by Christ And therefore it is past dispute that none but the self-denying are sanctified and therefore none bâ— they do truly take the Holy Ghost for their Sanctifier and truly believe in him So far as men are in Love with the disease it is certain they will not use the Physitian Reas 5. No man is a true Christian and in a state of salvation that denyeth renounceth or rejecteth the word of God But all men that have not self-denyal that hear the word of God do renounce deny it or reject it and therefore no man without self-denyal is a true Christian or can be saved In the Scriptures it is that we have eternal life it s they that must make us wise to salvation the man that will be blessed must meditate in them day and night Psal 1. 3. And it is not the hearers but the Doers of them that are blessed But nothing is more clear than that the voice of Scripture calleth aloud on all men to deny themselves and that the scope of it is to cry down self and set up God in Jesus Christ It is the very drift and meaning of it from end to end to take down self and abase men in their own eyes and bring them home to God from whom they are revolted Reas 6. No man can be a Christian or be saved without saving Grace But no man without self-denyal hath saving Grace For it is the nature of every Grace to carry man from himself to God by Christ It is the work of godly sorrow to humble proud man and break the heart of carnal self It is the work of faith for a self-denying soul to pass out for hope and life to Christ It is the work of Love to carry us quite above our selves to that infinite goodness which we love it is the nature of holy fear to confess our guilt and insufficiency and to suspect our selves and dread the fruit of our own ways Confidence doth bottom us upon God and Hope it self doth imply a Despairing in our selves Thankfulness doth pay the homage to him that hath saved us from our selves And every grace hath self-denyal as half its very life or soul And therefore it is certain that no man hath any more grace than he hath self-denyal Reas 7. They that reject the Ministry and the fruit of all the Ordinances of God are not true Christians nor cannot be saved But so do all among us that have not self-denyal For the use of the Ministry is to call home sinners from themselves to God The use of every Ordinance of God is to get or keep down carnal self and exalt the Lord. Confession is nothing but self-abasing and he must confess that will have the faithful and just God to forgive him for he that covereth his sin shall not prosper 1 John 1. 9. Prov. 28. 13. Prayer is a confession of our own emptiness insufficiency and unworthiness and a flying from our selves for help unto another In Baptism we come as condemned prisoners for a pardon as it were with ropes about our necks and strip our selves of the rags of our filthiness that by the blood of the lamb we may be washed from our blood and our sins may be buried as in the depth of the Sea In the Lords Supper we renew the same Covenant and receive the same renewed pardon and still fly from our selves to Christ for life and renounce our carnal selves by solemn Covenant as a people coming home to God So that never was any Ordinance of God effectual and saving on the soul of any further than it brought them to self-denyal or preserved exercised or manifested it Reas 8. He that can do no work sincerely nor go one step in the way of life is no true Christian nor in a state life But this is the case of all that have not self-denyal For self is their Principle Rule and End and he that hath either a false Principle Rule or End cannot be sincere in any of the means much less when he is out in all of these A selfish man is seeking himself in his very Religion and is serving himself when he seemeth to be serving God And indeed he doth not any service sincerely unto God because he makes not God his End And therefore cannot be accepted Reas 9. No man is a true Christian or can be saved that sticks in the depth of his natural misery in his lapsed state But so do all men that have not self-denyal for it is self that they are faln to and must be saved from Reas 10. No man can be a true Christian and be saved that is not a member of the Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints But so is none but the self-denying for every true member of the Church hath a publick spirit preferring the Churches interest to his own and suffering with fellow members in their suffering and having a care of one another 1 Cor. 12. But the self-seeking unsanctified person is a stranger to this disposition Reas 11. He that is led by the greatest enemy of God and his own soul is not a true Christian nor in a state of life But so is every man that hath not learned to deny himself For self is the greatest enemy of God and us Escape but your own hands and you are out of danger All the Devils in Hell cannot destroy you if you would not be your own destroyers Reas 12. Lastly It is a plain contradiction to be saved without self-denyal For as its self that we must be saved from both as our End and Means and greatest enemy so to stick in self is still to be lost and miserable and therefore not to be saved So that the case is as plain as a case can be that no man can be a true Christian or Disciple of Christ without self-denyal and consequently none without it can be saved I have been the briefer upon the Arguments because the matter of some of them may come to be fullier opened anon in the Application CHAP. III. Use 1. A general complaint of the Prevalency of Selfishness Use 1. AND now we have seen from the words of Christ the absolute Necessity of self-denyal and that there is no true Christianity nor salvation without it let us next take a view of our selves and of the world and Judge of our condition by this certain Rule Look well into your selves and into the world and tell me whether you find not cause to lament 1. That true Christianity is so rare a thing even among the professors of Christianity seeing self-denyal is so rare 2. That Grace is so weak and small in the most of the regnerate seeing self-denyal is so little and imperfect O if the name of Christians would prove us Christians and the magnificent Titles we give to Christ would prove that we are his true Disciples if reading and hearing and outward duties and a cheap Religiousness would serve turn we have then great
for our selves and not as duly subordinate to God The soul having unfaithfully and rebelliously withdrawn it self from God in point of Love and subjection it become its own Idol and looks no higher than it self and Loveth God and all things but for it self and principally for its carnal pleasure And the Propensity to this with the Privation of the souls Inclination to God is Original sin the Disposition suited to the actual sin that caused it which was a retiring from God to self He that feeleth not this evil in himself hath no true knowledge of Original sin And it 's the want of the sense of this great evil and so the want of being acquainted with their hearts that causeth so many to turn Pelagians and to deny the being of Orignal sin 2. Both selfishness and the want of a true discerning of it doth breed and feed abundance of errours and teach men to corrupt the whole body of Practical Divinity and to subvert many Articles of faith which stand in their way How comes the world to be all in a flame about the Universal Reign of the Pope of Rome but from the dominion of selfishness Whence is it that the Nations of the earth have been so troubled for Patriarchs Metropolitans and Diocesans that must do their work by others and for many things that at best can pretend to be but humane indifferent changeable forms but from the prevalency of Self Whence is it that mens consciences have been ensnared and the Churches troubled by so many Ceremonies of mens invention and the Church must rather lose her faithfullest Pastors than they be permitted to worship God as Peter and Paul did Hath not selfishness and Pride done this It is self that hath taught some to plead too much for their own sufficiency and to deny the need of special Grace And so far hath it prevailed with some of late as to lead them Doctrinally to deny that God is the Ultimate End of man and to be Loved for himself and above our selves and all things but only they say he is our finis cujus vel rei to be loved amore concupiscentiae In a word it is this woful principle that hath corrupted Doctrine Discipline and Worship in so many of the Churches 3. We shall never have Peace in Church or Common-wealth while selfishness bears sway Every mans Interest will be preferred before the publick Interest and rise against it as oft which will be oft as they seem inconsistent This is the Vice that informeth Tyranny whether it be Monarchy Aristocracy or Democracy when selfish interest is preferred before the Common Interest This makes our people think themselves too wise or too good to learn or to be guided by their Pastors and every man of this strain seems wise enough to lead off a party of the Church into a mutiny against the Pastors and the rest This makes the labours of Reconcilers unsuccessful while selfishness engageth so many wits and tongues and pens and parties against the most necessary equal terms and endeavours of such as would Reconcile Were it not for these selfish men how soon would all our rents be healed how soon would all our wars be ended and all our heart-burnings and malicious oppositions be turned into charitable consultations for an holy peace If once men were carryed above themselves they would meet in God the Center of Unity 4. It is for want of self denial that we undergo so many disappointments and suffer so much disquietment and vexation Were our wills more entirely subjected to the will of God so that his will were preferred before our own we should Rest in his will and have no contradictory desires to be disappointed and no mâ—tâ—er left for self-vexation Had we no disease we should feel no pain and it is our self-will rebelling against the will of God that is our disease Self-denial removeth all the venom from our hearts Persecution and poverty and sickness may touch our fleâ—h but the heart is fortified so far as we have his Grace O how happily doth it quiet and calm the mind when things befall us that would even distract a selfish man O happy man where God is All and Self is Nothing There Duty and Love and Joy are all and trouble and distress is nothing These are not our matters now Partly because we are above them and partly because they belong not to our care but to his Povidence Let us do our Duty and adhere to him and let him dispose of us as he sees meet Who would much fear a Tyrant or any other enemy that saw God and Glory which faith can see Did we see the glorious Throne of Christ we should be so far from trembling at the bar of Persecutors that we should scarce so much regard them as to answer them the infinite Glory would so potently divert our minds As we scarce hearken to our childreâ—s impertinent babblings when we are taken up with great Affairs so if a Tyrant talk to us of â—â—â—â—ging or imprisonment we should scarce hearkeâ— to such trivial impertinencies were we so far above our selves as Faith and Love should advance the soul I have further shewed you in the following Treatise how self-denial disableth all Temptations how it conduceth to all eminent works of Charity but especially to the secret works of the sincere It is of absolute necessity to salvation It is thething that hypocrites are condemned for want of It is the wisdom of the soul as being the only way to our own security And it is the holiness and justice of the soul as it is conjunct with the Love of God in that it restoreth to God his own The excellency of Grace is manifested in self-denial To do or suffer such little things as self is not much against is nothing But to be Nothing in our selves and God to be our All and to close with our first and blessed End this is the nature of Sanctification Alas poor England and more than England even all the Christian world into what confusion and misery hath selfishness plunged thee Into how many pieces art thou broken because that every hypocrite hath a self to be his principle and end and forsakes the true Universal End How vain are our words to Rulers to Souldiers to Rich and Poor while we call upon them to Deny themselves And must we lose our labour and must the Nation lose its peace and hopes Is there no remedy but selfishness must undo all If so be it known to you the principal loss shall be your own ☞ and in seeking your safety liberty wealth and glory you shall lose them all and fall into misery slavery and disdain Deny your selves or save your selves if you can God is not engaged to take care of you or preserve you if you will be your own and will be reserving or saving your selves from him ☞ And though you may seem to prosper in self-seeking waies they will end yea shortly end
break out in the Town and infect but a quarter as many houses as here are infectious Alehouses that harbour tiplers and drunkards and see whether the Magistrates of this or any Town will not a little better bestir themselves and send to search after infected places and nail up their doors and write on them Lord have mercy on us that all may take warning and keep away They will not here be offended with Informers nor say Am I bound to look after them And why are they not as zealous against sin as against the plague Great reason Self is for sin and God only is against it but self is against the Plague because it is concerned in it sin doth but hurt the soul and bring men to Helfire but the plague destroys their body and this is the greater matter with them because they have flesh and sense to judge of it but they have not faith to believe the other Again let but one house in the Town be on fire and all are up to quench it and the Bell is rung and the Magistrate doth not think that he wants a Call himself to look after it And when the fire of Hell is kindling in an Ale-house that 's nothing but must be let alone there 's no such zeal nor no such haste And why so Why one they see in good sadness and perceive that it is fire indeed but the other they believe in jest as if it would prove but a painted fire Again let but an ungodly fellow slander the Magistrate or call him all to naught especially if he give him but two or three boxes on the ear and see whether he will let that man alone But let the same man abuse the name of God and break his Laws and with too many he may be let alone unless they be urged to do Justice And how comes this difference Why self is toucht in one and it is but God But God! O Atheists that 's touched in the other Self can do more with them than God can do Remember still when I say that self can do more with them than God that I speak not of what God could do by his Omnipotency if he would but of the final Causality or the small interest that God hath in their hearts by holy Faith and Love Again let but a servant rob the Magistrate and carry his money and goods to an Ale-seller to reset and try whether he will look after him and the Ale-seller And why not as soon and as zealously when Ale-sellers reset mens sons and servants and drown mens understandings and turn them into beasts Why because in one it is but God and mens souls that are concerned a matter of nothing but in the other it is self a greater matter with them Shall I give you but one instance more that the Ale-sellers themselves will take my part in so far as to bear me witness that its true Here are Farmers of the Excise that have power to know what Ale-houses are in the Town and their gain lyeth on it and there shall scarce a man in Town or Country sell Ale so secretly but they will know it nor sell a Barrel but what they are acquainted with They do not say I am not bound to go search after them nor that they be not able to discover them and to bring them to pay Excise But the Justices too commonly can overlook abundance that the Excise-men can find and they cannot make one of twenty pay when the other can And what 's the matter Why one works for self and money and the other works but for God and his own and other mens salvation a small matter See then beyond denyal what self and money can do with such men when God and mens salvation can do next to nothing But I must desire you not to mistake me and think I speak this of any honest godly Magistrate and abuse the good by joyning them with the bad No far be it from me to be so injurious For its evident that they can be no good men nor have any true Love of God in their souls that are such in a predominant sense as I have here described It is not in my thoughts to lay this blame on any honest Godly Magistrate for none but the ungodly would do as I have mentioned and prefer themselves before the Lord and the bodies of men before the souls And alas if the Soveraign Powers of the Nations of the world were not too sick of the same disease gain would not be accounted Godliness but Godliness the greatest gain and carnal Policie would not go for Piety but true Piety would go for the surest Policie It would not be so common in most Nations to have the Truth and Cause of Christ disowned and his servants persecuted and their lives and blood to be made a sacrifice to carnal Self and worldly Interests Nor would the breaches of the Churches be so long unhealed and grow wider and wider and few much regard them but all have their own work to do which must be looked after Yea and the Cause of Christ and the Gospel must be trod down if it stand in the way of their own And the Churches must be set on fire by their wars and contentions for their selfish Interests And if Self were not too strong among us we should not have had such connivence at doctrinal and practical abominations nor so much delay or neglect of healing the discomposed Churches and uniting the divided Christians or attempting it more effectually than we have done But because I desire to speak to none but those that are within my hearing I will return home to our selves The holy ordering and instructing of families and suppressing sin in Children and servants is one of the most effectual works for the building up of the Church and the glory and stability of the Common-wealth O if Parents and Masters would but sanctifie their houses to the Lord and teach their families the will and fear of God and do their best by punishment when instruction will not serve to hinder sin how fast would Reformation then go on And what hindreth why carnal Self If it were but for wordly commodities they would do more Would you have me prove it Let experience speak Let a servant or child go prayerless to their work and few regard it but they will not go without meat or drink or cloaths The Master will suffer them to neglect Gods service but if they neglect his own and should do him no more or better service than they do to God they should soon hear of it and be turned out of door and they were no servants for him They will teach their children to do their own work or set them Apprentices to learn it but the work of God and their salvation they shall for them have little teaching in how plainly soever God hath commanded it them Deut. 11. 18 19. 6. 6 7 8. Ephes 6. 4. Let
man but a woman that had been a sinner When she held him by the feet Love did begin low in humility but it tended higher and ended higher Christ hath told us that where much is forgiven there will be much love For there 's most of the fruits of God's love and least of self and most to abase self It is not possible that love to Christ should dwell or work in any but the humble that feel at the heart that they are unworthy of love and worthy of everlasting wrath The Proud and Self conceited cannot love him for they cannot be much taken with Christ's love to them except as the Pharisee in a way of self-flattery But the poor soul that was lost will heartily love him that sought and found him and he that was dead will love when he finds himself alive and he that was condemned both by God and conscience will surely love the Lord that ransomed him And it is the apprehensions that men have of themselves that much causeth all this difference The self-abhorring self-judgeing self-denying sinner is melted with the love of God in Christ because it is to such a worthless sinful wretch What Lord saith he is the blood of Christ the pardon of sin the spirit of grace the priviledges of a child and everlasting glory for such an unworthy wretch as I that have so long offended thee and so much neglected thee and lived such a life as I have done and am such an empty unprofitable worm O what a wonder of mercy is this But the full soul loaths the honey-comb The self-conceited unhumbled sinner looks as mindlesly at Christ as a healthful man at the Physitian or an innocent man at a pardon And that good that is in the Proud and Self-conceited doth seldom do much good to others much less to themselves As such do but serve themselves so ordinarily God doth not bless their endeavours but as they are perverted they are the likest to pervert others and propagate their self-conceitedness Two words from an humble self-denying man doth oftentimes more good than a Sermon from the self-conceited I admonish you therefore in the name of God that you take heed of this part of selfishness and mortifie it It will else keep out God and almost all that is good If you are proud and self-conceited you will hear a Minister rather to cavil with him than to be edified and when any thing from God doth cross your foolish wisdom you will but slight it or make a jest at it And if any truth of God do strike at the heart of your selfish interest you will but fret at it and secretly hate it and perhaps as the Devils open souldiers publickly reproach it and as the Jews did against Stephen Act. 7. even gnash the teeth at the Preacher or as they did by Paul Act. 22. 22. They gave him audience to that word even that word that made against themselves 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 This entertainment we still meet with from our hearers when self hath brought them the next step to hell O Sirs suspect your own understandings Think not of them beyond the proportion of your attainments Nor beyond your experience and the helps and time and opportunities which you have had for knowledge nor beyond the measure of your diligence for the improving of these For these are God's ordinary way of giving in a ripeness in knowledge Read and study Heb. 5. 12 14. 1 Tim. 3. 6. Set not up your own conceits too boldly against those of longer standing and diligence in holy studies much less against your Teachers and much less against a multitude of Ministers and much less against all the Church of God and least of all against God himself as speaking to you by the holy Scriptures O take warning by the swarms of heresies and scandals that have been caused by self-conceitedness and pride Object If you may think your self wiser than me and others without self-conceitedness why may not I think my self wiser than you and such others without self-conceitedness Answ I may not do it in the cases before-mentioned I may not think my self to be what I am not nor exalt my self above them that are wiser than I nor against my Guides or the Church of God Object But it is but your conceit that you are wise enough to be a Teacher or wiser than others and why may not I as well conceit it Answ No man on his own Conceits must become a Teacher but the judicious of that Calling must Call them and judge of their abilities And conceits are as the ground of them is The true understanding of the grace that we have received is a duty and fitteth us for thankfulness but the false conceit that we have what we have not is a dangerous delusion For he that thinketh he is something when he is nothing deceiveth himself Gal. 6. 3. What if a blind man should argue as you do with one that sees and say You say that you see so far off and why may not I say so too would you not answer him I know that which I say to be true and so do not you And what if he still go on and say you think that I am blind and I think that you are blind and why may not I be believed as well as you would this kind of talk prove the man to have his eye-sight or should it make me question wheâ—â—er I have mine He that seeth knoweth that he seeth whoever question it and if another make doubt of it let men that have eyes in their head be Judges but not the blind But I confess spiritual blindness hath this disadvantage that whereas I can easily make any other blind man know that he is blind and therefore be willing to be led or help'd here the more blind men are most commonly they are the more confident that they see and scornfully say as the Pharisees to Christ John 9. 40. Are we blind also For Pride will not let them know their ignorance The same light that cureth ignorance must reveal it Especially when men are born blind and never knew the saving illumination of the Saints they will not believe that there is any other light than they have seen But I have been somewhat long on this part I pass now to the next CHAP. XV. Self-will be denied 4. THe fourth part of selfishness to be mortified is self-will And this is the fruit of self-conceit and also a natural corruption of the soul And a most deep rooted obstinate vice it is Every wicked man is a self-willed man against God and all that speak for God And till self be mortified in the will there is no saving grace in that will Quest But what will is it that is to be called a self-will Answ Not that which is from God and for God but all the
such useless members forseiting their very sustenance then surely he that is such or worse speeds fair if you leave him food and raiment 4. And the great command of doing all to Gods Glory and serving him with our substance will not be obeyed if you leave your Riches and Estates in the hands of such persons meerly because they are your Children No doubt but that is a selfish and unconscionable course and the thing that sets up the ungodly to disturb the Church Lord it over the world while parents furnish them with Riches to do the Devil eminent service with Object But who knows but God may convert them Answ You cannot guide your actions by things unknown You have no promise of their conversion nor much probability when they have frustrated all your Counsels and means of their good education and grace is supernatural and therefore you must proceed upon grounds that are known And for remoter Kindred if they may be as serviceable to God with what I give them as others nature teacheth me to prefer them before others but otherwise Grace teacheth me both to love a godly stranger better than ungodly kindred and to lay out all that I have as may be most serviceable to God CHAP. LVII Q. How we must love our Neighbours as our selves Quest 7. HOw is it that Self-denial requireth us to love our neighbour as our selves Is it with the same degree of Love Answ I answered this on the by before Briefly 1. The chief part of the precept is Negative thus q. d. Set not up thy self against the welfare of thy neighbour Draw not from him or covet not that which is his to thy self and confine not thy love and care of thyself 2. And it comprehendeth this positive and that as to the kind of Love we should love both our selves and neighbours as means to God and for the interest of God and in that respect there is an equality we must appretiative or estimatively love a better and more serviceable man that hath more of Gods Spirit in him above our selves and an equal person equally with our selves with this Rational Love which intendeth all for God 3. But Natural Love which is put into a man for self-preservation will be stronger to self than to another and alloweth us caeteris paribus to prefer and first preserve and provide for our selves And in this regard our neighbour must be loved but as a second self or next our selves 4. But this Natural Love in the exercise of it at least in imperate acts is to be subservient to our Rational spiritual Love and to be over-mastered by it And therefore it is that as Reason teacheth an Heathen to prefer his Country before his life though the instinct of Nature incline us more to life so faith teacheth a Christian much more to prefer Gods honour and the Gospel Church Common-wealth and his neighbours good when it more conduceth to these ends than his own before himself his liberty or life CHAP. LVIII Q. Is Self-revenge and Penance self-denial Quest 8. WHether self-denial require us after sin to use vindictive penance or punishment of the flesh by fasting watching going barefoot lying hard wearing hair-cloth or to do this ordinarily as some of the Papists Monks and Fryars do Answ The easiness of this case may allow a brief decision 1. The Body must be so far afflicted as is needful to humble it and subdue it to the spirit and tame its Rebellion and fit it for the service of God 2. The exercise of a holy revenge on our selves may be a lower end subservient to this 3. It must also be so far humbled as is necessary to express Repentance to the Church when Absolution is expected upon publick Repentance 4. As also to concur with the soul in secret or open humiliation But 1. He that shall think that whippings or sackcloth or going bare-foot or other self-punishing are of themselves good works and meritorious with God or satisfie his Justice or are a state of perfection doth offer God a hainous sin under the name and conceit of a good work 2. And he that shall by such self-afflicting unfit his Body for the service of God yea that doth not cherish it so far as is necessary to fit it for duty is guilty of self-murder and defrauding God of his service and abusing his creature and depriving others of the help we owe them so that iâ— one word the Body must be so used as may best fit it for Gods service And to think that self-afflicting is a good work meerly as it is penalty or suffering to the body or that we may go further herein is to think 1. That we should use our Body worse than our beast for we will no further afflict him than is necessary to tame him or serve our selves by him and not to disable him for service 2. And it will teach men to kill themselves for that is a greater penalty to the body than whipping or fasting 3. And it is an offering God a sacrifice of cruelty and Robbery which we commit against himself and man But I must needs add that though some Fryars and Melancholy people are apt to go too far in this and pine their bodies or misuse them with conceits of merit and satisfaction yet almost all the common people run into the contrary extream and pamper and please their flesh to the displeasing of God and the ruine of their souls And I know but few that have need to be restrained from afflicting or taking down the flesh too much CHAP. LIX Q. Is self-denial to be without Passion Quest 9. WHether self-denial consist in the laying by of all Passions and bringing the soul to an impassionate serenity Answ The Stoicks and some Behmenists think so But so doth not God or any well informed man For 1. God would not have made the Affections in vain It is not the Passions but the disorder of them that is sinful or the fruit of sin 2. We are commanded to exercise all the Affections or Passions for God and on other sutable objects We must Love God with all the heart and soul and might which is not without affection or passion We must Love his servants his Church his Word his wayes We must fear him above them that can kill us we must hunger and thirst after his Righteousness and pant after him as the Hart doth after the Water-brooks We must be angry and sin not A zeal for God is the life of our Graces we must always be zealous in a good matter fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. We must hate evil and sorrow for it when we are guilty and grieve under the sense of our miscarriages and Gods displeasure And all these expresly commanded in the Word are holy Affections or Passions of the soul 3. Yea it is the Work of the Holy Ghost to sanctifie all these Passions that they may be used for God and they are called by
his soul And now Sirs I must let go this subject as to you that have heard it preacht for we must not be always on one thing but I am exceedingly afraid lest I have lost my labour with most of you and shall leave you as selfish as I found you because sad experience tells me that it is so natural and obstinate an enemy that I have discovered and that you have now to set your selves against I have done my work but self hath not done but is still at work in you I cannot now go home with every one of you but self will go home with you I cannot be at hand with every one of you when the next temptation comes but self will be at hand to draw you to entertain it When you are next tempted to error to pride to lust to contention with your brethren by words or real injuries what will you do then and how will you stand against this enemy If God be not your Interest and the dearest to your souls and you see not with his light and will not by his Will and self-denial be not become as it were your nature you will never stand after all this that I have said but self will be your undoing for ever If you have not somewhat within you as selfishness is within you to be always at hand as it is and ready and constant and powerful to overcome it it will be your ruine after all the warnings that have been given you And this preserving Principle must be the Spirit of God by causing you to Deny your selves Believe in Christ and Love God above all I say again that you may think on it and live upon it The sum of all your Religion or saving grace is in these three Faith Self-denial and the Love of God Departing from Carnal-self Returning home to God by Love and this by faith in the Redeemer is the true Christianity and the Life that leadeth to everlasting life FINIS A DIALOGUE OF Self-denial Flesh Spirit Flesh WHat become Nothing ne're perswade me to it God made me Something and I 'le not undo it Spirit Thy Something is not thine but his that gave it Resign it to him if thou mean to save it Flesh God gave me Life and shall I choose to die Before my time or pine in miserie Spirit God is thy Life If then thou fearest death Let him be all thy soul thy pulse and breath Flesh What! must I hate my self when as my brother Must love me d I may not hate another Spirit Loath what is loathsom Love God in the rest He truly love's himself that love 's God best Flesh Doth God our ease and pleasure to us grudge Or doth Religion make a man a drudge Spirit That is thy Poyson which thou callest Pleasure And that thy drudgery which thou count'st thy treasure lFesh Who can eudure to be thus mewed up And under Laws for every bit and cup Spirit Gods Cage is better than the Wilderness When Winter comes Liberty brings distress Flesh Pleasure 's mans Happiness The Will 's not free To choose our misery This cannot be Spirit God is mans End with him are highest joyes Sensual pleasures are but dreams and toyes Should sin seem sweet Is Satan turn'd thy friend Will not thy sweet prove bitter in the end Hast thou found sweeter pleasures than Gods Love Is a fools laughter like the joyes above Beauty surpasseth all deceitful paints What 's empty mirth to the delights of Saints God would not have thee have less joy but more And therefore shew's thee the eternal store Flesh Who can love baseness poverty and want And under pining sickness be content Spirit He that hath laid his treasure up above And plac'd his portion only in Gods love That waits for Glory when his life is done This man will be content with God alone Flesh What good will sorrow do us Is not mirth Fitter to warm a cold heart here on earth Troubles will come whether we will or no I 'le never banish pleasure and choose wo. Spirit Then choose not sin touch not forbidden things Taste not the sweet that endless sorrow brings If thou love pleasure take in God thy fill Look not for lasting joyes in doing ill Flesh Affliction 's bitter life will soon be done Pleasure shall be my part ere all be gone Spirit Prosperity is barren all men say The soyl is best where there 's the deepest way Life is for work and not to spend in play Now sow thy seed labour while it is day The Huntsman seeks his game in barren plains Dirty land answers best the Plowmans pains Passengers care not so the way be fair Husbandmen would have the best ground and air First think what 's safe and fruitful There 's no pleasure Like the beholding of thy chiefest treasure Flesh Nature made me a man and gave me sonse Changing of Nature is a vain pretense It taught me to love women honour ease And every thing that doth my senses please Spirit Nature hath made thee Rational and Reason Must rule the sense in ends degrees and season Reason's the Rider sense is but the Horse Which then is fittest to direct thy course Give up the reins and thou becom'st a beast Thy fall at death will sadly end thy feast Flesh Religion is a dull and heavy thing Whereas a merry cup will make me sing Love's entertainments warm both heart and brain And wind my fancy to the highest strain Spirit Cupid hath stuck a feather in thy cap And lull'd thee dead asleep on Venus's lap Thy brains are tipled with some wantons eyes Thy Reason is become Lust's sacrifice Playing a game at Folly thou hast lost Thy wit and soul and winnest to thy cost Thy soul now in a filthy channel lies While fancy seems to sore above the skies Beauty will soon be stinking loathsome earth Sickness and death mar all the wantons mirth It is not all the pleasure thou canst find Will contervail the sting that 's left behind Blind brutish souls that cannot love their God! And yet can dote on a defiled clod Flesh Why should I think of what will be to morrow An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow Spirit But where 's that mirth when sorrows overtake thee Will it then hold when life and God forsake thee Forgetting Death or Hell will not prevent it Now lose thy day thou 'lt then too late repent it Flesh Must I be pain'd and wronged and not feel As if my heart were made of flint or steel Spirit Dost thou delight to feel thy hurt and smart Would not an Antidote preserve thy heart Impatience is but Self-tormenting folly Patience is cordial easie sweet and holy Is not that better which turns grief to peace Than that which doth thy misery encrease Flesh When sport and wine and beauty do invite Who is it whom such baits will not incite Spirit He that perceives the look and sees the end Whither it is that
A TREATISE OF Self-Denial By Richard Baxter Pastor of the Church at Kederminster Phil. 2. 20 21. I have no man like minded who will naturally care for your estate For all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons at the Princes Arms in Saint Pauls Church-yard 1675. A PREMONITION Concerning this Second Edition READER I Take the Love of God and Self-denial to be the sum of all saving Grace and Religion the first of the Positive part the second of the Oppositive or Negative part And I judge of the measure of my own and all other mens true piety by these two And it is the rarity of these two which assureth me of the rarity of sincere Godliness O how much selfishness and how little Love of God are too often found among those contenders for supposed true Doctrine true Worship true Discipline and the true Church who can say that their Zeal for these things doth eat up themselves their Charity their Peaceableness and their Brethren The same men that will not abate an opinion a formality a singularity for the Churches Peace and Concord or for the interest of Love and the healing of our wounds will as hardly abate a jot of their Wealth their worldly honour their carnal interest or selfish wills which shews that their zeal and seeming Orthodoxness and wisdom as in them is not from above but from beneath Jam. 3. 15 16 17. O that men knew what hearts-ease self-denial bringeth by mortifying all that corrupteth and troubleth the souls of sinners And if that part of Religion which seemeth hardest harshest be so sweet what is our Love and Delight in God but the foretaste of Heaven it self But the soul is seldom fit to relish this Doctrine aright till some special providence or conviction have made all the world notoriously insufficient for our relief But he that in or after sharp affliction will still be selfish in a predominant degree is next to hopeless I remember that one accounted of eminent wisdom a little before he forsook the Land of his Nativity made this the first word that ever he spake to me I thank you especially for your Book of Self-denial And when we are going out of the world we shall all be much fitter to relish and understand the Doctrine of Self-denial than now we are But though undeniable reason thus presented by the grace of God do much cure some particular souls yet alas the World the most of the Church visible the Land is so far uncured as that selfishness still triumpheth over our innocency piety and peace and seemeth to deride our hopes of remedy Were Profession as rare as true Self-denial I should be of their mind who reduce the Church into a much narrower room than either the Roman the National the Presbyterian or Independent Alas how few are those true Believers whose inordinate SELF-LOVE SELF-CONCEITEDNESS SELF-WILL and SELF-SEEKING are truly conquered by FAITH and turned into the LOVE of GOD as GOD and of the PUBLICK GOOD and of their NEIGHBOUR as themselves and into a HUMBLED UNDERSTANDING conscious of its Ignorance and into a humbled submissive WILL which is more disposed to follow than to lead and to obey than to be Imperious and domineer and into a LIFE entirely devoted to God and to the Common good But this complaint was made before But what we most feel we are most inclined to â—…r and to press that on others which we find most necessary to our selves And I must say that of all the Books which I have written I peruse none so often for the use of my own soul in its daily work as my Life of Faith and this of Self-denial and the last part of the Saints Rest One little thing I will here tell the Reader that no Book of mine except the two first had ever the word Dedicatory joyned to the Epistle by my consent but I have very oft prohibited it in vain whether by the oblivion or self-conceit of the Booksellers or the Printers I cannot tell Not that I condemn the word in others but that my Epistles were still of so different an importance as did require a different Title R. B. To the Honourable Colonel JAMES BERRY c. SIR PRovidence having deprived me of the opportunity of nearer converse with you which heretofore I have enjoyed yet leaving me the same affections they work towards you as they can and have chosen here to speak to you in the hearing of the world that my words may remain to the ends intended when a private Letter may be burnt or cast aside Flattery I am confident you expect not from me because you know me and know me to be your friend And yet my late Monitor hath made many smile by accusing me of that fawning crime I am told what it is to bless my friend with a loud voice Prov. 27. 14. I have learnt my self that Open rebuke is better than secret love and that faithful are the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful Prov. 27 5 6. And therefore I shall do as I would be done by Faithfulness and Usefulness shall be the measure of my message to you And they have commanded me to set before you this lesson of Self-denial and earnestly to intreat you and again intreat you that you will faithfully Read and Learn and Practise it Though I judged you have learnt it long ago I think it not needless to mind you of it again my soul being astonished to see the power of Selfishness in the world even in those that by Confessions and Prayers and high Professions have frequently condemned it Yet this is the Radical-mortal sin Where this lives all sins virtually lives Say that a man is Selfish and in that measure you say all that is naught of him as to his inclination That Selfishness is the summe of Vice and the Capital enemy of God of Common-wealths of Order and Government of all Grace and Vertue of every holy Ordinance and Duty especially of Unity and Brotherly Love and of the welfare of our neighbours and of our own salvation I have manifested to you in the following Discourse But alas what need we words to manifest it when the flames of discord and long-continued divisions among Brethren do manifest it When hatred strife variance emulation backbiting violence rebellions bloodshed resisting and pulling down of Governments have so lamentably declared it When such havock is made by it before our eyes and the evil spirit goes on and prospereth and desolation is zealously and studiously carried on and the voice of Peace-makers is despised or drowned in the confused noise Presumptuous are they self-willed they have not been afraid to speak evil of dignities 2 Pet. 2. 10. To speak evil was that the height of presumption and self-willedness then Alas how much further hath it proceeded now even under the Cloak of Liberty and
If selfish interest led them not to this and if they were more tender of the Interest of Christ than of their own and of mens souls than of their flesh it would not be thus But the same argument that tempts the sensual to Hell doth tempt such Magistrates to set up Liberty for drawing men to Hell The wicked sell their souls to spare their flesh and let go Heaven to enjoy the Liberty of sinning and run into Hell to scape the trouble of an holy life And such Magistrates sell the peoples souls to spare the flesh of the deceivers and in tenderness and mercy to their bodies they dare not restrain men from seeking their damnation Is faith and holiness propagated by perswasion and not by force Surely then Infidelity Popery and Ungodliness are propagated by perswasion too Again I tell you self-self-love doth make such Rulers wiser than to grant Commission or Liberty to all that will to tice their souldiers to mutinies or rebellion their wives to Adultery their children to prodigality or their servants to thievery But the love of Christ and mens salvation is not so strong as to satisfie them whether men should be hindred from raising mutinies in his Church and from destroying souls Forsooth they tell us that Christ is sufficient to look to his own cause Very true and they shall one day know it But must he not therefore teach or rule by men Is not Adultery Murder Theft Rebellion against the Cause of Christ and his Laws as well as Popery and Infidelity And must they therefore be let alone by man Christ is sufficient to Teach the world as well as to Govern But doth it follow that men must be no Teachers under him Nothing but selfishness could cause this blindness And because I know that this stream proceeds from the Roman spring and it is their great design to perswade the world that it belongs not to Magistrates to meddle with Religion but only to cherish them that the Pope approveth of and to punish those whom the Pope condemns and that Christ must Govern and judge of matters of Religion himself that is by his pretended Roman Vicechrist I shall only now say this that if Rome were acquainted with self-denial and if the selfish carnal interest of Riches and Rule and worldly greatness had not blinded them they could never have believed themselves that Christ did appoint the Pope of Rome to be his Universal Vicar and that Princes and Magistrates in their own Dominions have not more Power to judge who is to be tolerated or punished by the sword than the Pope of Rome when no Priest or Prelate upon earth as such hath any thing to do with such a judgement no not in the places where they live All that they have to do herein is to judge who is the Heretick or offendor in order to his censure and excommunication But it's Magistrates only that must judge who is the Heretick or effendor in order to corporal punishment or restraint And this I undertake to make good against all the Papists in the world much more that the Roman Tyrant hath no such Power at the Antipodes and in all the Christian Nations on earth Remember in all this that I speak not against a Toleration of Godly tolerable men Episcopal Presbyterian Independent Anabaptist c. that will walk in Charity Peace and Concord ☞ we shall never be well till these are closed But do we not know that Papists have Italy and Spain and Germany and France at hand to help them And that if we grant them such a liberty as shall strengthen them and make way for their power we give away our own liberty and are preparing faggots for our martyrdom and giving away the Gospel that by wonders of mercy hath been till now preserved and I hope shall be preserved in despite of Rome and Hell Nor yet do I plead for any cruelty against a Papist but for a necessary Defence of the interest of Christ and the souls of men and the hopes of our posterity True Humanity abhorreth cruelty Did Magistrates well know their dependence upon God and that they are his officers and must make him their end they would not take their flocks to be their masters though they may take them for their charge nor would they set up a carnal interest of the multitude against the pleasing of God and mens salvation nor would they think so highly of mens conceits and wills as to judge it a matter of so much moment to allow them in Religion to say or do what they list If allowing a mans self in the practice of Known sin is inconsistent with a state of grace and a sign of a miserable slave of Satan I leave it to you to consider what it will prove to allow others even Countries and Nations in Known sin And if Rulers know not that setting up an Universal Vice-christ and worshipping bread though they think there is no bread with Divine worshp and serving God in an unknown tongue with other points of Popery are sin and that opposing and reproaching the holy Scriptures Ordinances and Ministry are sin wo to such Rulers and wo to the Nations that are Ruled by such O what a blessing is a holy self-denying Magistracy to a Nation If one could have told you twenty years ago that you and such as you should be Rulers in this Land how confidently would you have promised an universal encouragement to godliness and a vigorous promoting the cause of Christ and a zealous suppressing of all that is against it Little would you or I have thought that after Professors of godliness were in power so many years should have been spent in destroying Charity and Unity and cherishing almost all that will stand up for the Devil and plead his cause against the Doctrine and Discipline and Worship and Churches and Officers of Jesus Christ And that in their dayes it should have been put to the Question whether the Ministry it self should be taken down And that men in power should write for Liberty for all that will call it self Religion even Popery not excepted nor I think Infidelity or Mahumetism it self and that those that write so should be men in Power My heart would have risen against him as an odious calumniator that should have presumed to tell me that such men as have attempted this would ever have come to such a pass and I should have encountred them with Hazaels question Are they dogs that they should do so vile a thing and exercise such cruelty on souls and seek to bring back the people of God to the Romish vomit and set up the greatest tyranny on earth and all under pretence of a Religious Liberty But alas it is not Magistrates only that are so wanting in self-denial Ministers also are guilty of this crime Or else we should not have been so forward to divisions and so backward to the cure nor would men of this profession for
that use it not for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. And when the soul of the worldly fool is required of him then whose shall all their Dignities and Honours and Riches be In the mean time God judgeth not by outward appearance as man judgeth nor honoureth any for being honoured of men Solus honor merito qui datur ille datur These Truths well known to you I thought meet here to set before your eyes not knowing whether I shall any more converse with you in the flesh and also to desire you seriously to read over these popular Sermons perswaded to the Press by the importunity of some faithful Brethren that love a mean Discourse on so necessary a subject Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation I rest Your Friend Richard Baxter Sept 12. 1659. THE PRFFACE Readers I Here present to your serious consideration a Subject of such Necessity and Consequence that the Peace and safety of Churches Nations Families and souls do lie upon it The Eternal God was the Beginning and the End the Interest the attractive the confidence the desire the delight the All of man in his upright uncorrupted State Though the Creator planted in mans Nature the principle of Natural Self-love as the spring of his endeavours for Self-preservation and a notable part of the engine by which he governeth the world yet were the parts subservient to the Whole and the whole to God And Self-love did subserve the Love of the Universe and of God and man desired his own Preservation for these higher Ends. When sia stept in it broke this order and taking advantage from the natural innocent principle of Self-love it turned man from the Love of God and much abated his Love to his neighbour and the publick good and turned him to Himself by an inordinate self-love which terminateth in himself and principally in his Carnal-self instead of God and the Common good so that Self is become All to Corrupted nature as God was All to Nature in its integrity Selfishness is the souls Idolatry and Adultery the sum of its Original and increased Pravity the Beginning and End the life and strength of actual sin even as the Love of God is the Rectitude and Fidelity of the soul and the sum of all our special Grace and the Heart of the new Creature and the life and strength of actual holiness Selfishness in one word expresseth all our Aversion Positively as the want of the Love of God expresseth it Privatively and all our sin is summarily in these two Even as all our Holiness is summarily in the Love of God and in self-denial It is the work of the Holy Ghost by sanctifying grace to bring off the soul again from Self to God Self-denial therefore is half the essence of Sanctification No man hath any more Holiness than he hath Self-denial And therefore the Law which the Sanctifying Spirit writeth on the heart doth set up God in the first Table and our neighbour in the second against the usurpation and encroachment of this Self It saith nothing of Love or Duty to our selves as such expresly In seeking the Honour and Pleasing of God and the Good of our neighbour we shall most certainly find our own Felicity which nature teacheth us to desire So that all the Law is Fulfilled in Love which includeth Self-denial as Light includeth the expulsion of darkness oâ— rather as Loyalty includeth a Cessation of Rebellion and a rejection of the Leaders of it and as conjugal fidelity includeth the rejection of Harlots The very meaning of the first Commandment is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. which is the sum of the first Table and the Commandment that animateth all the rest The very meaning of the last Commandment is Thou shalt Love thy neighbour as thy self which is the summary of the second Table and in General forbiddeth all particular injuries to others not enumerated in the fore-going precepts and secondarily animateth the four antecedent precepts The fifth Commandment looking to both Tables and conjoyning them commandeth us to Honour our Superiours in Authority both as they are the Officers of God and so paticipatively Divine and as they are the Heads of humane Societies and our subjection necessary to Common good so that self-denial is principally required in the first Commandment that is The denying of self as opposite to God and his Interest And self-denial is required in the Last Commandment that is The denying of self as it is an enemy to our neighbours Right and welfare and would draw from him unto our selves self-Self-love and self-seeking as opposite to our neighbours good is the thing forbidden in that Commandment and Charity or Loving our neighbour as our selves and desiring his Welfare as our own is the thing commanded Self-denial is required in the fifth Commandment in a double respect according to the double respect of the Commandment 1. In respect to God whose Governing Authority is exercised by Governours their Power being a beam of his Majesty the fifth Commandment requireth us to deny our selves by due subjection and by honouring our Superiours that is to deny our own aspiring desires and our refractory minds and disobedient self-willedness and to take heed that we suffer not within us any proud or rebellious dispositions or thoughts that would lift us up above our Rulers or exempt us from subjection to them 2. In respect to humane Societies for whose Good Authority and Government is appointed the fifth Commandment obligeth us to deny our Private interest and in all competitions to prefer the publick good and maketh a promise of temporal peace and welfare in a special manner to those that in obedience to this Law do prefer the Honour of Government and the Publick Peace and welfare before their Own Thus Charity as opposed to selfishness and including self-denial is the very sum and fulfilling of the Law And selfishness is the radical comprehensive sin containing uncharitableness which breaks it all And as the Law so also the Redeemer in his Example and his Doctrine doth teach us and that more plainly and urgently this lesson of self-denial The life of Christ is the pattern which the Church must labour to imitate And Love and self-denial were the summary of his life Though yet he had no sinful self to deny but only natural self He denyed himself in avoiding sin but we must deny our selves in returning from it He loved not his Life in comparison of his love to his Father and to his Church He appeared without desirable form or comeliness He was despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief he bore our griefs and carryed our sorrows and was esteemed stricken smitten of God and afflicted he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of
us all He was oppressed and afflicted yet he opened not his mouth he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her sheerers is dumb so he opened not his mouth He was taken from prison and from judgement he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people was he stricken It pleased the Lord to bruise him he put him to grief Isa 53. What was his whole life but the exercise of Love and self-denial He denyed himself in Love to his Father obeying him to the death and pleasing him in all things He denyed himself in Love to mankind in bearing our transgressions and redeeâ—ing us from the curse by being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. He made himself of no reputation and tock upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Phil. 2. 6 7 8. And this he did to teach us by his example to deny our selves to be like minded having the same love being of one accord of one mind that nothing be done through strife or vain-glory but in lowliness of mind that each esteem others better than themselves Looking not every man after his own matters but every man also after the things of others and thus the same mind should be in us that was in Christ Jesus Phil. 2. 3 4. 5. He denyed himself also in obedient submission to Governours He was subject to Joseph and Mary Luke 2. 51. He paid tribute to Caesar and wrought a Miracle for money rather than it should be unpaid Matth. 17. 24 25 26. He disowned a personal worldly Kingdom Joh. 18. 36. when the people would have made him a King he avoided it Joh. 6. 15. as being not a Receiver but a giver of Kingdoms He would not so much as once play the part of a Judge or divider of inheritances teaching men that they must be justly made such before they do the work of Magistrates Luke 12. 14. And his Spirit in his Apostles teacheth us the same Doctrine Rom. 13. 1 Pet. 2. 13 14 15 16 17. Eph. 6. 1 5. And they seconded his example by their own that we might be followers of them as they were of Christ What else was the life of holy Paul and the rest of the Apostles but a constant exercise of Love and Self-denial Labouring and travelling night and day enduring the basest usage from the world and undergoing indignities and manifold sufferings from unthankful men that they might please the Lord and edifie and save the souls of men and living in poverty that they might help the world to the everlasting riches In a word as Love is the fulfilling of the whole Law as to the positive part so is selfishness the evil that stands in contrariety thereto even self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking and thus far self-denial is the sum of our obedience as to the terminus à quo and Christ hath peremptorily determined in his Gospel that If any man will come after him he must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow him and that whosoever will put in a reserve but for the saving of his Life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for his sake shall find it Matth. 16. 24 25. And that he that doth not follow him bearing his Cross and that forsaketh not all he hath for him cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 27 33. According to the nature of these holy rules examples is the nature of theworkings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul He usually beginneth in shewing manhis sin and misery his utter insufficiency to help himself his alienation from God and enmity to him his blindness and deadness his emptiness and nothingness and then he brings him from himself to Christ and sheweth him his fulness and sufficiency and by Christ he cometh to the Father and God doth receive his own again It is one half of the work of Sanctification to cast ourSelves from our Understandings our Wills our Affections and our Conversations to subdue self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking to mortifie our carnal wisdom and our Pride and our concupiscence and our earthly members And the other and chiefest part consisteth in setting up God where self did rule that his Wisdom may be our Guide his Will our Law his Goodness the chiefest object of our Love and his service the work business of our lives The Spirit doth convince us that we are not our Own and have no power at all to dispose of our selves or any thing we have but under God as he commands us It convinceth us that God is our Owner and absolute Lord and that as we are wholly his so we must be wholly devoted to him and prefer his interest before our own and have no interest of our own but what is his as derived from him and subservient to him Fear doth begin this work of self-denial but it 's Love that brings us up to sincerity The first state of corrupted man is a state of selfishness and servitude to his own Concupiscence where pride and sensuality bear rule and have no more resistance than now and then some frightening uneffectual check When God is calling men out of this corrupted selfish state he usually or oft at least doth cast them into a state of Fear awakening them to see their lost condition and terrifying them by the Belief of his Threatnings and the sense of his indignation and making use of their Self-love to cause them to fly from the wrath to come and to cry out to the messengers of Christ What shall we do to be saved Some by these Fears are but troubled and restrained a little while and quickly overcoming them settle again in their selfish sensual senseless state some have the beginnings of holy Love conjunct with Fear of whom more anon And some do from this principle of Self-love alone betake themselves to a kind of Religious course and forsake the practise of those grosser sins that bred their Fears and fall upon the practise of Religious duties and also with some kind of faith do trust on the satisfaction and merits of Christ that by this means they may get some hopes that they shall escape the everlasting misery which they fear All this Religion that is animated by Fear alone without the Love of God and Holiness is but preparatory to a state of grace and if men rest here it is but a state of Hypocrisie or self-deceiving religiousness For it is still the old Principle of selfishness that reigns Till Love hath brought man up to God he hath no higher end than Himself The true mark by which these slavish professors and hypocrites may discern themselves is this They do the Good which they would not do and the evil which they do not they would do
They had rather live a sinful life if they durst and they had rather be excused from Religious duties except that little outward part which custom and their credit engage them to perform They are but like the caged birds that though they may sing in a Sun-shine day had rather be at liberty in the woâ—ds They love not a life of perfect holiness though they are forced to submit to some kind oâ— Religiousness for fear of being damned If they had their freest choice they had rather live in the Love of the creature than in the love of God and in the pleasures of the fleâ—h than in the holy course that pleaseth God The third state is the state of Love and none but this is a state of true Self-denial and of Justification and Salvation When we reach to this we are sincere we have then the Spirit of Adoption disposing us to go to God as to a Father But this Love is not in the same degree in all the sanctified Three degrees of it we may distinctly observe 1. Oft-times in the beginning of a true Conversion though the seed of Love is cast into the soul and the Convert had rather enjoy God than the world and had rather live in perfect holiness than in any sin yet Fear is so active that he scarce observeth the workings of the Love of God within him He is so taken up with the sense of sin and misery that he hath little sense of love to God and perhaps may doubt whether he hath any or none 2. When these Fears begin a little to abate and the soul hath attained somewhat of the sense of Gods Love to it self it Loveth him more observably and hath some leisure to think of the riches of his grace and of his Infinite excellencies and attractive goodness and not only to Love him because he Loveth us and hath been Merciful to us but also because he is Goodness it self and we were made to Love him But yet in this middle degree of Love the soul is much more frequently and sensibly exercised in minding it self than God and in studying its own preservation than the honour an interest of the Lord. In this state it is that Christians are almost all upon the inquiry after marks of Grace in themselves and asking How shall I know that I have this or that grace and that I perform this or that duty in sincerity and that I am reconciled to God and shall be saved Which are needful questions but should not be more insisted on than questions about our duty and the Interest of Christ In this state though a Christian hath the Love of God yet having much of his ancient Fears and Self-love and the Love of God being yet too weak he is much more in studying his Safety than his Duty and asketh oftner How may I be sure that I am a true believer than What is the duty of a true believer There is yet too much of Self in his Religion 3. In the third degree of Love to God the soul is ordinarily and observably carryed quite above it self to God and mindeth more the Will and Interest of God than its own Consolation or Salvation Not that we must at any time lay by the care of our Salvation as if it were a thing that did not belong to us or that we should separate the ordinate Love of our selves from the Love of God or set his Glory and our Salvation in an opposition But the Love of God in this Degree is sensibly predominant and we refer even our own Salvation to his Interest and Will In this Degree a Christian is grown more deeply sensible he is not his own but his that made him and redeemed him and that his principal study must not be for himself but for God and that his own interest is in it self an inconsiderable thing in comparison of the interest of the Lord and that Rewarding us with Consolation is Gods part and loving and serving him is ours assisted by his grace and that the diligent study and practice of our duty and the lively exercise of Love to God is the surest way to our Consolation In our first corrupt estate we are careless of our souls and are taken up with earthly cares In our estate of Preparation we are careful for our souls but meerly from the principle of Self-love In our first Degree of the state of saving grace we have the Love of God in us but it 's little observed by reason of the passionate fears and cares of our own salvation that most take us up In our second degree of holy Love we look more sensibly after God for himself but so that we are yet most sensibly minding the Interest of our own souls and enquiring after assurance of salvation In our third Degree of saving grace we still continue the care of our salvation and an ordinate self-love but we are sensible that the Happiness of Many even of Church and Common-wealth and the Glory of God and the accomplishment of his Will is incomparably more excellent and desirable than our own felicity And therefore we set our selves to please the Lord and study what is acceptable to him and how we may do him all the service that possibly we can being confident that he will look to our felicity while we look to our duty and that we cannot be miserable while we are wholly his and devoted to his service We are now more in the exercise of Grace when before we were more in trying whether we have it Before we were wont to say O that I were sure that I love God in sincerity Now we are more in these desires O that I could know and love him more and serve him better that I knew more of his holy will and could more fully accomplish it and O that I were more serviceable to him and O that I could see the full prosperity of his Church and the glory of his Kingdom This high degree of the Love of God doth cause us to take our selves as Nothing and God as All and as before conversion we were careless of our souls through ignorance presumption or security and after conversion were careful of our souls through the power of convincing awakening grace so now we have somewhat above our souls much more our bodies to mind and care for so that though still we must examine and observe our selves and that for our selves yet more for God than for our selves When we are mindful of God he will not be unmindful of us When it is our care to please him the rest of our care we may cast on him who hath promised to care for us Even when we suffer according to his will we may commit the keeping of our souls to him in well doing as to a faithful Creator 1 Pet. 4. 19 And it is not possible in this more excellent way 1 Cor. 12. 31 to be guilty of a careless neglect of our
according as their self-interest commandeth them more than according to the Interest of Christ Let a man be never so eminent in holiness and never so useful and serviceable in the Church and one that hath proved faithful in the greatest tryals if he do but oppose a selfish man and be thought by him to be against him he hateth him at the heart or hath as base contemptuous thoughts of him as malice can suggest He can as easily nullifie all his graces and multiply his smallest infirmities into a swarm of crimes by a censorious mind and a slanderous tongue as if vertue and vice received their form and denominations from the respect of mens minds and waies to him and all men were so far good or evil as they please him or displease him and he expects that others should esteem men such as he is pleased to describe or call them Let all the Countrey be the witnesses of a mans upright and holy life yea let the multitude of the ungodly themselves be convinced of it so far as that their consciences are forced to bear witness of him as Herod did of John Mark 6. 20. that he was a just man and an holy yet can the selfish hypocrite that is against him blot out his uprightness with a word and make him to be Proud or False or Covetous or what his malice please yea make him an Hypocrite as he is indeed himself No man can be good in their eyes that is against them or if he be acknowledged honest in the main it is mixt with exceptions and charges enough to make him seem vile while they confess him honest and if they acknowledge him a man they will withal describe him to be so plaguy or leprous that he shall be thought not fit for humane converse Such a man is an honest man say they but he is a peevish humorous self-conceited fellow And why so Because he is against some opinion or interest of theirs He is proud because he presumeth to dissent from them or reprehend them He raileth every time he openeth their errours or telleth them of their mis-doings He is a Lyar if he do but contradict them and discover their sins though it be with words of truth and soberness In a word no person no speeches or writings no actions can be just that are against a selfish man In differences at Law his cause is good because it is his and his adversaries is alwaies bad because it is against him In publick differences the side that he is on that is for him is alwaies right let it be never so wrong in the eyes of all impartial men The cause is good that he is for which is alway that which seems for him though it be undoubted Treason and perfidious Rebellion accompanied with perjury murder and oppression And the cause must be alwaies bad that is against him and they are the Traytors and Rebels and Oppressors that resist him His own murders are honourable Victories and other mens Victories are cruel and barbarous murders All is naught that is against themselves They are Affected to men according to their self-interest they judge of them and their actions according as they do Affect them they speak of them and deal by them according to this corrupted judgement But as for any that they imagine do Love and Honour them they can Love them and speak tenderly of them be they what they will A little grace or vertue in them seemeth much And their parts seem excellent that indeed are mean If they drop into Perjury Fornication Treason or such like scandalous sins they have alwayes a mantle of Love to cover them or if they blame them a little they are easily reconciled and quickly receive them to their former honour If they have any thing like Grace it 's easily believed to be Grace indeed if they be but on their side If they have nothing like Grace they can Love them for their good natures but indeed it is for themselves When this self-love describeth any person when it writeth Histories or Controversies about any cause or person that they are concerned in how little credit do they deserve Whence is it else that we have such contrary descriptions of Persons and Actions in the writings of the several Parties as we find How holy and temperate and exceedingly industrious a man was Calvin if the whole multitude of sober godly men that knew him may be credited or if we may believe his most constant intimate acquaintance or if we may judge by his judicious pious numerous writings And yet if the Papists may be believed contrary to the witness of a Popish City where he was bred he was a stigmatized Sodomite he was a glutton that eat but once a day and that sparingly he was an idle fleshly man that preached usually every day and wrote so many excellent Volumes and he dyed blaspheming and calling on the Devil that is in longing and praying for his remove to Christ crying daily How long lord how long and how comes all this inhumane forgery about Why one lying Pelagian Apostate Bolsecke wrote it whom Calvin had shamed for his errours and a peevish Lutheran Schlusselburgius hath related part of it from him and this is sufficient warrant for the Papists ordinarily to perswade their followers it is true and with seared Consciences to publish it in their writings though Massonius and some other of the soberer sort among themselves do â—â—ame them for the forgery So do they by Luther Beza and many more Among our selves here how certainly and commonly is it known to all impartial men acquainted with them that the persons nick-named Puritans in England have been for the most part a people fearing God and studying an holy life and of an upright conversation so that the impartial did bear them witness that in the scorners mouth a Puritan was one that was Integervitae scelerisque purus and this was the reason of their suffered-scorn and that the name was the Devils common engine in this Land to shame people from reading and hearing Sermons and praying and avoiding the common sins and seriously seeking their salvation A Puritan was one that Believeth unfeignedly that God is and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 12. 6. that strives to enter in at the strait gate and lives as men that believe that Heaven is worth their labour and that Gods Kingdom and its Righteousness should be first sought Mat. 6. 33. And yet if Fitz Simon and other Jesuits and Bishop Bancroft Dr. P. Heylin Mr. Tho. Pierce and other such among us are to be believed what an abominable odious sort of people are they and especially the Presbyterians who are the greatest part of them what intolerable hypocritical bloody men And what 's the reason of these accusations Much is pretended but the sum of all is that they were in some things against the Opinions or Interests of the persons that abuse
them the Jesuits know that they were averse from their Doctrines and Practices The rest are angry because some of them would be excused from two or three Ceremonies and from Vowing Obedience to the Ceremony-makers Yea many of their accusers think themselves injured if not oppressed and persecuted as long as they are with-held from silencing ejecting or persecuting these that would fain serve God according to his Word as the sufficient Rule and have nothing imposed on them in matter of worship but Necessary things according to the Apostles decree Acts 15. 28. By all this judge how rare self-denial is when the Interest of mens own Opinions Persons or Parties can cause such unchristian dealing from self-esteeming-professors and Preachers of the Gospel Selfishness is the greatest Lyar and Slanderer and the most malicious Calumniator in the world 4. Observe but how light most make of their own sins and how easily they aggravate the sins of others and how light they make of the good that is in others in comparison of that which is in themselves or those that are of their side and judge by this of their self-denial Judah would have judged Thâ—â—ar hardly but he was not so severe against himself David pronounceth very peremptorily the sentence 〈…〉 against the offendor till he heard from Nâ—than Thou art the man How hard is it to convince a selfishâ—…e â—…e of any sin that will admit of an excuse or cloak All the Town can see the Pride of some the covetousness of others the unpeaceable unchristian behaviour of others and yet themselves that should most observe it and best discern iâ— perceive it not nor will by any means be brought to see it No Minister can put them down when they are justifying themselves nor make them humbly and heartily confess that they have sinned But God will ere long convince them irresistibly and teach their tongues another kind of language Let the case of another come before them and how readily will they adjudge him to penitent confession reparation restitution and through-reformation But the case is altered when it becomes their own Such incompetent Judges are these selfish hypocrites 5. Observe but how casily men fall out with one another and how hardly they are reconciled and how much ado any peace-maker shall have to end the difference and observe also whether all the quarrel be not about some selfish interest and judge by this of their selfdenial When do they so fall out with men for wronging God or the Gospel or their own souls as they do for wronging them And if a Minister that can bear an injury against himself do faithfully rebuke them that deal injuriously against Christ and against the Church and the souls of men especially if they be Great men in the world that are reproved it 's strange to see how self makes them storm though they have read what a mark of Rebellion and prognostick of misery it was even in Kings to reject the reproofs of the Messengers of the Lord much more to hate or persecute the reprover 6. Observe also how forward many are unreasonably to exalt their own understandings above those that are far wiser than themselves and judge by this of their self-denial Though their Brethren or Teachers have studyed and prayed and sought after knowledge ten times or twenty times more than they and have as faithfully obeyed according to their knowledge and indeed be incomparably beyond them in understanding yet how commonly shall you meet with unstudied unexperienced Novices notably described 1 Tim. 3. 6. 6. 4. of undigested notions and green and raw apprehensions that are so puft up with a little smattering seeming knowledge that they despise both Ministers and people that be not of their mind and vilifie them as a sort of ignorant deluded men And do they indeed excell us in knowledge as much as they pretend O that they did that so we might see the Church furnished with wiser better Teachers and might our selves have the priviledge of being their hearers and of being better instructed by them But how evident is it to all that have eyes that it is in Pride and not in Knowledge that they excell and that all this comes from the Dominion of Self and that they speak evil of the things they know not Jude 10. 7. Observe also how far men are carryed by the fond over-valuing of their own opinions against all Reason and former promises and against all bonds to God and man and then judge of their self-denial If once they feel a new apprehension it tickleth them with delight as being an elevation of their understandings above other mens and as Parents are fond of their children because they are their own so are the Proud through the corruption of their minds as fond of an Opinion which they can call their Own if there be any thing of singularity in it to make them seem persons of more than ordinary understanding And when they are once possessed of it how partially do they indulge it How light do they make of the strongest arguments that are brought against it How contemptuously do they think and speak of the persons the judgements the writings the reasonings of any that are against them Nay usually they will not be perswaded so much as once to read the writings that contradict them Or if they do it is with so much prejudice and partiality that they have in their minds confuted them before they read or understand them and instead of considering the weight of arguments and comparing faithfully cause with cause they only study what to say against their adversary for so they account those that would cross or confute their opinions Nay observe but what a change a new opinion makes upon them in reference to their former friends How strange do they look at them that cannot follow them in their fancies Though before they were their bosom friends yet without any change in themselves they have lost their interest in these changelings And though before they honoured and praised them yet all 's changed when they themselves are changed and their friends must seem to have lost their wits or honesty or never to have had any as soon as themselves have lost their humility and charity How much am I able to say of this from sad experience of the change of many of my antient friends Some of them are changed to a reproaching of the Scripture Church and Ministry and Ordinances and to a denying of the Christian Faith and these I have lost for they have lost themselves And indeed these have constrained me to withdraw from them my antient Love of complacency though I have a Love of compassion to them still Others are secretly ensnared by the Papists and these I have lost though they seem to bear me some respect Others are changed to opinions which they think meet to Hide and these look strange at me especially since I wrote against these Hiders Others are
of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
them yea or that would not step out of their way for it and wound their Consciences and hazard all their hopes of Heaven for it if they found themselves in a likelyhood of obtaining it because where self doth raign at home it would raign also over all others Nothing more pleaseth the Carnal mind than to have his will and to have all men do what he would have them and to see all at his beck and each man seeking to know his Pleasure ready to receive his word for Law This is the reign of self But sanctification teaching men self-denyal doth make them look fist at the Doing of Gods will and would have all the world obedient to that and for their own wills they resign them absolutely to Gods and would not have men obey them but in a due subordination to the Lord. As they affect no Dominion or Government but for God so they desire not men to obey their wills any further than it is necessary to the obedience of Gods will to which they are serviceable and conform The self-denying sanctified man hath as careful an eye up and down the world for Gods interest as the self-seeker hath for his own And as eagerly doth he long to hear of the setting up of the Name and Kingdom and Will or Laws of God in the world as the ambitious man longs for the setting up of his own And it as much rejoyceth the holy self-denying man to hear that Gods Laws are set up and obeyed and that the world doth stoop to Jesus Christ as it would rejoyce the Carnal selfish wretch to be the Lord and Master of all himself and his will become the Law of the world An Holy self-denying man would be far gladder to hear that Africa America and the rest of the unbelieving part of the world were Converted to Christ by the power of the Gospel and that the Heathens were his inheritance and the Kingdoms of the world become the Kingdoms of Christ than if he had Conquered all these himself and were become the King or Emperour of the world For as self is the chief interest of an unsanctified man so Christ and the will of God is the chief Interest of the sanctified for the hath destroyed the contradictory Interest of self and renounced it and hath taken God for his End and Christ for the Way and consequently for his highest Interest so that he hath now no business in the world but Gods business he hath no honour to regard but Gods honour he hath none to exalt but the King of Kings he knows no gain but the pleasing of God he knows no content or pleasure but Gods pleasure for the life that he now lives in the flesh he lives by faith of the Son of God that hath loved him and given himself for him and thereby hath drawn him out of himself to the Fountain and End of Love and so it is not he that lives but Christ liveth in him Gal. 2. 20. 10. Lastly it is the high Prerogative of God to have the honour and Power and Glory ascribed to him and be praised as the author of all Good to the world and his Glory he will not give to another Man and all things are Created and preserved and ordered for his Glory Nor shall man have any Glory but in the Glorifying of his Lord when we fell short of Glorifying the Lord we also fell short of the Glory which we expected by him But when sin turned man from God to himself he became regardless of the honour of God and his mind was bent on his own Honour so that he would have every knee bow to himself and every eye observe him and every mind think highly of him and every tongue to praise and magnifie him It doth him good at the heart to have vertue and wisdom and greatness ascribed to him and an excellency in all and to have all the good that is done ascribed to him and to be taken to be as the Sun in the firmament that all must eye and none can live without and to be esteemed the benefactor of all When he hears that men extol him and speak nothing of him but well and great things and when he sees them all observe and reverence him and take him as an Oracle for wisdom or as an Angel of God O how this pleaseth his unsanctified selfish mind Now he hath his End even that which he would have and verily saith Christ they have their reward But when Sanctification hath taught men to deny themselves they see then that they are vile and miserable sinners and loath themselves for all their abominations and are base in their own eyes and humble themselves before the Lord and abhor themselves in dust and ashes and say To us belongeth shame and confusion of face Not unto us O Lord not unto us but to thy Name give the glory Psal 115. 1. Dan. 9. 7 8. The holy self-denying soul desireth no glory and honour but what may conduce to the glory and honour of his Lord His heart riseth against base flattering worldlings that would rob God and give the honour to him nor can they do him a greater displeasure than to ascribe that to him belongeth only to God or to bring to him or any Creature his Makers due If God be honoured he takes himself as honoured if he be never so low If God be dishonoured he is troubled and his own honour will not make him reparation As he liveth himself to the glory of God and doth all that he doth in the world to that end so would he have others do so too And if God be most honoured by his disgrace and shame he can submit And thus I have shewed you the true Nature both of selfishness and of self-denyal But observe that I describe it as it is in it self but yet there is too much selfishness in the best which may hinder the fulness of these effects But self-denyal is predominant in all the sanctified though it be not perfect CHAP. II. Reasons of the Necessity of Self-denyal to salvation III. ANd now you have seen the Description of self-denyal and I hope if you have studyed it you know what it is that is required I shall next shew you some of the Reasons of its Necessity and prove it to you beyond dispute that it is no indifferent thing nor the high attainment of some few of the Saints but a thing that all must have that will be saved being of the very essence of holiness it self so that it is as possible to live without life as to be Holy without self-denyal and as possible to be saved whether God will or no as to be saved without self-denyal in a predominant degree And if any of you thing strange that salvation should be laid on so high a duty and that no man can be a true Disciple that denyeth not himself even to the forsaking of his Life and all when God requireth it
How shall he cloath you with his righteousness while self keeps on your own defiled rotten rags Down therefore with self that Christ may be exalted Away with your own conceited righteousness that he may be your righteousness down with your Selfish foolish wisdom that the supposed foolishness of God may be your wisdom Level this mountain which Satan hath built up in enmity against the holy mountain of the Lord. 5. Moreover Self must be denyed as it is the great resister of the Holy Ghost The sanctifying spirit hath no greater enemy at least except the Devil himself One half of the work of sanctification is to destroy this Carnal self And therefore no wonder if hence it find the chief resistance Not an holy motion can be made to the soul but self is against it No work hath the spirit to do upon us but self is ready to gainsay it and contradict it and work against it when ever therefore this mortal Principle is contending against the spirit of God dishonouring holiness disswading you from duty perswading you to sin down with it and deny it as you would be true to the spirit and your selves 6. Moreover self must be denyed as it traiterously complyeth with the enemies of Christ and your own salvation when it takes part with Satan and pleads for sin and saith as wicked men say and entreth a conspiracy with all that would undo you and all this under pretence of your own good When ever it speaks for sin you may be sure it speaks against God and you and therefore it 's reason you should deny it Self also must be denied when it riseth up against the supposed tediousness or difficulty of duty when it grudgeth at an holy life saith What a stir is here what a weary life is this what do I get by serving God Now self is playing the traitor against God and you and therefore deny it 7. Moreover when self doth rise up against sufferings and make you believe that they are intolerable and that it is unreasonable for a man to forsake all that he hath for fear of a sinful word or deed when we sin every day when we have done our best it 's time now to stop the mouth of self for it plays the Devils game against God and you and would perswade you to prefer a short uncertain miserable life before eternal life and to give up your self to wilful sin because God beareth with the sins of mens infirmity It 's reason that you should deny so unreasonable an enemy to God you 8. Moreover self must be denyed when it stands up against the Ordinances of God When it pleadeth against the arguments of the word and findeth fault with the Law that it should obey and quarrelleth with prayer and all holy duties and would make all instituted means uneffectual for your saving good it 's time now that you deny it 9. When self doth rise up against the Officers of Christ and would make you believe your teachers fools and you are wise that they are beside the truth and you are in the right or that they speak against you out of malice or singularity or some such distemper and so would deprive you of the saving benefit of their Doctrine and Office it 's time now to deny self if you know but what belongeth to your peace And though I grant that you must not follow a Teacher into a certain sin and error yet when it is not God but self that riseth up against your Teachers and possesseth you with a spirit of bitterness disobedience contradiction and malignity this self must be denyed 10. Lastly as self is against the good of our neighbour or humane Societies it must be denyed For we must love our Neighbour as our selves that is both self and neighbour must be loved in a due subordination to God as means to his Glory and in this notion of a means the Love should be equal though there is also a Natural Love in order to self-preservation put into us by the Creator which our Love to every Neighbour is not to equal in degree yet our love to Societies should exceed it and our Love to a Neighbour should come so near it that we should diligere proximum proxima delictione love him as a second self and so study his welfare as to promote it to our power and not to covet or draw from him for our selves nor do him any wrong This is the sense of the tenth Commandement and sum of the second Table CHAP. XIII 1. Selfish Dispositions must be denyed and 1. Self-love HAving seen in what respects and upon what accounts it is that self must be denyed I am next to tell you the particulars of that selfish interest that must be denyed and the parts that are contained in this needful work And here you must remember what saving faith is that seeing how self opposeth it you may know wherein it must be denyed Saving faith is such a Belief in Christ for Reconciliation with God and the everlasting fruition of him in Glory as makes us for sake all the things of this world and give up our selves to the conduct of the word and spirit for the obtaining of it When a man can strip himself of all the pleasures and profits and honours of this world first in his estimation and love and resolution and then in the actual forsaking of them at the Call of God because of the firm belief and hope that he hath of the fruition of God in Glory as purchased and promised by Jesus Christ this is a Christian a Disciple of Christ a true believer and none but this And as I have told you as God in Unity and Father Son and Holy Ghost in Trinity is the Object of our saving faith so Carnal Self in unity and Pleasure Profits and Honours in trinity must be renounced and denied by all true Christians as being that which we turn from when we turn to God So that in brief to deny your selves doth generally consist in denying all your own Dispositions and Interests whatsoever as they are against God the Father Son or Spirit or stand not in a due subserviency to him And this Interest which you must deny consisteth in your Pleasures Profits and Honour Of these therefore I shall speak distinctly though but briefly I. You must begin at the denial and mortification of your Corrupt and selfish Disposition or else you can never well deny your selfish interest It is not enough to keep under this selfishness by denying it somewhat that it would have but the selfish Inclination or Nature it self must be so far mortified and destroyed that it shall not reign as formerly it did For this which we call selfishness is not your very Persons nor any spiritual or right natural desire of your owngood But it is the inordinate adhering of the soul to your selves by departing from God to whom you should adhere and so a carrying over Gods
interest and honour to your selves Holiness is an Inclination and Dedication to God by which two we are said to be separated to him And wickedness is an Inclination and Addictedness or Devotedness to our selves above God or as separated from God And this Inclination Disposition or Separation of man to Himself instead of God is it that I call self or selfishness and this self must it self be first destroyed as to the predominant degree And therefore let us First observe wherein this selfish Disposition doth consist which must be destroyed and then Secondly wherein the selfish Interest doth consist that must be denied And first the selfish Disposition consisteth in these several parts that follow 1. The principal part of it consisteth in an inordinate Self-love This is a corruption so deep in the heart of man that it may be called his very Natural Inclination which therefore lieth at the bottom below all his Actual sins whatsoever and must be changed into a New Nature which principally consists in the Love of God This is Original sin it self even in the heart of it This speaks what man by Nature is even an inordinate self-lover And as he is so he will act In this all other vice in the world is virtually contained even as all grace is in the Love of God which made the Schoolmen say that Love is the Form of all Grace not as they are this or that Grace in particular not of Faith as Faith nor of Hope as Hope but of Faith Hope c. as vital or gracious acts because the respect to the End is essential to the means as a means and therefore the respect to God as the End is Essential to Faith Hope c. as a means to him and therefore that Grace of Love which is terminated on the End must have an essential participation concurrence or influence on those that are directly terminated on the Way or Means and must convey somewhat of its very essence to them and so far as they partake of that essence of Love so far are they indeed those special Graces which carry the soul to God its End And in this sence we may allow the distinction between Fides Spes c. formata charitate which is true Christian Faith and Hope and Fides Spes c. informis which is but an opinion and dream And so it is in the body of sin When self-self-love doth reign it is the Heart of wickedness And though every sin hath its own specifick nature yet all are virtually in self-love and are so far mortal or prove men graceless as they are informed by the essential Communication of self-love For self being the End informeth all the means as they respect it I say the more to you of this because indeed it is a weighty truth for the right understanding of the true nature of Grace and sin and I doubt many are in the dark for want of understanding considering it A man that feareth and Loveth God and an unsanctified man may be both overtaken with the same sin perhaps a gross one as Noahs and Davids and Peters was and yet this may be a mortal sin in the ungodly I mean such as proves him in a state of death and yet not so in the gracious person The wicked will deride this in their ignorance as if we made God partial but it 's no such matter The Papists cannot endure it but suppose Peter David and Noah were quite without the Love of God and so were again unsanctified men but this is their error It was not from the Power of reigning self-love and the Habitual absence of the Love of God that these men or any Saints did sin but from a particular act of mortified self-love by a surprize upon the neglect of the actual exercise of the Love of God But all the sins of unsanctified men or at least their common sins are from the Habitual reign of self-love and the Habitual absence of the Love of God And therefore the sins of the Saints are as the Schoolmen speak of the graces of the ungodly unformed they be not Mortal sins in the sense aforesaid because they be not naturalized informed animated by the malignity and venom of the Mortal End and Principle which is Habitual reigning self-love But those of the wicked are sins informed by this inordinate self-love as an habitual reigning sin and therefore being animated by its malignity are mortal Yet say not that this makes God partial and not to hate the same sin in one as he doth in another For two things must be taken in 1. Where the heart is sanctified such sins are strangers perhaps one Godly man of ten or twenty may be guilty of one of them as Noah was of drunkenness once in all his life since his conversion For it will not stand with grace to live in them For such as a mans Love and Inclination and nature is such will be the drift of his Life And would not you have God make a difference between those that sin once and those that live in it 2. Besides will not any honest man make a great difference of the same acts according as they come from different hearts you will not take a passionate word from a Father Husband or Wife so ill as the same word from a malicious enemy If an unthrifty Son should spend you twenty shillings wastfully you will not prosecute him as you would do a thief or an enemy that takes it from you violently Wilful murder and casual man-slaughter have not the same punishment by the Law of the Land If you will make such a difference your selves of the same words or deeds as they come from different meanings and affections quarrel not with God for doing that which you confess is just and necessary to be done 1. The Faculty where this Disposition is principally seated is the Will which in man is the Heart of Morality whether Good or Evil. And the Principal Act is an Inordinate Adhesion of man to himself and Complacency in himself And this is the inordinate self-love that must be first mortified 2. The next faculty that self hath corrupted is the Understanding and here we first meet with the sin of self-esteem which is the second part of selfishness to be mortified It is not more natural for man to be sinful vile and miserable than to think himself vertuous worthy and honourable All men naturally over-value themselves and would have all others also over-value them This is the sin of Pride But of this I must speak by it self CHAP. XIV Self-conceitedness must be denied 3. THe next part of selfishness to be mortified is in the same faculty and it is called self-conceitedness And it consisteth of two parts the first is a Disposition to selfish opinions or conceits that are properly our own and the second is to think better of those conceits than they do deserve Naturally men are prone to spin themselves a web of
deluded souls that they do amiss but they say What harm is there in cards or dice or hunting or bowling or such like rerceations How shall we live without recreation Answ But is there no harm in needless flesh-pleasing and in the loss of precious time to men that are ready to step into eternity O that ever men should make such a question Sppose your recreations were the lawfullest in the world in their own nature Can there be a greater villany than to set your hearts on them and make a God of them and cast away pretious hours on them in using them needlesly Recreations are your physick or your sauce therefore must not become your food nor made a meal of They are only as whetting to the mower which must never be used but when there 's need To spend half the day in needless whetting deserves no wages O did you know but what your work and time and what 's before you you would be better husbands and then you might so contrive your business as to lose no time in recreation For either your calling puts you on the labour of the mind as Students or of the body as labouring men If study be your calling you need no exercise of recreation but for your bodies for variety of studies is the best or sufficient for the mind And two hours walking is bodily recreation enough in a day for almost any student that is in a capacity to labour And if you be labouring men or your calling lie in bodily motion then you need no recreation for your bodies besides your Callings but only for your mind And if you love God and his Word what better Recreation for your minds can you devise than thinking of the Love of God in Christ and meditating on the Law of God Psal 1. 2. and calling upon him and rejoycing in his praises and the Communion of his Saints Is not a day in his Courts better than a thousand any where else The Spirit of God by David said so Psal 84. 10. But alas it is this unmortified flesh and tyrannizing sensuality that blindeth you that you cannot see the truth or else all this would be as plain to you as the high way CHAP. XXIV Vain Company to he denied 7. ANother sensual vice to be denied is A love to vain ungodly Company This is a sin that I think none but utterly graceless men are much carried away with For the Godly are all taught of God to love one another 1 Thes 4. 9. and to delight in the Saints as the most excellent on Earth Psal 16. 2 3. and to take pleasure in their communion and to look on the ungodly with a differencing belief as fore-seeing their everlasting misery if they return not so that it is the ungodly that I have now to speak to Some fall in love with the company of good fellows as they call them and some love the company of harlots some of gamesters and most of merry pleasant companions and men that are of their own disposition and the love of such company ticeth them to the frequent committing of the sin They would not go to gaming but for company They would not go to the Alehouse but for company and when they are there perhaps they will swear and drink and mock at godliness for company But are you willing also to go to hell for company Is the company of those sinners better than the company of God and his favour were it not better to be that while with him in prayer or about his work If you love a tipling fellow better than God speak out and say so plainly and never dissemble any more nor say that you love God above all or that you are Christians Have you more delight in the Company of them that would entice to sin than in the Company of the godly that would draw you from it This is a most certain mark that yet you are the children of the Devil and in a state of damnation It is not possible for a sanctified child of God to do so See the description of the man that shall be saved in Psal 15. vers 4. In his eyes a vile person is contemned but he honoureth them that fear the Lord Birds of a feather will flock together The company which you love shews what courses you love and what you are You delight in the company of those that Christ will judge as his enemies and how then will he judge of you You delight most in the company of those notorious fools that know not the plainest and needfullest things in all the world that know not that God is better than the world and holiness than sin and know not the way of their own salvation If you are content to have the company of the ungodly for ever you may take it here But if you would not dwell in hell with them do not go on in sin with them O when you shall see those very men arrested by death and haled at the bar of God and cast into damnation then you will have no mind of their company Then O that you could but say that you were none of them Like a man that is enticed by thieves to joyn with them but when the hue and cry overtakes them and they are apprehended how glad would he be then to be from among them I tell you sinners if grace recover you you shall wish in the sorrow of your hearts that you had never seen the faces of those men that enticed you to evil but if grace do not recover you you shall wish ten thousand times in Hell that you had never seen their faces but then your wishes will be in vain In the name of God bethink your selves whether your companions can bear you out at last and save you from the wrath of God and warrant your Salvation Nay whether they can save themselves Alas you know they cannot God saith If you live after the flesh ye shall die Rom. 8. 13. and if these men say as the Devil to Eve you shall not die are they able think you to make it good What can they overcome the God of heaven O Sirs away as you love your souls from such mad and miserable company as this CHAP. XXV Pleasing Accommodations Buildings Gardens Horses c. 8. ANother sensual delight to be denied is Pleasing accommodations in Buildings Rooms Walks Gardens Grounds Cattle and such like It 's lawful to be thus accommodated and lawful to desire and use such accommodations with such cautions as I gave before about recreations 1. If you do not with Ahab desire to be accommodated by that which is another mans coveting your neighbours possessions or unlawfully procuring it 2. If you be not at too much cost upon such things expending that upon them that should be laid out on greater and better things 3. But especially if you desire such accommodations for right ends sincerely referring all to Gods honour and desiring them
not principally to please your own fancy and carnal mind but for the enabling you the better and more chearfully to serve God Nothing but God may be loved for it self When the Pleasing of the flesh and fancy is the utmost thing we look at in any of our desires they are wicked and idolatrous Our houses therefore must be fitted to Necessary uses and not to inordinate delights Our Gardens Orchards Walks and such like must be first suited to Necessity and then to so much Delight as is useful to us for the promoting of our holiness but not to any useless tempting Delight But worldlings and sensual persons will not be tied to these Christian Rules Alas it 's the furthest matter from their minds to make Heaven the End of all their earthly possessions and accommodations They may hypocritically talk of God and of serving him by their estates but really it is the pleasing of a fleshly mind that is the thing which they intend They have more delight in their houses and gardens and lands and cattle than in God and the hopes of life everlasting They desire fair houses that they may be thought to be no mean persons in the world and that they may please their humours that run after creatures for felicity and content I would desire such men to consider these things 1. All these are but the baits of Satan to delight you and entangle your desires and find you work in seeking after them while you neglect far greater matters Can you have while to look so much after superfluities and delights in the world when you have Necessaries yet to look after for your souls Have you not greater things to mind than these which these occasion you to neglect 2. Do you really find that they conduce to your main end even to make you more holy or more serviceable to God Nay do not your own Consciences tell you that they hinder you and cross those ends And yet will go against your experience 3. If you are humble conscionable Christians you feel cause enough already to lament that your love to God and delight in him is no more And yet are you preparing snares for your souls to steal away that little remnant of your affections which you seemed to reserve for God 4. If you have any spark of Grace in you you know that the flesh and the world are your dangerous enemies and you know that the way that the world doth undo men is by ticing them to over-value it over-love it that those that love it most are deepest in a state of condemnation and the less men love it the less they are hurt or endangered by it And do you not know that you are liker to over-love a sumptuous house with gardens orchards and such accommodations than a mean habitation Why should you be such enemies to your own salvation as to make temptations for your selves Have you not temptations enough already Do you deal with those you have so well and overcome them so easily and so constantly as that you have reason to desire more If Christ your General send you upon a hotter service you may go on with courage and expect his help But if you will so glory in your own strength as to run into the hotter battle and call for more and stronger enemies it 's easie to conjecture how you will come off If you are Christians know your selves you know that in the meanest state you are too prone to over-love the world and that under all Gods medicinal afflictions you cannot be so weaned from it as you ought Are you not daily constrained to groan and complain to God under the burden of too much Love of the world and too much delight in worldly things If this be not your case I see not how you can have any sincerity of saving grace And if it be your case will you be so sottiâ—â— and hypocritical as to complain daily to God of your sin in the mean time to love and cherish it to groan under your disease and wilfully eat and drink that which you know doth increase it What will you think of a man that will pray to God to save him from uncleanness and yet will dwell no where but in a Brothel-house What do you better that must needs have the world in the loveliest garb and must needs have house and grounds and all things in that plight as are fittest to entice the heart and then will complain to God that you over-love the world and love him too little To your shame you may speak it when you do it so willfully and cherish the sin which you thus complain of If God call you into a state of fulness and temptations watch the more narrowly over your affections and your practices and use no more of the creatures for your self if you have ten thousand pound a year than if you had but an hundred but do not seek and long for temptations With not for danger unless you were better able to pass through it 4. Remember when your fancies desire such things not only that it is an enemy that desireth them and to please your enemy is not safe for you but also that it 's the way that most have perished by to have the world before them in too pleasing and lovely a condition Remember Nebuchadnezzar's case Dan. 4. 30. that for glorying in his pompous buildings was turned as a mad man among the Beasts Remember the rich mans sad example Luke 12. 20. 16. and think whether it be safe to imitate them If men must perish for loving the creature more than God methinks you should long most for that condition in which the creature appeareth least lovely or is least likely to steal your love from God and in which you may love him and enjoy him most 5. And bethink you how unsuitable it is to your condition to desire sumptuous buildings and enticing accommodations to your flesh Have you not taken God for your portion and Heaven for your home and are you not strangers and pilgrims here and is not God and everlasting glory sufficient for you You profess all this if you profess to be Christians and if you be not you should not profess that you are And what do you begin to repent of your choice must you yet turn to the pomp and vanity of the world again and will you quit your hopes of God and glory Ah poor souls what little need have you of such great matters on earth you have but a little to do with them and but a little while to stay with them and will not a mean habitation and shorter accommodations serve you for so short a time Stay but a while and your souls shall have house-room enough in heaven or hell and a narrow grave of seven foot long will serve your bodies till the resurrection And cannot you make shift with an ordinary habitation and with small common things till then
of so many thousands as Prosperity hath undone and by so many dreadful Passages of Scripture which shew the danger of it and see that if you prosper in any worldly thing you offer it all to God and Deny your selves and prosper not to the flesh CHAP. XXIX Children and Relations how to be denied 12. ANother selfish interest is in friends and children and other near and dear Relations and this is also to be denied Not that you should imitate those unnatural Hereticks that tell us that Fathers and Mothers and Brethren and Sisters and Husbands Princes Wives and Subjects are all Carnal Relations that must be disowned any further than Justice binds us to a retribution to parents or others that have been at pains or cost upon us No this is worse than heathenish impiety and not only against the fifth Commandment but abundance of the plainest passages through the Scripture To be without natural affection and disobedient to parents is part of the Character of those impious professors of whom Paul prophesied 2 Tim. 3. 2 3. If Christian servants have Heathens to their Masters they must not therefore cast off the yoak but count them worthy of all honour that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed And if they have believing Masters they must not despise them because they are brethren but the rather do them service because they are faithful This is the doctrine of the Gospel which stablisheth and not dissolveth our Relations and if any teach otherwise he is proud knowing nothing but doating about questions and strifes of words 1 Tim. 6. 1 2 3 4. Believing wives must stay even with unbelieving husbands and win them to Christ by an eminent subjection chastity modesty and piety 1 Pet. 3. 1 2 3 4 6. 1 Cor. 7. 13 14. And the like may be said of other relations God calls us not as Popish votaries conceive to renounce and separate from our natural or other near relations on pretence of being devoted to him The words of Paul 2 Cor. 5. 16. are abused by them It 's true we must know no man after the flesh no not Christ himself that is as esteeming them principally for carnal excellencies as personage greatness birth c. or to carnal advantages and ends or preferring the body and common relations before the inward spiritual worth and spiritual relations And thus we must not know either parents or children or husbands or wives after the flesh nor should a Christian know or do any thing after the flesh as a Carnal man but yet as we still continue our Relation to Christ as his Disciples and Servants and Members and Redeemed ones for all that we know him not after the flesh so must we continue our Relations to others and be faithful in the duties of those Relations and this after the Spirit and for God So that by this you may see that it is our Relations carnally considered that are the fleshly interest which we must not know that is As they are look'd upon as any part of that self or of the Interest of that self which would be its own End and God and which is opposite to God or not subordinate to him To look upon your children more as yours than as God's is a carnal selfish thought To love them inordinately and more because they are your own than because they are Gods and to love your own interest in your children more than Gods interest in them is a selfish regarding them after the flesh Grace doth not destroy nature nor natural Relations or affections but it sanctifieth them all to God and carrieth us above it and destroyeth it as glorious intuition destroyeth gracious knowing in part that is by perfecting it Before Sanctification we know esteem regard and love our parents children husbands wives meerly as thus related to us and in these Carnal respects and rise no higher and if we had converst with Christ himself and eat and drank in his presence and loved him accordingly it would have been but by a selfish carnal knowledge esteem and love But now we are sanctified as God is exalted and self denied and annihilated as opposed or separated from God so are all things that belong to self And therefore if we had loved parents or Christ himself but with such a carnal selfish love before yet now we love them with higher love that carrieth self and all to God And thus even self is so destroyed as opposite to God and separate from him as thereby to be exalted as united and subservient to him And so is the love of friends Relations or Christ himself if we had loved him as a natural Kinsman or brother as some did that yet believed not in him it 's destroyed but by an exalting perfecting destruction Just so far as self is dead so far Carnal knowledge and self-interest in friends is dead and their dearness to us for that interest and self and they are all advanced and dedicated unto God And thus it is that the Apostle would be understood and thus it is that self must be denied in your Relations but because much duty consisteth herein I shall moreover tell you the several parts of it in a few Directions which shall mostly extend to other Relations but principally to parents because they are aptest to exceed 1. See that it be God more than your selves that you love in your Children and other Relations And to that End see what of God is in them as they are his creatures as devoted to him as any way gifted by him for his service and as sanctified if they are such He that loveth any creature for it self and doth not principally love God in them loveth them but carnally 2. See therefore that you value and love those most that have most of God in them and the best of his endowments Love a crooked deformed child that is Godly better than the most comely or beautiful or witty that is ungodly When Parents have a humorous unreasonable love to one child above the rest without desert or to a worse before a better this is but a carnal selfish Love 3. Love none excessively but with a moderate love such as shall allow God and holiness the preheminence so that when you have the most love for your Relations you may have more for God at least in the Estimation Resolution Adhesion of your souls to him if not in the passionate part of Love 4. See that you subject them to the Government of Christ Labour to win all other relations to him and devote your children to him betimes that they may be his as soon as yours Whiles they have no wills of their own to use they are to choose with your wills that is you are to make choice for them And therefore if you unfeignedly Dedicate them to God you have small reason to doubt of his acceptance This all parents do virtually that are Godly For he that is himself devoted
thy course and judge at last whether the friend that thou didst chuse or that thou didst neglect and abuse was the better and would have stood thee in more stead in thy deepest exâ—remities Christ hath resolved you once for all that he that loveth Father or Mother more than him is not worthy of him and cannot be his Disciple Nay if he hate not Father Mother and all that is If he will not cast them all away and forsake them as men do hated things rather than forsake Christ and the glory which he hath promised Luke 14. 26. 33. And therefore seeing Christ hath thought meet to instance in the forsaking of carnal friends for his sake as a duty of all that will be his Disciples you may see that this is a very considerable part of your self-denial And doubtless it is a point that Christians are usually put to the tryal in or else Christ would not have instanced in it Few turn to Christ but their carnal friends will turn from them No greater enemies to a man in the matters of his salvation except carnal self than carnal friends and therefore either God or they must be denied For when God is for holiness and they against it when they are for sinful pleasures and gain and God against it both cannot be pleased and therefore one of them must be denied God or they CHAP. XXX Revengeful passions to be denied 13. ANother part of self-denial consisteth in the denying of Revengeful Passions that provoke us against those that have done us wrong or that we judge to be our enemies It is the common saying of such persons as are disposed to this sin that Revenge is sweet it easeth the minds of malicious persons to have their will upon their adversaries and to see them at their feet Nothing of all his honours and prosperity could satisfie â—aman till he was revenged of Mordecai As a burning fâ—stering â—oâ—l or apâ—steme is eased by opening and vent so is a boiling paâ—â—ionate mind when by railing speeches or revengeful actions it venteth it self against them that they hate But in this also self must be denied by all that will be Christs Disciples for he forgiveth none but those that can heartily forgive another And that we may know that this is a part of self-denial of great necessity he hath put it into our prayers and will not have us so much as ask for forgiveness our selves if we cannot forgive that we may know that seeing it is not to be asked for on lower terms it is not to be hoped for The forgiving grace of God in Christ doth so melt and overcome the hearts of all true Christians that it disposeth them in their measure to imitate him in forgiving And they cannot find in their heart to take another by the throat for an hundred pence when their Lord hath forgiven them ten thousand talents Mat. 18. 24. 28. The grace that is most gloriously manifested in the Gospel must needs make the deepest imprestion on the soul and consequently conform the soul into its image and doubtless this is love and compassion and forgiving mercy and therefore he that cannot love his enemy bless them that curse him and pray for them that hate and persecute him and return good for evil can be no child of God Mat. 5. 44 45 46. It is an inhumane oblivion of our own condition for a man to seek revenge of another for a trifle for it can be no greater as it is against such simple worms as we when so many and hainous sins have been forgiven us Doth God remit to us the everlasting torments and shall we inflict on another the venom of our private spleen I know the furious Bedlams and malicious wretches do take all this but for unsatisfactory talk it is not words that will serve their turns to repair their honour and ease their devilish rancorous minds Flesh and blood say they cannot endure it Answ And therefore flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God nor corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 50. Grace can do more than flesh and blood and if you cannot forgive you cannot be forgiven If it be so hard to you to sorbear yea to love an enemy it shall be as hard for you to be saved and escape the portion of the enemies of God and if the word of Gods command be but wind with you the word of his promise shall be as uneffectual to your salvation as the word of his precept and perswasion was uneffectual to your conversion and obedience As God is Love so his sanctified ones are turned into Love Love is their new nature and Love is not of a Revengeful disposition Love is the Divine Nature in us and malice provoking to Revenge is the Devilish nature And a believer is more afraid of the anger of God than to take his sword of Revenge out of his hand He hath learn'd 1 Pet. 2. 21 23. 1 Thes 4. 6. Rom. 12. 19. Avenge not your selves but give place to wrath vengeance is mine and I will repay saith the Lord. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good CHAP. XXXI New Vain Histories and other Mens Matters c. 14. ANother piece of Carnal pleasure to be denied is the Delight men have in reading unprofitable Histories and hearing News that do not concern us and medling with other mens matters where we have no Call With some fancies this is a notable part of carnal delight Many School-boys and young effeminate wits are as much poysoned and carried away with reading Romances feigned histories and tale-books and play-books as by almost any piece of sensuality O the precious hours that have been lost upon this trash and trumpery but of this I spoke before that which now I speak is even true History and Reports as matter of meer News to please a busie ranging mind History is a very profitable study if it be used for right ends and be rightly chosen It 's a very great help to understand the Scriptures and to know the former and present state of the Church and see the wonderful works of providence that otherwise would be as lost to us It is not fit that the wondrous works of God should die with those that have seen them and not be transmitted to posterity God should have the honour of his glorious works from generation to genetion and how shall that be if all be forgotten He that knoweth nothing of any age but that which he lives in is as fooli as he that knows nothing of any Country or Town but that which he lives in Some History is essential to our faith and much more is integral to it yet much more is very serviceable to it He that hath not some competent acquaintance with Church-History will be at great disadvantages in the holding and defending his â—aith it self against an Infidel or the purity of Religion against a Papist And he that knoweth not the present
Heresies and Church-divisions as any Sensualist hath in his way And hence it is that a zeal for selfish opinions is easily got and easily maintained when zeal for the saving truths of God is hardly kindled and hardly kept alive Yea multitudes in the world do make the very truth to be the matter of their carnal interest in it while they some way get a seeming peculiar interest and promote it but as an opinion of their own or of their party and use it for selfish carnal ends And hence it is that many that are called Orthodox can easily get and keep a burning zeal for their Orthodox opinions when Practical Christians do find it a very hard matter to be zealous for the same truths in a Practical way Many ungodly men will be hot in Disputing for the truth and crying down all that are against it and perhaps so far exceed their bounds that the godly dare not follow them And the reason is clear Whether it be Truth or Error that a man holds if he hold it but as a conceit of his Own or as the opinion of his party or to be noted in the world as one that hath found out more truth than others or any way make it but the matter of his selfish interest nature and corruption will furnish him with a zeal for it It 's easie to go where sin and Satan drives and to be zelous where zeal hath so small resistance and to swim down the stream of corrupted nature But it is not so easie to be zealous in the practical saving entertainment of the truth and exercising that faith and love to God and holy obedience which truth is sent to work in us A schismatical or Opinionative use of truth it self is but an using it for self against the God of truth and it is no more wonder to see men zealous in this than to see men forward and hot in any evil We cannot tell how to quench or restrain this selfish carnal kind of zeal But when men should use the truth for God and their salvation against Satan and sin and self then it 's hard to make them zealous They are like green wood or wet fuel on the fire that will not burn without much blowing and soon goeth out when it seemed to be kindled if once you leave it to it self Paul spoke not non-sense when he said For ye are yet Carnal for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men For while one saith I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo are ye not Carnal 1 Cor. 3. 3 4 5. How secretly soever it may lurk there is doubtless much of self and flesh in Heresies and unjust Divisions I know that most of them little perceive it James and John in their zeal which would have called for fire from heaven did not know what spirit they were of But God would not have spoke it if it were not true Rom. 16. 17. Now I beseech you brethren mark them which cause Divisions and offences contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Though they little believe that that there is any such wickedness in them as this yet the Spirit of God that is the searcher of hearts is acquainted with it and assureth us that both at the bottom and the End Church-dividing courses have a carnal selfish nature It is some secret interest of self though scarce discerned that kindleth the zeal and carrieth on the work It is not God that is served by the divisions of his Church Many Sects now among us do put a face of Truth and Zeal upon their cause But self is the more dangerously powerful with them by how much the less suspected or observed The Papists under the pretence of the Churches Union are the great dividers of the Christian world unchurching the far greatest part of the Church and separating from all that be not Subjects of the Pope of Rome And do you think it is self and flesh that is the Principle and Life and End of this their Schism were it not for the upholding of this usurped power and worldly immunities and greatness of the Clergy it is morally impossible that so many men of reason and learning could concur in such a schism and in so many gross conceits as go along with it It is not the Pope that they are principally united in For the far greatest part of them it it too evident that it is selfish and fleshly interest that is their Center to which the Pope is but a means Hence it is that many of their Jesuits and Fryars are carried abroad the world with such a fire of zeal to promote their cause that they will compass sea and land for it and day and night are busie at the work to plot and contrive and insinuate and deceive and think no cost or pains too great For a selfish sinful zeal and diligence hath so many friends and so little hindrance that it 's easily maintained but so is not the healing peaceable practical and holy zeal of true believers Well! Consider what I say to you from the Word of the Lord There is a selfish dividing Zeal in Religion which must be denied as well as whoredom or drunkenness If you ask me how it 's known Briefly now I shallonly tell you this much of it 1. That it is usually for either an Error or a particular Truth against the interest and advantage of the body of unquestionable Christian verities They can let Religion suffer by it so their opinion do but thrive 2. It is usually for an Opinion by reason of some special endearment or interest of their own in it 3. They cry up that opinion with a zeal and diligence much exceeding that which they bestow upon other opinions of equal weight and lay a greater stress upon it than any shew of reason will allow them 4. They usually are zealous for a party and division against the Unity of the Catholick Church 5. Their Zeal is most commonly turned against the faithful Pastors of the Church For it 's hard to keep in with schism and with faithful Pastors too And if the Ministers will not own their sin and error they will disown the Ministers The Anabaptists and other Sects of late would never have been so much against Christ's Ministers if the Ministers had not been against their way 6. Their course doth in the conclusion bring down Religion and hinder the thriving of the Gospel and of Godliness Mark what is the issue of most of those ways that these men are so hot for Doth it go better or worse with the Church and cause of Christ in general where they are than it did before Is Religion in more strength and beauty and life and honour or doth real
some of them are no liberties but fancies or miseries the rest of them are no further to be valued than they are subservient to the Kingdom of Christ and the good of souls Conceited people call it their liberty to be governed rather by four hundred than by one or by Popularity than by other forms of Government and a great stir they make about this as if their felicity did consist in it When as the true liberty of a Commonwealth consisteth in the fullest conformity of their Laws and their execution to the will of God in being free from all Laws or Passions of men that encourage iniquity and are against the Gospel or the common good and peace and welfare of the body In a word to have Government best fitted to the ends of Government which is such a temporal safety and prosperity as most conduceth to the service and honour of God But the species of Government is none of this liberty in it self considered A people may be at much more liberty under a pious Monarch than an impious or unskilful Democracy The free choice of the most when they are bad as where is it better may enslave the best and the awe and interest of the Rich is commonly such upon the people that a free choice is somewhat strange And that sort of Government may be fittest for One people that is unfit for another And their happiness lieth not in the species of Government let them stretch their wits to invent new forms as long as they will but in the Predominancy of God and his Interest in the hearts of the Governors and in their Laws their Officers and Execution This is it and nothing but this in Government that will give the Commonwealth that desirable liberty in which their welfare doth consist And therefore those persons are Enemies to the Liberty of their Country that under that Name would advance such kind of Popular interest as is plainly against the interest of Christ and must have Magistrates and Ministers restrained from doing the Work of the Omnipotent Soveraign the one from punishing sin if it be against the first Table or come but under the name of conscience and the other from exercising Church-discipline and all under pretence of the Peoples Liberties All these are carnal Liberties to be Denied CHAP. XXXV Our Native Country and Habitations denied 18. ANother part of Carnal self-interest to be denied is Our Native Country or place of habitation with all the Comforts and Accommodations they afford us It is lawful to have some special Love to our own Country but not such as shall prevail against the love of Christ or seem sufficient to entangle us in sin We must shew our Love to it principally by desiring and endeavouring that Gods name may be hallowed and his Kingdom maintained and his will fulfilled among and by our Countrymen But if they should turn enemies to the Gospel or to Godliness we must love the servants of God abroad much better than his enemies at home and wish the success of his servants though of other Countries against his enemies though they were of our own And if we cannot serve God or enjoy the freedom of a good conscience at home another Nation though it were in the utmost parts of the Earth where we may better serve God must seem a better place to us And if we be banished or necessitated to forsake our Country we must not stick at it for the cause of Christ It is none of the greatest tryals to be put to remove from one Country to another as long as we have necessaries where-ever we come We have the same God to be with us and take care of us beyond sea as at home the same earth and air and sun to shine upon us The same Spirit and grace and promises do accompany us The same Saints of God and Ordinances of Worship may be had in other Countries as our own It 's a kind of childishness to make such a matter of being driven out of one Kingdom into another when we have the same or greater mercies in the other All is but our Fathers house and we do but remove from room to room The Earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof As I said before of Imprisonment so I say of Banishment It is in our own Wills by consenting to it to make it no banishment If you will make an affliction and a great matter of it you may A Merchant or Factor can live for his commodity far from home even among Turks and Infidels and take it for no banishment Much more should you do so for the sake of Christ Every place is our own Country where our Masters work lieth We are but pilgrims and as long as we are not out of our way we need not complain much for being out of our Country Indeed we are here but strangers and this is not our Country and therefore let us not overlove it upon a mistake The Apostles of Christ did purposely leave their Countreys and travel about the Countreys of the World to bring them the Doctrine of salvation by Christ And is it not better be walking Lights to illuminate the world than Candles shut up within the walls of our own habitation Heb. 11. 8 9 19. By faith Abraham when he was called to go into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance obeyed and he went out not knowing whither he went By faith he sojourned in the Land of promise as in a strange Country dwelling in Tahernacles for he looked for a City which had foundations whose builder and maker is God ver 13 14 15 16. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a Country And truly if they had been mindful of that Country from whence they came out they might have had opportunity to have returned But now they desire a better Country that is an heavenly wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he hath prepared for them a City It was the sorest kind of banishment that the Saints endured that 's mentioned Heb. 11. 37 38. and yet they patiently underwent it They wandred about in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute afflicted tormented Of whom the world was not warthy they wondred in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth We judge our selves unworthy of Christ and the new Jerusalem and our Heavenly Country if we cannot deny an earthly sinful Country for them CHAP. XXXVI Bodily health and ease from torments 19. BUt a far greater Interest of self to be denied doth consist in our bodily health and ease and from those pains and torments which persecutors use to inflict upon the godly An averseness to suffering is natural to man and in it self no sin but an excessive averseness doth signifie too much tenderness of the flesh and too little power of Reason which should
remember that Heathens themselves have chosen death First in case of some extream torment or other misery which they had no other hope to prevent or end But this was but a choosing a speedier or easier Death before a more grievous death though remote or before a death that had so great a misery for its fore-runner or at least before such a life as is a continual death And so the conquered Heathens would frequently kill themselves to prevent a more dishonourable cruel death from the hand of the Conqueror And so many a one in uncurable misery wiâ—â—eth rather to die than endure it partly because that the suffering is so great as to overcome all the comforts of life For I yield that some degrees of misery with life are more terrible to nature than death and partly because that they know they must die at last however Secondly in a desire of fame that they may leave behind them an honourable name when they are dead But this is not to desire death but life Fain they would live for ever and because they know that it cannot be obtained on earth they had rather die some honourable death a little sooner that their names may live when they are dead than to die ignominiously shortly after Thirdly And some have chosen to die for the publick good of their Country But as it 's very uncertain whether the desire of a living Name were not their greater motive so it was but a choosing a present death for their Country before a latter unavoidable death without any such advantage In all these cases a natural man may venture on death that knows he cannot scape it long but must shortly die whether he will or no. But if they could avoid it there 's very few would submit to death but believers and none but in one of these cases 1. To end or avoid some extream intolerable uncurable misery 2. To deliver their Country or friends 3. And whether any would do it upon their ungrounded hopes of better things in the life to come I leave to consideration But if it be taken for granted that a natural man may love 1. The comforts of life above it self 2. And the good of his Country or the world or his children above his life 3. Or some carnal felicity falsly conceited to be had in another life yet it is certain that none but a sanctified believer can Love God better than his Life or can prefer those spiritual heavenly joys which consist in the holy Love and Fruition of God before his life And therefore he that for these can deny his Life is indeed a Christian and none but be Though it be an ungrateful word to the ears of some I must say it again and none but he For this is the very point in which Christ for instance doth put our self-denial to the trial He that will save his life shall lose it Whether you Love an immortal holy life with God or this earthly fleshly life better is the great question on which it will be resolved whether you are Christians or Infidels at the heart and whether you are heirs of heaven or hell Some Love to God may be in the unsanctified but not a love to him above their lives and in some cases they may submit to death but not for the Love of God But both these set together that is a submitting to Death for the Love of God or a Loving of God above this life is the most infallible proof of your sincerity I confess flesh and blood must needs think this is a very hard saying and though they might consent to acknowledge it a Duty and a Reasonable thing to die for Christ and a note of excellency and a commendable qualification of some few extrordinary Saints yet it goeth very hardly down with them that it should be the lowest measure of saving grace that the weakest Christian must have it that will be saved For say they What can the strongest do more than die for Christ But to this I answer 1. There is no rom for objections against so plain a Word of God It is the wisdom of God and not our Reason that disposeth of the Crown of life and therefore it is his Wisdom and not our Reason must determine by what we shall attain it And if God say plainly that If any man come to Christ and hate not his own life that is love it not so much less than Christ that for his sake he can use it as a hated thing is used he cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 26. it is too late for the vote of man or all the clamour of foolish reason to recal this resolution The word of God will stand when they have talk'd against it never so long we may destroy our selves by dashing against it but we cannot destroy or frustrate it 2. And whereas men ask What can the strongest do more than die for Christ I answer Abundance more They can die for him with far greater Love and Zeal and Readiness and Joy than the weak can do and so bring much more honour to him by their death Though there be no higher way of outward expressing our Love to Christ than by dying for him yet the inward work of Love may be in very different degrees in persons that use the same expression of it Some may come to the stake with a little Love comparatively and some with fervent hot affections Some have much ado to yield to die and some die so chearfully that they rejoyce in the opportunity of honouring God and passing to him Yea and in the Expressions there is much difference in the manner Some give up themselves with so much readiness as works more on the standers by than their meer patience or the death it self And some are drawn so hardly to it as drowneth much of the honour and fruit of their martyrdom Of this read Mr. Pinks Serm. on Luke 14. 26. Obj. But Nature is of God and Nature teacheth us to Love and save our Lives and is it like that the God of Nature will command and teach us to cast them away and so contradict his own Law of Nature Answ 1. As Nature teacheth you to love your lives so God doth not forbid you But 2. Is it Natural to man to be Reasonable as well as to be sensitive and animate To have a reasonable soul as to have a temporal life 3. And doth not Reason tell us by the light of Nature that God should be loved better than our Lives If it did not yet by the help of supernatural light even Reason clearly tells us this And it is no contradiction for God to bid you Love your lives but love him better And he that bids you seek the preservation of your lives doth plainly except that you resign them to his dispose and that you seek not to save them from him when he commandeth you to lay them down So that it is not simply
against Nature to consent to die but when it is for him that is the Lord and end of life it is agreeable to Nature that is though it be against our natural inclination as we are Animate and Sensitive yet is it agreeable to our true nature as reasonable And therefore lay all together it is to be said to be agreeable to Nature simply in such a case because it is agreeable to the Principal part in nature which should be predominant It is agreeable to nature also that Reason should dispose of the inferiour powers of the soul Object But when you have said all that you can as long as you plead against my nature I cannot consent to what you say words are but wind To perswade me to consent to die is as much as to perswade me not to feel when I am hurt or to be hungry or thirsty or sleepy which are not in my power because these things are Natural Answ 1. Though hunger and thirst and other natural and sensitive appetites or passions be not in your power yet a consent of the will to deny these is in your power As natural as it is to hunger and thirst your superiour faculty of Reason can prevail with you to suffer hunger and thirst in a Siege or sickness when the suffering of it will save your life You will be ruled by your Physician to forbear not only many a dish but many a meal which your appetite desireth And your Reason can perswade you to suffer the opening of a vein and the drawing out of your own blood yea or the cutting off a member when it is to save your life for all that feeling and self-love is natural to you And you are not acquainted with the nature of Friendship if you would not suffer much for a friend nor with humane affections if you would not suffer much for parents or children or your Country so that your will is free though your sense be not free nor your natural appetite Though you cannot choose but feel when you are hurt you might consent to that feeling for a greater good 2. And according to the tenour of this Objection you may as wisely and honestly plead for most of the wickedness of the world and say It is natural to me to lust and therefore I may play the Adulterer and fulfil it It is natural to me to desire meat and drink and therefore I may eat and drink as long as I desire it It is natural to me to seek to hurt those that I am much angry with or hate and therefore I may beat or kill them If you must deny the Passions and sensitive appetite and the inferiour faculties of nature in one thing why not in another These lower powers were made to be ruled by reason as beasts are made to be ruled by men and more And therfore seeing this Argument from Nature is but from the bruitish part of Nature it is but a brutish Argument And if yet you say that for all these words Death is so great an enemy to you that you cannot choose it I answer that is because your reason is not illuminated and elevated by faith to see the Necessity of choosing it and to see those higher and better things which by this means you may obtain Had you that heavenly life of faith and love which the spirit worketh in the Saints it would carry you above this present life and take you up with higher matters and shew you that and so shew it you as should procure your own consent to die But because this is the great point that Christ doth purposely here try our self-denial by and a point of such great necessity to be look'd after I shall stay a little longer on it while I give you first some Reasons to move you and 2. Some Directions to assist you to get a self-denying submission to Death when Christ requireth it The many lamentable defects in grace which the inordinate fear of death doth intimate I have already opened in the fourth part of the Saints Rest and therefore may not now repeat them but shall add some few Considerations more CHAP. XXXVIII Twenty Reasons for denying Life 1. COnsider that Our Lives are not our Own but God that doth require them is the Absolute Lord of them More truly than you are owner of any thing that you have in the world is he the Owner of your lives and you And therefore both in Reason and Justice we should be content that he dispose of his own If he may notfreely dispose of you your lives you may as well deny him the dispose of any thing and so deny him to be God for he hath the same right to you as to any thing else and the same power over you And therefore if you consent that he shall be God for which he needs not your consent you must consent that he be the Owner and Disposer of all and of you as well as all things else Otherwise he is not God 2. You can be content that the lives of others yea that all the world be at Gods dispose In reason you cannot wish it should be otherwise You are content that the lives of Emperors and Kings that are greater than you should be at his Dispose And is there not the same Reason that he dispose of your life as of theirs Are you better than they or more your own or hath the world more need of you than them or rather is it not unreasonable selfishness that makes so unreasonable a difference with you If Reason might serve the case is plain 3. You are contented that far greater matters than your lives should be at Gods dispose The Sun in its course the frame of nature Heaven and Earth and all therein are at his dispose and would you wish it otherwise Days and Nights and Summer and Winter and times and seasons are at his dispose and you dare not murmur that all the year is not Summer or day-light and that there is any Night or Winter The Angels of Heaven are at his dispose to do his will and are content to be used on earth for your service and they desire not to be from under his dispose And should you desire it or rather desire that his will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven If you would not have the Crowns and Kingdoms of the world at his Dispose and Heaven and Earth are at his Dispose you would not have him to be God But if you would have these greatest things at his dispose what are you then that your lives should be excepted 4. Whom would you have to be the Disposer of mens Lives but God Is any other fit for the undertaking No other can give life but he And no other can preserve and continue it but he If your life had been in any creatures hand you had been dead long ago For no creature is able to uphold it self much less another also Is
earth or from a carrion in a ditch so will our glorified immortal bodies differ from this mortal corruptible flesh If a skilful workman can turn a little earth and ashes into such curious transparent glasses as we daily see and if a little seed that bears no shew of such a thing can produce the more beautiful flowers of the earth and if a little acorn can bring forth the greatest Oak why should we once doubt whether the seed of everlasting life and glory which is now in the blessed souls with Christ can by him communicate a perfection to the flesh that is dissolved into its elements There 's no true beauty but that which is there received from the face of God And if a glympse made Moses face to shine what glory will Gods glory communicate to us when we have the fullest endless intuition of it There only is the strength and there 's the riches and there 's the honour and there 's the pleasure and here are but the shadows and dreams and names and images of these precious things And the perfection of the soul that 's now imperfect will be such as cannot now be known The very nature and manner of Intellection Memory Volition and Affections will be unconceivably altered and elevated even as the soul it self will be and much more because of the change on the corruptible body which in these acts it now makes use of But of these things I have spoke so much in the Saints Rest that I shall say no more of them now but this that in a Believer that expects this blessed change and knows that he shall never till then be perfect there is much unreasonableness in the inordinate unwillingness and fears of death 12. You know that fears and unwillingness can do no good but much increase your suffering and make your death a double death If it be bitter naturally make it not more bitter wilfully I speak this of a violent death for Christ as well as of a natural death For as the one cannot be avoided if we would so the other cannot be avoided when Christ calleth us to it without the loss of our Salvation and therefore it may be called Necessary as well as the other Necessary suffering and death is enough without thâ— addition of unnecessary fears 13. Nay were it but to put an end to the inordinate fears of death even death it self should be the less fearful to us These very fears are troublesome to many an upright soul and should we not desire to be past them As a woman with Child is in fear of the pain danger of her travel but joyful when it 's over so is the true believer himself too oft afraid of the departing hour but death puts an end to all those fears Is it the pain that you fear Why how soon will it be over Is it the strangeness of your souls to God and the place that you are passing to This also will be quickly over and one moment will give you such full acquaintance with the blessed God and the Celestial inhabitants and the world in which you are to live that you will find your self no stranger there but be more joyfully familiar and content than ever you were in the bosom of your dearest friend The Infant in the Womb is a stranger to this lighter open world and all the inhabitants of it and yet it is nor best stay there You can fail for commodity to a Country that you never saw and why cannot you pass with peace and joy to a God a Christ a Heaven that you never saw But yet you are not wholly a stranger there Is it not that God that you have loved and that hath first loved you Have you not been brought into the world by him and lived by him and been preserved and provided for by him and do you not know him Is it not your Father and he that hath given you his Son and his Spirit have you not found an inclination towards him desires after him and some taste of his love and communion with him and yet are you wholly unacquainted with him Know ye not him whom you have loved above all in whom you have trusted and whom you have daily served in the world Who have you lived to but him for whom else have you laid out your time and labour and yet do you not know him And know you not that Christ that hath purposely come down into flesh that you might know him and that hath shewed himself to you in a holy life and bitter death and in abundant precious Gospel mercies and in Sacramental representations that so he might entertain a familiarity with you and infinite distance might not leave you too strange to God Know you not that Spirit that hath made so many a motion to your soul that hath sanctified you and formed the image of God upon you and hath dwelt in you so long and made your hearts his very work-house where he hath been daily doing somewhat for God It is not possible that you should be utterly strange to him that you Live to and Live from and Live in and not know him by whom you know your selves and all things nor see that Light by which you see whatever you see O but you say you never saw him and have no distinct apprehension of his essence Answ What! Would you make a Creature of him that can be limited comprehended or seen with fleshly mortal eyes Take heed of such imaginations It is the understanding that must see him You know that he is most Wise and Good and Great and that he is the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world and that he is your Reconciled Father in Christ and is this no knowledg of him And then the Heaven that you are to go to is it that you are an Heir of where you have laid up your treasure and where your hearts and conversation hath so long been and yet do you not know it You have had many a thought of it and bestowed many a days labour for it and yet do you not know it O but you never saw it for all this Answ It is a spiritual blessedness that flesh and blood can neither enjoy nor see But by the eye of the mind you have often seen at least some glimpse of it You know that it is the present intuition and full fruition of God himself and your glorified Redeemer with his blessed Angels and Saints in perfect Love and Joy and Praise And if you know this you are not altogether strangers to heaven And for the Saints and heavenly Inhabitants you are not wholly strangers to them Some of them you have known in the flesh and others of them you have known in the spirit You are fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and therefore cannot be utterly unacquainted with them But me thinks the stranger you are to God and to Heaven and to the Saints
down to be familiar with us and to bring us into a state of friendship and holy boldness with God himself And yet shall we draw back 17. I would put this question to you for your serious answer Can you be contented yea do you desire to have no more of God than here you have Is this much of the knowledge of him and his will and works sufficient for you Would you be no nearer him and enjoy no more of him What ever your flesh say sure the love of God in your hearts will not suffer you considerately to say so Consult with your new nature with the holy principle that is in you Me thinks you should not be content to remain for ever at such a distance from God as you are If you can I blame you not to be afraid of death If not Why then are you loth to go to him 18. And I would ask you also Whether you are content with the measure of sanctification which you have or which is to be attained in this life Are you content to live for ever with no more knowledge or love of God No more faith or love to Christ No more sense of the worth of Grace No more righteousness or peace or joy in the Holy Ghost No more meekness humility or heavenly mindedness Are you contented rather to live for ever under all the pride and ignorance and passion and selfishness and lust and worldliness and all other sins that here beset you rather than to remove to the place of perfection and yield that death shall break the vessel and nest of your corruptions If you care so little for the grace of God and see so little beauty in his image and see so little odiousness in sin that you had rather keep it for ever than go to God by the passage of death I blame you not to be afraid to die But if otherwise Why do you desire perfection and deliverance and yet be so loth to come and receive it When you know that it is not to be had on earth 19. Moreover are you contented to remain for ever as unserviceable to God as here you are Alas how little do you for him how much do you to displease him lay together all the service of your lives and how small and poor a matter is it And would you still live at these rates Will this content you Me thinks it should not if you have grace in your hearts Why then do you not desire to depart and to be with Christ There you shall be perfectly fitted for his service and therefore perfectly perform it What other service God will have for us we cannot yet tell but Love and Praise we are sure will be the chief and the rest will be good and holy and honourable what ever it be If you are Christians me thinks the sense of your unprofitableness and of your unpleasing frame of heart and life should be your daily grief and therefore you should desire the state where you may be more serviceable and not be so unwilling of it 20. Lastly I would ask you Are you contented to attain no other end of all your life and labours and sufferings than here you do attain What is it that you pray for and seek and strive for is it for no more than is to be had on earth If you have no higher design intentions or desires I cannot much blame you to be loth to die But if you have me thinks no man should be unwilling to attain his end What have you done and suffered so much for heaven and now would you not go to it Had you rather all your labour were lost Do you desire to be happy or do you not If you do as certainly you do would you not go where happiness it to be had when you are sure that it is not not to be had on earth What say you is there not plain reason in all this that I propound to you It is a sad case when men seek not God and Heaven as their felicity but only as a lesser evil than hell which they would endure rather than enjoy when they can keep no longer this earthly life which they account their felicity where this is the case it 's a sad case And were not this a common case there would not be so much unwillingness to depart And now Christian Reader I beseech thee weigh these foregoing Considerations and judge whether it be not a contradiction to thy profession and unseemly for a believer to be unwilling to die when God shall call him Much more to cast away evelasting life for the saving of his temporal life but a little longer O learn the needful lesson of self-denial especially in this point of denying your lives He that can do this can do all and may be sure that he is mortified indeed And he that can do all the rest and sticks but at this and could part with any thing for Christ save his life doth indeed do nothing nor is it esteemed self-denying It is a lesson therefore that is exceeding necessary to be learn'd and worthy all your time and diligence even to deny your Lives for the love of Christ Perhaps you will say We live in days of peace and liberty and therefore are not like to be called to Martyrdom What need then have we to learn this lesson I answer 1. You are uncertain what changes you may see but if you never suffer yet you must be sure that you have a heart that would suffer if God did call you to it For though you may be saved without suffering where you are not called to it yet you cannot be saved without a heart that would suffer if you were put upon it 2. And if you cannot deny your lives for Christ you will not sincerely deny your pleasures or profits or honours for him If you would not suffer death for him if he called you to it you will not sincerely suffer losses and wrongs and reproaches for him which almost every Christian must expect So that to try your own sincerity you should look after it 3. And it is certain that death will shortly come and then if you have not learnt this lesson to deny your selves even in case of life you will die unwillingly and uncomfortably At least me thinks I might reason thus with any man of you good or bad Either death is indeed terrible or not If it be not why do you so fear it when it comes If it be why do you not as well fear it before it comes even in your youth and health For you are sure then that you must die as if it were upon you A wonderful thing it is that mans heart should be so unreasonably insensible and that there should be so great a difference in the affections of most in regard of death It 's no matter of doubt or controversie whether they shall die He is a block and not a man that knoweth it
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
and wasteth comfort and grieveth the spirit of Adoption by which you are sealed to the day of Redemption and by which you have your peace and comforts If by such sin your souls are clouded and estranged from God be diligent in seeking for healing and reconciliation and rest not till your peace be made with God For while you think of him as displeased you will be afraid of coming to him and this will double the fears of Death Direct 3. Deny your selves first in the carnal and worldly comforts of this life or else you are unlikely to deny your selves in the matter of Life it self Disuse your selves from unnecessary pleasures of the flesh And learn to endure dishonour contempt and reproach from the world and sickness and poverty when it 's inflicted on you by the hand of God Till you can deny your ease and profit and appetite and honour and all the delight of this present world you are never likely to deny your lives sincerely To deny your lives doth contain the denying of all these and more and therefore you must learn the lesser if you would do the greater These are the parts of life as it were and it 's easier thus to overcome it in its parts than in the whole when particular Souldiers are destroyed the Army is the weaker And the use of suffering the Afflictions of this life will make you hardy and make death seem a smaller matter For when you thus Die Daily you will the more easily die once Besides Death is half disarmed when the Pleasures Interests of the flesh are first denied For the leaving of fleshly contents and pleasures is much of the reason of mens unwillingness to die And therefore when these are denied before-hand the Reasons of your unwillingness are taken away If you pull down the Nest the Birds will be gone Men that are loth to leave their Country would willingly be gone if their houses were fired or they were turned out of doors and their friends and goods were all sent away This is it that makes men so unwilling to die because they practise not Mortification in their health but contrarily study to live as Pleasingly as may be to the flesh and think it part of their Christian Liberty thus making Christ a carnal Saviour as the Jews conceive of their expected Messiah and taking up with a carnal false salvation not purchased by Christ but given by Satan in the name of Christ and assumed by themselves They make it their business to have buildings and lands and meats and drinks and honours and all things as pleasing as may be to the flesh and then they complain that they are unwilling to die and I easily believe him it is no wonder They make it the work of their lives to feather their nests and make Provision for the flesh and then complain that they are loth to leave those nests that they have been feathering so long and loth to scatter all the heap and treasure which they have been gathering And did you think that gathering it was the way to make you willing to leave it Men load themselves with the lumber and baggage of the world and then complain that they cannot travel on their journey but had rather sit down They fall a building them habitations in their way when they should have none but Inns or Tents and when they have bestowed all their time and cost and charges on them they complain of their hearts for being loth to leave them Such mad doings as these are not the way to be willing to die To provide for self and flesh in your Life-time is not the way to Deny your Lives Sirs the way is this if you will learn it and stick not at the cost and trouble Self must be here stript naked of all its carnal comforts so that it shall have nothing left o fly to or trust upon nor nothing lest tâ—at it can take delight in then it will away If you would drive ouâ—â—n ill Tenant you will cast out all their goods and leave them nothing but the bare walls and not so much as a bed to lie on and uncover the house over their heads and then they will be gone So if you cast out all your sensual commodities and delights that when the flesh looks about it shall see nothing but the bare walls and cannot find a resting place then death will be less grievous and less unwelcome Or rather indeed even the flesh and self must be mortified and in the sense in which it must be denied it must have no being or life that is as it is withdrawn from its subordination to God And then there will be nothing to rise up against your submission to Death Though nature as nature will keep you from Loving death as death yet were but self-denial perfect there would be nothing to keep you from submitting to it and desiring to pass through it to immortality O that you would but try such a self-denying life and you would certainly die an easie comfortable Death Direct 4. Suffer not unworthy thoughts of God to abide in your soul Think not of his Infinite Love and Goodness with doubtfulness or diminution You will never be willing to come to God while you think of him as cruel or as a despiser of his creatures or unwilling to do Good But when once you think of him as the surest greatest Good and your fastest friend and the most lovely object that can be conceived of and these thoughts are deep and wrought into the very nature of your soul then you will be ready more chearfully to die No man can love the presence of a tyrant or an enemy or of him that is so far above him that there is no communion with him to be had If you entertain such blasphemous thoughts of God you are unlikely ever to desire his presence See you think as honourably and magnificently of the Goodness and Love of God as you do of his Knowledge or his Power and as you would abhor any extenuating conceptions of the one so do of the other And then the Loveliness and glory of his face will draw out your desires and make you long to be with God Direct 5. And by such means as this aforesaid Labour to bring up your souls to live in the Love of God It is love that is the Divine and heavenly nature in us and therefore must needs incline us heaven-wards The nature of love is to long after communion with him that we love The more Love the more of God in the soul and the more desire after God This is the grace that must live for ever and therefore bendeth towards the place of its perfection It 's want of Love to God that maketh most of us so contented to be from him Strengthen and exercise all other graces as far as in you lieth but above all live in the exercise of this enjoying heavenly grace Direct 6. Consider of all
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
affections It is Gods highest honour to be highliest esteemed and dearliest beloved as being the most perfect and transcendent Good And Proud men in this world aspire to his Prerogative and much affect to be beloved of all and fain they would sit near mens hearts and be the darlings of the world This is a fine but dangerous sin and I doubt many that are guilty of it never well considered that it is a sin and so great a sin as indeed it is Deny your selves in this It is God that must be Loved of all and not you You must be content to be hated of all men for his name sake that he may be beloved Mens hearts were not made to be your throne but Gods Your work is to Love and not ambitiously to seek for love So far as your interest in mens affections doth conduce to Gods honour and service and their good desire it and spare not But see that these be really your ends But for your selves take heed of desiring or seeking for mens Love They are apt enough to have inordinate affections to the creature without your temptations To Love God in you and Love you for God is their duty which you may provoke them to in season But seek not for any nearer interest in them nor for such a love as terminateth in your selves Nature is exceeding ambitious of being beloved but steal not Gods due You are to be sutors and sollicitors for him to win the hearts of as many as you can and not to speak for your selves in his stead Thankfully accept of mens Ordinate Love to you if you have it but if they deny it for you or for the sake of Christ and turn it into hatred do you deny your selves herein and remember that it 's no more than you were forewarned of and no more than your Lord and his worthiest servants have endured What a Pattern is Paul that tells his converts he seeks not theirs but them as parents lay up for the children and not children for the parents and would gladly spend and be spent for them though the more he love the less he were beloved 2 Cor. 12. 14 15. See that you Love God and them and that is your duty do that and you need not take care for the Love of men to you Their Love is none of your felicity and therefore their hatred depriveth you not of your felicity for that lieth only in the Love of God Here therefore self must be denied CHAP. XLIII The Reputation of Riches to be denied 3 ANother part of the Honour which self must be denied in is The Reputation of your Riches For wealth is one thing that men are proud of Some desire to be esteemed richer than they are and therefore go in the best apparel they can get that they may not be thought to be persons of the lowest poorest sort And some that are Rich do glory in their Riches and think they are much more to be honoured than the poor But alas if they had well read and considered what Christ hath said of the danger of the rich particularly in Luke 12. 16. 18. 8. 14. Mat. 13. 22. Mark 10. 23. and what James saith to them James 5. 1 2. c. they would see that Riches is not a thing to be Proud of Not many great and noble are called God hath chosen the poor of this world Rich in faith to be heirs of the Kingdom The talents for which we must give such an account at the bar of Christ should be rather the matter of our fear and trembling than of our Pride That which makes our passage to heaven to be as the Camels through a needle's eye I think should not much lift us up All the Riches of the world do make you never the better thought of with God or any wise man Nor will they cause you to live a moneth the longer or quiet your Consciences or save you from death or the wrath of God The only worth of Riches is that you are better furnished than others to do God some good service by relieving the poor and helping the Church and furthering many such good works And for the sake of these good ends you must patiently bear a state of Riches yea and thankfully receive them if they are given you by God though the care and labour in a faithful distribution of them and the danger of abusing them and the reckoning to be made for them are so great as may deter a wise man from a greedy seeking them or glorying in them CHAP. XLIV Comeliness and Beauty to be denied 4. ANother part of the Honour that self must be denied in is The Reputation of your personal comeliness or beauty For such fools and children sin hath made folks that many much set by the Reputation of these And hence is most commonly the abuse of Apparel Every proud person is desirous of that which will make them seem the handsomest or beautifullest persons unto others and make it their care to set forth themselves to the eyes of beholders What they indeed are we can see as well in the meanest attire but what they would be thought to be we may best see in this But of this I spoke before yea some think that they are not Proud of their comeliness yet cannot endure to be esteemed ill-favoured or uncomely and so shew that Pride which they would deny I confess these are commonly but the temptations of women and procacious youth But one would think it should be easie for a few sober thoughts to cut their combs and let them see how little cause they have to be proud of beauty or comeliness of the flesh Alas what is that body that you are proud of Filth and corruption covered with a cleaner skin than some of your neighbours Ah but the skin is thin and if that be all you have to glory in it is as frail as contemptible There 's many a pretty flower in the common field that 's trodden down by the feet of beasts that have a gloss and hue incomparably beyond your beauty I asked you before what beauty you will have to glory of when you have dwelt but a few moneths in the grave or if the small Pox or Leprosie should clothe you with another coloured skin or if a Cancer should but seize upon your face and turn it into such an ugly shape as makes men tremble to behold it or when wrinkled age hath made you as another person or when death hath deprived you of that soul which was your beauty and laid you out as a prey and sacrifice to corruption Ah that ever such a skin full of dirt such a bag of filth should yet be proud that 's carried about by a living soul and by it kept a little while from falling down as a sensless clod and turning into a stinking corpse They are short-sighted and short-witted as well as graceless that cannot look so far before them
destroy the Church and Common-wealth and be a cruel enemy to mankind and to our Country and to rebel against the Powers that are ordained of God and thereby to receive damnation to our selves Rom. 13. 1 2 3. Heb. 13. 17. But yet this I must say that if a worthy person stand in competition with us self-denial requireth us to prefer them before our selves and to refuse honours and dignities when the good of the publick doth not call us to deny our selves more in the accepting them CHAP. LV. Q. Whether it be a denying our Relations Quest 5. WHether Self-denial consist in denying of Natural or Contracted Relations as of Father and Mother to Sons and Daughters of Brothers and Sisters Husband and Wife Master and Servant Prince and People Pastor and Flock Answ You might as wisely imagine that self-denial lieth in hating or denying any of Gods Works even the frame of nature or in denying food and rayment to our bodies or in denying our own lives so as to cut our throats For the same Law of Nature that made me a man and requireth me to preserve my life did make me a son and require me to love and honour my parents And it is in the Decalogue the first Commandment with promise as the Apostle calleth it Ephes 6. 2. It is frequently and expresly commanded in Scripture that children love honour obey their parents and terrible curses are pronounced on the breakers of these Commands Eph. 6. 1. 4. 5. 22 5. Colos 3. 20 21 22. 4. 1. Exod. 21. 17. Levit. 20. 9. Deuteron 21. 18 19. 27. 16. Prov. 30. 17. Mat. 15. 4. 19. 19. And if children were not bound to parents then parents should not be bound to educate children and then they would be exposed to misery and perish One would think that there should never such a Sect have risen up that should be worse than the very brutes who by the instinct of nature love their young ones and their dams But the Spirit foretold us that which is come to pass that in the last and perilous times there should be men that are disobedient to parents without natural affection 2 Tim. 3. 3. And for contracted Relations they are the express institution of God so frequently owned by him in Scripture and the duties of them so frequently commanded that I will not trouble you with the recital of the passages And as for the Adversaries objections they are frivolous The meaning of the Apostles words that we know no man after the flesh I have told you before The words of Christ to his Mother Joh. 2. 4. Woman what have I to do with thee which they alledge are nothing for their wicked cause they being no more but Christ's due Reprehension of his Mothers mistake who would prescribe him the time and manner of doing Miracles and have him do them in a way of ostentation which things did not belong to her but to the Spirit of God and the Lord himself And whereas they alledge that Text Luke 14. 26. that father mother brother sisters c. are to be hated for Christ I answer Even as our own lives are to be hated which are also numbred with them that is They must be all forsaken rather than Christ should be forsaken and therefore loved less than he and but for his sake If therefore this Text require you not at all to cut your own throats or some way kill your selves then it doth not require you to withdraw your due affections from Natural or Contracted Relations I must crave the Readers pardon that I trouble him with confuting such unnatural opinions and desire him to believe that it is not before I am urged to it by the arguments of some deluded souls that are not unlikely to do hurt by them with some CHAP. LVI Q. Or Relieving Strangers before Kindred Quest 6. WHether self-denial require that we should relieve godly strangers before our natural Kindred especially that are ungodly Or that we love them better Answ 1. Where our Natural Kindred are as holy and as needy as others there is a double obligation on us both natural and spiritual to love and relieve them 2. Where they are as Holy as others but less needy there may lie a double obligation on us to love them and yet not to give to them 3. If they be more needy or as needy as others though withal they be ungodly we are not thereby excused from natural affections or charitable relief 4. We must distinguish between children or such kindred as nature casteth upon our care for provision and such kindred as are by nature cast upon others If parents were not obliged to relieve and provide for their own children they would be exposed to misery and man should be more unnatural than brutes So that even when by ungodliness they are less amiable than others yet God hath bound men to provide for them more 5. Natural love and spiritual are much different you may have a stronger Natural Love to an ungodly child than to a Godly stranger but you must have a spiritual Love to that Godly stranger more than to your child And that spiritual Love must be at least as to the Rational and Estimative part much greater than the other Natural Love And yet you may be bound to Give more where you are not bound to Love more For it is not Love only that is the cause of giving but we are Gods Stewards and must dispose of what we have as he prescribeth us and his standing Law of Nature for the preservation of mankind is that parents take care of their children as such 6. The will and service of God being it that should dispose of all that we have we must in all such doubts look to these two things for our direction First to the particular Precepts of the Word and there we find the fore-said duty of parents expressed and withal the duty of relieving all that are needy to our power Secondly to the General Precept and there we find that we must honour God with our substance and lay out all our talents to his service And so the duty lieth plain before us If you have a child that is wicked yet as prents provide him his daily bread and leave him enough for daily bread when you die But more he should not have from me but the rest had I ten thousand pound a year I would lay out that way that my conscience told me may be most serviceable to God For 1. I am not bound to strengthen an enemy of Christ and enable him to do the greater mischief 2. Nor to cast away the mercies of God 3. If the Law required the parents to cause such a Rebellious son to be put to death Deut. 21. 18. then surely to provide him daily bread is now as much as a parent is obliged to And if it be an express Command that he that will not labour shall not eat 2 Thes 3. 10.
the names of the several graces of the Spirit And it is not Passion but disordered Passion that must be denied CHAP. LX. How far must we deny our own Reason Quest 10. HOw far must we deny our own Reason Answ 1. We must not be unreasonable nor live unreasonably nor believe unreasonably nor love or choose or let out any affection unreasonably We are commanded to be ready to give a reason of our hopes It is our Rational faculty that proveth us men and is essential to us And without it we can neither understand the things of God or man For how should we understand without an understanding But yet Reason must thus far be denied 1. We must not think highlier of our Reason than it deserves either in it self or as compared to others 2. We must not satisfie its curiosity in prying into unrevealed things 3. Nor must we satisfie or suffer its presumption in judging our Brethren or censuring mens hearts or ways uncharitably 4. Nor must we endure it to rise up against the Word or ways of God or contradict or quarrel with Divine Revelations though we cannot see the particular Evidence or Reason of each Truth nor reconcile them together in our apprehensions Though we may not take any thing to be the Word of God without Reason yet when he have Reason to it take to be his Word we must believe and submit to all that is in it without any more Reson for our belief For the formal Reason of our belief is because God is true that did reveal this Word And we have the greatest Reason in the world to believe all that he revealeth CHAP. LXI Q. Must we be content with affiictions permitted sin c. Quest 11. IF Self-denial require us to Content our souls in the Will of God then whether must we be content with his afflictions or permission of sin or the Churches sufferings and 1. How will this stand with our due sense of Gods displcasure and chastisements 2. And with our praying against them 3. And our use of means for their removal Answ 1. The Will of God is one thing and the Hurt which he willeth us is another and the Good En for which he willeth it is a third The afflicting Will of God is good and must be Loved as good and the End and Benefit of Chastisement is good and must be loved But the hurt as hurt must not be loved It is not Gods Will that we must resist or seek to change nor yet is it the End or Benefit of the Chastisement but only the hurt which our folly hath made a sutable means And we may not seek to remove this hurt till the effect be procured or on terms that may consist with the End of it And this is not against the Will of God that when the good is attained the Affliction be removed 2. And you must distinguish between his Pleased and Displeased Will his complacency and acceptance and his Displacency and Rejecting Will. Every act of Gods Will must be approved and loved as Good in God but it is not every one that we may Rest and Rejoyce in as Good to us and as our felicity We must be grieved for Gods Displeasure and yet Love even that holy will that is displeased with us and we must be sensible of Gods judgments and yet Love the Will that doth inflict them But it is only the Love of God and Pleasure of his Will to us that can be the Rest and felicity of our souls 3. Some acts of Gods Will are about the Means and have a tendency to a further end and some are about the End it self His Commanding Will we must Love and obey his forbidding Will must have the same affections his threatning Will we must love and fear his Rewarding Will we must Love and Rejoyce in His full Accepting Will that is his Love and Complacency in us we must Rest and Delight our souls in for ever And thus we must comply with the Will of God CHAP. LXII Q. May God be finally Loved as our Felicity and Portion Quest 12. YOu tell us that we must seek our selves but as Means to God How then may we make our salvation our End or desire the fruition of God when fruition is for our selves of somewhat that may make us happy Doth he not desire God as a Means for himself as the End that desireth him as his Portion Treasure Refuge and Felicity Answ There are such abundance of abstruse Philosophical Controversies de anima fine that stand here in the way that I must only decide this briefly and imperfectly for vulgar capacities Schoolmen and other Philosophers are not so much as agreed what a final Cause is But this much briefly may give some degree of satisfaction to the Moderate 1. No fleshly Profits Pleasures or Honours must be made our End This we are agreed on 2. The Ultimate End of all the Saints is an End that is sutable to the Nature of Love and that is perfectly to love God and Please him and serve him and to be perfectly beloved of him and behold his glory So that it is not an End of self-love or Love of Concupiscence or for our Commodity only but it is the End of the Love of Friendship Now all Love of friendship doth take in both the party Loving and the party beloved into the End For the End is a perfect Union of both according to their capacities And it being Intentio amantis the End of Love both God and our selves must be comprehended in it as the parties to be united and so it is both for him and for our selves 3. But yet though both parties as united be comprized in the End it is not equally but with great inequality For 1. God being Infinite Goodness it self must appreciative in estimation and affection be preferred exceedingly before our selves so that in desiring this blessed Union we must more desire it to Please and Praise him and give him his due for which he Created Redeemed and Glorified us than to be our selves happy in him 2. And God being not a meer friend but our Absolute Lord of Infinite Power and Glory it must be more in our Intention to bring to him eternally than to receive from him though both must be comprized For Receiving is for our selves further than we intend it for Returns but Returning is for God Not to add to his blessedness but to Please his Will and give him his own For he made all things for himself And so that in union with him we may give him his own in fullest love and Praise and service and thus please him must be the higest part of our Intention about our own felicity in enjoying him So that you may see that self-denial teacheth no man to ask Whether he could be content to be damned for Christ For this is contrary to our propounded End in the whole For a damned man hath no union of Love with God and
giveth him not his own in Love or Praises Object What say you then by the wishes of Moses and Paul Answ 1. The saying of Moses is very plain Exod. 32. 32. He doth not desire that his soul might be made a ransom for Israel but that if God would not pardon them but destroy them and cast them off he would blot out Moses name from his Book that is from among the number of the living so that his saying is no other than such as Elias or Jonas was What good will my life do me if I live to see thy people cast off and all thy wonders for them buryed therefore either let them live in thy sight or kill me with them This is the plain meaning of Moses request And for Pauls the difficulty is somewhat greater 1. Some think that Paul meaneth Rom. 9. 3. that he once wished himself to be no Christan in the days of his ignorance and all through his Zeal for the Jewith Nation But this is improbable 2. Some think that he meaneth only I could wish to be given up to death for them as the accursed under the Law 3. Some think he meaneth only I could wish my self yet unconverted to Christ so they were converted 4. Some think the meaning is I could wish my self cast out of the Church and given up to Satan for any bodily suffering 5. Some say it is only to have his salvation deferred 6. And some that it is damnation for a time But 7. The plain meaning seemeth to be this so great is my Love to my Countrymen the Jews that if it were offered to my choice whether they or I without them should enjoy Christ I would yield to be cast out of his sight for ever rather than they should where mark 1. That it is not a wish that it were so for he knew that this was no means to promote their salvation but it 's a discovery of his affection that would with or choose this if it were a means to that End 2. And it is not the sin of not Loving Christ that he would choose but only the misery of being deprived of his blessed presence 3. And the Reasons of this his choice are these two conjunct 1. Because the souls of so many thousands is in impartial Reason more to be valed than the soul of one 2. And principally because by the conversion and salvation of a whole Nation God may be more honored and served than by one And note farther 1. That this is not set as a mark for every Christian to try the truth of his Love by 2. But yet no doubt but it is a duty and degree of Grace that every one should aim at For 1. We see among Heathens that nature it self teacheth them that a man should lay down his life for his Country because a Country is better than a man And proportionably Reason tells us that the salvation of a Country being a greater good than of any one it should be more preferred And Self-love goeth against plain Reason when it contradicteth this What mans Reason doth not tell him that it were better he should die than the world should be destroyed or the Sun turned into darkness yea or that one Church or Country perish And so of salvation 2. And it is agreeable to the nature of Love to desire that most that most Pleaseth him whom we Love and therefore to desire rather that God may have multitudes than one and be served and Praised by them So much about the Matter of self-denial III. I Have finished the two first things which I promised you under the use of Exhortation viz. the trial of your self-denial and the particulars in which it consisteth and must be exercised and there I have shewed you 1. In what respect self must be denied 2. What that selfishness is that must be denied as to the inward Disposition and 3. What is that objective self-interest that must be denied which consisteth in so many Particulars that I cannot undertake to enumerate all but I have mentioned twenty Particulars under the general head of Pleasure and ten under the general Head of Honour and have referred you to another Treatise for that which consisteth in worldly profits And now I come to the third part of my work which is to shew you a little more fully the Greatness of the sin of selfishness and give you thence such moving reasons as may conduce to the cure of it which are these that follow CHAP. LXIII Motives 1. Selfishness the grand Idolatry of the world 1. SElfishness is the grand Idolatry of the world and self the worlds Idol as I have told you before It usurpeth the Place of God himself in mens Judgements wills affections and endeavours It was the work of the ten Discoveries in the Beginning of the Book to demonstrate this and therefore I shall say but little more But self-denial destroyeth the worlds great Idol and giveth God his own again The selfish lean most to their own understandings but the self-denying trust the Wisdom of God The selfish are careful principally for themselves and their own felicity even a terrene and carnal kind of felicity But the self-denying are principally careful how they may Please and Honour God and promote the welfare of his Church and in this way attain the spiritual everlasting felicity of the Saints The selfish must have their own humors pleased and their own wills accomplished and their own desires granted But the self-denying do slay their own carnal wills desires and conceits and lay them dead at the feet of Christ that his will alone may be exalted The selfish would have all men love them admire them and commend them But the self-denying would have all men to Love Admire and Glorifie the Lord above himself and all the world The selfish can bear with Gods enemies but not with their Own and they can suffer men to wrong Cod and sin against him more patiently than they can suffer them to wrong themselves But it is contrary with the self-denying A wrong to God and his Church seemeth far greater to them than a wrong against themselves In a word the selfish intend themselves and live to themselves and the self-denying intend God and live to him in the course of their lives And therefore when the selfish are troubled about many things the self-denying are minding the One thing Necessary And when the selfish are seeking to know what is good or evil to their flesh the self-denying are seeking to Please the Lord and desire to know nothing but him in Christ crucified and they could part with all the knowledge of the creatures as useful to themselves if they could but know more of God in Christ The selfish would be in his own hands at his own dispose and government and the self-denying would be in the hands of God and at his dispose and Government And doubtless the very state of mans Apostacy did lie in
Unworthiness by reason of this sin But self is not easily so far abased as to be heavy-laden and sick of sin nor is it easily drawn to value Grace or feel how much you are unworthy of it or need it nor easily driven to renounce all sufficiency and conceits of a Righteousness of your own and wholly to go out of your selves to Christ for life Self cannot spare sin for it is its darling and play-fellow its food its recreation and its life You must daily pray to be saved from temptation and delivered from Evil even the Evil of sin as well as of punishment But self doth Love the sin and therefore cannot long to be delivered from it and therefore Loveth the temptation that leadeth to it indeed is a continual tempter to it self Would the Covetous worldling be delivered from his worldliness Would the Ambitious Proud person be delivered from his Pride or Honours or the sensual person from his sensual delights No they do not Love the Preacher or people that are against them in these ways nor the holy self-denial that is contrary to them nor the Scripture that condemneth them nor indeed the Lord himself that forbids them and is the author of all these Laws and holy ways which they abhor So that you see how self is an enemy to every Petition in the Lords Prayer 3. And it is a violation of all the ten Commandments The first and second it is most directly against and is the very thing forbidden in them and all the rest it is against consequentially and is the virtual breach of them as disposing and drawing the soul thereunto The two Tables have two Great Commands which are the sum of the whole Law and all the other Commandments are consequents or particulars from these The sum of the first Table is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart or above all This is the first Commandment Thou shalt have none other Gods before me which is put first as being the Fundamental Law commanding subjection it self to the soveraign Power of God which necessarily goes before all actual obedience to particular precepts But self is directly against this and sets up man as a God to himself And all the unsanctified Love themselves better than God and therefore cannot Love him above all And therefore neither second third or fourth command can be sincerely kept by such For when self is set up and God denied in stead of the right worshipping of God they are worshipping themselves or suiting God worship to the conceit and will of self Instead of the Reverent use of his name they are setting up their own names and will venture on the grossest abuse of Gods name rather than self shall suffer or be crossed And instead of hallowing the Lords day they devote both that and every day to themselves The sum of the second Table is Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self and this is the meaning of the tenth Commandment which forbiddeth us to covet any thing from him to our selves that is that we set not up self and its interest against our neighbour and his good and be not like a bruised or inflamed part of the body that draweth the blood or humors to it self or like a Wen or other Tumor that is sucking from the body for its own nutrition so that it is but plainly this Be not selfish or drawing or desiring any thing to thy self which is not thy due but belongeth to another but let Love run by even proportions between thy neighbour and thy self in order to God and the publick good And this Commandment brings up the rear that it may summarily comprehend and gather up all other particulars that be not instanced in in the foregoing Commandments Now selfishness being the very sin that is here forbidden I need to say no more to tell you that self is the breaker of this Law Next to this summary concluding Precept the greatest in the second Table if not one of the first is the fifth Commandment which requireth the preservation of Relations and Societies and the duties of those Relations especially of inferiors to superiors for the Honour of God and the Common good And this is set before the rest because the publick good is preferred to the personal good of any and Magistrates and Superiors being Gods Officers and for the Publick good are to be prefered before the subjects But what an enemy selfishness is to this Commandment I intend anon to shew you distinctly and therefore now pass it by And for the following Commandments who ever murdered another but out of some inordinate respect to himself either to remove that other 〈…〉 of his selfish Ends or to be revenged on â—…riving self of profit or honour or somâ—… it would have had or in some way or other â—…in your Own Ends by anothers blood And what is it but the satisfaction of your Own â—â—â—thy lusts that causeth Adultery and all uncleanness And what is it but the furnishing and providing for self that provoketh any man to Rob another And what is it but some selfish End that causeth any man to pervert Justice or slander or bear false witness against his neighbour so that nothing is more plain than that selfishness is all sin and villany against God and man comprized in one word And therefore you need not ask me which Commandment it is that doth forbid it For it is forbidden in every one of the ten Commandments The first condemneth self as it is the Idol set up and Loved trusted and served before God the second condemneth it as the Enemy of his worship and the third condemneth it as the Prophaner of his Name and the fourth as the Prophaner of his Hallowed time The second Table in the tenth Commandment condemneth self as it is the Tumor and gulf that is contrary to the Love of our neighbour and would draw all to it self The fifth Commandment condemneth it as the Enemy of Authority and Society the sixth as the Enemy to our Neighbours life the seventh eighth and ninth condemn it as the enemy to our neighbours chastity Estates and Cause or Name So that if you see any mischief done in Persons Families Towns Countrys Courts Armies or any where in the world you need not send out Hue and Cry to find out and apprehend the actor It is selfishness that is the Author of all If the poor be oppressed by the rich and their lives made almost like the life of a labouring Ox or Horse till the Cry of the oppressed reach to heaven who is it that doth all this but self The Landlords and rich men must Rule and be served by them I warrant you they would not do thus by themselves If the poor be discontented and murmur at their condition and steal from others who is it that is the cause of this but self If another were in poverty they would not murmur nor steal for him It is selfishness
that blemisheth Judges and Justices and Officers with the stains of partiality avarice and injustice It is this that disturbeth the peace of Nations that will not let Princes Rule for God and consequently overthrows their Thrones that will not let subjects Obey them in the Lord but le ts in wars and miseries upon them that sets the Nations together by the ears and so continueth them yea it is self that will not let neighbours live together in Peace that provoketh people to disobey their Teachers and Teachers to be man-pleasers and neglect the people that will not let Masters and Servants Parents and Children Husband and Wife live peaceably and lovingly one with other It is the common make-bate and troubler of the world Nay it is self that causeth most of the new Opinions and practises in Religion that sets up Popery and most other Sects and causeth the Pastors to contend for superiority to the troubling of the Church after all the plain prohibitions of Christ In a word selfishness is the grand enemy of God and man the Disease of Depraved lapsed nature the very heart of Original sin and the old man the root of all the Iniquity in the world the breach of every Commandment of the Law the enemy of every Article of Faith and every Petition in the Lords Prayer and by that time we have added the rest of its deformity you will see whether it be not the very Image of the Devil as the Love of God and our neighbour which is its contrary is the image of God But now on the contrary side Self-denial complyeth with all Divine Revelations and disposeth the soul to all holy Requests and to the observation of every Command of God It humbly stoopeth to the mysteries of Faith which others proudly quarrel with in the dark It makes a man say O what am I that I should set my wit against the Lord and make my Reason the Touch-stone of his truth and think to Comprehend his judgements that are incomprehensible It causeth a man to sit as a little child at the feet of Christ to learn his will and say Speak Lord for thy servant heareth It silenceth the carpings of an unsatisfied understanding and limiteth the enquiries of a busie prying presumptuous wit and subdueth the contradictions of flesh and blood It casteth off that Pride and self-conceitedness that hindreth others from believing In Prayer it bringeth an emptied soul that is not stopped up against the grace and blessings of God It layeth us low in a receiving posture It emptieth us of our selves that we may be filled with God It hath nothing to say against any one of those Requests which Christ hath put into our mouths but subscribeth to them all It is the highest ambition the greatest desire of a self-denying soul that Gods Name may be hallowed and honoured whatever become of his own Name or honour and that the Kingdom of God may flourish in which he desireth to be a subject and that the will of God may be done and the will of himself and all the world conformed and subjected to it And so of the rest of the Petitions Self-denial is half the life of Prayer And it is a dutiful observer of all the Commandments It giveth up our Love to God as his Own and consequently worshippeth him in Love and Reverenceth his name and observeth his time and indeed is wholly devoted to him And it giveth our neighbour that part of our Love which belongeth to him and therefore will not dishonour superiors or encroach upon the possessions of others or injure them for his own ends And indeed what should draw a self-denying man to sin were he but perfect in self-denial when the poise is taken off the wheels all stand still Self-denial doth frustrate Temptations and leave them little to work upon What should move a self-denying man to be Proud or covetous or injurious to others no man doth evil but it seemeth good and for some good that he imagineth it will do him And this seeming good is to carnal self And therefore a self-denying man hath taken off the byass of sin and turned out the deceiver and when Satan comes he hath little in him to make advantage of O how easily may you take sin out of the hands of the self-denying and make them cast it away with lamentation when other men will hold it as fast as their lives O try this speedy way of Mortification Would you but destroy this Original breeding sin you would destroy all All the sins of your lives are the fruits of your selfishness kill them at the heart and root if you would go the nearest way to work What abundance of sin doth self-denial kill at once Indeed it is the sum of mortification And therefore be sure that you deny your selves CHAP. LXV Contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness 3. MOreover Selfishness is contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness contrary to every grace and contrary to the life of Glory For it is the use of all grace to recover the soul from selfishness to God that God may be Loved and Self-love may be overcome that God may be trusted and pleased and his service may be our care and business when before our care was to Please our selves And the very felicity of the soul consisteth in a closing and communion with God The soul that will be happy must be conscious of self-insufficiency and must go out of it self and seek after life in God It must forsake it self and apply it self to him Men lose their labour till they deny themselves by going to a broken empty cistern and forsaking the fountain of living waters The nearer men are to God and the more fully they are conformed to him and close with him and know him and love him the happyer they are Glory it self is but the nearest and fullest intuition and fruition of God And he that hath most of him here in his soul and in the creatures providences and ordinances is the happiest man on Earth and likest to the glorified And there is no approach to God but by departing from carnal self I know self-seeking men do think of finding more peace and comfort in that way but they are alway deceived of their hopes It is self-denial that is the way to peace and comfort While we rest on our selves or are taken up with anxious caring for our selves we are but tost up and down as on a tempestuous sea and are seeking Rest but never find it but when we retire from our selves to God we are presently at the harbour and find that Peace which before we sought in vain I confess in the too-little experience that I have my self of the way of peace and quiet to the soul I must needs say there is none to this There is none but this Never can I step out but self meets with somewhat that is vexatious and displeasing to it This business goes cross
to Hell if you run not your selves thither Never will you be shut out of Heaven if you run not from it by your own neglect and prefer not the prosperity of the world before it And therefore you see that we are nowhere more unsafe than in our own hands Gods Will is good and would make a good choice for us but our wills are bad and will make a bad choice for themselves God is unchangeable and the same for ever but we are giddy and uncertain and if we are in a good mind to day are in danger of being in a bad to morrow God is able to secure us against all the subtilty and rage and power of Earth or Hell but we are silly impotent worms and unable to defend our selves or to accomplish our own desires So that our safety consisteth in forsaking our selves and cleaving to the Lord. The more of your happiness lieth on your own hands the greater is your danger and the more of it is on the hands of God the greater is your safety Fly therefore from your selves to God as you would fly out of a torn or sinking Vessel into the strongest ship or as you would haste away from a tottering House that is ready to fall upon your heads so haste away from self to God Study his Love and fall in Love with him and that will be more gainful to you than studying and carnally Loving your selves Forget your selves and remember him and he will remember you to your greater advantage than if you had remembred your selves When any interest of your Own riseth up against the Interest or will of God care not then for your selves or for your own set as light by it as if it were nothing worth and say as the three witnesses of God in Dan. 3. 16 17. when they were ready to be cast into a flaming furnace We are not careful to answer thee in this matter If it be so the God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thy hand O King But if not be it known unto thee O King that we will not serve thy gods or worship the golden Image which thou hast set up Care you for your Duty and God will care for your safety better than you can do you are safer under Gods care in the midst of a flaming fire than under your own care in the greatest prosperity or honour in the world While Abraham and Isaac depended upon God they were safe though in the midst of dangers but when they fell upon carnal shifting for themselves to say their Wives were their Sisters they brought themselves but into a snare and double danger when you have cared and contrived and shifted for your selves as long as you can it 's God that must do the deed and defend and deliver you and provide for you when all is done Is it wise or safe or profitable for your child to be casting for provision of meat and drink and clothes for it self Cannot you do it better and is it not your work and had you not rather your child would trust you with it and meddle with his own business and be careful to please you and then to depend on your care and love What good will it do a simple patient to know the ingredients of every medicine compounded for him and given by his Physician or to desire to be acquainted with his Physick himself that so he may be tampering with his own body and have the doing of the business himself till by his unskilfulness he hath undone himself when he had a wise and faithful Physician that he might have trusted to O that men knew how ready a way it is to their undoing when they must be satisfied of all the Reasons of the ways of God! and when they must have their own wills and ways and must see a ground of safety in the creature and must take that course that self tells them is the best when they are resolved to look to their estates and honours and lives and dare not cast them on the wisdom and care and will of God! O that men knew how sure and near a way it is to their felicity to be contented to be Nothing that God may be all and then they would be More in God than they could have been in themselves and to be contented to Die that they may Live in God and to lose their lives that they may find them in him Let go your Reputation with men and you will find it made up a thousand-fold in the approbation of God Let men condemn you so that God may but Justifie you Let Riches go and see whether you will not find more in God than you could possibly lose for him Can any man be a loser by God or can he make an ill bargain that makes sure of Heaven Do you think there is any want of Riches or Honour there O Sirs win God and win all win Heaven and never fear being losers It seems a great loss to flesh and blood to lay down your estates and honour and life for Christ and the hopes of a life to come But it is because the flesh is blind and cannot see so far off as everlasting is The loss is not so great as to exchange your brass your dirt for gold and jewels or to exchange your sickness for health It is the most profitable Usury to make God your debtor by putting all your stock into his hand and venturing it all on his service upon the confidence of his promise But if you will go about to shift for your selves you will lose your selves and if you will save your selves you will undo your selves and if you will keep your Riches or Honours you do but cast them away For all is lost that is saved from God and that is best saved that is lost for God CHAP. LXVII Selfishness the powerful Enemy of all Ordinances 5. MOreover it is self that is the most powerful resister of all the Ordinances of God and it is self-denial that boweth the soul to that holy complyance with them which wonderfully furthereth their success Were it not for this one prevailing eneny what work would the Gospel make in the world O with what confidence should we come into the Pulpit and speak the word of God to our hearers had we any to deal with but this Carnal self God can overcome it by his victorious grace but it 's so blind so wilful so near men and so constant with them that it will overcome us and all that we can say or do till God set in When I come to convince a sinner of his guilt and shew him the hainous nature of his sin because it is his Own he will be convinced of it when I tell them of their misery they will not be convinced of it because it is their own Were I to speak all this to another and tell another of his
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉
Commonweal or the good of all Now selfishness is contrary to this common good which is the End of all Societies Every selfish person is his Own End and cares not to hinder the common good if he do but think it will promote his own And how is that Family Church or Commonwealth like to prosper where most alas most indeed have an End of their own that is set up against the End and being of the Society For though the real good of particular persons is usually comprehended in the common good yet that is but in subserviency to the publick good and is not observed usually by these persons who principally look at themselves And it commonly falls out that the publick welfare cannot be obtained but by such self-denial of the Members which these men will not submit to though they incur a greater hurt by their selfishness Little do they think of the common good it is their own matters that they regard and mind So it go well with them let Church and Commonwealth do what it will They can bear any ones trouble or losses save their own They are every man as a Church as a Commonwealth as a world to themselves If they be well all is well with them If they prosper they think it 's a good world what ever others undergo If they be poor or sick or under any other suffering it is all one to them as if calamity had covered the earth and if they see that they must die they take it as if it were the dissolution of the world unless as they leave either name or posterity behind them in which a shadow of them may survive And therefore they use to say when I am gone all the world is gone with me 2. Moreover selfishness is contrary to that Disposition and spirit that every Member of a Society should be possessed with The publick good will not be attained without a Publick spirit to which a Private spirit is contrary Men must be disposed to the work that they must be imployed in The work of every Member of a Society is such as Mordecai is approved for Esther 10. 3. seeking the wealth of his people and speaking peace to all his seed Every true Member of the Church must have such a spirit as Nehemiah that in the midst of his own prosperity and honours is cast down in fasting tears and Prayers when he heareth of the affliction reproach and ruines of Jerusalem and saith Why should not my countenance be sad when the City the place of my fathers sepulchres lieth waste Neh. 1. 3. 2. 3 4. And as the captivated Jews Psal 137. that lay by all their mirth and musick and sit down and weep at the remembrance of Zion A private selfish disposition is quite contrary to this and is busie about his own matters and principally looketh to his own ends and interests what ever come of the Church and falls under the reproof that Baruch had from God Jer. 45. 4 5. Behold that which I have built will I break down and that which I have planted I will pluck up even this whole Land and seekest thou great things for thy self seek them not This Private disposition makes men so foolish as to lose themselves by seeking themselves looking to their own goods or cabbins when the ship is sinking in which they are and to their own rooms when the House is all on fire But a Publick Spirit saith If I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget her cunning If I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief Joy Psal 137. 5 6. His love is to the Church as the Spouse of Christ and as to the body of which he is himself a member and his Prayers and endeavours are for its prosperity and peace Psal 122. 6 7 8 9. Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem they shall prosper that love thee Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy Palaces For my Brethren and companions sake I will now say Peace be within thee because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good The body of Christ is all animated by one spirit that it might aim at one end and it is so tempered by God that there should be no Schism in it but that the members should have the same care one for another that if one member suffer all the members should suffer with it or if one member be honoured all should rejoyce with it 1 Cor. 12. 13 24 25 26 27. There is no serving Publick ends with a Private selfish spirit 3. Moreover sefishness is an Enemy to the Laws of Societies whether it be the Laws of God or man For it would have them all bended to their private interest and fitted to their selfish disposition And therefore for the immutable Laws of God which they cannot change they corrupt them by misinterpretations expounding them according to the dictates of the flesh and putting such a sence on all as self can bear with And what they cannot misinterpret they murmur at and disobey And for the Laws of men where selfish persons are the makers of them you shall perceive by the warping of them who they were made for Hence it is that Princes and Parliaments have lookt at the Laws and Church and Ministers of Christ with an eye of Jealousie as if they had been some enemies that they stood in danger of and all for fear lest the personal selfish fleshly interest of Noblemen and Gentlemen and others should be incroacht upon by the Laws and Government of Christ And hence it is that so much endeavours and hopes of a Reformation have been so long frustrated and even among wise and Pious Law-makers there hath been so much pains to keep Ministers from doing their duty in Governing the Churches and laying such restrictions on them that Pastors might be no Pastors that is no Guides and Overseers of the Church in the worship of God And when good Laws are made they have as many enemies as selfish men If the Law were not hated the execution of it would not be hated so much 4. Also selfishness is an enemy to the very being of Magistracy and to all publick Officers and their work For the very End of the Magistracy is the Publick benefit as I said before of the end of a Commonwealth and therefore this selfishness is contrary to this end and such men will not value a Magistrate as a publick Officer but only as one that is able to help them or to hurt them which is but to fear him as a potent enemy and not to love or honour him as a Ruler They look at Magistrates as at Tyrants that are too strong for them and as a Cur will crouch to a Mastiff Dog so they will crouch to them to save themselves and this is their love and honour and obedience even such as Hobbs hath taught them
in his Leviathan But they do not reverence that beam of Divinity which God hath communicated to them in their Authority nor love their Governors as the Fathers of the Church and Common-wealth for the common good and the honour of God which they are appointed to promote 5. And this selfishness is the deadly enemy of all right Administrations of Justice and the due exercise of Authority in Church or Commonwealth If a Minister be selfish he will be shifting off the troublesome part of his duty and will over-rule his understanding to believe that it is no duty because dis-believing is easier than obeying He will be forward in those duties that are necessary to his maintenance and applause and are imposed on him by the Laws of men but out of the Pulpit it 's little that he will do As if it were the Pulpit only that were Gods Vineyard where he is set to labour Flesh and blood shall be consulted and men shall be pleased and all that the interest of self may be maintained And if the People be selfish they will rebel against their faithfullest Guides and kick against their Doctrine and reproofs and fly from Discipline which seems to their distempered minds to be against them Let but one most notorious lamentable instance suffice The greater part of our Parishioners in most places of the Land are lamentably ignorant and careless in the matters of their Salvation and all that we can do is too little to bring them to understand the matters of absolute Necessity and yet almost all of them are so much wiser in their own conceits than the ablest of their Teachers that if we do not humor them and be not Ruled by them in our Doctrine and Administrations about Sacraments Prayers Burial and the rest yea if we obey them not in gestures and forms they turn their backs upon Officers and Ordinances and the Church it self and pour out their reproach upon their Teachers as if we were ignorant in comparison of them even of them that know not so much as children of seven or eight year old should know See here the wonderful bewitched power of a selfish disposition And in matters of the Commonwealth what is it more than this nay what is it besides this that maketh Princes become Tyrants and Rulers keep under the Ordinances and interest of Christ or fearfully neglect them and look after the Church in the last place when they have no business of their own to call them off and to begin to build Gods House when they have first built their own not imitating Nehemiah's labourers that had the sword in one hand and the Trewel in the other and builded in their arms what else makes them give God but their leavings who giveth them all And what else could make them such enemies to Truth as to side with those parties what ever they be that side most with them and promote their interest And alas what work doth selfishness make with inferior Magistrates It is this only that opens the hand to a Reward and the ear to the solicitations of their friends and it s this that perverteth the judgement and this that oppresseth the poor and innocent and this that â—yeth the tongues and hands of Justices so that abundance of them do little more than possess the room and stand like an armed statue or a sign-post which hurteth none Alehouses do what their list for them and drunkards and swearers are bold at their noses and they are no terror to evil doers nor revengers to execute wrath upon them nor Ministers that use their power for much good but bear the Sword almost in vain contrary to the very nature of their Office Rom. 13. 1 2 3 4. And it is selfishness in the people that causeth the trouble of faithful Magistrates Every man would do what his list The worst offendor abhors him that would punish him And those that will commend Justice and cry down vice in the general yet when they fall under Justice themselves they take all that they suffer to be injury and will do all that they can against Justice and the Officers of it when it is to defend themselves or theirs from the execution of it so rare a thing is it to meet with a man that is a friend to Laws and Justice when themselves must suffer by it 6. Selfishness also makes men withdraw from all those necessary burdens and duties that are for the preservation of Church or Commonwealth Such wretches had rather the Gospel were thrust out of doors than it should cost them much and had rather have the unworthiest man that would be their Teacher for a little than allow the best that maintenance that the Gospel doth command or give them what the Law hath made their Own They would venture the ruine of Church and State and let all fall into the hands of the common enemies rather than hazard their persons or lay out their estates for the common preservation So that if the hand of violence did not sometimes squeeze those Spunges and force these leeches to disgorge themselves they would but impoverish the Common-wealth by their Riches and weaken the body like wens or impostumes by drawing to themselves 7. And then the selfish are such causes of Division that if they did no other harm they would break both Church and State into pieces if their humor were predominant and not restrained or purged out And in this regard selfishness is the direct enemy of Societies and is always at work to dissolve them into Independant individuals A Society is a Political Body which must have but one Head and one Interest and one End But when selfishness prevaileth there are as many Heads and Ends and Interests as Persons If they be in a Church every one is the Teacher and Ruler and every one must have his opinion countenanced and his humor satisfied Every one must have his way and will And how is this possible when their minds are so various and contrary to one another and their Interests so inconsistent and there are as many Rulers as persons when every man is drawing to himself and there is no center in which they can unite what work is there like to be in the Church What progress could be made in the building of Babel when no man was ruled by another but every man ran confusedly after his single imagination what an Army will it be and how are they like to speed in fight where every Souldier is instead of a Captain and General to himself and one runs this way and another that way and one will have one course taken and another another course and every one fighteth on his own head such work doth selfishness make in the Church It is this that hath broken it into so many parcels and would crumble it all to dust if it should prevail And it is this also that causeth the Divisions of the Commonwealth Faction rising up against Faction