you would you stand asking first How shall I know that it is mine or rather Take and Eat it when you are sure it may be yours if you will Let me intreat you therefore when the devil clamours in your ears Christ and Salvation is none of thine suppose that this voice of God in the Gospel were still in your ears yea let it be still in your memory O Take Christ and Life in him that thou maist be saved still think that you hear Paul following you with these words We are Embassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead be Reconciled to God Will you but remember this when you are on your knees in sorrow and when you would fain have Christ and Life and you are afraid that God will not give them to you I say Remember then God stands by Beseeching you to Accept the same thing which you are Beseeching him to give God is the first suitor and solicitor God Prayes you to Take Christ and you Pray him to give you Christ what have you now to do but to Take him And here understand that this Taking is no Impossible business it is no more but your hearty Consenting as I shall tell you more anon If you did but well understand and consider that Beleeving is the great Duty that God calls you to perform and promiseth to save you if you do truly perform it and that this Beleeving is to Take or Consent to have the same Mercy which you pray for and are troubled for fear least you shall misse of it even Christ and life in him this would presently draw forth your Consent and that in so open and express a way as you could not but discover it and have the comfort of it Remember this then That your first work is to Beleeve or Accept an offered Saviour 2. You must learn as I told you to Receive the Comforts of Universal or General Grace before you search after the Comforts of Special Grace I here suppose you so far sound in the doctrine of the Gospel as neither with some on one hand to look so much at Special Grace as to deny that General Grace which is the Ground of it or presupposed to it nor with others so far to look at universal Mercy as to deny Special Satan will tell you that all your Duties have been done in hypocrisie and you are unsound at the heart and have not a drop of saving Grace You are apt to entertain this and conclude that all this is true If I had any Grace I should have more Life and Love and Delight in God more tenderness of heart more growth in Grace I should not carry about such a Rock in my breast such a stupid dull insensible soul c. At the present let us suppose that all this be true yet see what a world of Comfort you may gather from Universal or General Mercy I have before opened to you four parts of it in the Cause of your Happiness and three in the Effect which may each of them afford much relief to your troubled soul 1. Suppose you are yet Graceless is it nothing to you that it is a God of Infinite Mercy that you have to do with whose Compassions are ten thousand times greater then your dearest friends or your own husbands Object O but yet he will not save the Graceless Answ True but he is the more ready to give Grace that you may be saved If any of you mark any of you do lack wisdome let him ask it of God who giveth to all men liberally without desert and upbraideth not with our unworthiness or former faults and it shall be given him Jam. 1.4 If you that are evil can give good gifts to your children how much more shall your heavenly Father give his holy Spirit to them that ask it Luk. 11.13 Suppose your life were in the hands of your own husband or your childrens life in your hands would it not exceedingly comfort you or them to consider whose hands they are in though yet you had no further Assurance how you should be used It may be you will say But God is no Father to the Graceless I answer He is not their Father in so neer and strict a sense as he is the Father of Beleevers but yet a Father he is even to the wicked and to convince men of his Fatherly Mercy to them he often so stileth himself He saith by Moses Deut. 32.6 to a wicked generation whose spot was not the spot of his children Do ye thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unwise Is not he thy Father that bought thee hath he not made thee and established thee And the Prodigall could call him Father for his encouragement before he returned to him Luk. 15.16 17 18. For my own part I must needs profess that my soul hath more frequent support from the consideration of Gods Gracious and Merciful nature then from the Promise it self 2. Furthermore Suppose you were Graceless at the present yet is it not an exceeding Comfort that there is one of such Infinite Compassions as the Lord Christ who hath assumed our Nature and is come down to seek and save that which was lost and is more tender hearted to poor sinners then we can possibly conceive yea who hath made it his Office to Heal and Relieve and Restore and Reconcile Yea that hath himself endured such temptations as many of ours For we have not an high-Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are without sin Let us therefore saith the holy Ghost come boldly unto the throne of Grace that we may obtain Mercy and finde Grace to help in time of need Heb. 4.15 16. Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and bloud he also himself likewise took part with them that he might destroy through death him that had the power of death that is the devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage For verily he took not on him the nature of Angels but he took on him the seed of Abraham Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his Brethren that he might be a Merciful and faithful high-Priest in things pertaining to God to make Reconciliation for the sins of the people For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted Heb. 2.14 15 16 17 18. Have you discountenance from men Christ had much more Doth God seem to forsake you so he did by Christ Are you fain to lye on your knees crying for Mercy why Christ in the days of his flesh was fain to offer up strong cryes and tears to him that was able to save him and was heard in that he feared It seems that Christ had distressing fears as well as you though not sinful fears Have you horrid
Passions by sanctifying Grace and by putting both Promises and dreadful Threatnings into his word I say if God by all these means hath given you several motives to obedience take heed of separating them Do not once ask your heart such a question Whether it would obey if there were no Threatning and s no â—ear Nor on the otherside do not let Fear do all without Love Doubtless the more Love constraineth to duty the better it is and you should endeavour with all your might that you might feel more of the force of Love in your duties But do you not mark how you cherish that Corruption that you complain of Your Doubts and Tormenting Fears are the things that Love should cast out Why then do you entertain them If you say I cannot help it why then do you cherish them and own them and plead and dispute for them and say you do well to Doubt and you have Cause Will this ever cast out Tormenting Fears Do you not know that the way to cast them out is not to maintain them by distrustful thoughts or words but to see their sinfulness and abhor them and to get more high thoughts of the Lovingkindness of God and the tender mercies of the Redeemer and the unspeakable Love that he hath manifested in his sufferings for you that so the Love of God may be more advanced and powerful in your soul and may be able to cast out your Tormenting Fears Why do you not do this instead of Doubting If Tormenting Fears and Doubtings be a sin why do you not make Conscience of them and bewail it that you have been so guilty of them Will you therefore Doubt because you have slavish fears Why that is to Doubt because you Doubt and to Fear because you Fear and so to sin still because you have sinned Consider well of the folly of this course DOUBT VII BVT I am not able to Believe and without Faith there is no pleasing God nor hope of salvation I fear Vnbelief will be my ruine ANSWER 1. I Have answered this Doubt fully before It is grounded on a Mistake of the Nature of true Faith You think that Faith is the Believing that you are in Gods favour and that you are Justified but properly this is no Faith at all but onely Assurance which is sometimes a fruit of Faith and sometimes never in this life obtained by a Believer Faith consisteth of two parts 1. Assent to the Truth of the Word 2. Acceptance of Christ as he is offered Which immediatly produceth a Trusting on Christ for salvation and a Consent to be Governed by him and Resolution to obey him which in the fullest sense are also acts of Faith Now do not you Believe the truth of the Gospel And do you not Accept of Christ as he is offered therein If you are truly willing to have Christ as he is offered I dare say you are a true Believer If you be not willing for shame never complain Men use rather to speak against those that they are unwilling of then complain of their absence and that they cannot enjoy them 2. However seeing you complain of unbelief in the Name of God do not cherish it and plead for it and by your own cogitations fetch in daily matter to feed it but do more in detestation of it as well as complain DOUBT VIII BVt I am a stranger to the witness of the spirit and the Joy of the Holy Ghost and Communion with God and therefore how can I be a true Believer ANSWER 1. FEeding your Doubts and Perplexities and arguing for them is not a means to get the Testimony and Joy of the Spirit but rather studying with all Saints to know the Love of Christ which passeth knowledge to comprehend the height and bredth and length and depth of his Love and seeking to understand the things that are given you of God Acknowledge Gods general Love to Mankind both in his Gracious Nature and Common Providences and Redemption by Christ and deny not his Special Mercies to your self but dwell in the study of the Riches of Grace and that 's the way to come to the Joy of the Holy Ghost 2. I have told you before what the witness of the Spirit is and what is the ordinary mistake herein If you have the Graces and holy operations of the Spirit you have the witness of the Spirit whether you know it or not 3. If by your own doubtings you have deprived your self of the Joy of the Holy Ghost bewail it and do so no more but do not therefore say you have not the Holy Ghost For the Holy Ghost often works Regeneration and Holiness before he works any sensible Joys 4. You have some hope of salvation by Christ left in you You be not yet in utter despair And is it no Comfort to you to think that you have yet any Hope and are not quite past all Remedy It may be your sorrows may so cloud it that you take no notice of it but I know you cannot have the least Hope without some answerable Comfort And may not that Comfort â—e truly the Joy of the Holy Ghost 5. And for Communion with God let me ask you Have you no recourse to him by Prayer in your straits Do you not wait at his mouth for the Law and direction of your life Have you received no holy desires or other Graces from him Nay are you sure that you are not a member of Christ who is one with him How can you then say that you have no Communion with him Can there be Communication of Prayer and Obedience from you yea your own self delivered up to Christ and a Communication of any life of Grace from God by Christ and the Spirit and all this without Communion It cannot be Many a soul hath most near Communion with Christ that knows it not DOUBT IX I Have not the spirit of prayer When I should pour out my soul to God I have neither bold access nor matter of Prayer nor Words ANSWER DO you know what the spirit of Prayer is It containeth 1. Desires of the soul after the things we want especially Christ and his Graces 2. An addressing our selves to God with these Desires that we may have help and relief from him Have not you both these Do you not Desire Christ and Grace Justification and Sanctification Do you not look to God as him who alone is able to supply your wants and bids you ask that you may receive Do you utterly despair of help and to seek to none Or do you make your addresses by Prayer to any but God But perhaps you look at words and matter to dilate upon that you may be able to hold out in a long speech to God and you think that is the effect of the spirit of Prayer But where do you find that in Gods Word I confess that in many and most the spirit which helpeth to Desires doth also help to some kind of
the Will with the most forcible Arguments A perswading quickning Ministry that helps to excite your Graces and draw up your heart to Christ is more usefull then they that spend most of their time to perswade you of your sincerity and give you comfort 3. But specially lay out your thoughts more in the most serious Considerations of those things which tend to breed and feed those particular Graces which you would have increased Objects and moving Reasons kept much upon the minde by serious thoughts are the great engine appointed both by nature and by Grace to turn about the soul of man Thoughts are to your soul as taking in the Air and Meat and Drink to your body Objects considered do turn the soul into their own Nature Such as are the things that you most think and consider of I mean in pursuance of them such will you be your self Consideration frequent serious Consideration is Gods great Instrument to convert the soul and to confirm it to get grace and to keep it and increase it If any soul perish for want of Grace it 's ten to one it is mainly for want of frequent and serious Consideration That the most of us do languish under such weaknesses and attain to small degrees of Grace is for want of sober frequent consideration We know not how great things this would do if it were but faithfully managed This then is my advice When you feel so great a want of faith and love for those be the main Graces for trial and use that you doubt whether you have any or none lay by those doubting thoughts a while and presently go and set your self to consider of God's Truth Goodness Amiableness and Kindheartedness to miserable unworthy sinners think what he is in himself and what he is to you and what he hath done for you and what he will do for you if you do but consent And then think of the vanity of all the childish Pleasures of this world how soon and in how sad a case they will leave us and what silly contemptible things they are in comparison of the everlasting Glory of the Saints By that time you have warmed your soul a little with such serious thoughts you will finde your Faith and Love revive and begin to stir and work within you And then you will feel that you have Faith and Love Only remember what I told you before that the heart and soul of saving Faith and Love supposing a Belief that the Gospel is true is all in this one Act of Willingness or Consent to have Christ as he is offered Therefore if you doubt of your Faith and Love it is your own Willingness that you doubt of or else you know not what you do Now methinks if you took but a sober view of the goodness of God and the Glory of Heaven on one side and of the silly empty worthless world on the other side and then ask your heart Which it will chuse and say to your self O my soul the God of Glory offers thee thy choice of dung and vanity for a little time or of the unconceivable Joyes of Heaven for ever Which wilt thou choose I say methinks the answer of your own soul should presently resolve you that you do Believe and that you Love God above this present world For if you can choose him before the world then you are more willing of him then the world and if he have more of your will for certain he hath more of your Faith and Love Use therefore in stead of doubting of your Faith to Believe till you put it out of doubt And if yet you doubt study God and Christ and Glory yet better and keep those objects by Consideration close to your heart whose nature is to work the heart to Faith and Love For certainly objects have a mighty power on the soul and certainly God and Christ and Grace and Glory are Mighty Objects as able to make a full and deep impression on mans soul as any in the world and if they work not it is not through any imperfection in them but because they be not well applied and by Consideration held upon the heart that they may work Perhaps you will say that Meditation is too hard a work for you and that your memory is so weak that you want matter to meditate upon or if you do meditate on these yet you feel no great motion or alteration on your heart To this I answer If you want matter take the help of some book that will afford you matter and if you want life in Meditation peruse the most quickning writings you can get If you have not better at hand read over and seriously consider as you read it those passages in the end of my Book of Rest which direct you in the exercise of these graces and give you some matter for your Meditation to work upon And remember that if you can increase the resolved choice of your will you increase your Love though you feel not those Affectionate workings that you desire Let me ask you now whether you have indeed taken this course in your doubtings If not how unwisely have you done Doubting is no cure but actual Believing and Loving is a cure If Faith and Love were things that you would fain get but cannot then you had cause enough to fear and to lie down and rise in trouble of minde from one year to another But it s no such matter It is so far from being beyond your reach or power to have these Graces though you would that they themselves are nothing else but your very Willingness at least your Willingness to have Christ is both your Faith and Love It may be said therefore to be in the power of your Will which is nothing else but that Actual Willingness which you have already If therefore you are unwilling to have him what makes you complain for want of the sense of his presence and the Assurance of his Love and the Graces of his Spirit as you frequently do It 's strange to me that people should make so many complaints to God and men and spend so many sad hours in fears and trouble and all for want of that which they would not have If you be not Willing be Willing now If you say you cannot do as I have before directed you One hours sober serious thoughts of God and the world of Christ and Satan of sin and Holiness of Heaven and hell and the differences of them will do very much to make you Willing Yet mistake me not Though I say you may have Christ if you Will and Faith and Love if you Will and no man can truly say I would be glad to have Christ as he is offered but Cannot Yet this Gladness Consent or Willingness which I mention is the effect of the special work of the Spirit and was not in your power before you had it nor is it yet so in your power as to
Believe without Gods further help but he that hath made you willing will not be wanting to maintain your willingness Though I will say to any man You may have Christ if you Will yet I will say to no man You can be willing of your self or without the special Grace of God Nay let me further ask Have not you darkned buried or weakned your Graces in stead of exercising and increasing them even then when you complained for want of Assurance of them when you found a want of Faith and Love have not you weakened them more and so made them less discernable Have you not fed your unbelief and disputed for your doubtings and taken Satans part against your self and which is farre worse have you never through these doubtings entertained hard thoughts of God and presented him to your soul as unwilling to shew you mercy and in an unlovely dreadfull hideous shape fitter to affright you from him then to draw you to him and likelier to provoke your hatred then your love If you have not done thus â— know too many troubled souls that have And if you have you have taken a very unlikely way to get Assurance If you would have been certain that you Loved God in sincerity you should have laboured to Love him more till you had been certain And that you might do so you should have kept better thoughts of God in your minde You will hardly love him while you think of him as evil or at least as hurtfull to you Never forget this Rule which I laid you down in the beginning that He that will ever love God must apprehend him to be Good and the more large and deep are our apprehensions of his goodness the more will be our Love For such as God appears to be to mens fixed conceivings such will their Affections be to him For the fixed deep conceptions or apprehensions of the mind do lead about the soul and guide the life I conclude therefore with this important and importunate request to you That though it be a duty necessary in its time and place to examine our selves concerning our sincerity in our several graces and duties to God yet be sure that the first and farre greater part of your time and pains and care and inquiries be for the getting and increasing of your grace then for the discerning it and to perform your duty rightly then to discern your right performance And when you conferre with Ministers or others that may teach you see that you ask ten times at least How should I get or increase my â—aith my love to Christ and to his people for once that you ask How shall I know that I believe or love Yet so contrary hath been and still is the practice of most Christians among us in this point that I have heard it twenty times asked How shall I know that I truly love the Brethren for once that I have heard it demanded How should I bring my heart to love them better And the like I may say of love to Christ himself I should next have spoke of the second part of the Direction How much our Assurance and Comfort will still depend on our Actual obedience But this will fall in in handling the two or three next following Directions DIRECTION XXIII 23. My next advice is this Think not that those doubts and troubles of minde which are caused and continued by wilfull Disobedience will ever be well healed but by the healing of that Disobedience or that the same means must be used and will suffice to the cure of such troubles which must be used and will suffice to cure the troubles of a tender-conscience and of an obedient Christian whose trouble is meerly through mistakes of their condition I Will begin with the later part of this Direction He that is troubled upon meer mistakes may be quieted upon the removal of them If he understood not the universal extent of Christs satisfaction or of the Covenant or conditional Grant of Christ and Life in him and if upon this he be troubled as thinking that he is not included the convincing him of his error may suffice to the removal of his trouble If he be troubled through his mistaking the nature of true Faith or true Love or other Graces and so think that he hath them not when he hath them the discovery of his error may be the quieting of his soul The soul that is troubled upon such mistakes must be tenderly dealt with Much more they that are disquieted by groundless fears or too deep apprehensions of the wrath or justice of God of the evil of sin and of their unworthiness and for want of fuller apprehensions of the loving kindness of God and the tender compassionate nature of Christ We can scarce handle such souls too gently God would have all to be tenderly dealt with that are tender of displeasing and dishonouring him by sin Gods own language may teach all Ministers what language we should use to such Isa 57.15 16 17 18 19 20 21. Thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity whose Name is Holy I dwel in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones For I will not contend for ever neither will I be alwaies wroth For the spirit should fail before me and the souls which I have made c. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt There is no peace saith my God to the wicked Much more tender language may such expect from Christ in the Gospel where is contained a fuller revelation of his Grace If Mary a poor sinfull woman lie weeping at his feet and washing them with her tears he hath not the heart to spurn her away but openly proclaims the forgiveness of her many sinnes As soon as ever the heart of a sinner is turned from his sinnes the heart of Christ is turned to him The very summe of all the Gospel is contained in those precious words which fully express this Matth. 11.28 29 30. Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you Rest Take my yoak upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall finde Rest unto your souls For my yoak is easie and my burden is light When the Prodigal Luke 15.20 doth once come home to his Father with sorrow and shame conâ—esting his unworthiness yea but resolved to confess it his Father preventeth him and sees him afarre off and staies not his coming but runs and meets him and when he comes to him he doth not upbraid him with his sins nor say Thou Rebell why hast thou forsaken me and preferred harlots and luxury before me nay he doth not so much as frown upon him but compassionatly fals on his neck and kisseth him Alas
Flesh-pleasing The three great sinnes therefore that do most directly fight against God himself in his Sovereignty are 1. Pride or Ambition 2. Worldlines or Love of Riches 3. Sensuality Voluptuousness or inordinate Love of Pleasures There are in the Vnderstanding indeed other sinnes as directly against God as these and more radicall as 1. Atheism denying a God 2. Polutheism denying our God to be the Alone God and joyning others with him 3. Idolatry owning false Gods 4. Infidelity denying Jesus Christ our Lord-Redeemer 5. Owning false Saviours and Prophets in his stead or before him as do the Mahometans 6. Joyning other Redeemers and Saviours with him as if he were not the alone Christ 7. Denying the holy Ghost and denying Credit to his Holy and Miraculous Testimony to the Christian faith and blasphemously ascribing all to the devil which is the sinne against the Holy Ghost 8. Owning and believing in devils or Lying spirits in stead of the Holy Ghost as the Montanists Mahometans Ranters Familists do 9. Owning and adjoyning devils or Lying spirits in coordination or equality with the Holy Ghost and believing equally his doctrine and theirs as if he were not sole and sufficient in his Work All these are sinnes directly against God himself and if prevalent most certainly damning three against the Father three against the Sonne and three against the Holy Ghost But these be not they that I need now to warn you of These are prevalent only in Pagans Infidels and Blasphemers Your troubles and complaints shew that these are not predominant in you It is therefore the three forementioned sinnes of the Heart or Will that I would have you carefully to look after in your troubles to see whether none of them get ground and strength in you 1. Enquire carefully into your humility It is not for nothing that Christ hath said so much of the excellency and necessity of this Grace When he bids us learn of him to be meek and lowly when he blesseth the meek and poor in spirit when he setteth a little child in the midst of them and telleth them Except they become as that child they could not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven when he stoopeth to wash and wipe his Disciples feet requiring them to do so by one another How oft doth the Holy Ghost press this upon us Commanding us to submit our selves to one another and not to minde high things but to condescend to men of low estate Rom. 12.16 and not to be wise in our own esteem but in honour preferre others before our selves Rom. 12.10 How oft hath God professed to resist and take down the Proud and to give Grace to the humble and dwell with them Search carefully therefore lest this sinne get ground upon you For though it may not be so predominant and reigning as to damn you yet may it cause God to afflict you and hide his face from you and humble you by the sense of his displeasure and the concealment of his Love And though one would think that doubting troubled souls should be alwaies the most humble and freest from pride yet sad experience hath certified me that much pride may dwell with great doubtings and distress of minde Even some of the same souls that cry out of their own unworthiness and fear lest they shall be firebrands of Hell yet cannot endure a close reproof especially for any disgracefull sin nor cannot bear a disparaging word nor love those nor speak well of them who do not value them nor endure to be crost or contradicted in word or deed but must have all go their way and follow their judgement and say as they say and dance after their pipe and their hearts rise aginst those that will not do it much more against those that speak or do any thing to the diminishing of their Reputation They cannot endure to be low and past by and overlooked when others are preferred before them or to be slighted and disrespected or their words or parts or works or judgements to be contemned or disparaged Nay some are scarce able to live in the same House or Church or Town in love and peace with any but those that will humour and please them and speak them fair and give them smooth and stroaking language and forbear crossing reproving and disparaging them Every one of these singly is an evident mark and fruit of pride how much more all joyntly I seriously profess it amazeth me to consider how hainously most professors are guilty of this sin even when they know it to be the devils own sin and the great abomination hated of God and read and hear so much against it as they do and confess it so oft in their praiers to God and yet not only inwardly cherish it but in words actions gestures apparel express it and passionately defend these discoveries of it The confusions and distractions in Church and State are nothing else but the proper fruits of it so are the contentions among Christians and the unpeaceableness in families For only from pride cometh contention saith Solomon Prov. 13.10 For my part when I consider the great measure of pride self-conceitedness self-esteem that is in the greatest part of Christians that ever I was acquainted with we of the Ministry not excepted I wonder that God doth not afflict us more and bring us down by foul means that will not be brought down by fair For my own part I have had as great means to help me against this sin as most men living have had first in many years trouble of minde and then in near twenty years languishing and bodily pains having been almost twenty times at the graves mouth and living near it continually and lastly and above all I have had as full a sight of it in others even in the generality of Professors and in the dolefull state of the Church and State and haynous detestable abominations of this ageâ— which one would think should have fully cured it And yet if I hear but either an applauding word from any of fame on one side or a disparaging word on the other side I am fain to watch my heart as narrowly as I would do the thatch of my house when fire is put to it and presently to throw on it the water of Detestation Resolution and Recourse to God And though the acts through Gods great mercy be thus restrained yet the constancy of these inclinations assures me that there is still a strong and deep root I beseech you therefore if you would ever have setled Peace and Comfort be watchfull against this sinne of Pride and be sure to keep it down and get it mortified at the very heart 2. The next sin that I would have you be specially jealous of is coveteousness or love of the profits or riches of the world This is not the sin of the rich only but also of the poor and more hainous is it in them to love the world inordinatly that have so
mistakes of many sad Christians hereabouts The cure lieth in breaking off sinne to the utmost of your power This is the Achan that disquieteth all It is Gods great mercy that he disquieteth you in sinning and gives you not over to so deep a slumber and peace in sinne as might hinder your repentance and reformation The dangerous mistakes here are these two 1. Some do as the Lapwing cry loudest when they are furthest from the nest and complain of an aking tooth when the disease is in the head or heart They cry out O I have such wandring thoughts in prayer and such a bad memory and so hard a heart that I cannot weep for sinne or such doubts and fears and so little sense of the Love of God that I doubt I have no true Grace When they should rather say I have so proud a heart that God is fain by these sad means to humble me I am so high in my own eyes so wise in my own conceit and so tender of my own esteem and credit that God is fain to make me base in my own eyes and to abhorre my self I am so worldly and in love with earth that it draws away my thoughts from God duls my love and spoils all my duties I am so sensual that I venture sooner to displease my God then my flesh I have so little compassion on the infirmities of neighbours and servants and other brethren and deal so censoriously churlishly and unmercifully with them that God is fain to hide his mercy from me and speak to me as in anger and vex me as in sore displeasure I am so froward peevish quarrelsome unpeaceable and hard to be pleased that it is no wonder if I have no peace with God or in my own conscience and if I have so little quietness who love and seek it no more Many have more reason I say to turn their complaints into this tune 2. Another most common unhappy miscarriage of sad Christians lieth here that They will rather continue complaining and self-tormenting then give over sinning so farre as they might give it over if they would I beseech you in the Name of God to know and consider what it is that God requireth of you He doth not desire your vexation but your reformation No further doth he desire the trouble of your minde then as it tendeth to the avoiding of that sinne which is the cause of it God would have you less in your fears and troubles and more in your obedience Obey more and disquiet your minde less Will you take this counsel presently and see whether it will not do you more good then all the complaints and doubtings of your whole life have done Set your self with all your might against your pride worldliness and sensuality your unpeaceableness and want of love and tenderness to your brethren and whatever other sin your conscience is acquainted with I pray you tell me If you had gravell in your shoe in your travel would it not be more wisdom to sit down and take off your shoe and cast it out then to stand still or go complaining and tell every one you meet of your soreness If you have a thorn in your foot will you go on halting and lamenting or will you pull it out Truly sinne is the thorn in your conscience and those that would not have such troubled consciences told of their sinnes for fear of increasing their distress are unskilfull comforters and will continue the trouble while the thorn is in As ever you would have peace then resolve against sinne to the utmost of your power Never excuse it or cherish it or favour it more Confess it freely Thank those that reprove you for it Desire those about you to watch over you and to tell you of it yea to tell you of all suspitious signes that they see of it though it be not evident And if you do not see so much Pride Worldliness Unpeaceableness or other sinnes in your self as your friends think they see in you yet let their judgement make you jealous of your heart seeing self-self-love doth oft so blinde us that we cannot see that evil in our selves which others see in us nay which all the Town may take notice of And be sure to engage your friends that they shall not smooth over your faults or mince them and tell you of them in extenuating language which may hinder Conviction and Repentance much less silence them for fear of displeasing you but that they will deal freely and faithfully with you And see that you distast them not and discountenance not their plain dealing lest you discourage them and deprive your soul of so great a benefit Think best of those as your greatest friends who are least friends to your sinne and do most for your recovery very from it If you say Alas I am not able to mortifie my sinnes It is not in my power I answer 1. I speak not of a perfect conquest nor of a freedom from every passion or infirmity 2. Take heed of pretending disability when it is unwillingness If you were heartily willing you would be able to do much and God would strengthen you Cannot you resist Pride Worldliness and Sensuality if you be willing Cannot you forbear most of the actual sinnes you commit and perform the duties that you omit if you be Willing though not so well as you would perform them Yea let me say this much lest I endanger you by sparing you Many a miserable hypocrite doth live in trouble of minde and complaining and after all perish for their wilfull disobedience Did not the rich young man go farre before he would break off with Christ and when he did leave him he went away sorrowfull And what was the cause of his sorrow Why the matter was that he could not be saved without selling all and giving it to the poor when he had great Possessions It was not that he could not be rid of his sinne but that he could not have Christ and Heaven without forsaking the world This is the case of unsanctified persons that are enlightened to see the need of Christ but are not weaned from worldly profits honours and pleasures they are perhaps troubled in minde and I cannot blame them but it is not that they cannot leave sinning but that they cannot have Heaven without leaving their delights and contentments on earth Sin as sin they would willingly leave For no man can love evil as evil But their fleshly profits honours and pleasures they will not leave and there is the stop and this is the cause of their sorrows and fears For their own judgement cries out against them He that loveth the world the love of the Father is not in him If ye live after the flesh ye shall die God resisteth the proud This is the voice of their informed understandings And conscience seconds it and saith Thou art the man But the flesh cries louder then both these Wilt thou leave
draw back Christ saith his soul shall have no pleasure in him Even those that have endured the great fight of Affliction being reproached and made a gazing-stock and that have taken joyfully the spoiling of their goods in assurance of a better and enduring substance have yet need to be warned that they cast not away their confidence and draw not back to perdition and lose not the Reward for want of Patience and Perseverance Heb. 10.22 to the end That you may escape this danger and be happy for ever take this advice 1. Look carefully to the sincerity of your hearts in their Covenant-closure with Christ See that you take him with the happiness he hath promised for your All. Take heed of looking after another felicity 〈◊〉 cherishing other Hopes or esteeming too highly any thing below Be jealous and very jealous lest your hearts should close deceitfully with Christ maintaining any secret Reserve for your bodily safety either resolving not to follow him or not resolving to follow him through the most desolate distressed condition that he shall lead you in Count what it may cost you to get the Crown study well his precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal There is no true hopes of the Glory to come if you cannot cast overboard all worldly hopes when the storm is such that you must hazard the one O how many have thought that Christ was most dear to them and that the hopes of heaven were their chiefest hopes who have left Christ though with sorrow when he bid them let go all 2. Every day renew your apprehensions of the Truth and Worth of the Promised Felicity and of the Delusory Vanity of all things here below Let not Heaven lose with you its Attractive force through your forgetfulness or unbelief He is the best Christian that knows best why he is a Christian and he will most faithfully seek and suffer that best knows for what he doth it Value not Wealth and Honor above that rate which the wisest and best experienced have put upon them and allow them no more of your affections then they deserve A mean wit may easily discover their emptiness Look on all present actions and conditions with a remembrance of their end Desire not a share in their prosperity who must pay as dear for it as the loss of their souls Be not ambitious of that honor which must end in Confusion nor of the Favor of those that God will call enemies How speedily will they come down and be levelled in the dust and be laid in the chains of darkness that now seem so happy to the pur-blinde world that cannot see the things to come Fear not that man that must shortly tremble before that God whom all must fear 3. Be more solicitous for the securing of your Consciences and Salvation then of your honors or estates In every thing that you are put upon consult first with God and Conscience and not with flesh and blood It is your daily and most serious care and watchfulness that is requisite to maintain your integrity and not a few careless thoughts or purposes conjunct with a minding of earthly things 4 Deal faithfully with every truth which you receive Take heed of subjecting it to carnal interests If once you have affections that can master your Understandings you are lost and know it not For when you have a Resolution to cast off any dâ—ty you will first Believe it is no duty and when you must change your judgement for carnal advantages you will make the change seem reasonable and right and evil shall be proved good when you have a minde to follow it 5. Make Gospel-Truths your own by daily humble studies arising to such a soundness of Judgement that you may not need to take too much upon trust lest if your guides should miscarry you miscarry with them Deliver not up your understanding in Captivity to any 6. Yet do not over-value your own Understandings This Pride hath done that in Church and State which all discerning men are lamenting They that know but little see not what they want as well as what they have nor that imperfection in their knowledge which should humble them nor that difficulty in things which should make them diligent and modest 7. Apprehend the necessity and Usefulness of Christs Officers Order and Ordinances for the prosperity of his Church Pastors must guide you though not seduce you or lead you blindefold But choose if you may such as are judicious and not ignorant not rash but sober not formal but serious and spiritual not of carnal but heavenly conversations especially avoid them that divide and follow parâ—â—es and seek to draw Disciples to themselves can sacrifice the Churches Unity and Peace to their proud humors or carnal interests Watch carefully that no weaknesses of the Minister do draw you to a dis-esteem of the Ordinances of God nor any of the sad miscarriages of Professors should cause you to set less by Truth or Godliness Wrong not Christ more because other men have so wronged him Quarrel more with your own unfitness and unworthiness in Ordinances then with other mens It is the frame of your own heart that doth more to help or hinder your Comforts then the quality of those you joyn with To these few Directions added to the rest in this Book I shall subjoyn my hearty Prayers that you may receive from that Gospel and Ministry which you have owned such stability in the faith such victory over the flesh and the world such apprehensions of the Love of God in Christ such direction in every strait and duty that you Live uprightly Dye peaceably and Raign Gloriously Amen May 9. 1653. Your servant in the Faith and Gospel of Christ Rich. Baxter To the Poor in Spirit MY dearly Beloved Fellow-Christians whose souls are taken up with the careful thoughts of attaining and maintaining Peace with God who are vile in your own eyes and value the Blood and Spirit and Word of your Redeemer and the Hope of the Saints in their approaching Blessedness before all the Pomp and Vanities of this world and Resolve to give up your selves to his Conduct who is become the Author of Eternal Salvation to all them that obey him For You do I Publish these following Directions and to You it is that I direct this Preface The onely Glorious and Infinite God who made the Worlds and upholdeth them by his Word who is attended with Millions of his Glorious Angels and Praised continually by his Heavenly hosts who pulleth down the Mighty from their seats and scattereth the Proud in the Imaginations of their hearts and maketh his Enemies lick the dust to whom the Kings and Conquerors of the Earth are as the silliest worms and the whole world is Nothing and lighter then Vanity which he will shortly turn into flames before your eyes This God hath sent me to you with that Joyful Message which needs no more but your believing entertainment to make
it sufficient to raise you from the dust and banish those terrours and troubles from your hearts and help you to live like the Sons of God He commandeth me to tell you that he takes notice of your sorrows he stands by when you see him not and say He hath forsaken you he minds you with greatest tenderness when you say He hath forgotten you He numbreth your sighs he bottles up your tears the groans of your hearts do reach his own He takes it unkindly that you are so suspicious of him and that all that he hath done for you in the work of Redemption and all the gracious workings of his Spirit on your souls and all your own peculiar experiences of his Goodness can raise you to no higher apprehensions of his Love Shall not Love be acknowledged to be Love when it s grown to a Miracle when it surpasseth Comprehension Must the Lord set up Love and Mercy in the work of Redemption to be equally admired with his Omnipotency manifested in the Creation and call forth the World to this sweet imployment that in Secret and in Publick it might be the business of our lives and yet shall it be so overlookt or questioned as if you lived without Love and Mercy in the World Providence doth its part by heaping up Mountains of daily Mercies and these it sets before your eyes The Gospel hath eminently done its part by clear describing them and fully assuring them and this is proclaimed frequently in your ears And yet is there so little in your hearts and mouths Do you see and hear and feel and taste Mercy and Love do you Live wholly on it and yet do you still doubt of it and think so meanly of it and so hardly acknowledge it God takes not this well but yet he considereth your frailty and takes you not at the worst He knows that flesh will play its part and the Remnants of Corruption will not be idle and the Serpent will be suggesting false thoughts of God and will be still striving most to obscure that part of his Glory which is dearest to him and especially which is most conjoyned with the Happiness of Man He knows also that sin will breed sorrows and fears and that mans Understanding is shallow and all his Conceivings of God are exceeding low and that we are so far from God as Creatures and so much further as sinners and especially as Conscious of the abuse of his Grace that there must needs follow such a strangeness as will damp and dull our apprehensions of his Love and such an abatement of our Confidence as will make us draw back and look at God afar off Seeing therefore that at this distance no full apprehensions of Love can be expected It is the Pleasure of our Redeemer shortly to Return with ten thousands of his Saints with the noble Army of his Martyrs and the attendance of his Angels and to give you such a Convincing Demonstration of his Love as shall leave no room for one more Doubt Your Comforts are now but a Tast they shall be then a Feast They are now but Intermittent they shall be then Continual How soon now do your Conquered fears return and what an unconstancy and unevenness is there in our Peace But then our Peace must needs be Perfect and Permanent when we shall please God and Enjoy him in Perfection to Perpetuity Certainly Christians your Comforts should be now more abundant but that they are not ripe It is that and not this that is your harvest I have told you in another Book the mistake and danger of expecting too much here and the Necessity of Looking and Longing for that Rest if we will have Peace indeed But alas how hard is this lesson learned Unbelievers would have Happiness but how fain would they have it in the Creature rather then in God! Believers would rather have their Happiness in God then in the Creature But how fain would they have it without Dying And no wonder for when Sin brought in Death even Grace it self cannot Love it though it may submit to it But though Churlish Death do stand in our way why look we not at the Souls admittance into Rest and the Bodies Resurrection that must shortly follow Doubtless that Faith by which we are Justified and Saved as it sits down on the word of Truth as the present ground of its confident repose so doth it thence look with one eye backward on the Cross and with the other forward on the Crown And if we well observe the Scripture Descriptions of that Faith we shall find them as frequently magnifying it and describing it from the latter as from the former As it is the duty and glory of faith to look back with Thankful Acknowledgement to a Crucified Christ and his payment of our Ransome so is it the Duty and Glory of that same Justifying Saving Faith to Look forward with Desire and Hope to the Return of King Jesus and the Glorious Celebration of the Marriage of the Lamb and the Sentencial Justification and the Glorification of his Saints To Believe these things unfeignedly which we never saw nor ever spoke with man that did see and to Hope for them so Really as to let go all present forbidden pleasures and all worldly hopes and seeming happiness rather then to hazard the loss of them this is an eminent part of that Faith by which the Just do live and which the Scripture doth own as Justifying and Saving For it never distinguisheth between Justifying Faith and Saving Faith as to their nature It is therefore a great mistake of some to look onely at that one eye of Justifying Faith which looks back upon the Cross and a great mistake of them on the other hand that look onely at that eye of it which beholds the Crown Both Christ Crucified and Christ Interceding and Christ Returning to Justifie and Glorifie are the objects even of Justifying Saving Faith most strictly so called The Scripture oft expresseth the one onely but then it still implyeth the other The Socinians erroniously therefore from Heb. 11. where the Examples and Elogies of Faith are set forth do exclude Christ Crucified or the respect to his Satisfaction from Justifying Faith and place it in a meer Expectation of Glory and others do as ungroundedly affirm that it is not the Justifying Act of Faith which Heb. 11. describeth because they find not the Cross of Christ there mentioned For as Believing in Christs Blood Comprehendeth the End even the Expectation of Remission and Glory merited by that blood so the Believing of that Glory doth always imply that we Believe and Expect it as the fruit of Christs Ransome It is for health and life that we Accept and Trust upon our Physician And it is for Justification and Salvation that we Accept and Trust on Christ The Salvation of our Souls is the End of our Faith They that question whether we may Believe and Obey for our own
to him as long as you strip him of his Divine Nature Remember the holy Ghost's description of God 1 Joh 4.16 God is Love Write these words deep in your Understanding 2. Hereby you will have this Advantage also that your thoughts of God will be more sweet and delightfull to you For as Glorious and beautifull sights to your eyes and melodious sounds to your ears and sweet smels tastes c. are all delightfull when things deformed stinking c. are all loathsome and we turn away from one with abhorrency but for the other we would often see taste c. and enjoy them So is it with the objects of our minde God hath given no command for Duty but what most perfectly agreeth with the nature of the object He hath therefore bid us Love God and Delight in him above all because he is above all in Goodness even infinitely and unconceivably Good else we could not Love him above all nor would he ever command us so to do The object is ever as exactly fitted to its part as to draw out the Love and Delight of our hearts as the Precept is on its part to oblige us to it And indeed the Nature of things is a precept to Duty and it which we call The Law of Nature 3. Hereupon will follow this further Advantage that your Thoughts will be both easilyer drawn toward God and more frequent and constant on him For delightfull objects draw the heart to them as the Loadstone doth the Iron How gladly and freely and frequently do you think of your deerest friends And if you did firmly conceive of God as one that is ten thousand times more Gracious Loving and Amiable then any friend that you have in the world it would make you not only to Love him above all friends but also more freely delightfully and unweariedly to think of him 4. And then you would hence have this further Advantage that you would have lesse backwardness to any Duty and lesse weariness in Duty you would finde more delight in Prayer Meditation and speech of God when once God himself were more Lovely and delightfull in your eyes 5. All these Advantages would produce a further that is The growth of all your Graces For its impossible but this growth of Love and frequent delightfull thoughts of God and addresses to him should cause an increase of all the rest 6. Hereupon your Evidences would be more clear and discernable For Grace in strength and action would be easily found and would not this resolve all your doubts at once 7. Yea the very exercise of these severall Graces would be comfortable 8. And hereupon you would have more humble familiarity and communion with God For Love Delight and frequent addresses would overcome strangeness and disacquaintance which make us fly from God as a Fish or Bird or wild beast will from the face of a man and would give us access with boldness and confidence And this would banish sadness and terrour as the Sun dispelleth darkness and cold 9. At least you would hence have this advantage That the fixed apprehension of Gods Goodness and mercifull nature would cause a fixed apprehension of the Probability of your Happiness as long as you are willing to be Happy in Gods way For reason will tell you that he who is Love it self and whose Goodness is equal to his Almightiness and who hath sworn that he hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner but rather that he repent and live will not destroy a poor soul that lyeth in submission at his feet and is so far from resolved rebellion against him that it grieveth that it is no better and can please him no more 10. However these right apprehensions of God would overcome those terrours which are raised only by false apprehensions of him And doubtless a very great part of mens causeless troubles are raised from such misapprehensions of God For Satan knows that if he can Bring you to think of God as a cruel Tyrant and bloudthirsty man-hater then he can drive you from him in terrour and turn all your Love and cheerfull obedience into hatred and slavish fear I say therefore again Do not only get but also fix deep in your understanding the highest thoughts of Gods natural Goodness and Graciousness that possibly you can raise for when they are at the highest they come short ten thousand fold Object But Gods Goodness lyeth not in Mercy to men as I have read in great Divines he may be perfectly Good though he should for ever torment the most innocent creatures Answ These are ignorant presumptuous intrusions into that which is unsearchable Where doth Scripture say as you say Judge of God as he revealeth himself or you will but delude your self and abuse him All his works represent him mercifull for his Mercy is over all his works and legible in them all His word saith He is Good and doth Good Psal 119.68 and 145.9 How himself doth proclaim his own Name Exod. 34.6 7. I told you before The most mercifull men are his liveliest Image and therefore he plants Mercy in them in their conversion as a principal part of their new nature and commands of mercifulness are a great part of his Law and he bids us Be mercifull as our heavenly Father is mercifull Luk. 6.36 Now if this were none of his Nature how could he be the pattern of our new nature herein and if he were not infinitely Mercifull himself how could we be required to be Mercifull as he is Who dare say I am more Mercifull then God Object But God is Just as well as Mercifull and for all his Mercifull nature he will damn most of the world for ever in hell Answ 1. But James saith Mercy rejoiceth against Judgement Jam. 2.13 2. God is necessarily the Governour of the world while there is a world and therefore must govern it in Justice and so must not suffer his Mercy to be perpetually abused by wicked wilfull contemptuous sinners But then consider two things 1. That he destroyeth not humble souls that lye at his feet and are willing to have Mercy on his easie termes but only the stubborn despisers of his Mercy He damneth none but those that will not be saved in his way that is that will not accept of Christ and salvation freely given them I speak of those that hear the Gospel for others their case is more unknown to us And is it any diminution to his infinite Mercy that he will not save those that will not be intreated to accept of salvation 2. And consider how long he useth to wait on sinners and even beseech them to be reconciled to him before he destroyeth them and that he heapeth multitudes of Mercies on them even in their rebellion to draw them to Repentance and so to Life and is it unmercifulness yet if such men perish Object But if God were so infinite in Mercy as you say Why doth he not make all these
use of Infallible signs of Sincerity and take not those for certain which are not ANd to that end remember what I said before that you must well understand wherein the Nature of saving Faith and so of all saving Grace doth consist And when you understand this write it down in two or three lines and both at your first trial and afterward when ever any doubts do drive you to a Review of your Evidences still have recourse only to those Signs and try by them What these Signs are I have shewed you so fully in the forecited place in my book of Rest that I shall say but little now Remember that Infallible signs are very few and that whatsoever is made the condition of salvation that is the most Infallible evidence of our salvation and therefore the fittest Mark to try by And therefore Faith in God the Father and the Redeemer is the main Evidence But because I have elsewhere shewed you that this Faith is comprehensive of Love Gratitude Resolution to Obey and Repentance let me more particularly open it to help you in the Triall To prove any Grace to be saving it is necessary that you prove that salvation is fully promised to him that hath it Now if you will know what it is that hath this promise I will tell you 1. As to the Object 2. The Act. 3. The degree or modification of the Act. For all these three must be enquired after if you will get Assurance 1. The Object is principally God and the Redeemer Christ And secondarily the Benefits given by Christ and under that the means to attain the principal Benefits c. 2. The Act hath many Names drawn from Respective and Modall differences in the Object as Faith Desire Love choosing Accepting Receiving Consenting c. But properly all are comprised in one word Willing The Understandings high estimation of God and Christ and Grace is a Principal part of true saving Grace but yet it is difficult and scarce possible to judge of your self by it rightly but only as it discovers it self by prevailing with the Will 3. The Degree of this Act must be such as ordinarily prevaileth against its contrary I mean both the contrary Object and the contrary Act to the same Object But because I doubt School-termes do obscure my meaning to you though they are necessary for exactness I will express the nature of saving Grace in two or three Marks as plain as I can 1. Are you heartily willing to take God for your Portion and had you rather Live with him in Glory in his favour and fullest Love with a soul perfectly cleansed from all sin and never more to offend him Rejoicing with his Saints in his everlasting praises than to enjoy the delights of the flesh on earth in a way of sin and without the favour of God 2. Are you heartily willing to take Jesus Christ as he is offered in the Gospel that is to be your only Saviour and Lord to give you pardon by his bloudshed and to sanctifie you by his Word and Spirit and to govern you by his Laws Because this General containeth and implieth several Particulars I will express them distinctly Here it is supposed that you know this much following of the nature of his Laws For to be Willing to be Ruled by his Laws in General and utterly Unwilling when it comes to particulars is no true Willingness or subjection 1. You must know that his Laws reach both to heart and outward actions 2. That they command a holy spiritual heavenly life 3. That they command things so cross and unpleasing to the flesh that the flesh will be still murmuring and striving against obedience Particularly 1. They command things quite cross to the inclinations of the flesh as to forgive Wrongs to Love Enemies to forbear Malice and Revenge to restrain and mortifie Lust and Passion to abhor and mortifie Pride and be low in our own eyes and humble and meek in spirit 2. They command things that cross the interest of the flesh and its inclination both together I mean which will deprive it of its enjoyments and bring it to some suffering As to perform Duties even when they lay us open to disgrace and shame and reproach in the world and to deny our credit rather then forsake Christ or our duty to obey Christ in doing what he commandeth us though it would hazard or certainly lose our wealth friends liberty and life it self forsaking all rather then to forsake him to give to the poor and other good uses and that liberally according to our abilities to deny the flesh all forbidden pleasures and make not provision to satisfie its lusts but to crucifie the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof and in this combate to hold on to the end and to overcome These are the Laws of Christ which you must know before you can determine whether you are indeed unfeignedly willing to obey them Put therefore these further questions to your self for the trial of your willingness to be ruled by Christ according to his Laws 3. Are you heartily willing to live in the performance of those holy and spiritual Duties of heart and life which God hath absolutely commanded you and are you heartily sorry that you perform them no better with no more cheerfulness delight success and constancy 4. Are you so throughly convinced of the worth of everlasting Happiness and the intollerableness of everlasting misery and the truth of both and of the soveraignty of God the Father and Christ the Redeemer and your many engagements to him and of the necessity and good of obeying and the evil of sinning that you are truly willing that is have a setled resolution to cleave tâ— Christ and obey him in the deerest most disgracefull painfull hazardous flesh-displeasing Duties even though it should cost you the loss of all your worldly enjoyments and your life 5. Doth this willingness or resolution already so far prevail in your heart and life against all the Interest and Temptations of the world the devil and your flesh that you do ordinarily practise the most strict and holy the most self-denying costly and hazardous duties that you know God requireth of you and do heartily strive against all known sin and overcome all gross sins and when you fall under any prevailing temptation do rise again by Repentance and begging pardon of God through the bloud of Christ do resolve to watch and resist more carefully for the time to come In these five Marks is expressed the Gospel-description of a true Christian Having laid down these Marks I must needs add a few words for the explaining of some things in them least you mistake the meaning and so lose the benefit of them 1. Observe that it is your willingness which is the very Point to be tried And therefore 1. Judge not by your bare knowledge 2. Judge not by the stirrings or passionate workings of your Affections â— pray you forget not
this Rule in any of your self-examinings It is the heart that God requireth My son give me thy heart Prov. 23.26 If he hath the Will he hath the heart He may have much of our Knowledge and not our heart but when we Know him so throughly as to Will him unfeignedly then he hath our heart Affectionate workings of soul to God in Christ are sweet things and high and noble Duties and such as all Christians should strive for But they are not the safest Marks to try our states by 1. Because there may be a solid sincere intention and choice in and of the Will when there is little stirring perceived in the Affections 2. Because the Will is the Master Commanding Faculty of the Rational soul and so if it be right that man is upright and safe 3. Because the Passions and Affections are so mutable and uncertain The Will can command them but imperfectly it cannot perfectly Restrain them from vanities much less can it perfectly raise them to that height as is suitable to the excellency of our heavenly objects But the object it self with its sensible manner of apprehension moves them more then all the Command of the Will And so we finde by experience that a godly man when with his utmost private endeavour he cannot command one stirring pang of divine Love or Joy in his soul yet upon the hearing of some moving Sermon or the sudden receiving of some extraordinary Mercy or the reading of some quickning book he shall feel perhaps some stirring of that Affection So when we cannot weep in private one tear for sin yet at a stirring Sermon or when we give vent to our sorrows and ease our troubled hearts into the bosome of some faithfull friend then we can finde tears 4. Because Passions and Affections depend so much on the temperature of the Body To one they are easie familiar and at command to another as honest they are difficult and scarce stirred at all With most women and persons of weaker tempers they are easier then with men Some cannot weep at the death of a friend though never so deer no nor perhaps feel very sensible inward grief and yet perhaps would have redeemed his life at a far deerer rate had it been possible then those that can grieve and weep more abundantly 5. Because Worldly things have so great an advantage on our Passions and Affections 1. They are sensible and neer us and our knowledge of them is clear But God is not to be seen heard or felt by our senses he is far from us though locally present with us we are capable of knowing but little very little of him 2. Earthly things are alway before our eyes their advantage is continuall 3. Earthly things being still the objects of our senses do force our Passions whether we will or not though they cannot force our Wills 6. Because Affections and Passions rise and fall and neither are nor can be in any even and constant frame and therefore are unfit to be the constant or certain evidence of our state But the Wills Resolution and Choice may be more constant So that I advise you rather to try your self by your Will then by your Passionate stirrings of Love or longing of Joy or sorrow Object But doth not Scripture lay as much on Love as on any Grace and doth not Christ say that except we Love him above all we cannot be his Disciples Answ It s all very true But consider Love hath two parts the one in the Will which is commonly called a faculty of the soul as Rational and this is the same thing that I call Willing Accepting Choosing or Consenting this Complacency is true Love to Christ and this is the sure standing Mark. The other is the Passionate part commonly said to be in the soul as sensitive and this though most commonly called Love yet is less certain and constant and so unfitter to try your state by though a great duty so far as we can reach it 2. You must understand and well remember that it is not every willingness that will prove your sincerity For wicked men may have slight apprehensions of spiritual things which may produce some slight desires and wishes which yet are so feeble and heartless that every lust and carnal desire overcomes them And it will not so much as enable them to deny the grossest sin But it must be the Prevalent part of your Will that God must have I mean a greater share a deeper and larger room then any thing in the world That is you must have a higher estimation of God and everlasting happiness and Christ and a holy life then of any thing in the world and also your Will must be so disposed hereby and inclined to God that if God and Glory to be obtained through Christ by a holy self-denying life were set before you on the one hand and the Pleasure Profits and Honours of the world to be enjoyed in a way of sin on the other hand you would resolvedly take the former and refuse the later Indeed they are thus set before you and upon your choice dependeth your salvation or damnation though that Choice must come from the Grace of God 3. Yet must you well remember that this Willingness and Choice is still imperfect and therefore when I mention a hearty willingness I mean not a perfect willingness There may be and is in the most gracious souls on earth much undisposedness backwardness and withdrawing of heart which is too great a measure of unwillingness to duty Especially to those duties which the flesh is most averse from and which require most of God and his Spirit to the right performance of them Among all Duties I think the soul is naturally most backward to these following 1. To secret Prayer because it is spiritual and requires great reverence and hath nothing of external pomp or form to take us up with and consisteth not much in the exercise of common gifts but in the exercise of special Grace and the breathings of the Spirit and searchings pantings and strivings of a gracious soul towards God I do not speak of the heartless repeating of bare words learned by rote and either not understood or not uttered from the feeling of the soul 2. To serious Meditation also is the soul very backward that is either to meditate on God and the promised Glory or any spiritual subject to this end that the heart may be thereby quickned and raised and graces exercised though to meditate on the same subject only to know or dispute on it the heart is nothing neer so backward Or else to meditate on the state of our own hearts by way of self-examination or self-judging or self-reprehension or self-exciting 3. Also to the Duty of faithfull dealing with each others souls in secret reproof and exhortation plainly though lovingly to tell each other of our sins and danger to this the heart is usually very backward partly through a
or treasures of the earth If you had as you have an offer of God Christ Grace and Glory on one side and worldly prosperity in sin on the other side you would choose God and let go the other You dare not you would not give over Praying Hearing Reading and Christian company and give up your self to worldly fleshly pleasures yet you are not Assured of salvation because you finde not that Delight and Life in Duty and that Witness of the Spirit and that communion with God nor that tenderness of heart as you desire It is well that you desire them But though you be not Certain of Salvation do not you see a great likelihood a Probability in all this Is not your heart raised to a Hope that yet God is mercifull to you and means you good Doubtless this you might easily discern The second thing that I am to shew you is that there may much spiritual Comfort and Peace of Conscience be enjoyed without any Certainty of Salvation given upon these forementioned Probabilities Which I prove thus 1. No doubt but Adam in innocency had Peace of Conscience and Comfort and Communion with God and yet he had no Assurance of Salvation I mean either of continuing in Paradise or being translated to Glory For if he had either he was sure to persevere in Innocency and so to be glorified But that was not true or else he must foreknow both that he should fall and be raised again and saved by Christ But this he knew not at all 2. Experience tels us that the greatest part of Christians on earth do enjoy that Peace and Comfort which they have without any Certainty of their Salvation 3. The Nature of the thing telleth us that a likelihood of so great a mercy as everlasting Glory must needs be a ground of great Comfort If a poor condemned prisoner do but hear that there is Hopes of a pardon specially if very probable it will glad his heart Indeed if an Angel from Heaven were brought into this state it would be sad to him But if a devil or a condemned sinner have such Hope it must needs be glad news to them The devils have it not but we have 3. Let me next therefore intreat you to take the Comfort of your Probabilities of Grace and Salvation Your horse or dog knoweth not how you will use them Certainly yet will they lovingly follow you and put their heads to your hand and trust you with their lives without fear and love to be in your company because they have found you kinde to them and have tried that you do them no hurt but good yea though you do strike them sometimes yet they finde that they have their food from you and your favour doth sustain them Yea your little children have no Certainty how you will use them and yet finding that you have alwaies used them kindly and expressed Love to them though you whip them sometimes yet are glad of your company and desire to be in your lap and can trust themselves in your hands without tormenting themselves with such doubts as these I am uncertain how my mother will use me whether she will wound me or kill me or turn me out of doors and let me perish Nature perswades us not to be too distrustfull of those that have alwaies befriended us and especially whose Nature is Mercifull and Compassionate Nor to be too suspitious of evil from them that have alwaies done us good Every man knows that the Good will do good and the Evil will do evil and accordingly we expect that they should do to us Naturally we all fear a Toad a Serpent an Adder a mad Dog a wicked Man a mad Man a cruel blood thirsty Tyrant and the Devil But no one fears a Dove a Lamb a good Man a mercifull compassionate Governour except only the Rebels or notorious offenders that know he is bound in justice to destroy or punish them And none should fear distrustfully the wrath of a gracious God but they who Will not submit to his Mercy and Will not have Christ to reign over them and therefore may know that he is bound in Justice if they come not in to destroy them But for you that would be Obedient and Reformed and are troubled that you are no better and beg of God to make you better and have no sin but what you would be glad to be rid of may not you at least see a strong Probability that it shall go well with you O make use therefore of this Probability and if you have but Hopes that God will do you good rejoice in those Hopes till you can come to rejoyce in Assurance And here let me tell you that Probabilities are of divers Degrees according to their divers Grounds Where men have but a little Probability of their Sincerity and a greater Probability that they are not Sincere in the faith these men may be somewhat born up but it behoves them presently to search in fear and to amend that which is the cause of their fear Those that have more Probability of the Sincerity of their hearts then of the contrary may well have more peace then trouble of minde Those that have yet a higher Degree of Probability may live in more Joy and so according to the Degree of Probability may their Comforts still arise And observe also that it is but the highest Degree of this Probability here which we call a Certainty For it is a Moral Certainty and not that which is called a Certainty of Divine faith nor that which is called a Certainty of evidence in the strictest sense though yet evidence there is for it But it is the same evidences materially which are the ground of Probability and of Certainty Only sometime they differ Gradually one having more Grace and another less and sometime not so neither for he that hath more Grace may discern but a Probability in it through some other defect no more then he that hath less But when one man discerns his Graces and Sincerity but darkly he hath but a Probability of Salvation manifested by them and when another discerneth them more clearly he hath a stronger Probability and he that discerneth them most clearly if other necessaries concurre hath that which we call a Certainty Now I am perswaded that you frequently see a strong Probability of your Sincerity and may not that be a very great stay and comfort to your soul Nay may it not draw out your heart in Love Delight and Thankfulness Suppose that your name were written in a piece of paper and put among a hundred or fifty or but twenty other like papers into a Lottery and you were certain that you should be the owner of this whole Land except your name were drawn the first time and if it were drawn you should die Would your Joy or your Sorrow for this be the greater Nay if it were but ten to one or but two to one odds on
your side it would keep you from drooping and discouragement And why should it not do so in the present case DIRECTION XVII 17. My next advice to you is this For the strengthening your apprehensions of the Probability of your Salvation Gather up and improve all your choicest Experiences of Gods good will and mercy to you And observe also the Experiments of others in the same kind WE do God and our selves a great deal of wrong by forgetting neglecting and not improving our Experiences How doth God charge it on the Israelites especially in the wilderness that they forgot the Works of God by which he had so often manifested his Power and Goodness Psal 78. 107. see 105 106. When God had by one Miracle silenced their unbelief they had forgotten it in the next distress It was a sign the disciples hearts were hardened when they forgot the Miracles of the loaves and presently after were distrustfull and afraid Mar. 6.52 God doth not give us his mercies only for the present use but for the future nor only for the body but for the soul I would this truth were well learned by Believers You are in sickness in troubles and dangers and pinching straits in fears and anguish of minde In this case you cry to God for help and he doth in such a manner deliver you as silenceth your distrust and convinceth you of his love at least of his readiness to do you good What a wrong is it now to God and your self to forget this presently and in the next temptation to receive no strengthening by the consideration of it Doth God so much regard this dirty flesh that he should do all this meerly for its ease and relief No he doth it to kill your unbelief and convince you of his special Providence his care of you and love to you and power to help you and to breed in you more loving honourable and thankfull thoughts of him Lose this benefit and you lose all You may thus use one and the same Mercy a hundred times Though it be gone as to the body it is still fresh in a believing thankfull carefull soul You may make as good use of it at your very death as the first hour But O the sad forgetfulness mutability and unbelief of these hearts of ours What a number of these choice experiences do we all receive When we forget one God giveth another and we forget that too When unbelief doth blasphemously suggest to us Such a thing may come once or twice by chance God addeth one experience to another till it even shame us out of our unbelief as Christ shamed Thomas and we cry out My Lord and My God Hath it not been thus oft with you Have not Mercies come so seasonably so unexpectedly either by small means or the means themselves unexpectedly raised up without your designing or effecting and plainly in answer to prayers that they have brought conviction along with them and you have seen the Name of God engraven on them Sure it is so with us when through our sinfull negligence we are hardly drawn to open our eyes and see what God is doing Much more might we have seen if we had but observed the workings of Providence for us Especially they that are in an afflicted state and have more sensible daily use for God and are awakened to seek him and regard his dealings I know a Mercy to the body is no certain evidence of Gods Love to the soul But yet from such experiences a Christian may have very strong Probabilities When we find God hearing Prayers it is a hopefull sign that we have some interest in him We may say as Manoahs wife said to him Judg. 13.23 If the Lord had meant to destroy us he would not have received a sacrifice at our hands nor have done all this for us To have God so near to us in all that we call upon him for and so ready to relieve us as if he could not deny an earnest prayer and could not endure to stop his ears against our cries and groans these are hopefull signes that he meaneth us good I know special Grace is the only Certain Evidence of special Love But yet these kind of experiences are many times more effectual to refresh a drooping doubting soul then the surest Evidences For Evidences may be unseen and require a great deal of holy skill and diligence to try them which few have But these experiences are near us even in our bodies and shew themselves They make all our bones say Lord who is like unto thee And it is a great advantage to have the help of sense it self for our Consolation I hope you yet remember the choice particular Providences by which God hath manifested to you 〈◊〉 Goodness even from your youth till now especially his frequent answering of your prayers Methinks these should do something to the dispelling of those black distrustfull thoughts of God I could wish you would write them down and oft review them And when Temptations next come remember with David who helpt you against the Lion and the Bear and therefore fear not the uncircumcised Philistine 2. And you may make great use also of the experiences of others Is it not a great satisfaction to hear twenty or fourty or a hundred Christians of the godliest lives to make the very same complaints as you do your sel◠The very same complaints have I heard from as many By this you may see your case is not singular but the ordinary case of the tenderest Consciences and of many that walk uprightly with God And also is it not a great help to you to hear other Christians tell how they have come into those troubles and how they have got out of them what hurt them and what helped them and how God dealt with them while they lay under them How desirous are diseased persons to talk with others that have had the same disease and to hea◠them tell how it took them and how it 〈◊〉 them and specially what cured them Besides it will give you much stronger hopes of cure and recovery to peace of conscience when you hear of so many that have been cured of the same disease Moreover is it not a reviving thing to hear Christians open the Goodness of the Lord and that in particulars as upon experience they have found him to their own souls To hear them tell you of such notable discoveries of Gods special providence and care of his people as may refell all Temptations to Atheism and unbelief To hear them give you their frequent and full experiences of Gods hearing and answering their Prayers and helping them in their distresses Though the carnal part of the Mercy were only theirs yet by improvement the spiritual part may be yours You may have your faith and love and joy confirmed by the experiences of David Job Paul which are past so long ago and by the experiences of all your Godly acquaintance as if they
were your own This is the benefit of the unity of the Church the blessings of one member of the body are blessings to the rest and if one Rejoyce the rest may Rejoyce with them not only for their sakes but also for their own Such as God is to the rest of his children such he is and will be to you He is as ready to pity you as them and to hear your complaints and moans as theirs And lest we should think that none of them were so bad as we he hath left us the examples of his mercies to worse then ever we were You never were guilty of witchcraft and open Idolatry as Manasses was and that for a long time and drawing the whole Nation and chief part of the Visible Church on earth into Idolatry with him You never had your hand in the blood of a Saint and even of the first Martyr Stephen as Paul had You never hunted after the blood of the Saints and persecuted them from City to City as he did And yet God did not only forgive him but was found of him when he never sought him yea when he was persecuting him in his Members and kicking against the pricks yea and made him a chosen Vessel to bear about his Name and as noble an Instrument of the Propagation of his Gospel as if he had never been guilty of any such crimes that he might be an encouraging example to the unworthiest sinners and in him might appear the riches of his Mercy 1 Tim. 1.13 16. see also Titus 3.3 4 5 6 7. Is there no ground of comfort in these examples of the Saints The same we may say of the experiences of Gods people still And doubtless it were well if experimentall Christians did more fully and frequently open to one another their experiences It were the way to make private particular Mercies to be more publike and common Mercies and to give others a part in our blessings without any diminution of them to our selves Not that I would have this so openly and rashly done by those who through their disability to express their mindes do make the works and language of their Spirit seem ridiculous to carnal ears as I perceive some in a very formality would have it as if it must be one of their Church customs to satisfie the society of the fitness of each member before they will receive them But I would have Christians that are sit to express their minds to do it in season and with wisdom Especially those to whom God hath given any more eminent and notable experiments which may be of publick use Doubtless God hath lost very much of the honour due to his Name and poor Christians much of the benefit which they might have received and may challenge by the mutual interest of fellow-members for want of the publike communication of the extraordinary and more notable experiences of some men Those that write the lives of the holiest men when they are dead can give you but the outside and carkass of their Memorials The most observable passages are usually secret known only to God and their own souls which none but themselves are able to communicate For my own part I do soberly and seriously profess to you that the experiences I have had of Gods special Providences and Fatherly care and specially of his hearing prayers have been so strange and great and exceeding numerous that they have done very much to the quieting of my spirit and the perswading my soul of Gods Love to me and the silencing and shaming of my unbelieving heart and especially for the conquering of all temptations that lead to Atheism or Infidelity to the denying of special Providence or or the verity of the Gospel or of the Necessity of holy Prayer and worshipping of God Yea those passages that in the bulk of the thing seem to have no great matter in them yet have come at such seasons in such a manner in evident answer to prayers that they have done much to my confirmation O happy Afflictions and Distresses Sufferings and Danger force us to Pray and force the cold and customary Petitioner to seriousness and importunity Importunate Prayers bring evident returns such returns give us sensible experiences such experiences raise faith love and thankfulness kill unbelief and Atheism and encourage the soul in all distresses to go the same way as when it sped so well I often pity the poor seduced Infidels of this age that deny Scripture and Christ himself and doubt of the usefulness of Prayer and holy Worship and I wish that they had but the experiences that I have had O how much more might it do then all their Studies and Disputes Truly I have once or twice had motions in my mind to have publikely and freely communicated my experiences in a Relation of the more observable passages of my Life But I found that I was not able to do it to Gods praise as was meet without a shew of ostentation and vanity and therefore I forbore DIRECTION XVIII 18. Next that you may yet further understand the true Nature of Assurance Faith Doubting and Desperation I would have you observe this That God doth not command every man nor properly any man ordinarily by his Word to Belâ—eve that his sins are forgiven and himself is Justified Adopted and shall be saved But he hath prescribed a way by which they may attain to Assurance of these in which way it is mens Duty to seek it So that our Assurance is not properly that which is called A Certainty of Belief I Have said enough for the proof of this Proposition in the third Part of my Book of Rest Chap. 1â— whither I must referre you But there is more to be said yet for the Application of it But first I must briefly tell you the meaning of the words 1. God commandeth us all to believe wicked and godly that our sins are made pardonable by the sufficient satisfaction of Christ for them and that God is very mercifull and ready to forgive and that he hath conditionally forgiven us all in the New Covenant making a deed of gift of Christ and pardon and Life in him to all on condition they Believe in him and Accept what is given 2. But no man is commanded to Believe that he is Actually forgiven 3. Therefore I say our Assurance is not strictly to be called Belief or a Certainty of Belief For it is only our Certain Belief of those things which we take on the meer credit of the Witnesser or Revealer which we call Certainty of Faith Indeed we commonly in English use the word Belief to express any confident but uncertain opinion or perswasion And if any will so take it then I deny not but our Assurance is a Belief But it is commonly taken by Divines for an Assent to any thing on the credit of the word of the Revealer and so is distinguished both from the sensible Apprehension of things and
them in terror and amazement Like men after a flash of lightning that are left more sensible of the darkness For no wise man can expect that such Joyes should be a Christians ordinary state or God should so diet us with a continual feast It would neither suit with our health nor the condition of this Pilgrimage Live therefore on your Peace of conscience as your ordinary diet when this is wanting know that God appointeth you a fast for your health and when you have a feast of high Joyes feed on it and be thankfull but when they are taken from you gape not after them as the Disciples did after Christ at his Ascension but return thankfully to your ordinary diet of Peace and remember that these Joyes which are now taken from you may so return again however there is a place preparing for you where your Joyes shall be full DIRECTION XXII 22. My next Direction is this Spend more of your time and care about your Duty then about your Comforts and for the exercise and increase of your Graces then for the discovery of them And when you have done all that you can for Assurance and Comfort you shall finde that it will very much depend on your Actual Obedience THis Direction is of as great importance as any that I have yet given you but I shall say but little of it because I have spoke of it so fully already in my Book of Rest Part 3. Ch. 8 9 10 11. My Reasons for what I here assert are these 1. Duty goeth in order of nature and time before comfort as the Precept is before the Promise Comfort is part of the Reward and therefore necessarily supposeth Duty 2. Grace makes men both so ingenuous and Divine as to consider Gods due as well as their own and what they should Do as well as what they shall Have still remembring that our works cannot Merit at Gods hands 3. As we must have Grace before we can Know we have it so ordinarily we must have a good measure of Grace before we can so clearly discern it as to be certain of it Small things I have told you are next to none and hardly discernable by weak eyes When all waies in the world are tried it will be found that there is no way so sure for a doubting soul to be made certain of the truth of his Graces as to keep them in Action and get them increased And it will be found that there is no one cause of Christians doubting of the truth of their Faith Love Hope Repentance Humility c. so great or so common as the small degree of these Graces Doth not the very language of complaining Christians shew this One saith I have no faith I cannot believe I have no love to God I have no delight in Duty Another saith I cannot mourn for sin my heart was never broken I cannot patiently bear an injury I have no courage in opposing sin c. If all these were not in a low and weak degree men could not so ordinarily think they had none A lively strong working Faith Love Zeal Courage c. would shew themselves as do the highest Towers the greatest mountains the strongest windes the greatest flames which will force an observance by their greatness and effects 4. Consider also that it is more pleasing to God to see his people study him and his will directly then to spend the first and chiefest of their studies about the attaining of comforts to themselves 5. And it is the nature of Grace to tend first and chiefly toward God and but secondarily to be the evidence of our own happiness We have faith given us principally that we might believe and live by it in daily applications of Christ We have repentance that it might break us off from sin and bring us back to God We have Love that we might Love God and our Redeemer his Saints and Laws and waies We have Zeal that we might be quickened in all our holy duties and we have obedience to keep us in the way of our duty The first thing we have to do with these Graces is to use them for those holy ends which their nature doth express And then the discerning of them that we may have Assurance followeth after this both in time and dignity 6. And it is a matter of farre greater concernment to our selves to seek after the obtaining of Christ and Grace then after the certain knowledge that we have them You may be saved though you never get Assurance here but you cannot be saved without Christ and Grace God hath not made Assurance the Condition of your salvation It tends indeed exceedingly to your comfort and a pretious mercy it is but your safety lieth not on it It is better go sorrowfull and doubting to Heaven then comfortably to hell First therefore ask what is the Condition of salvation and the way to it and then look that you do your best to perform it and to go that way and then try your performance in its season 7. Besides as it is a work of farre greater moment so also of quicker dispatch to Believe and Love Christ truly then to get Assurance that you do truly Believe and Love him You may believe immediatly by the help of Gods Grace but getting Assurance of it may be the work of a great part of your life Let me therefore intreat this one thing of you that when you feel the want of any Grace you would not presently bend all your thoughts upon the enquiry Whether it be true or no but rather say to your self I see trying is a great and difficult a long and tedious work I may be this many years about it and possibly be unresolved still If I should conclude that I have no Grace I may be mistaken and so I may if I think that I have it I may inquire of friends and Ministers long and yet be left in doubt It is therefore my surest way to seek presently to obtain it if I have it not and to increase it if I have it and I am certain none of that labour will be lost to get more is the way to know I have it But perhaps you will say How should I get more Grace that 's a business of greater difficulty then so I answer Understand what I told you before that as the beginning of Grace is in your Understanding so the heart and life of it is in your Will and the Affections and passionate part are but the fruits and branches If therefore your Grace be weak it is chiefly in an unwillingness to yield to Christ and his Word and Spirit Now how should an unwilling soul be made willing Why thus 1. Pray constantly as you are able for a willing minde and yielding inclinable heart to Christ 2. Hear constantly those Preachers that bend their doctrine to inform your understanding of the great necessity and excellency of Christ and Grace and Glory and to perswade
God knows that a poor sinner in this humbled troubled case hath burden enough on his back already and indeed more then he is able of himself to bear The sense of his own sinfull folly and misery is burden enough If God should adde to this his frowns and terrors and should spurn at a poor sinner that lies prostrate at his feet in tears or terrours who then should be able to stand before him or to look him in the face But he will not break the bruised reed he will not make heavier the burden of a sinner He cals them to come to him for Ease and Rest and not to oppress them or kill them with his terrours We have not a King like Rehoboam that will multiply our pressures but one whose office it is to break our yoaks and loose our bonds and set us free When he was a Preacher himself on earth you may gather what Doctrine he preached by his Text which he chose at one of his first publike Sermons which as you may finde in Luke 4.18 19. was this The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blinde to set at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. O if a poor bruised wounded soul had but heard this Sermon from his Saviours own mouth what heart-meltings would it have caused what pangs of Love would it have raised in him You would sure have believed then that the Lord is gracious when All that heard him bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth Luke 4.22 I would desire no more for the comfort of such a soul then to see such a sight and feel such a feeling as the poor penitent Prodigal did when he found himself in the arms of his Father and felt the kisses of his mouth and was surprized so unexpectedly with such a torrent of Love The soul that hath once seen and felt this would never sure have such hard and doubtfull thoughts of God except through ignorance they knew not whose arms they were that thus embraced them or whose voice it was that thus bespoke them or unless the remembrance of it were gone out of their mindes You see then what is Gods own language to humbled Penitents and what is the method of his dealings with them And such must be the language and dealing of his Ministers They must not wound when Christ would heal nor make sad the heart that Christ would comfort and would not have made sad Ezek. 13.22 But will this means serve turn or must the same course be taken to remove the sorrows of the wilfully disobedient No God takes another course himself and prescribes another course to his Ministers and requires another course from the sinner himself But still remember who it is that I speak of It is not the ordinary unavoidable infirmities of the Saints that I speak of such as they cannot be rid of though they fain would such as Paul speaks of Rom. 7.19 The good that I would do I do not and when I would do good evil is present with me And Gal. 5.17 The flesh lusteth against the Spirit c. so that we cannot do the things that we would A true Christian would Love God more perfectly and Delight in him more abundantly and bring every thought in subjection to his Will and subdue the very remnants of carnal concupiscence that there should be no stirrings of lust or unjust anger or worldly desires or pride within him and that no vain word might pass his lips all this he would do but he cannot Striving against these unavoidable infirmities is conquering But though we cannot keep under every motion of concupiscence we can forbear the execution Anger will stirre upon provocations But we may restrain it in degree that it set us not in a flame and do not much distemper or discompose our mindes and we can forbid our tongues all raging furious or abusive words in our Anger all cursing swearing or reproachfull speaking If an envious thought against our Brother do arise in our hearts because he is prefer'd before us we may hate it and repress it and chide our hearts for it and command our tongues to speak well of him and no evil Some pride and self-esteem will remain and be stirring in us do what we can it is a sinne so deeply rooted in our corrupt Natures But yet we can detest it and resist it and meet with abhorrence our self-conceited thoughts and rejoycings in our own reputations and fame and inward heart-risings against those that undervalue us and stand in the way of our Repute and we may forbear our boasting language and our contestings for our credit and our excuses of our sinnes and our backbitings and secret defaming of those that cross us in the way of credit We may forbear our quarrels and estrangements and dividings from our Brethren and stiff insisting on our own conceits and expecting that others should make our Judgements their Rule and say and do as we would have them and all dance after our pipe all which are the effects of inward Pride We cannot while we are on earth be free from all inordinate Love of the world and the Riches and Honours of it but we may so watch against it and repress it as that it shall neither be preferred before God nor draw us to unlawfull waies of gain by lying deceit and overreaching our Brethren by stealing unjust or unmercifull dealings oppressing the poor and insulting over those that are in the way of our thriving and crushing them that would hinder our aspiring designes and treading them down that will not bow to us and taking revenge of them that have crossed or disparaged us or cruelly exacting all our Rights and Debts of the poor and squeezing the purses of subjects or tenants or those that we bargain with like a spunge as long as any thing will come out Yea we may so farre subdue our love of the world as that it shall not hinder us from being mercifull to the poor compassionate to our servants and labourers and bountifull to our power in doing good works nor yet shut out Gods service from our families or closets nor rob him of our frequent affectionate thoughts especially on the Lords day So for sensuality or the pleasing of our flesh more immediatly we shall never on earth be wholly freed from inordinate motions and temptations and fleshly desires and urgent inclinations and solicitations to forbidden things But yet we may restrain our Appetite by reason so farre that it bring us not to gluttony and drunkenness and a studying for our bellies and pampering of our flesh or a taking care for it and making provision to satisfie its lusts Rom. 13.14 We may forbear the obeying it in
places more though we must have no thoughts of a Legal Righteousness according to the Law of Works or Ceremonies in our selves They may as well say that a woman doth forsake her husband because she comforteth her self in this that she hath not forsaken him or been false and unchast thence gathering that he will not give her a bill of Divorce Or that a servant forsakes his Master or a subject his Prince or a Parent is forsaken by his childe because they comfort themselves in their Obedience and Loyalty gathering thence that they are not flat Rebels and shall not be used as Rebels Or that any that enter Covenant with Superiors do forsake them because they comfort themselves in their keeping Covenant as a sign that the Covenant shall be kept with them All these are as wise collections as to gather that a man forsakes Christ and his Righteousness and setteth up his own in stead of it because he looks at his not forsaking refusing and vilifying of Christ his Love and faithfull obedience to Christ as comfortable signes that Christ will not forsake and reject him Do these men think that a Rebell may have the love of his Prince and as much comfort from him as a Loyal subject or a whorish woman have as much love and comfort from her husband as a faithfull Wife or a stubborn rebellious son or servant have as much love and comfort from their Father or Master as the dutifull If there be so near a Relation as hitherto we have supposed between a Soveraign and subjection to him and a Husband and Marriage-faithfulness to him and a Master and service to him and a Father and loving obedience to him it is strange that men should suppose such a strange opposition as these men do Certainly God doth not so when he saith Mal. 1.6 If I be a Father where is mine honour and if I be a Master where is my fear And Isa 1.3 4. Hear O heavens and give ear O earth for the Lord hath spoken I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me The Ox knoweth his owner and the Asse his Masters crib but Israel doth not know my people doth not consider Ah sinfull Nation a people laden with iniquity a seed of evil doers children that are corrupters they have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the holy one of Israel to anger they are gone away backward And Jer. 3.19 Thou shalt call me my Father and shalt not depart away from me And 2 Tim. 2.19 The Lord knoweth who are his and let him that nameth the Name of Christ depart from iniquity And Psal 66.18 If I delight in iniquity or regard it God will not hear my prayers saith David himself Doubtless Paul did not forsake Christs Righteousness by confidence in his own when he saith This is our rejoycing the Testimony of our Conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity we have had our conversation among you 2 Cor. 1.12 with many the like which I before mentioned Nor doth the Lord Jesus at the day of Judgement turn men off from his Righteousness when he saith Well done good and faithfull servant because thou hast been faithfull in a very little I will make thee ruler over much Luke 19.17 Mat. 25.23 and cals them thereupon Righteous saying And the righteous shall go into life everlasting Mat. 25. last It remains now that I further acquaint you what use you should make of this observation concerning the dependance of Assurance upon actual obedience And 1. I advise you if your soul remain in doubts and troubles and you cannot enjoy God in any way of peace and comfort nor see any clear evidence of the sincerity of your faith take a serious view of your obedience and faithfully survey your heart and life and your daily carriage to God in both See whether there be nothing that provokes God to an unusual Jealousie If there be it is either the increase of some carnal interest in your heart or else the wilfull or negligent falling into some actual sinne of commission or omission In the making of this search you have need to be exceeding cautelous for if I have any acquaintance with the mystery of this business your peace or trouble comfort or discomfort will mainly depend on this And your care must lie in this point that you diligently avoid these two extreams First That you do not deal negligently and unfaithfully with your own soul as either unwilling to know the truth or unwilling to be at that labour which you must needs be at before you can know it Secondly That you do not either condemn your self when your conscience doth acquit you or vex your soul with needless scruples or make unavoidable or ordinary infirmities to seem such wilfull hainous sinnes as should quite break your setled peace O how narrow is the path between these two mistaken roads and how hard a thing and how rare is it to finde it and to keep in it For your self and all tender conscienc'd Christians that are heartily willing to be Ruled by Christ I would perswade you equally to beware of both these because some souls are as inclinable to the later extream as to the former during their troubles But for the most Christians in the world I would have them first and principally avoid the former and that with farre greater diligence then the later For 1. Naturally all mens hearts are farre proner to deal too remisly yea unfaithfully with themselves in searching after their sins then too scrupulously and tenderly The best men have so much pride and carnal self-self-love that it will strongly incline them to excuse or mince or hide their sinnes and to think farre lightlier and more favourably of it then they should do because it is theirs How was the case altered with Judah towards Thamar when he once saw it was his own act How was Davids zeal for Justice allaied as soon as he heard Thou art the man This is the most common cause why God is fain to hold our eyes on our transgressions by force because we are so loth to do it more voluntarily and why he openeth our sinne in such crimson and scarlet colours to us because we are so apt either to look on them as nothing or to shut our eyes and over-look them and why God doth hold us so long on the rack because we would still ease our selves by uningenuous excuses and extenuations and why God doth break the skin so oft and keep open our wounds because we are still healing them by such carnal shifts This proud sin-excusing distemper needs no other proof or discovery then our great tenderness and backwardness in submitting to reproofs How long do we excuse sinne and defend our pretended innocency as long we can finde a word to say for it Doth not daily experience of this sad distemper even in most of the godly discover fully to us that most men yea naturally all are farre
proner to over-look their sinnes and deal unfaithfully and negligently in the triall then to be too tender and to charge themselves too deep Besides If a Christian be heartily willing to deal impartially and search to the quick yet the heart is lamentably deceitfull that he shall over-look much evil in it when he hath done his best And the devil will be farre more industrious to provoke and help you to hide excuse and extenuate sinne then to open it and see it as it is His endeavour to drive poor souls into terrours is usually but when he can no longer keep them in presumption When he can hide their sin no longer nor make it seem small to keep them in impenitency then he will make it seem unpardonable and remediless if he can but usually not before So that you see the frame of most mens spirits doth require them to be rather over-jealous in searching after their sinnes then over-careless and confident of themselves 2. Besides this I had rather of the two that Christians would suspect and search too much then too little because there is a hundred times more danger in seeing sinne less then it is or overlooking it then in seeing it greater then it is and being over-fearfull The later mistake may bring us into sorrow and make our lives uncomfortable to us and therefore should be avoided but usually it doth not endanger our happiness but is often made a great occasion of our good But the former mistake may hazzard our everlasting salvation and so bring us to remediless trouble 3. Yea lest you should say This is sad language to comfort a distressed wounded soul let me adde this one Reason more So farre as I can learn by reading the Scriptures and by long experience of very many souls under troubles of conscience It is most commonly some notable cherished corruption that breedeth and feedeth the sad uncomfortable state of most professours except those who by melancholy or very great ignorance are so weak in their Intellectuals as that they are uncapable of making any true discovery of their condition and of passing a right judgement upon themselves thereupon Least I should make sad any soul that God would not have sad let me desire you to observe 1. That I say but of most Professors not all For I doubt not but God may hide his face for some time from some of the holiest and wisest of Believers for several and great reasons 2. Do but well observe most of the humble obedient Christians that you know to lie under any long and sad distress of minde and you will finde that they are generally of one of the two forementioned sorts either so ignorant as not to know well what faith is or what the conditions of the Covenant are or what is the extent of the promise or the full sufficiency of Christs satisfaction for all sinners or what are the evidences by which they may try themselves Or else they are Melancholy persons whose fancy is still molested with these perturbing vapours and their understandings so clouded and distempered that Reason is not free And so common is this later that in my observation of all the Christians that have lived in any long and deep distress of minde six if not ten for one have been deeply Melancholy except those that feed their troubles by disobedience So that besides these ignorant and Melancholy persons and disorderly declining Christians the number of wounded spirits I think is very small in comparison of the rest Indeed it is usual for many at or shortly after their first change to be under trouble and deep fears But that is but while the sense of former sinne is fresh upon their hearts The sudden discovery of so deep a guilt and so great a danger which a man did never know before must needs amaze and affright the soul and if that fear remain long where right means are either not known or not used for the cure it is no wonder and sometimes it will be long if the rightest means be used But for those that have been long in the Profession of holiness and yet lye or fall again under troubles of soul except those before excepted I would have them make a diligent search whether God do not observe either some fleshly interest incroach upon his Right or some actual sin to be cherished in their hearts or conversations And here let me tell you when you are making this search what particulars they be which I would have you to be most jealous of 1. The former sort which I call contrary carnal interest incroaching on Christs Right are they that you must look after with farre more diligence then your actual sinnes 1. Because they are the farre greatest and most dangerous of all sinnes and the root of all the rest for as God is the End and Chief Good of every Saint so these sinnes do stand up against him as our End and Chief good and carry away the soul by that Act which we call simply willing or complacency and so these interests are mens Idols and resist Gods very Soveraignty and perfect Goodness that is They are against God himself as our God Whereas those which I now call Actual sinnes as distinct from these are but the violation of particular Precepts and against Gods means and Laws directly and but remotely or indirectly against his Godhead and they have but that act of our Will which we call Election Consent or Vse which is proper to Means and not to the End 2. Because as these sinnes are the most damnable so they lye deepest at the heart and are not so easily discovered It is ordinary with many to have a Covetous Worldly Ambitious heart even damnably such that yet have wit to carry it fairly without yea and seem truly Religious to themselves and others 3. Because these sinnes are the most common For though they reign only in hypocrites and other unsanctified ones yet they dwell too much in all men on earth If you now ask me what these sinnes are I answer They are as denominated from the Point or Term from which men turn all comprised in this one Vnwillingness of God or the turning of the heart from God or not loving God But as we denominate them from the Term or Object to which they turn they are all comprised in this one Carnal self-self-love or turning to and preferring our carnal self before God and as it inclineth to action all or most of it is comprehended in this one word Flesh-pleasing But because there are a Trinity of sinnes in this Unity we must consider them distinctly Three great Objects there are about which this sinne of Flesh-pleasing is exercised 1. Credit or Honour 2. Profit or Riches 3. Sensual Pleasure more strictly so called consisting in the more immediate Pleasing of the senses Whereas the two first do more remotely please them by laying in Provision to that end Otherwise all three are in the general but
Lord Jesus will forsake them as they have forsaken him the Prayers of his Saints will be fully turned against them and his Elect shall cry to him night and day till he avenge them speedily by making these his enemies to lâ—ck the dust and dashing them in pieces like a Potters vessel because they would not that he should reign over them And then they shall know whether Christ be not King of Kings and Lord of Lords Perhaps you may think I Digress from the matter in hand But as long as I speak but for my Lord Christ and for Doing Good I cannot think that I am quite out of my way But to return nearer to those for whose sakes I chiefly write This is that sum of my advice Study with all the understanding you have how to do as much Good while you have time as possibly you can and you shall find that without any Popish or Pharisaical self-confidence to be the most excellent art for obtaining spiritual Peace and a large measure of comfort from Christ To that end use seriously and daily to bethink your self What way of expending your Time and Wealth and all your Talents will be most comfortable for you to hear of and review at Judgement and take that as the way most comfortable now Onely consult not with flesh and blood make not your flesh of your counsel in this work but take it for your enemy expect its violent unwearied opposition But regard not any of its clamours or repinings But know as I said before that your truest spiritual comforts are a Prize that must be won upon the conquest of the flesh I will only add to this the words of Blessed Dr. Sibs a man that was no enemy to Free Grace nor unjust Patron of mans Works in his Preface to his Souls Conflict Christ is first a King of Righteousness and then of Peace The Righteousness that he works by his Spirit brings a Peace of sanctification whereby though we are not freed from sin yet we are enabled to combat with it and to get the victory over it Some Degree of Comfort follows every Good Action as heat accompanies fire and as beams and influences issue from the Sun Which is so true that very Heathens upon the discharge of a good Conscience have found Comfort and Peace answerable this is a Reward before our Reward Again In watchfulness and diligence we sooner meet with Comfort then in idle Complaining Again Pag. 44 45. An unimployed life is a burthen to it self God is a pure act always Working always Doing and the nearer our soul comes to God the more it is in action and the freer from disquiet Men experimentally feel that Comfort in Doing that which belongs unto them which before they longed for and went without And in his Preface to the Bruised Reed There is no more Comfort to be expected from Christ then there is Care to Please him Otherwise to make him an A better of a lawless and a loose life is to transform him into a phancy nay into the likeness of him whose works he came to destroy which is the most detestable Idolatry of all One way whereby the Spirit of Christ prevaileth in his is to preserve them from such thoughts Yet we see People will frame a Divinity to themselves pleasing to the flesh sutable to their own ends which being vain in the substance will prove likewise vain in the fruit and a building upon the sands So far Dr. Sibs It seems there were Libertines and Antinomians then and will be as long as there are any carnal unsanctified Professors DIRECTION XXVI 26. Having led you thus far towards a setled Peace my next Direction shall contain a Necessary Caution lest you run as far into the contrary extreme viz. Take heed that you neither trouble your own soul with needless scruples about matters of doctrine of duty or of sin or about your own Condition Nor yet that you do not make your self more work then God hath made you by feigning things unlawful which God hath not forbidden or by placing your Religion in Will-worship or in an over-curious insisting on Circumstantials or an over-rigorous dealing with your Body THis is but the Exposition of Solomons Be not Over-wise and be not Righteous â—vermuch Eccl. 7.16 A man cannot serve God too much formally and strictly considering his service much less Love him too much But we may do too much Materially intending thereby to serve God which though it be not true Righteousness yet being Intended for Righteousness and done as a service of God or Obedience to him is here called Over-much-Righteousness I know it is stark madness in the prophane secure World to think that the doing of no more then God hath commanded us is Doing too much or More then needs as if God had bid us do more then needs or had made such Laws as few of the foolish Rulers on earth would make This is plainly to Blaspheme the Most High by denying his Wisdom and his Goodness and his Just Government of the World and to Blaspheme his holy Laws as if they were too strict precise and made us more to do then needs and to reproach his sweet and holy ways as if they were grievous intolerable and unnecessary Much more is their Madness in charging the Godly with being too Pure and too Precise and making too great a stir for Heaven and that meerly for their Godliness and Obedience when alas the best do fall so far short of what Gods Word and the necessity of their own souls do require that their Consciences do more grievously accuse them of Negligence then the barking World doth of being too precise and diligent And yet more mad are the World to lay out so much Time and Care and Labour for Earthly Vanities and to provide for their contemptible bodies for a little while and in the mean time to think that Heaven and their Everlasting Happiness there and the escaping of everlasting damnation in Hell are Matters not worth so much ado but may be had with a few cold wishes and that it s but folly to do so much for it as the Godly do That no labour should be thought too much for the World the Flesh and the Devil and every little is enough for God And that these wretched souls are so blinded by their own lusts and so bewitched by the Devil into an utter Ignorance of their own hearts that they verily think and will stand in it that for all this They Love God above all and love Heavenly things better then Earthly and therefore shall be saved But yet Extremes there are in the service of God which all wise Christians must labour to avoyd It is a very great Question among Divines Whether the common rule in Ethicks That Virtue is ever in the middle between two extremes be sound as to Christian Virtues Amesius saith No. The Case is not very hard I think to be resolved if you will
but use these three Distinctions 1. Between the Acts of the meer Rational faculties Understanding and Will called Elicite Acts and the Acts of the Inferiour faculties of soul and body called Imperate Acts. 2. Between the Acts that are About the End immediatly and those that are About the Means 3. Between the Intension of an Act and the Objective-Extension and Comparison of Object with Object And so I say 1. The End that is God and Salvation cannot be too fully Known or too much Loved with a pure Rational Love of Complacency nor too much sought by the Acts of the soul as purely Rational For the End being loved and sought for it self and being of Infinite Goodness must be loved and sought without Measure or Limitation it being Impossible here to exceed Prop. 2. The Means while they are not mis-apprehended but taken as Means and Materially well understood cannot be too clearly discerned nor too Rightly chosen nor too Resolutely prosecuted Prop. 3. It is too possible to mis-apprehend the Means and to place them instead of the End and so to Over-love them Prop. 4. The Nature of all the Means consisteth in a Middle or Mean betwixt two Extreams materially both which Extreams are sin so that it is possible to over-do about all the Means as to the Matter of them and the Extent of our acts Though we cannot Love God too much yet it is possible to Preach Hear Pray Read Meditate Confer of Good too much For one Duty may shut out another and a greater may be neglected by our over-doing in a lesser which was the Pharisees sin in Sabbath-Resting 5. If we be never so right in the extension of our Acts yet we may go too far in the Intension of the Imperate Acts or Passions of the soul and that both on the Means and End Though the pure Acts of Knowing or Willing cannot be too great towards God and Salvation yet the Passions and Acts commonly called Sensitive may A man may Think on God not onely too much as to exclude other necessary thoughts but too Intensly and Love and Desire too Passionately For there is a Degree of Thinking or Meditating and of Passionate Love and Desire which the brain cannot bear but it will cause Madness and quite overthrow the use of Reason by overstretching the organs or by the extreme turbulency of the agitated spirits Yet I never knew the man nor ever shall do I think that was ever guilty of one of these excesses that is of Loving or Desiring God so Passionately as to distract him But I have often known weak-headed people that be not able to order their thoughts and many Melancholy People Guilty of the other that is of thinking too much and too seriously and intensly on Good and Holy things whereby they have overthrown their Reason and been distracted And here I would give all such weak-headed Melancholy persons this warning That whereas in my Book of Rest I so much press a constant course of Heavenly Meditation I do intend it onely for sound heads and not for the Melancholy that have weak heads and are unable to bear it That may be their sin which to others is a very great duty While they think to do that which they cannot do they will but disable themselves for that which they can do I would therefore advise those Melancholy persons whose minds are so troubled and heads weakned that they are in danger of overthrowing their Understandings which usually begins in multitudes of scruples and restlesness of mind and continual fears and blasphemous temptations where it begins with these distraction is at hand if not prevented that they forbear Meditation as being no duty to them though it be to others and instead of it be the more in those duties which they are fit for especially Conference with Judicious Christians and Chearful and Thankful acknowledgement of Gods Mercies And thus have I shewed you how far we may possibly exceed in Gods service Let me now a little apply it It hath ever been the Devils Policy to begin in perswading men to Worldlyness Flesh-pleasing Security and Presumption and utter Neglect of God and their souls or at least preferring their bodies and worldly things and by this means he destroyeth the world But where this will not take but God awaketh men effectually and casteth out the sleepy Devil usually he fils mens heads with needless scruples and next setteth them on a Religion not commanded and would make poor souls believe they do Nothing if they do not more then God hath commanded them When the Devil hath no other way left to destroy Religion and Godliness he will pretend to be Religious and Godly himself and then he is always over-religious and over-godly in his Materials All over-doing in Gods work is undoing And who ever you meet with that would Over-do suspect him to be either a subtil destroying enemy or one deluded by the destroyer O what a Tragedy could I here shew you of the Devils acting and what a Mysterie in the Hellish Art of Deceiving could I open to you And shall I keep the Devils counsel No. O that God would open the eyes of his poor desolate Churches at lâ—st to see it The Lord Jesus in Wisdom and tender Mercy establisheth a Law of Grace and Rule of Life Pure and Perfect but simple and plain laying the Condition of mans salvation more in the Honesty of the Believing Heart then in the strength of Wit and subtilty of a Knowing Head He comprized the Truths which were of Necessity to salvation in a Narrow room So that the Christian Faith was a matter of great plainness and simplicity As long as Christians were such and held to this the Gospel rode in Triumph through the world and an Omnipotency of the Spirit accompanied it bearing down all before it Princes and Scepters stoopt subtil Philosophy was non-plust and all useful Sciences came down and acknowledged themselves Servants and took their places and were well contented to attend the pleasure of Christ As Mr. Herbert saith in his Church Militant Religion thence fled into Greece where Arts Gave her the highest place in all mens hearts Learning was pos'd Philosophy was set Sophisters taken in a Fishers Net Plato and Aristotle were at a loss And wheel'd about again to spell Christs Cross Prayers chas't Syllogisms into their den And Ergo was transform'd into Amen The Serpent envying this Happiness of the Church hath no way to undo us but by drawing us from our Christian simplicity By the occasion of Hereticks quarrels and errours the Serpent steps in and will needs be a spirit of Zeal in the Church and he will so Over-do against Hereticks that he perswades them they must enlarge their Creed and adde this Clause against one and that against another and all was but for the perfecting and preserving of the Christian Faith And so he brings it to be a Matter of so much Wit to be a Christian as Erasmus
he will move a scruple whether it were not too Good or too much You shall not cloath your self but he will move you to scruple the lawfulness of it You shall not come into any company but he will afterward vex you about every word you spoke lest you sinned The like I may say also about your condition but more of that anon DIRECTION XXVII 27. When God hath once shewed you a Certainty or but a strong probability of your sincerity and his special Love Labour to fix this so deep in your Apprehension and Memory that it may serve for the time to come and not onely for the present And leave not your soul too open to Changes upon every New Apprehension nor to question all that 's past upon every Jealousie Except when some Notable declining to the world and the flesh or a committing of Gross sins or a wilfulness or carelesness in other sins that you may avoyd do give you just Cause of questioning your sincerity and bringing your sâ—ul again to the bar and your estate to a more exact review SOme Antinomian Writers and Preachers you shall meet with who will perswade you whatsoever sin you fall into never more to question your Justification or Salvation I have said enough before to prove their doctrine detestable Their reason is Because God changeth not as we change and Justification is never lost To which I answer 1. God hated us while we were workers of Iniquity Psal 11.5 5.5 and was angry with us when we were Children of wrath Eph. 3.1 2 3. And afterward he laid by that Hatred and Wrath and all this without change If we cannot reach to apprehend how Gods unchangeableness can stand with the fullest and frequentest expressions of him in Scripture must we therefore deny what those expressions do contain As Austin saith Shall we deny that which is plain because we cannot reach that which is obscure and difficult 2. But if these men had well studied the Scriptures they might have known that the same man that was yesterday Hated as an Enemy may to Day be Reconciled and loved as a Son and that without any change in God even as it fals out within the reach of our Knowledge For God Ruleth the world by his Laws They are his Moral Instruments By them he Condemneth By them he Justifieth so far as he is said in this Life before the Judgement day to do it unless there be any other secret act of Justification with him which man is not able now to understand The change is therefore in our Relations and in the Moral Action of the Laws When we are Unbelievers and Impenitent we are Related to God as Enemies Rebels Unjustified and Unpardoned being such as Gods Law Condemneth and pronounceth Enemies and the Law of Grace doth not yet Justifie or pardon and so God is as it were in some sense obliged according to that Law which we are under to deal with us as Enemies by destroying us And this is Gods Hating Wrath c. When we Repent Return and Believe our Relation is changed The same Law that did Condemn us is Relaxed and Disabled and the Law of Grace doth now Acquit us it Pardoneth us it Justfieth us and God by it And so God is Reconciled to us when we are such as according to his own Law of Grace he is as it were Obliged to forgive and to do Good to and to use as sons Is not all this apparently without any change in God! Cannot he make a Law that shall change its Moral Action according to the change of the actions or inclinations of sinners and this without any change in God And so If it should so be that a Justified man should fall from God from Christ from sincere Faith or Obedience the Law would Condemn him again and the Law of Grace would Justifie him no more in that state and all this without any change in God 3. If this Antinomian Argument would prove any thing it would prove Justification before and so without Christs satisfaction because there is no change in God 4. The very point That no justified man shall ever fall from Christ is not so clear and fully revealed in Scripture and past all doubt from the assault of Objections as that a poor soul in such a Relapsed estate should venture his everlasting salvation wholly on this supposing that he were Certain that he was once sincere For my own part I am perswaded that no Rooted Believer that is Habitually and Groundedly Resolved for Christ and hath crucified the flesh and the world as all have that are throughly Christs do ever fall quite away from him afterwards But I dare not lay my salvation on this And if I were no surer of my salvation then I am of the truth of this my Judgement to speak freely my soul would be in a very sad Condition 5. But suppose it as certain and plain as any word in the Gospel that a Justified man is never quite Unjustified Yet as every new sin brings a new obligation to punishment or else they could not be pardoned as needing no pardon so must every sin have its particular pardon and consequently the sinner a particular Justification from the Guilt of that sin besides his first general pardon and Justification For to pardon sin before it is committed is to pardon sin that is no sin which is a Contradiction and Impossibility Now though for daily unavoydable Infirmities there be a pardon of Course upon the Title of our Habitual Faith and Repentance yet whether in case of Gross sin or more notable Defection this will prove a sufficient Title to particular pardon without the addition of actual Repentance and what Case the sinner is in till that actual Repentance and Faith as I told you before are so difficult questions it being ordered by Gods great wisdom that they should be so that it beseems no wise man to venture his salvation on his own opinion in these Nay it 's certain that if Gross sinners having opportunity and knowledge of their sins Repent not they shall perish And therefore I think a Justified man hath great Reason upon such fals to examine his particular Repentance as well as his former state and not to promise himself or presume upon a pardon without it 6. And besides all this though both the Continuance of Faith and non-intercision of Justification be never so certain yet when a mans obedience is so far overthrown his former Evidences and Perswasions of his Justification will be uncertain to him Though he have no Reason to think that God is changeable or Justification will be lost yet he hath Reason enough to question whether ever he were a true Believer and so were ever Justified For Faith worketh by Love and they that Love Christ will keep his Commandments Libertines and carnal men may talk their pleasure but when Satan maintains not their Peace sin will break it and Dr. Sibs words will be
found true Souls Conflict pag. 41 42. Though the main pillar of our Comfort be the free forgiveness of our sins yet if there be a neglect â—f growing in Holiness the soul will never be soundly quiet because it will be proâ—e to question the truth of Justification and it is as proper for sin to raise doubts and fears in the Conscience as for rotten flesh and wood to breed worms Where there is not a pure Conscience there is not a pacified Conscience c. Read the rest This much I have been fain to premise lest my words for Consolation should occasion security and desolation But now let me desire you to peruse the Direction and practice it If when God hath given you Assurance or strong probabilities of your sincerity you will make use of it but onely for that present time you will never then have a setled Peace in your soul Besides the great wrong you do to God by necessitating him to be so often renewing such discoveries and repeating the same words to you so often over If your Child offend you would you have him when he is pardoned no longer to believe it then you are telling it him Should he be still asking you over and over every day Father am I forgiven or no Should not one answer serve his turn Will you not believe that your money is in your purse or chest any longer then you are looking on it Or that your corn is growing on your land or your cattel in your grounds any longer then you are looking on them By this Course a Rich man should have no more content then a beggar longer then he is looking on his money or goods or lands and when he is looking on one he should again lose the Comfort of all the rest What hath God given you a Memory for but to lay up former apprehensions and discoveries and experiences and make use of them on all meet occasions afterwards Let me therefore perswade you to this great and necessary work When God hath once Resolved your Doubts and shewed you the truth of your Faith Love or Obedience Write it down if you can in your book as I have advised you in my Treatise of Rest Such a day upon serious perusal of my heart I found it thus and thus with my self Or at least Write it deep in your Memory And do not suffer any fancies or fears or light surmises to cause you to question this again as long as you fall not from the Obedience or Faith which you then discovered Alas mans Apprehension is a most mutable thing If you leave your soul open to every new apprehension you will never be setled You may think two contrary things of your self in an hour You have not always the same opportunity for right discerning nor the same clearness of Apprehension nor the same outward means to help you nor the same inward Assistance of the Holy Ghost When you have these therefore make use of them and fix your wavering soul and take your Question and Doubt as Resolved and do not tempt God by calling him to new Answers again and again as if he had given you no answer before You will never want some occasion of Jealousie and fears as long as you have Corruption in your heart and sin in your life and a Tempter to be troubling you But if you will suffer any such wind to shake your Peace and Comforts you will be always shaking and fluctuating as a wave of the Sea And you must labour to apprehend not onely the Uncomfortableness but the Sinfulness also of this course For though the questioning your own sincerity on every small occasion be not near so great a sin as the questioning of Gods Merciful Nature or the truth of his Promise or his Readiness to shew Mercy to the Penitent soul or the Freeness and Fulness of the Covenant of Grace yet even this is no contemptible sin For 1. You are doing Satans work in denying Gods Graces and Accusing your self falsly and so pleasing the Devil in Disquieting your self 2. You slander Gods Spirit as well as your own soul in saying He hath not Renewed and Sanctified you when he hath 3. This will necessitate you to further Unthankfulness for who can be Thankful for a Mercy that thinks he never received it 4. This will shut your mouth against all those Praises of God and that Heavenly joyful Commemoration of his great unspeakable Love to your soul which should be the blessed work of your life 5 This will much abate your Love to God and your sense of the Love of Christ in dying for you and all the rest of your Graces while you are still questioning your Interest in Gods Love 6. It will lay such a discouragement on your soul as will both destroy the sweetness of all Duties to you which is a great evil and thereby make you backward to them and heartless in them You will have no mind of Praying Meditation or other duties because all will seem dark to you and you will think that every thing makes against you 7. You rob all about you of that chearful encourageing example perswasion which they should have from you and by which you might win many souls to God And contrarily you are a discouragement and hindrance to them I could mention many more sinful aggravations of your denying Gods Graces in you on every small insufficient occasion which methinks should make you be very tender of it if not to avoyd unnecessary Trouble to your self yet at least to avoyd sin against God And what I have said of Evidences and Assurance I would have you understand also of your Experiences You must not make Use onely at the present of your Experiences but lay them up for the time to come Nor must you tempt God so far as to expect new Experiences upon every new scruple or doubt of yours as the Israelites expected New Miracles in the Wilderness still forgetting the Old If a Scholar should in his Studies forget all that he hath Read and Learned and all the Resolutions of his Doubts which in study he hath attained and leave his Understanding still as an unwritten Paper as Receptive of every Mutation and New Apprehension and contrary Conceit as if he had never studied the Point before he will make but a poor proficiency and have but a fluctuating unsetled brain A Scholar should make all the studies of his Life to compose one entire Image of Truth in his soul as a Painter makes every line he draws to compose one entire picture of a man and as a Weaver makes every thred to compose one Web so should you make all former Examinations Discoveries Evidences and Experiences Compose one full Discovery of your Condition that so you may have a setled Peace of soul And see that you tye both Ends together and neither look on your present troubled state without your former lest you be unthankful and unjustly discouraged nor on
come not among them or pitty them not as you should and do not your duty for the saving of their souls but think it belongs not to you but to others Do you use to deal with servants and neighbors about you and tell them of sin and misery and the remedy and seek to draw their hearts to Christ and bring them to duty I doubt you do little in this and that is sad unmercifulness for if you did truly you could not choose but finde such miserable ignorance such senselesness and blockishness such hating reproof and unwillingness to be reformed such love of this world and slavery to the flesh and so little savour of Christ Grace Heaven and the things of the Spirit and especially such an unteachableness intractableness as thorns and bryars and so great a difficulty of moving them an inch from what they are that you would have been willing ever after to have Ministers preach more rousingly then they do and you would be glad for their sakes when you heard that which might awake them and prick them to the heart Yea if you had tried how hard a work it is to bring worldly formal Hypocrites to see their Hypocrisie or to come over to Christ from the creature and to be in good earnest in the business of their salvation you would be glad to have Preachers search them to the quick and ransack their hearts and help them against their affected and obstinate self-delusions Besides you should consider that theâ— Case is far different from yours Your disease is pain and trouble they are stark dead You have Gods favour and doubt of it they are his enemies and never suspect it You want comfort and they want pardon and life if your disease should never here be cured it is but going more sadly to heaven But if they be not recovered by Regeneration they must lie for ever in Hell And should we not then pitty them more then you and study more for them and preach more for them and rather forget you in a Sermon then them should you not wish us so to do should we more regard the comforting of one then the saving of an hundred Nay more we should not onely neglect them but dangerously hurt them if we should preach too much to the case of troubled souls For you are not so apt to misapply passages of terror and to take their portion as they are apt to apply to themselves such passages for comfort and take your portion to themselves I know some will say that it is preaching Christ and setting forth Gods Love that will win them best and terrors do but make unwilling Hypocrital Professors This makes me remember how I have heard some Preachers of the times blame their Brethren for not preaching Christ to their People when they Preached the danger of rejecting Christ disobeying him and resisting his Spirit Do these men think that it is no preaching Christ when we have first many years told men the fulness of his satisfaction the freeness and general extent of his Covenant or Promise and the riches of his Grace and the incomprehensibleness of his Glory and the Truth of all to tell them afterwards the danger of refusing neglecting and disobeying him and of living after the flesh and preferring the world before him and serving Mammon and falling off in persecution and avoiding the cross and yielding in Temptation and quenching the Spirit and declining from their first Love and not improving their Talents and not forgiving and loving their brethren yea and enemies c. Is none of this Gospel nor preaching Christ yea is not Repentance it self except despairing Repentance proper to the Gospel seeing the Law excludeth it and all manner of hope Blame me not Reader if I be zealous against these men that not only know no better what preaching Christ is but in their ignorance reproach their Brethren for not preaching Christ and withal condemn Christ himself and all his Apostles Do they think that Christ himself knew not what it was to preach Christ or that he set us a patern too low for our imitation I desire them soberly to read Mat. 5.6 7 10 25. Rom. 8. from the first verse to the 14. Rom. 2. Heb. 2. 4. 5. 10 and then tell me whether we preach as Christ and his Apostles did But to the Objection I Answer first we do set forth Gods love and the fulness of Christ and the sufficiency of his death and satisfaction for all and the freeness and extent of his offer and promise of mercy and his readiness to welcome returning sinners this we do first mixing with this the discovery of their natural misery by sin which must be first known and next we shew them the danger of Rejecting Christ and his offer 2. When we finde men settled under the preaching of free Grace in a base contempt or sleepy neglect of it preferring the world and their carnal pleasures and ease before all the Glory of heaven and Riches of Christ and Grace is it not time for us to say How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation Heb. 2.3 and of how much soarer punishment shall he be thought worthy that treads under foot the blood of the Covenant Heb. 10.26 when men grow careless and unbelieving must we not say Take heed lest a promise being lest of entring into his Rest any of you should seem to come short of it Heb. 4.1 3. Hath not Christ led us commanded us and taught us this way Except ye Repent ye shall all perish was his Doctrine Luke 13.3 5. Go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature what 's that Gospel He that believeth shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 Those mine Enemies that would not I should raign over them bring hither and stay them before me Luke 19.27 Doth any of the Apostles speak more of hell-fire and the worm that never dyeth and the fire that never is quenched their Christ himself doth And do not his Apostles go the same way even Paul the greatest preacher of faith 2 Thess 1 7 8 9. and 2.12 c. What more common Alas what work should we make if we should stroak and smooth all men with Antinomian language It were the way to please all the sensual prophane multitude but it is none of Christs way to save their souls I am ready to think that these men would have Christ preached as the Papists would have him pray'd to to say Jesu Jesu Jesu nine times together and this oft over is their praying to him and to have Christs name oft in the Preachers mouth some men think is the right preaching Christ Let me now desire you hereafter to be glad to hear Ministers awaken the prophane and dead-hearted hearers and search all to the quick and misapply nothing to your self but if you think any passage doth neerly concern you open your mind to the Minister privately
harden their hearts or stiffen their necks and you will finde that the most usual meaning of the Holy Ghost is this They were an intractable disobedient obstinate people or as the Greek word in the New Testament signifieth which we often translate Vnbelieving they were an Vnperswadable people no saying would serve them They set light by Gods Commands Promises and severest Threatnings and Judgements themselves nothing would move them to forsake their sins and obey the voyce of God You shall finde that hardness of heart is seldom put for want of tears or a melting weeping disposition and never at all for the want of such tears where the will is tractable and obedient I pray you examine your self then according to this Rule God offereth his Love in Christ and Christ with all his benefits to you Are you willing to Accept them He commandeth you to worship him and use his ordinances and Love his people and others and to forsake your known Iniquities so far that they may not have dominion over you Are you Willing to this He commandeth you to take him for your God and Christ for your Redeemer and stick to him for better and worse and never forsake him Are you willing to do this If you have a stiff Rebellious heart and will not Accept of Christ and Grace and will rather let go Christ then the world and will not be perswaded from your known iniquities but are loth to leave them and love not to be reformed and will not set upon those duties as you are able which God requireth and you are fully convinced of then are you Hard-hearted in the Scripture sense But if you are glad to have Christ with all your heart upon the terms that he is offered to you in the Gospel and you do walk-daily in the way of duty as you can and are willing to Pray and willing to hear and wait on God in his Ordinances and willing to have all Gods Graces formed within you and willing to let go your profitablest and sweetest sins and it is your daily desires O that I could seek God and do his will more faithfully zealously and pleasingly then I do O that I were rid of this body of sin these carnal corrupt and worldly inclinations and that I were as holy as the best of Gods Saints on earth And if when it comes to practise whether you should obey or no though some unwillingness to duty and willingness to sin be in you you are offended at it and the greater bent of your Will is for God and it is but the lesser which is towards sin and therefore the world and flesh do not lead you captive and you live not wilfully in avoidable sins nor at all in gross sin I say if it be thus with you then you have the Blessing of a soft heart a heart of flesh a new heart for it is a Willing obedient tractable heart opposed to obstinacy in sin which Scripture calleth a soft heart And then for the Passionate part which consisteth in lively feelings of sin misery mercy c. and in weeping for sin I shall say but this 1. Many an unsanctified person hath very much of it which yet are desperately Hard-hearted sinners It dependeth far more on the temper of the body then of the Grace in the soul Women usually can weep easily and yet not all and children and old men Some complexions encline to it and others not Many can weep at a Passion-Sermon or any moving duty and yet will not be perswaded to obedience these are hard-hearted sinners for all their tears 2. Many a tender godly person cannot weep for sin partly through the temper of their minds which are more judicious and solid and less passionate but mostly from the temper of their bodies which dispose them not that way 3. Deepest sorrows seldom cause tears but deep thoughts of heart as greatest joys seldom cause laughter but inward pleasure I 'le tell you how you shall know whose heart is truly sorrowful for sin and tender He that would be at the greatest cost or pains to be rid of sin or that he had not sinned You cannot weep for sin but you would give all that you have to be rid of sin you could wish when you dishonoured God by sin that you had spent that time in suffering rather and if it were to do again on the same terms and inducements you would not do it Nay you would live a beggar condtendedly so you might fully please God and never sin against him and are content to pinch your flesh and deny your worldly interest for the time to come rather then wilfully disobey This is a truly tender heart On the other side another can weep to think of his sin and yet if you should ask him what wouldst thou give or what wouldst thou suffer so thou hadst not sinned or that thou mightest sin no more Alas very little For the next time that he is put to it he will rather venture on the sin then venture on a little loss or danger or disgrace in the world or deny his craving flesh its pleasures This is a hard-hearted sinner The more you would part with to be rid of sin or the greater cost you would be at for that end the more Repentance have you and true tenderness of heart Alas if men should go to Heaven according to their weeping what abundance of children and women would be there for one man I 'le speak truly my own Case This doubt lay heavy many a year on my own soul when yet I would have given all that I had to be rid of sin but I could not weep a tear for it Nor could I weep for the death of my dearest friends when yet I would have bought their lives had it been Gods will at a dearer rate then many that could weep for them ten times as much And now since my nature is decayed and my body languisheth in consuming weakness and my head more moistned and my veins filled with flegmatick watry blood now I can weep and yet I find never the more tender-heartedness in my self then before And yet to this day so much remains of my old disposition that I could wring all the money out of my purse easier then one tear out of my eyes to save a friend or rescue them from evil when I see divers that can weep for a dead friend that would have been at no great cost to save their lives 5. Besides as Dr. Sibs saith There is oft sorrow for sin in us when it doth not appear It wanteth but some quickening word to set it afoot It is the nature of Grief to break out into tears most when sorrow hath some vent either when we use some expostulating aggravating terms with our selves or when we are opening our hearts and case to a friend then sorrow will often shew it self that did not before 6. Yet do I not deny but that our want of Tears and
them for it Why he useth this same Distinction between Humiliation for sin and Doubting of sincerity and salvation and he helps them to the former and helps them against the latter Could ye not watch with me one hour saith he There he convinceth them of the sin that they may be humbled for it The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak saith he There he utterly resisteth their Doubtings or preventeth them shewing them wherein sincere Grace consisteth even in the spirits willingness and telling them that they had that Grace and then telling them whence came their sin even from the weakness of the flesh 2. I have shewed you that as every mans Will is but partly sanctified as to the Degree of holiness and so far as it is imperfect it will be unwilling so that there is something in the Duties of secret Prayer Meditation and Reproof which makes most men more backward to them then other duties The last doth so cross our fleshly Interests and the two former are so spiritual and require so pure and spiritual a soul and set a man so immediatly before the living God as if we were speaking to him face to face and have nothing of external pomp to draw us that it is no wonder if while there is flesh within us we are backward to them especially while we are so unacquainted with God and while strangeness and consciousness of sin doth make us draw back Besides that the Devil will more busily hinder us here then anywhere 3. The Question therefore is not whether you have an unwillingness backwardness to Good for so have all Nor yet whether you have any cold uneffectâ—al wishes for so have the ungodly Buâ— whether your Willingness be not more then your unwillingness And in that 1. It must not be in every single act of duty for a godly man may be actually more unwilling to a duty at this particular time then willing and thereupon may omit it but it must be about your Habitual Willingness manifested in ordinary actual Willingness 2. You must not exclude any of those Motives which God hath given you to make you willing to Duty He hath Commanded it and his Authority should move you He hath Threatned you and therefore Fear should move you Or else he would never have Threatned He hath made Promises of Reward and therefore the Hope of that should move And therefore you may perceive here what a dangerous mistake it is to think that we have no Grace except our Willingness to Duty be without Gods Motives from a meer Love to the Duty it self or to its effect Nay it is a dangerous Antinomian mistake to imagine that it is our duty to be Willing to Good without these Motives of God I say To take it so much as for our Duty to exclude Gods Motives though we should not judge of our Grace by it For it is but an Accusation of Christ and his Law who hath ordained these Motives of Punishment and Reward to be his Instruments to move the soul to duty Let me therefore put the right Question to you Whether all Gods Motives laid together and considered the ordinary prevailing part of your Will be not rather for Duty then against it This you will know by your practice For if the prevailing part be against Duty you will not do it If it be for Duty you will ordinarily perform it though you cannot do it so well as you would And then you may see that your backwardness and remaining unwillingness must still be matter of Humiliation and resistance to you but not matter of Doubting Nay thank God that enableth you to pull down your self on your knees when you are unwilling For what is that but the prevailing of your willingness against your unwillingness Should your unwillingness once prevail you would turn your back upon the most acknowledged Duties DOUBT VI. BVt I am afraid that it is onely slavish fear of Hell and not the Love of God that causeth me to obey and if it were not for this fear I doubt whether I should not quite give over all And perfect Love casteth out fear ANSWER I Have answered this already Love will not be perfect in this life In the life to come it will cast out all fear of damnation and all fear that drives the soul from God and all fear of men which is meant in Rev. 21.8 where the fearful and unbelievers are condemned that is those that fear men more then God And that 1 John 4.17 18. speaketh of a Tormenting Fear which is it that I am perswading you from and consisteth in Terrors of soul upon an apprehension that God will condemn you But it speaketh not of a filial fear nor of a fear lest we should by forsaking God or by yielding to Temptation lose the Crown of Life and so perish as long as this is not a tormenting fear but a cautelous preserving preventing fear Besides the Text plainly saith It is that we may have boldness in the day of judgement that Love casteth out this fear And at that day of Judgement Love will have more fully overcome it It is a great mistake to think that Filial Fear is onely the fear of temporal chastisement and that all fear of Hell is slavish Even Filial Fear is a Fear of Hell But with this difference A son if he know himself to be a Son hath such a perswasion of his Fathers Love to him that he knows he will not cast him off except he should be so vile as to renounce his Father which he is moderately fearful or careful lest by Temptation he should be drawn to do but not distrustfully fearful as knowing the helps and mercies of his Father But a slavish Fear is when a man having no apprehensions of Gods love or willingness to shew him mercy doth look that God should deal with him as a slave and destroy him when ever he doth amiss It is this slavish Tormenting fear which I spend all this writing against But yet a great deal even of this slavish fear may be in those sons that know not themselves to be sons But suppose you were out of all fear of Damnation do not belye your own heart and tell me Had you not rather be Holy then Unholy pleasing to God then displeasing and would not the Hope of Salvation draw you from sin to duty without the fear of Damnation in Hell But you will say That is still Mercenary and as bad as slavish fears I answer Not so This Hope of Salvation is the Hope of enjoying God and living in perfect Pleasingness to him and pleasure in him in Glory And the Desire of this is a Desire of Love It is Love to God that makes you Desire him and Hope to enjoy him Lastly I say again Take heed of separating what God hath joyned If God by putting in your nature the several Passions of Hope Fear Love c. and by putting a Holiness into these
seven or eight years last past This being so you must look that your perseverance should be by being preserved from Temptation and must rather examine Whether you have that Grace which will enable you to avoyd Temptations then whether you have Grace enough to overcome them if you rush into them But if God unavoydably cast you upon them keep up your Watch and Prayer and you have no Cause to trouble your self with distrustful fears DOUBT XIII I Am afraid lest I have committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost and then there is no hope of my salvation ANSWER IT seems you know not what the sin against the Holy Ghost is It is this When a man is convinced that Christ and his Disciples did really work those glorious Miracles which are recorded in the Gospel and yet will not Believe that Christ is the Son of God and his Doctrine true though sealed with all those Miracles and other holy and wonderful works of the Spirit but do Blasphemously maintain that they were done by the Power of the Devil This is the sin against the Holy Ghost And dare you say that you are guilty of this If you be then you do not Believe that Christ is the Son of God and the Messiah and his Gospel true And then you will sure oppose him and maintain that he was a Deceiver and that the Devil was the Author of all the Miraculous and Gracious workings of his Spirit Then you will never fear his displeasure nor call him seriously either Lord or Saviour nor tender him any service any more then you do to Mahomet None but Infidels do commit the Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost Nor but few of them Unbelief is eminently called Sin in the Gospel and that Vnbelief which is maintained by Blaspheming the Glorious Works of the Holy Ghost which Christ and his Disciples through many years time did perform for a Testimony to his Truth that is called singularly The sin against the Holy Ghost You may meet with other Descriptions of this sin which may occasion your terrour but I am fully perswaded that this is the plain Truth DOUBT XIV BVT I greatly fear lest the time of Grace be past and lest I have out sit the day of mercy and now mercy hath wholly forsaken me For I have oft heard Ministers tell me from the Word Now is the Accepted time Now is the day of your visitation To day while it is called to day harden not your hearts lest God swear in his wrath that you shall not enter into his Rest But I have stood out long after I have resisted and quenched the Spirit and now it is I fear departed from me ANSWER HEre is sufficient matter for Humiliation but the Doubting ariseth meerly from Ignorance The day of Grace may in two respects be said to be over The first and most properly so called is When God will not Accept of a sinner though he should Repent and Return This is never in this life for certain And he that imagineth any such thing as that it is too late while his soul is in his body to Repent and Accept of Christ and Mercy is meerly ignorant of the Tenour and sense of the Gospel For the New Law of Grace doth limit no time on earth for Gods Accepting of a Returning sinner True Faith and Repentance do as surely save at the last hour of the day as at the first God hath said that whosoever Believeth in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life He hath no where excepted late Believers or Repenters Shew any such Exception if you can 2. The second sense in which it may be said that the day of Grace is over is this When a man hath so long resisted the Spirit that God hath given him over to wilful obstinate Refusals of Mercy and of Christs Government resolving that he will never give him the prevailing Grace of his Spirit Where note 1. That this same man might still have Grace as soon as any other if he were but Willing to Accept Christ and Grace in him 2. That no man can know of himself or any other that God hath thus finally forsaken him For God hath given us no sign to know it by at least who sin not against the Holy Ghost God hath not told us his secret intents concerning such 4. Yet some men have far greater cause to fear it then others especially those men who under the most searching lively Sermons do continue secure and wilful in known wickedness either hating godliness and godly persons and all that do Reprove them or at least being â—â—â—â—pified that they feel no more then a Post the force of Gods terrours or the sweetness of his promises but make a jest of sinning and think the life of godliness a needless thing Especially if they grow old in this course I confess such have great Cause to fear lest they are quite forsaken of God For very few such are ever recovered 5. And therefore it may well be said to all men To day if you will hear his voyce harden not your hearts c. and This is the Acceptable time this is the day of salvation both as this life is called The day of salvation and because no man is certain to live another day that he may Repent nor yet to have Grace to Repent if he Live 6. But what 's all this to you that do Repent Can you have Cause to fear that your day of Grace is over that have Received Grace Why that is as foolish a thing as if a man should come to the Market and buy Corn and when he hath done go home lamenting that the Market was past before he came Or as a man should come and hear the Sermon and when he hath done lament that the Sermon was done before he came If your day of Grace be past tell me and do not wrong God Where had you the Grace of Repentance How came you by that Grace of holy Desâ—res Who made you Willing to have Christ for your Lord and Saviour So that you had rather have him and Gods favour and a Holy heart and life then all the glory of the World How came you to desire that you were such a one as God would have you to be and to desire that all your sins were dead and might never live in you more and that you were able to Love God and Delight in him and please him even in perfection and that you are so troubled that you cannot do it Are these signs that your day of Grace is over Doth Gods Spirit breath out Groans after Christ and Grace within you and yet is the day of Grace over Nay what if you had no Grace Do you not hear God daily offering you Christ and Grace doth he not intreat and Beseech you to be Reconciled unto him 2 Cor. 5.19 20. and would he not compel you to come in Mat. 22. Do you not feel some unquietness in your
sinful Condition and some motions and strivings at your heart to get out of it Certainly though you should be one that hath yet no Grace to salvation yet these continued offers of Grace and strivings of the Spirit of Christ with your heart do shew that God hath not quite forsaken you and that your day of Grace and Visitation is not past DOUBT XV. BVt I have sinned since my Profession and that even against my Knowledge and Conscience I have had Temptations to sin and I have considered of the Evil and Danger and yet in the very soberest deliberations I have Resolved to sin And how can such a one have any true Grace or be saved ANSWER 1. IF you had not true Grace God is still offering it and ready to work it 2. Where do you finde in Scripture that none who have true Grace do sin knowingly or Deliberately Perhaps you will say in Heb. 10.24 If we sin willfully after the knowledge of the Truth there Remaineth no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of Judgement and fire which shall devour the adversaries Ans But you must know that it is not every wilful sin which is there mentioned but as even now I told you Vnbelief is peculiarly called Sin in the New Testament And the true meaning of the Text is If we utterly renounce Christ by Infidelity as not being the true Messiah after we have known his Truth then c. Indeed none sin more against knowledge then the Godly when they do sin For they know more for the most part then others do And Passion and Sensuality the remnant of it which yet remaineth will be working strongly in your very Deliberations against sin and either perverting the Judgement to doubt whether it be a sin or whether there be any such danger in it or whether it be not a very little sin Or else blinding it that it cannot see the Arguments against the sin in their full vigor Or at least prepossessing the Heart and Delight and so hindring our Reasons against sin from going down to the Heart and working on the Will and so from Commanding the Actions of the Body This may befal a godly man And moreover God may withdraw his Grace as he did from Peter and David in their sin and then our Considerations will work but faintly and sensuality and sinful Passion will work effectually It is scarce Possible I think that such a man as David could be so long about so horrid a sin and after contrive the murther of Vriah and all this without deliberation or any reasonings in himself to the contrary 3. The truth is though this be to good cause for any Repenting sinner to doubt of Salvation yet it is a very grievous aggravation of sin to commit it against Knowledge and Conscience and upon consideration And therefore I advise all that Love their Peace or Salvation to take heed of it For as they will finde that no sin doth deepâ—ier wound the Conscience and plunge the sinner into fearful perplexities which oft times hang on him very long so the oftner such Zeal and Passion But let me tell you that you may grow in these and not grow in the body of your Graces Doubtless Satan himself may do much to kindle your Zeal if he do but see it voyd of sound Knowledge as he did in Iames and Iohn when they would have called for Fire from Heaven but knew not what spirit they were of For the doleful Case of Christs Churches in this age hath put quite beyond dispute that none do the Devils work more effectually nor oppose the Kingdom of Christ more desperately then they that have the hottest Zeal with the weakest Judgements And as Fire is most excellent and necessary in the Chimney but in the thatch it is worse then the vilest dung so is Zeal most excellent when guided by sound Judgement but more destructive then prophane sensuality when it is let loose and misguided On the other side you may decay much in feeling and fervour of Affections and yet Grow in Grace if you do but grow in the Understanding and the Will And indeed this is the Common Growth which Christians have in their Age Examine therefore whether you have this or no. Do you not understand the things of the Spirit better then you formerly did Do you not value God Christ Glory and Grace at higher rates then formerly Are you not more fully Resolved to stick to Christ to the death then formerly you have been I do not think but it would be a harder work for Satan to draw you from Christ to the flesh then heretofore When the tree hath done growing in visible greatness it groweth in rootedness The fruit grows first in bulk and quantity and then in mellow sweetness Are not you less Censorious and more Peaceable then heretofore I tell you that is a more noble growth then a great deal of austere and bitter youthful censorious dividing Zeal of many will prove Mark most aged experienced Christians that walk uprightly and you will find that they quite outstrip the younger 1. In experience knowledge prudence and foundness of Judgement 2. In well-setled Resolutions for Christ his Truth and Cause 3. In a Love of Peace especially in the Church and a hatred of dissentions perverse contendings and divisions If you can shew this growth say not that you do not grow 3. But suppose you do not grow should you therefore deny the sincerity of your Grace I would not perswade any soul that they grow when they do not But if you do not be humbled for it and endeavour it for the future Make it your desire and daily business and spare not Lye not still complaining but rouse up your soul and see what 's amiss and set upon neglected duties and remove those Corruptions that hinder your Growth Converse with Growing Christians and under quickening means Endeavour the Good of other mens souls as well as your own and then you 'l find that growth which will silence this Doubt and do much more for you then that DOUBT XVII I Am troubled with such Blaspemous thoughts and Temptations to Vnbelief even against God and Christ and Scripture and the Life to come that I doubt I have no faith ANSWER TO be Tempted is no sign of Gracelesness but to yield to the Temptation nor every yielding neither but to be overcome of the Temptation Most Melancholy people especially that have any knowledge in Religion are frequently haunted with Blasphemous Temptations I have oft wondred that the Devil should have such a power and advantage in the predominancy of that distemper Scarce one person of ten who ever was with me in deep Melancholy either for the Cure of body or mind but hath been haunted with these Blasphemous thoughts and that so impetuously and violently set on and followed that it might appear to be from the Devil yea even many that never seemed Godly or to mind any such
this doctrine they must have none because they can be no surer that Christ dyed for them then they are that themselves are sincere Believers and truly sanctified And when Thankfulness for Christs Death and Redemption ceaseth Gospel obedience ceaseth and Legal slavish terrors do take place Though the same cannot be said of Thankfulness for special renewing pardoning Grace 4. The fourth part of the Christian Life is Chearful Obedience God loveth a chearful Giver and so he doth in every part of obedience Deut. 28.47 Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with Joyfulness with Gladness of heart for the abundance of all things thou shalt serve thy enemies in hunger thirst c. Will you now lay all this together and make it for the time to come your business and try whether whether it will not be the truest way to comfort and make your life a blessed life will you make it your end in hearing reading praying and meditation to raise your soul to Delight in God Will you strive as much to work it to this Delight as ever you did to work it to sorrow Certainly you have more reason and certainly there is more matter of Delight in the face and Love of God then in all the things in the world besides Consider but the Scripture Commands and then lay to heart your Duty Phil. 4.4 Rejoyce in the Lord alway and again I say Rejoyce Phil. 3.1 Zech. 10.7 Joel 2.23 Isa 41.16 Psal 33.1 Rejoyce in the Lord O ye Righteous for praise is comely for the upright Psal 97.12 1 Thess 5.16 Rejoyce evermore 1 Pet. 1. 6 8 Rom. 5.2 John 4.36 Psal 5.11 33.21 35.9 66.6 68.3 4. 71.23 89.16 105.3 149.2 49.4 27.6 John 16.24 Rom. 15 13. and 14.17 The Kingdom of God is in Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost Gal. 5.22 Psal 32.11 Be glad in the Lord and Rejoyce O ye Righteous and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart Psal 132.9 16. 5.11 35.27 Hab. 3.18 with a hundred more the like Have you made conscience of this great duty according to its excellency and these pressing Commands of God Have you made Conscience of the Duties of Praise Thanksgiving and Cheerful Obedience as much as of Grieving for sin Perhaps you will say I cannot do it for want of Assurance If I knew that I were one of the Righteous and upright in Heart then I could be Glad and shout for Joy Ans 1. I have before shewed you how you may know that when you discover it in your self see that you make more Conscience of this duty 2. You have had Hopes and Probabilites of your sincerity Did you endeavor to answer those Probabilities in your Joys 3. If you would but labour to get this Delight in God it would help you to Assurance for it would be one of your clearest evidences O how the subtil enemy disadvantageth the Gospel by the misapprehensions and dejected spirits of Believers It is the very Design of the ever-blessed God to Glorifie Love and Mercy as highly in the Work of Redemption as ever he Glorified Omnipotency in the Work of Creation And he hath purposely unhindged the Sabboth which was appointed to Commemorate that work of Power in Creation to the first day of the week That it might be spent as a weekly day of Thanksgiving and Praise for the now more Glorious work of Redemption that Love might not only be equally admired with power but even go before it So that he hath laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Grace in Love and Mercy and in Love and Mercy hath he framed the whole Structure of the Edifice and Love and Mercy are written in legible indelible Characters upon every piece And the whole frame of his Work and Temple-service hath he so composed that all might be the resounding Eccho's of Love and the Praise and glorious Commerations of Love and Mercy might be the great business of our solemn Assemblies And the new Creation within us and without us is so ordered that Love Thankfulness and Delight might be both the way and the end And the Serpent who most opposeth God where he seeketh most Glory especially the Glory of his Grace doth labour so succesfully to obscure this Glory that he hath brought multitudes of poor Christians to have poor low thoughts of the Riches of this Grace and to set every sin of theirs against it which should but advance it and even to question the very foundation of the whole building whether Christ hath Redeemed the World by his Sacrifice yea he puts such a vail over the Glory of the Gospel that men can hardly be brought to Receive it as Glad tidings till they first have Assurance of their own Sanctification And the very nature of Gods Kingdom is so unknown that some men think it to be Unrighteousness and Libertinism and others to be Pensive Dejections and Tormenting Scruples and fears and but few know it to be Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Hoy Ghost And the very business of a Christians life and Gods service is rather taken to be Scrupling Quarrelling and Veâ—â—â— our selves and the Church of God then to be Love and Gratitude and a Delighting our souls in God and chearfully obeying him And thus when Christianity seems a Thrâ—â—dom and Torment and the service of the world the flesh and the Devil seems the onely freedom and quiet and delight no wonder if the Devil have more unfeigned servants then Christ and if men tremble at the name of Holiness and fly away from Religion as a Mischief What can be more contrary to its nature and to Gods design in forming it then for the Professors to live such dejected and dolorous lives God calls men from Vexation and Vanity to high Delights and Peace And men come to God as from Peace and Pleasure to Vexation All our preaching will do little to win souls from Sensuality to Holiness while they look upon the sad lives of the Professors of Holiness As it will more deter a sick man from medling with a Physician to see all that he hath had in hand to lie languishing in continual pains to their death then all his words and promises will encourage them O what blessed lives might Gods people live if they understood the love of God in the mysterie of mans Redemption and did addict themselves to the consideration and improvement of it and did believingly eye the promised Glory and hereupon did make it the business of their lives to Delight their souls in him that hath Loved them And what a wonderful success might we expect to our Preaching if the Holy Delights and Chearful Obedience of the Saints did preach as clearly to the eyes of the world as we preach loudly to their ears But flesh will be flesh yet a while and unbelief will be unbelief we are all too blame The Lord forgive our overlooking his
willing of them and there is no more sin then there is will in it I answer 1. We were in Adam willing of that sin which caused them 2. We are in some degree inclining in our Wils to sin though God have that prevalent part and determination which in comparative cases doth denominate them 3. The Understanding and Will may be most hainously guilty where they do not consent in that they do not more strongly dissent and more potently and rulingly command all the subject Faculties And so a Negation of the Wils act or of such a Degree of it as is necessary to the Regiment of the sensual part is a deep guilt and great offence and it may be said that there is Will in this sin It is morally or reputatively voluntary though not naturally because the Will doth not its office when it should As a man is guilty of voluntary murder of his own childe that stands by and seeth his servant kill him and doth not do his best to hinder him I would this were better understood by some Divines For I think that the commonest guilt of the Reason and Will in our actual sinnes is by Omission of the exercise of their Authority to hinder it And that most sinnes are more bruitish as to the true efficient cause then many imagine and yet they are humane or moral Acts too and the soul nevertheless guilty because the commanded Faculties performed not their office and so are the Moral or Imputative causes and so the great culpable causes of the fact But I am drawn nearer to Philosophy and points beyond your reach then I intended a fault that I must be still resisting in all my Writings being upon every occurring difficulty carried to forget my subject and the capacity of the meanest to whom I write But what you understand not pass over and go to the next The second kinde of sinnes of Infirmity are The smaller sort of sinnes which we may forbear if we will that is If we be actually though not perfectly yet prevalently Willing or if our Wils be determined to forbear them or if the chief part of the Will actually be for such forbearance The first sort are called sinnes of Infirmity in an Absolute sense These last I call sinnes of Infirmity in both an Absolute and Comparative sense that is both as they proceed from our inward corruption which through the weakness of the soul having but little grace is not fully restrained and also as it is compared with gross sinnes And so we may call idle words and rash expressions in our hast and such like Sins of Infirmity in comparison of Murder Perjury or the like gross sinnes which we commonly call Crimes or Wickedness when the former we use to call but Faults These Infirmities are they which the Papists and some Learned Divines of our own as Rob. Baronius in his excellent Tractate de Peccat Mortali Veniali do call Venial sinnes Some of them in a fair and honest sense viz. Because they are such sinnes as a true Christian may live and die in though not unrepented or unresisted yet not subdued so farre as to forsake or cease from the practice of them and yet they are pardoned But other Papists call them Venial sinnes in a wicked sense as if they needed no pardon or deserved not eternal punishment And why should they call them Venial if they need not pardon A justified man liveth in the daily practice of some vain thoughts or the frequent commission of some other sinnes which by his utmost diligence he might restrain But he liveth not in the frequent practice of Adultery Drunkenness False-witnessing Slandering Hating his Brother c. Yet observe that though the forementioned lesser sinnes are called Infirmities in regard of the matter of them yet they may be so committed in regard of the end and manner of them as may make them crimes or gross sinnes As for example If one should use idle words wilfully resolvedly without restraint reluctancy or tenderness of conscience this were gross sinning or the neerer it comes to this and the more wilfulness or neglect or evil ends there is in the smallest forbidden action the worse it is and the grosser And observe of which more anon that the true bounds or difference between gross sinnes and those lesser faults which we call Infirmities cannot be given I think by any man I am sure not by me either as to the Act it self to say just what Acts are gross sins and what not or else as to the manner of committing them as to say Just how much of the Will must go to make a gross sinne or Just how farre a man may proceed in the degree of evil intents or how farre in the frequency of sinning before it must be called a gross sinne 3. The third sort of sinnes which may be called Sins of Infirmity are these last mentioned gross sinnes themselves so far as they are found in the Regenerate These are gross sinnes put in opposition to the former sort of Infirmities but our Divines use to call them all Sins of Infirmity in opposition to the sinnes of Unbelievers who are utterly unholy And they call them Sins of Infirmity 1. Because the person that committeth them is not dead in sinnes as the Unregenerate are but only diseased wounded and infirm 2. Because that they are not committed with so full consent of Will as those of the Unregenerate are but only after much striving or at least contrary to Habitual Resolutions though not against Actual Here we are in very great Difficulties and full of Controversies Some say that these gross sinnes do extinguish true Grace and are inconsistent with it and that David and Peter were out of the 〈◊〉 of Grace till they did again Repent Others say that they were in the state of Grace and not at al so liable to condemnation but that if they had died in the Act they had been saved because There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus and that therefore all the sins of Believers are alike sins of Infirmity pardoned on the same terms and therefore as a rash word may be pardoned without a particular repentance so possibly may these gross sins To others this seems dangerous and contrary to Scripture and therefore they would fain finde out a way between both But how to do it clearly and satisfactorily is not easie at least to me who have been long upon it but am yet much in the dark in it I think it is plain that such persons are not totally unsanctified by their sin I believe that Christs interest is Habitually more in their Wils then is the interest of the flesh or world at that very time when they are sinning and so Christs interest is least as to their Actual Willing And so sinne prevaileth for that time against the Act of their Faith and Love but not wholly against the prevalent part of the Habit. And therefore
when the shaking winde of that stormy temptation is over the soul will return to Christ by Repentance Love and renewed Obedience But then to know what state he is Relatively in this while as to his Justification and Reconciliation and right to Glory is the point of exceeding difficulty Whether as we distinguish of Habitual Faith and Love and Obedience which he hath not lost and Actual which he hath lost so we must make some answerable distinction of Justification Habitual and Actual it cannot be into Virtual Justification which he hath not lost and Actual Justification which he hath lost or into Plenary Justification which he hath not and Imperfect Justification wanting a further Act to make it Plenary which may remain But still it will be more difficult to shew punctually what this Imperfect or Virtual Justification is and most difficult to shew Whether with the loss of Actual Plenary Justification and the loss of a Plenary Right to Heaven a mans salvation may consist that is Whether if he should die in that condition he should be saved or condemned Or if it be said that he shall certainly repent 1. Yet such a supposition may be put while he yet repenteth not for the enquiry into his state How farre there is any intercision of his Justification Pardon Adoption or Right to salvation 2. And whether it can fully be proved that it is impossible or that which never was or shall be for a Regenerate man to die in the very act of a gross sinne as self-murder or the like For my part I think God hath purposely left us here in the dark that we may not be too bold in sinning but may know that whether the gross sins of Believers be such as destroy their Justification and right to Glory prevalently or not yet certainly they leave them in the dark as to any Certainty of their Justification or Salvation And then more dark is it and impossible to discover How farre a man may go in these grosser sinnes and yet have the prevalent habits of Grace As to the former Question about the intercision of Justification I am somewhat inclinable to think that the habit of Faith hath more to do in our Justification then I have formerly thought and may as properly be said to be the condition as the act and that as long as a man is in a prevalent degree habitually a Believer he is not only imperfectly and virtually Justified but so farre actually Justified that he should be saved though he were cut off before he actually Repent And that he being already habitually Penitent having a hatred of all sin as sin should be saved if meer want of opportunity do prevent the Act And that only those sinnes do bring a man into a state of condemnation or prove him in such which consist not with the Habitual Preheminence of Christs interest in our souls above the interest of the flesh and world And that David's and Peter's were such as did consist with the preheminence of Christs interest in the habit But withall that such gross sinnes must needs be observable and so the soul that is guilty doth ordinarily know its guilt yea and think of it And that it is inconsistent with this habitual Repentance not to Repent actually as soon as Time is afforded and the violence of passion so farre allaied as that the soul may recollect it self and Reason have its free use And that he that hath this leasure and opportunity for the free use of Reason and yet doth not Repent it is a sign that the interest of the flesh is habitually as well as actually stronger then Christs interest in him I say in this doubtfull case I am most inclining to judge thus But as I would have no man take this as my resolved Judgement much less as certain Truth and least of all to venture on sinne or impenitency ever the more for such a doubtfull opinion which doth not conclude him to be certainly unjustified so I am utterly ignorant both how long sensual passions may possibly rage and keep the soul from sober Consideration or how farre they may interpose in the very time of Consideration and frustrate it and prevail against it and so keep the sinner from actual Repenting or at least from a full ingenuous acknowledgement and bewailing of the sin which is necessary to full Repentance and how long Repentance may be so farre stifled as to remain only in some inward grudgings of conscience and trouble of minde hindered from breaking out into free Confession which seemeth to have been David's case long Nay it is impossible to know just how long a man may live in the very practice of such gross sin before Christs habitual Interest above the flesh be either overthrown or proved not to be there and how oft a man that hath true Grace may commit such sins These things are undiscernable besides that none can punctually define a gross sin so as to exclude every degree of Infirmities and include every degree of such gross sin Perhaps you will marvell why I run so farre in this Point It is both to give you as much light as I can what sins they be which be to be called Infirmities and so what sins they be that do forbid that gentle comforting way of cure when the soul is troubled for them which must be used with those that are troubled more then needs or upon mistakes and also to convince you of this weighty Truth That Our Comfort yea and Assurance hath a great dependance on our actual obedience yea so great that the least obedient sort of sincere Christians cannot by ordinary means have any Assurance and the most obedient if other necessaries concurre will have thâ— most Assurance and for the middle sort their Assurance will rise and fall ordinarily with their obedience so that there 's no way to comfort such offending Christians but by reducing them to fuller obedience by Faith and Repentance that so the evidences of their Justification may be clear and the great impediments of their Assurance and Comfort be removed This I will yet make clearer to you by its Reasons and then tell you how to apply it to your self 1. No man can be sure of his salvation or Justification but he that is sure of his true Faith and Love And no man can be sure of his true Faith and Love but he that is sure of the sincerity of his obedience For true Faith doth ever take God for our great Soveraign and Christ for our Lord-Redeemer and containeth a Covenant-delivery of a mans self to God and the Redeemer to be Ruled by him as a Subject Childe Servant and Spouse This is not done sincerely and savingly unless there be an actual and habitual Resolution to obey God and the Redeemer before all creatures and against all temptations that would draw us from him To obey Christ a little and the flesh more is no true obedience If the flesh can