purified and zealous of good works Tit. 2.14 He called you a chosen Generation a Royal Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar people that ye should shew forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light ye are as lively stones built up a spiritual house an holy Priesthood to offer up spiritual Sacrifice acceptable to God by Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 2.5 9. You are born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible 1 Pet. 1.23 and are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light God hath delivered you from the power of darkness and translated you into the Kingdom of his dear Son in whom you have redemption through his bloud the remission of sins Col. 1.12 13 14. The spirit it self beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and if children then Heirs Heirs of God and joynt Heirs with Christ Rom. 8.16 17. All things shall work together for your good He that spared not his own Son but gave him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things Vers. 28.32 Nothing but the illuminated Soul can discern the riches of the glory of Gods inheritance in the Saints and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe according to the work of his mighty power Eph. 1.18 19. When we were dead in sins he hath quickned us together with Christ and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding Riches of his Grace in his kindness towards us through Jesus Christ. He hath brough us nigh that were far off so that by one spirit we have access to the Father by Christ and are now no more strangers and forreigners but fellow Citizens of the Saints and of the houshold of God Eph. 2.5 6 7 13 17 18 19. We are members of the body of Christ we are come to Mount Zion and unto the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and an innumerable company of Angels to the general Assembly and Church of the first born which are written in Heaven and to God the Judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant Heb. 12.22 23 24. Brethren shall the Lord speak all this and more than this in the Scripture of your Glory and will you not prove your selves glorious and study to make good this precious word Doth he say The righteous is more excellent than his Neighbour Prov. 12.26 and will you not study to shew your selves more excellent indeed Shall all these high things be spoken of you and will you live so far below them all What a hainous wrong is this to God He sticks not in boasting of you to call you his jewells Mal. 3.17 and tells the world he will make them one day discern the difference between the Righteous and the wicked between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not verse 18. He tells the World that his coming in Judgment will be to be glorified in his Saints and to be admired in them that believe 2 Thess. 1.10 It 's openly Professed by the Apostle John We know that we are of God and the whole World lyeth in wickedâ—â—â—â— 1 John 5.19 He challengeth any to condemn you or lay any thing to your charge professing that it is he that justifieth you casting the Saints into admiration by his love What shall we say to these things if God be for us who can be against us Rom. 8.31 He challengeth Tribulation Distress Persecution Famine or Nakedness Peril or Sword to separate you if they can from the Love of God He challengeth Death and Life Angels Principalities and Powers things present and things to come height and depth or any other Creature to separate you if they are able from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord Rom. 8.35 37 38 39. Shall the Lord of Heaven thus make his boast of you to all the World and will you not make good his boasting Yea I must tell you he will see that it be made good to a word and if you be not careful of it your selves and it be not made good in you then you are not the people that God thus boasteth of He tells the greatest Persecutors to their faces that the meek the humble little ones of his Flock have their Angels beholding the face of God in Heaven Matth. 18.10 and that at the great and dreadful day of Judgment they shall be set at his right hand as his Sheep with a Come ye blessed inherit the Kingdom when others are set at his left hand as Goats with a Go ye cursed into everlasting Fire Matth. 25. He tells the world that he that receiveth a Converted man that is become as a little Child receiveth Christ himself and that whoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in him it were better for him that a Milstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the Sea Matth. 18.3 4 5 6. Mark 9.42 Luke 17.2 O Sirs must God be thus wonderfully tender of you and will you not now be very tender of his interest and your duty Shall he thus difference you from all the rest of the world and will you not study to declare the difference The ungodly even gnash the teeth at Ministers and Scriptures and Christ himself for making such a difference between them and you and will you not let them see that it is not without cause I intreat you I require you in the Name of God see that you answer these high commendations and shew us that God hath not boasted of you beyond your worth 9. Consider this as the highest Motive of all God doth not only magnify you and boast of you but also he hath made you the living Images of his blessed self his Son Jesus Christ his Spirit and his holy Word and so he hath exposed himself his Son his Spirit and his Word to be censured by the World according to your lives The express Image of the Fathers person is the Son Heb. 1.3 The Son is declared to the World by the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost hath endited the Holy Scriptures which therefore bear the Image of Father Son and Holy Ghost This holy Word both Law and Promise is written on your hearts and put into your inner parts by the sâ—me spirit 2 Cor. 3.3 Heb. 8.13 and 10.16 So that as God hath imprinted his holy nature in the Scripture so hath he made this word the Seal to imprint again his Image on your hearts And you know that common eyes can better discern the Image in the Wax than on the Seal Though I know that the hardness of the Wax or somthing lying between or the imperfect application may cause an imperfection in the Image on the
for it till it surprize him and therefore when it cometh it findeth him prepared and he gladly entertaineth it as the messenger of his Father to call him to his everlasting home It is not a strange unexpected thing to him to hear he must die He died daily in his daily sufferings and mortified contempt of worldly things and in his daily expectation of his change He wondereth to see men at a dying time surprized with astonishment and terrour who jovially or carelesly neglected it before as if they had never known till then that they must die Or as if a few years time were reason enough for so great a difference For that which he certainly knoweth will be he looketh at as if it were even at hand and his preparation for it is more serious in his health than other mens is on their death-bed He useth more carefully to bethink himself what graces he shall need at a dying time and in what case he shall then wish his soul to be and accordingly he laboureth in his provisions now even as if it were to be tomorrow He verily believeth that it is incomparably better for him to be with Christ than to abide on earth and therefore though Death of it self be an enemy and terrible to nature yet being the only passage into happiness he gladly entertaineth it Though he have not himself any clear and satisfactory apprehensions of the place and state of the happiness of departed souls yet it quieteth him to know that they shall be with Christ and that Christ knoweth all and prepareth and secureth for him that promised Rest Joh. 12.26 2 Cor. 5.1 7 8. Phil. 1.21 23. Luke 23.43 Though he is not free from all the natural fears of death yet his belief and hope of endless happiness doth abate those fears by the joyfull expectation of the gain which followeth See my Book called The last enemy and the last work of a Believer and that of self-denial against the fears of death But especially he loveth and longeth for the coming of Christ to judgement as knowing that then the Marriage-day of the Lamb is come and then the desires and hopes of all Believers shall be satisfied Then shall the Righteous shine as Stars in the Kingdom of their Father and the hand of violence shall not reach them Every enemy then is overcome and all the Redeemers work is consummated and the Kingdom delivered up unto the Father Then shall the ungodly and the unmercifull be confounded and the righteous filled with overlasting joy when their Lord shall throughly plead their cause and justifie them against the accusations of Satan and all the lies of his malicious instruments O blessed glorious joyfull day when Christ shall come with thousands of his Angels to execute vengeance on the ungodly world and to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that now believe 2 Thes. 1.8 9 10 When the patient followers of the Lamb shall behold him in glory whom they have believed in and shall see that they did not pray or hope or wait in vain When Christ himself and his sacred truth shall be justified and glorified in the presence of the world and his enemies mouths for ever stopped When he shall convince all that are ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him Jude 14 15. Where then is the mouth that pleadeth the cause of infidelity and impiety and reproached the serious holiness of Believers and made a jest of the Judgements of the Lord Then what terrours and confusion and shame what fruitless repentings will seize upon that man that set himself against the holy ones of the Lord and knew not the day of his visitation and imbraced the image and form of godliness while he abhorred the power The Joys which will then possess the hearts of the Justified will be such as now no heart can comprehend When Love shall come to be glorified in the highest expression to those that lately were so low when all their doubts and fears and sorrows shall be turned into full contenting sight and all tears shall be wiped away and all reproaches turned into glory and every enemy overcome and sin destroyed and holiness perfected and our vile bodies changed and made like the glorious body of Christ Phil. 3.20 21. Col. 3.3 4. Then will the Love and work of our Redemption be fully understood And then a Saint will be a Saint indeed when with Christ they shall judge the Angels and the world 1 Cor. 6.2 3. and shall hear from Christ Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world Mat. 25.34 Enter ye into the joy of your Lord Mat. 25.21 Then every knee shall bow to Christ and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father Phil. 2.9 10 11. Then sin will fully appear in its malignity and holiness in its luster unto all The proud will then be abased and the mouths of all the wicked stopped when they shall see to their confusion the Glory of that Christ whom they despised and of those holy ones whom they made their scorn In vain will they then knock when the door is shut and cry Lord Lord open unto us Mat. 25.10 11 12. And in vain will they then wish O that we had known the day of our visitation that we might have died the death of the righteous and our latter end might have been as his Numb 23.10 Rom. 3.19 Job 5.16 Psal. 107.42 31.23 13.6 8. The day of Death is to true Believers a day of Happiness and Joy But it is much easier for them to think with joy on the coming of Christ and the day of Judgement because it is a day of fuller joy and soul and body shall be conjoyned in the blessedness and there is nothing in it to be so great a stop to our desires as Death is which naturally is an enemy God hath put a love of life and fear of death into the nature of every sensible creature as necessary for the preservation of themselves and others and the orderly Government of the world But what is there in the blessed day of Judgement which a Justified child of God should be averse to O if he were but sure that this would be the day or week or year of the coming of his Lord how glad would the confirmed Christian be and with what longings would he be looking up to see that most desired sight 2. And the weak Christian is so far of the same mind that he had rather come to God by Death and Judgement than not at all except when temptations make him fear that he shall be condemned He hath fixedly made choice of that Felicity which till then he cannot attain He would not take all the pleasures of this world for his hopes of the happiness of
it for matter or manner or else if the Minister displease you your feeble stomachs do loath the food because you like not the Cook that dresseth it or because his hands are not so clean as you desire The full Soul loatheth an Honey-comb but to the hungry every bitter thing is sweet Prov. 27.7 Or if you get it down you can hardly keep it but are ready to cast it up to our faces And thus a great deal of our labour is lost with you holy Doctrine lost and Sacraments and other Ordinances lost because you have not strength to digest them Labour therefore to be stablished and built up 7. I beseech you look upon the face of the World and see whether it have not need of the strongest helps Whereas the weak and sick are burthensome to others rather than fit to help the distressed It is a multitude among us and abroad in the world that are ignorant and ungodly and in the depth of misery And if there be but a few to help them those few should not be Babes Abundance of this multitude are obstinate in their sin blind and wilful captivated by the Devil and have sold themselves to do evil and shall such miserable Souls as these have none but children or sick folks to help them I tell you Sirs their Diseases prove too hard for the skilfullest Physicians It will put the wisest man in England to it to perswade one obstinate enemy of godliness to the hearty love of a holy life or to cure one old superstitious person of his self-conceitedness or one covetous person of his love of the World or one old drunkard or glutton of his sensuality How then will silly ignorant Christians be able to perswade them I know it is not the ability of the Instrument but the will of God that is the principal cause but yet God useth to work by instruments according to their fitness for the work What a case is that Hospital in where all are sick and no healthful persons among them to help them Poor weak Christians you are not able much to help one another how much less to help the dead ungodly World Wo to the World if it had no better helpers And wo to your selves if you had not the help of stronger than your selves seeing it is Gods way to work by means Alas a child or sick person is so unfit to labour for the Family and to work for others that they are the burdens of the Family and must be provided for by others They are so unmeet to help others in their weakness that they must be carried or attended and waited on themselves What a Life is this to be the burdens of the Church when you might be the Pillars of the Church To be so blind and lame when you might be eyes to the blind and feet to the lame I speak not this to extenuate Gods mercies to you nor to undervalue the great felicitie of the Saints even the poorest and weakest of them I know that Christ is tender of the weakest that are sincere and will not forsake them But though you are so far above the dead world even in the bed of your groaning and languishing yet O how far are you below the Confirmed healthful Christian You are happy in being alive but you are unhappy in being so diseased and weak You are happy in being of the Family and fellow-Citizens with the Saints But you are unhappy in being so useless and unprofitable and burdensom For indeed you live but as the Poor of the Parish not only on the Alms of Christ for so we do all but on the Alms of your brethrens assistance and support And I know that in worldly matters you will rather labour with your hands that you may have to give to them that need than be troublesom to others and live upon Charity Eph. 4.28 I know that the time is not yet come that there shall not be a Beggar in Israel I mean one that needs not our continual relief The poor we shall have alwayes with us even the poor in Grace to exercise our Charity and I know that the strong must bear with their infirmities and exercise compassion on them But yet you should remember the words of Christ It is more honourable to give than to receive And therefore be perswaded to be stir your selves for spiritual health and strength and riches that the multitudes of needy miserable Souls may have some help from you and that when they come to your doors you may not turn them away with so cold an answer Alas we have nothing for our selves Were you but strong confirmed Christians what blessings might you be to all about you What a stay to the places where you live Your lips would feed many as a Tree of Life The ear that heard you would bless you and the eye that saw you would bear you witness Job 29.11 You would be to poor Souls as bountiful Rich men are to their bodies the support and relief of many that are needy You would not eat your morsells alone nor would you see any perish for lack of cloathing but the loyns of the poor would bless you Job 31.17 18 19 20. Oh pity the poor World that needeth more than Childrens help and grow up unto Confirmation O pity the poor Church that abounds with weaklings that 's pestered with childish self conceited quarrellers and needeth more than childrens help and grow up to confirmation O pity your selves and live not still in so childish sickly and beggarly a condition when the way of riches and health is before you but up and be doing till you have attained confirmation 8. Yea this is not all you do not only deny the Church your assistance but most of the troubles and divisions of the Church are from such unsetled weaklings as you In all Ages almost these have made the Church more work than the Heathen Persecutors did with Fire and Sword These Novices as Paul calleth them that is your beginners in Religion are they that most commonly are puffed up with Pride and fall into the condemnation of the Devil 1 Tim. 3.6 These are they that are easiest deceived by Seducers as being not able to make good the truth nor to confute the plausible reasonings of the adversaries and withall they have not that rooted love to the Truth and wayes of God which should hold them fast and they quickly yield like cowardly Souldiers that are able to make but small resistance And as Paul speaks they are like children tossed to and fro and carryed about with every wind of Doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in wait to deceive Eph. 4.14 If you will still continue children what better can we expect of you but thus to be toss'd and carryed about Thus you gratify Satan and Seducers when you little think on it And thus you harden the ungodly in their way And thus you grieve the hearts
above others When Christ himself had spoken the fore-cited words it s said in the next Verses 28 29. that All they in the Synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the City and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their City was built that they might cast him down headlong This was the entertainment of Christ himself when he did but declare how few it is that God will save and for whole sakes he specially sends his Messengers And must we incur all this for magnifying you and will you dishonour your selves Is all our study and labour for you and our lives for you and all things for you and will not you be wholly and to the utmost of your strength for God Are you cull'd out of all the World for Salvation and will you not answer this admirable differencing Grace by an admirable difference from those that must perish and by an admirable excellency in meekness humility self-denial and heavenliness above other men 6. Moreover you know more and have a greater experience to assist you than others have and therefore you should excel them accordingly Others have but heard of the odiousness of sin but you have seen and felt it Others have heard of Gods displeasure but you have tasted it to the breaking or bruising of your hearts You have been warned at the very quick as if Christ had spoken to your very flesh and Bones Go thy way sin no more left a worse thing come unto thee And as Ezra said Chap. 9.13 After all that is come upon us should we again break thy Commandements wouldst thou not be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us So if after all your spiritual experiences after so many tasts of the bitterness of sin and groans and prayers and cryes against it you shall yet live as like to the wicked as you dare and be familiar with that which hath cost you so dear how do you think that God must take this at your hands You have tasted of the sweetness of the Love of Christ and wondered at the unspeakable Riches of his Grace You have tasted the sweetness of the hopes of Glory and of the powers of the World to come You have perceived the necessity and excellency of holiness by inward experience And if after all this you will draggle on the earth and live below your own experiences contenting your selves with an Infancy of Love and Life and fruitfulness how much do you then transgress against the Rules of Reason and of Equity 7. Moreover All the World expecteth much more from you than from any others God expecteth more from you for he hath given you more and meaneth to do more for you Must you be in the eternal Joyes of Heaven when all your unsanctified Neighbours are in torments and yet will you not more endeavour to excel them Is it not unreasonable to expect to be set eternally at so vast a distance from the ungodly world even as far as Heaven is from Hell and yet to be content to differ here but a little from them in Holiness The Lord knows that poor forsaken impenitent sinners will do no better but rage and be confident till they are past remedy He looks for no better from them than to neglect him and slight his Son and Word and Wayes and to go on in Worldliness and fleshly living to be filthy still and careless and presumptuous and self-conceited still But it 's higher matters that he expects from you and good reason he hath done more for you and prepared you for better things The Ministers of Christ do look for little better from many of their poor ignorant ungodly Neighbours but even to rub out their dayes in security and self-deceit and to be barren after all their labours if not to hate us for seeking to have saved them But it 's you that their eyes are most upon and you that their hearts are most upon Their comfort and the fruit of their lives lyes much in your hands saith Paul 1 Thess. 3.7 8 9. Brethren we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your Faith For now we live if you stand fast in the Lord For what thanks can we render to God again for you for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God Night and day Praying exceedingly that we might see your face and might perfect that which is lacking in your Faith You see here that your Pastors lives are in your hands If you stand fast they live For the end of life is more then life and your Salvation is the end of our lives If the impenitent world reproach us and abuse and persecute us we suffer it joyfully as long as our work goeth on with you But when you are at a stand When you are barren and scandalous and passionate and dishonour your Profession and put us in fears left we have bestowed all our labour on you in vain this breaks our hearts above any worldly cross whatsoever O when the people that we should rejoyce and glory in shall prove unruly self-conceited peevish proud every one running his own way falling into divisions contentions or scandals this is the killing of the comforts of your Ministers When the ungodly shall hit us in the teeth with your scandals or divisions and say These are the godly people that you boasted of see now what is become of them this is the smoak to our eyes and the gall and Vinegar that 's given us by the Adversary and though still we know that our reward is with the Lord yet can we not choose but be wounded for your sakes and for the sake of the Cause and Name of God Yea the World it self expecteth more from you than others When men talk of great matters and profess as every Christian doth to look for the greatest matters of eternity and to live for no lower things than everlasting fellowship with God and Angels no wonder then if the World do look for extraordinary matters from you If you tell them of reaching Heaven they will look to see you wing'd like Angels and not to creep on earth like worms If you say that you are more than men they look you should shew it by doing more than men can do even by denying your selves and forgiving injuries and loving your enemies and blessing those that curse you and contemning this World and having your conversation in Heaven O Sirs believe it it is not small or common things that will satisfy the expectations of God or men of Ministers or of the World themselves concerning you 8. Yea moreover God himself doth make his boast of you and call out the World to observe your excellency he sets you up as the light of the World to be beheld by others He calls you in his Word his peculiar treasure above all people Exod. 19.5 Deut. 14.3 Psal. 135. â— a peculiar People
Christians though their Worship hath errors and faults repugnant to the right order and manner of Worship so be it you joyn not in that Worship which is substantially evil and such as God doth utterly disown Or that you commit no actual sin your selves or that you approve not of the errors and faults of the Worshippers and justifie not their smallest evil Or that you prefer not defective faulty Worship before that which is more pure and agreeable to the Will of God For while all the Worshippers are faulty and imperfect all their Worship will be so too And if your actual sin when you Pray or Preach defectively your selves doth not signify that you approve your faultiness much less will your presence prove that you allow of the faultiness of others The business that you come upon is to joyn with a Christian Congregation in the use of those Ordinances which God hath appointed supposing that the Ministers and Worshippers will all be sinfully defective in method order words or circumstances And to bear with that which God doth bear with and not to refuse that which is Gods for the adherent faults of men no more than you will refuse every dish of meat which is unhansomly Cooked as long as there is no poyson in it and you prefer it not before better 1 Cor. 1.10 and 3.1 2 3. with 11.17 18 21. Rom. 15.1 2. DIRECT XIV Keep up a constant Government over your Thoughts and Tongues especially against those particular sins which you are stronglyest tempted to and which you see other Christians most overtaken with KEep your Thoughts imployed upon somthing that is good and profitable either about some useful Truths or about some duty to God or man of your general or particular Calling yea about all these in their several seasons Learn how to watch your thoughts and stop them at their first excursions and how to quicken them and make them serviceable to every grace and every duty You can never improve your solitary hours if you have not the Government of your Thoughts And as the Thoughts must be governed because they are the first and intimate actings of good or evil so the Tongue must be Governed as the first expresser of the mind and the first instrument of good or hurt to others Especially take heed of these sins which the faultiness of most Professors of Religion doth warn you to avoid 1. An ordinary course of vain jesting and unprofitable talk 2. Provoking passionate inconsiderate words that tend to kindle wrath in others 3. Backbiting censuring and speaking evil of others without any just call when it is either upon uncertain reports or uncharitable suspition or tendeth more to hurt than good 4. A forward venting of our own conceits and a confident pleading for our uncertain unproved Opinions in Religion and a contentious wrangling for them as if the Kingdom of God lay in them And a forwardness in all company to be the Speakers rather than the Hearers and to talk in a Magisterial Teaching way as if we took our selves to be the wisest and others to have need to learn of us But especially take heed of speaking evil of those that have wronged you or of those that differ from you in some tollerable Opinions in Religion And hate that devilish uncharitable vice which maketh many ready to believe any thing or say any thing be it never so false of those that are against their Sect yea of whole parties of men that differ from them when there is not one of a thousand of all the party that ever they were acquainted with or ever could prove the thing by of which they are accused By the means of these bold uncharitable reports the Devil hath unspeakably gained against Christ and the Kingdom of malice hath won upon the Kingdom of Love and most Christians are easier known to be factious by hating or slandering one another than they can be known to be Christs Disciples by loving one another And while every Sect without remorse doth speak reproachfully and hatefully of the rest they learn hereby to hate one another and harden the Infidel and ungodly world in hating and speaking evil of them all So that a Turk or Heathen need no other witness of the odiousness of all Christians than the venemous words which they speak against each other And as foul words in quarrels prepare for blows so these malicious invectives upon differences in Religion prepare for the cruellest persecutions From my own observation which with a grieved soul I have made in this Generation I hereby give warning to this and all succeeding Ages that if they have any regard to Truth or Charity they take heed how they believe any factious partial Historian or Divine in any evil that he saith of the party which he is against For though there be good and credible persons of most parties yet you shall find that passion and partiality prevaileth against Conscience Truth and Charity in most that are sick of this Disease And that the envious zeal which is described Jam. 3. doth make them think they do God service first in believing false reports and then in verting them against those that their zeal or laction doth call the enemies of truth so that there is little credit to be given to their reproaches farther than some better evidence is brought to prove the thing Nay it would astonish a man to read the impudent lies which I have often read obtruded upon the World with such confidence that the Reader will be tempted to think Surely all this cannot be false Yea about publick words or actions where you would think that the multitude of Witnesses would deter them from speaking it if it were not true and yet all as false as tongue can speak Therefore believe not Pride or Faction or Malice in any evil that it saith unless you have better evidence of the truth Most Christian is that advice of Dr. H. More that all Parties of Christians would mark all the Good which is in other Parties and be more forward to speak of that than of the Evil And this would promote the work of Charity in the Church and the interest of Christianity in the World whereas the overlooking of all that 's good and aggravating all the evil and falsly seigning more than is true is the work of greatest service to the Devil and of greatest enmity to Christianity and Love that I know commonly practised in the World Keep your tongues from all such hellish work as this DIRECT XV. Let every state of life and Relation that you are in be sanctifyed unto God and conscionably used And to that end understand the advantages and duties of every condition and Relation and the sins and hinderances and dangers which you are most lyable to THe duties of our Relations are a great part of the work of a Christians life As Magistrates and Subjects Pastors and Flocks Parents and Children Husband and Wife Masters and
loveth him more for his Mercy to the Church and for that Goodness which consisteth in his Benignity to the Church But he Loveth him most of all for his Infinite perfections and essential excellencies His Infinite Power and Wisdom and Goodness simply in himself considered For he knoweth that Love to himself obligeth him to returns of Love especially differencing saving grace And he knoweth that the souls of millions are more worth incomparably then his own and that God may be much more honoured by them than by him alone And therefore he knoweth that the mercy to many is greater mercy and a greater demonstration of the goodness of God and therefore doth render him more amiable to man Rom. 9.3 And yet he knoweth that the Essential perfection and goodness of God as simply in himself and for himself is much more amiable than his Benignity to the creature And that he that is the first efficient must needs be the ultimate final cause of all things And that God is not finally for the creature but the creature for God for all that he needeth it not For of him and through him and to him are all things Rom. 11.36 And as he is Infinitely better than our selves so he is to be better Loved than our selves As I love a wise and vertuous person though he be one I never expect to receive any thing from and therefore Love him for his own sake and not for his benignity or usefulness to me So must I love God most for his essential perfections though his benignity also doth represent him amiable As he is blindly selfish that would not rather himself be annihilated or perish than whole Kingdoms should all perish or the Sun be taken out of the world because that which is best must he loved as best and therefore be best loved so is he more blind who in his estimative complacential Love preferreth not Infinite Eternal Goodness before such an imperfect silly creature as himself or all the world We are commanded to love our Neighbour as our selves when God is to be loved with all the heart and soul and might which therefore signifieth more than to love him as our selves or else he were to be loved no more than our Neighbour So that the strong Christian loveth God so much above himself as that he accounteth himself and all his interests as nothing in comparison of God yea and loveth himself more for God than for himself Though his own salvation be loved and desired by him and God must be loved for his mercy and benignity yet that salvation it self which he desireth is nothing else but the love of God Wherein his love is the final felicitating act and God is the final felicitating object and the felicity of loving is not first desired but the attractive object doth draw out our love and thereby make us consequentially happy in the injoying exercise thereof Thus God is All and in all to the soul. Psal. 73.25 Rom. 11.36 1 Cor. 10.31 Deut. 6.5 Mat. 23.37 Mat. 19.17 2. A weak Christian also loveth God as one that is infinitely better than himself and all things or else he did not love him at all as God But in the exercise he is so much in the minding of himself and so seldom and weak in the contemplation of Gods perfections that he feeleth more of his love to himself than unto God and feeleth more of his love to God as for the Benefits which he receiveth in and by himself than as for his own perfections yea and often feeleth the love of himself to work more strongly than his Love to the Church and all else in the world The care of his own salvation is the highest principle which he ordinarily perceiveth in any great strength in him and he is very little and weakly carried out to the Love of the whole Church and to the Love of God above himself Phil. 2.20 21 22. 1 Cor. 10.24 Jer. 45.5 3. A seeming Christian hath a common Love of God as he is Good both in himself and unto the world and unto him But this is not for his Holyness and it is but a general uneffectual approbation and praise of God which followeth a dead uneffectual belief But his chiefest predominant Love is always to his Carnal self and the Love both of his soul and of God is subjected to his fleshly self-self-love His chiefest Love to God is for prospering him in the world and such as is subservient to his sensuality pride coveteousness presumption and false hopes Luke 18.21 22. 1 Joh. 2.15.2 Tim. 3.2 4. Joh. 12.43 Joh. 5.42 VII 1. A Christian indeed doth practically take this Love of God and the holy expressions of it to be the very life and top of his Religion and the very life and beauty and pleasure of his soul He makes it his work in the world and loveth himself complacentially but so far as he findeth in himself the Love of God And so far as he findeth himself without it he loatheth himself as an unlovely carkass And so far as his prayers and obedience are without it he looks on them but as unacceptable loathsome things And therefore he is taken up in the study of Redemption because he can no where so clearly see the Love and Loveliness of God as in the face of a Redeemer even in the wonders of Love revealed in Christ. And he studieth them that Love may kindle Love And therefore he delighteth in the contemplating of Gods attributes and infinite perfections and in the beholding of him in the frame of the Creation and reading his name in the book of his works that his soul may by such steps be raised in Love and Admiration of his Maker And as it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun or light so is it to the mind of the Christian indeed to be frequently and seriously contemplating the nature and glory of God And the exercise of Love in such contemplations is most of his daily walk with God And therefore it is also that he is more taken up in the exercises of thanksgiving and the Praises of the Almighty than in the lower parts of Godliness so that though he neglect not confession of sin and humiliation yet doth he use them but in subserviency to the Love and Praise of God He doth but rid out the filth that is undecent in a Heart that is to entertain its God He placeth not the chief part of his Religion in any outward duties nor in any lower preparatory acts Nor doth he stop in any of these however he neglect them not But he useth them all to advance his soul in the Love of God And useth them the more diligently because the Love of God to which they conduce as to their proper end is so high and exellent a work Therefore in Davids Psalms you find a heart delighting it self in the praises of God and in Love with his word and works in order
friend who dealeth freely with him and is the greatest enemy to his faults And a flatterer he taketh but for the most dangerous insinuating kind of foe 2. But the weak Christian though he hate his sin and love reformation and loveth the most searching Books and Preachers and loveth a gentle kind of reproof yet hath so much pride and selfishness remaining that any reproof that seemeth disgracefull to him goeth very hardly down with him like a bitter medicine to a queasie stomack If you reprove him before others or if your reproof be not very carefully sugured and minced so that it rather extenuate than aggravate his fault he will be ready to cast it up into your face and with retortions to tell you of some faults of your own or some way shew you how little he loveth it and how little thanks he giveth you for it If you will not let him alone with his infirmities he will distaste you if not fall out with you and let you know by his smart and impatience that you have touched him in the sore and galled place He must be a man of very great skill in managing a Reproof that shall not somewhat provoke him to distaste 3. And for the seeming Christian this is his condemnation that Light is come into the world and he loveth darkness rather than light because his deeds are evil He cometh not to the light lest his deeds should be discovered and reproved Joh. 3.19 20 21. He liketh a searching Preacher for others and loveth to hear their sins laid open if it no way reflect upon himself But for himself he liketh best a General or a smoothing Preacher and he flyeth from a quick and searching ministry lest he should be proved and convinced to be in a state of sin and misery Guilt maketh him fear or hate a lively searching Preacher even as the guilty prisoner hateth the Judge He loveth no company so well as that which thinketh highly of him and applaudeth and commendeth him and neither by their reproofes nor stricter lives will trouble his conscience with the remembrance of his sin or the knowledge of his misery He will take you for his enemy for telling him the truth if you go about to convince him of his undone condition and tell him of his beloved sin Sin is taken to be as himself It is He that doth evil and not only sin that dwelleth in him And therefore all that you say against his sin he taketh it as spoken against himself and he will defend his sin as he would defend himself He will hear you till you come to touch himself as the Jews did by Stephen Act. 7.51 54. when they heard him call them stiffnecked resisters of God and persecutors then they were cut to the heart and grind their teeth at him And as they did by Paul Act. 22.22 They gave audience to this word and then lift up their voices and said away with such a fellow from the earth for it is not fit that he should live Gal. 4.16 Joh 9.40 Mat. 21.45 The priests and pharisees would have laid hands on Christ when they perceived that he spake of them And Ahab hated Michaiah because he did not prophesie good of him but evil 1 King 22.8 Deservedly do they perish in their sin and misery that hate him that would deliver them and refuse the remedy Prov. 12.1 Whose loveth instruction loveth knowledge but he that hateth reproof is bruitish Prov. 29.1 He that being often reproved hardneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy XII 1. A Christian indeed is one that unfeignedly desireth to attain to the highest degree of holiness and to be perfectly freed from every thing that is sin He desireth perfection though not with a perfect desire He sitteth not down contentedly in any low degree of grace He looketh on the holiest how poor soever with much more reverence and esteem than on the most rich and honourable in the world And he had far rather be one of the most holy than one of the most prosperous and great He had rather be a Paul or Timothy than a Caesar or an Alexander He complaineth of nothing with so much sorrow as that he can Know and Love his God no more How happy an exchange would he count it if he had more of the Knowledge and Love of God though he lost all his wealth and honour in the world His smallest sins are a greater burden to him than his greatest corporal wants and sufferings As Paul who because he could not perfectly fulfill Gods Law and be as good as he would be crieth out as in bondage O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death Rom. 7.27 2. And for the weak Christian though he is habitually and resolvedly of the same mind yet alas his desires after perfection are much more languid in him And he hath too much patience and reconciledness to some of his sins and sometimes taketh them to be sweet So that his enmity to his Pride or Coveteousness or passion is much abated and suffereth his sin to wast his grace and wound his conscience and hinder much of his communion with God He seeth not the odiousness of sin nor the beauty of Holiness with so clear a fight as the confirmed Christian doth He hateth sin more for the ill effects of it than for its malignant hateful nature He seeth not clearly the intrinsick evil that is in sin which maketh it deserve the pains of hell Nor doth he discern the difference between a holy and an unholy soul so clearly as the stronger Christian doth 1 Cor. 3.2 3. Heb. 12.1 3. And as for the seeming Christian though he may approve of perfect holiness in another and may wish for it himself when he thinketh of it but in the general and not as it is exclusive and destructive of his beloved sin yet when it cometh to particulars he cannot away with it He is so far from desiring it that he will not endure it The name of holiness he liketh and that preservation from Hell which is the consequent of it But when he understandeth what it is he hath no mind of it That holiness which should cure his ambition and pride and make him contented with a low condition he doth not like He loveth not that holiness which would deprive him of his coveteousness his intemperance in pleasant meats and drinks his fleshly lusts and inordinate pleasures Nor doth he desire that holiness should employ his soul in the Love of God and in daily prayer and meditating on his word and raise him to a heavenly life on earth XIII 1. A Christian indeed is one that maketh God and Heaven the End Reward and Motive of his Life And liveth not in the world for any thing in the world but for that endless happiness which the next world only can afford The Reasons which actuate his thoughts and choice and all his life are
eternal deity and foresee the Joyes which he shall have for ever He sticketh not in superficial formalitie but breaking the shell doth feed upon the kernell It is not bare external duty which he is taken up with nor any meer creature that is his content but it is God in creatures and ordinances that he seeketh and liveth upon and therefore it is that Religion is so pleasant to him He would not change his Heavenly delights which he findeth in the exercise of faith and hope and love to God for all the carnal pleasures of this world he had rather be a door keeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents or palaces of wickedness A day in Gods court is better to him than a thousand in the court of the greatest Prince on earth He is not a stranger to the joy in the Holy Ghost in which the Kingdom of God doth in part consist Rom. 14.17 Psal. 84.10.2 65.4 In the multitude of his thoughts within him the comforts of God do delight his soul. Psal. 94.19 His meditation of God is sweet and he is glad in the Lord. Psal. 104.34 The freest and sweetest of his thoughts and words run out upon God and the matters of salvation The word of God is sweeter to him than hony and better than thousands of Gold and Silver Psal. 119.72 119.103 19.10 Prov. 16.24 And because his delight is in the law of the Lord therefore doth he meditate in it day and night Psal. 1.2 He seeth great reason for all those commands Rejoyce ever more 1 Thes. 5.16 Let the righteous be glad let them rejoyce before God yea let them exceedingly rejoyce Psal. 68.3.4 64.10 31.1 32.11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoyce ye righteous and shout for joy all that are upright in heart He is sorry for the poor unhappy world that have no better things than meat and drink and cloaths and house and land and mony and lust and play and domineering over others to rejoyce in And heartily he wisheth that they had but a taste of the Saints delights that it might make them spit out their luscious unclean unwholesome pleasures One look to Christ one promise of the Gospel one serious thought of the life which he must live with God for ever doth afford his soul more solid comfort than all the kingdoms on earth can afford And though he live not continually in these high delights yet peace with God and peace of conscience and some delight in God and godliness is the ordinary temperature of his soul and higher degrees are given him in season for his cordials and his feasts 2. But the weak Christian hath little of these spiritual delights his ordinary temper is to apprehend that God and his wayes are indeed most delectable his very heart acknowledgeth that they are worthiest and fittest to be the matter of his delights And if he could attain assurance of his special interest in the love of God and his part in Christ and life eternal he would then rejoyce in them indeed and would be gladder than if he were Lord of all the world But in the mean time either his fears and doubts are damping his delights or else which is much worse his appetite is dull and God and holiness relish not with him half so sweetly as they do with the confirmed Christian and he is too busie in tasting of fleshly and forbidden pleasures which yet more deprave his appetite and dull his desires to the things of God so that though in his Estimation choice resolution and endeavour he much preferreth God before the world yet as to any delightful sweetness in him it is but little that he tasteth He loveth God with a Desiring Love and with a Seeking Love but with very little of a Delighting Love The remnant of corrupt and alien affections do weaken his affections to the things above and his infant measure of spiritual life conjunct with many troublesome diseases allow him very little of the joy of the Holy Ghost Nay perhaps he hath more grief and fear and doubts and trouble and perplexity of mind than ever he had before he turned unto God and perhaps he hath yet less pleasure in God than he had before in sin and sensuality Because he had his sin in a state of fruition but he hath God only in a seeking hoping state he had the best of sin and all that ever it will afford him but he hath yet none of the full felicity which he expecteth in God The fruition of him is yet but in the prospect of hope His sensual sinfull life was in its maturity and the object present in its most alluring state but his spiritual life of faith and love is but yet in its weak beginnings and the object absent from our sight He is so busie at first in blowing up his little spark not knowing whether the fire will kindle or go out that he hath little of the use or pleasure either of its light or warmth Infants come crying into the world and afterwards oftner cry than laugh Their senses and reason are not yet perfected or exercised to partake of the pleasures of life And when they do come to know what a laughter is they will laugh and cry almost in a breath And those weak Christians that do come to taste of joy and pleasure in their religious state it is commonly but as a flash of lightning which leaveth them as dark as they were before Sometimes in the beginning upon their first apprehensions of the love of God in Christ and of the pardon of their sins and the priviledges of their new condition and the hopes of everlasting joy their hearts are transported with unspeakable delight which is partly from the newness of the thing and partly because God will let them have some encouraging tast to draw them further and to convince them of the difference between the pleasures of sin and the comforts of believing But these first rejoycings soon abate and turn into a life of doubts and fears and griefs and care till they are grown to greater understanding experience and setledness in the things of God The root must grow greater and deeper before it will bear a greater top Those Christians that in the weakness of grace have frequent joys are usually persons whose weak and passionate nature doth occasion it some women especially that have strong phantasies and passions are alwaies passionately affected with whatsoever they apprehend And these are like a ship that is tossed in a tempest that is one while lifted up as to the clouds and presently cast down as into an infernal gulf There one day in great joy and quickly after in as great perplexity and sorrow Because their comforts or sorrows do follow their present feeling or mutable apprehensions But when they come to be confirmed Christians they will keep a more constant judgement of themselves and their own condition and constantly see their
that day But yet he thinketh not of it with so strong a faith and great consolation nor with such boldness and desire as the confirmed Christian doth but either with much more dull security or more perplexity and fear His thoughts of God and of the world to come are much more dark and doubtfull and his fears of that day are usually so great as make his desires and joys scarce felt Only he thinketh not of it with that contempt or stupidity as the Infidel or hardened sinner nor with the terrours of those that have no God no Christ no hope except when temptation bringeth him near to the borders of despair His death indeed is unspeakably safer than the death of the ungodly and the joys which he is entring into will quickly end the terrour but yet he hath no great comfort of the present but only so much trust in Christ as keepeth his heart from sinking into despair 3. But to the Hypocrite or seeming Christian Death and Judgement are the most unwelcome daies and the thoughts of them the most unwelcome thoughts He would take any tolerable life on earth at any time for all his hopes of Heaven and that not only through the doubts of his own sincerity which may sometime be the case of a tempted Christian but through the unsoundness of his belief of the life to come or the utter unsuitableness of his soul to such a blessedness which maketh him look at it as less desirable to him than a life of fleshly pleasures here All that he doth for Heaven is upon meer necessity because he knoweth that Die he must and he had rather be in Heaven than in Hell though he had rather be in prosperity on earth than either And as he taketh Heaven but as a reserve or second good so he seeketh it with reserves and in the second place And having no better preparations for Death and Judgement no marvel if they be his greatest terrour He may possibly by his self-deceit have some abatement of his fears and he may by Pride and Wit seem very valiant and comfortable at his death to hide his fear and pusillanimity from the world But the 〈◊〉 of all his misery is that he sought not first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness and laid not up a treasure in Heaven but upon earth and loved this world above God above the world to come and so his heart is not set on Heaven nor his affections on the things above and therefore he hath not that Love to God to Christ to Saints to perfect Holiness which should make that world most desirable in his eyes and make him think unfeignedly that it is best for him to depart and live with Christ for ever Having not the Divine Nature nor having lived the Divine Life in walking with God his complacency and desires are carnal according to the nature which he hath And this is the true cause and not only his doubts of his own sincerity of his unwillingness to die or to see the day of Christs appearance Matth. 6.33.19.20 21. 1 Joh. 2.15 Col. 3.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.5 6 7 8. 1 Cor. 2.13 14. 2 Pet. 1.4 And thus I have shewed you from the Word of God and the Nature of Christianity the true Characters of the confirmed Christian and of the weak Christian and of the seeming Christian. The Vses for which I have drawn up these Characters and which the Reader is to make of them are these I. Here the weak Christian and the Hypocrite may see what manner of persons they ought to be Not only how unsafe it is to remain in a state of Hypocrisie but also how uncomfortable and unserviceable and troublesome it is to remain in a state of weakness and diseasedness what a folly and indeed a sign of Hypocrisie is it to think If I had but grace enough to save me I would desire no more or I would be well content Are you content if you have but Life here to difference you from the dead If you were continually Infants that must be fed and carried and made clean by others or if you had a continual Gout or Stone or Leprosie and lived in continual want and misery you would think that Life alone is not enough and that non vivere tantum sed valere vita est that Life is uncomfortable when we have nothing but Life and all the delights of life are gone He that lyeth in continual pain and want is weary of his life if he cannot separate it from those calamities He that knoweth how necessary strength is as well as life to do any considerable service for God and how many pains attend the diseases and infirmities of the weak and what great dishonour cometh to Christ and Religion by the faults and childishness of many that shall be pardoned and saved would certainly bestir him with all possible care to get out of this sick or infant state II. By this you may see who are the strong Christians and who are the weak It is not alwaies the man of Learning and free expressions that can speak longest and wiseliest of holy things that is the strong confirmed Christian But he that most excelleth in the Love of God and man and in a heavenly mind and holy life Nor is it he that is unlearned or of a weak memory or slow expression that is the weakest Christian But he that hath least Love to God and man and the most Love to his carnal self and to the world and the strongest corruptions and the weakest grace Many a poor day-labourer or woman that can scarce speak sense is a stronger Christian as being stronger in Faith and Love and Patience and Humility and Mortification and Self-denial than many great Preachers and Doctors of the Church III. You see here what kind of men they be that we call the Godly and what that Godliness is which we plead for against the malicious Serpentine Generation The lyars would make men believe that by Godliness we mean a few affected strains or hypocritical shews or heartless lip-service or singular opinions or needless scrupulosity or ignorant zeal yea a schism or faction or sedition or rebellion or what the Devil please to say If these sixty Characters describe any such thing then I will not deny that in the way that such men call heresie faction schism singularity so worship we the God of our Fathers But if not the Lord rebuke thee Satan and hasten the day when the lying lips shall be put to silence Psal. 131.18 120.2 109.2 Prov. 12.19 22. 10.18 IV. By this also you may see how unexcusible the enemies of Christianity and Godliness are and for what it is that they hate and injure it Is there any thing in all this Character of a Christian that deserveth the suspicion or hatred of the world what harm is there in it or what will it do against them I may say to them of his servants
the injury was like to go both against me and many others of my Brethren Therefore finding since among the relicts of my scattered Papers this imperfect piece which I had before written on that Text I was desirous to publish it as for the benefit of weak Christians so to right my self and to cashier that Farewel Sermon If the Reader will but peruse these Directions impartially and read them as he doth the Prescripts of his Physicians which are not written meerly to be read but must be daily practised whatever it cost him as he loveth his life then I make no doubt notwithstanding the weakness of the composure but it may further the cure of his spiritual weaknesses and distempers and of the consequent troubles and losses of others and himself I hope I shall not meet with many besides malignant hypocrites who will be so impenitent and peevish as to fly in the face of the Reprover and Directer and say that I open the nakedness of many servants of Christ to the reproach and dishonour of Religion I have told you from the Word of God that it is Gods way and must be ours to lay the just dishonour upon the sinner that it may not fall upon Religion and on God And that the defending or excusing odious sins in tenderness of the persons who committed them is the surest and worse way to bring dishonour first or last both upon Religion and on them A Noah a Lot a David a Solomon a Peter c. shall be dishonoured by God in holy Record to all ages that God may not be more dishonoured by them And the truly penitent are willing that it should be so and account their honour a very cheap Sacrifice to offer up to the honour of Religion which they have wronged And till you come to this you come short of true Repentance He that defendeth his open sin unless he could deny the fact doth as bad as say God liketh it Christ bid me do it the Scripture is for it or not against it Religion taught it me or doth not forbid it me The godly allow it and will do the like And what can be said more Blasphemously against God or more injuriously against Religion the Scriptures and the Saints But he that confesseth his sin doth as good as say Lay all the blame on me who do deserve it and not on God on Christ on Scripture on Religion or on the Servants of God For I learned it not from any of them nor was encouraged to it by them None are greater enemies to it than they If I had hearkened to them I had done otherwise It is one of the chief reasons why Repentance is so necessary because it justifieth God and godliness And alas it is too late to talk of concealing those weaknesses and crimes of Christians which are so visible before all the World which have had such publick effects upon Churches Kingdoms and States which have kept almost all the Christian Churches in a torn and bleeding woful state for so many hundred years to this present day Which have separated the Churches of the East and West and defiled both And have drawn so much blood in Christian Countreyes And keep us yet like distracted persons gazing strangely at our nearest friends and running away by peevish separation from our Brethren with whom we must live in Heaven and mistakingly using those as enemies with whom if we are Christians as we profess we are united in the same Head and by the same Spirit which is a Spirit of Love In a word when our faults are so conspicuous as to harden the Infidels Heathens and ungodly and to hinder the Conversion of the World and when they sound so loud in the mouths of our common reproaching enemies and when they have contracted so much malignity as to refuse a cure by such Wars Divisions Church-desolations Plagues and Flames as we have seen It is then too late to say to the Preachers of Repentance Be silent lest you open the nakedness of Christians and disgrace Religion and the Church We must not be silent lest we disgrace Religion and the Church to save the credit of the sinners Whoever readeth the holy Scriptures and ever understood the Christian Faith must needs know that nothing in all the World is so much against every one of our errors and mis-doings It is only for want of more Religion that any Professors of Religion do miscarry Nothing but the Doctrine of Christianity and Godliness did at first destroy the reign of their sin and nothing else can subdue the rest and finish the Cure It is no disgrace to Life that so many mens lives are burdensome with sickness which the dead are not troubled with Nor is it any disgrace to Learning that Scholars for want of more Learning have troubled the World with their contentious Disputes Nor is it any disgrace to reason that mens different Reasons for want of more Reason doth set the World together by the ears We can never magnifie you enough as you are Christians and Godly unless we should ascribe more to you than your bounteous Lord hath given you who hath made you little lower than Angels and crowned you with glory and honour Psal. 8.5 6. But your sins are so much the more odious as they are brought so near the holy presence and as they are aggravated by greater mercies and professions And God is so far from being reconciled or reconcileable to any one of them that though he see not such iniquity in Jacob as is in Heathens and the ungodly because it is not in them to be seen yet he seeth more aggravated iniquity in such sins as you do commit in many respects than in the Heathens And that which is our common trouble is that you hurt not your selves alone by your iniquities Families are hurt by them Neighbours are hurt by them Churches are distracted by them Kingdoms are afflicted by them and thousands of blind sinners are hardened and everlastingly undone by them The ignorant Husband faith I will never follow Sermons nor Scriptures nor be so Religious while I see my Wife that maketh so much ado with Religion to be as peevish and discontented and foul-tongued and unkind and contemptuous and disobedient as those that have no Religion The Master that is prophane saith I like not your Religion when that servant which most Professeth Religion in my house is as lazy and negligent and as surly and sawcy and as ready to dishonour me and answer again and as proud of his little knowledg as those that have no Religion at all The like I might say of all other Relations All the dishonour that this casteth upon Grace is that you have too little of it and it is so weak in you that its Victory over your flesh and passions is lamentably imperfect A servant hearing a high commendation of a Gentleman that he was of extraordinary wisdom and godliness and bounty and patience and
therefore your holiness and obedience should also be exceeding great You have all the Book of Nature to instruct you Every Creature may teach you God and calls loud upon you to perswade your hearts yet nearer to him Every work of disposing Providence is an instructer and perswader of you Every leaf and line of Scripture is a guide or spur to you You have Ministers able and willing to help you You have the help of the Communion of Saints the help of the examples of the good and the warnings of the Judgments of God upon the wicked the helps of Sermons the helps of Sacraments the helps of Prayer and holy Meditation and Conference Mercies to encourage you Afflictions to excite you What more would you have And yet will you be Infants and do no more with all your helps But this I toucht upon before 6. It is an exceeding great necessity that is upon you And therefore your Resolutions should be exceeding high and your diligence exceeding great For all you are Converted your Salvation lyeth yet upon your stability and perseverance Col. 1.22 23. Christ hath reconciled you in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight if ye continue in the Faith grounded and setled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which you have heard God will not be an accepter of persons You must stick to his terms if you will partake of his Salvation He will not make two words with you He hath told you what he expecteth of you and that he will have Death will not be bribed nor put by Judgment is comming on There is no shifting out of the hands of God And under such pressing necessities as these what Christians should we be How stable and abundant in Faith and Righteousness 7. It is a great account that you have to make and therefore a great preparation that should be made When you shall be brought before the living God and all your times and thoughts and waies must be called over and you see what follows and are waiting for the final doom then there will be no dull thoughts in your hearts all will be then lively and quite above this careless frame Then even the wicked will have strong desires O that we had taken another course that we had but prevented this dreadful doom whatever it had cost us And should not believers now be awakened to great and careful preparations for such a day as this 8. For trifles here are great endeavours used To climb up into honour or riches in the World to satisfy the flesh to lay up a treasure on earth and labour for the meat that perisheth O what endeavours then should be used for the heavenly everlasting treasure 9. Consider also How forward and diligent should those men be that are sure they can never go too high nor be too diligent when they have done their best Nay that are certain that the best do come so abundantly short that they must after sit down and lament that they were no better O there is not the holiest Saint on earth but will confess with lamentation how little his love to God is in comparison of what it should be how short all falls below our duty below the glorious Majesty of God below the precious love of Christ below the worth of precious Souls below the weight of endless glory below the Mercies that should warm our hearts below the great necessity that is on us and consequently below their own desires Look therefore after greater things while you may attain them 10. Lastly Consider what abundance of great engagements are on you that are sincere Believers more than upon others 1. You are nearlyer related to Christ than any others are And therefore you should be more tender of offending him and more eminent in love and service to him You are his houshold-servants and will you not labour for him and stick to him You are his friends and should a friend abuse him should not a friend be faithful You are his dear adopted children and his Spouse and should not you be faithful to him to the death Should not all the love and service that you have be his Isa. 1.2 3. Mal. 1.10 Gal. 5.4 2. You have bound your selves to him by more serious frequent vows and Covenants than other men have done How many persons and places and necessities of yours can witness against you if you be not firm and forward for the Lord. As Joshua said to Israel Josh. 24.27 Behold this stone it shall be a witness unto you lest you deny your God So I may say the places where you have kneeled and prayed and promised will be witnesses against you if you be not firm to God the Churches that you have assembled in the places you have walked in in your solitary Meditations the persons that have heard your promises and professions the World about you that hath seen your forwardness will all witness against you if you be not firm 3. It is you that have the life and kernel of mercies Others have but the crums that fall from your Tables Others have common mercies but you have the great and special mercies that accompany Salvation All things are yours and should not you be Christs 1 Cor. 3.21 22. Of you it is that God is so exceeding tender that he chargeth your enemies not to touch you and tells them that touch you that they touch the Apple of his eye Zech. 2.8 And should not you abound in love and holiness and should you not be as tender of his favour and his law and honour as of the Apple of your eye Should not he that toucheth the Name and Law and Honour of God by profaning them by sin be as one that toucheth the Apple of your eye 4. You have a spirit and heavenly Life within you which the rest of the World are unacquainted with And can you think it is not somthing extraordinary that God must needs expect from you Will you not walk in the Spirit which is given you and mortify the flesh by it Gal. 5.16 17 24. Is there not more expected from the living than the dead Surely he that hath made you New Creatures and made you partakers of the Divine nature doth expect somwhat Divine in your affections and devotions and that you be somwhat more than men 5. Moreover it is you above others for whom the Word and Messengers of God are sent We must speak to all but it is you that Gods special eye is upon it is your Salvation that he intends to accomplish by us Luke 4.26 27. There were many Widdows in the dayes of Elias and many Lepers in the dayes of Ehsha but it was but to one of them that the Prophet was sent We make the ungodly multitude even rage against us and Ministers are hated for magnifying the Grace of God to you and declaring his special love to you
Wax when yet the Image on the Seal is perfect And therefore the World hath no just cause to censure God or Christ or the Spirit or the Word to be imperfect because that you are so But yet they will do it and their temptation is great O Sirs how would your Prince take it of you or how would your poorest friend take it of you if you should hang forth a deformed picture of them to the view of all that shall pass by and should represent them as blind or leprous or lame wanting a leg or an arm or an eye Would they not say that you unworthily exposed them to scorn So if you will take on you to be the living Images of God of Christ of the Spirit and the Word and yet will be blind and worldly and passionate and proud and untruly and obstinate or lazy and negligent and little differing from those that bear the Image of the Devil what do you but Proclaim that the Image of God and of Satan and the World do little differ and that God is thus unrighteous and unholy as you are 10. Lastly Consider That the faithful servants of Christ are few and therefore if those few dishonour him and prove not fast to him what do you but provoke him to forsake all the World and make an end of all the Sons of men It is but a little flock to whom he will give the Kingdom Luke 12.32 It is but a few from whom God expecteth any great matter And shall those few prove deceitful to him It must be you or none that must honour the Gospel You or none that must be exemplary to the World and shall it be none at all Shall all the Workmanship of God abuse him Shall he have no honour from any inferiour Creature How can you then expect that he should preserve the World For will he be at so much care to keep up a World to dishonour and abuse him If the turning of mens hearts prevent it not he would come and smite the earth with a Curse Mal. 4.6 For the Land that beareth Thorns and Bryars is rejected and is nigh unto Cursing whose end is to be burned Heb. 6.7 8. If therefore Israel play the Harlot yet let not Judah sin Hos. 4.15 If the Vessels of wrath prepared to destruction will be blind and sensual and filthy still yet let pollution be far from the sanctified Such were some of you but ye are washed ye are sanctified ye are justified 1 Cor. 6.11 O let the Lord be magnified in his Saints Blot not out his Image Receive not his impressions defectively and by the halves Let the Name of the most holy one be written in your very foreheads O that you would be so tender of the honour of the Lord and shine forth so brightly in Holyness and Righteousness that he that runs might read whose servants you are and know the Image Superscription of God upon the face of your conversations that as clearly as light is seen in and from the Sun and the power and wisdom and goodness of God is seen in the frame of the Creation and of Scripture so might the same shine forth in you that you might be Holy as God is Holy 1 Pet. 1.16 and perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect Matth. 5.48 that they that would know God may see him in his Saints where his Image is or should be so lively and discernable And they that cannot read and understand the Scripture or the works of Creation or disposing-Providence may read and understand the holy and heavenly representations of your lives Men are apt to look after Images of the Godhead because they are carnal and far from God O you that are appointed to bear his Image see that you so represent him to the eyes of the world as may be to his glory and not to his dishonour and take not the Name of God in vain It is so desirable for God and for the Church and for your own peace and happiness that Christians should grow up to a ripeness in Grace and be rooted built up confirmed and abound according to my Text that it hath drawn out from me all these words of exhortation thereunto Though one would think that to men of such holy Principles and experience it should be more than needs But if all will but serve to awaken the weak to a diligent progress I shall be glad and have my end The great matter that I intended when I began this discourse is yet behind and that is the giving you such Directions as may tend to your Confirmation and perseverance Which I shall now proceed to But I intreat every Reader that hath any spark of Grace in his Soul that he will resolve to put these Directions in practice and turn them not off with a bare perusal or approbation Let me reap but thus much fruit of all my foregoing Exhortations and I shall not think my labour lost XX. DIRECTIONS FOR CONFIRMATION In a state of Grace DIRECT I. Be sure that the Foundation be well laid both in your Heads and Hearts or else you can never attain to Confirmation nor be savingly built up TO this end you must know what the Foundation is and how it must be soundly laid The Foundation hath two parts or respects according to the faculties of the Soul where it must be laid The first is the Truth of the Doctrine and Matter and the second is the Goodness of it As True the Foundation is laid in our Understandings as Good it is laid in the Will Concerning both these we must therefore first consider of the matter of the Foundation and then of the Manner how that must be received or laid And the Foundation is that matter or object of our Faith and Hope and Love which is Essential to a Christian that is to the Christian saving Faith hope and love This hath been alwayes contained in our Baptism because Baptizing us is making us visible Christians or the solemn entrance into the state of Christianity As therefore we are Baptized into the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil so the doing of this unfeignedly without equivocation according to the Scripture sense of the words is the Essence of Christianity or the right laying of the Foundation So that the Foundation-Principal or Fundamental Matter is God the Father Son and Holy Ghost The Secondary Foundation or Fundamental Doctrine is those Scripture Propositions that express our Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost When we name the three persons as the object of the Christian Faith we express names of Relation which contain both the persons nature and Offices or undertaken works Without either of which God were not God and Christ were not Christ and the Holy Ghost were not in the sense of our Articles of Faith the Holy Ghost As we must therfore believe that there is One only God So we must
believe that God the Father is the First in the holy Trinity of persons that the whole Godhead is perfect and infinite in Being and Power and Wisdom and Goodness in which all his Attributes are comprehended but yet a distinct understanding of them all is not of absolute necessity to Salvation That this God is the Creator Preserver and Disposer of all things and the Owner and Ruler of Mankind most just and merciful that as he is the Beginning of all so he is the Ultimate end and the Chief Good of man which before all things else must be loved and sought This is to be believed concerning the Godhead and the Father in person Concerning the Son we must moreover believe that he is the same God with the Father the second person in Trinity in carnate and so become man by a personal union of the Godhead and Manhood That he was without Original or actual sin having a sinless nature and a sinless life that he fulfilled all Righteousness and was put to death as a Sacrifice for our sins and gave himself a Ransome for us and being buried he rose again from the dead and afterward ascended into Heaven where he is Lord of all and intercedeth for Believers that he will come again and raise the dead and judg the World the Righteous to everlasting Life and the Wicked to everlasting punishment that this is the only Redeemer the Way the Truth and the Life neither is their access to the Father but by him nor Salvation in any other Concerning the Holy Ghost we must believe that he is the same One God the third person in Trinity sent by the Father and the Son to inspire the Prophets and Apostles and that the Doctrine inspired and miraculously attested by him is true that he is the sanctifier of those that shall be saved renewing them after the Image of God in Holiness and Righteousness giving them true Repentance Faith Hope Love and sincere Obedience causing them to overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil thus gathering a Holy Church on earth to Christ who have by his Bloud the pardon of all their sins and shall have everlasting blessedness with God This is the Essence of the Christian Faith as to the Matter of it As to the Manner of Receiving it by the understanding 1. It must be received as Certain truth of Gods Revelation upon the credit of his Word by a lively effectual belief pierceing so deep as is necessary for its prevalency with the Will 2. And it must be Entirely received and not only a part of it Though all men have not so exactly formed distinct apprehensions of every member of this belief as some have yet all true Christians have a true apprehension of them We feel by daily experience that with the wisest some matters are truly understood by us which yet are not so distinctly and clearly understood as to be ready for an expression I have oft in matters that I am but studying a light that gives me a general imperfect but true conception which I cannot yet express but when another hath helped me to form my conception I can quickly and truly say that was it that I had an unformed apprehension of before and it that I meant but could not utter not so much for want of words as for want of a full and distinct conception 2. The Matter of our Christianity to be Received by the Will is as followeth As we must consent to all the forementioned truths by the Belief of the understanding so the pure Godhead must be Received as the Fountain and our End the Father as our Owner Ruler and Benefactor on the title of Creation and Redemption and as our everlasting happiness The Son as our only Saviour by Redemption bringing us pardon reconciliation holiness and glory and delivering us from sin and Satan and the wrath and Curse of God and from Hell The Holy Ghost as our Guide and Sanctifier All which containeth our Renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil and carnal Self that is the point of their Unity and heart of the old Man This is the Good that must be embraced or accepted by the will And secondly as to the Manner of Receiving it it must be done Vnfeignedly Resolvedly unreservedly or absolutely and habitually by an inward Covenanting of the heart as I have formerly explained it And this is the Essence of Christianity This is true Believing in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost This is the Foundation and this is the right laying of it And now the thing that I am perswading you to is to see that this Foundation be surely laid in Head and Heart And 1. That it may be surely laid in the Head you must labour 1. To understand these Articles And 2. to see the Evidence of their verity that you may firmly believe them And 3. To Consider of the worth and necessity of the matter revealed in them that your Judgments may most highly esteem it This is the sure laying the Foundation in the Head To these ends you should first learn some Catechism and be well acquainted with the Principles of Religion and also be much in reading or hearing the holy Scripture and enquiring of your Teachers and others that can help you and see that you take your work before you and step not higher till this be done And then all other following truths and Duties and promised benefits must all be so learnt as to be built upon this foundation and joyned to it as receiving their life and strength from hence and never lookt upon as separated from this nor as more excellent and necessary For want of learning well and believing soundly these Principles Essentials or Fundamentals of Christianity some of our people can go no further but stand all their dayes in their ignorance at a non-plus Some of them go on in a blind Profession deceiving themselves by building upon the Sand and hold true Doctrine by a false unsound belief of it And when the Flouds and storms do beat upon their building it falls and great is the fall thereof With some of them it falls upon the first assault of any Seducer that hath interest in them or advantage on them and abundance swallow up Errors because they never well understood or Firmly believ'd Fundamental Truths With others of them the building falls not until death because they lived not under any shaking temptations But it being but a perseverance in an unfound Profession will nevertheless be ineffectual to their Salvation 2. When you have thus laid the Foundation in your understanding be sure above all that it be firmly laid in your Heart or Will Take heed lest you should prove false and unstedfast in the holy Covenant and lest you should take in the Word but into the furnace of the Soul and not give it depth of earth and rooting and lest you should come to Christ but as a servant upon tryall and make an absolute
to God He hath respect to the humble contrite soul. Isa. 57.15 and 66.2 Psal. 51.17 The hungry he filleth with good but the rich he sendeth empty away Luk. 1.53 He giveth more grace to the humble when the proud are abhorred by him 1 Pet. 5.5 The Church of Laodicea that said I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing was miserable and poor and blinde and naked Rev. 3.17 As many that are proud of their honour and birth run out of all by living above their estates when meaner persons grow rich because they are still gathering and make much of every little So proud Professors of Religion are in a Consumption of the Grace they have while the humble increase by making much of every little help which is sleighted and neglected by the proud and by shunning all those spending courses which the proud are plunged in Be sure to keep mean thoughts of your selves of your knowledg and parts and grace and duties and be content to be mean in the esteem of others if you would not be worse than mean in the esteem of God DIRECT V. Exercise your selves daily in a life of Faith upon Jesus Christ as your Saviour your Teacher your Mediator and your King as your Example your Wisdom your Righteousness and your Hope ALL other studies and knowledg must be meerly subservient to the study and knowledg of Christ 1 Cor. 2.2 That vain kind of Philosophy which St. Paul so much cautioneth Christians against is so far yet from being accounted vain that by many called Christians it is preferred before Christianity it self and to shew that it is Vain while they overvalue it they can shew no solid worth or vertue which they have got by it but only a tumified mind and an idle tongue like a tinkling Cymbal 1 Cor. 13.1 and 12.31 and 2.4.14 15 16. and 1.18 19 20 21 23 24 27. Col. 2.8 9. We are compleat in Christ in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ver 10. No study in the World will so much lead you up to God and acquaint you with him especially in his Love and Goodness as the study of Christ his Person his Office his Doctrine his Example his Kingdom and his benefits As the Deity is your ultimate end to which all things else are but helps and means so Christ is that great and principal means by whom all other means are animated Remember that you are in continual need of him for direction intercession pardon sanctification for support and comfort and for peace with God Let no thoughts therefore be so sweet and frequent in your hearts nor any discourse so ready in your mouths next to the excellencies of the eternal Godhead as this of the design of mans Redemption Let Christ be to your Souls as the Air the Earth the Sun and your Food are to your bodies without which your life would presently fail As you had never come home to the Father but by him so without him you cannot a moment continue in the Fathers love nor be accepted in one duty nor be protected from one danger nor be supplyed in any want For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell Col. 1.18 19. And by him it is that being justified by Faith we have peace with God and have access by Faith unto this Grace wherein we stand and rejoyce in hope of the Glory of God Rom. â— 1 2. And it is in him the Head that we must grow up in all things from whom the whole body doth receive it's increase Ephes. 4.15 16. You grow no more in Grace than you grow in the true knowledg and daily use of Jesus Christ. But of this I will say no more because I have said so much in my Directions for a sound Conversion DIRECT VI. Let the Knowledg and Love of God and your obedience to him be the Works of your Religion and the everlasting fruition of him in Heaven be the continual end and ruling Motive of your Hearts and Lives that your very Conversation may be with God in Heaven YOu are so far HOLY as you are DIVINE and HEAVENLY A Christian indeed in casting up his accounts being certain that this World doth make no man happy hath been led up by Christ to seek a Happiness with God above If you live not for this everlasting happiness if you trade not for this if this be not your treasure your hope and home the chief matter of your desires love and joy and if all things be not prest to serve it and despised when they stand against it you live not indeed a Christian life GOD and HEAVEN or GOD in HEAVEN is the Life and Soul the beginning and the end the Sum the All of true Religion And therefore it is that we are directed to lift up our Heads and Hearts and begin our Prayers with Our Father which art in Heaven and end them with ascribing to Him the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever It is not the Creatures but God the Creator that is the Father the Guide and the felicity of Souls and therefore the ultimate end and object of all Religious actions and affections Dwell still upon God and dwell in Heaven if you would understand the nature and design of Christianity Take God for all that is for God Study after the knowledg of him in all his Works Study him in his Word Study him in Christ And never study him barely to know him but to know him that you may love him Take your selves as dead when you live not in the Love of God Keep still upon your hearts a lively sense of the infinite difference between him and the Creature Look on all the World as a shadow and on God as the substance Take the very worst that man can do to be in comparison of the punishments of God but as a Flea-biting to the sorest death And take all the dreaming pleasures of the World to be less in comparison with the joyes of Heaven than one lick of honey is to a thousand years possession of all the felicities on earth Think not all the pleasures honours or riches of the world to be worthy to be named in comparison of Heaven nor the Greatest of Men to be worthy to be once thought on in comparison of God As one straw or feather won or lost would neither much rejoyce or trouble you if all the City or land were yours So live as men whose eyes are open and who discern a greater disproportion between the portion of a worldling and a Saint Let God be your King your Father your master your friend your wealth your joy your All. Let not a day go over your heads in which your hearts have no converse with God in Heaven when any trouble overtaketh you on Earth look up to Heaven and remember that it is there that Rest and Joy are prepared for believers When you are under any want or cross or
sorrow fetch not your comfort from any hopes of deliverance here on Earth but from the place of your final full deliverance If you feel any strangeness and backwardness on your minds to Heavenly contemplations do not make light of them but presently by Faith get up to Christ who must make your thoughts of Heaven familiar and seek remedy before your estrangedness increase The soul is in a sad condition when it cannot fetch comfort and encouragement from Heaven for then it must have none or worse than none When the thoughts of Heaven will not sweeten all your crosses and relieve your minds against all the encombrances of earth your souls are not in a healthful state It 's time then to search out the cause and seek a cure before it come to worse There are three great causes of this dark and dangerous state of soul which make the thoughts of Heaven uneffectual and uncomfortable to us which therefore must be overcome with the daily care and diligence of your whole lives 1. Unbelief which maketh you look towards the life to come with doubting and uncertainty And this is the most common radical powerful and pernicious impediment to a heavenly life The second is the Love of present things which being the vanity of a poor low fleshly mind the reviving of Reason may do much to overcome it but it 's the sound Belief of the life to come that must indeed prevail The third is the inordinate Fear of Death which hath so great advantage in the constitution of our nature that it is commonly the last enemy which we overcome as Death it self is the last enemy which Christ overcometh for us Bend all your strength and spend your daies in striving against these three great impediments of a heavenly conversation And remember that so far as you suffer your heart to retire from Heaven so far they retire from a life of Christianity and peace DIRECT VII In the work of Mortification let SELF-DENYAL be the First and Last of all your study care and diligence UNderstand how much of the fallen depraved state of man consisteth in the sin of SELFISHNESS How he is sunk into Himself in his fall from the Love of God and of his Neighbour of the publick or private good of others And how this inordinate Self-love is now the grand enemy of all true Love to God or Man and the root and heart of Covetousness Pride Voluptuousness and all iniquity Let it be your work therefore all your dayes to mortifie it and watch against it When you feel your selves partial in your own cause and apt to be drawing from others to your selves in point of reputation precedency or gain and apt to make too great a matter of every word that is spoken against you or every little wrong that is done you observe then the pernicious root of Selfishness from whence all this mischief doth proceed Read more of this in my Treatise of Self-denyal DIRECT VIII Take your corrupted fleshly Desires for the greatest enemy of your Souls and let it be every day your constant work to mortify the Flesh and to keep a watch upon your lusts and appetite and every sense REmember that our senses were not made to govern themselves but to be governed by right Reason And that God made them at the first to be the ordinary passage of his Love and mercy to our hearts by the means of the Creatures which represent or manifest him unto us But now in the depraved state of man the Senses have cast off the Government of Reason and are become the Ruling power and so man is become like the Beasts that perish Remember then that to be sensual is to be bruitish And though Grace doth not destroy the appetite and sense yet it subjecteth it to God and Reason Therefore let your appetite be pleased in nothing but by the allowance of right Reason And think not that you have reason to take any meats or drink or sport meerly because your flesh desireth it but consider whether it will do you good or hurt and how it conduceth to your ultimate end It is a base and sinful state to be in servitude to your appetite and sense When by using to please it you have so increased its desires that now you know not how to deny it and displease it When you have taught it to be like a hungry dog or swine that will never be quiet till his hunger be satisfied Whereas a well-governed appetite and sense is easily quieted with a rational denyal Rom. 8.1 6 7 8 13. and 13.13 14. 1 Pet. 2.11 1 Johnâ— 16 DIRECT IX Take heed lest you fall in love with the World or any thing therein and lest your thoughts of any place or condition which you either possess or hope for do grow too sweet and pleasing to you FOr there is no one perisheth but for loving some Creature more than God And complacency is the formal act of Love Love not the World nor the things that are in the World for if any man love the World the love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 Value all earthly things as they conduce to your Masters Service or to your Salvation and not as they tend to the pleasing of your Flesh It is the commonest and most dangerous folly in the World to be eager to have our houses and lands and provisions and every thing about us in the most pleasing and amiable state when as this is the acknowledged way to Hell and the only poyson of the Soul Are you not in more danger of overloving a pleasing and prosperous condition than a bitter and vexatious state and of overloving Riches honour and sensual fulness and delights rather than Poverty reproach and mortification And do you not know that if ever you be damned it will be for loving the World too much and God too little Is it for nothing that Christ describeth a Saint to you as a Lazarus in poverty and sores and a damned wretch as one that was clothed in Purple and Silk and fared sumptuously every day Luke 16. Did not Christ know what he did when he put the rich man upon this tryal to part with all his worldly riches and follow Christ for a treasure in heaven Luke 18.22 13. All things must be esteemed as loss and dung for the knowledg of Christ and the hopes of heaven if ever you will be saved Phil. 3.6 7 8. You must so live by Faith and not by sight as not to look at the temporal things that are seen but at the things eternal which are unseen 2 Cor. 4.17 18. and 5.7 8. And one that is running in a race for his life would not so much as turn his head to look back on any one that called to him to stay or to look aside to any one that would speak with him in his way Thus must we forget the things that are behind as counting them not worthy a thought
his hand or the Fornicator to cure his lust than to put out his eyes it were a cheap remedy A cheap and easy superficial Repentance may skin over the sore and deceive an Hypocrite but he that would be sure of pardon and free from fear must go to the bottom DIRECT XX. Live as with Death continually in your eye and spend every day in serious preparation for it that when it cometh you may find your work dispatcht and may not then cry out in vain to God to try you once again PRomise not your selves long life Think not of death as at many years distance but as hard at hand Think what will then be needful to your peace and comfort and order all your life accordingly and prepare that now which will be needful then Live now while you have time as you will resolve and promise God to live when on your death-bed you are praying for a little time of tryal more It is a great work to die in a joyful assurance and hope of everlasting life and with a longing desire to depart and be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1.21 23. O then what a burden and terror it will be to have an unbelieving or a worldly heart or a guilty Conscience Now therefore use all possible diligence to strengthen Faith to increase love to be acquit from guilt to be above the World to have the mind set free from the Captivity of the flesh to walk with God and to obtain the deepest most delectable apprehensions of his love in Christ and of the heavenly blessedness which you expect Do you feel any doubts of the state of immortality or staggering at the Promise of God through unbelief Presently do all you can to conquer them and get a clear resolution to your souls and leave it not all to do at the time of sickness Are the thoughts or God and Heaven unpleasant or terrible to you Presently search out the cause of all and labour in the cure of it as for your lives Is there any former or present sin which is a burden or terror to your Consciences Presently seek out to Christ for a Cure by Faith and true Repentance and do that to disburden your Consciences now which you would do on a sick-bed and leave not so great and necessary a 〈◊〉 to so uncertain and short and unfit a time Is there any thing in this World that is swâ—â—tâ—r tâ— your thoughts than God and Heaven 〈◊〉 which you cannot willingly let go Mâ—rtiâ—iâ— it without delay consider of its vanity compare it with Heaven Crucifie it by the Cross of Christ cease not till you account it loss and â—â—ung for the excellent knowledg of Christ and life eternal Phil. 3.7 8 9. Let not death surprize you as a thing that you never seriously expected Can you do no more in preparation for it than you do If no why do you wish a death to be tryed once again and why are you troubled that you lived no better But if you can when think you should it be done Is the time of uncertain painful sickness better than this O how doth sensuality besot the World and inconsiderateness deprive them of the benefit of their reason O Sirs if you know indeed that you must shortly die live then as dying men should live Choose your condition in the World and manage it as men that must shortly dye Use your Power and Command and Honour and use all your Neighbours and especially use the Cause and Servants of Christ as men should do that must shortly die Build and plant and buy and sell and use your Riches as those that must die remembring that the fashion of all these things is passing away 1 Cor. 7.29 30. Yea pray and read and hear and meditate as those that must die Seeing you are as sure of it as if it were this hour in the name of God delay not your preparations It is a terrible thing for an immortal Soul to pass out of the body in a carnal unregenerate unprepared state and to leave a World which they loved and were familiar with and go to a World which they neither know nor love and where they have neither heart nor treasure Matth. 6.19 20 31. The measure of Faith which may help you to bear an easie cross is not sufficient to fortifie and encourage your souls to enter upon so great a change So also bear all your wants and crosses as men that must shortly die Fear the cruelties of men but as beseemeth those that are ready to die He that can die well can do any thing or suffer any thing And he that is unready to die is unfit for a fruitful and comfortable life What can rationally rejoyce that man who is sure to die and unready to dye and is yet unfurnished of dying comforts Let nothing be now sweet to you which will be bitter to your dying thoughts Let nothing be much desired now which will be unprofitable and uncomfortable then Let nothing seem very heavy or grievous now which will be light and easy then Let nothing now seem honourable which will then seem despicable and vile Consider of every thing as it will look at death that when the day shall come which endeth all the joyes of the ungodly you may look up with joy and say Welcome Heaven This is tho day which I so long expected which all my dayes were spent in preparation for which shall end my fears and begin my felicity and put me into possession of all that I desired and prayed and laboured for when my Soul shall see its glorified Lord For he hath said John 12.26 If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be If any man serve me him will my Father honour Even so Lord Jesus remember me now thou art in thy Kingdom and let me be with thee in Paradise Luke 23.42 43. O thou that spakest those words so full of unexpressible comfort to a sinful woman in the first speech after thy blessed Resurrection Joh. 20.17 GO TO MY BRETHREN AND SAY VNTO THEM I ASCEND UNTO MY FATHER AND YOUR FATHER AND TO MY GOD AND YOVR GOD. Take up now this Soul that is thine own that it may see the Glory given thee with the Father Joh. 17.24 and instead of this life of temptation trouble darkness distance and sinful imperfection I may delightfully Behold and Love and Praise thy Father and my Father and thy God and my God Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Luke 2.29 Acts 7.59 And now I have given you all these Directions I shall only request you in the close that you will set your very hearts to the daily serious practise of them For there is no other way for a ripe confirmed state of Grace And as ever you regard the glory of God the honour of your Religion the welfare of the Church and those
about you and the living and dying comforts of your selves O do not sluggishly rest in an Infant state of Grace Did you but know how a weak and strong Faith differ and how a weak and a found Confirmed Christian differ as to the honour of God and the good of others and especially to themselves both in life and death it would quickly awaken you to a cheerful diligence for so high and excellent an end Did you but well understand the wrong that Christ and the Gospel have sustained in the World yea in England by weak diseased distempered Christians your hearts would bleed and with shame and grief it would be your secret and open lamentation Stir up then the Grace that is given you and use Christs means and do your best and you will find that Christ is not an insufficient Physician nor an uneffectual Saviour or an empty Fountain but that he is filled with all the fulness of God and hath Spirit and life to communicate to his Members Zech. 12.8 and that there is no want which he cannot supply and no corruption or temptation which his Grace is not sufficient to overcome John 4.14 2 Cor. 12.9 Rom. 6.4 6. Col. 3.1 3 4. FINIS THE CHARACTER Of a Sound Confumed CHRISTIAN As also 2. Of a Weak Christian And 3. Of a Seeming Christian. Written to imprint upon mens minds the true Idea or conception OF Godliness and Christianity By Richard Baxter The Second Part of the Directions for Weak Christians LONDON Printed by R. White for Nevill Simmons at the Three Crowns near Holborn Conduit 1669. THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART Directed to my worthy Friend Henry Ashurst Esquire Citizen of London Dear and faithful Friend WHen this Book was Printed and passing into the World without the ordinary ornament of a prefixed honoured Name my thoughts reduced me into the common way though not upon the common reasons assuring me that your name would be more than an accident or ceremony to such a discourse as this even a part more substantial than a Map is in a Treatise of Geography or the well-cut Figures in Tractates of Anatomy Discourses of Navigation Architecture Musick c. may almost as hopefully instruct the Learners without any visible operations or effects as the Characters of well-tempered Christians can duly inform the minds of ignorant ungodly men of so Divine a thing as Christianity and Godliness without acquaintance with some such Persons in whom these Characters are manifestly exemplified Wise and holy precepts are to make wise and holy persons It is such Persons as well as such Precepts which bear the image of God which indeed is most perfect in exactness and integrity in the precepts for in them is no imperfection or errour as they are of God But it is of greater final Excellency in activity and usefulness as it is in men And therefore as God delighteth in his servants and is Glorified in and by them in the world so Satan usually chooseth such Persons to reproach and make odious to the ignorant rather than the holy Precepts immediately by which they are directed both because their Holiness is most exasperating by activity and also most lyable to calumny and contempt through imperfection and mixture of that which indeed is worthy of dislike Till Godliness and Christianity be visible in full perfection and elevated above the contradiction of folly and the contempt of pride the blind distracted minds of hardened forsaken sinners will not acknowledge its divine celestial nature and worth But then it will be too late to become partakers of it They must both know and possess it in its infancy and minority who will ever enjoy it in its heavenly dignity and glory If seasonable illumination and conversion confute not the deceits and standers which pride and ignorance have entertained the too-late confutation of them by death and their following experience will make them wish that they had been wise at cheaper rates when it will be in vain to cry Give us of your Oyle for our Lamps are out Mat. 25.8 But while I offer your name to the malicious world as an instance of the temper which I here describe I intend it not as a singular though an eminent instance For through the great mercy of God there are thousands of examples of confirmed Christians among us in this Land even before those eyes which will not see them But it is not Catalogues but single names which Writers have used in this way And why may I not take the advantage of Custome to leave to the World the testimony of my estimation and great respects to so deserving a person of the primitive Christian Catholick temper And to let them know what sort of men were my most dear and faithful friends And also thus to express my love by telling you closely what you must be as well as by telling the World for their example what you are Upon these accounts without your knowledge or consent I presume thus to prefix your name to this Treatise written long ago but now published by Your faithful Friend Rich. Baxter From my Lodging in New-Prison June 14. 1669. ERRATA Reader When I had gathered the Errata I was separated by a Prison from those Collections and having but two of the Sheets now at hand I shall give you the Errata of them only IN the Contents n. 15. for Lovers of God read Love of God Pag. 163. l. 5. for to six 1. and six pag 163. l. 18. blot out that p. 164. l. 5. for that 1. than p. 169. l. 10. for of 1. for p. 170. l. 1. for câ—re 1. cure All the rest I have forgotten save that some where I remember filthy for slâ—shly TO THE READER Readers IT is a matter of greater moment than I can express what Idea or Image of the nature of GODLINESS and CHRISTIANITY is imprinted upon mens minds The description which is expressed in the sacred Scriptures is true and full The thing described is rational pure perfect unblameable and amiable That which is expressed in the Lives of the most is nothing so but is purblind defiled maimed imperfect culpable and mixt with so much of the contrary quality that to them that cannot distinguish the Chaff from the Wheat the Sickness from the Life it seemeth an unreasonable fancifull loathsome and vexatious thing and so far from being worthy to be preferred before all the Riches Honours and Pleasures of the world that it seemeth worthy to be kept under as a troubler of Kingdoms Societies and Souls And doubtless this monstrous Expression of it in mens Lives is because the perfect expression of it in Gods Word hath not made 〈…〉 impression upon the Mind and consequently upon the Heart For as it is sound doctrine which must make sound Christians so Doctrine worketh on the will and affections not as it is in it self and as delivered but as it is understood believed remembered considered even as it is imprinted on the
irrational creatures but at least it much imitateth Nature as it is found in Rational creatures where the Inclination is necessary but the Operations free and subject to Reason It is a spiritual appetite in the Rational appetite even the will and a spiritual visive disposition in the understanding Not a faculty in a faculty but the right disposition of the faculties to their highest objects to which they are by corruption made unsuitable So that it is neither a proper power in the Natural sense nor a meer act but neerest to the nature of a seminal disposition or habit It is the health and rectitude of the faculties of the Soul Even as Nature hath made the understanding disposed to Truth in generall and the will disposed or inclined to Good in generall and to self-preservation and felicity in particular so the Spirit of Christ doth dispose the understanding to spiritual truth to know God and the matters of salvation and doth incline the will to God and Holiness not blindly as they are unknown but to love and serve a known God So that whether this be properly or only analogically called A Nature or rather should be called a Habit I determine not but certainly it is a fixed Disposition and Inclination which Scripture calleth the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1.4 and the seed of God abiding in us 1 Joh. 3.9 But most usually it is called the Spirit of God or of Christ in us Rom. 8.9 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his 1 Cor. 12.13 By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body Therefore we are said to be in the Spirit and walk after the Spirit and by the Spirit to mortifie the deeds of the Body Rom. 8.1.9 13. And it is called the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father or are inclined to God as Children to their Father and the Spirit of grace and supplication Rom. 8.15.23.26 Gal. 4.6 5.17 18. Eph. 2.18 22. 4.3 4. Phil. 1.27 2.1 Zech. 12.10 From this Spirit and the fruits of it we are called New Creatures and quickened and made alive to God 2 Cor. 5.17 Eph. 2.15 Rom. 6.11 13. It is a great controversie whether this Holy disposition and inclination was Natural to Adam or not and consequently whether it be a restored nature in us or not It was so natural to him as Health is natural to the body but not so natural as to be a Necessitating Principle nor so as to be inseparable and unlosable 2. This same Spirit and holy inclination is in the weakest Christian also but in a small degree and remisly operating so as that the fleshly inclination oft seemeth to be the stronger when he judgeth by its passionate struglings within him Though indeed the Spirit of life doth not only strive but conquer in the main even in the weakest Christians Rom. 8 9. Gal. 5.17 18 19 20 21. 3. The seeming Christian hath only the uneffectual motions of the Spirit to a Holy Life and effectual motions and inward dispositions to some common duties of Religion And from these with the natural principles of self-love and common honesty with the outward perswasions of company and advantages his Religion is maintained without the Regeneration of the Spirit Joh. 3.6 V. From hence it followeth 1. That a Christian indeed doth not serve God for fear only but for love even for love both of himself and of his holy work and service Yea the strong Christians Love to God and Holiness is not only greater than his Love to Creatures but greater than his fear of wrath and punishment The Love of God constraineth him to duty 2 Cor. 5.14 Love is the fulfilling of the Law Rom. 13.10 therefore the Gospel cannot be obeyed without it He saith not O that this were no duty and O that this forbidden thing were lawfull Though his Flesh say so the Spirit which is the predominant part doth not But he saith O how I love thy Law O that my wayes were so directed that I might keep thy statutes Psal. 119.5 For the spirit is willing even when the flesh is weak He serveth not God against his will but his will is to serve him more and better than he doth He longeth to be perfect and perfectly to do the will of God and taketh the remnant of his sinfull infirmities to be a kind of bondage to him which he groaneth to be delivered from To will even perfection is present with him though not perfectly and though he do not all that he willeth And this is the true meaning of Pauls complaints Rom. 7. Because the flesh warreth against the Spirit he cannot do the good that he would that is he cannot be perfect for so he would be Gal. 5.17 His love and will excells his practice 2. The weak Christian also hath more love to God and holiness than to the world and fleshly pleasure But yet his fear of punishment is greater than his Love to God and Holiness To have no Love to God is inconsistent with a state of Grace and so it is to have less love to God than to the world and less love to holiness than to sin But to have more Fear than Love is consistent with sincerity of Grace Yea the weak Christians love to God and Holiness is joyned with so much backwardness and aversness and interrupted with weariness and with the carnall allurements and diversions of the Creature that he cannot certainly perceive whether his love and willingness be sincere or not He goeth on in a course of duty but so heavily that he scarce knoweth whether his love or loathing of it be the greater He goeth to it as a sick man to his meat or labour All that he doth is with so much pain or undisposedness that to his feeling his aversness seemeth greater than his willingness were it not that necessity maketh him willing For the habitual love and complacency which he hath towards God and Duty is so oppressed by fear and by aversness that it is not so much felt in act as they 3. A seeming Christian hath no true Love of God and Holiness at all but some uneffectual liking and wishes which are overborn by a greater backwardness and by a greater love to earthly things so that Fear alone without any true effectual Love is the spring and principle of his Religion and obedience God hath not his heart when he draweth near him with his lips He doth more than he would do if he were not forced by Necessity and Fear and had rather be excused and lead another kind of life Mat. 15.8 Isa. 29.13 Though Necessity and fear are very helpfull to the most sincere yet Fear alone without Love or Willingness is a graceless state VI. 1. A Christian indeed doth love God in these three gradations He loveth him much for his mercy to himself and for that Goodness which consisteth in benignity to himself But he
to forget that these are but his messengers and instruments to convey unto us several parcells of that Truth which is his and not theirs and which naturally or supernaturally they received from him and all these Candles were lighted by him who is the Sun And how little doth this weak Christian refer his common knowledge to God or use it for him or to the furtherance of his own and others happiness 1 Tim. 2.4 3. And the seeming Christian though materially he may be eminent for knowledge yet is so far from resigning himself to the teachings of Christ that he maketh even his knowledge of Christian Verities to be to him but a common carnal thing while he knoweth it but in a common manner and useth it to the service of the flesh and never yet learned so much as to be a new creature nor to love God as God above the world 1 Cor. 13.2 X. 1. A Christian indeed is one whose Repentance hath been deep and serious and universal and unchangeable It hath gone to the very roots of sin and to the bottom of the sore and hath not left behind it any reigning unmortified sin nor any prevalent love to fleshly pleasures His Repentance did not only disgrace his sin and cast some reproachful words against it and use confessions to excuse him from mortification and to save its life and hide it from the mortal blow Nor doth he only repent of his open sins and those that are most censured by the beholders of his life But he specially perceives the dangerous poyson of Pride and unbelief and worldliness and the want of the Love of God and all his outward and smaller sins do serve to shew him the greater malignity of these and these are the matter of his greatest lamentations He taketh not up a profession of Religion with strong corruptions secretly covered in his heart But his Religion consisteth in the death of his corruptions and the purifying of his heart He doth not secretly cherish any sin as too sweet or too profitable to be utterly forsaken nor overlook it as a small inconsiderable matter But he feeleth sin to be his enemy and his disease and as he desireth not one enemy one sickness one wound one broken bone one serpent in his bed so he desireth not any one sin to be spared in his soul But faith with David Psal. 139.23 Search me O God and know my heart try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting He liveth in no gross or scandalous sin And his infirmities are comparatively few and small so that if he were not a sharper accuser of himself than the most observant spectators are that are just there would little be known by him that is culpâ—ble and matter of reproof He walketh in all the commandments and ordinances of God blameless as to any notable miscarriage Luk. 1.6 He is blameless and harmless as the son of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom he shineth as a light in the world Phil 2 15. The fear and love and obedience of God is the work and tenour of his life 2. But the weak Christian though he hath no sin but what he is a hater of and fain would be delivered from yet alas how imperfect is his deliverance and how weak is the hatred of his sin and mixed with so much proneness to it thaâ— his life is much blemished with the spots of his offences Though his unbelief and pride and worldleness are not predominant in him yet are they or some of them still so strong and fight so much against his faith humility and heavenliness that he can scarcely tell which hath the upper hand nor can others that see the failings of his life discern whether the good or the evil be most prevalent Though it be Heaven which he most seeketh yet Earth is so much regarded by him that his Heavenly mindedness is greatly damped and suppressed by it And though it be the way of Godliness and obedience which he walketh in yet is it with so many stumblings and falls if not deviations also that maketh him oft a burthen to himself a shame to his profession and a snare or trouble to those about him His heart is like an ill swept house that hath many a sluttish corner in it And his life is like a moth-eaten garment which hath many a hole which you may see if you bring it into the light 1 Cor. 3.1 2 3. 6.6 7 8. 11.18 21 22 c. 3. And for the seeming Christian his Repentance doth but cropp the branches it goeth not to the root and heart of his sin It leaveth his fleshly mind and interest in the dominion It pollisheth his life but maketh him not a new creature It casteth away those sins which the flesh can spare and which bring more shame or loss or trouble with them than worldly honour gain or pleasure But still he is a very worldling at the heart and the sins which his fleshly pleasures and felicity consisteth in he will hide by confessions and seeming oppositions but never mortifie and forsake As Judas that while he followed Christ was yet a thief and a coveteous hypocrite Joh. 12.6 1 Tim. 6.10 11. XI 1. Hence it followeth that a Christian indeed doth heartily love the searching light that it may fully acquaint him with his sins He is truly desirous to know the worst of himself And therefore useth the word of God as a candle to shew him what is in his heart and bringeth himself willingly into the light He loveth the most searching Books and Preachers not only because they disclose the faults of other men but his own he is not one that so loveth his pleasant and profitable sins as to fly the light lest he should be forced to know them and so to forsake them But because he hateth them and is resolved to forsake them therefore he would know them Joh. 3.19 20 21. Therefore he is not only patient under Reproofs but loveth them and is thankful to a charitable reprover and maketh a good use even of malicious and passionate reproofs Psal. 141.5 2 Sam. 16.11 He saith as in Job 34.32 That which I see not teach thou me If I have done iniquity I will do no more His hatred of the sin and desire to be reformed suffer not his heart by pride to rise up against the remedy and reject reproof Though he will not falsely confess his duty to be his sin nor take the judgement of every selfish passionate or ignorant reprover to be infallible nor to be his rule yet if a judicious impartial person do but suspect him of a fault he is ready to suspect himself of it unless he be certain that he is clear He loveth him better that would save him from his sin than him that would entice him to it and taketh him for his best
fetcht from Heaven The interest of God and his soul as to eternity is the ruling interest in him As a traveller goeth all the way and beareth all the difficulties of it for the sake of the End or Place that he is going to how ever he may talk of many other matters by the way so is it with a Christian he knoweth nothing worthy of his life and labours but that which he hopeth for hereafter This world is too sinful and too vile and short to be his felicity His very trade and work in the world is to lay up a treasure in heaven Mat. 6.20 and to lay up a good foundation against the time to come and to lay hold on eternal life 1 Tim. 6.19 And therefore his very heart is there Mat. 6.21 and he is emploied in seeking and setting his affections on the things above Col. 3.1.2 3. And his conversation and trafick is in Heaven Phil. 3.20 21. He looketh not at the things which are seen which are temporal but at the things which are not seen which are eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 He is a stranger upon earth and Heaven is to him as his home 2. The weak Christian also hath the same End and Hope and Motive and preferreth his hopes of the life to come before all the wealth and pleasures of this life But yet his thoughts of Heaven are much more strange and dull He hath so much doubting and fear yet mixed with his faith and hope that he looketh before him to his everlasting state with backwardness and trouble and with small desire and delight He hath so much hope of Heaven as to abate his fears of hell and make him think of eternity with more quietness than he could do if he found himself unregenerate But not so much as to make his thoughts of Heaven so free and sweet and frequent nor his desires after it so strong as the confirmed Christians are And therefore his duties and his speech of Heaven and his endeavours to obtain it are all more languid and unconstant And he is much proner to fall in love with earth and to entertain the motions of reconciliation to the world and to have his heart too much set upon some place or person or thing below and to be either delighted too much in the possession of it or afflicted and troubled too much with the loss of it Earthly things are too much the Motives of his life and the reasons of his joyes and griefs Though he hath the true belief of a life to come and it prevaileth in the main against the world yet it is but little that he useth it to the commanding and raising and comforting his soul in comparison of what a strong believer doth Mat. 16.22 23. 3. But the seeming Christian would serve God and Mammon and placeth his chief and certainest happiness practically upon earth Though speculatively he know and say that Heaven is better yet doth he not practically judge it to be so to him And therefore he loveth the world above it and he doth most carefully lay up a treasure on earth Mat. 6.19 and is resolved first to seek and secure his portion here below and yet he taketh Heaven for a reserve as knowing that he world will cast him off at last and dye he must there is no remedy and therefore he taketh heaven as next unto the best as his second hope as better than hell and will go in Religion as far as he can without the loss of his prosperity here so that earth and flesh do govern and command the design and tenor of his life But heaven and his soul shall have all that they can spare which may be enough to make him pass with men for eminently religious 1 Joh. 2.15 Mat. 13.22 Luke 18.22 23. Luk. 14 24 33. Ps. 17.14 Phil. 3.18 19 20. XIV 1. A Christian indeed is one that having taken heaven for his felicity doth account no labour or cost too great for the obtaining of it he hath nothing so dear to him in this world which he cannot spare and part with for God and the world to come He doth not only notionally know that nothing should seem too dear or hard for the securing of our salvation but he knoweth this practically and is resolved accordingly Though difficulties may hinder him in particular acts and his executions come not up to the height of his desires Rom. 7.16 17. c. yet he is resolved that he will never break on terms with Christ There is no duty so hard which he is not willing and resolved to perform and no sin so sweet or gainful which he is not willing to forsake He knoweth how unprofitable a bargain he makes who winneth the world and loseth his own soul and that no gain can ransome his soul or recompence him for the loss of his salvation Mar. 8.36 He knoweth that it is impossible to be a loser by God or to purchase heaven at too dear a rate he knoweth that whatsoever it cost him heaven will fully pay for all and that it is the worldlings labour and not the saints that is repented of at last He marvelleth more at distracted sinners for making such a stir for wealth and honours and command than they marvail at him for making so much a-doe for heaven He knoweth that this world may be too dear bought but so cannot his salvation yea he knoweth that even our duty it self is not our smallest priviledge and mercy And that the more we do for God the more we receive and the greater is our gain and honour and that the sufferings of believers for righteousness sake do not only prognosticate their joyes in heaven but occasion here the greatest joyes that any short of heaven partake of Mat. 5.11 12. Rom. 5.12 3 c. He is not one that desireth the end without the means and would be saved so it may be on cheap and easie terms But he absolutely yieldeth to the terms of Christ and saith with Austin Da quod jubes jube quod vis Cause me to do what thou commandest and command what thou wilt Though Pelagius contradicted the first sentence and the flesh the second yet Augustine owned both and so doth every true believer He greatly complaineth of his backwardness to obey but never complaineth of the strictness of the command He loveth the holiness justness and goodness of the Laws when he bewaileth the unholiness and badness of his heart He desireth not God to command him less but desireth grace and ability to do more He is so far from the mind of the ungodly world who cry out against too much holiness and making so much ado for heaven that he desireth even to reach to the degree of Angels and would fain have Gods will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven and therefore the more desireth to be in heaven that he may do it better Psal. 119.5 Rom. 7.24 2. The weak Christian hath the
same estimation and resolution But when it comes to practice as his will is less confirmed and more corrupted and divided so little impediments and difficulties are great temptations to him and stop him more in the way of his obedience All his duty is much more tedious to him and all his sufferings are much more burthensome to him than to confirmed Christians And therefore he is easier tempted into omissions and impatiency and walketh not so evenly or comfortably with God When the spirit is willing it yieldeth oft to the weakness of the flesh because it is willing in too remiss a degree Mat. 26.41 Gal. 2.14 3. But the seeming Christian though notionally and generally he may approve of strictness yet secretly at the heart hath alwaies this reserve that he will not serve God at too dear a rate His worldly felicity he cannot part with for all the hopes of the life to come And yet he will not he dare not renounce and give up those hopes And therefore he maketh himself a Religion of the easiest and cheapest parts of Christianity among which sometimes the strictest opinions may fall out to be one part so be it they be separated from the strictest practice And this easie cheap Religion he will needs believe to be true Christianity and Godliness and so will hope to be saved upon these terms And though he cannot but know that it is the certain character of a hypocrite to have any thing nearer and dearer to his heart than God yet he hopeth that it is not so with him because his convinced judgement can say that God is best and the world is vanity while yet his heart and affections so much contradict his opinion as almost to say There is no God For his heart knoweth and loveth no God as God that is above his worldly happiness He is resolved to do so much in religion as he findeth necessary to delude his conscience and make himself believe that he is godly and shall be saved but when he cometh to forsake all and take up the Cross and practise the costlyest parts of duty then you shall see that Mammon was better loved than God and he will go away sorrowful and hope to be saved upon easier terms Luke 18.23 For he was never resigned absolutely to God XV. 1. A confirmed Christian is one that taketh selfdenial for the one half of his Religion and therefore hath bestowed one half of his endeavours to attain and exercise it He knoweth that the fall of man was a turning to himself from God And that selfishness and want of Love to God are the summ of all corruption and ungodliness And that the Love of God and selfdenial are the summ of all religion And that conversion is nothing but the turning of the heart from carnal self to God by Christ And therefore on this hath his care and labour been so succesfully laid out that he hath truly and practically found out something that is much better than himself and to be loved and preferred before himself and which is to be his chiefest ultimate end He maketh not a God of himself any more but useth himself for God to fulfill his will as a creature of his own that hath no other end and use He no more preferreth himself above all the world but esteemeth himself a poor and despicable part of the world And highlier valueth the honour of God and the welfare of the church and the good of many than any interest of his own Though God in nature hath taught him to regard his own felicity and to love himself and not to seek the glory of God and the good of many souls in opposition to his own yet hath he taught him to prefer them though in conjunction much before his own For reason telleth him that man is nothing in comparison of God and that we are made by him and for him and that the welfare of the Church or publick societies is better in order to the highest ends than the welfare of some one Selfishness in the unregenerate is like an inflammation or apposteme which draweth the humours from other parts of the body to it self The interest of God and man are all swallowed up in the regard that men have to self-interest And the Love of God and our neighbour are turned into self-self-love But self is as annihilated in the confirmed Christian so that it ruleth not his Judgement his affections or his choice And he that lived in and to himself as if God and all the world were but for him doth now live to God as one that is good for nothing else and findeth himself in seeking him that is infinitely above himself Luk. 14.31 32 33. Phil. 2.4 21. 2. And the weak Christian hath attained to so much selfdenial that self is not predominant in him against the Love of God and his neighbour But yet above all other sins too great a measure of selfishness still remaineth in him These words own and mine and self are too significant with him every thing of his own is regarded inordinately with partiality and too much selfishness A word against himself or an injury to himself is more to him than worse against his brother He is too little mindfull of the glory of God and of the publick good and the souls of others and even when he is mindful of his own soul he is too regardless of the souls of many that by prayer or exhortation or other means he ought to help As a small candle lighteth but a little way and a small fire heateth not farr off so is his Love so much confined that it reacheth not farr from him He valueth his friends too much upon their respect to please himself and loveth men too much as they are partiall for him and too little upon the pure account of grace and their love to Christ and servisableness to the Church He easily overvalueth his own abilities and is too confident of his own understanding and apt to have too high conceits of any opinions that are his own he is too apt to be tempted unto uncharitableness against those that cross him in his interest or way he is apt to be too negligent in the work of God when any selfinterest doth stand against it and too much to seek himself his own esteem or his own commodity when he should devote himself to the good of souls and give up himself to the work of God Though he is not like the hypocrite that preferreth himself before the will of God and the common good yet selfishness greatly stoppeth interrupteth and hindreth him in Gods work and any great danger or loss or shame or other concernment of his own doth seem a greater matter to him and oftner turn him out of the way than it will with a confirmed Christian They were not all hypocrites that Paul speaketh of in that sad complaint Phil. 2.20 21. For I have no man like minded to Timothy who will naturally
care for your state for all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs that is They too much seek their own and not entirely enough the things that are Christs which Timothy did naturally as if he had been born to it and Grace had made the Love of Christ and the souls of men and the good of others as naturall to him as the Love of himself Alas how lowdly do their own distempers and soul miscarriages and the divisions and calamities of the Church proclaim that the weaker sort of Christians have yet too much selfishness and that selfdenial is lamentably imperfect in them 3. But in the seeming Christian selfishness is still the predominant principle he loveth God but for himself and he never had any higher end than self All his Religion his opinions his practice is animated by self-love and governed by it even by the Love of carnal self self-esteem self-conceitedness self-love self-willedness self-seeking and self-saving are the constitution of his heart and life He will be of that opinion and way and party in Religion which selfishness directeth him to choose He will go no farther in Religion than self-interest and safety will allow him to go He can change his friend and turn his love into hatred and his praises into reproach when ever self-interest shall require it He can make himself believe and labour to make others believe that the wisest and holiest servants of God are erroneous homorous hypocrites and unsufferable if they do but stand cross to his opinions and interest For he judgeth of them and loveth or hateth them principally as they conform to his will and interest or as they are against it As the godly measure all persons and things by the will and interest of God so do all ungodly men esteem them as they stand in reference to themselves When their factious interest required it the Jews and specially the Pharisees could make themselves and others believe that the Son of God himself was a breaker of the Law and an enemy to Caesar and a blasphemer and unworthy to live on the earth And that Paul was a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people and a ringleader of a sect and a prophaner of the Temple Act. 24.5 6. and which of the Prophets and Apostles did they not persecute Because Christs doctrine doth cross the interest of selfish men therefore the world doth so generally rise up against it with indignation even as a Country will rise against an invading enemy For he cometh to take away that which is dearest to them As it is said of Luther that he medled with the Popes crown and the Fryars bellies and therefore no wonder if they swarmed all about his ears Selfishness is so generall and deeply rooted that except with a few self-denying Saints self-self-love and self-interest ruleth the world And if you would know how to please a graceless man serve but his carnal interest and you have done it Be of his opinion or take on you to be so applaud him admire him flatter him obey him promote his preferment honour and wealth be against his enemies in a word make him your God and sell your soul to gain his favour and so it 's possible you may gain it XVI 1. A Christian indeed hath so far mortified the flesh and brought all his senses and appetite into subjection to sanctified Reason as that there is no great rebellion or perturbation in his mind but a little matter a holy thought or a word from God doth presently rebuke and quiet his inordinate desires The flesh is as a well-broken and well-ridden horse that goeth on his journey obediently and quietly and not with striving and chasing and vexatious resisting Though still flesh will be flesh and will be weak and will fight against the spirit so that we cannot do all the good we would Isa. 5.17 Rom. 7.16 17 c. yet in the confirmed Christian it is so far tamed and subdued that its rebellion is much less and its resistance weaker and more easily overcome It causeth not any notable unevenness in his obedience nor blemishes in his life it is no other than consisteth with a readiness to obey the will of God Gal. 5.24 25. 1 Cor. 9.26 27. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof They run not as uncertainly they fight not as one that beateth the air but they keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection lest by any means they should be castawaies They put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Rom. 13.13 14. As we see to a temperate man how sweet and easie temperance is when to a glutton or drunkard or riotous liver it is exceeding hard so it is in all other points with a confirmed Christian. He hath so far crucified the flesh that it is as dead to its former lusts and so far mastered it that it doth easily and quickly yield And this maketh the life of such a Christian not only pure but very easie to him in comparison of other mens Nay more than this he can use his sense as he can use the world the objects of sense in subserviency to faith and his salvation His eye doth but open a window to his mind to hold and admire the Creator in his work His tast of the sweetness of the creatures is but a means by which the sweeter Love of God doth pass directly to his heart His sense of pleasure is but the passage of spiritual holy pleasure to his mind His sense of bitterness and pain is but the messenger to tell his heart of the bitterness and vexatiousness of sin As God in the creation of us made our senses but as the inlet and passage for himself into our minds even as he made all the creatures to represent him to us by this passage so grace doth restore our very senses with the creature to this their holy original use that the goodness of God through the goodness of the creature may pass to our hearts and be the effect and end of all 2. But for the weak Christian though he have mortified the deeds of the body by the spirit and live not after the flesh but be freed from its captivity or reign Gal. 5.24 Rom. 8.1 7 8 9 10 11 12 13. yet hath he such remnants of concupiscence and sensuality as make it a far harder matter to him to live in temperance and deny his appetite and govern his senses and restrain them from rebellion and excess He is like a weak man upon an ill-ridden headstrong horse who hath much ado to keep his saddle and keep his way He is stronglier inclined to fleshly lusts or excess in meat or drink or sleep or sports or some such fleshly pleasure than the mortified temperate person is and therefore is ofter guilty of some excess so that his life is a very tiresome
things present do carry away his heart and have the greatest power and interest with him and are most regarded and sought after in this life For he is purblind not seeing a farr off as it is said 2 Pet. 1.9 He wanteth that faith which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen Heb. 11.1 Things promised in another world seem to him too uncertain or too farr off to be preferred before all the happiness of this world he is resolved to make his best of that which he hath in hand and to prefer possession before such hopes Little doth his heart perceive what a change is neer and how the face of all things will be altered How sin will look and how the minds of sinners will be changed and what all the riches and pleasures and honours of the world will appear at the latter end He foreseeth not the day when the slothful and the worldly and the fleshly and the proud and the enemies of godliness shall all wish in vain O that we had laid up our treasure in heaven and laboured for the food that perisheth not and had set less by all the vanities of the world and had imitated the holiest and most mortified believers Though the hypocrite can himself foretell all this and talk of it to others yet his belief of it is so dead and his sensuality so strong that he liveth by sense and not by that belief and present things are practically preferred by him and bear the sway so that he needeth those warnings of God as well as the profane Deut. 32. O that they were wise that they understood this and that they would consider their latter end And he is one of the foolish ones Mat. 25.8 11. who are seeking oyl for their lamps when it is too late and are crying out Lord Lord open to us when the door is shut and will not know the time of their visitation nor know effectually in this their day the things which belong to their everlasting peace XX. 1. The Christian indeed is one that liveth upon God alone His faith is Divine his love and obedience and confidence are Divine his chiefest converse is Divine his hopes and comforts are Divine As it is God that he dependeth on and trusteth to and studieth to please above all the world so it is Gods approbation that he taketh up with for his justification and reward He took him for his absolute Governour and judge and full felicity in the day when he took him for his God He can live in peace without mans approbation If men are never acquainted with his sincerity or vertues or good deeds it doth not discourage him nor hinder him from his holy course he is therefore the same in secret as in publick because no place is secret from God If men turn his greatest vertues or duties to his reproach and slander him and make him odious to men and represent him as they did Paul a pestilent fellow a mover of sedition and the ringleader of a sect and make him as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things this changeth him not for it changeth not his felicity nor doth he miss of his reward 1 Cor. 4.9 10 11 12 13 14. Read the words in the text Though he hath so much suspition of his own understanding and reverence for wiser mens that he will be glad to learn and will hear reason from any one yet praise and dispraise are matters of very small regard with him and as to himself he accounteth it but a small thing to be judged of men whether they justifie or condemn him because they are fallible and have not the power of determining any thing to his great commodity or detriment nor is it their judgement to which he stands or falls 1 Cor. 4.3.4 He hath a more dreadful or comfortable judgement to prepare for man is of small account with him in comparison of God Rom. 8.33 34 35 36. 2. And though with the weakest true Christian it is so also as to the predominancie of Gods esteem and interest in him yet is his weakness daily visible in the culpable effects Though God have the chiefest place in his esteem yet man hath much more than his due The thoughts and words of men seem to such of far greater importance than they should Praise and dispraise favours and injuries are things which affect their hearts too much they bear not the contempts and wrongs of men with so quiet and satisfied a mind as beseemeth those that live upon God They have so small experience of the comforts of God in Christ that they are tasting the deeper of other delights and spare them not so easily as they ought to do God without friends or house or land or maintenance or esteem in the world doth not fully quiet them but there is a deal of pievish impatience left in their minds though it doth not drive them away from God 3. But the seeming Christian can better take up with the world alone than with God alone God is not so much missed by him as the world He alwayes breaks with Christ when it cometh to forsaking all He is godly notionally and professedly and therefore may easily say that God is his portion and enough for those that put their trust in him But his heart never consented truly to reduce these words to practise When it comes to the trial the praise or dispraise of man and the prosperity or matters of the world do signifie more with him than the favour or displeasure of God and can do more with him Christ and riches and esteem he could be content with but he cannot away with a naked Christ alone Therefore he is indeed a practical Atheist even when he seemeth most religious For if he had ever taken God for his God indeed he had certainly taken him as his portion felicity and all and therefore as enough for him without the creature Luk. 18.23 XXI 1. For all this it followeth that A Christian indeed hath with himself devoted all that he hath to God and so all that he hath is sanctified he is only in doubt oft times in particular cases what God would have him do with himself and his estate but never in doubt whether they are to be wholly employed for God in obedience to his will so far as he can know it and therefore doth estimate every creature and condition purely as it relateth unto God and life eternal HOLINES TO THE LORD is written upon all that he hath and doth he taketh it as sent from God and useth it as his Masters goods and talents not chiefly for himself but for his Masters ends and will God appeareth to him in the creature and is the life and sweetness and glory of the creature to him his first question in every business he undertaketh or every place or condition that he chooseth is how it conduceth to the Pleasing of God and
grounds of comfort and when they cannot raise their souls to any high and passionate joys they yet walk in a settled peace of soul and in such competent comforts as make their lives to be easie and delightful being well pleased and contented with the happy condition that Christ hath brought them to and thankful that he left them not in those foolish vain pernicious pleasures which were the way to endless sorrows 3. But the seeming Christian seeketh and taketh up his chief contentment in some carnal thing If he be so poor and miserable as to have nothing in possession that can much delight him he will hope for better dayes hereafter and that hope shall be his chief delight or if he have no such hope he will be without delight and shew his love to the world and flesh by mourning for that which he cannot have as others do in rejoycing in what they do possess and he will in such a desperate case of misery be such to the world as the weak Christian is to God who hath a mourning and desiring love when he cannot reach to an enjoying and delighting Love His carnal mind most savoureth the things of the flesh and therefore in them he findeth or seeketh his chief delights Though yet he may have also a delight in his superficiall kind of Religion his hearing and reading praying in his ill-grounded hopes of life eternal But all this is but subordinate to his chiefest earthly pleasure Isai. 58.2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my waies as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinances of their God they ask of me the ordinances of justice they take delight in approaching unto God And yet all this was subjected to a covetous oppressing mind Mat. 13.20 He that received the seed into stony places the same is he that heareth the word and anon with joy receiveth it yet hath he not root in himself but dureth for a while for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word by and by he is offended Whereby it appeareth that his love to the word was subjected to his love to the world Obj. But there are two sorts of people that seem to have no fleshly delights at all and yet are not in the way to salvation viz. the Quakers and Behmenists that live in great austerity and some of the Religious orders of the Papists who afflict their flesh Answ. Some of them undergo their fastings and pennance for a day that they may sin the more quietly all the week after And some of them proudly comfort themselves with the fancies and conceit of being and appearing more excellent in austerity than others And all these take up with a carnal sort of pleasure As proud persons are pleased with their own or others conceits of their beauty or witt or worldly greatness so prouder persons are pleased with their own and others conceits of their holiness And verily they have their reward Mat. 6.2 But those of them that place their chiefest happiness in the love of God and the eternal fruition of him in heaven and seek this sincerely according to their helps and power though they are mislead into some superstitious errors I hope I may number with those that are sincere for all their errors and the ill effects of them XXIV 1. A confirmed Christian doth ordinarily discern the sincerity of his own heart and consequently hath some well grounded assurance of the pardon of his sins and of the favour of God and of his everlasting happiness And therefore no wonder if he live a peaceable and joyfull life For his grace is not so small as to be undiscernable nor is it as a sleepy buried seed or principle but it is almost in continual act And they that have a great degree of grace and also keep it in lively exercise do seldom doubt of it Besides that they blot not their Evidence by so many infirmities and falls They are more in the light and have more acquaintance with themselves and more sense of the abundant love of God and of his exceeding mercies than weak Christians have and therefore must needs have more assurance They have boldness of access to the throne of grace without unreverent contempt Eph. 3.12 2.18 They have more of the spirit of Adoption and therefore more child-like confidence in God and can call him Father with greater freedom and comfort than any others can Rom. 8.15 16. Gal. 4.6 Eph. 1.6 1 Joh. 5.19 20. And we know that we are of God and that the whole world lyeth in wickedness c. 2. But the weak Christian hath so small a degree of grace and so much corruption and his grace is so little in act and his sin so much that he seldom if ever attaineth to any well-grounded assurance till he attain to a greater measure of grace He differeth so little from the seeming Christian that neither himself nor others do certainly discern the difference When he searcheth after the truth of his faith and love and heavenly mindedness he findeth so much unbelief and aversness from God and earthly mindedness that he cannot be certain which of them is predominant and whether the interest of this world or that to come do bear the sway So that he is often in perplexities and fears and more often in a dull uncertainty And if he seem at any time to have assurance it is usually but an ill-grounded perswasion of the truth though it be true which he apprehendeth when he taketh himself to be the child of God yet it is upon unfound reasons that he judgeth so or else upon sound reasons weakly and uncertainly discerned so that there is commonly much of security presumption fancie or mistake in his greatest comforts He is not yet in a condition fit for full assurance till his love and obedience be more full 3. But the seeming Christian cannot possibly in that estate have either certainty or good probability that he is a child of God because it is not true His seeming certainty is meerly self-deceit and his greatest confidence is but presumption because the spirit of Christ is not within him and therefore he is certainly none of his Rom. 8.9 XXV 1. The Assurance of a confirmed Christian doth increase his alacrity and diligence in duty and is alwayes seen in his more obedient holy fruitful life The sense of the love and mercy of God is as the rain upon the tender grass He is never so fruitful so thankful so heavenly as when he hath the greatest certainty that he shall be saved The Love of God is then shed abroad upon his heart by the Holy Ghost which maketh him abound in love to God Rom. 5.1 2 3 4. He is the more stedfast unmoveable and alwaies abounding in the work of the Lord when he is most certain that his labour shall not be in vain in the Lord 1 Cor. 15.58 2. But the weak Christian is unfit
baits of and what is the manner in which he spreadeth his nets He seeth alwaies some snares before him And what company soever he is in or what business soever he is about he walketh as among snares which are visible to his sight And it is part of his business continually to avoid them He liveth in a continual watch and warfare He can resist much stronger and subtill temptations than the weak can do He is allwayes armed and knoweth what are the special remedies against each particular snare and sin Eph. 6. 2 Cor. 2.11 Prov. 1.17 And he carrieth always his antidotes about him as one that liveth in an infectious world and in the midst of a froward and perverse generation from which he is charged to save himself Phil. 2.15 Act. 2.40 2. And the weak Christian is a souldier in the army of Christ and is engaged in striving against sin Heb. 12.4 And really taketh the flesh and world as well as the Devil to be his enemies and doth not only strive but conquer in the main But yet alas how poorly is he armed How unskilfully doth he manage his Christian armour How often is he soild and wounded How many a temptation is he much unacquainted with And how many a snare doth lie before him which he never did observe And oft he is overcome in particular temptations when he never perceiveth it but thinks that he hath conquered 3. But the Hypocrite is fast ensnared when he gloryeth most of his integrity and is deceived by his own heart and thinketh he is something when he is nothing Gal. 6.3 Luk. 18.20 21 22 23. When he is thanking God that he is not as other men he is rejoycing in his dreams and sacrificing for the victory which he never obtained Luk. 18.11 He is led by Satan captive at his will when he is boasting of his uprightness and hath a beam of coveteousness or pride or cruelty in his own eye while he is reviling or censuring another for the mote of some difference about a ceremony or tolerable opinion And usually such grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived Mat. 7.3 4 5. 2 Tim. 3.13 XXVIII 1. A Christian indeed is one that hath deliberately counted what it may cost him to follow Christ and to save his soul and knowing that suffering with Christ is the way to our reigning with him he hath fully consented to the terms of Christ He hath read Luk. 14.26 27 33. and findeth that bearing the Cross and forsaking all is necessary to those that will be Christs disciples And accordingly in resolution he hath forsaken all and looketh not for a smooth and easie way to heaven He considereth that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution and that through many tribulations we must enter into heaven And therefore he taketh it not for a strange or unexpected thing if the fiery trial come upon him He doth not wonder at the unrighteousness of the world as if he expected reason or honesty justice or truth or mercy in the enemies of Christ and the instruments of Satan He will not bring his action against the Devil for unjust afflicting him He will rather turn the other cheek to him that smiteth him than he will hinder the good of any soul by seeking right much less will he exercise unjust revenge Though where government is exercised for truth and righteousness he will not refuse to make use of the justice of it to punish iniquity and discourage evil doers yet this is for God and the common good and for the suppression of sin much more than for himself Suffering doth not surprise him as a thing unlooked for He hath been long preparing for it and it findeth him garrison'd in the love of Christ Yea though his flesh will be as the flesh of others sensible of the smart and his mind is not senseless of the sufferings of his body yet it is some pleasure and satisfaction to his soul to find himself in the common way to heaven and to see the predictions of Christ fulfilled and to feel himself so far conform to Jesus Christ his head and to trace the footsteps of a humbled Redeemer in the way before him As Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh so doth the Christian arm himself with the same mind 1 Pet. 4.1 He rejoyceth that he is made partaker of the sufferings of Christ that when his glory shall be revealed he may also be partaker of the exceeding joy 1 Pet. 4.12 13. yea he taketh the reproach of Christ for a treasure yea a greater treasure than Riches or mens favours can afford Heb. 11.25 26. For he knoweth if he be reproached for the name or sake of Christ he is happy For thereby he glorifieth that God whom the enemy doth blaspheme and so the spirit of God and of glory resteth on him 1 Pet. 4.14 He liveth and suffereth as one that from his heart believeth that they are blessed that are persecuted for righteousness sake for great is their reward in heaven And they are blessed when men shall revile them and persecute them and say all manner of evil against them falsly for Christs sake In this they Rejoyce and are exceeding glad as knowing that herein they are followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promise Mat. 5.10 11 12. Heb. 6.12 If he be offered upon the sacrifice and service of the saith of Gods elect he can rejoyce in it as having greater good than evil Phil. 2.17 He can suffer the loss of all things and account them dung that he may win Christ and be found in him and know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death Phil. 3.8 9 10. Not out of surliness and pride doth he rejoyce in sufferings as some do that they may carry the reputation of holy and undaunted men and seem to be far better and constanter than others When pride maketh men suffer they are partly the Devils martyrs though the cause be never so good Though it is much more ordinary for pride to make men suffer rejoycingly in an ill cause than in a good the Devil having more power on his own ground than on Christs But it is the Love of Christ and the belief of the reward and the humble neglect of the mortified flesh and the contempt of the conquered world that maketh the Christian suffer with so much joy For he seeth that the Judge is at the door And what torments the wicked are preparing for themselves And that as certainly as there is a God that governeth the world and that in Righteousness so certainly are his eyes upon the Righteous and his face is set against them that do evil 1 Pet. 3.12 and though sinners do evil an hundred times and scape unpunished till their dayes be prolonged yet vengeance will overtake them in due time and it shall be well with them that
is made to shine upon the world he could not be content to live idly or to labour unprofitably or to get never so much to himself and live in never so much plenty himself unless he some way contribute to the good of others Not that he grudgeth at the smallness of his talents and lowness or obscurity of his place for he knoweth that God may dispose his creatures and talents as he please and that where much is given much is required Mat. 25. Luk. 12.48 19.23 But what his Lord hath entrusted him with he is loth to hide and willing to improve to his Masters use He is so far from thinking that God is beholden to him for his good works that he taketh it for one of his greatest mercies in the world that God will use him in doing any good And he would take it for a very great suffering to be deprived of such opportunities or turned out of service or called to less of that kind of duty If he were a Physitian and denied liberty to practice or a minister and denied liberty to preach it would far more trouble him that he is hindered from doing good than that he is deprived of any profits or honours to himself He doth not only comfort himself with the foresight of the reward but in the very doing of good he findeth so much pleasure as makeeth him think it the delightfullest life in the world And he looketh for most of his receivings from God in a way of duty Joh. 5.29 Gal. 6.10 Heb. 13.16 1 Pet. 3.11 2. But the weak Christian though he have the same disposition is far less profitable in the world He is more for himself and less able to do good to others He wanteth either parts or prudence or zeal or strength Yea he is oft like the infants and sick persons of a family that are not helpful but troublesome to the rest They find work for the stronger Christians to bear their infirmities and watch them and support and help them Indeed as an infant is a comfort to the mother through the power of her own love even when she endureth the trouble of its crying and uncleaness so weak Christians are a comfort to charitable ministers and people we are glad that they are alive but sadded often by their distempers Rom. 14.1 15.12 3. The seeming Christian liveth to himself and all his good works are done but for himself to keep up his credit or quiet his guilty conscience and deceive himself with the false hopes of a reward for that which his falseheartedness maketh to be his sin If he be a man of learning and good parts he may be very serviceable to the Church But the thanks of that is due to God and little to him who seeketh himself more than God or the good of others in all that he doth Mat. 25 24 25 26. XLII 1. A Christian indeed doth truly love his neighbour as himself He is not all for his own commodity His neighbours profit or good name is as his own He feeleth himself hurt when his neighbours is hurt And if his neighbour prosper he rejoyceth as if he prospered himself Though his neighbour be not united to him in the nearest bonds of Christianity or Piety yet he is not disregardfull of the common Vnity of Humanity Love is the very soul of life Lev. 19.18 Mat. 19.19 22.39 Rom. 13.9 Gal. 5.14 Jam. 2.8 Mark 10.21 1 Joh. 4.10 2. But the Love that is in weaker Christians though it be sincere is weak as they are and mixed with too much selfishness and with too much sowerness and wrath Little matters cause differences and fallings out When it cometh to MINE and THINE and their neighbours cross their interest or commodity or stand in their way when they are seeking any preferment or profit to themselves you shall see too easily by their sowreness and contention how weak their love is Mat. 24.12 1 Tim. 6.10 Luke 22.24 3. But in the seeming Christian selfishness is so predominant that he loveth none but for himself with any considerable love All his kindness is from self-love because men love him or highly value him or praise him or have done him some good turn or may do him good hereafter or the like If he hath any love to any for his own worth yet self-self-love can turn all that to hatred â—f they seem against him or cross him in his way For no man that is a Lover of the world and flesh and carnall self can ever be a true friend to any other For he loveth them but for his own ends and any cross Interest will shew the falshood of his love 2 Tim. 3.2 3 4. Mat. 5.46 XLIII 1. A Christian indeed hath a special Love to all the Godly such as endeareth his heart unto them and such as will enable him to visit them and relieve them in their wants to his own loss and hazzard according to his ability and opportunity For the image of God is beautifull and honourable in his eyes He loveth not them so much as God in them Christ in them the Holy Spirit in them He foreseeth the day when he shall meet them in Heaven and there rejoyce in God with them to Eternity He loveth their company and converse and delighteth in their gracious words and lives And the converse of ungodly empty men is a weariness to him unless in a way of duty or when he can do them good In his eyes a vile person is contemned but he honoureth them that fear the Lord Psal. 15.4 Other men grieve his soul with their iniquities while he is delighted with the appearances of God in his holy ones even the excellent ones on earth Psal. 16.3 2 Pet. 2.7 8. Yea the infirmities of Believers destroy not his Love for he hath learned of God himself to difference between their abhorred frailties and their predominant Grace and to love the very Infants in the Family of Christ. Yea though they wrong him or quarrel with him or censure him in their weakness he can honour their sincerity and love them still And if some of them prove scandalous and some seeming Christians fall away or fall into the most odious crimes he loveth Religion never the less but continueth as high an esteem of piety and of all that are upright as he had before 1 Joh. 4.7 8 10. Joh. 13.34 35. 1 Thess. 4.9 1 Joh. 3.11 14 23. Matth. 25.39 40 c. 2. The weak Christian sincerely loveth all that bear his Fathers image But it is with a Love so weak even when it is most passionate as will sooner be abated or interrupted by any tempting differences He is usually quarrelsome and froward with his Brethen and apter to confine his love to those that are of his own opinion or party And because God hath taught him to love all that are sincere the Devil tempteth him to censure them as not sincere that so he may justifie himself in the
abatement of his love And weak Christians are usually the most censorious because they have the smallest degree of Love which covereth faults and thinketh no evil and is not suspicious but ever apt to judge the best till the worst be evident 1 Cor. 13.4 5. It beareth all things believeth all things that are credible hopeth all things endureth all things v. 7. But it is no wonder to see children fall out even about their childish toyes and trifles And what the dissentions of the children of the Church have done against themselves in these Kingdoms I need not I delight not to record See 1 Cor. 3.1 2 3 4. And I brethren could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat for hitherto ye were not able to bear it neither yet now are ye able For ye are yet carnall for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are you not carnall and walk as men 3. The seeming Christian may have some love to reall Christian even for their goodness sake But it is a Love subservient to his carnal self-self-love And therefore it shall not cost him much As he hath some Love to Christ so he may have some Love to Christians but he hath more to the world and fleshly pleasures And therefore all his Love to Christ or Christians will not make him leave his worldly happiness for them And therefore Christ at the day of Judgement will not enquire after empty barren love but after that love which visited and relieved suffering Saints An hypocrite can allow both Christ and Christians such a cheap superficial kind of love as will cost him little He will bid them lovingly Depart in peace be you warmed and filled Jam. 2.15 16 17. But still the World is most beloved XLIV 1. A Christian indeed doth love his enemies and forgive those that injure him and this out of a thankfull sense of that grace which forgave him a farr greater debt Not that he thinketh it unlawfull to make use of the Justice of the Government which he is under for his necessary protection or for the restraint of mens abuse and violence Nor is he bound to love the malice or injury though he must love the man Nor can he forgive a crime as it is against God or the common good or against another though he can forgive an injury or debt that is his own Nor is he bound to forgive every debt though he is bound so farre to forgive every wrong as heartily to desire the good of him that did it Even Gods Enemies he so farre loveth as to desire God to convert and pardon them while he hateth their sin and hateth them as Gods enemies and desireth their restraint Psal. 139.21 22. 101.3 119.4 68.1 21.8 But those that hate and curse and persecute himself he can unfeignedly love and bless and pray for Matth. 5.43 44 45 46 47 48. For he knoweth that else he cannot be a child of God v. 45. And that to love those that love him is not much praise-worthy being no more than Heathens and wicked men can do v. 46 47. He is so deeply sensible of that wondrous love which so dearly redeemed him and saved him from Hell and forgave him a thousandfold worse than the worst that ever was done against himself that Thankfulness and Imitation or Conformity to Christ in his great compassions do overcome his desires of revenge and make him willing to do good to his most cruel enemies and pray for them as Christ and Stephen did at their deaths Luk. 23.34 Acts 7.60 And he knoweth that he is so inconsiderable a worm that a wrong done to him as such is the less considerable And he knoweth that he daily wrongeth God more than any man can wrong him and that he can hope for pardon but on condition that he himself forgive Matth. 6.12 14 15. 18.34 35. And that he is far more hurtfull to himself than any other can be to him 2. And the weakest Christian can truely love an enemy and forgive a wrong but he doth it not so easily and so fully as the other But it is with much striving and some unwillingness and aversness and there remaineth some grudge or strangeness upon the minde He doth not sufficiently forget the wrong which he doth forgive Indeed his forgiving is very imperfect like himself Matth. 18.21 Luk. 9.54 55. not with that freeness and readiness required Eph. 4.2 With all lowliness and meekness with long-suffering forbearing one another in love Col. 3.12 13. Put on therefore as the Elect of God holy and beloved bowels of mercies kindness humbleness of minde meekness long-suffering forbearing one another and forgiving one another even as Christ forgave you so also do ye Rom. 12.14 19. Avenge not your selves c. 3. As for the seeming Christian he can seem to forgive wrongs for the sake of Christ but if he do it indeed it is for his own sake As because it is for his honour or because the person hath humbled himself to him or his commodity requireth it or he can make use of his love and service for his advantage or some one hath interposed for reconciliation who must not be denyed or the like But to love an enemy indeed and to love that man be he never so good who standeth in the way of his preferment honour or commodity in the world he never doth it from his heart whatever he may seem to doe Matth. 6.14 15. 18.27 30 32. The Love of Christ doth not constrain him XLV 1. A Christian indeed is as precise in the Justice of his dealings with men as in acts of piety to God For he knoweth that God requireth this as strictly at his hands 1 Thess. 4.6 That no man go beyond or defraud his Brother in any matter for the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also have forewarned and testified He is one that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness and speaketh the truth in his heart that backbiteth not with his tongue nor doth evil to his neighbour nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour If he swear to his own hurt he changeth not He putteth not out his money to unjust or unmercifull Vsury nor taketh reward against the innocent Psal. 15. He obeyeth that Lev. 19.13 Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour neither rob him the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night untill the morning He can say as Samuel 1 Sam. 12. Whose Oxe or Asse have I taken or whom have I defrauded whom have I oppressed or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blinde mine eyes therewith and I will restore it And they said Thou hast not defrauded us nor oppressed us neither hast thou taken ought of any mans hand And if heretofore he was ever guilty of defrauding any he is willing to his
Pride hath conquered his Sobriety and engaged him in some Sect or erroneous way which his Teachers are against and would reduce him from Joh. 6.66 Mark 5.27 2 Chron. 25.16 LVIII 1. A Christian indeed is one that hath stored up such manifold experience of the fulfilling of Gods promises and the bearing of prayers and of the goodness of his holy waies as will greatly fortifie him against all temptations to Infidelity Apostasie or Distrust No one hath stronger temptations usually than he and no one is so well furnished with weapons to resist them The arguments of most others are fetcht out of their Books only but he hath moreover a life of experiences to confirm his faith and so hath the witness in himself He hath tryed and found that in God in holiness in faith in prayer which will never suffer him to forsake them Yea it is like that he hath upon record some such wonders in the answer of prayers as might do much to silence an Infidel himself I am sure many Christians have had such strange appearances of the extraordinary hand of God that hath done much to destroy the remnants of their own unbelief Psal. 66.16 2. But the Experiences of the younger weaker Christians are much shorter and less serviceable to their faith And they have not judgement enough to understand and make use of the dealings of God but are ready to plead his providences unto evil ends and consequences and to take their own passionate imaginations for the workings of the Spirit It is ordinary with them to say This or that was set upon my heart or spoken to me as if it had been some divine inspiration when it was nothing but the troubled workings of a weak distempered brain and it is their own fantasie and heart that saith that to them which they think the Spirit of God within them said Heb. 5.11 12 13. 2 Thes. 2.21 John 4.1 1 Tim. 4.1 1 Cor. 12.10 Jer. 23.28.27.32 29.8 3. And the Hypocrite wanteth those establishing Experiments of the power of the Gospel and the hearing of prayers and fulfilling of promises and communion with Christ in the spirit And therefore he is the more open to the power of temptations and a subtil disputer will easilier corrupt him and carry him away to flat Apostasie For he wanteth the Root and Witness in himself Mat. 13.21 22 1 John 5.10 Heb. 6.6 7 8. Luk. 8.13 LIX 1. A Christian indeed is one that highly valueth sanctified affections and passions that all he doth may be done as lively as possibly he can And also holy abilities for expression But he much more valueth the three great essential constant parts of the new creature within him that is 1. A high estimation of God and Christ and Heaven and Holiness in his understanding above all that can be set in any competition 2. A resolved choice and adhesion of the Will by which he preferreth God and Christ and Heaven and Holiness above all that can be set against them and is fixedly resolved here to place his happiness and his hopes 3. The main drift and endeavours of his Life in which he seeketh first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness Mat. 6.33.9.20.21 In these three his Highest estimation his Resolved choice and complacencies and his Chief endeavours he taketh his standing constant evidences of his sincerity to consist And by these he tryeth himself as to his state and not by the passionate feelings or affections of his heart nor by his memory or gifts or orderly thinking of expression And it is these Rational operations of his Soul in which he knoweth that Holiness doth principally consist and therefore he most laboureth to be strong in these 1. To ground his Judgement well 2. And to resolve to fix his Will 3. And to order his Conversation aright Psal. 50.23 Yet highly valuing sensible Affections and gifts of utterance but in subserviency to those which are the vital acts 1 Cor. 13. Rom. 7.18 19 c. 6.16 22. Rom. 8.13 Jam. 2. Col. 1.9 3.16 2. But the weak Christian usually placeth most of his religion in the more affectionate and expressive part He striveth more with his heart for passionate apprehensions than for complacency and fixed resolution He is often in doubt of his sincerity when he wanteth the feeling affectionate workings which he desireth c. thinketh he hath no more grace than that he hath sensibility of expressive gifts And so as he buildeth his comfort upon these unconstant signs his comforts are accordingly unconstant sometime he thinketh he hath grace when his body or other advantages do help the excitation of his lively affections And when the dulness of his body or other impediments hinder this he questioneth his grace again because he understandeth not aright the nature and chiefest acts of grace 3. The Hypocrite hath neither the Rational nor the Passionate part in Sincerity But he may go much further in the latter than in the former A quick and passionate nature though unsanctified may be brought to shed more tears and express more fervour than many a holy person can Especially upon the excitation of some quickning Sermon or some sharp affliction or great conviction or at the approach of death Few of the most holy persons can constantly retain so lively fervent passionate repentings and desires and resolutions to amend as some carnal persons have in sickness The power of fear alone doth make them more earnest that Love maketh many a gracious soul. But when the fear is over they are the same again How oft have I heard a sick man most vehemently profess his resolutions for a holy life which all have come to nothing afterwards How oft have I heard a common drunkard with tears cry out against himself for his sin and yet go on in it And how many gracious persons have I known whose judgements and wills have been groundedly resolved for God and holiness and their lives have been holy fruitfull and obedient who yet could not shed a tear for sin nor feel any very great sorrows or joys If you judge of a man by his earnestness in some good moods and not by the constant tenor of his life you will think many an Hypocrite to be better than most Saints Who would have thought that had seen him only in that fit but that Saul had been a penitent man when he lift up his voice and wept and said to David Thou art more righteous than I for thou hast rewarded me good whereas I have rewarded thee evil 1 Sam. 24.16 17 18 19 20 21. A smaller matter will raise some sudden passions than will renew the soul and give the preheminence to God and Holiness and Heaven in the Judgement Will and Conversation Hos. 6.4 13.3 Isa. 58.2 Mat. 13.20 LX. 1. A Christian indeed confirmed in Grace is one that maketh it the business of his life to prepare for death and delayeth not his serious thoughts of it and preparations
were done to himself Mat. 25. and hath commanded the strong to bear with the infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves Rom. 15.1 2 3. and to receive one another as Christ received us Rom. 15.7 and hath told those that offend but one of his little ones that it were good for that man that a milstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the Sea Matth. 18.6 and hath told him that suiteth his fellow servants that his Lord will come in a day when he looketh not for him and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the Hypocrites where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Mat. 24.48 49 50 51. I wonder what men would have Christ do to free himself and the Christian Religion from the imputation of the sins of the Hypocrites and the weak distempered Christians Would they have him yet make stricter Laws when they hate these for being so strict already Or would they have him condemn sinners to more grievous punishment when they are already offended at the severity of his threatnings O what an unrighteous generation are his enemies that blame the Law because men break it and blame Religion because many are not Religious enough As if the Sun must be hated because that shadows and dungeons do want light or Life and Health must be hated because many are sick and pained by their diseases But Christ will shortly stop all the mouths of these unreasonable men and O how easily will he justifie himself his Laws and all his holy waies when all iniquity shall be for ever silent And though it must needs be that offences come yet wo to the world because of offences and wo to the man by whom they come Mat. 18.7 Luke 17.1 The wrong that Christ receiveth from hypocrites and scandalous Christians of all ranks and places is not to be estimated These are the causes that Christianity and Godliness are so contemptible in the eyes of the world that Jews and Heathens and Mahometans are still unconverted and deriders of the Faith Because they see such scandalous tyranny and worship among the Papists and such scandalous lives among the greatest part of professed Christians in the world whereas if the Papal Tyranny were turned into the Christian Ministry Luke 22.25 26 27. and 1 Tim. 5.17 and their irrational sopperies and historical hypocritical worship were changed into a reverent rational and spiritual worship and the cruel carnal worldly lives of men called Christians were changed into Self-denial Love and Holiness In a word if Christians were Christians indeed and such as I have here described from their Rule what a powerfull means would it be of the conversion of all the unbelieving world Christianity would then be in the eye of the world as the Sun in its brightness and the glory of it would dazle the eyes of beholders and draw in millions to enquire after Christ who are now driven from him by the sins of Hypocrites and scandalous Believers And this doth not contradict what I said before of the Enmity of the world to Holiness and that the best are most abused by the ungodly For even this enmity must be rationally cured as by the errour of reason it is sed God useth by the power of intellectual light to bring all those out of darkness whom he saveth and so bringeth them from the power of Satan to himself Acts 26.18 Men hate not Holiness as Good but as misconceived to be evil Evil I say to them because it is opposite to the sensual pleasures which they take to be their chiefest good And the way of curing their enmity is by shewing them their errour and that is by shewing them the excellency and necessity of that which they unreasonably distaste Acts 26.9 10 11 14 19. Luke 15.13 14 15 16. Acts 2.36 37. VI. Lastly In these Characters you have some help in the work of Self-examination for the tryal both of the Truth and Strength of grace I suppose it will be objected that in other Treatises I have reduced all the infallible Marks of Grace to a smaller number To which I answer I still say that the predominancy or prevalency of the Interest of God as our God and Christ as our Saviour and the Spirit as our Sanctifier in the estimation of the Vnderstanding the Resolved Choice of the Will and the Government of the Life against all the worldly interest of the Flesh is the only infallible sign of a justified regenerate soul. But this whole hath many parts and it is abundance of particulars materially in which this sincerity is to be found Even all the sixty Characters which I have here named are animated by that one and contained in it And I think to the most the full description of a Christian in his essential and integral parts yet shewing which are indeed essential is the best way to acquaint them with the nature of Christianity and to help them in the tryal of themselves And as it were an abuse of Humane Nature for a Painter to draw the picture of a man without arms or legs or nose or eyes because he may be a man without them so would it have been in me to draw only a maimed picture of a Christian because a maimed Christian is a Christian. Yet because there are so many maimed Christians in the world I have also shewed you their lamentable defects not in a manner which tendeth to encourage them in their sins and wants under pretence of comforting them but in that manner which may best excite them to their duty in order to their recovery without destroying their necessary supporting comforts O happy Church and State and Family which are composed of such confirmed Christians where the predominate temperature is such as I have here described Yea happy is the place where Magistrates and Ministers are such who are the vital parts of State and Church and the instruments appointed to communicate these perfections to the rest But how much more happy is the New Jerusalem the City of the Living God where the perfected spirits of the just in Perfect Life and Light and Love are perfectly beholding and admiring and praising and pleasing the Eternal God their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier for ever where the least and meanest is greater and more perfect than the confirmed Christian here described And where Hypocrisie is utterly excluded and Imperfection ceaseth with scandal censures uncharitableness division and all its other sad effects And where the souls that thirsted after Righteousness shall be fully satisfied and Love God more than they can now desire and never grieve themselves or others with their wants or weaknesses or misdoings any more And O blessed day when our most Blessed Head shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels and shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that now believe whose weakness here occasioned his dishonour and their own contempt when
the seed of Grace is grown up into Glory and all the world whether they will or not shall discern between the Righteous and the wicked between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not between the clean and the unclean and between him that sweareth and him that feareth an oath And though now our Life is hid with Christ in God and it yet appeareth not to the sight of our selves or others what we shall be yet then when Christ who is our Life shall appear we also shall appear with him in Glory Heb. 12.22 23. Rev. 22.3 4 5 14 15. 21.3 4 8. 2 Thes. 1.9 10. Mat. 5.4 6. Mal. 3.18 Eccles. 9.2 1 Joh. 3.2 3. Col. 3.3 4. Away then my soul from this dark deceitfull and vexatious world Love not thy diseases thy setters and calamities Groan daily to thy Lord and earnestly groan to be cloathed upon with thy house which is from Heaven 2 Cor. 5.2 4. that mortality may be swallowed up of Life Joyn in the harmonious desires of the Creatures who groan to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Rom. 8.20 21 22. Abide in him and walk in Righteousness that when he shall appear thou maist have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming 1 John 2.28 29. Joyn not with the evil servants who say in their hearts Our Lord delayeth his coming and begin to smite their fellow-servants and to eat and drink with the drunken whose Lord shall come in a day when they look not for him and in an hour that they are not aware of and shall cut them asunder and appoint them their portion with the Hypocrites where shall be weeping gnashing of teeth Mat. 24.48 49 50 51. O watch and pray that thou enter not into temptation And be patient for the Judge is at the door Lift up thy head with earnest expectation O my soul for thy Redemption draweth near Rejoyce in hope before thy Lord for he cometh he cometh to judge the world in Righteousness and Truth Behold he cometh quickly though faith be failing and iniquity abound and Love waxeth cold and scoffers say where is the promise of his coming Make haste O thou whom my soul desireth and come in Glory as thou first camest in Humility and conform them to thy self in Glory whom thou madest conformable to thy sufferings and humility Let the Holy City New Jerusalem be prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and let Gods Tabernacle be with men that he may dwell with them and be their God and wipe away their tears and death and sorrow and crying and pain may be no more but former things may pass away Keep up our Faith our Hope our Love And daily vouchsafe us some beams of thy directing consolatory Light in this our darkness And be not as a stranger to thy scattered flock in this desolate wilderness But let them hear thy voice and find thy presence and have such conversation with thee in Heaven in the exercise of Faith and Hope and Love which is agreeable to their low and distant state Testifie to their souls that thou art their Saviour and Head and that they abide in thee by the Spirit which thou hast given them abiding and overcoming in them and as thy Agent preparing them for eternal life O let not our darkness nor thy strangeness feed our odious Unbelief O shew thy self more clearly to thy Redeemed ones And come and dwell in our hearts by Faith And by holy Love let us dwell in God and God in us that we grope not after him as those that worship an unknown God O save us from Temptation And if the messenger of Satan be sent to buffet us let thy strength be manifest in our weakness and thy grace appear sufficient for us And give us the patience which thou tellest us we need that having done thy will we may inherit the promise And bring us to the sight and fruition of our Creator of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen FINIS