1.2 His delight is in the Law of the Lord and then it follows in that Law doth he meditate day and night When prayer is your delight and not your task then you will dwell therein with complacence Psal. 43.4 Then will I go unto the altar of God unto God my exceeding joy Children are subject to look off their books because they delight not in them but when they are playing they do hoc agere But now when thy love is cool and weak thou lovest Christ and that 's all alass there 's little heart to him the soul comes heavily to him and having little delight and heavenly complacence in him is most easily drawn off with any distraction for where the treasure is there will the heart be also where God and Christ are a man's treasure his heart is with them He wakes and travels and cares but his heart is with them he runs through his business with all the haste that may stand with good speed that he may retreat to his heart which he left with God and then holy duties are the rest of his soul. And where the world or sin are a mans treasure his heart is with them also he reads and hears and prays but his heart is away the least noise business or whisper can fetch him away alas his love is cool and a drop of water will quench a spark of fire The Remedies of this weakness of love to Christ and his Ordinances are 1. Know him better and meditate more on his real excellencies Ignoti nulla cupido Cant. 5.9 What is thy Beloved more than another beloved Why ver 16. His mouth is most sweet yea he is altogether lovely or as the Heb. all of him is delights And then mark the reply chap. 6.1 We will seek him with thee The pure and orient Sun is no more than a glow-worm to the blind nor the fairest face than a Skeleton It is the eye that must affect the heart Come then open the eye of Faith and gaze on this heavenly object sit down and meditate who and what he is open but the sacred Cabinet of his Attributes every box full of most sweet perfumes each of his offices pregnant with true and transcendent comfort His actions his passion his words his works and above all his heart as full of Heaven as ever it can hold and full for thee the breast full running into the open mouth of faith the Fountain opened for thy sins and uncleanness The treasures of his grace free for thy supplies what heart can freez under such discoveries Nay stay and look at him on the cross calling thee arms stretched out to embrace thee heart opened to let thee in and deny him thy love if thou can And if once your hearts be inflamed with his love no small businesses shall keep you from his presence nor distract you in it 2. Get communion with Christ in his Ordinances As he said on another occasion Ioh. 4.10 If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is thou wouldest have asked and he would have given thee living water So I say if thou knewest what communion is with Christ thou wouldest ask after prayer and long for such opportunities Why what is communion with Christ Why for thy spirit to flie up into heaven among the celestial spirits and for Christ's Spirit to descend into thy heart And this makes an heaven upon earth 't is inexperience in this that makes us cool to Christ and holy duties strangeness makes company burthensome A King and a beggar a scholar and a clown cannot make company of one another So when there is a distance between God and the soul there is little longing for his Ordinance nor true delight in it Communion with Christ increases love and love to him promotes communion Cant. 8.1 O that thou wert my brother saith the Spouse the son of my mother there 's ardent love when I should find thee without I would kiss thee there 's communion yet should I not be despised If you did but see his power and glory your soul would be filled as with marrow and fatness and your mouth would praise him with joyful lips Psal. 63.2 5. One beam of his holiness love or mercy would so charm your hearts that you would be loth to part and long to meet again for how can it choose but transport a finite heart to see and feel the sweetest properties of the infinite God displayed before and graven on it When Moses was in near communion with God on the Mount no thinking of meat no cares about his tents below but there he is swallowed up and is content to melt in that Sun of light and heat and come down no more easie to count his distractions in the Mount O who can see the face of God and not be ravished therewithâ— who can behold the beauty of the Lord and not chuse to dwell in his presence all the days of a mans life 'T is communion with Christ Iesus that will warm your love to him and when the King brings you into his chambers you will be glad and rejoyce in him you will remember his love more than wine 3. Believe verily that you can be no where better no where so well as in an Ordinance this will content and please your minds in the Lord's service when you can be no where better for what company can be better than God's The chiefest Good must needs afford the choicest company who can impart such rare delights and sweet content as he can and where doth he communicate himself as in an Ordinance Say the world knocks at door and would have thee away can vanity entertain you like felicity can the world produce higher pleasures than he that made it Would sin come in and steal your hearts away can the chiefest evil create thee sweeter entertainment than the chiefest Good No no you are best where you are If the world could find you such another Deity somewhat might be yielded or give you security like God of the reality satisfaction and duration of its toys quarter-contents but alas there 's no shew for this you are best where you are I am conversing with the Lord of heaven and earth who can reward or ruin me in a moment I am sucking at the breast of the chiefest Good I am in the next employment to heaven in a corner of heaven I cannot look off yonder lovely One I will not leave I must not come down And this experience would enamour you of an Ordinance and deliver you from diversions in it you will sit down under his shadow with great delight when his fruit is sweet to your taste SECT VII THe seventh cause of wandring of the thoughts in the worship of God is want of watchfulness Matth. 26.41 Watch and pray are most necessary companions else shall we fall into temptation In those sad times of plague the faithful Guard stands at the City gates
find that in it which none ever found will it do more for thee than ever it did for any Believe its vanity upon God's Word ere thou try it by thy sad experience Get faith to suck vertue out of Christ's death to vanquish it For this is our victory 1 Ioh. 5.4 that overcometh the world even our faith Lay thee down with Christ in the grave by faith and say then What is the world Get faith to believe that eternal happiness which being once seen by that piercing eye would so disgrace the world that all the comforts of it would not weigh a straw in comparison of it If a man lived in the Sun what a poor mote would the whole earth look He that lives in Christ in Heaven by faith sees all the glories of the earth with a disdainful eye and cries Vanity of vanities all is vanity 2. You shall be helped against this disease by deep consideration of the folly and misery of such a frame of heart It 's folly for all that is gotten of the world with the neglect of the soul invasion of holy duties or by a carking worldly heart comes to thee in wrath will sink thee deeper in hell or if thou repent is most commonly some way consumed vix gaudet tertius haeres thy grand-child will rue it If we could penetrate the method of God's providence usually those losses you have in this beast or the other house or the like are the just value of what you have gotten by immoderate care hard dealing with others or unseasonable contrivance when your heart should have been better employed And then the misery of worldly-mindedness that it pierceth the heart through with many sorrows Sorrow and pain in getting sorrow and care in keeping sorrow and grief in losing The heart is never at perfect rest A man would not use his horse as a worldling doth his heart gives it no quiet or ease and all this to no purpose at all Hab. 2.13 The people labour in the very fire and weary themselves for very vanity and may not the consideration hereof be an effectual means to hate this humour and when it is once hated it is more than half discharged 3. Have recourse to God by prayer and therein see and bewail thy former madness solemnly vow to restore their right to every man thou hast wronged rather part like Zacheus with half thine estate than with thy whole soul and body and earnestly cry to the Lord to encline thy heart to his testimonies and not unto covetousness Psal. 119.36 Intreat your heavenly Father to give you an heavenly heart and if it come not at first asking it 's a gift worth going for again humbly tell him by vertue of that Covenant wherein you promised to forsake the world which you are now resolved to stick to his Majesty is bound to give you a mortifi'd and heavenly heart and you will never leave him till you have obtained it 4. Charm your hearts from worldly thoughts when you go to the worship of God Prov. 16.1 3. The preparation of the heart is from the Lord Commit thy ways to him and thy thoughts shall be established The Heathen left their shooes at the Temple doors to intimate that all earthly affections must be left behind you when you go to speak with God Do as that great States-man used who would lay off his Gown wherein he administred his Office when he went to worship God and say Lie there Lord Cecil implying he would take none of the cares of his Office into the presence of God So when you go to prayer reading or hearing lay aside the world and say Lie there house ye fields lie there lie there my cares till I have done with God So Abraham left his servants and asses Gen. 22.5 below the hill and took up nothing but an holy heart and the materials of his Sacrifice with him thither Keep still an eye upon your hearts and both watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation SECT VI. THe sixth cause of Distractions in the Worship of God is Weakness of love to Iesus Christ and consequently to his Ordinances Love unites the soul to its object as Faith is the bond of our mystical so Love is the bond of our moral union with Christ. The more love to Christ the more life in his service Cant. 8.6 Set me as a seal upon thy heart as a seal upon thy arm for love is strong as death Were your love more strong it would seal up both soul and body and unite them firmly unto Jesus Christ. Love marries the heart and eye to the object hence 't is there is not a distracting thought in heaven for there love is perfect they see and love and sing and praise and see enjoy and love for ever and ever The three Disciples Matth. 17.4 had but an half-quarter glimpse of that state but their love to their dearest Lord and his presence was so heightned that the world was forgotten Ierusalem below and all their friends and fellow-Disciples forgotten and they undone to abide there And if we could by the eye of faith see him that is invisible and perfectly love him O how hardly could we spare a by-thought in his presence and service no all the world would be forgotten comforts and crosses all sleep together while God and our soul were conversing in an Ordinance Whence is it that most men can work and care perpetually and no distractions divert them discourse their business most orderly without one alien thought drive on a bargain an hour together and think on nothing but what 's pertinent to their present business Why they love what they are about they like it well and so tongue and heart go together are wholely taken up therewith The jovial knot like their company and nothing shall distract them the servant comes about necessary business the master fumes that they will not let him alone the child comes and then the wife but he frets he rages And why all this why he loves his company 't is his delight his heaven Even so the Soul that hath a strong love to a precious Christ and his Ordinance-presence doth most heavily bear a distracting thought The devil cannot pluck him from Christ but the soul smarts and when there is this smart at parting that soul will part but seldom You have sometimes seen a sucking child that loves the mother and the breast most dearly how loth is it to leave it while it is hungry how eagerly and angrily it seeks and cries and catches hold again Here 's love Christ Iesus is the spring of all happiness and his Ordinances are his breasts and he that loves the Lord Jesus with all his soul and all his strength there he lies and sucks at the breasts of consolation This business knocks at door that trifle tempts him yet there he sticks and frowns away all his temptations His love is ardent Psal.
and affections while it remains imperfect in your mind and judgment Associate also with zealous Christians borrow some of their heat and lend them some of your light and be not ashamed to talk of God Heaven and a Soul when you are together we lose the benefit of mens graces for want of broaching those blessed Vessels of grace you converse with Especially read the Scripture which will inflame thee and mold thee being rightly used into its blessed nature I have known some that before their private duties would meditate on a verse in the Psalms Canâ—icles or the like and then run hot and lively into the presence of God And chose rather to be frequent and fervent than long and roving in a duty Shorter prayers may sometimes inflame when long ones tire the spirits and that way the antient Christians in Egypt used to take And lastly do as holy David did that carried such a nature as thou dost be ever calling to God as He who is at it eight or nine times in Psal. 119. Quicken me in thy way quicken me and I will call upon thy name and if He had need thus to fetch fire from Heaven how much more have We Q. Were it not better to omit the duty than attempt it with such a dull heartless frame as this A. 1. Omission of a duty will never fit us for the better performance of a duty Luther was used to say The oftner I neglect the more unfit I am this is nothing but a shift of the Devil 2. If thou dost endeavour with thy utmost strengthâ— and sincerity though thou be dull it 's better than to leave it undone for as one sin prepares for another so one duty prepares for another Fall therefore to work and then God is engaged to help thee never think neglects will mend it one sin never cures another By the upright use of these means you will find the holy Ghost as it were stretch himself on your cold hearts and infuse life and heat into you And when you are soaring aloft in the Spirit that cunning marksman cannot shoot and fetch you down by his distracting Arrows SECT V. THe fifth cause of Distractions in God's Worship is Worldly mindedness An heart in earth and an heart in Heaven are far asunder As long as the Lark soareth upward she sings without danger of the Net but stooping to gaze on the Foulers deceitful Glass she is quickly ensnared So is it with us while we live aloft we are safe but when the heart stoops down and grows worldly through the false glass Satan puts upon it then are we taken in these snares Ezek. 33.31 With their mouthes they shew much love but their heart goeth after their covetousness Their faces look one way but they row another their eyes are up towards heaven their hearts set on the earth and grasping two affairs they prosper in neither How should he set his affections on the things above that hath set them chiefly on things below when as these two are directly opposed Col. 3.2 How should the Soul that Bird of Paradise flie up to heaven in a duty when it is not only weighed down with the lead of natural corruption but intangled in the lime-twigs of earthly mindedness they can never write on their duties Holiness to the Lord that stamp upon their coyn God with us Hence it comes to pass that the heart is loth to come to an Ordinance and then longs to goe out again how heavily do they go to Church how lightly to the market for here the heart goes with them and there it 's left behind and being forc'd into a duty because its treasure is in the world the heart hastens to be there again and sicut piscis in arido is out of its element when in an Ordinance We read of the world set in a mans heart Eccles. 3.11 and of an heart set on the world Ps. 62.10 Now how should God have any of such a heart No no he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth there he can rest without weariness of that he can discourse without distractions but when he should turn to God and flee to heaven this care knocks at door and that business whispers him in the ear and there the carcase is left but the heart is gone The Prophet Hosea 4.11 tells us that whoredome and wine and new wine take away the heart It were very unlikely that any man in the heat of those sins should pray or hear or meditate aright and it is much what as likely for an heart that is taken away with the cares of this world and drowned therein to converse with God without innumerable wandrings Mistake not it is not the world but worldly mindedness that is taxed not the increase of riches but the heart set upon them And so no doubt a poor man may have his part of distractions through his want of worldly things as well as the rich through his abundance He may have many a distracting thought what to do for the world as the rich hath what to do with the world And thus we see those things which were given for our welfare prove our snare and what should hire us to serve God keeps us from him Which shews what good reason the wise man had to crave neither riches nor poverty but convenient comforts seeing the weight of the world distracts one sort and the want of the world another sort in the very immediate service of God Howbeit for the most part the heart that is fullest of the world is emptiest of God Now the best remedy against worldly mindedness is Mortification O get a chip of Christ's Cross Gal. 6.14 whereby the world will be crucifi'd to you and you to the world So was Paul As saith one of the Antients Paul and the world were like two dead bodies that neither embrace with delight nor part with grief from each other You must be dead I say dead to the world if you mean to live to God or live with him A drunken prayer and a worldly prayer are alike devout Therefore Love not the world nor the things of the world for so long the love of the Father is not in you and if you love him not how should you pray to him It would be an ill favoured sight to behold all this Congregation in their work-day cloaths here how unpleasing a sight to God is it to see us all with our work-day hearts Now that you may be rid of an earthly heart faithfully make use of these directions 1. Get faith to believe the report God hath given of the world that all that is in it is but the lusts of the flesh the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life a poor vain thing not able to give the soul a breakfast this all that have tasted it and Christ also do aver and canst thou
it Phil 4.13 I can do all things through Christ. God and his servant can do any thing SECT VIII THe eighth cause of distractions in holy duties is A beloved sin When the soul hath espoused some bosome lust the thoughts be you never so busie will be warping towards it though God himself look on Ier. 4.14 O Ierusalem wash thy heart from wickedness how long shall vain thoughts lodge within thee When wickedness is in the heart vain thoughts will be in thy duties they will enter yea they will lodge within thee A beloved sin is like a byass on the bowl though you throw it out never so streight yet the byass will draw it off that way do what you can so is a beloved sin unto the soul aim you with utmost skill yet there is a secret load stone in it that attracts the heart and makes that prayer to end in hell that began in heaven Either sin and you must be at a distance or God and you will The soul that is in league with sin dare not come at God dare not look at him dare not think on him and what must that man think on in a duty that dare not think seriously on God As that penitent Father speaks in his confessions An unmortifi'd soul like the husband of a scolding wife had rather be any where than at home and makes many a sad bargain abroad because he hath no comfort at home with his wife so such an heart chooses to be thinking of any thing rather than God alas matters are not straight between them the poison of sin is in him and he hugs that abhominable thing which God hates the Thief had rather go forty miles another way than come near the Judge God is an offended Judge to a wilful sinner and he cares not for ever coming near him Hence Heb. 10.22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience He that comes to God with a true upright honest heart being sprinkled from an evil conscience may draw near to God in full assurance of faith whereas guilt clouds clogs and distracts the soul. So that you see both the guâ—lt and power of a bosom sin furnish us with too much cause of distractions Sin That would have all the heart and God He will have all or nothing It 's such an offering that is a whole burnt-offering that the Lord delights in As no subject is capable of two contrary qualities in the intense degree as heat and cold may be both in the same hand but not in their intense degrees so the heart of man cannot entertain Christ and corruption light and darkness except the one be loved and served superlatively above the other Psal. 66.18 If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me God first stops his ear above and then the sinners mouth below that regards iniquity that likes loves approves or gives it rest and quiet in the soul. Indeed God neither regards him nor doth such a soul regard God He must love God that is lively in his service Iob 27.10 Will he delight himself in the Almighty will he always call upon God will he always he may now and then send a thought that way in his special need but not always there 's difference between converse and communion One may have converse or traffick with a stranger upon occasion but communion is with a friend there 's visits of pure kindness an hypocrite may have some converse or trading with God for necessaries but sweet communion constant calling on God and serious duties he can never enjoy and follow that loves any sin before the chiefest Good The Remedies against a beloved sin are briefly these two 1. Consideration sit down and think what real good this sin hath ever done thee Think what hurt it hath done thee and others and what fruit but shame and death it brings to any Thy dearest sin is but sin which is the worst thing in the world and its masks and disguises being laid aside more ugly than the devil more horrid than hell it self And think the more thou lovest it the more God hates it and his rage and jealousie is increased with the increase of thy desires Think how many prayers it hath lost thee how many mercies it hath poison'd to thee how many smiles it hath clouded besides what unutterable sufferings it hath inflicted upon Christ and is preparing for thee in hell Consider that thou maist have as much joy happiness and true comfort without it and all converted sinners confess that Jesus Christ hath been better to them than all their sins and if you may have as good injoyments or better to have Christ with them and Heaven after them will not make them worse 2. Supplication Kneel down and pray with faith in the uprightness of your hearts for strength from above All the strength of Heaven is engag'd by prayer He that heartily sets himself against his sin by prayer cannot but dislike it and when it is truly disliked its heart is broken Augustine complains that when he in his unconverted estate begged a divorce from his sin his heart was afraid lest God should hear his prayers Beware lest your hearts secretly cry Spare when your tongues openly cry Lord kill and crucifie my corruption but do thou bonâ fide pull on earth and the Lord will bono Spiritu pull from Heaven and rent thy sin and soul asunder Otherwise as the Poets tell us of Hippomanes that running with Atalanta for victory he conquered by throwing golden apples down which Atalanta stooping to take up lost the prize so Satan seeing the soul running heaven-ward in God's service will throw down the gilded temptations of a beloved sin stop it in its carreer and hazard the prize of eternal glory SECT IX A Ninth cause of Distractions in the Worship of God is Satan And this he doth sometimes more remotely by throwing in some cross business before Duties whereby the soul is unhinged some body or Letter with business just before prayer or some passionate distempering passages in the family whereby to lay matter ready for our discomposure and wandrings in the following duties Sometimes he approaches nearer and by presenting and occasioning objects to our senses in God's Worship draws off the heart He can stay One long from the Congregation that Another may be distracted in observing him coming in and so wounds two and sometimes twenty at a blow Satan is not idle when this and that child are restless and unquiet in the family whereby perhaps all in the family lose the passages that would most profit them He can create a further distraction by every pillar and part of the structure and every person in the congregation and can be content you read sentences on the walls to hinder and divert your sâ—uls from the sentences in the pulpit
and serious in his Sermon Martha good woman was highly cumbred and distracted with much serving Mary sate at her Saviour's feet and heard his word Saith Martha I think it much that my Sister must have all the Dainties and I all the Distractions Master rectifie this inequality Ah saith our Lord Martha Martha thou art cumbred or as the word signifies distracted about many things But one thing is needful Mary is imbarked in a most necessary affair and worldly cumber is improper for an heavenly business She that 's working for her soul hath work enough at that time Salvation Eternal salvation Eternal salvation of soul and body these are not things to dally about SECT V. THE fifth Evil of these rovings of heart is That they are sins of Hypocrisie And there can be no little evil in the sin of Hypocrisie What is Hypocrisie Matth. 15.7 8. But the Honour of the lips and the Distance of the heart vox preterea nihil as it is said of the Nightingale a sound of words and no soundness in the heart that 's Hypocrisie of all sins most odious unto God and man And though the purpose of the heart be wanting to make it formal and full Hypocrisie yet a custom in these will beget that at length and he that useth to lye in jest will come at length to lye in earnest Hos. 11.12 Ephraim compasseth me about with lyes Oh how often may the Lord say over us these people compass me about with lyes What a Generation of Vipers are here like the Viper that 's speckled without and poisonous within Moses took a vail when he spake to Israel and put it off when he spake to God But the Hypocrite doth quite contrary he shews his best to men his worst to God but the Lord sees both the vail and the face and it 's hard to say whether he hates more the vail of dissimulation or their face of wickedness This 't is a disappointing of God in a sense a deceiving of him Mal. 1.4 Cursed be the deceiver that hath in his flock a Male and voweth and sacrificeth to God a corrupt thing Yea sayes God you have in your flock a Male you can be serious when you will but a corrupt thing it seems will serve my turn you disappoint me you deceive me you appoint a meeting between an heart and me and here I come and the heart is gone you knock at my door with great earnestness and when I come the heart is gone you are deceivers and deserve my curse If this be not repented and reformed such deceitful Hypocrites must carry away no blessing of mine but a curse A prayer though but of forty words sincerely made and felt every syllable shall prevail more with God than a long Oration with half an heart and the meanest Sermon heard with a prepared humble and attentive heart shall receive a greater blessing than a better sermon with a worser heart for God is a spirit and shews do work nothing with him he that seems to serve him and doth not exasperates him the more An eye to Heaven and an heart for Hell an humble knee and a haughty spirit a serious posture and a frivolous soul are abominable to the Lord SECT VI. IN the next place the Evil of Distractions is seen in the Effects whereof these are some First They do alienate the heart from holy duties When we miss of God we have small mind to his service again It is the comparison of a learned Divine when there is no marow in the bone we quickly throw the bone away even so when the sweet injoyment of God is not found in an Ordinance which is lost by the roving heart we shall ere long cast away that Ordinance except shame or custom restrain us Now when the soul cares not for prayer or other Ordinances it is a sad effect the Lord may say to thee with more right and reason than Dalilah did Iudg. 16.15 How canst thou say I love thee when thine heart is not with me What love is that without an heart where the affection is there the cogitation will be also I may truly invert this and say where the heart is not before there love will not come after Let all the soul be seriously bestowed in any duty of prayer singing reading or hearing and you will be loth to leave that duty and long to be at it again O the sweetness therein and love thereunto Psal. 119.93 I shall never forget thy precepts for with them thou hast quickened me Oh when shall I come and appear before God! O that every day were a Sabbath then should I be well as said that famous Instance of Practical Piety Hence with a gracious heart one duty prepares and gets a stomach for another But you shall find when the heart is out of tune and beating about the bush and not half quarter of it with God O then it is the most wearisome imployment in the world A man had rather thresh than pray that hath his heart in the Barn when he is in prayer And there is no lively desires or longings of soul to that business wherein he felt so little of God Hence it is so hard to get a worldly family to get together to prayer Alas the duty is a distraction to them when they come they still leave their hearts behind them you can make them no penny-worth of an Ordinance whose hearts do usually run out of an Ordinance SECT VII THE second Effect of Distractions is That they much affront the Majesty of God It was an high affront to God Act. 7.39 that his people after they had had experience of him yet in their hearts turned back into Egypt This is the wisdom of a roving heart they say Come we like not this blessed presence of nor work in our hearts let 's walk into the world again Ezek. 11.21 But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things I will recompence their way upon their own heads saith the Lord God Here one detestable thing offers it self and there another for every thing that draws the heart from God its chief good is therein detestable Now when the heart walks after them that is the right vein of distractions Where the heart walks after every trifle that puts up finger he shall have enough of his waies saith the Lord. Must I stand for a staâ—e when he is aiming at other matters must the great God wait on a simple Worm till he can be at leisure to speak with him shall the worst of evils be courted while the chief of goods is slighted and yet even then pretend to service As if some miserable Scullion at the Court had made great means to possess the King with his low condition and when the King is come to speak with him he lyes sweeping the sink or scouring the spit and there lets his Prince wait on him to