never blameless And the corruption of the noblest faculty is the worst The delights of Eating Drinking Venery are the matter of common Sensuality when they are inordinately desired And is not the inordinate desire of Creature-knowledge if it be desired from the like principle and to the like ends
of Children in general and their inception of a new life so in special he seemeth to respect them as Disciples set Children to School and their business is to hear and learn all day They set not their wits against their Masters and do not wrangle and strive against him and say It is not so we know better than you But so abominably is humane nature corrupted by this Intellectual Pride that when once Lads are big enough to be from under a Tutor commonly instead of Learning of others they are of a teaching humour and had rather speak two hours than hear one And set their wits to contradict what they should learn and to conquer those that would instruct them and to shew themselves wiser than to learn to be more wise and we can scarce talk with Man or Woman but is the wisest in the Company and hardliest convinced of an errour But two things here I earnestly advise you 1. That you spend more time in Learning than in Disputing Not but that disputing in its season is necessary to defend the Truth But usually it engageth mens wits in an eager opposition against others and so against the truth which they should receive And it goeth more according to the ability of the disputants than the merits of the cause And he that is worsted is so galled at the disgrace that he hateth the truth the more for his sake that hath dishonoured him and therefore Paul speaketh so oft against such disputing and saith that the Servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle and apt to teach and in meekness instruct opposers I would ordinarily if any Man have a mind to wrangle with me tell him If you know more of these things than I if you will be my Teacher I shall thankfully hear and learn and desire him to open his Judgment to me in its fullest evidence And I would weigh it as the time and case required And if I were fully satisfied against it I would crave leave to tell him the reasons of my dissent and crave his patient audience to the end And when we well understood each others mind and reasons I would crave leave then to end in peace unless the safety of others required a dispute to defend the Truth 2. And my specially repeated counsel is that you suspend your judgment till you have cogent evidence to determine it Be no further of either side than you know they are in the right cast not your self into other mens opinions hastily upon slight reasons at a blind adventure If you see not a Certainty judge it not Certain If you see but a Probability judge it but Probable Prove all things and hold fast that which is good The Bereans are commended for searching the Scripture and seeing whether the things were so which Paul had spoken Truth feareth not the light It is like Gold that loseth nothing by the fire Darkness is its greatest Enemy and Dishonour Therefore look before you leap you are bid Believe not every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they be of God. Stand still till you know that the ground is safe which you are to tread on When Poysoners are as Common as Physicians you will take heed what you take It 's safer when once you have the essentials of Christianity to take too little than too much For you are sure to be saved if you are meer true Christians but how far Popery Antinomianism c. may corrupt your Christianity is a controversie Wish them that urge you to forbear their haste in a matter of everlasting consequence These are not matters to be rashly done And as long as you are uncertain profess your selves uncertain and if they will condemn you for your ignorance when you are willing to know the truth so will not God. But when you are certain resolve in the strength of God and hold fast whatever it cost you even to the death and never fear being losers by God by his Truth or by Fidelity in your Duty PART II. Of true saving Knowledge I. Causing our Love to God. II. Thereby Qualifying us for his Love. 1 Cor. 8.3 But if any man Love God the same is known of him Chap. I. Knowledge is to be estimated more by the end it tendeth to than by it self HAving done with that Epidemical mortal disease SELF-CONCEITEDNESS or PREFIDENCE or overhasty judging and Pretending to know that which we know not which I more desire than hope to cure I have left but a little room for the nobler part of my Subject True saving Knowledge because the handling of it was not my principal design The meaning of the Text I gave you before The true Paraphrase of it is as followeth As if Paul had said You overvalue your barren notions and think that by them you are wise whereas Knowledge is a means to a higher end is to be esteemed of as it attaineth that end And that end is to make us Lovers of God that so we may be known with Love by him For to Love God and be beloved by him is mans felicity and ultimate end and therefore that which we must seek after and live for in the world and he is to be accounted the wisest man that loveth God most when unsanctified Notions Speculations will prove but folly This being the true meaning of the Text I shall briefly speak of it by parts as it containeth these several Doctrines or Propositions Doct. 1. Knowledge is a means to a higher end according to which it is to be estimated Doct. 2. The End of Knowledge is to make us Lovers of God and so to be known with Love by him Doct. 3. Therefore knowledge is to be valued sought and used as it tendeth to this holy blessed end Doct. 4. And therefore those are to be accounted the wisest or best-knowing men that Love God most and not those that are stored with unholy knowledge For the first of these that Knowledge is a means to a higher end I shall first open it and then prove it I. Aquinas and some other Schoolmen make the Vision or Knowledge of God to be the highest part of mans Felicity And I deny not but that the three faculties of mans Soul Vital Activity Intellect and Will as the Image of the Divine Trinity have a kind of inseparability and coequality And therefore each of their perfections and perfect Receptions from God and operations on God is the ultimate end of man But yet they are Distinguishable though not divisible and there is such an Order among them as that one may in some respects be called the Inceptor and another the Perfecter of humane operations and so the Acts of one be called a means to the Acts of the other And thus though the Vision or Knowledge of God be one inadequate conception if not a part of our ultimate end yet the Love of God and Living to God are also other conceptions or parts of it yea
and the more completive perfect parts which we call finis ultimate ultimus II. The proof shall be fetcht 1. From the Order and use of the Faculties of the Soul. 2. From the Objects 3. From the constitution of the Acts. 4. From express Scripture I. It is evident to our internal perception 1. That the Understanding is but the Guide of the Will and its acts but mediate to determine the Will As the Eye is to lead the Appetitive and Executive faculties by presenting to them their proper objects To know is but an initial introductory act Yea 2. It is evident that the Soul is not Satisfied with bare knowing if no Delight or Complacency follow For what is that which we call Satisfaction but the Complacency of the Will Suppose a man to have no effect upon his Will no Pleasure no Contentation in his Knowledge and what Felicity or Desireable Good to him would there be in all the Knowledge in the world Yea when I name either Good or Desirable every one knoweth that I name an object of the Will. Therefore if you stop at bare Intellection it is not to be called Good or Desireable as to the Intellect these being not proper intellectual objects Though remotely I confess they are that is that which is called Good Amiable and Desireable primarily as the proper object of the Will must be discerned to be such by the understanding When yet the Formal notion of the Intellects object is but quid Intelligibile which materially is Ens Unum Verum Bonum But Goodness is the Formal notion of the object of the will and not only the material If any say that I seem here to take part with Epicurus and Cicero's Torquatus who erred by placing the chief excellency of Virtue in the Pleasure of it and consequently making any thing more Excellent which is more Pleasant though it be sin itself I answer he that will decide that great controversy must distinguish 1. Between Sensitive Pleasure and the Complacency of the Will. 2. Between that which is Good only to me and that which is Good to others and that which is Good in relation to the Supream and Final Will of God. 3. Between the Exterior and the Interior acts of Virtue And then you shall see Cicero and Torquatus easily reconciled thus 1. It is certain that GOODNESS and the WILL are so essentially related to each other that they must each eâ—â—â—r the others definition To be Bonum is to be Volibile and to Will is ever Velle Bonum 2. It is certain that God's Will is the Original and End of all Created Good which hath its Essence in relation to His Will. And therefore if it were possible for Virtue to be unpleasant or pernicious to the possessor it would be Good as it is suited and related to the Will of God. 3. Therefore it cannot be said that Virtue as Virtue is better than Virtue as it pleaseth God But it is most certain that Virtue as Virtue is pleasing to God as to the objective aptitude and that Virtue as pleasing to God and consequently as Virtue is Better than Virtue as it is pleasant to the possessor 4. And it is certain that Virtue as it is profitable and justly pleasing to Mankind to the Church to Kingdoms to Publick Societies or multitudes is better than as it is pleasing unto one Because the Good of many is better than of one 5. And it is certain that Virtue as it pleaseth the rational Will is better than as it pleaseth the meer Sensitive Appetite which it seldom doth And therefore Sensuality hath no advantage hence 6. And Virtue as it profiteth though at present it occasion sorrow or displicence in its consequents is better than that which at the present only pleaseth and quickly vanisheth But that Profit lieth in this that it prepareth for everlasting or more durable Pleasure And a long Pleasure attained by present sorrow is better than a momentany pleasure which is another difference between sensual sinful and spiritual durable delights 7. And to end all this Controversie between us and Epicurus it is notorious that the Internal Vital Acts of true Virtue are nothing else radically but Pleasure it self For it is radically and summarily nothing but the Love of God and Goodness And Love in its properest notion is nothing but the Complacency of the Will. To say I love it is but to say It pleaseth me unless when you speak of either sensual appetite and delight or Love as conjunct with some other act or passion And though Occam here stretch it a little too far it is certain that the external act of man hath no Virtue in it that is Moral but secondary and derived from the Will even as far as it is Voluntary So that the informing root of all Virtue is Will Love or Complacency which Austin useth to call Delectation asserting what I now assert So that the Question now is Whether Virtue which is nothing but Complacency in Good be better as Complacency or as Virtue that is under one Name or another or whether it be better as Virtue or as Virtue as Complacency or as Complacency If you think I make Cicero and the older Philosophers fools by feigning them to agitate such a Question I answer 1. If they do so it is not my doing but their own 2. But I think Cicero meant not so foolishly but understood Epicurus only of sensual pleasure and not of rational 3. Or at least of private pleasure of a single person as opposite to the utility and pleasure of multitudes 4. And whether he had so much Theology as to remember that which is it that resolveth the whole doubt I know not viz. that Virtus as Virtue is objectively pleasing to the Will of God and as pleasing to God it is better than as pleasing to me and all the world So that notwithstanding this Objection thus fully answered the Acts of the Intellect meerly as such without their respect to some Will either of God or Man are not so much as formally Amiable Desirable or Good. 3. I further add that the Acts of the Intellect may be forced involuntary displeasing and both morally and penally evil A man may by God be forbidden to search after and to know some things and to know them as voluntarily done may be his sin And all know that a man may be necessitated to know many things and that knowledge may torment him As to know dangers losses enmities injuries future evils especially sins by an accusing Conscience and God's displeasure And Devils and damned Souls have such knowledge Obj. All this is true of some knowledge but not of the knowledge of God or Goodness Ans 1. It is granted then that Knowledge as such is not sufficient to be man's felicity or final act 2. And as to the Object I easily grant that the true Knowledge of God is the initial part of man's felicity But that is much because it ever inferreth
Holy Light is that Knowledge and Belief which kindleth Love and causeth a Holy Life Holy Love is that complacency of the Will in God and Goodness which is kindled by Holy Life and Light and operateth in Holy practice Any one of these thus described where Love is the Heart of all is an infallible mark of Holiness But all other Graces and Duties which are but the Integrals of Holiness are in all Characters and Promises to be understood with a caeteris paribus that is supposing them to be animated with Holy Love and caused by Holy Life and Light Knowledge and Belief And that God doth most certainly Love all that Love him besides the forementioned proofs from Scripture is further evident 1. The Love of God and Goodness is the Divine Nature And God cannot but Love his own Nature in us It is his Image which as in its several degrees he Loveth for himself and next to himself 2. The Love of God is the Rectitude of Man's Soul its soundness health and beauty And God Loveth the Rectitude of his creatures 3. The Love of God is the final perfect operation of the Soul even that end which it was created and redeemed for And God Loveth to have his works attain their end and to see them in their perfection 4. The Love of God is the Goodness of the Soul it self And Goodness is Amiableness and must needs be Loved by Him that is Goodness and Perfection Himself 5. The Love of God is our uniting adhesion to him And God that first draweth up the Soul to this Union will not himself reject us and avoid it 6. Love is a pregnant powerful pleasing Grace It delivereth up our selves and all that we have to God It delighteth in duty It conquereth difficulties It contemneth competitors and trampleth on temptations It accounteth nothing too much nor too dear for God. Love is the Soul's nature appetite and pondus according to which it will ordinarily act A man's Love is his Will his Heart himself And if God have our Love he hath our selves and our all So that God cannot but Love the Soul that truly Loveth him as God. But here are some Doubts to be resolved Q. 1. What if the same Soul have Love and Sin mixed or sincere Love in a degree that is sinfully defective and so is consistent with something of its contrary God must hate that Sin How then can he Love that Soul Ans Remember still that Diversity is only in us and not in God Therefore God's Will is related and denominated towards us just as its object is All that is Good in us God Loveth All that is Evil in us he hateth Where Goodness is predominant there God's Love is predominant or greatest from this Relation and Connotation Where Sin is predominant God's aversation displicency or hatred is the chief And we may well expect that the effects be answerable Obj. But we are beloved as Elect before Conversion Ans That was answered before That is God from Eternity purposed to make us Good and Amiable and Happy if you will call that as you may his Love. Obj. But we are beloved in Christ for his Righteousness and Goodness and not for our own Ans The latter is false The former is thus true For the Merits of Christ's Righteousness and Goodness God will pardon our sins and make us Good Holy and Happy and will Love us as the Holy Members of his Son that is both as Related to him and as Holy. Obj. But if God must needs Love sincere imperfect Lovers of him as such with a predominant Love which will not damn them then sin might have been pardoned without Christ's death and the sinner be loved without his Righteousness if he had but sincerely loved God. Ans The supposition is false that a sinner could have Loved God without Pardon and the Spirit purchased by the Death and Righteousness of Christ God perfectly Loveth the perfected Souls in Glory for their own holy perfection But they never attained it but by Christ And God Loveth us here according to the measure of our Love to him But no man can thus Love him till his sin be pardoned for which he was deprived of the Spirit which must kindle Love. And imperfect Love is ever joyned with imperfect Pardon whatever some falsly say to the contrary I mean that Love which is sinfully imperfect Quest 2. Doth not God's Loving us make us Happy And if so it must make us Holy. And then none that he Loveth will fall away from him Whereas the fallen Angels and Adam Loved him and yet fell from him How then were they beloved by him Ans I before told you that God's Will or Love is first Efficient causing Good and then Final being pleased in the Good that is caused God's Efficient Will or Love doth so far make men Holy and Happy as they are such even efficiently But God's Will or Love as it is our Causa finalis and the termiting Object of our Love and is pleased in us and approveth us is not the Efficient Cause of our Holiness and Happiness but the objective and perfect constitutive Cause Now you must further note that God's Benevolent Efficient Will or Love doth give men various degrees of Holiness To Adam in Innocency he gave but such a degree and upon such terms as he could lose and cast away which he did But to the blessed in Glory he giveth that which they shall never lose These degrees are from God's Efficient Love or Will which therefore causeth some to persevere when it left Adam to himself to stand or fall But it is not God's Final Love of Complacency as such that causeth our perseverance For Adam had this Love as long as he Loved God and stood and he after lost it so that it is not that Final Complacency which is the Terminus of our Holiness and Constitutive Cause of our Happiness which alone will secure the perpetuity of either of them Obj. Thus you make God mutable in his Love as Loving Adam more before his fall than after Ans I told you Loving and not Loving the Creature are no changes in God but in the Creature It is Man that is mutable and not God. It is only the Relation of God's Will to the Creature as varying in it self and the extrinsick denomination by connotation of a changed Object which is changed as to God. As the Sun is not changed when you wink and when you open your Eyes Nor a Pillar changed when your motion sets it sometimes on your right hand and sometimes on your left 5. Lastly It must be noted as included in the Text That our own Loving God is not the only or total notion of our end perfection or felicity but to be Known and Loved by God is the other part which must be taken in to make up the total notion of our end In our Love God is considered as the Object But in God's Complacential Love to us
he is considered as Active and his Love as an Act and Man as the Object But yet not as an Object of Efficiency but of Approbation and a Pleased Will or Delight Here then the great difficulty is in resolving which of these is the highest perfective notion of man's felicity perfection or ultimate end Our Love to God or God's Love to us Ans It is mutual Love and Union which is the true and compleat notion of our End And to compare God's Love and ours as the parts and tell which is the final principal part or notion is not easy nor absolutely necessary But I conceive 1. That our Love to God is Objectively or as to the Object of it infinitely more excellent than Gods Love to us as to the Object Which is but to say that God is Infinitely better than man God loveth man who is a worm But we Love God who is perfect goodness 2. Gods Love to us as to the Agent and the Act ex parte Agentis is Infinitely more excellent than our Love to him For it is Gods Essential will which loveth us and it is the will of a worm that loveth God. 3. That mans Felicity as such is not the chief notion of his ultimate end But he must Love God as God better than his own Felicity as such or better than God as our Felicity 4. That mans true ultimate end containeth these five inadequate conceptions 1. The lowest notion or part of it is our own holiness and felicity 2. The next notion of it is the perfection of the Church and Universe to which we contribute and which we must value above our own Including the Glory of Christs Humanity 3. The third notion is the Glory or Lustre of Gods perfections as they shine forth in us and all his perfected glorious works 4. The fourth notion is Gods own Essential goodness as the Object of our Knowledge Love and Praise 5. The fifth and highest notion is the Active Love or Complacency of Gods fulfilled Will in us and in the whole Creation So that the Pleasing of Gods will is the highest notion of mans ultimate end Though all these five are necessarily contained in it Chap. III. Doct. 3. Therefore Knowledge is to be valued sought and used as it tendeth to our Love of God. THis third Doctrine is much of the Scope of the Text All means are for their end So far as Knowledge is a means of love it must needs hence have the measure of its worth and we the motives of our desires of it and the direction for our using of it 1. All knowledge that kindleth not the love of God in us is so narrow and small that it deserveth not indeed the name of Knowledge For the necessary things that such a person is Ignorant of are a thousand times more or greater than that little which he knoweth For 1. What is it that he is Ignorant of 1. He hath no sound and real Knowledge of God. For if he knew God truly he could not but love him Goodness is so naturally the Object of the will that if men well knew the infinite Good they must needs love him However there is a partial knowledge that is separable from sincere Love. 2. He that knoweth not and loveth not God neither knoweth nor loveth any creature truly and effectually either as it is of God or Through him or To him Either as it beareth the Impress of the Glorious Efficient or as it is ordered to its end by the most wise Director or as it is a means to lead up Souls to God or to Glorify and please him no nor to make man truly happy And can he be said indeed to know any Creature that knoweth it not in any of these respects that knoweth neither its Original Order or Use Doth a Dog or a Goose know a Book of Philosophy because he looketh on it and seeth the bulk Doth he know a Clock or Watch who knoweth no more of it but that it hath such Parts and Shapes made of Iron and Brass It is most evident that an unholy person knoweth nothing that is no one Being though he may know aliquid de re aliqua something of some Being For he that knoweth not the Nature Order or Use and End of a Being cannot properly be said to know that Being but only secundum quid or some Accidents of it or to have a general Knowledge that it is a Substance or a something he knoweth not what As an Epicurean can call all things compacted Atomes or Matter and Motion An ungodly man is just like one that studieth the art of a Scrivener or Printer to make the Letters and place them by art but never learnt to read or know the signification of the Letters which he maketh or composeth Or if any may be said to have a Speculative knowledge of all this in the Creature the Nature Order and Use yet he is without the true Practical Knowledge which is it that only is Knowledge indeed and of use and benefit to man. For to be able to speak or write a true Proposition about God or the Creature is not properly to know God or the Creature but to know names and words concerning them It is but a Logical Knowledge of Notions and not the knowledge of the Thing it self to be able to say and know that this or that concerning it is true or false Nothing more deceiveth mankind both in point of Learning and of Religion and Salvation than mistaking the Organical or Logical Knowledge of second Notions Words Propositions Inferences and Methods for the Real Knowledge of the Things themselves And thinking that they know a thing because they know what to say of it He knoweth not a Countrey who is only able by the Map or hear-say to describe it He knoweth not Motion Light Heat Cold Sweet Bitter that knoweth no more than to give a true definition of it And as this is true of things sensible which must themselves be perceived first by sense so is it of things spiritual which must themselves be perceived first by Intellection and not only the notions and definitions of them He that doth not intuitively or by internal immediate perception know what it is to Understand to Remember to Will and Nill to Love and Hate and consequently to be able to do these acts doth not know what a man is or what a Reasonable Soul is and what an Intellectual Spirit is though he could were it possible without these learn the Definition of a Man a Soul a Spirit A definition or word of art spoken by a Parrot or a madman proveth not that he knoweth the thing Practical objects are not truly known without a Practical Knowledge of them He knoweth not what meat is that knoweth not that it must be eaten and how to eat it He only knoweth his clothing that knoweth how to put it on He only knoweth a Pen a Gun or other instrument that knoweth how
Salvation even for all the Poor and Vulgar wits which is so much too hard for our most subtile Students 2. And Christianity is as suitable to us in the Benefit and Sweetness of it What a happy Religion is it that employeth men in nothing but receiving good to themselves and in doing good to themselves and others Whose work is only the Receiving and Improving of Gods Mercies and Loving and Delighting in all that is good rejoycing in the tasts of Gods Love on Earth and in the Hopes of perfect Felicity Love and Joy for ever Is not this a sweeter life than tiresom unprofitable Speculations O then how unexcuseable are our contemners of Religion that live in wilful Ignorance and ungodliness and think this easy and sweet Religion to be a tedious and intolerable thing What impudent Calumniators and Blasphemers are they of Christ and Holiness who deride and revile this sweet and easy way to life as if it were a slavery and an irksom toil unnecessary to our Salvation and unfit for a freeman or at least a Gentleman or a Servant of the flesh and world to practise If Christ had set you but such a task as Aristotle or Plato did to their disciples so many notions and so many Curiosities to learn If he had written for you as many Books as Chrysippus did If he had made necessary to your Salvation all the arbitrary notions of Lullius all the Fanatick conceits of Campanella and all the dreaming Hypotheses of Cartesius and all the Astronomical Cosmographical difficulties of Ptolomy Tycho-Brache Copernicus and Galilaeus and all the Chronological difficulties handled by Eusebius Scaliger Functius Capellus Petavius c. And all the curiosities in Philosophy and Theology of Cajetane Scotus Ockam Gabriel c. Then you might have had some excuse for your aversation But to accuse and refuse and reproach so Compendious so Easie so Sweet so Necessary a Doctrine and Religion as that which is brought and taught by Christ this is an ingratitude that hath no excuse unless Sensuality and Malignant enmity may pass for an excuse Doth Christ deliver you from the maze of Imaginary Curiosities and from the burdens of worldly wisdom called Philosophy and of Pharisaical Traditions and Jewish Ceremonies and make you a light burden an easy Yoak and Commandments that are not grievous and after all this must he be requited with Rejection and Reproach and your Burdens and Snares be taken for more tolerable than your deliverance You make a double forfeiture of Salvation who are so unwilling to be saved Be thankful O Christians to your heavenly Master for tracing you out so plain and sweet a way Be thankful that he hath cut short those tiresom studies by which your task-masters would confound you under pretence of making you like Gods in some more subtile and sublime Speculations than Vulgar wits can reach Now all that are willing may be Religious and be saved It is not confined to men of learning The way is so sweet as sheweth it suitable to the end It is but Believe Gods Love and Promises of Salvation by Christ till you are filled with Love and its delights and live in the pleasures of Gratitude and Holiness and in the Joyful hopes of endless Glory And is not this an easy Yoak Saith our Heavenly Poet Mr. G. Herbert in his Poem called Divinity p. 127. As men for fear the Stars should Sleep and Nod And trip at night have Spheres supply'd As if a Star were duller than a clod Which knows his way without a guide Just so the other Heaven they also serve Divinities transcendent Sky Which with the Edge of wit they Cut and Carve Reason Triumphs and Faith lies by But all his Doctrine which he taught and gave Was clear as heav'n from whence it came At least those Beams of truth which only save Surpass in Brightness any Flame Love God and Love your Neighbours watch and pray Do as you would be done unto O dark instructions even as dark as day Who can these Gordian Knots undo Chap. 10. The sixth Inference How little reason ungodly men have to be proud of their Learning or of any sort of Knowledge or Wisdom whatsoever AS the ancient Gnosticks being puffed up with their corrupt Platonick Speculations lookt down with contempt upon ordinary Christians as silly ignorants in comparison of them and yet had not wisdom enough to preserve them from the Lusts and Pollutions of the world Even so is it with abundance of the worldly Clergy and ungodly Scholars in this age They think their Learning setteth them many degrees above the Vulgar and giveth them right to be Reverenced as the Oracles or Rabbies of the World When yet poor Souls They have not learned by all their Reading Studies and Disputings to Love God and Holiness better than the Riches and Preferments of the World. And some of them not better than a Cup of strong drink or than the brutish pleasures of Sense and Flesh It is a pitiful thing to see the Pulpit made a Stage for the ostentation of this self-shaming self-condemning Pride and Folly For a man under pretence of serving God and helping other men to Heaven to make it his errand to tell the hearers that he is a very Wise and Learned man who hath not wit enough to choose a holy humble life nor to make sure of Heaven or to save his Soul nor perhaps to keep out of the Tavern or Ale-house the next week nor the same day to forbear the venting of his worldly carnal mind What is such Learning but a Game of Imagination in which the Phantasie sports it self with names and notions or worse the materials which are used in the service of sin the fuel of pride the blinder and deceiver of such as were too ignorant before being a meer shadow and name of Knowledge What good will it do a man tormented with the Gout or Stone or by miserable poverty to know the names of various herbs or to read the titles of the Apothecaries boxes or to read on a sign-post Here is a good ordinary And what good will it do a carnal unsanctified Soul that must be in Hell for ever to know the Hebrew roots or points or to discourse of Cartesius his materia subtilis globuli aetherei c. Or of Epicurus and Gassendus Atomes or to look on the Planets in Galileus Glasses while he casteth away all his hopes of Heaven by his unbelief and his preferring the pleasures of the flesh Will it comfort a man that is cast out of Gods presence and condemned to utter darkness to remember that he was once a good Mathematician or Logician or Musician or that he had wit to get riches and preferments in the world and to climb up to the heighth of honour and dominion It is a pitiful thing to hear a man boast of his wit while he is madly rejecting the only felicity forsaking God esteeming vanity and damning his Soul
The Lord deliver us from such wit and learning Is it not enough to refuse Heaven and choose Hell in the certain causes to lose the only day of their hopes and in the midst of light to be incomparably worse than mad but they must needs be accounted wise and learned in all this self-destroying folly As if like the Physician who boasted that he killed men according to the Rules of art it were the heighth of their ambition to go learnedly to Hell and with Reverend gravity and wit to live here like brutes and hereafter with Devils for evermore Chap. 11. The seventh Inference Why the ungodly world hateth Holiness and not Learning FRom my very Child-hood when I was first sensible of the concernments of mens Souls I was possest with some admiration to find that every where the Religious godly sort of people who did but exercise a serious care of their own and other mens Salvation were made the wonder and obloquy of the world Especially of the most vitious and flagitious men so that they that professed the same Articles of faith the same Commandments of God to be their Law and the same Petitions of the Lords Prayer to be their desire and so professed the same Religion did every where revile those that did endeavour to live according to that same profession and to seem to be in good sadness in what they said I thought that this was impudent Hypocrisie in the ungodly worldly sort of men To take them for the most intolerable persons in the Land who are but serious in their own Religion and do but endeavour to perform what all their Enemies also vow'd and promised If religion be bad and our faith be not true why do these men profess it If it be true and good why do they hate and revile them that would live in the serious practice of it if they will not practise it themselves But we must not expect Reason when sin and sensuality have made men unreasonable But I must profess that since I observed the course of the world and the concord of the Word and Providences of God I took it for a notable proof of mans fall and of the verity of the Scripture and the supernatural Original of true Sanctification to find such an universal enmity between the holy and the serpentine seed and to find Cain and Abels case so ordinarily exemplified and him that is born after the Flesh to persecute him that is born after the Spirit And methinks to this day it is a great and visible help for the confirmation of our Christian Faith. But that which is much Remarkable in it is that nothing else in the world except the Crossing of mens carnal interest doth meet with any such universal enmity A man may be as learned as he can and no man hate him for it If he excel all others all men will praise him and proclaim his excellency He may be an excellent Linguist an excellent Philosopher an excellent Physician an excellent Logician an excellent Orator and all commend him Among Musicians Architects Souldiers Seamen and all Arts and Sciences men value prefer and praise the best Yea even Speculative Theology such wits as the Schoolmen and those that are called great Divines are honoured by all and meet as such with little Enmity Persecution or Obloquy in the world Though I know that even a Galilaeus a Campanella and many such have suffered by the Roman Inquisitors that was not so much in enmity to their Speculations or Opinions as through a fear lest new Philosophical notions should unsettle mens minds and open the way to new opinions in Theology and so prove injurious to the Kingdom and Interest of Rome I know also that Demosthenes Cicero Seneca Lucan and many other learned men have died by the hands or power of Tyrants But that was not for their Learning but for their opposition to those Tyrants Wills and Interests And I know that some Religious men have suffered for their Sins and Follies and some for their medling too much with secular affairs as the Councellours of Princes as Functius Justus Jonas and many others But yet no Parts no Excellency no Skill or Learning is hated commonly but honoured in the World no not Theological Learning save only this practical Godliness and Religion and the Principles of it which only rendereth men amiable to God through Christ and saveth mens Souls To know and love God and live as those that know and love him to seek first his Kingdom and the Righteousness thereof to walk circumspectly in a holy and heavenly Conversation and studiously to obey the Laws of God this which must save us this which God loveth and the Devil hateth is hated also by all his Children for the same malignity hath the same effect But methinks this should teach all considering men to perceive what Knowledge it is that is best and most desirable to all that love their happiness Sure this sort of Learning Wit and Art which the Devil and the malignant World do no more dispraise oppose and persecute though as it is sanctified to higher ends it be good yet of it self is comparatively no very excellent and amiable thing I know Satan laboureth to keep out Learning it self that is truly such from the world because he is the Prince and Promoter of darkness and the Enemy of all useful light And lower Knowledge is some help to higher and speculative Theology may prepare for practical and the most gross and brutish ignorance best serveth the Devils designs and turn And even in Heathen Rome the Arts prepared men for the Gospel and Learning in the Church Reformers hath ever been a great help and furtherance of Reformation But yet if you stop in Learning and Speculation and take it as for it self alone and not as a means to holiness of Heart and Life it is as nothing It is Paul's express resolution of the case that if we have all Knowledge without this holy Love we are nothing but as sounding Brass or a tinkling Cymbal 1 Cor. 13. But surely there is some special excellency in this holy knowledge and Love and Obedience which the Devil and the malignant World so hate in high and low in rich and poor in Kindred Neighbours Strangers or any where they meet with it It is not for nothing This is the Image of God this is it that is contrary to their carnal Minds and to their fleshly Lusts and sinful Pleasures This tells them what they must be and do or be undone for ever which they cannot abide to be or do Let us therefore be somewhat the wiser for this discovery of the mind of the Devil and all his Instruments I will love and honour all Natural Artificial acquired Excellencies in Philology Philosophy and the rest As these expose not men to the Worlds Obloquy so neither unto mine or any sober mans In their low places they are good and may be used to a greater good
But let that holy knowledge and love be mine which God most loveth and the World most hateth and costeth us dearest upon Earth but hath the blessed end of a Heavenly Reward Chap. XII The eighth Inference What is the work of a faithful Preacher and how it is to be done IF that Knowledge which kindleth in us the Love of God be the only saving Knowledge then this is it that Ministers must principally preach up and promote Could we make all our hearers never so learned that will not save their Souls But if we could make them holy and kindle in them the love of God and goodness they should certainly be saved The holy practical Preacher therefore is the best Preacher because the holy practical Christian is the best and only true Christian We work under Christ and therefore must carry on the same work on Souls which Christ came into the World to carry on All our Sermons must be fitted to change mens Hearts from Carnal into Spiritual and to kindle in them the love of God. When this is well done they have learnt what we were sent to teach them and when this is perfect they are in Heaven Those Preachers that are Enemies to the godliest of the people and would make their Hearers take them all for Hypocrites that go any further than obedience to their Pastors in Church-forms and Orders Observances and Ceremonies and a civil Life are the great Enemies of Christ his Spirit his Gospel and the Peoples Souls and the Eminent Servants of the Devil in his malignant War against them all All that Knowledge and all those Formalities which are set up instead of divine Love and holy Living are but so many cheats to deceive poor Souls till time be past and their convictions come to late I confess that ignorance is the calamity of our times and people perish for lack of Knowledge And that the Heart be without Knowledge it is not good And lamentable ignorance is too visible in a great degree among the religious sort themselves as their manifold differences and errours too openly proclaim And therefore to Build up men in Knowledge is much of the Ministerial work But what Knowledge must it be Not dead Opinions or uneffectual Notions or such Knowledge as tendeth but to teach men to talk and make them pass for men of parts But it is the Knowledge of God and our Redeemer the Knowledge of Christ Crucified by which we Crucifie the Flesh with all its Affections and Lusts And by which the World is Crucified to us and we to it If the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost in whom the God of this World hath blinded their Eyes when there is no truth and mercy and knowledge of God in the Land no wonder if such a Land be clad in mourning When men have not so much Knowledge of the evil of sin and their own sin and misery and of the need and worth of Christ of the truth of Gods Word of the vanity of the World of the greatness wisdom and goodness of God and of certain most desirable Glory of Heaven as shall humble their Souls and turn them from the World to God and absolutely deliver them up to Christ and mortifie fleshly Lusts and overcome temptations and renew them unto the Love of God and goodness and set their Hearts and Hopes on Heaven This is the ignorance that is mens damnation And the contrary effectual Knowledge is it which saveth Souls Chap. XIII The ninth Inference Those that Know God so far as to Love him above all may have comfort notwithstanding their remaining ignorance A Great number of upright hearted Christians who Love God sincerely and obey him faithfully are yet under so great want of further knowledge as is indeed a great dishonour to them and a hinderance of them in their duty and comfort and to many a great discouragement And O that we knew how to cure this imperfection that Ignorance might not feed so many Errours and cause so many fractions and disturbances in the Church and so many sinful miscarriages in its members But yet we must conclude that the person that hath knowledge enough to renew his Soul to the Love of God shall be loved by him and shall never perish and therefore may have just comfort under all the imperfections of his knowledge More wisdom might make him a better and more useful Christian But while he is a Christian indeed he may rejoyce in God. I blame not such for complaining of the dulness of their Understandings the badness of their Memories their little profiting by the means of Grace I should blame them if they did not complain of these And I think their case far more dangerous to the Church and to themselves who have as much ignorance and know it not but proudly glory in the wisdom which they have not But many a thousand Christians that have little of the Notional and Organical part of Knowledge have powerful apprehensions of the Power Wisdom and Love of God and of the great Mercy of Redemption and of the Evil of Sin the Worth of Holiness and the Certainty and Weight of the Heavenly Glory And by how much these men love God and Holiness more than the more Learned that have less Grace by so much they are more beloved of God and accounted wiser by the God of wisdom and therefore may rejoice in the greatness of their felicity I would have none so weak as to under-value any real useful Learning But if Pharisees will cry out against unlearned godly Christians These people know not the Law and are accursed Remember the Thanksgiving of your Lord I thank thee Father Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to Babes And as the reputed foolishness of God that is of Gods Evangelical Mysteries will shortly prove wiser than all the reputed wisdom of men so he that hath wisdom enough to love God and be saved shall quickly be in that World of light where he shall know more than all the Doctors and subtile disputers upon Earth and more in a moment than all the Books of men can teach him or all their Authors did ever here know Jer. 9.23 24. Thus saith the Lord Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom neither let the mighty man glory in his might let not the rich man glory in his riches But let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness and righteousness in the Earth For in these things do I delight saith the Lord. Chap. XIV Questions and Objections answered Quest 1. IF so much knowledge will save a man as helpeth him to love God as God may not Heathens or Infidels at least be saved For they know that there is one God who is Infinitely Good and Perfect and more amiable than all the World and the
great Benefactor of man and of the whole Creation So that there is no goodness but what is in him or from him and through him and finally to him And mans will is made to love apprehended good and followeth the last practical act of the Intellect at least where there is no Competitor but omnimoda ratio boni And all men know that God is not only Best in himself but Good yea Best to them because that all they have is from him And they have daily Experience of pardoning Grace contrary to their Commerit It seemeth therefore that they may love God as God. Ans 1. To cause a man to Love God as God there is necessary both Objective Revelation of God's Amiableness and such Subjective Grace which consisteth in a right Disposition of the Soul. 2. Objective Revelation is considered as sufficient either to well disposed or to an ill disposed Soul. 3. This Right disposition consisteth both in the abatement of mens Inclinations to contrary sensual objects and in the inclining them to that which is Divine and Spiritual And now I answer 1. It cannot be denied but that so much of God's Amiableness or Goodness is revealed to Infidels that have not the Gospel by the means mentioned in the Objection as is sufficient to bring men under an obligation to love God as God and to leave them unexcusable that do not 2. Therefore to such the Impossibility is not Physical but Moral 3. And there is in that objective Revelation so much sufficiency as that if the Soul it self were sanctified and well disposed it might love God upon such revelation Which Amyraldus hath largely proved 4. But to an unholy and undisposed Soul no objective Revelation is sufficient without the Spirits help and operations 5. Only the Spirit of Christ the Mediator as given by and from him doth thus operate on Souls as savingly to renew them 6. Whether ever the Spirit of Christ doth thus operate on any that hear not of Christs Incarnation must be known either by the Scripture or by experience By the Scripture I am not able to prove the Universal Negative though it 's easy to prove sanctification incomparably more common in the Church than on those without if any there have it The case of Infants and of the Churches and the World before Christs Incarnation must here come into consideration 2. And by experience no man can prove the Negative because no man hath experience what is in the Hearts of all the persons in the World. Q. 2. May a Papist or an Heretick by his knowledge be a lover of God as God Ans What is said to the former question is here to be reviewed And further 1. A Papist and such Heretick as positively holdeth all the essentials of Christianity and seeth not the opposition of his false opinions hereto and holdeth Christianity more practically than those false opinions may be saved in that state for he is a Lover of God But no other Papists or Hereticks can be saved but by a true conversion 2. There is a sufficiency in the Doctrine of Christianity which they hold to save them as to Objective Sufficiency And that God giveth not subjective Grace of Sanctification to any such notwithstanding their errours is a thing that no man can prove nor any sober charitable Christian easily believe And experience of the piety of many maketh it utterly improbable though we know not certainly the Heart of another There are many murmurings against me in this City behind my back for never one man of them to my remembrance to this day did ever use any charitable endeavour to my face to convince me of my supposed errour as one that holds that a Papist may be saved yea that we are not certain that none in the World are saved besides Christians and the Sectaries whisper me to one another to be like Origen a person in these dangerous opinions forsaken of God in comparison of them What really I assert about these Questions I have here briefly hinted but more largely opened in my Catholick Theology But I will confess that I find no inclination in my Soul to desire that their doctrine may prove true who hide the Glorified love of God and would contract his Mercy and Mans Salvation into so narrow a Room as to make it hardly discernable by man and the Church to be next to no Church and a Saviour to save so very few as seem scarce considerable among the rest that are left remediless And who would make us believe that the way appointed to bring men to the Love of God is to believe that he hath elected that particular person and left almost all the World many score or hundreds to one unredeemed and without any promise or possibility of Salvation I am sure that the covenant of Innocency is ceased And I am sure that all the World was brought under a Law of Grace made after the fall to Adam and Noe And that this Law is still in force to those that have not the more perfect edition in the Gospel And that Christ came not to bring the World that never hear of him nor can do into a worse condition than Jews and Gentiles were in before nor hath he repealed that Law of Grace which he before made them nor hath God changed that Gracious Name which he proclaimed even to Moses Exod. 34.6 7. And I am sure that Abraham the Father of the Faithful conjectured once even when God told him that Sodom was ripe for destruction that yet there might be fifty Righteous persons in it By which we may conjecture what he thought of all the World And I know that in every Nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him And that he that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and therefore without Faith none can please God And that men shall be judged by that same Law which they were under and obliged by whatever it be And they that have sinned under the Law of Moses shall be judged by it And they that sinned without that Law shall be judged without it And I know that God is LOVE it self and Infinitely Good and will shew us his goodness in such Glorious Effects to all eternity as shall satisfy us and fill us with Joyful praise And as for the Papists I know that they are seduced by a worldly Clergy and that by consequence many of the Errours in that Church do subvert the Fundamentals And so do many Errors of the Antinomians and others among us that are taken for religious persons yea and as notoriously as any Doctrines of the Popish Councils do But I know that as a Logical Faith or Orthodoxness which consisteth in holding right Notions and Words deceiveth thousands that have no sound belief of the things themselves expressed by these words So also Logical errors about Words Notions and Sentences may
yet the true ultimate end of all things is God himself And the love of God is the highest love And Gods Justice is not without that love of himself and tendeth to that good which he is capable of receiving which is but the fulfilling or complacency of his own will which is but improperly called his Receiving 2. And we little know how many in another World or in the renewed Earth are to be profited by his Justice on the damned as Angels and Men are by his Justice on the Devils 1. LOVE is the Life of Religion and of the Soul and of the Church And what can be a just pretence for any to destroy or oppose the very Life of Religion the Life of Souls and the Life of the Church of Christ Physick Blood-letting and Dismembring may be used for Life But to take away Life except necessarily for a Good that is better than that life is Murder And what is it that is better than the Life of Religion in all matters of Religion Or than the life of the Church in all Church affairs Or than the life of mens Souls in all matters of Soul concernment 2. LOVE is the great command and summary of all the Law And what can be a just pretence for breaking the greatest command yea and the whole Law 3. LOVE is Gods Image and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God who is LOVE and God in him And what can be a pretence sufficient for destroying the Image of God which is called by his name 4. There is nothing in man that God himself loveth better than our love And therefore nothing that as better can be set against it And yet alas what enmity is used in the World against the Love of God and Man and many things alledged as pretences to justify it Let us consider of some few of them 1. The great Tyrants of the World such as in several ages have been the Plagues of their own and neighbour Nations care not what havock they make of Religion and of mens lives by Bloody Wars and Cruel Persecutions destroying many thousands and undoing far more thousands of the Country Families where their armies come and sacrificing the lives of the best of their subjects by butcheries or flames And what is the pretence for all this Perhaps they would be Lords of more of the World and would have larger Kingdoms Or more honour Perhaps some Prince hath spoken a hard word of them or done them some wrong Perhaps some subjects believe not as they bid them believe or forbear not to worship God in a manner which they forbid them Perhaps Daniel will not give over praying for a time or the Apostles will not give over preaching or the three Confessors will not fall down to the Golden Image and so Nebuchadnezzar or the other Rulers seem despised And their wills and honour are an Interest that with them seemeth to warrant all this But how long will it seem so I had rather any friend of mine had the Sins of a Thief or Drunkard or the most infamous Sinner among us to answer for than the Sins of a Bloody Alexander Caesar or Tamerlane 2. The Roman Clergy set up Inquisitions force men by cruelties to submit to their Church Keys whose very nature is to be used without force and they silence yea torment the faithful Ministers of Christ and have murdered thousands of his faithful people raised rebellions against Princes and Wars in Kingdoms and taught men to hate Gods Servants as Hereticks Schismaticks Rebels Factious and what not And what pretence must justify all this Why the Interest of the Pope and Clergy called in ignorance or craft by the name of the Holy Church Religion Unity and such other honourable name But must their Church live on Blood and holy Blood And be built or preserved by the destruction of Christs Church Must their doctrine be kept up by silencing faithful Ministers and their worship by destroying or undoing the true worshippers of Christ Are all these precious things which die with Love no better than to be sacrificed to the Clergies Pride and Worldly lusts 3. Among many Schismaticks and Sectaries that are not miscalled so but are such indeed their Discipline consisteth in separating from most other Christians as too bad and that is too unlovely to be of their Communion and their Preaching is much to make those seem bad that is unlovely that are not of their way and their worship is much such as relisheth of the same envy and strife to add affliction or reproaches to their Brethren or to draw the people from the Love of others unto them And their ordinary talk is back-biting others for things that they understand not and reporting any lie that is brought them and telling the hearers something of this Minister or that person or the other that is unlovely as if Satan had hired them to Preach down Love and prate and pray down Love and all this in the name of Christ And the third chapter of James is harder than Hebrew to them they do not understand it but though they tear it not out of the Bible they leave it out of the Law in their Hearts as much as the Papists leave the Second Commandment out of their Books And it is one of the marks of a good man among them to talk against other parties and make others odious to set up them And what are the Pretences for all this Why Truth and Holiness 1. Others have not the Truth which they have And 2. Others are not against the same Doctrines and Ceremonies and Bishops and Church Orders and ways of worship which they are against and therefore are ungodly antichristian or men of no Religion But Truth seldom dwelleth with the Enemies of Love and Peace They that are Strangers and Enemies to it indeed do often cry it up and cry down those as Enemies to it that possess it The wisdom that hath bitter envying and heart-strife is from beneath and is earthly sensual and devilish I admonish all that care for their Salvation that they set up nothing upon love killing terms If you are Christs disciples you are taught of God to love each other you are taught it as Christs last and great Commandment You are taught it by the wonderful example of his life and specially Joh. 13.14 By his washing hiâ— disciples feet You are taught it by the Holy Ghosts uniting the hearts of the disciples and making them by Charity to live as in Community Acts 3. and 4. You are taught it by the Effective operation of the Spirit on your own hearts The new nature that is in you inclineth you to it And will you now pretend the necessity of your own Interest Reputation your Canons and things indifferent your little Church orders of your own making yea or the positive institutions of Christ himself as to the present exercise against this Love Hath Christ commanded you any thing before it except the
your Religion and the work of your whole lives to possess your minds with the liveliest sense of the infinite goodness and amiableness of God and hereby to live in the constant exercise of Love. II. And though some men hinder love by an over fearful questioning whether they have it or not and spend that time in doubting and complaining that they have it not which they should spend in exciting and exercising it yet reason requireth us to take heed lest a carnal mind deceive us with any counterfeits of holy love Of which having written more in my Christian Directory I shall here give you but these brief instructions following It is here of grand importance I. To have a true conception of God as he must be loved II. And then to know practically how it is that love must be exercised towards him I. GOD must be conceived of at once both 1. As in his essence 2. And as in his relations to the world and to our selves 3. And as in his works And those that will separate these and while they fix only on one of them leave out the other do not indeed love God as God as he must be loved 1. To think in general that there is an infinite eternal Spirit of Life Light and Love and not to think of him as related to the world as its Creator Preserver and Governor nor as related to us and to mankind as our Owner Ruler and Benefactor is not to think of him as a God to us or to any but himself And a love thus exercised cannot be true saving love 2. And because his relations to us result from his works either which he hath done already or which he will do hereafter therefore without the knowledge of his works and their goodness we cannot truly know and love God in his relations to us 3. And yet when we know his works we know but the medium or that in which he himself is made known to us And if by them we come not to know him and love him in his perfect Essence it is not God that we know and love And if we knew him only as Related to us and the World as that he is our Creator Owner Mover Ruler and Benefactor and yet know not what he is in his essence that is thus related viz that he is the Perfect First Being Life Wisdom and Love this were not truly to know and love him as he is God. These conceptions therefore must be conjunct God is not here known to us but by the revelation of his works and word nor can we conceive of him but by the similitude of some of his works not that we must think that he is just such as they or picture him like a creature for he is infinitely above them all but yet it is certain that he hath made some impressions of his perfections upon his works and on some of them so clear as that they are called his Image Nothing is known to us but either 1. By sense immediately perceiving things external and representing them to the phantasie and intellect or 2. By the Intellects own conceiving of other things by the similitude of things sensed 3. Or by immediate internal Intuition or Sensation of the acts of the Soul in it self 4. Or by reasons collection of the nature of other things from the similitude and effect of such perceived operations I. By the external Senses we perceive all external sensed things and we imagine and know them as so perceived II. By the Intellection of these we conceive of other things as like them forming Universal conceptions and applying them to such individuals as are beyond the reach of our Senses As we think of Men Trees Beasts Fishes c. in the Indies as like those which we have seen and of sounds there as like those which we have heard and of the taste of Fruits by the similitude of such as we have tasted c. III. How Sense it self Intellection it self Volition it self and internal Affections are perceived is no small controversie among Philosophers That we do perceive them by the great wisdom and goodness of our Creator we are sure but how we do it we can scarce describe as knowing it better by the experience of that perception it self than by a knowledge of the Causes and Nature of the acts It is most commonly said that the Intellect knoweth its own acts by Reflection or as Ockam by Intuition and that it knoweth what Sense is and what Volition by some Species or Image of them in the phantasie which it beholdeth But such words give no man a true knowledge of the thing enquired of unless withal he read the solution experimentally in his own Soul. I know not what the meaning of a Reflect act is Is it the same act which is called Direct and Reflect And doth the Intellect know that it knoweth by the very same act by which it knoweth other things If so why is it called Reflect and what is that reflection But the contrary is commonly said that divers objects make divers acts and therefore to know e.g. that this is Paper and to know that I know this are two acts and the latter is a reflecting of the former But the former act is gone and nothing in the instant that it is done and therefore is in it self no intelligible object of a reflecting act But as remembred it may be known or rather that remembring is knowing what is past by a marvellous retention of some impress of it which no man can well comprehend so as to give an account of it And why may not the same memory which retaineth the unexpressible Record of an Act past an hour or many years ago be also the Book where the Intellect readeth its own Act as past immediately in the foregoing instant But sure this is not the first knowing that we know Before the act of memory the Intellect immediately perceiveth its own particular acts And so doth the sense By one and the same act we see and perceive that we see and by one and the same act I think we know and know that we know and this by a consciousness or internal sense which is the immediate act of the Essence of the faculty And chuse whether you will say that such two objects may constitute one act Or whether you will say that the latter the act it self is not properly to be called an object For the various senses of the word object must be considered in the decision of that Mans Soul is Gods Image When God knoweth himself and his own knowledge and when he willeth or loveth himself and his own will or love here we must either say that himself his knowledge and will is not properly to be called an Object or else that the Object and the Act are purely the same without the least real difference but we name them differently as inadequate conceptions of one Being And why may it not be so
they love him not also as he is the Wise and Holy and Righteous Ruler of Mankind and as he requireth us to be holy and would make us holy and love not to please his Governing will they love him not as God with a saving love I have elsewhere mentioned the saying of Adrian after Pope in his Quodlib that an unholy person may not only love God as he is the glorious cause of the World and natural good but may rather choose to be himself annihilated and be no man than that there should be no God were it a thing that could be made the matter of his choice And indeed I dare not say that every man is holy who had rather be annihilated than one Kingdom should be annihilated when many Heathens would die to save their Countrey or their Prince much less dare I say that all shall be saved that had rather be annihilated than there should be no world or be no God But saith the foresaid Schoolman it is the love of God as our holy Governour and a love of his holy will and of our conformity thereto that is saving love II. And I fear that no small number do deceive themselves in thinking that they love Holiness as the Image of God in themselves and others when they understand not truly what Holiness is but take something for it that is not it Holiness is this Uniting love to God and Man and a desire of more perfect Union To love Holiness is to love this love it self to love all of God that is in the World and to desire that all men may be united in holy love to God and one another and live in his praise and the obedience of his will. But I fear too many take up some opinions that are stricter than other mens and call some things Sin which others do not and get a high esteem of some particular Church order and form of manner of worshiping God which is not of the essence or holiness and then they take themselves for a holy people and other men for prophane and loose and so they love their own Societies for this which they mistake for holiness and instead of that uniteing love which is holiness indeed they grow into a factious enmity to others reproaching them as rejoicing in their hurt as taking them for the enemies of God. 2. And as God must be loved in his Image on his servants so must he in his Image on his word Do you love the holy Laws of God as they express that holy Wisdom and Love which is his perfection Do you love them as they would rule the World in Holiness and bring mankind to true wisdom and mutual love Do you love this word as it would make you Wise and Holy and therefore love it most when you use it most in reading hearing meditation and practice surely to love the Wisdom and Holiness of Gods Laws and Promises is to love God in his Image there imprinted even in that Glass where he hath purposely shewed us that of himself which we must love 3. But no where is Gods Image so refulgent to us as in his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ In him therefore must God be loved Though we never saw him yet what he was even the holy Son of God separate from sinners the Gospel doth make known to us as also what wonderous love he hath manifested to lost mankind In him are all the treasures of Wisdom and Goodness both an example and a doctrine and law of wisdom holiness and peace he hath given to the World In this Gospel Faith seeth him yea seeth him as now Glorified in Heaven and made Head over all things to the Church the King of love the great high Priest of love the Teacher of love and the express Image of the Fathers person Are the thoughts of this glorious Image of God now pleasing to you and is the wisdom holiness and love of Christ now amiable to you in believing If so you Love God in his blessed Son. And as he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father so he that loveth the Son loveth the Father also 4. Yet further the glory of God will shine most clearly in the Celestial glorified Church containing Christ and all the blessed Angels and Saints who shall for ever see the glory of God and Love obey and praise him in perfect Unity Harmony and Fervency You see not this heavenly Society and Glory but the Gospel revealeth it and Faith believeth it Doth not this blessed Society and their holy work seem to you the most lovely in all the world Is it not pleasing to you to think in what perfect joy and concord they love and magnify God without all sinful ignorance disaffection dullness discord or any other culpable imperfection I ask not only whether your opinion will make you say that this Society and State is best but whether you do not so really esteem it as that it hath the pleasing desires of your Souls Would you not fain be one of them and be united to them and joyn in their perfect Love and Praise If so this is to Love God in that most glorious appearance where he will shew forth himself to man to be beloved But here true believers may be stopt with doubting because they are unwilling to die and till we die this glory is not seen But it 's one thing to love Heaven and God there manifested and another thing to love death which standeth in the way Nature teacheth us to loath death as death and to desire if it might be that this Cup might pass by us Though faith make it less dreadful because of the blessed State that followeth But he that loveth not blood-letting or Physick may love health It is not death but God and the heavenly perfection in glory which we are called to Love. What if you could come to this glory without dying as Henoch and Elias did would you not be willing to go thither 5. And he that loveth God in all these his appearances to man in his works and Image on his Saints in the wisdom holiness and goodness of his word in the wisdom love and holiness of his Son and in the perfection of his glory in the heavenly Society doth certainly also love him in the highest respect even as he is himself that blessed essence that perfect greatness Wisdom and Goodness or Life Light and Love which is the beginning and end of all things and the most amiable object of all illuminated minds and of every Sanctified will and of all our harmonious praise for ever For whatever become of that dispute whether we shall see Gods essence in itself as distinct from all created glory the word seeing being here ambiguous it is sure that we can even now have abstracting thoughts of the Essence of God as distinct from all creatures and our knowledge of him then will be far more perfect It should be most pleasant to every
drowsy knowledge or belief that God and Holiness are best may not be ordinarily kept out of act and consist with a prevailing habit of sensuality or love of forbidden pleasure in the will and with a privation of prevalent habitual love to God and Holiness I suppose with most such sinners this is the true case the understanding said lately It is best for thee to love God and live to him and deny thy lust And it oft forgetteth this while it still saith with sense that fleshly pleasure is desireable and at other times it saith Though God be best thou maist venture at the present on this pleasure and so le ts loose the corrupted will reserving a purpose to repent hereafter as apprehending most strongly at the present that just now sensual delight may be chosen though holiness will be best hereafter Obj. But if a habit will not prove that we sincerely love and prefer God how shall any man know that he loveth and preferreth him when the best oft sin and in the act of sin God is not actually preferred Ans 1. I told you that a habit of true love will prove sincerity though not a habit of true opinion or belief which is not brought into lively and ordinary act uneffectual faith may be habitual Yea such an uneffectual counterfeit half love which I before described to you may be habitual and yet neither act nor habit saving 2. The Sins of godly men are not prevalent absolutely against the being operation or effects of the love of God and Holiness For even when they sin these live and are predominant in all other things and in the main bent and course of life but only they prevail against some Degree of holy love perhaps both in the act and habit for such sins are not ungodliness but imperfection of godliness and the effects of that imperfection 3. When godly men fall into a great extraordinary sin it is not to be expected that they should comfortably discern the sincerity of their love to God either by that sin or in that sin but they may discern it 1. By the course of a godly life where the prevalency of the habit appeareth in the power and stream of acts and 2. By their Repentance for and abhorring and forsaking of that sin which stopt and darkened their love to God. And these two together viz A resolved course of living unto God and Repentance and Hatred of every sin which is against it and especially of greater sins will shew the sincerity and power of holy love Obj. But then one that sinneth daily e. g. by passion or too much love to the World or creatures and by omissions c. shall never be sure that he sincerely loveth God because this is a course of sin and he cannot have such assurance till he forsake it Ans One that ordinarily committeth gross and wilful sin that is such sin as he had rather keep than leave and as he would leave if he were but sincerely willing hath no predominant love of God at least in act and therefore can have no assurance of it But one that is ordinarily guilty of meer infirmities may at the same time know that the love of God doth rule both in his heart and life The Passion of fear or of anger or of sorrow may be inordinate and yet God loved best because the will hath so weak a power over them that a man that is guilty of them may truly say I would fain be delivered from them And some inordinate love of life health wealth friends honour may stand with a more prevailing love of God and the prevalency be well perceived But what greater actual sin as Noahs or Lots Drunkenness Davids Adultery and Murder Peters denial of Christ are or are not consistent with true love to God is a case that I have elsewhere largely handled and is unmeet for a short decision here Obj. But when I feel my heart desires and delights all cold to God and Holiness and too hot after fleshly worldly things may I not conclude that I love these better Ans Sensible near things may have much more of the passionate part of our love our desires and delights and yet not be best loved by us For God and Things Spiritual being out of the reach of sense are not so apt or like to move our sense and passion immediately to and by themselves As I said before that is best loved which hath 1. The highest esteem of the understanding 2. The most resolved prevalent choice of the will 3. And the most faithful endeavours of our life And many a Christian mistaketh his affection to the thing it self because of his strangeness to the place and to the change that death will make If the weakest Christian could have without dying the clear knowledge of God the communion of Faith and Love by his Spirit could he love God but as much as he would love him and answerably tast his love in every prayer in every promise in every Sacrament in every mercy could his Soul keep a continual sabbath of delight in God and in his Saints and Holy worship this seemeth to him more desireable and pleasing than all the treasures of the World. And he that desireth this communion with God desireth Heaven in reality though he fear the change that death will make because of the weakness of faith and our strangeness to the state of separated Souls Chap. XX. The second part of the Exhortation Rest in this that you are known with Love to God. 2. TO be KNOWN OF GOD here signifieth to be approved and Loved of him and consequently that all our concerns are perfectly known to him and regarded by him This is the full and final comfort of a believer Our Knowledge and Love of God in which we are agents are 1. The evidence that we are known with Love to God and so our comfort as is said by way of Evidence 2. And they are our comfort in their very exercise But the chief part of our comfort is from God not only as the Object of our Love but as the Lover of us and all his Saints even in our passive receiving of the blessed effects of his Love for ever When a Christian therefore hath any discerning of his interest in this Love of God by finding that he Loveth God and Goodness here he must finally Anchor his Soul and quietly rest in all Temptations Difficulties and Tribulations 1. Our enemies know us not but judge of us by blinding interest and the biass of their false opinions and by an easy belief of false reports or by their own ungrounded suspicions And therefore we are odious to them and abused slandered and persecuted by them But God knoweth us and will justify our righteousness and bring all our innocency into light and stop the mouth of all iniquity 2. Strangers know us not but receive such Characters of us as are brought to them with the greatest advantage And
and comfortable a life is it to live in the Family of such a Father and with a thankful carelesness to trust his will and take that portion as best which he provideth for us And into what misery do foolish Prodigals run who had rather have their portion in their own hand than in their Fathers 5. Thy heavenly Father knoweth with what kind and measure of Tryals and Temptations it is fit that thou shouldst be exercised It is his work to permit and bound and order them It is thy work to beg his grace to overcome them and watchfully and constantly to make resistance and in Tryal to approve thy faithfulness to God Blessed are they that endure Temptations for when they are tryed they shall receive the Crown of life James 1. If he will try thee by bodily pain and sickness he can make it turn to the health of thy Soul Perhaps thy diseases have prevented some mortal Soul-diseases which thou didst not fear If he will try thee by mens malice Injury or Persecution he knoweth how to turn it to thy good and in season to bring thee out of trouble He will teach thee by other mens wickedness to know what grace hath cured or prevented in thy self and to know the need of trusting in God alone and appealing to his desireable Judgment He that biddeth thee when thou art Reviled and Persecuted and loaded with false reports for righteousness sake to rejoyce and be exceeding glad because of the great reward in heaven can easily give thee what he doth Command and make thy sufferings a help to this exceeding joy If he will try thee by Satans molesting Temptations and suffer him to buffet thee or break thy peace by Melancholy disquietments and vexatious thoughts from which he hath hitherto kept thee free he doth but tell thee from how much greater evil he hath delivered thee and make thy fears of Hell a means to prevent it and call thee to thy Saviour to seek for safety and peace in him If it please him to permit the malicious tempter to urge thy thoughts to blasphemy or other dreadful sin as it ordinarily falleth out with the Melancholy it telleth thee from what malice grace preserveth thee and what Satan would do were he let loose It calleth thee to remember that thy Saviour himself was tempted by Satan to as great sin as ever thou wast even to worship the Devil himself And that he suffered him to carry about his body from place to place which he never did by thee It tells thee therefore that it is not sin to be tempted to sin but to consent And that Satans sin is not laid to our charge And though our corruption is such as that we seldom are tempted but some culpable blot is left behind in us for we cannot say as Christ that Satan hath nothing in us Yet no sin is less dangerous to mans damnation than the Melancholy thoughts which such horrid vexatious Temptations cause both because the person being distempered by a disease is not a volunteer in what he doth and also because he is so far from loving and desiring such kind of sin that it is the very burden of his life They make him weary of himself and he daily groaneth to be delivered from them And it is certain that Love is the damning malignity of sin and that there is no more sin than there is will And that no sin shall damn men which they had rather leave than keep and therefore forgiveness is joyned to Repentance Drunkards Fornicators Worldlings Ambitious men love their sin But a poor Melancholy Soul that is tempted to ill thoughts or to despair or terrour or to excessive griefs is far from loving such a state The case of such is sad at present But O how much sadder is the case of them that are Lovers of pleasure more than of God and prosper and delight in sin 6. God knoweth how long it is best for me to live Leave then the determination of the time to him All men come into the word on the condition of going out again Die we must and is it not fitter that God choose the time than we Were it left to our wills how long we should live on Earth alas how long should many of us be kept out of heaven by our own desires And too many would stay here till misery made them impatient of living But our lives are his gift and in his hand who knoweth the use of them and knoweth how to proportion them to that use which is the justest measure of them He chose the time and place of my birth and he chuseth best Why should I not willingly leave to his choice also the time and place and manner of my departure I am known of him and my concerns are not despised by him He knoweth me as his own and as his own he hath used me and as his own he will receive me Psal 37.18 The Lord knoweth the days of the upright and their inheritance shall be for ever And if he bring me to death through long and painful sickness he knoweth why and all shall end in my Salvation He knoweth the way that is with me and when he hath tryed me I shall come forth as Gold Job 23.10 He forsaketh us not in sickness or in death Like as a Father pityeth his Children the Lord pityeth them that fear him For he knoweth our frame he remembreth that we are dust As for man his days are as grass as a flower of the Field so he flourisheth For the wind passeth over it and it is not and the place thereof shall know it no more But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to them that fear him If the Ox should not know his owner nor the Ass his Masters Crib the owner will know his own and seek them That we understand and know the Lord is matter of greater joy and glorying than all other wisdom or riches in the world Jer. 9.24 But that he knoweth us in Life and Death on Earth and in Heaven is the top of our rejoycing The Lord is good and strength in the day of trouble and he knoweth them that trust in him Nah. 1.7 Sickness may so change my flesh that even my Neighbours shall not KNOW ME and Death will make the change so great that even my friends will be unwilling to see such an unpleasing loathsome spectacle But while I am carried by them to the place of darkness that I may not be an annoyance to the living I shall be there in the sight of God and my Bones and Dust shall be owned by him and none of them forgotten or lost 7. It may be that under the temptations of Satan or in the languishing weakness or distempers of my flesh I may doubt of the love of God and think that he hath withdrawn his mercy from me or at least may be unmeet to tast the sweetness of his love or to meditate