think of the Heathen and Infidel parts of the world and to see the Rebellion of the Prophane among us and that the Laws of God are unknown or despised by the most of men Alas what abundance are ruled by their lusts and self-conceitedness and corrupted wills and the customs of the world or the wills of men but how few are Ruled by the Laws of God! O how should it grieve an honest heart to see Gods Kingdom hindered by Infidelity and weakned divided and disturbed by Popery and Heresie and dishonoured by scandal and impiety as it is And to see the multitude and the violence and industry of corrupters dividers and destroyers and the fewness the coldness and remisness of the builders the healers and restorers All you that are loyal subjects to your Lord lament these waies of Rebellion and Disobedience and the diminutions and distempers of the subjects of his Kingdom and the unfaithfulness and negligence of his Ministers and bend your cares desires and prayers to the promoting of Gods Kingdom in you and in the world and befriend not any thing that hindereth its prosperity CHAP. XV. 14. THE third of these Relations and the next point in the Knowledge of God to be spoken of is that he is Our must Loving Father or Bountiful Benefactor As he is Good so he doth Good Psal. 119. 68. And as he is the chiefest Good so he bestoweth the greatest Benefits and therefore is thence by a Necessary Resultancy our Most Bountiful Benefactor The term Father comprehendeth in it all his three great Relations to us 1. A Father gives Being to his Children and therefore hath some Propriety in them and God is the first cause oâ— our whole Being and therefore we are his Own 2. A Father is the Governour of his Children and God is our Chief Governour 3. A Father tenderly Loveth his Children that are childlike loving and obedient to him and seeketh their felicity and so doth God Love and will make Happy his loving and obedient children who have not only their Being from him as their Maker but their New being or Holy nature from him as their Sanctifier And this last being the end and perfection of the rest doth communicate its nature to the rest as the Means And so 1. The new nature that God thus giveth us in our Regeneration is not from his common Love but is an act of special Grace proceeding from his special Fatherly Love 2. The Government that he exerciseth over them as his Regenerate children is not a Common Government such as is that of the meer Law of Nature or of works but it is a special Government by a Law of Grace a Justifying Remedying Saving Law or Covenant together with an internal illuminating quickning guiding spirit with Church-state and Officers and Ordinance all suited to this way of Grace Even as his Dominion or Propriety by Redemption and our Sanctification and Resignation is not a Common Propriety but a gracious Relation to us as Our Own Father who have the endeared Relation to him of being his Own Children All is from Love and in a way of Love and for the exercise and demonstration of Love so that when I call God Our Benefactor I precisely distinguish this last part of his Relations to us from the rest But when I call him a Father I mean the same thing or Relation which a Benefactor signifieth but with fuller aspect on the foregoing Relations and connotation of them as they are perfected all in this And here I. I shall briefly name the Benefits on which this Relation of God is founded And 1. Even in Creating us he acted as a Benefactor giving us the Fundamental Good of Being and the excellency of manhood 2. By setting us in a well furnished world and putting all things under our feet and giving us the use of Creatures 3. By entering into the Relation of a Governour to us and consequently engaging himself to terms of Justice in his dealing with us and to protect us and reward us if we did obey and making us capable of an everlasting happiness as our end and appointing us sufficient means thereto These Benefits denominated God the Great Benefactor or Father unto man in the state of his Creation But then moreover he is a Common Benefactor also 4. By so loving the world as to give his only begotten Son to be their Redeemer a sufficient sacrifice for sin 5. By giving out his Promise or Covenant of Grace and making a Common Deed of Gift of pardon Reconciliation and Eternal Life to all that will accept it in and with Christ to Gospel ends 6. By sending forth the Messengers of this Grace commanding them to Preach to every creature the Gospel or word of Reconciliation committed to them and to beseech men in Christs stead as his Embassadours as if God himself did intreat by them to be reconciled to God Matth. 28. 18 19. Mar. 16. 16. 2 Cor. 5. 19 20. 7. By affording some common mercies without and motions of his spirit within to second these invitations But though by this much God hath a Title to their dearest Love yet they have no Title to his highest Benefits nor are in the nearest Relation of Children or Beneficiaries to him But 8. When he begetteth us again to a lively Hope by his incorruptible seed and giveth us both to will and to do and when the Father effectually draweth us to the Son and reneweth us according to his Image and taketh away our old and stony hearts and giveth us new and tender hearts and giveth us to Know him and Love him as a Father then is he our Father in the dearest and most comfortable sense and we are his children that have interest in his dearest Love 9. And therefore we have his spirit and pardon Justification and Reconciliation with him 10. And also we have special Communion with him in Prayer Praises Sacraments and all holy Ordinances and Conversation 11. And we and our services are pleasing to him and so we are in the light of his countenance and under a special promise of his protection and provision and that all things shall work together for our good 12. And we have the promise of perfection in everlasting Glory II. And now as you see how God is our Benefactor or most Gracious and Loving Father let us next see what this must work on us And 1. Goodness and Bounty should shame men from their sin and lead them to Repentance Rom. 2. 4 5. Love is not to be abused and requited with unkindness and provocation He that can turn grace into wantonness and do evil because grace hath abounded or that it may abound shall be forced to confess that his damnation is just He that will not hate his sin when he seeth such exceeding Benefits stand by and heareth mercy and wonderful mercy plead against it and upbraid the sinner with ingratitude is like to die a double death and shall have no more sacrifice
worldly trash which are made and new-made to be the dwelling place of God Desire not the company which would diminish your heavenly acquaintance and correspondency Be not unfriendly nor conceited of a self-sufficiency but yet beware lest under the honest ingenuous title of a friend a special faithful prudent faithful friend you should entertain an Idol or an enemy to your Love of God or a corrival and competitor with your highest friend For if you do it is not the specious title of a friend that will save you from the thorns and bryars of disquietment and from greater troubles than ever you found from open enemies O blessed be that High and everlasting friend who is every way suited to the upright souls To their Minds their Memories their Delight their Love c. by surest Truth by fullest Goodness by clearest Light by dearest Love by firmest Constancy c. O why hath my drowsie and dark-sighted soul been so seldome with him why hath it so often so strangely and so unthankfully passed by and not observed him nor hearkened to his kindest calls O what is all this trash and trouble that hath filled my memory and employed my mind and cheated and corrupted my affections while my dearest Lord hath been daies and nights so unworthily forgotten so contemptuously neglected and disregarded and loved as if I loved him not O that these drowsie and those waking nights those loitered lost and empty hours had been spent in the humblest converse with him which have been dreamed and doted away upon now I know not what O my God how much wiser and happier had I been had I rather chosen to mourn with thee than to rejoyce and sport with any other O that I had rather wept with thee than laughed with the creature For the time to come let that be my friend that most befriendeth my dark and dull and backward soul in its undertaken progress and heavenly conversation Or if there be none such upon earth let me here take no one for my friend O blot out every Name from my corrupted heart which hindereth the deeper engraving of thy Name Ah Lord what a stone what a blind ungrateful thing is a Heart not touched with celestial Love yet shall I not run to thee when I have none else that will know me shall I not draw near thee when all fly from me When daily experience cryeth out so loud NONE BUT CHRIST GOD OR NOTHING Ah foolish Heart that hast thought of it Where is that place that Cave or Desert where I might soonest find thee and fullest enjoy thee is it in the wilderness that thou walkest or in the croud in the Closet or in the Church where is it that I might soonest meet with God But alas I now perceive that I have a Heart to find before I am like to find my Lord O Loveless Lifeless stony heart that 's dead to him that gave it Life and to none but him Could I not Love or Think or Feel at all methinks I were less dead than now Less dead if dead than now I am alive I had almost said Lord let me never Love more till I can Love thee Nor think more on any thing till I can more willingly think of thee But I must suppress that wish for Life will act And the mercies and motions of Nature are necessary to those of Grace And therefore in the life of Nature and in the glimmerings of thy Light I will wait for more of the Celestial life My God thou hast my consent It is here attested under my hand Separate me from what and whom thou wilt so I may but be nearer thee Let me Love thee more and feel more of thy Love and then let me Love or be beloved of the world as little as thou wilt I thought self-love had been a more predominant thing But now I find that Repentance hath its Anger its Hatred and its Revenge I am truly Angry with that Heart that hath so oft and foolishly offended thee Methinks I hate that Heart that is so cold and backward in thy love and almost grudge it a dwelling in my breast Alas when Love should be the life of Prayer the life of holy meditation the life of Sermons and of holy conference and my soul in these should long to meet thee and delight to mention thee I straggle Lord I know not whither or I sit still and wish but do not rise and run and follow thee yea I do not what I seem to do All 's dead all 's dead for want of Love I often cry O where is that place where the quickening beams of Heaven are warmest that my frozen soul might seek it out But whither ever I go to City or to Solitude alas I find it is not Place that makes the difference I know that Christ is perfectly replenished with Life and Light and Love Divine And I hear him as our Head and Treasure proclaimed and offered to us in the Gospel This is thy Record that he that hath the Son hath Life O why then is my barren soul so empty I thought I had long ago consented to thy offer and then according to thy Covenant both He and Life in him are mine And yet must I still be dark and dead Ah dearest Lord I say not that I have too long waited but if I continue thus to wait wilt thou never find the time of Love and come and own thy gasping worm wilt thou never dissipate these clouds and shine upon this dead and darkened soul Hath my Night no Day Thrust me not from thee O my God! For that 's a Hell to be thrust from God But sure the cause is all at home could I find it out or rather could I cure it It is sure my face that 's turned from God when I say His face is turned from me But if my Life must here be out of sight and hidden in the Root with Christ in God and if all the rest be reserved for that better world and I must here have but these small beginnings O make me more to Love and long for the blessed day of thine appearing and not to fear the time of my deliverance nor unbelievingly to linger in this Sodom as one that had rather stay with sin then come to thee Though sin hath made me backward to the fight let it not make me backward to receive the Crown Though it hath made me a loiterer in thy work let it not make me backward to receive that wages which thy Love will give to our pardoned poor accepted services Though I have too oft drawn back when I should have come unto thee and walked with thee in thy waies of Grace yet heal that unbelief and disaffection which would make me to draw back when thou callest me to possess thy Glory Though the sickness and lameness of my soul have hindered me in my journey yet let their painfulness help me to desire to be delivered from them and to be at home where without the interposing nights of thy displeasure I shall fully feel thy fullest Love and walk with thy Glorified ones in the Light of thy Glory triumphing in thy Praise for evermore Amen BUT now I have given you these few Directions for the improvement of your solitude for converse with God lest I should occasion the hurt of those that are unfit for the Lesson I have given I must conclude with this Caution which I have formerly also published That it is not melancholly or weak-headed persons who are not able to bear such exercises for whom I have written these Directions Those that are not able to be much in serious solitary thoughtfulness without confusions and distracting suggestions and hurrying vexatious thoughts must set themselves for the most part to those duties which are to be done in company by the help of others and must be very little in solitary duties For to them whose natural faculties are so diseased or weak it is no duty as being no means to do them the desired good but while they strive to do that which they are naturally unable to endure they will but confound and distract themselves and make themselves unable for those other duties which yet they are not utterly unfit for To such persons therefore instead of ordered well-digested Meditations and much time spent in secret thoughtfulness it must suffice that they be brief in secret Prayer and take up with such occasional abrupter Meditations as they are capable of and that they be the more in reading hearing conference and praying and praising God with others untill their melancholly distempers are so far overcome as that by the direction of their Spiritual Guides they may judge themselves fit for this improvement of their Solitude FINIS * Charles Earl of Balcarres who dyed of a stone in his heart of a very strange magnitude
the living And so it containeth all the former in their highest perfection that is both Natural Life and Moral-Spiritual Life and the holy exercise thereof together with the full attainment and fruition of God in Glory the End of all ETERNAL That is simply eternal objectively as to God the principal object and Eternal ex parte post subjectively that is Everlasting THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL Not Natural life in it self considered as the Devils and wicked men shall have it But 1. It is the same Moral-Spiritual Life which shall have no End but endure to Eternity It is a Living to God in Love But only initial and very imperfect here in comparison of what it will be in Heaven 2. It is the Eternal felicity 1. Seminally for Grace is as it were a seed of Glory 2. As it is the Necessary way or means of attaining it and that preparation which infallibly procureth it The Perfect Holiness of the Saints in Heaven will be one part of their perfect happiness And this Holiness imperfect they have here in this life It is the same God that we know and love here and there and with a Knowledge and Love that is of the same nature seminally As the egg is of the nature of the Bird Whether it may be properly said to be formally and specifically the same quoad actum as well as quoad objectum yea whether the Objectum clare visum and the objectum in speculo vel aenigmate visum make not the act specifically differ I shall not trouble you to dispute And this imperfect Holiness hath the promise of Perfect Holiness and Happiness in the full fruition of God hereafter So it is the Seed and Prognostick of Life Eternal TO KNOW Non semper ubique eodem modo vel gradu Not to know God here and hereafter in the same manner or degree But to know him here as in a glass and hereafter in his Glory as face to face To know him by an Affective Practical knowledge There is no Text of Scripture of which the rule is more clearly true and necessary than of this that Words of Knowledge do imply affection It is the closure of the whole soul with God which is here called the knowing of God And because it is not meet to name every particular act of the soul when ever this duty is mentioned it is all denominated from Knowledge as the first Act which inferreth all the rest 1. Knowledge of God in the Habit is Spiritual Life as a Principle 2. Knowledge of God in the exercise is Spiritaal Life as an employment 3. The Knowledge of God in perfection with its effects is Life Eternal as it signifieth full felicity What it containeth I shall further shew anon THEE That is The Father called by some Divines Fons vel fundamentum Trinitatis the fountain or foundation of the Trinity and oft used in the same sense as the word GOD to signifie the pure Deity THE ONLY He that believeth that there is more Gods than One believeth not in any For though he may give many the Name yet the description of the true God can agree to none of them He is not God indeed if he be not One only This doth not at all exclude Jesus Christ as the second person in Trinity but only distinguisheth the pure Deity or the Only true God as such from Jesus Christ as Mediator between God and man TRUE There are many that falsly and Metaphorically are called Gods If we think of God but as one of these it is not to know him but deny him GOD The word GOD doth not only signifie the Divine perfections in himself but also his Relation to the Creatures To be a God to us is to be one to whom we must ascribe all that we are or have and one whom we must Love and obey and honour with all the powers of soul and body and one on whom we totally depend and from whom we expect our judgement and reward in whom alone we can be perfectly blessed AND JESUS CHRIST That is As Mediator in his Natures God and man and in his Office and Grace WHOM THOU HAST SENT That is whom thy Love and Wisdom designed and commissioned to this undertaking and performance The Knowledge of the Holy Ghost seemeth here left out as if it were no part of life Eternal But 1. At that time the Holy Ghost in that Eminent sort as sent by the Father and Son on the Apostles after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ was not yet so manifested as afterwards and therefore not so necessarily to be distinctly known and believed in as after The having of the Spirit being of more necessity than the distinct knowledge of him Certain it is that the Disciples were at first very dark in this article of faith And Scripture more fully revealeth the necessity to salvation of believing in the Father and Son than in the Holy Ghost distinctly yet telling us that if any man have not the spirit of Christ the same is none of his Rom. 8. 9. 2. But presently after when the Spirit was to be sent the necessity of believing in him is expressed especially in the Apostles Commission to Baptize all Nations that were made Disciples in the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Doct. THe Knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ the Mediator is the Life of Grace and the necessary way to the life of Glory As James distinguisheth between such a dead faith as Devils and wicked men had and such a living and working faith as was proper to the justified so must we here of the Knowledge of God Many profess that they know God but in works they deny him being abominable and disobedient and to every good work reprobate Tit. 1. 16. There is a form of knowledge which the unbelievers had Rom. 2. 22. and a knowledge which puffeth up and is void of Love which hypocrites have 1 Cor. 8. 1. 13. But no man spiritually knoweth the things of God but by the spirit And they that rightly know his name will put their trust in him Psal. 9 10. Thus he giveth the regenerate a heart to know him Jer. 24. 7. and the new creature is renewed in knowledge Col. 3. 10. And vengeance shall be poured out on them that know not God 2 Thes. 1. 8. This saving Knowledge of God which is Eternal Life containeth and implyeth in it all these acts 1. The understandings apprehesion of God according to the necessary articles of faith 2. A Belief of the truth of these articles that God is and is such as he is therein described 3. An high estimation of God accordingly 4. A Volition complacency or Love to him as God the chiefest Good 5. A Desiring after him 6. A Choosing him with the rejection of all competitors 7. A Consent that he be our God and a giving up our selves to him as his people 8. An intending him as our Ultimate End in
is capable of this and so they have an everlasting end and this is their Excellency And therefore the Atheist that denyeth an everlasting life to man doth bring himself into a far baser state then the bruits are in For the bruits have an everlasting end in promoting the happiness of man But if man have no everlasting end himself there is no other whose everlasting happiness he can promote The unbeliever therefore doth debase his own soul and the whole creation And faith and holiness advance the soul and all things with it that are useful to our advancement The true Believer honoureth his horse his dog his food and rayment and the earth he treadeth on and every creature incomparably more than the Infidel doth honour his own or any others soul or then he honoureth the greatest prince on earth For the Believer useth all things even the vilest in reference to Eternity but the Infidel useth his life and soul but to a transitory end and takes the greatest Prince on earth to be but for a transitory use And as Eternity is unvalualbe in comparison of time so the use and excellency that a Believer doth ascribe to a bit of bread or the basest creature in the sanctified improvement of it is ten thousand times even unspeakably above the use and excellency that an Unbeliever ascribeth to his soul or to his Prince He that stampeth the Image of a Dog or a Toad upon gold instead of the Image of the Prince and would have ten thousand pounds-worth goe but for a farthing doth not by a thousand degrees so much debase the gold as the Infidel doth debase his soul and all things Infidelity is guilty of the destruction of all souls and the destruction of all mercies and the destruction of all Divine Revelations of all graces of all ordinances and means and of the destruction of the whole creation that was made for man For he that destroyeth the End destroyeth all the means But the Infidel destroyeth and denyeth the end of every one of these and Holiness only doth give them up and use them to their ends 1. He is guilty of the destruction of all souls For as much as in him lies they are destroyed while they are all made useless to the End for which they were created If there be no other life and happiness Everlasting what are souls good for what is the Reasonable creature good for Is it to be Happy here In what Here is no happiness Is it in eating and drinking and sleeping why these are to strengthen us for our service which tendeth to our end and therefore cannot be themselves our end Is it not better be without either meat or drink or sleep in point of Happiness so be it we also were without the need of them then to need them and have them for our need especially with the care and trouble which they cost us I had an hundred times rather for my part if it were lawful to desire it never have meat or drink or sleep and be without the need of them as I had rather be without a sore then to have a plaister that will ease it and be every day at the pains to dress it Brutes have some advantage in these above men in that they have not the care and fear and sorrow of mind as we have in the getting or keeping what they have or need If you go downward and say that men are made to govern brutes then what are brutes made for unless to dung the earth and so the basest shall be the end of the noblest and God may be as wisely said to be for man because he is to govern him Truely if there were no Everlasting life but man were a meer terrestrial animal I had rather never have been born or should wish I had never been a man I knew not what to do with my self nor how to imploy the faculties of my soul or body but they would all seem to me as useless things What should I do with my Reason if I had no higher an end then beasts what should I do with a mind that knoweth that there is a God and another world and that is capable of desiring him seeking and enjoying him if it must be frustrated of all what should I do with a heart that 's capable of the Love of God and delighting in his Love if I have no God to Love and delight in when this life is ended why have I a heart that so desireth him in fuller vision and fruition if I be capable of no such thing what then should I do with my time and life verily I know not if I were fully of this sad opinion whether I should turn brute in my life agreeably to my judgement or whether I should make an end of my life to be eased of a useless burden but confident I am I should not know what to do with my self I should be like a poor cashiered Souldier or like one turned out of his Service that knew not where to have work and wages And if you found me standing all day idle I must give you the reason because no man hath hired me What do those wretches do with their lives that think they have no God to serve and seek or future happiness to attain As men use to say of naughty Ministers so may I say of all mankind according to the Doctrine of the Infidels A sorry Taylor may make a Botcher or a bad Shoomaker may make a Cobler and a broken Mercer may be a Pedler but a naughty Priest is good for nothing And its true of him as such and as Christ himself saith Matth. 5. 13 14. Yee are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost his savour wherewith shall it be salted It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men yee are the light of the world men do not light a candle to put it under a bushel So I say of the Reasonable Creature The grass is useful for the beasts The beasts are serviceable unto man A swine that cannot serve you living is useful being dead But if there were no God to seek and serve and no life but this for us to hope for for ought I know man were good for nothing What were Light good for if there were no eyes or eyes if there were no light to see by what is a Watch good for but to tell the hour of the day All the curious parts and workmanship of it is worth no more then the mettal is worth if it be not useful to its proper end And what Reason and will and affections in man are good for I know not if not to seek to please and to enjoy the Lord Take off this poise and all the wheels of my soul must stand still or else do worse 2. The Infidel and ungodly man that looks not after an Etern lend destroyeth all the mercies of God
it is a more sweet and excellent state of life to be the Spouse of Christ and his members and serve God as friends and children with Love and Thankfulness then to serve him meerly as the most loyal subjects or with an obedience that hath less of Love 9. In the way of Redemption Holiness is more admirably exemplified in Christ then it was or would have been in Adam Adam would never have declared it in that eminency of Charity to others submission to God contempt of the world self-denyal and conquest of Satan as Christ hath done 10. And in the way of Redemption there is a double obligation laid upon man for every duty To the obligations of Creation all the obligations of Redemption and the new Creation are superadded And this threefold cord should not so easily be broken Here are moral means more powerfully to hold the soul to God 11. And in this way there is a clearer discovery of the everlasting state of man and life and immortality are more fully brought to light by the Gospel 2 Tim. 1. 10 then for ought we find in Scripture they were to innocent man himself No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son that is in the bosome of the Father he hath declared him Joh. 1. 18. For no man hath ascended up into heaven but he that came down from heaven even the son of man which is in heaven Joh 3. 13. 12. Man will be advanced to the judging of the ungodly and of the conquered Angels even by the good will of the Father and a participation in the honour of Christ our head and by a participation in his Victories and by our own Victories in his strength by the right of Conquest we shall judge with Christ both Devils and men that were enemies to him and our salvation as you may see 1 Cor. 6. 2 3. And there is more in that promise then we yet well understand Rev. 2. 26 27. He that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end to him will I give power over the Nations and he shall rule them with a rod of Iron as the vessels of a Potter shall they be broken to shivers even as I received of my Father 13. And that which Augustine so much insisteth on I think is also plain in Scripture that the Salvation of the Elect is better secured in the hands of Christ then his own or any of his posterities was in the hands of Adam We know that Adam lost that which was committed to him But we know whom we have believed and are perswaded that he is able to keep that which we commit to him against that day 1 Tim. 1. 12. Force not these Scriptures against our own Consolation and the glory of our Redeemer and then judge Joh. 7. 2. As thou hast given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal Life to as many as thou hast given him Joh. 6. 3. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out Ver. 39. And this is the Fathers will which hath sent me that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the last day Joh. 10. 26 27 28 29. But yee believe not because yee are not of my sheep as I said unto you My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish and none shall take them out of my hands My Father which gave them me is greater then all and no man is able to pluck them out of my Fathers hands Eph. 1. 3 4. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in Love Having predestinated us to the adoption of his children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved Being predestinated according to the purpose of him that worketh all things after the counsel of his own will Ver. 11. And if Faith and Repentance and the right disposition of the will it self be his resolved gift to his Elect and not things left meerly to our uncertain wills then the case is past all question 2 Tim. 2. 25 26. In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves if God peradventure will give them Repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves our of the snare of the Devil Eph. 2. 8. By grace yee are saved through faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God Gal. 5. 22. The fruit of the spirit is Love Faith Phil. 1. 29. To you it is given on the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him Act. 13. 48. As many as were ordained to eternal life believed Jer. 24. 7. And I will give them an heart to know me that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God for they shall return unto me with their whole heart Ezek. 11. 19 20. And I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within you and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them an heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and do them and they shall be my people and I will be their God Ezek. 36. 26 27. A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you an heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes See also Heb. 8. 6 7 8 9 10. where this is called the new and better Covenant I will put my Laws in their minds and write them in their hearts Jer. 31. 33. And Jer. 32. 39 40. And I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me for ever And I will make an everlasting Covenant with them and I will not turn away from them to do them good but I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me 1 Cor. 4. 7. Who makes thee to differ and what hast thou that thou didst not receive Much more may be produced from which it is evident that Christ is the Author and finisher of our Faith and that the certainty of the salvation of his Elect doth lie more on his undertaking and resolution infallibly to accomplish their salvation then upon our wisdom or the stability of our mutable free-wills and that thus we are better in the hands of the second Adam then we were in the hands of the first
what it is to be Godly and to walk with God and what it is to be an Atheist or Ungodly you may easily see that Godliness is more rare and Atheism more common than many that themselves are Atheists will believe It is not that which a man calls his God that is taken by him for his God indeed It is not the Tongue but the Heart that is the man Pilate called Christ the King of the Jews when he crucified him The Jews called God their Father when Christ telleth them they were of their father the Devil and proveth it because what ever they said they would do his lusts Joh. 8. 44. The same Jews pretended to honour the name of the Messiah and expect him while they killed him The question is not what men call themselves but what they are Not whether you say you take God for your God but whether you do so indeed Not whether you profess your selves to be Atheists but whether you are Atheists indeed or not If you are not look over what I have here said and tell your consciences Do you walk with God who is it that you submit your selves willingly to be disposed of by To whom are you most subject and whose commands have the most effectual authority with you who is the Chief Governour of your hearts and lives whom is it that you principally desire to please whom do you most fear and whose displeasure do you principally avoid from whom is it that you expect your greaetest reward and in whom and with whom do you place and expect your happiness whose work is it that you do as the greatest business of your lives Is it the goodness of God in himself and unto you that draweth up your hearts to him in Love Is he the ultimate End of the main intentions design and industry of your lives Do you trust upon his Word as your security for your everlasting hopes and happiness Do you study and observe him in his works Do you really live as in his presence Do you delight in his Word and meditate on it Do you love the Communion of Saints and to be most frequent and familiar with them that are most frequent and familiar with Christ Do you favour more the particular affectionate discourse about his Nature Will and Kingdom than the frothy talk of empty wits or the common discourse of carnal worldlings Do you love to be employed in thanking him for his Mercies and in praising him and declaring the glory of his attributes and works Is your dependence on him as your great benefactor and do you receive your mercies as his gifts If thus your principal observation be of God and your chief desire after God and your chiefest confidence in God and your chiefest business in the world be with God and for God and your chifest joy be in the favour of God when you can apprehend it and in the prosperity of his Church and your hopes of glory and your chiefest grief and trouble be your sinful distance from him and your backwardness and disability in his love and service and the fear of his displeasure and the injuries done to his Gospel and honour in the world then I must needs say you are savingly delivered from your Atheism and Ungodliness you do not only talk of God but walk with God you are then acquainted with that spiritual life and work which the sensual world is unacquainted with and with those invisible everlasting excellencies which if worldlings knew they would change their minds and choice and pleasures You are then acquainted with that rational manly saintly life which ungodly men are strangers to and you are in the way of that well grounded Hope and Peace to which all the Pleasures and Crowns on earth if compared are but cheats and misery But if you were never yet brought to walk with God do not think that you have a sound belief in God nor that you acknowledge him sincerely nor that you are saved from heart atheism Nor is it Piety in the Opinion and the Tongue that will save him that is an Atheist or ungodly in heart and life Divinity is an affective-practical science Knowing is not the ultimate or perfective act of man but a means to holy Love and Joy and service Nor is it clear and solid knowledge if it do not somewhat affect the heart and engage and actuate the life according to the nature and use of the thing known The soundness of Knowledge and Belief is not best discerned in the intellectual acts themselves but in their powerful free and pleasant efficacy upon our choice and practice By these therefore you must judge whether you are Godly or Atheistical The question is not what your Tongues say of God nor what complemental ceremonious observances you allow him but what your Hearts and your endeavours say of him and whether you glorifie him as God when you say you know him Otherwise you will find that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who held the truth in unrighteousness Rom. 1. 18 21. And now alas what matter of lamentation is here before us To see how seriously men converse with one another and how God is overlookt or neglected by the most How men live together as if there were more that is considerable and regardable in these particles of animated dust then in the Lord Almighty and in all his graces service and rewards To see how God is cast aside and his interest made to give place to the interest of the flesh and his services must stay till men have done their service to their lusts or to worldly men that can do them hurt or shew them favour And his will must not be done when it crosseth the will of sinful man How little do all the commands and promises and threatnings of God signifie with these Atheistical men in comparison of their lusts or the laws of men or any thing that concerneth their temporal prosperity O how is the world revolted from their Maker How have they lost the knowledge of themselves and forgotten their natures capacities and obligations and what it is to be indeed a man O hearken sinners to the call of your Redeemer Return O seduced wandering souls and know at last your resting place why is not God in all your thoughts or why is he thought on with so much remisness unwillingness and contempt and with so little pleasure seriousness or regard Do you understand your selves in this Do you deal worthily with God Or wisely for your selves Do you take more pleasure with the Prodigal to feed swine and to feed with swine then to dwell at home with your heavenly Father and to walk before him and serve him in the world Did you but know how dangerous a way you have been in and how unreasonably you have dealt to forsake God in your hearts and follow that which cannot profit you what haste would you make
juvenile delights and so live retiredly and seek no higher pleasure or felicity but only sit down with the weeping or the laughing Philosopher lamenting or deriding the Vanity of the world do yet live no other than a sensual life as an old Dog that hath no pleasure in hunting or playfulness as he had when he was a Whelp Only he is less deluded and less vain than other sensualists that find more pleasure in their course All the doubt is concerning those that place their felicity in Knowledge and those that delight in Moral Vertues or that delight in studying of God though they are no Christians Answ. The point is weighty and hath oft unhappily faln into injudicious hands I shall endeavour to resolve it as truly clearly and impartially as I can 1. It is a great errour against the Nature of man to say that Knowledge as such is fit to be any mans chief and ultimate End It may be that act which is next the Enjoying Act of the Will which is it that indeed is next the End objectively considered But it is not that Act which we call Ultimate Ultimus And this is plain 1. Because the Object of the Understanding which is Truth is not formally the nearest object or matter of full felicity or delight It is Goodness that is the nearest object 2. And therefore the office of the Intellect is but introductive and subservient to the office of the Will to apprehend the Verity of Good and present it to the will to be prosecuted or embraced or delighted in There are many Truths that are ungrateful and vexatious and which men would wish to be no truths And there is a knowledge which is troublesome useless undesirable and tormenting which even a wise man would fain avoid if he knew how Morality is but preparatively in the intellect and therefore intellectual acts as such are not morally Good or evil but only participatively as subject to the Will And therefore knowledge as such being not a Moral Good can be no other than such a Natural Good as is Bonum alicui only so far as it tendeth to some Welfare or Happiness or pleasure of the possessor or some other And this Welfare or Pleasure is either that which is suited to the Sensitive Powers or to the Rational which is to be found in the love of God alone 2. I add therefore that even those men that seem to take up their felicity in common Knowledge indeed do but make their Knowledge subservient to something else which they take for their felicity For Knowledge of Evil may Torment them It is only to know something which they take to be Good that is their Delight And it is the Complacency or Love of that Good at the Heart which sets them on work and causeth the delight of Knowing If you will say that common Knowledge as Knowledge doth immediately Delight yet will it be found but such a pleasing of the Phantasie as an Ape hath in spying marvels which if it have no end that 's higher is still but a sensitive Delight but if it be referred to a higher Delight in God doth participate of the nature of it Delight in general is the common end of Men and Brutes But in specie they are distinguished as Sensual or Rational 3. If you suppose a Philosopher to be Delighted in studying Mathematicks or any of the works of God either he hath herein an End or no End beyond the Knowledge of the Creature Either he terminateth his desires and delights in the Creature or else useth it as a means to raise him to the Creatour If he study and delight in the Creature ultimately this is indeed the Act of a rational Creature and an act of Reason as to the faculty it proceeds from and so is a Rational Contrivance for sensual ends and pleasures But it is but the errour of Reason and is no more agreeable to the Rational Nature than the deceit of the senses is to the sensitive Nor is it finally to be numbred with the operations felicitating humane nature any more than an erroneous dream of pleasure or than that man is to be numbred with the lovers of learning who taketh pleasure in the binding leaves or letters of the book while he understandeth nothing of the sense But if this Philosopher seek to know the Creatour in and by the Creatures and take delight in the Makers Power Wisdome and Goodness which appeareth in them then this is truly a Rational Delight in it self considered and beseeming a man And if he reach so far in it as to make God his Highest desire and delight overpowring the desires and delights of sensuality he shall be happy as being led by the Son unto the Father But if he make but some little approaches towards it and drown all such desires in the sensual desires and delights he is then but an unhappy sensualist and liveth brutishly in the tenor of his life though in some acts in part he operate rationally as a man The like I may say of them that are said to place their delight in Moral Vertues Indeed nothing is properly a Moral Good or vertue but that which is exercised upon God as our End or upon the Creature as a Means to this End To study and know meer notions of God or what is to be held and said of him in discourse is not to study or to know God no more than to love the language and phrase of holy writing is to Love God To study God as one that is less regardable and desirable than our sensual delights is but to blaspheme him To study seek and serve him as one that can promote or hinder our sensual felicity is but to abuse him as a means to your sensuality And for the vertues of Temperance Justice or Charity they are but Analogically and secundum quid to be found in any ungodly person Materially they may have them in an eminent degree but not as they are informed by the End which moralizeth them Jezabel's fast was not formally a vertue but an odious way of Hypocrisie to oppress the innocent He that doth works of Justice or Mercy to Evil ends only as for applause or to deceive c. and not from the true principles of Justice and Mercy doth not thereby exercise Moral Vertue but hypocrisie and other vice He that doth works of Justice and Mercy out of meer natural compassion to others and desire of their good without respect to God as obliging or rewarding or desiring it doth perform such a natural good work as a Lamb or a gentle Beast doth to his fellows which hath not the true form of Moral Vertue but the Matter only He that in such works hath some little by-respect to God but more to his carnal interest among men doth that which on the by participateth of Moral Good or is such secundum quid but not simpliciter being to be denominated from the part predominant He that doth works
blood and made them Kings and Priests to God Herein he hath sometime a sweet foretast of the everlasting pleasures which though it be but little as Jonathans honey on the end of his rod or as the clusters of grapes which were brought from Canaan into the wilderness yet are they more excellent then all the delights of sinners And in the beholding of this celestial Glory some beams do penetrate his breast and so irradiate his longing soul that he is changed thereby into the same image from Glory to Glory the spirit of Glory and of God doth rest upon him And O what an excellent holy frame doth this converse with God possess his soul of How reverently doth he think of him what life is there in every Name and Attribute of God which he heareth or thinketh on The mention of his Power his Wisdome his Goodness his Love his Holinesse his Truth how powerful and how pleasant are they to him when to those that know him but by the hearing of the ear all these are but like common names and notions and even to the weaker sort of Christians whose Walking with God is more uneven and low interrupted by their sins and doubts and fears this life and glory of a Christian course is lesse perceived And the sweet appropriating and applying works of faith by which the soul can own his God and finds it self owned by him are exercised most easily and happily in these near approaches unto God Our doubts are cherished by our darknesse and that is much caused by our distance The nearer the soul doth approach to God the more distinctly it heareth the voice of mercy the sweet reconciling invitations of Love and the more clearly it discerneth that goodness and amiableness in God which maketh it easier to us to believe that he loveth us or is ready to embrace us and banisheth all those false and horrid apprehensions of him which before were our discouragement and made him seem to us more terrible then amiable As the Ministers and faithful servants of Christ are ordinarily so misrepresented by the malignant Devil to those that know them not that they are ready to think them some silly fools or falsehearted hypocrites and to shun them as strange undesirable persons but when they come to through acquaintance with them by a nearer and familiar converse they see how much they were mistaken and wronged by their prejudice and belief of slanderers misreports Even so a weak believer that is under troubles in the apprehension of his sin and danger is apt to hearken to the enemy of God that would shew him nothing but his wrath and represent God as an enemy to him And in this case it is exceeding hard for a poor sinner to believe that God is reconciled to him or loveth him or intends him good but he is ready to dread and shun him as an enemy or as he would fly from a wild beast or murderer or from fire or water that would destroy him And all these injurious thoughts of God are cherished by strangeness and disacquaintance But as the soul doth fall into an understanding and serious converse with God and having been often with him doth find him more merciful than he was by Satan represented to him his experience reconcileth his mind to God and maketh it much easier to him to believe that God is reconciled unto him when he hath found much better entertainment with God than he expected and hath observed his benignity and the treasures of his bounty laid up in Christ and by him distributed to believers and hath found him ready to hear and help and found him the only full and suitable felicitating Good this banisheth his former horrid thoughts and maketh him ashamed that ever he should think so suspiciously injuriously and dshonourably of his dearest God and Father Yet I must confesse that there are many upright troubled souls that are much in reading prayer and meditation that still find it hard to be perswaded of the Love of God and that have much more disquietment and fear since they set themselves to think of God than they had before But yet for all this we may well conclude that to walk with God is the way to consolation and tendeth to acquaint us with his love As for those troubled souls whose experience is objected against this some of them are such as are yet but in their return to God from a life of former sin and misery and are yet but like the needle in the compasse that is shaken in a trembling motion towards their rest and not in any setled apprehensions of it Some of them by the straying of their imagination too high and putting themselves upon more than their heads can bear and by the violence of fears or other passions do make themselves uncapable of those sweet consolations which else they might find in their converse with God as a Lute when the strings are broken with straining is uncapable of making any melody All of them have false apprehensions of God and therefore trouble themselves by their own mistakes And if some perplex themselves by their errour doth it follow that therefore the Truth is not comfortable Is not a Fathers presence consolatory because some children are afraid of their Fathers that know them not because of some disguise And some of Gods children walk so unevenly and carelesly before him that their sins provoke him to hide his face and to seem to reject them and disown them and so to trouble them that he may bring them home But shall the comforts of our Fathers Love and Family be judged of by the fears or smart of those whom he is scourging for their disobedience or their tryal Seek God with understanding as knowing his essential properties and what he will be to them that sincerely and diligently seek him and then you will quickly have experience that nothing so much tendeth to quiet and settle a doubting troubled unstable soul as faithfully to walk with God But the soul that estrangeth it self from God may indeed for a time have the quietness of security but so far it will be strange to the assurance of his Love and to true consolation Expect not that God should follow you with his comforts in your sinfulnesse and negligence and cast them into your hearts whilest you neither seek nor mind them or that he give you the fruit of his wayes in your own wayes Will he be your joy when you forget him will he delight your souls with his goodness and amiableness while you are taken up with other matters and think not of him can you expect to find the comforts of his family among his enemies out of doors The experience of all the world can tell you that prodigals while they are stragling from their Fathers house do never tast the comfort of his embraces The strangers meddle not with his childrens joyes They grow not in the way of ambition covetousnesse vainglory or
that hath rightly and resolvedly determined of his end hath virtually resolved a thousand controversies that others are unsatisfied and erroneous in He that is resolved that his End is to Please and Glorifie God and to enjoy him for ever is easily resolved whether a holy life or a sensual and worldly be the way whether the way be to be Godly or to make a mock at Godliness whether Covetousness and Riches Ambition and Preferment Voluptuousness and Fleshly pleasures be the means to attain his End whether it will be attained rather by the studying of the Word of God and meditating on it day and night and by holy conference and fervent prayer and an obedient life or by negligence or worldliness or drunkenness or gluttony or cards and dice or beastly filthiness or injustice and deceit Know once but whither it is that we are going and its easie to know whether the Saint or the Swine or the Swaggerer be in the way But a man that doth mistake his End is out of his way at the first step and the further he goes the further he is from true felicity and the more he erreth and the further he hath to go back again if ever he return Every thing that a man doth in the world which is not for the right end the Heavenly felicity is an act of foolishness and errour how splendid soever the Matter or the Name may make it appear to ignorant men Every word that an ungodly person speaketh being not for a right End is in him but sin and folly however materially it may be an excellent and useful Truth While a miserable soul hath his back upon God and his face upon the world every step he goeth is an act of folly as tending unto his further misery It can be no act of wisdome which tendeth to a mans damnation When such a wretch begins to enquire and bethink him where he is and whither he is going and whither he should go and to think of turning back to God then and never till then he is beginning to come to himself and to be wise Luk. 15. 17. Till God and Glory be the End that he aimeth at and seriously bends his study heart and life to seek though a man were searching into the mysteries of nature though he were studying or discussing the notions of Theology though he were admired for his earning and wisdome by the world and cryed up as the Oracle of the Earth he is all the while but playing the fool and going a cleanlier way to Hell than the grosser sinners of the world For â—s he wise that knoweth not whether Heaven or Earth be better whether God or his Flesh should be obeyed whether everlasting joyes or the transitory pleasures of sin should be preferred or that seemeth to be convinced of the truth in these and such like cases and yet hath not the wit to make his choice and bend his life according to his conviction He cannot be wise that practically mistakes his End 3. He that walketh with God doth know those things with a deep effectual heart-changing knowledge which other men know but superficially by the halves and as in a dream And true wisdome consisteth in the Intensiveness of the knowledge subjectively as much as in the extensiveness of it objectively To see a few things in a narrow room perspicuously and clearly doth shew a better eye-sight than in the open Air to see many things obscurely so as scarce to discern any of them aright â—â—ke him that saw men walk like trees The clearness and 〈◊〉 of knowledge which makes it effectual to its proper use 〈…〉 greatness and excellency of it Therefore it is that unlearned men that love and fear the Lord may well be said to be incomparably more wise and knowing men than the most learned that are ungodly As he hath more riches that hath a little Gold or Jewels than he that hath many load of stones so he that hath a deep effectual knowledge of God the Father and the Redeemer and of the life to come is wiser and more knowing than he that hath only a notional knowledge of the same things and of a thousand more A wicked man hath so much knowledge as teacheth him to speak the same words of God and Christ and Heaven which a true Believer speaks but not so much as to work in him the same affections and choice nor so much as to cause him to do the same work As it is a far more excellent kind of knowledge which a man hath of any Country by travel and habitation there than that which cometh but by reading or report or which a man hath of meat of fruits of wine by eating and drinking than that which another hath by hearsay so is the inward heart-affecting knowledge of a true believer more excellent than the flashy notions of the ungodly Truth simply as Truth is not the highest and most excellent object of the mind But Good as Good must be apprehended by the Understanding and commended to the Will which entertaineth it with Complacency adhereth to it with Choice and Resolution prosecuteth it with Desire and Endeavour and Enjoyeth it with Delight And though it be the Understanding which apprehendeth it yet it is the Heart or Will that rellisheth it and tasteth the greatest sweetness in it working upon it with some mixture of internal sense which hath made some ascribe a knowledge of Good as such unto the Will. And it is the Wills intention that causeth the Understanding to be denominated Practical And therefore I may well say thâ—t it is Wisdom indeed when it reacheth to the heart No man knoweth the Truth of God so well as he that most firmly Believeth him And do man knoweth the Goodness of God so well as he that Loveth him most No man knoweth his Power and Mercy so well as he that doth most confidently Trust him And no man knoweth his Justice and Dreadfulness so well as he that feareth him No man knoweth or believeth the Glory of Heaven so well as he that most esteemeth desireth and seeketh it and hath the most Heavenly Heart and Conversation Ho man believeth in Jesus Christ so well as he that giveth up himself unto him with the greatest Love and Thankfulness and Trust and Obedience As James saith Shew mee thy Faith by thy works so say I Let me know the measure and value of my knowledge by my Heart and Life That is wisdome indeed which conformeth a man to God and saveth his soul This only will be owned as wisdome to eternity when dreaming notions will prove but folly 4. He that walketh with God hath an infallible Rule and taketh the right course to have the best acquaintance with it and skill to use it The Doctrine that informeth him is Divine It is from Heaven and not of Men And therefore if God be wiser than man he is able to make his Disciples wisest and Teaching will more certainly and
no connaturality with the things above for such a soul to be surprized with the tydings of death alas how dreadful must it be And thus I have shewed you the Benefits that come by walking with God which if you Love your selves with a rational love me thinks should resolve every impartial considerate Reader to give up himself without delay to so desirable a course of life or if he have begun it to follow it more chearfully and faithfully than he had done CHAP. VII I Am next to shew you that Believers have special obligations to this holy course of life and therefore are doubly faulty if they neglect it Though indeed to neglect it totally or in the main drift of their lives is a thing inconsistent with a living Faith Consider 1 If you are true Christians your Relations engage you to walk with God Is he not your Reconciled Father and you his Children in a special sense And whom should Children dwell with but with their Father You were glad when he received you into his Covenant that he would enter into so near a Relation to you as he expresseth 2 Cor. 6. 17 18. I will receive you and will be a Father to you and ye shall be my Sons and Daughters saith the Lord Almighty And do you draw back as if you repented of your Covenant and were not only weary of the Duty but of the Priviledges and Benefits of your Relation You may have access to God when others are shut out Your Prayers may be heard when the prayers of the wicked are abominable You may be welcome when the worldling and ambitious and carnal are despised He that dwelleth in the highest Heaven is willing to look to you with respect and dwell with you when he beholdeth the proud afar off Isa. 66. 1 2. 57. 15 16. And yet will you not come that may be welcome Doth he put such a difference between you and others as to feed you as his Children at his table while others are called Dogs and are without the doors and have but your crums and leavings and yet will you be so foolish and unthankful as to run out of your Fathers presence and choose to be without among the Dogs How came your Fathers presence to be so grievous to you and the priviledges of his family to seem so vile Is it not some unchild-like carriage the guilt of some disobedience or contempt that hath first caused this Or have you faln again in love with fleshly pleasures and some vanity of the world Or have you had enough of God and Godliness till you begin to grow aweary of him If so you never truly knew him However it be if you grow indifferent as to God do not wonder if shortly you find him set as light by you And believe it the day is not far off in which the Fatherly Relation of God and the priviledges of Children will be more esteemed by you when all things else forsake you in your last distress you will be loth that God should then forsake you or seem as a stranger to hide his face Then you will cry out as the afflicted Church Isa. 63. 15 16. Look down from Heaven and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory Where is thy zeal and thy strength the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me are they restrained Doubtless thou art our Father though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not thou O Lord art our Father our Redeemer thy name is from everlasting Nothing but God and his Fatherly Relation will then support you Attend him therefore and with reverent obedient chearfulness and delight converse with him as with your dearest Father For since the beginning of the world men have not known by sensible evidence either the ear or the eye besides God himself what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him Isa. 64. 4. Though he be wroth with us because we have sinned yet doth he meet him that rejoyceth and worketh rightcousness that remembreth him in his waies vers 5. Say not I have played abroad so long that I dare not now go home I have sinned so greatly that I dare not speak to him or look him in the face Come yet but with a penitent returning heart and thou mayest be accepted through the Prince of Peace Prodigals find better entertainment than they did expect when once they do but resolve for home If he allow us to begin with Our Father which art in Heaven we may boldly proceed to ask forgiveness of our trespasses and whatever else is truly good for us But alas as our iniquities seduce us away from God so the guilt of them affrighteth some from returning to him and the love of them corrupteth the hearts of others and makes them too indifferent as to their communion with him so that too many of his children live as if they did not know their Father or had forgotten him We may say as Isa. 64. 6 7 8 9. But we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away and there is none that calleth upon thy name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee for thou hast hid thy face from us and hast consumed us because of our iniquities But now O Lord thou art our Father we are the Clay and thou our Potter and we are all the work of thy hand Be not wroth very sore O Lord neither remember iniquity for ever Behold see we beseech thee we are all thy people O do not provoke your Father to disown you or to withdraw his help or hide his face or to send the Rod to call you home for if you do you will wish you had known the priviledges of his presence and had kept nearer to him Be not so unnatural so unthankful so unkind as to be weary of your Fathers presence and such a Father 's too and to take more delight in any others Moreover you are related to God in Christ as a Wife unto a Husband as to Covenant union and nearness and dearness of affection and as to his tender care of you for your good And is it seemly is it wisely or gratefully done of you to desire rather the company of others and delight in creatures more than him Isa. 54. 5 6. How affectionately doth thy Maker call himself the Husband of his people And can thy heart commit adultery and forsake him My Covenant they brake though I was an Husband to thee saith the Lord Jer. 31. 32. O put not God to exercise his jealousie It is one of his terrible attributes to be a jealous God And can he be otherwise to thee when thou lovest not his converse or company and carest not how long thou art from him in the world Woe to thee if he once say as Hos. 2. 2. She is not
unresistibly procureth our Love to them And when we Love them it is wonderful to observe how easily we are brought to think well of almost all they do and highly to value their judgements graces parts and works when greater excellencies in another perhaps are scarce observed or regarded but as a common thing And therefrre the destruction or want of Love is apparent in the vilifying thoughts and speeches that most men have of one another and in the low esteem of the judgements and performances and lives of other men much more in their contempt reproaches and cruel persecutions Now though God will have us encrease in our Love of Christ in his members and in our pure Love of Christians as such and in our common charity to all yea and in our just fidelity to our friend yet would he have us suspect and moderate our selfish and excessive Love and inordinate partial esteem of one above another when it is but for our selves and on our own account And therefore as he will make us know that we our selves are no such excellent persons as that it should make another so laudable or advance his worth because he Loveth us so he will make us know that our friends whom we overvalue are but like other men If we exalt them too highly in our esteem it is a sign that God must cast them down And as their Love to us was it that made us so exalt them so their unkindness or unfaithfulness to us is the fittest means to bring them lower in our estimation and affection God is very jealous of our hearts as to our overvaluing and overloving any of his Creatures what we give inordinately and excessively to them is some way or other taken from him and given them to his injury and therefore to his offence Though I know that to be void of natural friendly or social affections is an odious extream on the other side yet God will rebuke us if we are guilty of excess And it 's the greater and more inexcusable fault to over-love the Creature because our Love to God is so cold and hardly kindled and kept alive He cannot take it well to see us dote upon dust and frailty like our selves at the same time when all his wondrous kindness and attractive goodness do cause but such a faint and languid Love to him which we our selves can scarcely feel If therefore he cure us by permitting our friends to shew us truly what they are and how little they deserve such excessive Love when God hath so little it is no more wonder than it is that he is tender of his glory and merciful to his servants souls 5. By the failing and unfaithfulness of our friends the wonderful Patience of God will be observed and honoured as it is shewed both to them and us When they forsake us in our distress especially when we suffer for the cause of Christ it is God that they injure more than us And therefore if he bear with them and forgive their weakness upon repentance why should not we do so that are much less injured The worlds persidiousness should make us think How great and wonderful is the patience of God that beareth with and beareth up so vile ungrateful treacherous men that abuse him to whom they are infinitely obliged And it should make us consider when men deal treacherously with us How great is that mercy that hath born with and pardoned greater wrongs which I my self have done to God than these can be which men have done to me It was the remembranâ—e of David's sin that had provoked God to raise up his own Son against him of whom he had been too fond which made him so easily bear the curses and reproach of Shimei It will make us bear abuse from others to remember how ill we have dealt with God and how ill we have deserved at his hands our selves 6. And I have observed another of the Reasons of Gods permitting the failing of our friends in the season and success It is that the Love of our friends may not hinder us when we are called to suffer or dye When we over-love them it teareth our very hearts to leave them And therefore it is a strong temptation to draw us from our duty and to be unfaithful to the cause of Christ lest we should be taken from our too-too-dear friends or lest our suffering cause their too-much grief It is so hard a thing to dye with willingness and peace that it must needs be a mercy to be saved from the impediments which make us backward And the excessive Love of friends and relations is not the least of these impediments O how loth is many a one to dye when they think of parting with wife or husband or children or dear and faithful friends Now I have oft observed that a little before their death or sickness it is ordinary with God to permit some unkindness between such too-dear friends to arise by which he moderated and abated their affections and made them a great deal the willinger to dye Then we are ready to say It is time for me to leave the world when not only the rest of the world but my dearest friends have first forsaken me This helpeth us to remember our dearest everlasting friend and to be grieved at the heart that we have been no truer our selves to him who would not have forsaken us in our extremity And sometime it maketh us even aweary of the world and to say as Elias Lord take away my life c. 1 King 19. 4 10 14. when we must say I thought I had one friend left and behold even he forsaketh me in my distress As the Love of friends intangleth our affections to this world so to be weaned by their unkindnesses from our friends is a great help to loosen us from the world and proveth oft a very great mercy to a soul that is ready to depart And as the friends that Love us most and have most interest in our esteem and Love may do more than others in tempting us to be unfaithful to our Lord to entertain any errour to commit any sin or to flinch in suffering so when God hath permitted them to forsake us and to lose their too great interest in us we are fortified against all such temptations from them I have known where a former intimate friend hath grown strange and broken former friendship and quickly after turned to such dangerous wayes and errours as convinced the other of the mercifulness of God in weakning his temptation by his friends desertion who might else have drawn him along with him into sin And I have often observed that when the husbands have turned from Religion to Infidelity Familism or some dangerous heresie that God hath permitted them to hate and abuse their wives so inhumanely as that it preserved the poor women from the temptation of following them in their Apostasie or sin When as some other women with
the use of means in the course of our Conversations 9. A seeking him in the choise and use of means 10. An obeying him as our Soveraign Governour 11. An honouring and praising him as God 12. And an enjoying him and delighting in him in some small foretasts here as he is seen by saith but perfectly hereafter as beheld in Glory The affective practical Knowing of God which is Life eternal containeth or implyeth all these parts And every Christian that hath any of this Knowledge desireth more It is his great desire to Know more of God and to know him with a more affecting powerful knowledge He that groweth in grace doth accordingly grow in this knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. The vigour and alacrity of our souls lieth in it The rectitude of our actions and the holiness of them floweth from it God is the excellency of our Hearts and lives Our advancement and our joy is here only to be found All other knowledge is so far desirable as it conduceth to the knowledge of God or to the several duties which that knowledge doth require All knowledge of words or things of causes and effects of any creatures actions customes Laws or whatsoever may be known is so far valuable as it is useful and so far useful as it is Holy subserving the knowledge of God in Christ. What the sun is to all mens eyes that God is to their souls and more It is to Know him that we have understandings given us And our understandings enjoy him but so far as they know him as the eye enjoyeth the Light of the sun by seeing it The ignorance of God is the blindness and part of the atheism of the soul and inferreth the rest They that know him not desire not heartily to know him nor can they Love him Trust him fear him serve him or call upon him whom they do not Know How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed Rom. 10. 14. The heart of the Ungodly saith to God Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy wayes what is the Almighty that we should serve him and what profit shall we have if we pray unto him Job 21. 14 15. 22. 17. All wickedness hath admission into that heart or land where the knowledge of God is not the watch to keep it out Abraham inferred that the men of Gerar would kill him for his wife when he saw that the fear of God was not in that place Gen. 20. 11. It was Gods controversie with Israel because there was no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God in the land but by swearing and lying and killing and stealing they brake out and blood touched blood Hos. 4. 1 2. They are called by God a foolish people sottish children of no understanding that knew not God though they were wise to do evil Jer. 4. 22. He will pour out his fury upon the heathen that know him not and the families that call not on his name Jer. 10. 25. As the day differeth from the night by the light of the sun so the Church differeth from the world by the Knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. Psal. 76. 1 2. In Judah is God known his name is great in Israel In Salem also is his Tabernacle and his dwelling place in Sion The Love and Unity and peace which shall succeed persecution and malice in the blessed times shall be because the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea Isa. 11. 6 7 8 9. Hypocrites shall know him superficially and uneffectually and his holy ones shall know him so as to Love him fear him trust him and obey him with a knowledge effectual upon heart and life And he will continue his loving kindness to them that know him Psal. 36. 10. He is the best Christian that hath the fullest impression made upon his soul by the Knowledge of God in all his Attributes Thus it is our Life eternal to Know God in Christ. It is to reveal the Father that the Son was sent and it is to reveal the Father and the Son that the Holy spirit is sent God is the light and the life and felicity of the soul. The work of its salvation is but the restoring it to him and putting it in possession of him The beginning of this is Regeneration and Reconciliation the perfection oâ— it is Glorification beatifical Vision and Fruition The Mind that hath least of God is the darkest and most deluded Mind And the mind that hath most of him is the most lucide pure and serene And how is God in the Mind but as the Light and other visible objects are in the eye and as pleasant melodie is in the ear and as delightful meats and drinks are in the tast But that God maketh a more deep and durable impress on the soul and such as is suitable to its spiritual immaterial nature As your seal is to make a full impression on the wax of the whole figure that is upon it self so hath God been pleased in divers seals to engrave his Image and these must make their Impress upon us 1. There is the seal of the Creation sor the world hath much of the Image of God It is engraven also on the seal of Providential disposals though there we are uncapable of reading it yet so fully as in the rest 2. It is engraven on the seal of the holy Scriptures 3. And on the Person of Jesus Christ who is the purest clearest Image of the Father as also on the holy example of his life 4. And by the means of all these applyed to the soul in our sober consideration by the working of the Holy Ghost the Image of God is made upon us Here note 1. That All the revealed Image of God must be made on the soul and not a part only and all is wrought where any is truly wrought 2. That to the compleatness of his Image on us it is necessary that each part of Gods Description be orderly made and orderly make the Impress on us and that each part keep its proper place For it is a monster that hath feet where the head should be or the backside forward or where there is any gross misplacing of the parts 3. Note also that all the three forementioned seals contain all Gods Image on them but yet not all alike but the first part is more clearly engraven upon the first of them and the second part upon the second of them and the third part most clearly on the third and last To open this more plainly to you Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity is the sum of our holy faith In the Deity there is revealed to us One God in three persons the Father Son and Holy Ghost The Essence is but one the subsistences are three And as we must conceive and speak of the Divine Nature according to its Image while we see it but in a glass so
we must say that in this Blessed Deity in the Unity of Essence there is a Trinity of Essential properties and Attributes that is Power Wisdom and Goodness Life Light and Love The measure of which is to have no measure but to be Infinite And therefore this Being is Eternal and not measured by Time being without Beginning or end He is Immense as being not measured by Place but containeth all places and is contained in none He is Perfect as not Measured by Parts or by Degrees but quite above Degrees and Parts This Infiniteness of his Being doth communicate it self or also consist in the Infiniteness of his Essential properties His Power is Omipotency that is Infinite Power His Knowledge or wisdom is Omniscience that is Infinite Wisdom His Goodness is Felicity it self or Infinite Goodness The first seal to our Cognisance on which he engraved this his Image was the Creation that is 1. The whole world in General 2. The Intellectual Nature or Man in special In the Being of the Creation and every particular Creature his Infinite Being is revealed so wretched a Fool is the Atheist that by denying God he denyeth all things Could he prove that there is no God I would quickly prove that there is no world no man no creature If he know that he is himself or that the world or any Creature is he may know that God is For God is the Original Being And all Being that is not Eternal must have some Original And that which hath no Original is God being Eternal Infinite and without cause The Power of God is revealed in the Being and Powers of the Creation His Wisdom is revealed in their Nature Order Offices Effects c. His Goodness is revealed in the Creatures Goodness its beauty usefulness and accomplishments But though all his Image thus appear upon the Creation yet is it his Omnipotency that principally there appears The beholding and consideration of the wonderful greatness activity and excellency of the Sun the Moon the Stars the fire and other creatures doth first and chiefly possess us with apprehensions of the Infinite Greatness or Power of the Creator In the Holy Word or Laws of God which is the second glass or seal more clear and legible to us than the former there appeareth also all his Image His power in the narratives predictions c. His Wisdom in the prophesies precepts and in all His Goodness in the promises and institutions in a special manner But yet it is his second property his Wisdom that most eminently appeareth on this second seal and is seen in the glass of the holy Law The discovery of such mysteries the revelation of so many Truths the suitableness of all the instituted means and the admirable fitness of all the holy contrivances of God and all his precepts promises and threatnings for the Government of Mankind and carrying him on for the attainment of his end in a way agreeable to his nature these shew that wisdom that is most Eminently here revealed though Power and Goodness be revealed with it so in the face of Jesus Christ who is the third and most perfect seal and glass there is the Image of the Power and Wisdom and Goodness of the Godhead But yet it is the Love or Goodness of the Father that is most Eminently revealed in the son His Power appeared in the incarnation the conquests over Satan and the world the Miracles the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ. His wisdom appeareth in the admirable mysterie of Redemption and in all the parts of the office works and laws of Christ and in the means appointed in subordination to him But Love and Goodness shineth most clearly and amiably through the whole it being the very end of Christ in this blessed work to reveal God to man in the Richoâ— of his Love as giving us the greatest mercies by the most precious means in the meetest season and manner for our good Reconciling us to himself and treating us as Children with Fatherly compassions and bringing us nearer him and opening to us the everlasting treasure having brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel God being thus revealed to man from without in the three Glasses or Seals of the Creation Law and Son himself he is also revealed to us in our selves man being as it were a little world In the Nature of man is revealed as in a Seal or Glass the nature of the blessed God in some measure In Unity of Essence we have a Trinity of Faculties of soul even the Vegetative Sensitive and Rational as our bodies have both parts and spirits Natural Vital and Animal the Rational Power in Unity hath also its Trinity of faculties even Power for Execution Understanding for Direction and Will for Command The measure of Power is Naturally sufficient to its use and end the understanding is a faculty to reason discern and discourse The will hath that Freedom which beseemeth an undetermined self-determining creature here in the way Besides this Physical Image of God that is inseparable from our Nature we have also his Law written in our hearts and are our selves objectively part of the Law of nature that is the signifiers of the will of God Had we not by sin obliterated somewhat of this Image it would have shewed it self more clearly and we should have been more capable of understanding it And then when we are Regenerate and Renewed by the Grace and Spirit of Christ and planted into him as living members of his body we have then the third impression upon our souls and are made like our Head in Wisdom Holiness and in effectual strength Considered as Creatures endued with Power understanding and will we have the Impress of all the foresaid Attributes of God But Eminently of his Power Considered as we were at first possessed with the light and law of works or Nature of which we yet retain some part so we have the Impress of all these Attributes of God But most Eminently of his Wisdom Considered as Regenerate by the Spirit and planted into Christ so we have the impress of all his said Attributes But most eminently of his Love and Goodness shining in the Moral accomplishments or graces of the soul. Man being thus made at first the Natural and Sapiential image of God with much of the Image of his Love the Lord did presently by necessary Resultancy and voluntary consent stand Related to us in such variety of Relations as answer the foresaid Properties and Attributes And these Relations of God to us are next to be known as flowing from his Attributes and Works As we have our derived Being from God who is the Primitive Eternal Being so from our Being given by Creation God is Related to us as our Maker From this Relation of a Creator in Unity there ariseth a Trinity of Relations This Trintty is in that Unity and that Unity in this Trinty First God having made us of nothing is necessarily
of sin and wickedness is not desirable to a Saint And is not God One and his Church One and hath he not commanded all his servants to be One and is not Love the new and great commandment by which they must be known to all men to be his Disciples Which then is the stricter servant of the Lord he that Loveth much or he that Loveth little he that Loveth all Christians or he that Loveth but a few with the special Love He that Loveth a Christian as a Christian or he that Loveth him but as one of his party or opinion He that is One in the Catholike Body Or he that disowneth Communion with the far greatest part of the body Will you say that Christ was loose and Pharises strict because Christ eat and drank with Publicans and Sinners and the Pharises condemned him for it It was Christ that was stricter in holiness then they for he abounded more in Love and Good works but they were stricter then he in a proud self-conceeted morosity and separation Certainly he that is highest in Love is highest in Grace and not he that confineth his Love to few Was it not the weak Christian that was the stricter in point of meats and drinks and dayes Rom. 14. 15. But the stronger that were censured by them did more strictly keep the commandment of God Christian Reader let the Unity of God have this effect upon thy soul 1. To draw thee from the distracting multitude of Creatures and make thee long to be all in God That thy soul may be still working toward him till thou â—nd nothing but God alone within thee In the multitude of thy thoughts within thee let his comforts delight thy soul Psal. 94. 19. The multitude distracteth thee Retire into Unity that thy soul may be composed quieted and delighted 2. And let it make thee long for the Unity of the Saints and endeavour it to the utmost of thy power that the Church in Unity may be more like the Head 3. And let it cause thee to admire the Happiness of the Saints that are freeed from the bondage of the distracting Creature and have but One to Love and Fear and Trust and Serve and Seek and Know One thing is needful which should be chosen but it s many that we are troubled about Luk. 11. 42. CHAP. IV. 3. THe Immensity of God which is the next Attribute to be considered must have this Effect upon thy soul 1. The Infinite God that is everywhere comprehending all places and things and comprehended by none must raise admiring reverent thoughts in the soul of the believer We wonder at the Magnitude of the Sun and the Heavens and of the whole Creation But when we begin to think what is beyond the Heavens and all created Being we are at a kind of loss Why it is God that is in all and above all and beyond all and beneath all and where there is no place because no Creature there is God And if thy thoughts should imagine millions of millions of miles beyond all place and measure all is but God and go as far as thou canst in thy thoughts and thou canst not go beyond him Reverently admire the Immensity of God The world and all the Creatures in it are not to God so much as a sand or atome is to all the world The point of a needle is more to all the world then the world to God For between that which is Finite and that which is Infinite there is no comparison Isa. 40. 12 15 17. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meated out Heaven with the span and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a ballance Behold the Nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the ballanceâ— behold he taketh up the Iles as a very little thing All Nations before him are as nothing and they are counted to him less then Nothing and Vanity 2. From this Greatness and Immensity of God also thy soul must reverently stay all its busie bold enquiries and know that God is to us and to every creature Imcomprehensible If thou couldst fathome or measure him and know his Greatness by a comprehensive knowledge he were not God A Creature can comprehend nothing but a Creature You may know God but not comprehend him As your foot treadeth on the earth but doth not cover all the earth The Sea is not the Sea if you can hold it in a spoon Thou canst not comprehend the Sun which thou seest and by which thou seest all things else nor the sea or earth no nor a worm or pile of grass Thy understanding knoweth not all that God hath put into any the least of these Thou art a stranger to thy self and to somewhat in every part of thy self both body and soul. And thinkest thou to comprehend God that perfectly comprehendest nothing Stop then thy overbold enquiries and remember that thou art a shallow finite worm and God is Infinite First reach to comprehend the Heaven and Earth and whole Creation before thou think of Comprehending him to whom the world is nothing or vanity or so small a dust or drop or point Job 37. 1 5. saith Elihu At this my heart trembleth and is moved out of his place Hear attentively the Noise of his Voice God thundereth marvelously with his Voice great things doth he which we cannot comprehend How then should we comprehend himself When God pleadeth his cause with Job himself what doth he but convince him of his Infiniteness and absoluteness even from the greatness of his works which are beyond our reach and yet are as nothing to himself Should he take the busie enquirer in hand but as he did begin with Job 38. 1 2. c. Who is this that darkeneth Counsel by words without knowledge Gird up thy loins like a man for I will demand of thee and answer thou me c. alas how soon would he non-plus and confound us and make us say as Job 40. 4. Behold I am vile what shall I answer thee I will lay my hand upon my mouth Once have I spoken but I will not answer yea twice but I will proceed no further Indeed there is mentioned Eph. 3. 11. The Saints comprehending the dimensions of the Love of Christ but as the next verse saith it passeth knowledge so comprehending there signifieth no more but a knowing according to our Measure an attainment of what we are capable to attain nay nor all that neither but such a prevalent knowledge of the Love of Christ as is common to all the Saints As there is nothing more visible then the Sun and yet no visible being less comprehended by the sight so is there nothing more Intelligible then God for he is All in all things and yet nothing so Incomprehensible to the mind that knoweth him It satisfieth me not to be
all that he saith and doth will be more acceptable to you and all that you say or do in Love will be more acceptable unto him Love him and you will be loth to offend him you will be desirous to please him you will be satisfied in his Love Love him and you may be sure that he Loveth you Love is the fulfilling of his Law Rom. 13. 10. And that you may Love him this must be your work to Believe and Contemplate his goodness Consider daily of the Infinite goodness or Amiableness of his Nature and of his excellency appearing in his works and of the perfect Holiness of his Laws But especially see him in the face of Christ and behold his Love in the design of our Redemption in the person of the Redeemer and in the promises of Grace and in all the benefits of Redemption Yea look by Faith to Heaven it self and think how you must for ever live in the perfect blessed Love of infinite enjoyed goodness As it is the knowledge and sight of gold or beauty or any other earthly vanity that kindleth the Love of them in the minds of men so is it the knowledge and serious contemplation of the goodness of God that must make us Love him if ever we will Love him 2. The goodness of God must also encourage the soul to trust him For Infinite good will not deceive us Nor can we fear any hurt from him but what we wilfully bring upon our selves If I knew but which were the best and most Loving man in the world I could trust him above all men and I should not fear any injury from him How many friends have I that I dare trust with my estate and life because I know that they have Love and goodness in their low degree And shall I not trust the Blessed God that is Love it self and Infinitely good what ever he will be in Justice to the ungodly I am sure he delighteth not in the death of sinners but rather that they turn and live and that he will not cast off the soul that Loveth him and would fain be fully conformed to his will It cannot be that he should spurn at them that are humbled at his feet and long and pray and seek and mourn after nothing more then his grace and love Think not of God as if he were scanter of love and goodness then the Creature is If you have high and confident thoughts of the goodness and fidelity of any man on earth and dare quietly trust him with your life and all see that you have much higher thoughts of God and trust him with greater confidence left you set him below the silly creature in the Attributes of his goodness which his Glory and your Happiness require you to know 3. The Infinite goodness of God must call off our hearts from the inordinate Love of all created good whatever Who would stoop so low as earth that may converse with God And who would feed on such poor delights that hath tasted the graciousness of the Lord Nothing more sure then that the Love of God doth not reign in that soul where the Love of the world or of fleshly lust or pleasure reigneth 1 John 2. 15. Had worldlings or sensual or ambitious men but truly known the goodness of the Lord they could never have so fallen in Love with those deceitful vanities If we could but open their eyes to see the Loveliness of their Redeemer they would soon be weaned from other Loves Would you conquer the Love of Riches or Honour or any thing else that corrupteth your affections O try this sure and powerful way Draw nigh to God and take the fullest view thou canst in thy most serious Meditation of his Infinite goodness and all things else will be vile in thy esteem and thy heart will soon contemn them and forget them and thou wilt never dote upon them more 4. The Infinite goodness of God should increase Repentance and win the soul to a more resolute chearful service of the Lord. O what a heart is that which can offend and wilfully offend so good a God! This is the odiousness of sin that it is an abuse of an Infinite good This is the most hainous damning aggravation of it that Infinite goodness could not prevail with wretched souls against the empty flattering world but that they suffered a dream and shadow to weigh down Infinite goodness in their esteem And is it possible for worse then this to be found in man He that had rather the sun were out of the firmament then a hair were taken off his head were unworthy to see the light of the Sun And surely he that will turn away from God himself to enjoy the pleasures of his flesh is unworthy to enjoy the Lord. It s bad enough that Augustine in one of his Epistles saith of sottish worldly men that they had rather there were two stars fewer in the firmament then one Cow fewer in their Pastures or one tree fewer in their woods or grounds But it is ten thousand times a greater evil that every wicked man is guilty of that will rather forsake the Living God and lose his part in Infinite goodness then he will let go his filthy and unprofitable sins O Sinners as you love your souls despise not the riches of the goodness and forbearance and long suffering of the Lord but know that his goodness should lead you to Repentance Rom. 2. 4. Would you spit at the Sun Would you revile the stars Would you curse the holy Angels If not O do not ten thousand fold worse by your wilful sinning against the Infinite Goodness it self But for you Christians that have seen the Amiableness of the Lord and tasted of his perfect Goodness let this be enough to melt your hearts that ever you have wilfully sin'd against him O what a Good did you contemn in the dayes of your unregeneracy and in the hour of your sin Be not so ingrateful and disingenuous as to do so again Remember when ever a Temptation comes that it would entice you from the Infinite Good Ask the tempter man or Devil Whether he hath more then an Infinite Good to offer you and whether he can outbid the Lord for your affection And now for the time that is before you how cheerfully should you address your selves unto his service and how delightfully should you follow it on from day to day What manner of persons should the servants of this God be that are called to nothing but what is Good How Good a Master how good a work and how good company encouragements and helps and how good an End All is good because it is the Infinite Good that we serve and seek And shall we be loitering unprofitable servants 5. Moreover this Infinite Goodness should be the matter of our daily Praises He that cannot cheerfully magnifie this Attribute of God so suitable to the nature of the Will is surely a stranger to the
14. To conclude Vindictive Justice will be doubly honoured upon them that are final rejecters of this grace Though conscience would have had matter enough to work upon for the torment of the sinner and the justifying of God upon the meer violation of the Law of nature or works yet nothing to what it now will have on them that are the despisers of this great salvation For of how much sorer punishment suppose yee shall he be thought worthy that hath trodden under foot the Son of God when it is willful impenitency against most excellent means and mercies that is to be charged upon sinners and when they perish because they would not be saved Justice will be most fully glorified before all and in the conscience of the sinner himself All this considered you may see that besides what reasons of the counsel of God are unknown to us there is abundant reason open to our sight from the great advantages of this way why God would rather save us by a Redeemer then in a way of Innocency as our meer Creator But for the answering of all objections against this I must desire you to observe these two things following 1. That we here suppose man a terrestrial inhabitant cloathed with flesh otherwise it is confessed that if he were perfect in heaven where he had the Beatifical Vision to confirm him many of these forementioned advantages to him would be none 2. And it is supposed that God will work on man by Moral means and where he never so infallibly produceth the good of man he doth it in a way agreeable to his nature and present state and that his work of Grace is Sapiential magnifying the contrivance and conduct of his Wisdom as well as his Power otherwise indeed God might have done all without these or any other means 3. The knowledge of God in Christ as our Redeemer must imprint upon the soul those Holy Affections which the design and nature of our Redemption do bespeak and which answer these forementioned ends As 1. It must keep the soul in a sense of the odiousness of sin that must have such a remedy to pardon and destroy it 2. It must raise us to most high and honourable thoughts of our Redeemer the Captain of our Salvation that bringeth back lâ—st sinners unto God and we must study to advance the Glory of our Lord whom the Father hath advanced and set over all 3. It must drive us out of our selves and bring us to be nothing in our own eyes and cause us to have humble penitent self condemning thoughts as men that have been our own undoers and deserved so ill of God and man 4. It must drive us to a full and constant dependance on Christ our Redeemer and on the Father by him As our life is now in the Son as its root and fountain so in him must be our faith and confidence and to him we must daily have recourse and seek to him and to the Father in his Name for all that we need for daily pardon strength protection provision and consolation 5. It must cause us the more to admire the Holiness of God which is so admirably declared in our Redemption and still be sensible how he hateth sin and loveth Purity 6. It must invite and encourage us to draw near to God who hath condescended to come so near to us and as sons we must cry Abba Father and though with reverence yet with holy confidence must set our selves continually before him 7. It must cause us to make it our daily imployment to study the Riches of the Love of God and his abundant mercy manifested in Christ so that above all books in the world we should most diligently and delightfully peruse the Son of God incarnate and in him behold the Power and Wisdom and Goodness of the Father And with Paul we should desire to know nothing but Christ crucified and all things should be counted but loss and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord Phil. 3. 8. That we may be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the bredth and length and depth and heighth and to know the Love of Christ which passeth knowledge that we may be filled with all the fulness of God 8. Above all if we know God as our Redeemer we must Live in the Power of holy Love and Gratitude His Manifested Love must prevail with us so far that unfeigned Love to him may be the predominant affection of our souls And being free from the spirit of bondage and slavish fear we must make Love and Thankfulness the sum of our Religion and think not any thing will prove us Christians without prevailing Love to Christ nor that any duty is accepted that proceedeth not from it 9. Redemption must teach us to apply our selves to the holy Laws and Example of our Redeemer for the forming and ordering of our hearts and lives 10. And it must quicken us to Love the Lord with a redoubled vigour and to obey with double resolution and diligence because we are under a double obligation What should a people so Redeemed esteem too much or too dear for God 11. Redemption must make us a more Heavenly people as being Redeemed to the incorruptible inheritance in Heaven The blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in Heaven for us who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation 1 Pet. 1. 3. 12. Lastly Redemption must cause us to walk the more carefully and with a greater care to avoid all sin and to avoid the threatned wrath of God because sin against such unspeakable Mercy is unspeakably great and condemnation by a Redeemer for despising his grace will be a double condemnation Joh. 3. 19. 36. CHAP. XII 11. THE third Relation in which God is to be Known by us is as he is our Sanctifier and Comforter which is specially ascribed to the Holy Ghost And doubtless as the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost is the Perfecting dispensation without which Creation and Redemption would not attain their ends and as the sin against the Holy Ghost is the great and dangerous sin so our Belief in the Holy Ghost and Knowledge of God as our Sanctifier by the Spirit is not the least or lowest act of our faith or Knowledge And it implieth or containeth these things following 1. We must hence take notice of the certainty of our common original sin The necessity of sanctification proveth the corruption as the necessity of a Redeemer proveth the guilt It is not one but all that are Baptized that must be Baptized into the Name of the Son and Holy Ghost as well as of the Father which is an entering into Covenant with the Son as our Redeemer and with the
objective means yet shall not these do it without the internal effectual means But when Love doth shine to us so resplendently without us in the face of the Glorious Sun of Love and is also â—et into us by the Spirits Illumination that sheds abroad this Love in our hearts then will the holy fire burn which comes from Heaven and leads to Heaven and will never rest till it have reacht its center and brought us to the face and arms of God 5. And from the Fatherly Relation and Love of God we must learn to Trust him and Rest our souls in his securing Love Shall we distrust a Father an Omnipotent Father Therefore is this Relation prefixed to the Petitions of the Lords Prayer and we begin with Our Father which art in Heaven that when we remember his Love and our Interest in him and his Alsufficiency we may be encouraged to Trust him and make our addresses to him If a Father and such a Father smite mee I will submit and kiss the Rod for I know it is the healing fruit of Love If a Father and such a Father afflict mee wound mee deal strangely wiâ—h mee and grieve my flesh let mee not murmure or distrust him for he well understandeth what he doth and nothing that shall hurt mee finally can come from Omnipotent Paternal Love If a Father and such a Father kill mee yet let mee Trust in him and let not my soul repine at his proceedings nor tremble at the separating stroak of death A Beast knows not when we strive with him what we intend whether to Cure or to Kill him but a Child need not fear a killing blow nor a Loving soul a damning death from such a Father If he be a Father where is his Love and Trust 6. If God be our Father and so wonderful a Benefactor to us then Thanks and Praise must be our most constant work and must be studied above all the rest of Duty and most diligently performed If the tongue of man which is called his Glory be made for any thing and good for any thing it is to give the Lord his Glory in the Thankful acknowledgement of his Love and Mercies and the daily chearful Praises of his Name Let this then be the Christians work 7. The Children of such a Father should live a contented chearful life Diligence becometh them but not contrivances for worldly greatness nor carking cares for that which their Father hath promised them to care for Humility and Reverence beseemeth them but not dejection and despondency of mind and a still complaining fearful troubled disconsolate soul. If the Children of such a Father shall not be bold and confident and chearful let joy and confidence then be banished from the earth and be renounced by all the Sons of men CHAP. XVI 15. THere are yet divers subordinate Attributes of God that being comprized in the forementioned may be passed over with the briefer touch And the next that I shall speak of is his Freedome And God is Free in more senses than one but for brevity I shall speak of all together 1. And first God hath a Natural Freedome of Will being Determined to Will by nothing without him nor liable to any Necessity but what is consistent with perfect Blessedness and Liberty His own Being and Blessedness and Perfections are not the objects of his Election and therefore not of that which we call Free Will But all his works without as Creation Providence Redemption c. are the effects of his Free Will Not but that his Will concerning all these hath a Necessity of existence For God did from Eternity Will the Creation and all that is done in time and therefore from Eternity that will existing had a Necessity of existence But yet it was Free because it proceedeth not Necessarily from the very Nature of God God was God before he made the world or Redeemed it or did the things that are daily done And therefore one part of the Schoolmen maintain not only that there is Contingency from God but that there could be no Contingency in the Creature if it had not its Original in God the Liberty of God being the fountain of Contingency 2. There is also an Eminency both of Dominion and Soveraignty in God according to which he may be called Free His Absoluteness of Propriety freeth him from the restraint of any Obligation but what floweth from his own Free Will from Disposing of his own as he pleases And his Absolute Soveraignty freeth him from the Obligation of his own Laws as Laws though he will still be true to his Promises and Predictions Let man therefore take heed how he questioneth his Maker or censureth his Laws or Works or Waies CHAP. XVII 16. ANother Attribute of God is his Justice With submission I conceive that this is not to be said to be from 〈◊〉 any otherwise than all Gods Relations are as Creator 〈◊〉 c. because here is no time with God For though 〈◊〉 Blessed Nature denominated Just is from Eternity yet not 〈◊〉 â—â—râ—ality or Denomination of Justice For Justice is an Attribute of God as he is Governour only And he was not Governour till he had Creatures to Govern And he could not be a Just Governour when he was no Governour The Denomination â—â—â— not arise till the Creation had laid the Foundation Many Questions may be resolved hence which I will not trouble you to reâ—â—â—e Justice in God is the Perfection of his Nature as it giveth every his his due oâ— Governeth the world in the most perfect Orders â—or the Ends of Government Because he is Just he will Reward the Righteous and difference between the Godly and the Wicked For that Governor that useth all alike is not Just. The Crown of Righteousness is given by him as a Righteous Judge 2 Tâ—m 4. 8. 1. The Justice of God is substantially in men we call it an Inclination â—â—â— Nature and so it is Eternal 2. It is 〈◊〉 formally in his Relation of Governour 3. It is expressively first in his Laws For as a Just Governour he made them suited to the Subjects Objects and Ends. 4 It is expressively secondarily in his Judgments and Executions which is when they are according to his Law oâ— in the Cares of Penalty where he may dispense at least according to the state of the subject and sitted to the Ends of Government 1. The Justice of God is the Consolation of the Just He will Justifie them whom his Gospel Justifieth because he is Just. The Justice of God in many places of Scripture is taken for his Fidelity in vindicating his people and his Judging for them and procuring them the happy fruits of his Government and so is taken in a Consolatory sense Psal. 89. 14. Justice and Judgement are the habitations of thy Throne Mercy and Truth shall go before thy face 2 Thes. 1. 5 6. It is a Righteous thing with God to recompence tribulation to them that trouble
God be Good because he will not save you when he can I shall leave you to him to receive satisfaction who will easily silence and consound your impudence and justifie his works and laws Prepare your accusations against him if you will needs insist upon them and try whether he or you shall prevail but remember that thou art a worm and he is God and that he will be the only judge when all is done and ignorance and impiety that prate against him to their own confusion in the day of his patience shall not then usurp the throne Object 2. But how can God be fit for mortals to converse with when they see him not and are infinitely below him Answ. I hope you will not say that you have nothing to do at home with your own souls and yet you never saw your souls And it is the souls the Reason and the will of men that you daily converse with here in the world more then their bodies and yet you never saw their souls their Reason or their wills If you have no higher light to discern by then your eyesight you are not men but beasts If you are men you have Reason and if you are Christians you have faith by which you know things that you never saw You have more dependance on the things that are unseen then on those which you see and have much more to do with them And though God be infinitely above us yet he condescendeth to communicate to us according to our capacities As the Sun is far from us and yet doth not disdain to enlighten and warm and quicken a worm or fly here below If any be yet so much an Atheist as to think that Religious converse with God is but a fancy let him well answer me these few questions Quest. 1. Doth not the continued being and well-being of the Creatures tell us that there is a God on whom for being and well-being they depend and from whom they are and have whatsoever they are and whatsoever they have And therefore that passively all the Creatures have more respect to him by far then to one another Quest. 2. Seeing God communicateth to every Creature according to their several capacities is it not meet then that he deal with man as man even as a Creature Rational capable to know and love and obey his Great Creator and to be happy in the knowledge love and fruition of him That man hath such natural faculties and capacities is not to be denyed by a man that knoweth what it is to be a man And that God hath not given him these in vain will be easily believed by any that indeed believe that he is God Quest. 3. Is there any thing else that is finally worthy of the highest actions of our souls or that is fully adequate to them and fit to be our happiness If not then we are left either to certain infelicity contrary to the tendency of our natures or else we must seek our felicity in God Quest. 4. Is there any thing more certain then that by the title of Creation our Maker hath a full and absolute right to all that he hath made and consequently to all our love and obedience our time and powers For whom should they all be used but for him from whom we have them Quest. 5. Can any thing be more sure then that God is the Righteous Governour of the world and that he Governeth man as a rational creature by Laws and Judgement And can we live under his absolute Soveraignty and under his many righteous Laws and under his Promises of salvation to the Justified and under his threatnings of damnation to the unjustified and yet not have more to do with God than with all the world If indeed you think that God doth not Love and reward the holy and obedient and punish the ungodly and disobedient then either you take him not to be the Governour of the world or which is worse you take him to be an unrighteous Governour And then you must by the same reason say that Magistrates and Parents should do so too and love and reward the obedient and disobedient alike But if any mans disobedience were exercised to your hurt by slandering or beating or robbing you I dare say you would not then commend so indifferent and unjust a Governour Quest. 6. If it be not needless for man to Labour for food and rayment and necessary provision for his body how can it be needless for him to labour for the happiness of his soul If God will not give us our daily bread while we never think of it or seek it why should we expect that he will give us Heaven though we never think on it value it or seek it Quest. 7. Is it not a contradiction to be happy in the fruition of God and yet not to mind him desire him or seek him How is it that the Soul can reach its Object but by estimation desire and seeking after it And how should it enjoy it but by Loving it and taking pleasure in it Quest. 8. While you seem but to wrangle against the Duty of believers do you not plead against the comfort and happiness of believers For surely the employment of the soul on God and for him is the health and pleasure of the soul And to call away the soul from such employment is to imprison it in the dungeon of this world and to forbid us to smell to the sweetest flowers and confine us to a sink or dunghill and to forbid us to tast of the food of Angels or of men and to offer us Vineger and Gall or turn us over to feed with Swine He that pleadeth that there is no such thing as real Holiness Communion with God doth plead in effect that there is no true felicity or delight for any of the Sons of men And how welcome should ungodly Atheists be unto mankind that would for ever exclude them all from happiuess and make them believe they are all made to be remedilesly miserable And here take notice of the madness of the unthankful world that hateth and persecuteth the Preachers of the Gospel that bring them the glad tidings of pardon and hope and life eternal of solid happiness and durable delight and yet they are not offended at these Atheists and ungodly Cavillers that would take them off from all that is truly good and pleasant and make them believe that nature hath made them capable of no higher things than beasts and hath enthralled them in remediless infelicity Quest. 9. Do you not see by experience that there are a people in the world whose hearts are upon God and the life to come and that make it their chiefest care and business to seek him and to serve him How then can you say that there is no such thing or that we are not capable of it when it is the case of so many before your eyes If you say that it is but their
and erroneous disposition of our own hearts The will hath a very great power upon the understanding And therefore ungodly fleshly men will very hardly receive any truth which crosseth the carnal interest or disposition And will hardly let go any errour that feedeth them because their corrupted wills are a byas to their understandings and make them desperately partial in all their reading and hearing and hypocritical in their prayers and enquiries after truth Interest and corruption locketh up their hearts from their own observation Whereas a man that walketh with God that is jealous and holy and just and a searcher of the heart is driven from hypocrisie and forced to behave himself as in the open light and to do all as in the sight of all the world as knowing that the sight of God is of far greater concernment and regard The partiality corruption and byas of the heart is detected and shamed by the presence of God Therefore to walk with God is to walk in the light and as children of the light and not in darkness And he that doth Truth cometh to the light that his deeds might be manifest that they are wrought in God when every one that doth evil hateth the light neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved And this is their condemnation that light is come into the world and men love the darkness rather then the light because their deeds are evil Joh. 3. 19 20 21. It tendeth therefore exceedingly to make men wise to Walk with God because it is a walking in the light and in such a presence as most powerfully prevaileth against that hypocrisie deceitfulness and partiality of the heart which is the common cause of damning errour 10. Lastly they that walk with God are entitled by many promises to the guidance and direction of his spirit And blessed are those that have such a guide at once a light in the world without them and a light immediately from God within them For so far as he is received and worketh in them he will lead them into truth and save them from deceit and folly and having guided them by his counsel will afterward take them unto glory Psal. 73. 24. Whereas the ungodly are led by the flesh and often given up to their own hearts lusts to walk in their own counsels Rom. 8. 1 13. Psal. 81. 12. till at last the fools do say in their hearts there is no God Psal. 14. 1. and they become corrupt and abhominable eating up the people of the Lord as bread and call not on his Name ver 2. c. Deceiving and being deceived sensual having not the spirit Jud. 19. who shall receive the reward of their unrighteousness as accounting it pleasure to riot in the day time 2 Pet. 2. 13. IV. ANother benefit of Walking with God is that it maketh men good as well as wise It is the most excellent means for the advancement of mans soul to the highest degree of holiness attainable in this life If conversing with Good men doth powerfully tend to make men good conversing with God must needs be more effectual which may appear in these particulars 1. The apprehensions of the presence and attributes of God do most effectually check the stirrings of corruption and rebuke all the vicious inclinations and motions of the soul even the most secret sin of the heart is rebuked by his presence as well as the most open transgression of the life For the thoughts of the heart are open to his view All what is done before God is done as in the open light nothing of it can be hid no sin can have the encouragement of secresie to embolden it It is all committed in the presence of the Universal King and Lawgiver of the world who hath forbidden it It is done before him that most abhorreth it and will never be reconciled to it It is done before him that is the Judge of the world and will shortly pass the sentence on us according to what we have done in the body It standeth up in his presence who is of infinite Majesty and perfection and therefore most to be reverenced and honoured And therefore if the presence of a wise and grave and venerable person will restrain men from sin the presence of God apprehended seriously will do it much more It is committed before him that is our dearest friend and tender Father and chiefest benefactor And therefore ingenuity gratitude and love will all rise up against it in those that walk with God There is that in God before the eyes of those that walk with him which is most contrary to sin and most powerful against it of any thing in the world Every one will confess that if mens eyes were opened to see the Lord in Glory standing over them it would be the most powerful means to restrain them from transgressing The drunkard would not then venture upon his cups the fornicator would have a cooling for his lusts the swearer would be afraid to take his Makers name in vain the prophane would scarce presume to scorn or persecute a holy life And he that walketh with God though he see him not corporeally yet seeth him by faith and liveth as in his presence and therefore must needs be restrained from sin as having the means which is next to the sight of God If pride should begin to stir in one that walks with God O what a powerful remedy is at hand How effectually would the presence of the Great and Holy God rebuke it and constrain us to say as Job 42. 5 6. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee wherefore I abhor my self and repent in dust and ashes If worldly love or carnal lust should stir â—n such a one how powerfully would the terrours of the Lord repress it and his Majesty rebuke it and his Love and Goodness overcome it If worldly cares or murmuring discontents begin to trouble such a one how effectually will the Goodness the All sufficiency and the faithfulness of God allay them and quiet and satisfie the soul and cause it to be offended at its own offence and to chide it self for its repinings and distrust If Passion arise and begin to discompose us how powerfully will the presence of God rebuke it and the reverence of his Majesty and the sense of his Authority and pardoning grace will asswage it and shame us into silent quietness who dare let out his passions upon man in the presence of his Maker that apprehendeth his presence The same I might say of all other sins 2. The presence and attributes of God apprehended by those that walk with him is the potent remedy against Temptations Who will once turn an eye to the gold and glory of the world that is offered him to allure him to sin if he see God stand by who would be tempted to lust or any sinful pleasure if he observe the presence of the Lord
Satan can never come in so ill a time with his temptations and have so little hope to speed as when the soul is contemplating the attributes of God or taken up in prayer with him or any way apprehensive of his presence The soul that faithfully walks with God hath enough at hand in him to answer all temptations And the further any man is from God and the less he knoweth him the more Temptations can do upon him 3. The presence of God affordeth the most powerful motives unto Good to those that walk with him There is no grace in man but what is from God and may find in God its proper object or incentive As God is God above the creature transcendently and infinitely in all perfections so all the motives to goodness which are fetcht from him are transcendently above all that may be fetcht from any creature He that liveth alwaies by the fire or in the Sun-shine is likest to be warm He that is most with God will be most like to God in Holiness Frequent and serious converse with him doth most deeply imprint his communicable attributes on the heart and make there the clearest impression of his image Believers have learned by their own experience that one hours serious prayer or meditation in which they can get nigh to God in the Spirit doth more advance their grace then any help that the creature can afford them 4. Moreover those that walk with God have not only a Powerful but an universal incentive for the actuating and increasing of every grace Knowledge and faith and fear and love and trust and hope and obedience and zeal and all have in God their proper objects and incentives One Creature may be useful to us in one thing and another in another thing but God is the most effectual mover of all his graces and that in a holy harmony and order Indeed he hath no greater Motive to draw us to Love him and Fear him and Trust him and Obey him than himself It is life eternal to know him in his Son Joh. 17. 3. And that is not only because it entitleth us to life eternal but also because it is the beginning and incentive of that life of holiness which will be eternal 5. Moreover those that walk with God have a constant as well as a Powerful and Universal incentive to exercise and encrease their Graces Othet helps may be out of the way Their Preachers may be silenced or removed Their Friends may be scattered or taken from them Their Books may be forbidden or not at hand But God is alwaies ready and willing They have leave at all times to come to him and be welcome Whenever they are willing they may go to him by prayer or contemplation and find all in him which they can desire If they want not Hearts they shall find no want of any thing in God At what time soever fear would torment them they may draw near and put their trust in him Psal. 56. 2 3 4. 11. 1. 18. 2 30. 31. 1 6. He will be a sure and speedy refuge for them a very present help in trouble Psal. 46. 1. 62. 7 8. 91. 2 9 94. 22. Whenever coldness or lukewarmness would extinguish the work of Grace they may go to him and find those streams of flaming Love flow from him those strong attractives those wonderful mercies those terrible judgements of which while they are musing the fire may again wax hot within them Psal. 39. 3. 6. Lastly by way of encouraging reward God useth to give abundantly of his Grace to those that walk most faithfully with him He will shew most Love to those that most love him He will be nearest to them that most desirously draw nigh to him while he forsaketh those that forsake him and turneth away from those that turn away from him 2 Chro. 15. 2. Prov. 1. 32. Ezr. 8. 22. The hand of our God is for good upon all them that seek him but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him Thus it is apparent in all those evidences that walking with God is not only a discovery of the Goodness that men have but the only way to encrease their Grace and make them better O what a sweet humility and seriousness and spirituality appeareth in the conference or conversation or both of those that newly come from a believing close converse with God! When they that come from men and Books may have but a common mind or life And those that come from the business and pleasure of the world and flesh and from the company of foolish riotous gallants may come defiled as the Swine out of the mire V. LAstly to walk with God is the best preparation for times of suffering and for the day of death As we must be judged according to what we have done in the body so the nearer we find our selves to judgement the more we shall be constrained to judge our selves according to what we have done and shall the more perceive the effects upon our souls That this is so excellent a preparative for sufferings and death will appear by the consideration of these particulars 1. They that walk with God are safest from all destructive sufferings and shall have none but what are sanctified to their good Rom. 8. 28. They are near to God where destruction cometh not as the Chicken under the wings of the Hen. They walk with him that will not lead them to perdition that will not neglect them nor sell them for nought nor expose them to the will of men and devils though he may suffer them to be tryed for their good No one can take them out of his hands Be near to him and you are safe The destroyer cannot fetch you thence He can fetch you when the time is come from the side of your merriest companions and dearest friends from the presence of the greatest Princes from the strongest Tower or most sumptuous Pallace or from your heaps of riches in your securest health But he cannot take you from the arms of Christ nor from under the wings of your Creatours love For there is no God like him in Heaven above or on the earth beneath who keepeth Covenant and Mercy with his servants that walk before him with all their heart 1 King 8 23. 1 King 11. 38. However we are used in our Fathers presence we are sure it shall be for good in the latter end For he wanteth neither Power nor Love to deliver us if he saw deliverance to be best 2. Walking with God is the surest way to obtain a certainty of his special love and of our salvation And what an excellent preparative for sufferings or death such assurance is I need not tell any considerate beleever How easie may it be to us to suffer poverty disgrace or wrongs or the pains of sickness or death when once we are certain that we shall not suffer the pains of
my Wife neither am I her Husband Nay more than this if you are Christians you are members of the body of Christ And therefore how can you withdraw your selves from him and not feel the pain and torment of so sore a wound or dislocation you cannot live without a constant dependence on him and communication from him Joh 15. 1 4 5. I am the true Vine and my Father is the Husbandman Abide in me and I in you I am the Vine ye are the Branches He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you So near are you to Christ that he delighteth to acquaint you with his secrets O how many mysteries doth he reveal to those that walk with him which carnal strangers never know Mysteries of Wisdome Mysteries of Love and saving Grace Mysteries of Scripture and Mysteries of Providence Mysteries felt by inward experience and Mysteries revealed foreseen by Faith Not only the strangers that pass by the doors but eveâ—â— the common servants of the family are unacquainted with the secret operations of the Spirit and entertainments of Grace and Joy in believing which those that walk with God either do or may possess Therefore Christ calleth you friends as being more than servants Joh. 15. 14 15. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what the Lord doth but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you It is true for all this that every true Christian hath reason and is apt to complain of his darkness and distance from God Alas they know so little of him and of the Mysteries of his Love and Kingdom that sometimes they are apt to think that they are indeed but utter strangers to him But this is because there is infinitely more still unknown to them than they know what can the silly shallow creature comprehend his infinite Creatour Or shall we know all that is to be known in Heaven before we enjoy all that is to be enjoyed in Heaven It is no more wonder to hear a believer pant and mourn after a fuller knowledge of God and neâ—râ—r access to him than to seek after Heaven where this will be his happiness But yet though his Knowledge of God be small compared with his Ignorance that little Knowledge of God which he hath attained i 〈…〉 ore mysterious sublime and excellent than all the learning of the greatest unsanctified Scholars in the world Walk with him according to the neatness of your Relations to him and you shall have this excellent knowledge of his Mysteries which no Books or Teachers alone can give You shall be effectually touched at the heart with the truths which others do uneffectually hear You shall be powerfully moved when they are but uneffectually exhorted When they only hear the voice without them you shall hear the voice within you and as it were behind you saying This is the way walk in it O that you could duly value such a friend to watch over you and for you and dwell in you and tell you faithfully of every danger and of every duty and teach you to know good and evil and what to choose and what to refuse How closely and delightfully would you converse with such a blessed friend if you rightly valued him 2. MOreover you that are the servants of God have by your Covenant and Profession renounced and forsaken all things else as they stand in any opposition to him or competition with him and have resigned your selves wholly unto him alone And therefore with him must you converse and be employed unless you will forsake your Covenant You knew first that it was your interest to forsake the world and turn to God You knew the world would not serve your turn nor be instead of God to you either in life or at death And upon this Knowledge it was that you changed your Master and changed your minds and changed your way your work your hopes And do you dream now that you were mistaken Do you begin to think that the world is fitter to be your God or Happiness if not you must still confess that both your Interest and your Covenant do oblige you to turn your hearts and minds from the things which you have renounced and to walk with him that you have taken for your God and to obey him whom you have taken for your King and Judge and to keep close to him with purest Love whom you have taken for your everlasting portion Mark what you are minding all the day while you are neglecting God Is it not something that you have renounced And did you not renounce it upon sufficient cause Was it not a work of your most serious deliberation and of as great wisdome as any that ever you performed if it were turn not back in your hearts again from God unto the renounced Creature You have had many a lightning from Heaven into your understandings to bring you to see the difference between them You have had many a teaching and many a warning and many a striving of the spirit before you were prevailed with to renounce the world the flesh and the devil and to give up your self intirely and absolutely to God Nay did it not cost you the smart of some afflictions before you would be made so wise And did it not cost you many a gripe of conscience and many a terrible thought of Hell and of the wrath of God before you would be heartily engaged to him in his Covenant And will you now live as strangely and neglectfully towards him as if those daies were quite forgotten and as if you had never felt such things and as if you had never been so convinced or resolved O Christians take heed of forgetting your former case your former thoughts your former convictions and complaints and covenants God did not work all that upon your hearts to be forgotten He intended not only your present change but your after remembrance of it for your close adhering to him while you live and for your quickning and constant preservance to the end The forgetting of their former miseries and the workings of God upon their hearts in their conversion is a great cause of mutability and revolting and of unspeakable hurt to many a soul. Nay may you not remember also what sorrow you had in the day of your Repentance for your forsaking and neglecting God so long And will you grow again neglective of him Was it then so hainous a sin in your eyes and is it not now grown less Could you then aggravate it so many waies and justly and now do you justifie or extenuate it Were you then ready to sink under the burden of it and were
either alienate or make a grief to one another How apt are we to take unkindnesses at one another and to be suspicious of our friends or offended with them And how apt to give occasion of such offence How apt are we to censure one another and to misinterpret the words and actions of our friends And how apt to give occasion of such mistakes and cutting censures And the more kindness we have found in or expected from our friends the more their real or supposed injuries will affect us We are apt to say Had it been a stranger I could have born it But to be used thus by my bosome or familiar friend goes near my heart And indeed the unkindnesses of friends is no small affliction the suffering going usually as near the heart as the person that caused it was near it especially when our own weakness causeth us to forget the frailty and infirmities of man and with what allowances and expectations we must choose and use our friends and when we forget the Love that remaineth in the midst of passions 4. Also cross-interests and unsuitableness may exceedingly interrupt the fastest friendship Friendship is very much founded in suitableness and maintained by it And among mortals there is no perfect suitableness to be found but much unsuitableness still remaineth That which pleaseth one is displeasing to another One liketh this place and the other that One liketh this habit and the other that One is for mirth and the other for sadness One for talk and the other for silence One for a publick and the other for a private life And their personality or individuation having self-love as inseparable will unavoidably cause a contrariety of interests The Creature is insufficient for us If one have it perhaps the other must want it Like a covering too narrow for the bed Sometimes our Reputations seem to stand cross so that one mans is diminished by anothers and then how apt is envy to create a grudge and raise unfriendly jealousies and distastes Sometimes the commodity of one is the discommodity of the other And then Mine and Thine which are contrary to the community of friendship may divide and alienate and make Two of those that seemed One. The instances of Abraham and Lot upon the difference among their servants and of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau and of Laban and Jacob and of Leah and Rachel and of Joseph and his Brethren and of Saul and David and of Ziba Mephibosheth and David with many others tell us this It is rare to meet with a Jonathan that will endearedly love that man to the death who is appointed to deprive him of a Kingdome If one can but say I suffer by him or I am a looser by him it seemeth enough to excuse unfriendly thoughts and actions When you can gratifie the desires of all the covetous ambitious self-seeking persons in the world or else cure their diseases and possess their minds with perfect Charity then all the world will be your friends 5. Cross opinions also are like to alienate many of your friends This age hath over and over again given the world as full and sad demonstrations of the power of Cross opinions to alienate friends and make divisions as most ages of the world have ever had If your friend be proud it 's wonderful how he will slight you and withdraw his Love if you be not of his mind If he he zealous he is easily tempted to think it a part of his duty to God to disown you if you differ from him as taking you for one that disowneth the truth of God and therefore one that God himself disowneth or at least to grow cold in his affection toward you and to decline from you as he that thinks you do from God As agreement in opinions doth strangely reconcile affections so disagreement doth secretly and strangely alienate them even before you are well aware your friend hath lost possession of your hearts because of an unavoidable diversity of apprehensions When all your friends have the same intellectual complexion and temperature and measure of understanding with your selves then you may have hope to escape the ruptures which unlikeliness and differences of apprehensions might else cause 6. Moreover some of your friends may so far overgrow you in wisdome or wealth or honour or worth in their own conceits that they may begin to take you to be unsuitable for them and unmeet for their further special friendship Alas poor man they will pitty thee that thou art no wiser and that thou hast no greater light to change thy mind as fast as they or that thou art so weak and ignorant as not to see what seems to them so clear a truth or that thou art so simple to cast away thy self by crossing them that might prefer thee or to fall under the displeasure of those that have power to raise or ruine thee But if thou be so simple thou mayest be the object of their lamentation but art no familiar friend for them They think it fittest to close and converse with those of their own rank and stature and not with such shrubs and children that may prove their trouble and dishonour 7. And some of your friends will think that by a more through acquaintance with you they have found out more of your infirmities or faults and therefore have found that you are less amiable and valuable than at first they judged you They will think that by distance unacquaintedness and an overhasty love and judgement they were mistaken in you and that now they see reason to repent of the love which they think was guilty of some errours and excess when they come nearer you and have had more tryal of you they will think they are fitter to judge of you than before And indeed our defects are so many and all our infirmities so great that the more men know us the more they may see in us that deserveth pitty or reproof and as pictures we appear less beautiful at the nearest view Though this will not warrant the withdrawing of that Love which is due to friends and to vertue even in the imperfect nor will excuse that alienation and decay of friendship that is caused by the pride of such as overlook perhaps much greater failings and weaknesses in themselves which need forgiveness 8. And perhaps some of your friends will grow weary of their friendship having that infirmity of humane nature not to be much pleased with one thing long Their Love is a flower that quickly withereth It is a short-lived thing that soon groweth old It must be novelty that must feed their love and their delight 9. And perhaps they may have got some better friends in their apprehensions that may have so much interest as to take them up and leave no room for antient friends It may be they have met with those that are more suitable or can be more useful to them that have more learning
man and the instability of the dearest friends How highly was Athanasius esteemed and yet at last deserted and banished even by the famous Constantine himself How excellent a man was Gregory Nazianzene and highly valued in the Church and yet by reproach and discouragements driven away from his Church at Constantinople whither he was chosen and envied by the Bishops round about him How worthy a man was the eloquent Chrysostome and highly valued in the Church And yet how bitterly was he prosecuted by Hierome and Epiphanius and banished and dyed in a second banishment by the provocation of factious contentious Bishops and an Empress impatient of his plain reproofs What person more generally esteemed and honoured for learning piety and peaceableness then Melanchthon and yet by the contentions of Illyricus and his party he was made aweary of his life As highly as Calvin was deservedly valued at Geneva yet once in a popular lunacy and displeasure they drove him out of their City and in contempt of him some called their dogs by the name of Calvin though after they were glad to intreat him to return How much our Grindal and Abbot were esteemed it appeareth by their advancement to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury and yet who knoweth not that their eminent piety sufficed not to keep them from dejecting frowns And if you say that it is no wonder if with Princes through interest and with people through levity it be thus I might heap up instances of the like untrustiness of particular friends But all History and the experiences of the most do so much abound with them that I think it needless Which of us must not say with David that all men are lyars Psal. 116. that is deceitful and untrusty either through unfaithfulness weakness or insufficiency that either will forsake us or cannot help us in the time of need Was Christ forsaken in his extremity by his own Disciples to teach us what to expect or bear Think it not strange then to be conformed to your Lord in this as well as in other parts of his humiliation Expect that men should prove deceitful Not that you should entertain censorious suspicions of your particular friends but remember in general that man is frail and the best too selfish and uncertain and that it is no wonder if those should prove your greatest grief from whom you had the highest expectations Are you better then Job or David or Christ and are your friends more firm and unchangeable then theirs Consider 1 That Creatures must be set at a sufficient distance from their Creator Allsufficiency Immutability and indefectible fidelity are proper to Jehovah As it is no wonder for the Sun to set or be ecclipsed as glorious a body as it is so it is no wonder for a friend a pious friend to fail us for a time in the hour of our distress There are some that will not but there is none but may if God should leave them to their weakness Man is not your Rock He hath no stability but what is derived dependant and uncertain and defectible Learn therefore to rest on God alone and lean not too hard or confidently upon any mortal might 2. And God will have the common infirmity of man to be known that so the weakest may not be utterly discouraged nor take their weakness to be gracelesness whilest they see that the strongest also have their infirmities though not so great as theirs If any of Gods servants lives in constant holiness and fidelity without any shakings or stumbling in their way it would tempt some self accusing troubled souls to think that they were altogether graceless because they are so far short of others But when we read of a Peters denying his Master in so horrid a manner with swearing and cursing that he knew not the man Matth. 26. 74. and of his dissimulation and not walking uprightly Gal. 2. and of a Davids unfriendly and unrighteous dealing with Mephihosheth the seed of Jonathan and of his most vile and treacherous dealing with Uriah a faithful and deserving subject it may both abate our wonder and offence at the unfaithfulness of our friends and teach us to compassionate their frailty when they desert us and also somewhat abate our immoderate dejectedness and trouble when we have failed God or man our selves 3. Moreover consider how the odiousness of that sin which is the root and cause of such unfaithfulness is greatly manifested by the failing of our friends God will have the odiousness of the remnants of our self-self-love and carnalmindedness and cowardize appear we should not discern it in the seed and root if we did not see and tast it in the fruits Seeing without tasting will not sufficiently convince us A crab looks as beautiful as an apple but when you tast it you better know the difference When you must your selves be unkindly used by your friends and forsaken by them in your distress and you have tasted the fruits of the remnants of their worldliness selfishness and carnal fears you will better know the odiousness of these vices which thus break forth against all obligations to God and you and notwithstanding the light the conscience and perhaps the grace that doth resist them 4. Are you not prone to overvalue and overlove your friends If so is not this the meetest remedy for your disease In the loving of God we are in no danger of excess and therefore have no need of any thing to quench it And in the loving of the godly purely upon the account of Christ and in loving Saints as Saints we are not apt to go too far But yet our understandings may mistake and we may think that Saints have more of sanctity then indeed they have and we are exceeding apt to mix a selfish common love with that which is spiritual and holy and at the same time when we Love a Christian as a Christian we are apt not only to Love him as we ought but to overlove him because he is our friend and Loveth us Those Christians that have no special Love to us we are apt to undervalue and neglect and Love them below their holiness and worth But those that we think entirely Love us we Love above their proper worth as they stand in the esteem of God Not but that we may Love those that Love us and add this Love to that which is purely for the sake of Christ but we should not let our own interest prevail and overtop the interest of Christ nor Love any so much for Loving us as for Loving Christ And if we do so no wonder if God shall use such remedies as he seeth meet to abate our excuse of selfish love O how highly are we apt to think of all that Good which is found in those who are the highest esteemers of us and most dearly love us when perhaps in it self it is but some ordinary good or ordinary degree of goodness which is in them Their Love to us
whom their husbands have dealt more kindly have been drawn away with them into pernicious paths Therefore still I must say we were undone if we had the disposing of our own conditions If would be long before we should have been willing our selves to be thus unkindly dealt with by our friends And yet God hath made it to many a soul a notable means of preserving them from being undone for ever Yea the unfaithfulness of all our friends and the malice and cruelty of all our enemies doth us not usually so much harm as the Love and Temptation of some one deluded erring friend whom we are ready to follow into the gulf 7. Lastly consider that it is not desirable or suitable to our state to have too much of our comfort by any creature Not only because it is most pure and sweet which is most immediately from God but also because we are very prone to overlove the Creature and if it should but seem to be very commodious to us by serving our necessities or desires it would seem the more amiable and therefore be the stronger snare The work of mortification doth much consist in the annihilation or deadness of all the Creatures as to any power to draw away our hearts from God or to entangle us and detain us from our duty And the more excellent and lovely the creature appeareth to us the less it is dead to us or we to it and the more will it be able to hinder or ensnare us When you have well considered all these things I suppose you will admire the wisdome of God in leaving you under this kind of tryal and weaning you from every creature and teaching you by his providence as well as by his word to Cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils for wherein is he to be accounted of And you will see that it 's no great wonder that corrupted souls that live in other sins should be guilty of this unfaithfulness to their friends and that he that dare unthankfully trample upon the unspeakable kindness of the Lord should deal unkindly with the best of men You make no great wonder at other kind of sins when you see the world continually commit them why then should you make a greater or a stranger matter of this than of the rest Are you better than God Must unfaithfulness to you be made more hainous than that unfaithfulness to him which yet you daily see and sleight The least wrong to God is a thousandfold more than the greatest that can be done to you as such Have you done that for your nearest friend which God hath done for him and you and all men Their obligations to you are nothing in comparison of their great and manifold obligations to God And you know that you have more wronged God your selves than any man ever wronged you And if yet for all that he bear with you have you not great reason to bear with others Yea you have not been innocent towards men your selves Did you never wrong or fail another Or rather are you not apter to see and aggravate the wrong that others do to you than that which you have done to others May you not call to mind your own neglects and say as Adonizebeck Judg. 1. 7. Threescore and ten Kings having their thumbs and their great toes cut off gathered their meat under my table As I have done so God hath requited me Many a one have I failed or wronged and no wonder if others fail and wrong me Nay you have been much more unfaithful and injurious to your selves than ever any other hath been to you No friend was so near you as your selves None had such a charge of of you None had such helps and advantages to do you good or hurt And yet all the enemies you have in the world even in Earth or Hell have not wronged and hurt you half so much as you have done your selves O methinks the man or woman that knoweth themselves and knoweth what it is to Repent that ever saw the greatness of their own sin and folly should have no great mind or leisure to aggravate the failings of their friends or the injuries of their enemies considering what they have proved to themselves Have I forfeited my own salvation and deserved everlasting wrath and sold my Saviour and my soul for so base a thing as sinful pleasure and shall I ever make a wonder of it that another man doth me some temporal hurt Was any friend so near to me as my self Or more obliged to me O sinful soul let thy own rather than thy friends deceit and treachery and neglects be the matter of thy displeasure wonder and complaints And let thy Conformity herein to Jesus Christ be thy holy ambition and delight Not as it is thy suffering nor as it is caused by mens sin but as it is thy Conformity and fellowship in the sufferings of thy Lord and caused by his Love I have already shewed you that sufferers for Christ are in in the highest form among his Disciples The order of his followers usually is this 1. At our entrance and in the lowest form we are exercised with the fears of Hell and Gods displeasure and in the works of Repentance for the sin that we have done 2. In the second form we come to think more seriously of the remedy and to enquire what we shall do to be saved and to understand better what Christ hath done and suffered and what he is and will be to us and to value him and his love and grace And here we are much enquiring how we may know our own sincerity and our interest in Christ and are labouring for some assurance and looking after signs of grace 3. In the next form or order we are searching after further knowledge and labouring better to understand the mysteries of Religion and to get above the rudiments and first principles And here if we scape turning bare Opinionists or Hereticks by the snare of controversie or curiosity it 's well 4. In the next form we set our selves to the fuller improvement of all our further degrees of knowledge and to digest it all and turn it into stronger Faith and Love and Hope and greater Humility Patience Self-denial Mortification and contempt of earthly vanities and hatred of sin and to walk more watchfully and holily and to be more in holy duty 5. In the next form we grow to be more publick-spirited to set our hearts on the Churches welfare and long more for the progress of the Gospel and for the good of others and to do all the good in the world that we are able for mens souls or bodies but especially to long and lay out our selves for the conversion and salvation of ignorant secure unconverted souls The counterfeit of this is An eager desire to proselyte others to our opinions or that Religion which we have chosen by the direction of flesh and blood or which is not of God nor
would have been grieved for their griefs and for ought they know might have fallen into as sad a state as they themselves are now lamenting 6. Do you think it is for the Hurt or the Good of your friend that he is removed hence It cannot be for his Hurt unless he be in Hell At least it is uncertain whether to live would have been for his Good by an increase of Grace and so for greater Glory And if he be in Hell he was no fit person for you to take much pleasure in upon earth He might be indeed a fit object for your compassion but not for your complacency Sure you are not undone for want of such company as God will not endure in his sight and you must be separated from for ever But if they be in Heaven you are scarce their friends if you would wish them thence Friendship hath as great respect to the good of our friends as of our selves And do you pretend to friendship and yet lament the removal of your friend to his greatest happiness Do you set more by your own enjoying his company then by his enjoying God in perfect blessedness This sheweth a very culpable defect either in Faith or Friendship and therefore beseemeth not Christians and friends If Love teacheth us to mourn with them that mourn and to rejoyce with them that rejoyce can it be an act of rational Love to mourn for them that are possessed of the highest everlasting joyes 7. God will not honour himself by one only but by many He knoweth best when his work is done When our friends have finished all that God intended them for when he put them into the world is it not time for them to be gone and for others to take their places and finish their work also in their time God will have a succession of his servants in the world Would you not come down and give place to him that is to follow you when your part is played and his is to begin If David had not died there had been no Solomon no Jehoshaphat no Hezekiah no Josiah to succeed him and honour God in the same throne You may as wisely grudge that one day only takes not up all the week and that the clock striketh not the same hour still but proceedeth from one to two from two to three c. as to murmur that one man only conâ—inueth not to do the work of his place excluding his successors 8. You must not have all your Mercies by one messenger or hand God will not have you consine your Love to one only of his servants And therefore he will not make one only useful to you but when one hath delivered his message and done his part perhaps God will send you other mercies by another hand And it belongeth to him to choose the messenger who gives the gift And if you will childishly dote upon the first messenger and say you will have all the rest of your mercies by his hand or you will have no more your frowardness more deserveth correction than compassion and if you be kept fasting till you can thankfully take your food from any hand that your Father sends it by it is a correction very suitable to your sin 9. Do you so highly value your friends for God or for them or for your selves in the final consideration If it was for God what reason of trouble have you that God hath disposed of them according to his wisdome and unerring will should you not then be more pleased that God hath them and employeth them in his highest service than displeased that you want them But if you value them and love them for themselves they are now more lovely when they are more perfect and they are now fitter for your content and joy when they have themselves unchangeable content and joy than they could be in their sin and sorrows But if you valued and loved them but for your selves only it is just with God to take them from you to teach you to value men to righter ends and upon better considerations and both to prefer God before your selves and better to understand the nature of true friendship and better to know that your own felicity is not in the hands of any creature but of God alone 10. Did you improve your friends while you had them or did you only Love them while you made but little use of them for your souls If you used them not it was just with God for all your Love to take them from you They were given you as your candle not only to Love it but to work by the Light of it And as your garments not only to Love them but to wear them and as your meat not only to Love it but to feed upon it Did you receive their counsel and hearken to their reproofs and pray with them and conser with them upon those holy truths that tended to elevate your minds to God and to inflame your brests with sacred Love If not be it now known to you that God gave you not such helps and mercies only to talk of or look upon and Love but also to improve for the benefit of your souls 11. Do you not seem to forget both where you are your selves and where you must shortly and for ever live Where would you have your friends but where you must be your selves Do you mouâ—n that they are taken hence Why if they had staid here a thousand years how little of that time should you have had their company when you are almost leaving the world your selves would you not send your treasure before you to the place where you must abide How quickly will you pass from hence to God where you shall find your friends that you lamented as if they had been lost and there shall dwell with them for ever O foolish mourners would you not have your friends at home at their home and your home with their Father and your Father their God and your God! Shall you not there enjoy them long enough Can you so much miss them for one day that must live with them to all eternity And is not eternity long enough for you to enjoy your friends in Obj. But I do not know whether ever I shall there have any distinct knowledge of them or love to them and whether God shall not there be so far All in All as that we shall need or fetch no comfort from the creature Answ. There is no reason for either of these doubts For 1. You cannot justly think that the knowledge of the Glorified shall be more confused or imperfect then the knowledge of natural men on earth We shall know much more but not so much less Heaven exceedeth earth in knowledge as much as it doth in joy 2. The Angels in Heaven have now a distinct particular knowledge of the least believers rejoycing particularly in their conversion and being called by Christ himself Their Angels Therefore when we shall
be equal to the Angels we shall certainly know our nearest friends that there dwell with us and are employed in the same attendance 3. Abraham knew the Rich man in Hell and the man knew Abraham and Lazarus Therefore we shall have as distinct a Knowledge 4. The two Disciples Knew Moses and Elias in the mount whom they had never seen before Though it is possible Christ told them who they were yet there is no such thing expressed and therefore it is as probable that they knew them by the communication of their irradiating glory Much more 〈…〉 we be then illuminated to a clearer knowledge 5. It is said expresly 1 Cor. 13. 10 11 12. that our present knowledge shall be done away only in regard of its imperfection and not of it self which shall be perfected when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away As we put away childish thoughts and speeches when we become men The change will be from seeing in a glass to seeing face to face and from knowing in part to knowing even as we are known 2. And that we shall both Know and Love and rejoyce in creatures even in Heaven notwithstanding that God is all in all appeareth further thus 1. Christ in his glorified humanity is a Creature and yet there is no doubt but all his members will there Know and Love him in his glorified humanity without any derogation from the glory of the Deity 2. The Body of Christ will continue its unity and every member will be so nearly related even in Heaven that they cannot choose but Know and Love each other Shall we be ignorant of the members of our Body and not be concerned in their felicity with whom we are so nearly one 3. The state and felicity of the Church hereafter is frequently described in Scripture as consistent in society It is a Kingdom the City of God the Heavenly Jerusalem and it is mentioned as part of our happiness to be of that society Heb. 12. 22 23 24 c. 4. The Saints are called Kings themselves and it is said that they shall judge the world and the Angels And Judging in Scripture is frequently put for Governing Therefore whether there will be another world of moreals which they shall Govern as Angels now Govern men or whether the Misery of damned men and Angels will partly consist in as base a subjection to the glorified Saints as dogs now have to men or wicked reprobates on earth to Angels or whether in respect of both these together the Saints shall then be Kings and Rule and Judge or whether it be only the participation of the Glory of Christ that is called a Kingdom I will not here determine but it is most clear that they will have a distinct particular Knowledge of the world which they themselves must judge and some concernment in that work 5. It is put into the description of the Happiness of the Saints that they shall come from the East and from the West and shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God Therefore they shall know them and take some comfort in their presence 6. Love even to the Saints as well as unto God is one of the graces that shall endure for ever 1 Cor. 13. It is exercised upon an Immortal object the Image and Children of the Most High and therefore must be one of the Immortal Graces For Grace in the Nature of it dyeth not and therefore if the Object cease not how should the Grace cease unless you will call it's perfecting a ceasing It is a state too high for such as we and I think for any meer Creature to live so Immediately and only upon God as to have no use for any fellow Creature nor no comfort in them God can make use of Glorified Creatures in such subserviency and subordination to himself as shall be no diminution to his All sufficiency or Honour nor to our glory and felicity We must take heeed of fancying even such a Heaven it self as is above the capacity of a Creature as some very wise Divines think they have done that tell us we shall immediately see Gods Essence his Glory being that which is provided for our intuition and felicity and is distinct from his Essence being not everywhere as his Essence is And as those do that tell us because that God will be All in All therefore we shall there have none of our comfort by any creature Though flesh and blood shall not enter into that Kingdom but our Bodies will then be Spiritual Bodies yet will they be really the same as now and distinct from our souls and therefore must have a felicity suitable to a Body glorified And if the soul did immediately see Gods Essence yet as no reason can conclude that it can see nothing else or that it can see even Created Good and not Love it so the Body however must have objects and felicity fit for a Body Obj. But it is said If we knew Christ after the flesh henceforth know we him no more Answ. No doubt but all the carnality in principles matter manner and ends of our knowledge will then cease as it's imperfection But that a carnal knowledge be turned into a spiritual is no more a diminution to it than it is to the glory of our Bodies to be made like the stars in the Firmament of our Father Obj. But then I shall have no more comfort in my present friends than in any other Answ. 1. If you had none in them it is no diminution to our happiness if indeed we should have all in God immediately and alone 2. But if you have as much in others that you never knew before that will not diminish any of your comfort in your antient friends 3. But it is most probable to us that as there is a twofold object for our love in the Glorified Saints one is their Holiness and the other is the Relation which they stood in between God and us being made his instruments for our conversion and salvation so that we shall Love Saints in Heaven in both respects And in the first respect which is the chiefest we shall love those most that have most of God and the greatest Glory though such as we never knew on earth And in the second respect we shall Love those most that were employed by God for our greatest good And that we shall not there lay by so much respect to our selves as to forget or disregard out benefactours is manifest 1. In that we shall for ever remember Christ and Love him and Praise him as one that formerly Redeemed us and washed us in his blood and hath made us Kings and Priests to God And therefore we may also in just subordination to Christ remember them with Love and Thankfulness that were his Instruments for the collation of these benefits 2. And this kind of Self-Love to be sensible of Good and
Evil to our selves is none of the sinful or imperfect selfishness to be renounced or laid by but part of our very Natures and as inseparable from us as we are from our selves Much more were it not digressive might be said on this subject but I shall only add that as God doth draw us to every holy duty by shewing us the excellency of that duty and as perpetuity is not the smallest excellency so he hath purposely mentioned that Love endureth for ever when he had described the Love of one another as a principal motive to kindle and encrease this Love And therefore those that think they shall have no personal Knowledge of one another nor personal Love to one another for we cannot Love personally if we know not personally do take a most effectual course to destroy in their souls all holy special Love to Saints by casting away that principal or very great motive given them by the Holy Ghost I am not able to Love much where I foreknow that I shall not Love long I cannot Love a comely Inne so well as a nearer dwelling of my own because I must be gone to morrow Therefore must I love my Bible better than my Law books or Physick books c. because it leadeth to Eternity And therefore I must Love Holiness in my self and others better than meat and drink and wealth and honour and beauty and pleasure because it must be Loved for ever when the Love of these must needs be transitory as they are transitory I must profess from the very experience of my soul that it is the belief that I shall Love my friends in Heaven that principally kindleth my Love to them on Earth And if I thought I should never know them after death and consequently never love them more when this life is ended I should in reason number them with temporal things and Love them comparatively but a little even as I Love other transitory things allowing for the excellency in the nature of Grace But now I converse with some delight with my Godly friends as believing I shall converse with them for ever and take comfort in the very Dead and Absent as believing we shall shortly meet in Heaven and I Love them I hope with a Love that is of a Heavenly Nature while I Love them as the Heirs of Heaven with a Love which I expect shall there be perfected and more fully and for ever exercised 12. The last Reason that I give you to move you to bear the Loss or Absence of your friends is that it gives you the loudest call to retire from all the world and to converse with God himself and to long for Heaven where you shall be separated from your friends no more And your forsaken state will somewhat assist you to that solitary converse with God which it calls you to But this brings us up to the third part of the Text. AND yet I am not alone because the Father is with me Doct. When all forsake us and leave us as to them alone we are far from being simply alone because God is with us He is not without company that is with the King though twenty others have turned him off He is not without Light that hath the shining Sun though all his Candles be put out If God be our God he is our All and is enough for us And if he be our All we shall not much find the want of creatures while he is with us For 1. He is with us who is Everywhere and therefore is never from us and knoweth all the waies and projects of our enemies being with them in wrath as he is with us in mercy 2. He is with us who is Almighty sufficient to preserve us conquerable by none and therefore while he is with us we need not fear what man can do unto us For they can do nothing but what he will No danger no sickness no trouble or want can be so great as to make it any difficulty to God to deliver us when and how he please 3. He is with us who is Infinitely wise and therefore we need not fear the subtilty of enemies nor shall any of his undertaken works for his Church or us miscarry for want of foresight or through any oversight We shall be preserved even from our own Folly as well as from our Enemies subtilty For it is not our own wisdome that our greatest concernments do principally rest upon nor that our safety and peace are chiefly secured by but it is the Wisdome of our great Preserver He knoweth what to do with us and what paths to lead us in and what is best for us in all conditions And he hath promised to Teach us and will be our sure infallible Guide 4. He is with us who is Infinitely Good and therefore is only sit to be a continual delight and satisfaction to our souls that hath nothing in him to disaffect us or discourage us whom we may love without fear of overloving and need not set any bounds to our Love the object of it being infinite 5. He is with us who is most nearly related to us and most dearly loveth us and therefore will never be wanting to us in any thing that is fit for us to have This is he that is with us when all have left us and as to man we are alone and therefore we may well say that we are not alone Of this I shall say more anon in the application Quest. But how is he with us Answ. 1. He is with us not only in his Essential presence as he is everywhere but as by his Gracious Fatherly presence We are in his Family attending on him even as the eye of a servant is to the hand of his Master We are alwaies with him and as he phraseth it himself in the Parable Luke 15. all that he hath in ours that is all that is fit to be communicated to us and all the provisions of his bounty for his children When we awake we should be still with him When we go abroad we should be alwaies as before him Our life and works should be a Walking with God 2. He is alwaies with us efficiently to do us Good Though we have none else that careth for us yet will he never cast us out of his care but biddeth us cast our care on him as promising that he will care for us Though we have none else to provide for us he is alwiaes with us and our Father knoweth what we want and will make the best provision for us Mat. 6. 32 33. Though we have none else to defend us against the power of our enemies he is alwaies with us to be our sure defence He is the Rock to which we fly and upon which we are surely built He gathereth us to himself as the Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings Mat. 23. 37. And sure while Love is thus protecting us we may well say that the Father himself
so may he that liveth in the open world and hath all the visible works of God to meditate upon But all this were nothing if God were not the sense of Books and Creatures and the matter of all these noble studies He that is alone and hath only God himself to study hath the matter and sense of all the Books and Creatures in the world to employ his thoughts upon He never need to want matter for his meditation that hath God to meditate on He need not want matter of discourse whether mental or vocal that hath God to talk of though he have not the name of any other friend to mention All our Affections may have in him the highest and most pleasant work The soul of man cannot have a more sweet and excellent work than to Love him He wanteth neither work nor pleasure that in his solitude is taken up in the believing contemplations of Eternal Love and of all his blessed Attributes and works O then what happy and delightful converse may a Believer have with God alone He is alwaies present and alwaies at leisure to be spoken with and alwaies willing of our access and audience He hath no interest cross to our felicity which should move him to reject us as worldly great ones often have He never misunderstandeth us nor chargeth that upon us which we were never guilty of If we converse with men their mistakes and interests and passions and insufficiencies do make the trouble so great and the benefit so small that many have become thereby aweary of the world or oâ— humane society and have spent the rest of their daies alone in desert places Indeed so much of God as appears in men so much is their converse excellent and delightful and theirs is the best that have most of God But there is so much of vanity and self and flesh and sin in the most or all of us as very much darkneth our Light and dampeth the pleasure and blasteth the fruit of our societies and converse O how oft have I been solaced in God when I found nothing but deceit and darkness in the world How oft hath he comforted me when it was past the power of man How oft hath he relieved and delivered me when all the help of man was vain It hath been my Stay and Rest to look to him when the creature hath been a broken staff and deceitful friends have been but as a broken tooth or a foot that is out of joynt as Solomon speaketh of confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble Prov. 25. 29. Verily as the world were but an horrid dungeon without the Sun so it were a howling wilderness a place of no considerable employment or delight were it not that in it we may live to God and do him service and sometime be refreshed with the light of his countenance and the communications of his Love But of this more anon Use 1. WE see our Example and our encouragements Let us now as followers of Christ endeavour to imitate him in this and to Live upon God when men forsake us and to know that while God is with us we are not alone nor indeed forsaken while he forsakes us not I shall 1. Shew you here Negatively what you must not do 2. Affirmatively what you must do for the performance of your duty in this imitation of Christ. 1. You must not make this any pretence for the undervaluing of your useful friends nor for your unthankfulness for so great a benefit as a godly friend nor for the neglect of your duty in improving the company and help of friends Two is better then one The communion of Saints and help of those that are wise and faithful is a mercy highly to be esteemed And the undervaluing of it is at least a sign of a declining soul. 2. You must not hence fetch any pretence to slight your friends and disoblige them or neglect any duty that you owe them or any means therein necessary to the continuation of their friendship 3. You must not causelesly withdraw from humane society into Solitude A weariness of converse with men is oft conjunct with a weariness of our duty And a retiring voluntarily into solitude when God doth not call or drive us thither is oft but a retiring from the place and work which God hath appointed us And consequently a retiring rather from God than to God Like some idle servants that think they should not work so hard because it is but Worldly business and think their Masters deal not Religiously by them unless they let them neglect their labour that they may spend more time in serving God as if it were no serving God to be faithful in their Masters service I deny not but very holy persons have lived in a state of retirement from humane converse In such cases as these iâ— may become a duty 1. In case of such persecution as at present leaveth us no opportunity of serving or honouring God so much in any other place or state 2. In case that natural infirmity or disability or any other accident shall make one less serviceable to God and his Church in society than he is in solitude 3. In case he hath committed a sin so heinous and of indelible scandal and reproach as that it is not fit for the servants of Christ any more to receive him into their local communion though he repent For as to Local communion I think such a case may be 4. In case a man through custome and ill company be so captivated to some fleshly lust as that he is not able to bear the temptations that are found in humane converse but falleth by them into frequent heinous sinning In this case the right hand or eye is rather to be parted with than their salvation And though a meer restraint by distance of temptations and opportunities of sinning will not prove a man sanctified nor save the soul that loveth the sin and fain would live in it Yet 1. Grace may sometime appear in the strength and self-denyal which is exercised in the very avoiding of temptations when yet perhaps the person hath not strength enough to have stood against the temptation if it had not been avoided And 2. The distance of temptations and opportunity of serious and frequent consideration may be a means to help them to sincerity that want it 5. In case a man by age or sickness find himself so near to death as that he hath now a more special call to look after his present actual preparation than to endeavour any more the good of others and find withall that solitude will help him in his preparations his society being such as would but hinder him In these five cases I suppose it lawful to retire from humane converse into solitude But when there is no such necessity or call it usually proceedeth from one of these vicious distempers 1. From Cowardize and fear of suffering when the souldiers of Christ do
world his God so doth it savour of the same hainous sin to lament our loss of Creatures more than the displeasure of God If God be my enemy or I am fallen under his indignation I have then so much greater matters to lament than the loss or absence or frowns of man as should almost make me forget that there is such a thing as man to be regarded But if God be my Father and my friend in Christ I have then so much to think of with delight and to recreate and content my soul as will proclaim it most incongruous and absurd to lament inordinately the absence of a worm while I have his Love and presence who is All in All. If God cannot content me and be not enough for me how is he then my God or how shall he be my Heaven and everlasting Happiness 2. If God be with me he is with me to whom I am absolutely devoted I am wholly his and have acknowledged his interest in me and long ago disclaimed all usurpers and repented of alienations and unreservedly resigned my self to him And where should I dwell but with him that is my owner and with whom I have made the solemnest Covenant that ever I made â— never gave my self to any other but in subordination to him and with a salvo for his highest inviolable right Where should my goods be but in my own house with whom should a Servant dwell but with his Master and a Wife but with her Husband and Children but with their Father I am nearlier related to my God and to my Saviour than I am to any of my Relations in this world I owe more to him than to all the world I have renounced all the world as they stand in any competition or comparison with him And can I want their company then while I am with him How shall I hate Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister for his sake if I cannot spare them or be without them to enjoy him To hate them is but to use them as men do hated things that is to cast them away with contempt as they would alâ—enate me from Christ and to cleave to him and be satisfied in him alone I am now married to Christ and therefore must chearfully leave Father and Mother and my native place and all to cleave to him And with whom should I now delight to dwell but with him who hath taken me into so near relation to be as it were one flesh with him O my dear Lord hide not thou thy face from an unkind an unworthy sinner Let me but dwell with thee and see thy face and feel the gracious embracements of thy Love and then let me be cast off by all the world if thou see it meetest for me or let all other friends be where they will so that my soul may be with thee I have agreed for thy sake to forsake all even the dearest that shall stand against thee and I resolve by thy grace to stand to this agreement 3. If God be with me I am not alone for he is with me that Loveth me best The Love of all the friends on earth is nothing to his Love O how plainly hath he declared that he loveth me in the strange condescention the sufferings death and intercession of his Son What Love hath he declared in the communications of his Spirit and the operations of his Grace and the near relations into which he brought me What Love hath he declared in in the course of his providences in many and wonderful preservations and deliverances in the conduct of his wisdome and in a life of mercies What Love appeareth in his precious promises and the glorious provisions he hath made for me with himself to all eternity O my Lord I am ashamed that thy Love is so much lost that it hath no better return from an unkind unthankful heart that I am not more delighted in thee and swallowed up in the contemplation of thy Love I can contentedly let go the society and converse of all others for the converse of some one bosome friend that is dearer to me than they all as Jonathan to David And can I not much more be satisfied in thee alone and let go all if I may continue with thee My very Dog will gladly for sake all the Town and all persons in the world to follow me alone And have I not yet found so much Love and Goodness in thee my dear and blessed God as to be willing to converse alone with thee All men delight most in the company of those that Love them best They choose not to converse with the Multitude when they look for solace and content but with their dearest friends And should any be so dear to me as God O were not thy Love unworthily neglected by an unthankful heart I should never be so unsatisfied in thee but should take up or seek my comforts in thee I should then say Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee Though not only my friends but my flesh and heart themselves should fail me it is thou that will still be the strength of my heart and my portion for ever it is good therefore for me to draw near to thee how far soever I am from man O let me there dwell where thou wilt not be strange for thy loving kindness is better than life instead of the multitude of my turmoiling thoughts let me be taken up in the believing views of thy reconciled face and in the glad attendance upon thy Grace or at least in the multitude of my thoughts within me let thy celestial comforts delight my soul. Let me dwell as in thy family and when I awake let me be still with thee Let me go no whither but where I am still following thee Let me do nothing but thy work nor serve any other but when I may truly call it a serving thee Let me hear nothing but thy voice and let me know thy voice by whatever instrument thou shalt speak Let me never see any thing but thy self and the glass that representeth thee and the books in which I may read thy name And let me never play with the outside and gaze on words and letters as insignificant and not observe thy name which is the sense Whether it be in company or in solitude let me be continually with thee and do thou vouchsafe to hold me by my right hand And guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me unto thy glory Psal. 73. 23 24 25 26 28. Psal. 63. 3. 4. If God be with me I am not alone for I shall be with him whose Love is of greater use and benefit to me than the Love of all my friends in the world Their Love may perhaps be some little comfort as it floweth from His But it is His Love by which and upon which I Live It is His Love that gives
his Love He hath readify forgiven the sins which I thought would have made my soul the fuel of Hell He hath entertained me with joy with musick and a feast when I better deserved to have been among the Dogs without his doors He hath embraced me in his sustaining consolatory arms when he might have spurned my guilty soul to Hell and said Depart from me thou worker of iniquity I know thee not O little did I think that he could ever have forgotten the vanity and villany of my youth yea so easily have forgotten my most aggravated sins When I had sinned against light when I had resisted conscience when I had frequently and wilfully injured Love I thought he would never have forgotten it But the greatness of his Love and Mercy and the blood and intercession of his Son hath cancelled all O how many mercies have I tasted since I thought I had sinned away all mercies How patiently hath he born with me since I thought he would never have put up more And yet besides my sins and the withdrawings of my own heart there hath been nothing to interrupt our converse Though he be God and I a worm yet that would not have kept me out Though he be in Heaven yet he is near to succour me on Earth in all that I call upon him for Though he have the Praise of Angels he disdaineth not my tears and groans Though he have the perfect Love of perfect soulâ— he knoweth the little spark in my breast and despiseth not my weak and languid Love Though I injure and dishonour him by Loving him no more though I oft forget him and have been out of the way when he he hath come or called me though I have disobediently turned away mine ears and unkindly refused the entertainments of his Love and unfaithfully plaid with those whose company he forbad me he hath not divorced me nor turned me out of doors O wonderful that Heaven will be familiar with Earth and God with man the Highest with a worm and the most Holy with an unconstant sinner Man refuseth me when God will entertaine me Man that is no wiser or better than my self Those that I never wronged or deserved ill of reject me with reproach And God whom I have unspeakably injured doth invite me and intreat me and condescendeth to me as if he were beholden to me to be saved Men that I have deserved well of do abhorre me And God that I have deserved Hell of doth accept me The best of them are bryars and as a thorny hedge and he is Love and Rest and Joy And yet I can be more welcome to him though I have offended him than I can to them whom I have obliged I have freer leave to cast my self into my Fathers arms than to tumble in those bryars or wallow in the dirt I upbraid my self with my sins but he doth not upbraid me with them I condemn my self for them but he condemns me not He forgiveth me sooner than I can forgive my self I have peace with him before I can have peace of conscience O therefore my soul draw near to him that is so willing of thy company That frowneth thee not away unless it be when thou hast fallen into the dirt that thou mayest wash thee from thy filthiness and be fitter for his converse Draw near to him that will not wrong thee by believing misreports of enemies or laying to thy charge the things thou knewest not but will forgive the wrongs thou hast done to him and justifie thee from the sins that conscience layeth to thy charge Come to him that by his Word and Spirit his Ministers and Mercies calleth thee to come and hath promised that those that come to him he will in no wise shut out O walk with him that will bear thee up and lead thee as by the right hand Psal. 73. 23. and carry his Infants when they cannot go O speak to him that teacheth thee to speak and understandeth and accepts thy stammering and helpeth thine infirmities when thou knowest not what to pray for as thou oughtest and giveth thee groans when thou hast not words and knoweth the meaning of his spirit in thy groans that cannot be contained in the Heaven of Heavens and yet hath respect to the contrite soul that trembleth at his word and feareth his displeasure that pittieth the tears and despiseth not the sighing of a broken heart nor the desires of the sorrowful O walk with him that is never weary of the converse of an upright soul that is never angry with thee but for flying from him or for drawing back or being too strange and refusing the kindness and felicity of his presence The day is coming when the proudest of the sons of men would be glad of a good look from him that thou hast leave to walk with Even they that would not look on thee and they that injured and abused thee and they that inferiours could have no access to O how glad would they be then of a smile or a word of hope and mercy from thy Father Draw near then to him on whom the whole Creation doth depend whose favour at last the proudest and the worst would purchase with the loudest cryes when all their pomp and pleasure is gone and can purchase nothing O walk with him that is Love it self and think him not unwilling or unlovely and let not the deceiver by hideous misrepresentations drive thee from him when thou hast felt a while the storms abroad methinks thou shouldest say How goâ—d how safe how sweet is it to draw near to God! 1. With whom should I so desirously converse as with him whom I must Live with for ever If I take pleasure in my house or land or country my walks my books or friends themselves as clothed with flesh I must possess this pleasure but a little while Henceforth know we no man after the flesh Had we known Christ himself after the flesh we must know him so no more for ever Though his Glorified spiritual Body we shall know Do you converse with Father or Mother with Wives or Children with Pastors and Teachers Though you may converse with these as Glorified Saints when you come to Christ yet in these Relations that they stand in to you now you shall converse with them but a little while For the Time is short It remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as not abusing it or as though they used it not for the fashion of this world doth pass away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. Why then should I so much regard a converse of so short continuance why should I be so familiar in my Inne and so in love wiâ—h that familiarity as to grieve when I must but think of