as you were to it he would never have deceived you He would havâ— received your departed souls and made you like Angels and raised your bodies to glory at the last and perpetuated that Glory Will your Riches or Pleasures or Honours do this He would have rescued you from the devouring flames which your inordinate love of the world will bring you to O miserable change to change God for the world it is to change a Crown of Glory for a Crown of thorns the love of our only friend for the smiles of deceitful enemies Life for death and Heaven for Hell O what thoughts will arise in your hearts when you are past the deceit and under the sad effects of it and shall review your folly in another world It will fill your consciences with everlasting horrour and make you your own accusers and tormentors to think what you lost and what you had for it To think that you sold God and your souls and everlasting hopes for a thing of nought More foolishly then Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottagâ— If the Sun and Moon and Stars were yours would you exchange them for a lump of clay Well sinners if God and Glory seem no more worth to you then to be slighted for a little fleshly pleasures you cannot marvail if you have no part in them SECT XIX IF Reason and Scripture-Evidence would serve turn I dare say you would by this time be convinced of the necessity of being Crucified to the world and the world to you But sensuality is unreasonable and no saying will serve with it like a child that will not let go his apple for a piece of gold But yet I shall not cease my Exhortation till I have tryed you a little further and if you will not yield to forsake the world you shall keep it to your greater cost as you keep it against the clearer light that would convince you of your duty 1. As you love God or would be thought to love him love not the world For so far as you Love it you Love not him 1 Ioh. 2. 15. As ever you would be found the friends of God see that you be enemies and not friends to the world For the friendship of the world is enmity to him Iam. 4. 4. You are used to boast that you Love God above all If you do so you will not Love the world above him And then you will not labour and care more for it then for him Your love will be seen in the bent of your lives That which you Love best you will â—eek most and be most careful and diligent to obtain As they that love money are most careful to get it so they that Love heaven will be more careful to make sure of that As they that love their drink and lust will be much in the Ale-house and among those that are the baits and fewel of their lust So they that Love the fruition of God will be much in seeking him and enquiring after him and much among those that are acquainted with such Love and can further them any way in the accomplishment of their desires If you Love God then let it be seen in the Holy Endeavours of your lives and set your affections on things above and not on the things that are on earth For that which you most look after we must think that you most Love Can you for shame commit Adultery with the world and live with it in your bosoms and yet say that you love God 2. As you Love your present peace and comfort see that you love not but Câ—ucifie the world It doth but delude you first and disquiet you afterward Like wind in your bowels which can tear and torment you but cannot nourish you And if God do love you with a special Love he will be sure to wean you from the world though to your sorrow If you do provoke him to lay wormwood on the breasts and to hedge up your forbidden way with thorns when you find the smart and bitterness you may thank your selves It is the remnant of our folly and our backsliding nature that is still looking back to the world which we have forsaken that is the cause of those successive afflictions which we undergo Did you Love the creature less it would vex you less but if you will needs set your minds upon them and be pleasing your worldly sensual desires God will turn loose those very creatures upon you and make them his scourges for the recovery of your wits the reducing of your mis-led revolting souls Are you taken up with the hopes of a more plentifull estate and think you are got into a thriving way How soon can God blast and break your expectations By the death of your cattle the decay of trading the false-dealing of those you trust the breaking and impoverishing of them by contentious neighbours vexing you with Law suits by corrupted witnesses or Lawyers that will sell you for a little gain by ill servants by unthrifty children by thieves or souldiers or the raging flames by restraining the dew of heaven and causing your land to deny its increase and make you complain that you have laboured in vain How many waies hath he in a day or an hour to scatter all the heap of wealth that you have been gathering and to shew you that by sad experience which you might have known before at easier rates At the least if he meddle not with any thing that you have yet how quickly can he lay his hand upon your selves and lay you in sickness to groan under your pain and sin together and then what comfort will you have in the world when head ake's and back ake's and nothing can ease you When pain and languishing make you weary of day and of night and weary of every place and weary of your best diet your finest cloathes your merriest companions Where then is the sweetness and beauty of the world Then if you look on house or goods or lands how little pleasure find you in any of them Especially when you know that your departure is at hand and you must stay here no longer but presently must away Oh then what a carkaise will all the glory of the world appear and how sensibly then will you read or hear or think of these things that now in your prosperity are very little moved by the hearing of them Is it your children that you set your hearts upon in inordinate Love or Care Why alas how quickly can God call them from you by death and then you will follow them to the Church-yard and lay them in the grave with so much the sadder heart by how much the more inordinately you loved them And perhaps God may leave them to be Graceless and unnatural and make that child by rebellion or unkindness to be the breaking of your heart whom you most excessively affected If it be a wife that you over-love you know not but they
commendation but may possibly be as injurious to his Moral Honesty as any other sort of Tyranny and might have learned of his chiefest Master Seneca de Tranquil Anim. that the free City of Athens could less endure Socrates then the Tyrants and did put him to death whom they had tolerated Nunquid potes invenire urbem miseriorem quam Atheniensium fuit cum illam triginta tyranni divellerent Mille trecentos ciâ—es optimum quemque occiderant Socrates tamen in medio erat Et imitari volentibus magnum circumferebat exemplar cum inter triginta dominos liber incederet Hunc tamen Athenae ipse in carcere occiderunt Et qui tutò insultaverat agmini tyrannorum ejus Libertatem libera civitas non tulit Gentlemen for the Lords sake for your souls sake for the Churches and the Gospels sake for your Countries sake and the spritual and corporal good of thousands awake now from your sloth and selfishness from your Ambition Voluptuousness and sordid Worldliness and give up your selves and all that you have to God by Christ and to the Common Good and make the best of all your faculties and interest for the high and noble Ends of Christians And convince all self-conceited founders or troublers of the Common-wealth that you have hit the way of a true Reformation without any alteration of the form by correcting your selves the principal Materials And let them see by your seeking the weale of all that your form is as truly a Common-weale as theirs and that they absurdly appropriate the Title to their own If you deny us this on you shall lie the blame and shame and not on our want of a Popular form But because I have gone so far with you by perswasion though yet I doubt whether indeed you will be perswadedâ— I shall not leave you till I have added the â—â—st part of my task which is to set some Rules and Matter for Good works before you that if you are but willing you may set your money to the happyest usury and that upon the best security 1. For General Rules Aime at no lower an ultimate End in your Charity then the Pleasing of God and move from no lower a first moral Principle then the Love of God within you Seek not self while you seem to Deny it Give and do good to Christ in his servants 2. Consider therefore of mens Relations to Christ and understand where his Interest lyeth in the world Avoid both their extreams that would have you do Good to none but Saints and that would have you do it to all alike As God hath a special Love to his children and yet doth Good to all his mercy being over all his works and as he is the Saviour of all men but especially of them that Believe so must you Love all men as men and Saints as Saints and do Good to all men but especially to them of the houshold of faith Gal. 6. 10. The New command of special Love must not be thought to abrogate the old Commandment of common Love even of Loving our neighbour as our selves You must do Good to a Disciple in the name of a Disciple and to a Prophet in the name of a Prophet Mat. 10. 42. and yet take the wounded man for your neighbour that you see lie in your way Luke 10. 30. I know the Serpentine seed had rather you would kick against the Pricks and tread down Christs interest then there to lay out your greatest Charity But its God that you have to reckon with who judgeth not as they The Philosopher being asked Why all men were more ready to give to the halt and blind then to Philosophers answered that They thought they might come to be halt and blind themselves but were never like to be Philosophers So I may say of many that would be content that you feed the common poor with bread but the Disciples of Christ with stones They think they may be poor themselves but they are never like to be Christs Disciples Nay some of them such as Clem. writes in his mock fides divina will perswade you that its a sottish thing to conceive that any have Christs Spirit now that work not Miracles and that he hath no Church Ministry or Saints that is that Christianity is not the right Religion unless it had present Miracles to warrant it And then you might be excused rather for your uncharitableness to it then for your Charity But wisdom is justified of all her children And the mouths of her enemies will be quickly stopt and they shall then know that Christ is Lord and Iudge without either faith or further Miracles 3. When you have two Good works before you prefer the Greater and choose not the less 4. Caeteris Paribus let Works of Spiritual and everlasting concernment be prefer'd to those that are meerly temporal 5. And let Works for the Publick Good of Church or Common-wealth be preferred before private Works 6. Let God have All in one way or other even that which your selves and families receive Take it but as your daily bread to support you in his service Do not limit God or tie him to any part Take heed of Reserving any thing from him or of halving with him as Ananias and Saphira He deserveth and he expecteth all That which he hath not you have not but Satan hath it You lose it if you return it not to him And now in the Conclusion I shall presume though I foresee I may incurr a censure for it to give you a Catalogue of some of those good works which are seasonable in our daies by which you may make your reckoning comfortable And do not think that God is beholden to you for it if you perform them all but take it as the happyest bargain that you can make and thankfully take the opportunity while it is offered you remembering that there is no such security nor advantage to be made of your money in any way as for God and that it is more blessed to Give then to Receive Say not another day but that you had a price in your hands if you have not an Heart you must suffer with the unfaithful A Catalogue of seasonable Good Works presented to them that are sanctified to God and dare trust him with their Riches expecting the everlasting Riches which he hath promised and are zealous of Good Works and take it for a precious Mercy that they may be exercised therein 1. ENquire what persons burdened with children or sickness or on any such occasion labour under necessities and relieve them as you are able and find them fit And still make advantage of it for the benefit of their souls instructing admonishing and exhorting them as they have need If you give them any annual gift of cloathes bread or money engage them to learn some Catechism withall and to go to the Minister and give him an account of it Some I know that set up a monethly Lecture to be
best condition to him that best accommodateth and advantageth him for Gods service He taketh the fleshes Interest to be none of his Interest and therefore that which only concerneth the flesh concerneth not him And therefore he looketh in this regard upon an high estate or a low as Nothing to him Let God dispose of him as he please that 's Gods work and not his He hath learned in whatever estate he is therewith to be content He knows how to be abased and he knows how to abound every where and in all things he is instructed both to be full and to be hungry both to abound and to suffer need Phil. 4. 11 12. If you applaud and honour him he takes it but as if you breathed on him at the best it is but a sweeter kind of breath And if you vilifie and reproach and unjustly condemn him he takes it for no great hurt For with him it is a very small thing to be judged of man and at mans barr for he that judgeth him is the Lord 1 Cor. 4. 3 4. Nay what if I said that if you imprison him threaten him torment him yea put him to death he doth not much regard it nor make any great matter of it so far as he is Crucified to the world How joyfully could Paul and Silas sing in the stocks when their bodies were sore with scourging Act. 16. What a rapture of joyful praises did the Apostles break forth into when they were threatned by the Priests and Elders Acts 4. 21 24. I will add but two more instances Dan. 3. The three Jews that were threatned with a furnace of fire are accused for not regarding the King vers 12. and their own answer is vers 16 17. We are not careful to answer thee in this matter If it be so the God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thy hand O King But if not be it known unto thee O King that we will not serve thy Gods And sure they that would not accept of deliverance when they were tortured Heb. 11. 35. did set little by it in comparison of that better Resurrection which they hoped for As Christ said of Satan The Prince of this world hath nothing in me Iohn 14. 30. So in our measure so far as we are dead with Christ the world hath nothing in us no interest no carnal life to work upon and therefore is unable to do any thing with us Our undue estimation of the world is Crucified This is the first part 2. If we are Crucified to the world our inordinate cogitations of the world are Crucified We must not give it that room in our fancies or power over them as they have with other men We should not indeed allow the creature one thought either for it self and terminated finally in it self nor as separated from God Much less should we have so frequent and so pleasant or passionate thoughts of it as most have But of this more in the Application 3. To be Crucified to the world is to have Affections dead about worldly things That which is vile in our estimation will be uneffectual in our Affections I shall briefly instance in some particulars 1. Our Love to the world is Crucified if we be Crucified to the world As this is the great Affection which God claimeth for himself and which he maketh the seat of his most excellent grace so is it that which he is most jealous of and will least allow the creature to partake of and the mis-imployment of it is the greatest sin as the right imployment of it is the greatest duty 1 Iohn 2. 15. Love not the world neither the things that are in the world This is a plain and flat command If the world be not apprehended by the understanding to be our Good it will not be embraced by the will nor be Loved Perhaps you will say Though it be not our chief Good yet it is Good and therefore may be loved though not châ—â—sâ—â— loved To which I answer that in the senses before disclaimed it is none of our Good at all It hath no Goodness to us in it but the Good of a Means which is respective to the End and therefore we must have no Love to it but that which is due to the Means God therefore being our End we must Love the world only for his sake as it cometh from him and leadeth to him The least love to the world for it self is Idolatrous As you may not allow another woman the least Conjugal affection though you allow your wife more without some guilt of unchastity so you may not in the least measure love the creature for it self without some guilt of spiritual unchastity If God must be loved with All the heart and soul and strength then there is none lest for any co-partner whatsoever When we love any thing but as a Means it is more properly the End that we love in that very act And therefore some Philosophical Divines affirm that Nothing but the ultimate End is properly loved so that the Love which we give the world in a due subordination to God is not so properly a Love to the world as to God and therefore it taketh not from God the least part of that which is due to him But if we love it in the least measure for it self or with any co-ordinate Love so much as we allow it is robbed from God 2. Hence it followeth when our love to the world is crucified that our Desires after it is crucified also Before we thirsted after Pleasures or Honours or Riches but now this thirst is abated for when we obey the Call of Christ Isa. 55. 1. and have freely drunk of the living waters we thirst our former thirst no more according to the measure in which we partake of him but his Spirit will be a well of water in us springing up to everlasting life Iohn 4. 13 14. The distempered appetite of a Carnal man is so eager after worldly things that his heart is set upon them which Rom. 8. 5. is called his minding the things of the flesh But the mortified Christian as such hath no mind of them His appetite to them is dead and gone He cares not for them Now he perceiveth that they are not Good for him his heart is turned against them 3. When we are Crucified to the world our expectations of Good from the world are Crucified Before we looked for much from it we thought if we had this Pleasure or that Honour if we had such lands buildings friends or provision then we were well or at least much better then now we are O how Good did we think that these were for us And therefore we still lived in Hope of more But when we are Crucified to the world we give up these Hopes We see then that we were deceived we did but hope for nourishment from a stone The
breasts are dry which we thought would have refreshed and satisfied us When we see that the world is an empty thing a cask a picture a dream a shadow we turn away from it and look no more after it but look for content in something else As a child that seeth a painted Apple may be eager of it till he try that it is favourless and then he careth for it no more or if a beautiful crab deceive him when he hath set his teeth in it he casteth it away So when a Christian findeth the folly of his former expectations and tasteth the vexation of the creature which he was so greedy of and withall is acquainted by a lively faith where he may be better away go all his expectations from the world and he promiseth himself no more content or satisfaction in it This is a notable part of Mortification As it is the Hopes of some Good that sets men awork in all endeavours so take down their Hopes and all the wheels of the soul stand still If it were not for Hope we say the heart would break And therefore when all our Hopes from the world are dead the very Heart of the old man is broken and all his worldly motions cease Then he saith It s as good sit still as labour for nothing I despair of ever having contentment in the creature I see it will not pacifie my conscience it will not save me from the wrath to come it will do nothing for me that is worthy my regard and therefore let it go I will follow it no further It shall have my heart no more Before he had many a promising delightful thought of the creatures which he could not reach He thought with himself If I were but thus placed and settled once if I had but this or that which I want if I were but here or there where I would be if I had but the favour of such or such an one how happy were I how well should I be I would then be content and seek no more But when faith hath mortified us to the world we see that all these were foolish dreams we knew not what it was that we Hoped for and then we give up all such Hopes for ever Such pleasing thoughts of any worldly thing while you want it or of any place or Condition which you are absent from and such promises and hopes from any worldly state or person or thing doth manifest that so far you are alive to the world and is a folly of the same nature with theirs that Idolize the world when they do enjoy it For one man to say If I had this or that I were well and for another that hath it to say Now I am well Soul take thy Rest do both shew the same Estimation and Idolatrous Love to the world in their hearts though one of them have the thing which he loves and the other hath it not And to be so pleased with the very fancy and conceits of those worldly things which they never had seems worse then to be pleased with it when they have it I pray you lay this well to heart that I say to you Despair utter Despair of ever being contented or well in the world or made happy by the world in whole or in part is the very life of Christian Mortification It is the nature of a Carnal heart to keep up his worldly Hopes as long as possibly he can If you beat him from one thing he runs to another and if he despair of that he looks after a third and thus he will wander from creature to creature till Grace convert him or Judgement condemn him If he find that one friend faileth him he hopes another will prove more faithfull and if that prove a broken reed he will rest upon a third If he have been crost in his Hopes of worldly contentment once or twice or ten times or an hundred times yet he is in Hope that some other way may hit and some more comfort he may find at last But when God hath opened a mans eyes to see that the whole world is Vanity and Vexation and that if he had it all it would do him no Good at all and that it is a meer deceitful empty thing and when a man is brought to a full and finall Desparation of ever finding in the world the Good that he expected then and not till then is he Crucified to the world and then he can let it go and care not and then he will betake himself in good earnest to look after that which will not deceive him When a worldling is in utmost poverty or in prison he may part with all his worldly contentment at the present but this is not to be Crucified to the world For still he keeps up his former estimation of it and Love to it and some Hope perhaps that yet it may be better with him Yea if he should Despair of ever being Happy in the world if this proceed not from his Disesteem of it and the change of his Affections but meerly because he would have the world but sees he cannot this is far from the nature of true mortification 4. If we are Crucified to the world our Delight in it is Crucified It seemeth not to us a matter of such worth as to be fit for our Delight Children are glad of toyes which a wise man hath no pleasure in To have too sweet contentful thoughts in the creature and to apprehend it as our Good and to be rejoyced in it is a sign that so far we are not Crucified to it It is not able to Glad a mortified heart so far as it is mortified though the Love of God that is manifested by it may make him glad And this is it that Paul disclaimeth in my Text God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of Christ. If he were the Lord of all the honours or wealth of the world he would not Glory in them If he had all the Pleasures that the flesh can desire he would not glory in them If he had the common applause of all men and every one spoke well of him if he had all things about him suited to a carnal hearts content yet would he not glory in it No more then a grave and learned man would glory that he had found a counter or a pin Ier. 9 23. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom nor the mighty man glory in his might let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that gloryeth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord that exercise loving kindness judgement and righteousness on the earth for in these things I delight saith the Lord. Jer. 4. 2. The Nations shall bless themselves in him and in him shall they glory Isa. 41. 16. Thou shalt rejoyce in the Lord and glory in the holy one of Israel Isa. 45. 25. In the Lord shall all
is trying what it will do for him as long as he hath any hope As the poor Infants in Ireland lay sucking at the breasts of the corpse of their mothers when the Irish Papists had slain them so will these poor worldlings still hang upon the world even when they find that it cannot help them and when it will scarce afford them a miserable life but with much labour and suffering they hardly get a little food and cloathing So that their affections are still alive to the world even when to their sorrow they look on the world as dead or almost dead to them But the Cross of Christ will teach you to Crucifie the world in another manner As Christ did voluntari'y contemn it and shew that he set so little by it that he could be content to be the most despicable Object upon earth in the eyes of men so will he teach you also voluntarily to contemn it and set up your selves as the Butt which all the arrows of malice and despight shall be shot at So that though you have naturally a desire of the preservation of your lives and from that may say Father if it be thy will let this cup pass from me Yet shall you have a far greater desire of Pleasing Enjoying and Glorifying God which shall cause you from a comparative Judgement to say Yet not as I will but as thou wilt Much more shall you be enabled to despise the unnecessary matters of the world and to mortifie your inordinate and distempered affections The Cross of Christ will shew you Reason though such as the worldly wise call foolishness even such Reason as none but a Teacher come from God could have revealed for the leading up your affections from the world and it will point you to the higher things that do deserve them This Cross is the truest Ladder by which you may ascend from earth to heaven When in this wilderness and as without the gate you are lifted up with Christ on the Cross of worldly desertion and reproach you are then in the highest road to Glory and if you faint not shall be lifted up with him into the throne For if you suffer with him ye shall also reign with him Rom. 8. 17. And to him that overcometh he will grant to sit with him in his throne even as he also overcame and is set down with his Father in his throne Rev. 3. 21. And as the Cross of Christ is Teaching so also is it Strengthning As the touch of his garment stayed the poor womans issue of blood so will a touch of the Cross by faith even dry up the stream of your inordinate affections that have run out after the world so long When a worldling mourneth over the Dead world as having lost his chiefest friend the Cross of Christ will cause you to rejoyce over it as a conquered enemy and to insult over the carkaise of its vain glory and delights For its one thing to have an angry God by providence to kill the world to them and another thing to have a gracious Father by his Spirit to Crucifie us to the world and the world to us by the changing of our â—â—â—imation and affections Set therefore a Crucified Christ continually before the eye of your souls See what he suffered for your adhering to the creature and what it cost him to loose you from it and bring up your souls again to God Can you still dote upon the world intangle your affections in its painted allurements when you consider that this is the very sin that killed your Saviour and which the blood of his heart was shed to cure Look up to that Cross and see the fruits of worldly love If you see a man that hath surfeited on unwholsom fruits lie groaning and gasping and trembling in pain and at last must die for it you will take heed of such a surfeit your selves It was we that took a surfeit of the creature and the Lord that saw there was no other remedy to save our lives did by a Miracle of mercy and wisdom derive upon himself the pain and trouble and groaned and sweat and bled and dyed for our Recovery And will you feed and surfeit again upon the creature Look up to that Cross of Christ and see the enmity of the world unto your Head And will you take it for your friend See how it used him and will you expect that it should deal contrarily with you Did it hang him up among Malefactors and will it set you on a throne or dandle you in its lap Did it pierce his side and will it heal your wounds Did it reach him Gall and Vinegar and will it reach you milk and honey If it do yet trust it not For the milk is but to prepare you for that sleep in which it may destroy you without resistance for you must next expect the hammer and the nail as Iael used Sisera Iudg. 4. 19 21. There is not so clear a glass in all the world in which you may see the world in its just complexion and proportion as the Cross of Christ. There you may see what its worth and how to be esteemed by the estimate of one that never was deceived by it but had a perfect knowledge of its use and value When you have so long beheld that Cross by faith as that you can be contented to be hanged between heaven and earth and become the most forlorn and despicable creature in the eyes of men and to be stript of all the comforts of life and life it self for the sake of Christ and for the Invisible Kingdom which by his Cross was purchased for you then are you throughly Crucified to the world and the world to you by the Cross of Christ. Direct 2. BE sure that you receive nâ—t a false picture of the world into your minds or if you have received such an one see that you blot it out and think of the creature truly as it is The most are deceived and undone by mis-apprehensions As if a man should dote on an ugly harlot because of a painted face or because he seeth a beautiful picture which is falsly pretended to be hers The world in it self is vanity and insufficiency As opposite to God it is poyson and enmity to us But most men conceive of it as if it were the very seat of their felicity and so are enamoured of they know not what If men did not entertain false apprehensions of God and his holy waies as being against them or hurtful to them or needless and uncomfortable they could not be so much against them as they are And so if they did not entertain false apprehensions of the creature and the waies of sin they could not be so much for them nor embrace them with so much delight For they draw in their fancies some odious picture of the blessed God and his waies and therefore they are averse to them And so they draw in
censure them because they cannot prove them to be such Deceivers When yet the very bent and course of their lives proclaimeth them worldlings to almost all men but themselves who by the just but heavy judgement of God are given over to that blindness as not to see that damnable sin in themselves that the enemies of Religion see with scorn and their most impartial friends do see with lamentation but seeing it are not able to remedy for worldliness is the commonest badge of an Hypocrite and where there is a false heart at the bottom and but an hypocriticall faith and an hypocriticall love to God and the life to come there will be no effectual resistance of the world but all exhortations do come upon so great disadvantage with such souls that usually they are lost and leave them as they find them If any covetous scraping earth-worm whether he be Gentleman Tradesman or Husbandman do feel his conscience at the reading of this begin to stir I beseech him if there be any hope of such hypocrites to hearken to it in time and regard a little more the warnings of his friends and not to be so stiffly confident of his innocency nor yet to think himself free from hainous gross and scandalous sin as long as he is a covetous worldling If covetousness be idolatry and the sin of those with whom we may not so much as eat and if the covetous shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven and be such as the Holy Ghost doth joyn with thieves and the vilest sinners who then but an Infidel can think that it is not a scandalous sin and such as will be the damnation of all that be not throughly cured of it See Eph. 5. 5 6 7. 1 Cor. 5. 10 11. Psal. 10. 3. 2 Tim. 3. 2. 2 Pet. 2. 14. Luke 16. 14. Mark 7. 22. 2 Tim. 3. 2. Ier. 8. 10. 6. 13. David prayeth God to encline his heart to his testimonies and not to covetousness Psal. 119. 36. and now men think they may be enclined to both and that they have found out the terms of reconciling heaven with earth and hell I marvail these men will not see their own faces when the Prophets and Christ himself do hold them so clear a glass Ezek. 33. 31. They come unto thee as the people cometh and they sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words but they will not do them for with their mouth they shew much love but their heart goeth after their covetousness Mat. 13. 22. He that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choak the word and he becometh unfruitful I know the men that I am now speaking of have many excellent gifts and in other respects do seem the forwardest for godliness in the Countrey but the more is the pitty that men of such parts should be rotten-hearted hypocrites and damned for worldliness after so much pains in duties For an heathen may as soon be saved as a worldling When they have prayed and preached and cryed down prophanness let them hear what the Lord saith to them Luke 18. 22 23 24. and there see again their faces in that glass Yet lackest thou one thing even such an one as none can be saved without even a Love to God and Heaven above earth sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come follow me And when he heard this he was very sorrowful for he was very rich And when Iesus saw that he was sorrowful he said How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God Set not then so high a value on a full estate Let your conversation be without covetousness and be contint with such things as ye have and trust your selves on the security of his promise who hath said I will never fail thee nor forsake thee Heb. 13. 5. It is not for nothing that Christ himself hath given you so many and so terrible warnings to take heed of this sin As Luke 12. 15. Take heed and beware of covetousness for a mans life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth As if he should say While you think you are securing your well-being you do not secure your Being it self When you have done all to provide for the delights of your life you are never the surer of life it self Read the following passages in the Text and let them warn you or condemn you If such admonitions as these will not take from the mouth of him whom you call your Lord and from whom you profess to expect your Judgement What have we then further to say to you or how should our warnings expect entertainment with you Yet I shall do that which is my duty and leave the success to God I do therefore again in the name of God advise and warn you to Take heed of having too pleasant thoughts on a prosperous state Long not after fulness and plenty in the world Be not too eager for accomodations to your flesh A Coffin of two yards long will shortly hold it and be room enough for it And will nothing but well built houses adorned rooms the neatest cloathing and plentiful possessions serve you now How sad a mark is this of a soul that never had a saving taste of the everlasting riches Away foolish children and stand not building houses with sticks and sand Home with you to God and remember where you must dwell for ever When you have feathered your nests and made them as you would have them you must leave them before you are well settled and warm in them And if it comfort you to think that you leave them to your children remember that you leave them the fruit of your sins and bequeath to them the snares that undid your souls that so they may become the heirs of your wickedness and be deceived and destroyed by the world as you have been This is your great care for them and this is your kindness to them I have told you once already from God that this your way is your folly though your posterity be like to approve your sayings because you do so much to make them of your mind Psalm 49. 13. For though your inward thoughts be that your houses shall continue and you hope to leave a name behind you yet man being in honour abideth not but is like the beasts that perish When he dyeth he shall carry nothing away his glory shall not descend after him though whiles he lived he blessed his soul and men praise them that thus do well to themselves yet shall they go to the generation of their fathers and shall never see Light Man that is in honour and understandeth not is like the beasts that perish Vers. 11 12 17 18 19 20. Though the ungodly prosper in the world and encrease in riches yet he
be in Heaven from whence it is that he expecteth his Saviour to change his vile earthly body and make it like to his glorious body Phil. 3. 17 18 19 20 21. If indeed you have laid up your treasure in heaven where rust and moath corrupt not and where thieves do not break through and steal let it appear then by the effects For where your treasure is there will your heart be and where your heart is that way the Labours of your lives will tend I shall reduce my Exhortation to some particulars 1. IF you are Crucified to the world be sure that you seek it not nor any thing in it for its own sake but only as a means to higher things The sincerity of your hearts doth lie much in this and the life of your souls depends much upon it Labour in your lawful callings and spare not so you exclude not your spiritual work It is not your Labour that we find fault with But if the creature be the end of any Labour you may better â—it still and spare your pains or rather speedily change your intentions If you overtake the hastyest traveller in his journey and ask him why he takes all that pains he will not say it is For Love of the way that he travaileth in but for Love of the place to which he is going or the persons or things which â—e there expects So must it be with you if you are the heirs of heaven I blame you not to be glad of a fair way and to love it rather then a foul one but it is not for the love of the way that you must travail He that runs in a race doth not bestow all that pains for the Love of the path which he runs in but for Love of the Prize which he expecteth at the end And he that plougheth and soweth doth it more for Love of the crop which he hopeth for then for Love of his labour He that saileth through the dangerous Seas performeth not his voyage for Love of the Sea or of his Ship but for Love of the Merchandize and Gain which he seeketh The Carryer that goeth weekly to London with your wares doth not take all that pains for Love of the carriage or of the way but of the gain which he deserveth So must it be with you in all your worldly business When you seek for credit or pleasure or maintenance in the world it must not be finally for the Love of these but for the End which they are given for and which your hearts and lives and all must be devoted to Your hearts will as soon deceive you in this as in any thing if you do not watch them with jealousie and diligence How quickly will the heart begin to Love the creature for it self that seemed once to Love it but for God Look in what measure you love your wealth your houses your recreations your friends for themselves and because they accommodate the flesh so far you wrong God and abuse them to â—dolatry And if your Love do begin in greater purity if you be not watchful it will quickly degenerate to a carnal Love Many a Scholar that at first desired Learning to fit him for the service of God and his Church doth by suffering carnality to insinuate and prevail lose much of the purity of his first affections and in time grow more cold and regardless of his first ends and loveth common Learning meerly for it self and for the delight of knowing or which is worse to get him a name among men It s common with men that need recreation for their health when they set upon it as they think but to fit them for their duty to fall in love with it afterwards to the perverting of their hearts the wounding of their consciences the wasting of their time and the neglect of that work of God for which it should be used We should take our meat and drink and cloathes but to strengthen and â—it us for the service of our Master but how quickly do we turn them to the gratifying of our flesh and so the service of another Master It s too frequent for young persons of different sexes to Love each other at first as Christians only with a chast and necessary Love but when they have been tempted awhile to an imprudent familiarity their Love doth degenerate and that which was Spiritual becometh Carnal and the Serpent deceiveth them to the corrupting of their minds and it s well if it proceed not to actuall wickedness and the undoing of each other Many a poor man thinks with himself If I were but out of debt or could but live so as to serve the Lord without distractions and had such and such necessities supplyed I would not desire any more or care any further for the world But if their desires be granted them they find themselves entangled and their hearts deceived and they thirst more after fulness then before they did after necessaries And many a one thinks I care not for riches or honours but only to do good with and if I had them I would so use them But when they have their desires the case is altered the flesh then hath need of it and can spare for God as little as other men because it loves it better then before and pretendeth to have more use for it then formerly it had Watch therefore over your deceitful hearts and be sure to keep up the Love of God and actually intend him in all that you have or do and be not withdrawn to carnal affections 2. IF you are Crucified to the world be not too eager for it As God hath promised it you but as an appendix to your felicity and as an overplus to the great blessings of the Covenant so must you desire it but as such And as God hath promised it you but with certain limitations so far as he shall see it good for you and agreeable to his greater ends so you must desire it but with such limitations I observe many to have so much reason as to put up their prayers for outward blessings with those limitations and will not for shame express themselves in absolute peremptory language when yet there is apparent cause to fear that they limit not their desires as they do their words nor do they submit so freely to the disposal of God in their hearts as they seem to do in their expressions and so they make their words to be modest while their desires are inordinate their language to be chast while their hearts are committing adultery with the world their expressions are pious while their affections are idolatrous And so their prayers are made monstrous while the soul of them is so disagreable to the body Be ashamed and afraid to desire that which you are ashamed and afraid to ask You dare not say to God in your prayers Lord I must needs have a fuller estate I would fain be rich and be somebody in the
Tempter is hereby disarmed and he is disabled from doing that against you which with others he can do The Living world is the Life of Temptations As a Bear for all his strength and fierceness may be led up and down by the nose when by a ring the cord is fastened to his flesh So the Tempter leadeth men captive at his will by fastening together the world and their flesh He finds it no hard matter to entice a sensuall worldly mind to almost any thing that is evil Bid him lye or steal and if it be not for shame or fear of men he will do it Bid him neglect God and his worship and he will do it Bid him hate those that hinder his commodity or speak evil of them that cross his desires or seek revenge of those that he thinks do wrong him herein and how quickly will he do it The Devil may do almost what he list with those that are not Crucified to the world They will follow him up and down the world from sin to sin if he have but a golden bait to tice them But when the world is Crucified to you what hath he to entice you with The cord is broken by which he was wont to bind and lead you Can you tice a wise man by pins and counters as you may do a child If he would draw you from God he hath nothing to do it with for the world by which he should do it is now dead If he would tice you to pride or ambition or covetousness or to sinful means for worldly ends he hath nothing to do it with because the world is dead The Devil hath nothing but a little money or sensual pleasure or honours to hire you with to betray and cast away your souls And what cares a mortified man for these Will he part with Christ and heaven for money who looks on money as other men do on chips or stones It is the frame of mens hearts that is the strength of a temptation To a man that is in love with money O what a strong temptation is it to see an opportunity of getting it by sin But what will this move him that looketh on it as on the dirt in the streets To a proud man that is tender of his reputation in the world what a troublesom temptation is it to be reproached or slighted or slandered and what a dangerous temptation is it to him to be applauded But what are these to him that takes the approbation and applauses of the world but as a blast of wind As Christ saith of himself Iohn 14. 30. The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me that is He cometh to make his last and strongest assault but he shall find no carnall sinfull matter in me to work upon and he cometh by his instruments to perscute me to the death but he shall find no guilt in me which might make it a glory to him or a dishonour to me So in their measure the mortified members of Christ may say When Satan cometh by temptations the world is dead by which he would tempt them and he shall find little of that earthly matter in them to work upon and to entertain his seed and therefore when he afterward cometh by persecution he will find the less of that guilt which would be the oyl to enlarge and seed these flames Your innocency and safety lyeth much in this Mortification Benefit 4. ANother Benefit that followeth our Crucifixion of the world is this It will prevent abundance of needless unprofitable cost and labour that other men are at You will not be drawn to run and toyl for a thing of nought When other men are riding and going and caring and labouring for a little smoak or a flying shadow you will sit as it were over them and discern and pitty and lament their folly To see one man rejoyce that hath got his prize and another lament because he cannot get it and a third in the eager pursuit of it as if it were for their lives While they live as if they had forgotten the eternal Life which is at hand will cause you to lift up your soul to his praises that hath saved you from this dotage The world worketh on the sensual part first and thereby corrupteth and as it were brutifieth our very reason and the whole course of worldly designs and affairs even from the glorious actions of Kings and Commanders to the daily business of the plow-man and the beggar are all but the actions of frantick men or mad men I say so far as the affairs of the world are managed by this sensuall unmortified principle a sanctified Believer can look upon them all as on the runnings or tumults of children or ideots or on a game at Chests where wit is laid out to little purpose Mortification will help you to turn your thoughts and cares and labours into a more profitable course So that when the end comes you will have somewhat to shew that you have gained when others must complain that they have lost all their labour and worse then lost it What abundance of precious time do other men lose in dreaming pursuits of an empty deceiving transitory world When God hath taken off the poise from you of such unprofitable motion and taught you better to employ your time Many an hundred hours which others cast away upon worldly thoughts or discourse or practises are redeemed by the wise for their everlasting benefit Benefit 5. MOreover this Mortification Will help you to prevent a great deal of sharp Repentance which must tell unmortified worldlings of their folly When they have run themselves out of breath and abused Christ and neglected grace and either lost or hazarded their souls they must sit down in the end and befool themselves for losing their time and lives for nothing When God hath given a man but a short life and laid his everlasting life upon it and put such works into his hand as call for his utmost wisdom and diligence What a sad perplexing thought must it be to consider that all or most of this time hath been cast away upon worldly vanities If a man shall run away from his own Father and serve a Master that at last will turn him off with nothing but shame and blows will he not wish that he had never seen his face Such a Master all worldlings and sensualists do serve And he that got most by the world among them shall wish at last that he had never served it When the mortified Christian that slighted the world and laid out his care and labour for a better may so far escape the bitterness of such Repentings and be glad that he hath chosen the better part That is not the best meat that is sweetest in the eating when afterward it must be vomited up with pain because it cannot be digested The sparer dyet of Mortified men will prevent such after pains and troubles Benefit 6.
the way to that Mat. 5. 3. Blessed are the poor in Spirit It is not Blessed are the worldly rich Nor Blessed are the Glorified only But the reason is For theirs is the Kingdom of heaven that is in title but not in possession ver 2. Blessed are they that mourn And why are mourners blessed For they shall be comforted Luk. 6. 24 25. Wo unto you that are Rich for ye have received your consolation Wo unto you that are full for you shall hunger Wo unto you that laugh now for you shall mourn and weep Wo unto you when all men speak well of you c. that is Wo to you that place your comfort and felicity in Riches and Fulness and Mirth and the Applause of men Yea though you possess the things you desire yet wo to you because you shall miss of the true and durable felicity Thus also run all the rest of the blessings in Matth. 5. Blessed are the meek Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the peace-makers Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsly for my sake that is When you are so firm in the faith and so far in love with me and the heavenly reward that you can bear all these revilings and slanders and persecutions you are Blessed even when the troubles are upon you So that you see here that our present Blessedness consisteth in Mortification to present things and Hope of future And from the future the Reason of our present blessedness is fetcht They which hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled The merciful shall obtain mercy The pure in heart shall see God The peace makers shall be called the children of God The persecuted shall have the Kingdom of heaven Indeed to the meek it is promised in present that they shall inherit the earth as Psal. 37. 11. had before said that is It shall afford them accommodations for a travailer which is all that is desirable in it or can be expected from it For godliness hath the promise of this life and of that to come 1 Tim. 4. 8. Yea moreover there is a special promise to the meek above those godly persons that are most wanting herein For their passage through this world to heaven shall ordinarily be more peaceable and quiet to them then other mens They do not so molest their own minds and vex themselves nor make themselves troubles nor provoke others against them as the passionate do and commonly they are either loved or pittyed or easilyer dealt with by all So that you may see throughout the Gospel that our present blessedness is in Mortification and Hope as the way to our future blessedness which consisteth in fruition And therefore it is a a very great errour in Believers when they overlook the blessedness of a Mortified state and can see little in any thing but sensible fruition and rejoycings When you are low in afflictions and grieved for your corruptions and fill the ears of God and men with your complaints though you have not then the joyful sense of the Love of God yet me thinks you might easily perceive your Mortification And will that afford you no refreshing Do you not feel that you are Crucified to the world and your desires after it are languid and life-less Can you not truly say that the world is Crucified to you and that you look on it but as a Carkass as an empty lifeless and unsatisfactory thing Would you not gladly part with it for more of Christ Could you not let go credit and wealth and friends so that the Kingdom of God might be more advanced within you and you might live more in the Spirit by a life of faith Could you not be content to be poor in the world so that you might but be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him Why do you not then consider what a blessed condition you are in and that your Mortification is a Mercy that leadeth to salvation and as sure a token of the Love of God as your most sensible joyes Did you ever mark and conscionably practise that command of Christ Mat. 5. 12. to the persecuted reviled slandered Believers Rejoyce and be exceeding glad mark what a frame your Saviour would have you live in for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you So when you are poor and afflicted and have hearts that set light by earthly things in comparison of God and Glory you have cause to Rejoyce and be exceeding glad though you live under sufferings for thus it hath been with the true Believers that have gone before you SECT XXVI I Come now to the second Branch of the Observation which is that When Believers Glory in their own Mortification it must be as it is the fruit of the Cross of Christ that so all their Glorying may be principally and ultimately in Christ and not in themselves They must take heed of ascribing the honour to themselves or of resting in themselves but all their observation of the graces that are in them must be in pure respect to him that is the fountain and the end that we may thankfully acknowledge our receivings and admire the eternall Love which did bestow them and the compassions and merits of our Crucified Redeemer and the powerfull operations of his Spirit in our souls and so may be carried out to Love and Duty in the sense of our receivings and may live to the praises of him that hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light And that you may see how great reason there is for this and so may be kept from glorying in your selves I shall open the cause to you as it lyeth both on Christs part and on ours What he is to us and what we are to our selves Consider 1. It was Christ and not we that wrought our deliverance by the wonderfull work of our Redemption Long enough might we have layen in prison before we could have paid the utmost farthing and long might we have born the wrath which we deserved before we could have done any thing to merit or any way procure our deliverance Had we wept out our eyes and prayed our hearts out and never committed sin again this would not have made satisfaction to God for the sin that was past Long enough might we have lain in our blood if this compassionate Redeemer had not taken us up and undertaken the cure Had he turned us off to any creature we had been left helpless Had we looked on the right hand for some to deliver us or on the left we should have found none Besides him there is no Saviour Isaiah 43. 11. Acts 4. 12. And moreover the way he hath
to give up your selves to pleasures and recreations and you think that you may do with your own as you list as if it had been given you to gratifie the flesh The words that converted Austin never suâ—k yet into your hearts Rom. 13. 13 14. Let us walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambering and wantonness not in strife and envying but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof You never felt the meaning of those words Rom. 8. 13. If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if by the Spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live But to turn my Complaint into an Admonition I beseech you consider what you are and what you do 1. How unlike are you to Iesus Christ your pattern that denyed himself all the Honours and Riches and Carnal delights of the world Read over his Life and Read your own and judge whether any man on earth be more unlike to Christ then a voluptuous worldly Gentleman Especially if Malignity be added to his sensuality 2. How unlike are you to the holy Laws of Christ. Are his precepts of Mortification and Self-denyal imprinted in your hearts and predominant in your lives Is a beast any more unlike a man then your hearts and lives are unlike Christs Laws 3. How unlike are you to the Antient Christians that forsook all and followed Christ and lived in a Community of Charity And how unlike to every gracious soul that is dead to the world and hath mortified his members upon earth and hath his conversation in another world Are you not such as Paul wept over Phil. 3. 18. Whose God is their belly who glory in their shame and who mind earthly things and that are enemies to the Cross of Christ. though perhaps you are no enemies to his Name Believe it Gentlemen whatever your thoughts of your selves may be you will find that no Religion will save you that stoopeth to the world and is but an underling to your fleshly interest 4. How unlike are you to your Profession and your Covenant with God and to your Confessions and Prayers to him Did you not renounce the flesh the world and the Devil in your Baptism Do you not still Profess that heaven is best and God is to be preferred and yet will you not do it but let your own Professions condemn you Do you not ordinarily confess that the world is vain and yet will you shew your selves such Dissemblers as to love and seek it more then God As if there were no more Power in the Spirit of Christianity then in the Opinion of Zeno the Philosopher who having oft said that Poverty and Riches were neitheâ— good nor bad but things indifferent was yet dismaye when he heard that his farms were seized on by the enemies the Prince having sent one with the report to try him telling him when he had done that Now Riches and Poverty were not things indifferent How oft have you prayed to be saved from Temptation and yet will you still date upon your snares and fetters and shew your selves such hypocrites as to love the temptations which you pray against 5. You are guilty of a double injury to God in that you are obliged to him as his Created subjects and yet more obliged by your Riches and Honours which he hath given you for your Masters use To whom men give much from them will they expect the more Luke 12. 48. For a servant that hath double wages to abuse you for a friend that hath received double kindness to prove false to you for a Commander in the Army to betray his General is sure an aggravation of the crime Must God advance you highest and will you thrust him lowest in your heart Must he feed you with the best and cloath you with the best and will you put him off with the worst Have you ten times or an hundred times more wealth from him then many an honest heavenly Believer and yet will you Love and Serve him less 6. Is it not pitty and shame that you should thus turn Mercies themselves into sin and draw your bane from that which might have been a blessing Will you be the worse because God is so good to you Must he give you health and time for his service and give you such plentiful provision and assistance and will you be worse in health then others are in sickness and worse in Plenty then others are in want Is not this the way to dry up the streams of Mercy when the more you have the worse you are 7. You exceedingly wrong the Church and Common-wealth For it is for the publick good that you are advanced and you should be a blessing to the Land And will you cast away that time and wealth upon the flesh which you have received for such noble ends Rob not the Church and Common wealth of what you owe it by engrossing it to your selves or consuming it on your lusts 8. Great men have a great account to make You shall shortly hear Give account of thy Steward-ship for thou shalt be no longer Stewarâ— If God have entrusted you you with a thousand pound a year it is not the same reckoning that must serve your turn as would serve his turn that had but an hundred Your improvement must be somewhat answerable to your receivings Do you need to be told how sad a reckoning it will then be to say Lord I imployed most of it in maintaining the Pomp and Pleasure of my self and family even that Pomp of the world and those sinful lusts of the flesh which in my Baptism I forswore and the rest I left to my children to maintain them in the same pomp and pleasure except a few scraps of my Revenews which I gave to the Church or poor 9. Your wealth and greatness do afford you great opportunities to do good and to further the salvation of your selves and others and worldliness and sensuality will rob you of these opportunities O how many good works might you have done to the honour of your Lord and the benefit of others and your selves if you had made the best of your Interest and Estates The loss of the Reward will shortly appear to you a greater loss then that which you now account the loss of your estates 10. Your worldliness and sensuality is a sin against your own experience and the experience of all the world You have long tryed the world and what hath it done for you that you should so over-value it You know that it is the common vote of all that ever tryed it sooner or later that it is vanity and vexation And have you not the wit or grace to learn from so plain a teacher as Experience yea your own experience yea and all the worlds experience 11. You sin also against your very Reason it self and against your certain knowledge You
can have all the world but he may have a mind that can contemn all the world No man can have all that he will but he may be content to be without it The disease is within you and there must be the Cure Direct 2. Be sure to fix with a serious faith upon the Inivsible glory as your portion and then look at all things in this world as good or bad as they respect your end and judge of them as they help or hinder you in the main Nothing but a truly heavenly mind is the saving cure of an earthly mind No man will rightly let go earth till he have the powerful Light that hath shewed him the greater good and given him a taste of the world to come Had you not been strangers to God and heaven in heart whatever you were in tongue and fancy you could never have so fallen in love with earth None are so much disposed to travail into other Countries as they that are fallen out with their own Remember that you have not one penny or pennies worth in the world but what you had from God and must be accountable to God for and must employ with an eye upon his will and your salvation I do not call you to cast away your Riches but to see that you use all that ever you have as will be most comfortable to you in your last review I know as Seneca saith He is a wise man that can make use of earthen vessels as if they were all silver and he is wise too that can make use of silver vessels as if they were but earth Infirmi est animi pati non posse divitias but it s one thing to Bear Riches and Use them for God and another thing to Enjoy them with delight I neither take the Monasticks to be the only or the highest in perfection nor yet do I condemn necessitated retirements For I know it is hard to most to converse with God in tumults and to hear the still voice of his Spirit in the murmuring noise of a crowd I know that the commons are usually more barren and fruitless then inclosures and that the fruit-tree that groweth by the high-way side shall have many a stone and cudgel thrown at it which those that are in your Orchard scape But still look to your end and secure the main Dream not that you have any full Propriety Remember that you are Gods Stewards Set therefore your Masters name and not your own upon every penny-worth you possess Let Holiness to the Lord be written upon all Possess nothing but what is Devoted to him to be used as he would have you Put him not off with scraps and leavings that gave you all So much as you save from him you lose and worse then lose and so much as you lose for him and surrender to him and improve for him you save and more then save For Godliness with content is great gain And he that is faithful in a little shall be made ruler over much It s thus that all things are sanctified with the Saints Direct 3. Think not that your Riches are given you to fulfill the least inordinate desire of the flesh Or that you may take ever the more sensual ease or pleasure if you had all the world But remember that better wages obligeth you to more work And therefore rise as early and labour as hard in your own employment the more for the common good the better yea and deny your flesh a◠much as if you had but food and rayment If you have much give the more and use the more but enjoy never the more and let not your sensual desires find ever the more provision A rich man that is wise and a faithful Steward may live in as much self-denyal and labour as hard and humble his flesh as much as he hat hath but his daily bread God sent you not in provision for his enemy All that is made the food of sin or that doth not help you up to God is employed contrary to the end that you received it for Direct 4. Be sure that you deal with the world as a Deceiver Be very suspicious of all your Riches and Honours and Delights Feed not on these luscious summer-fruits too boldly or without fear Remember how many millions the world hath deceived before you None come to Hell but those that are cheated thither by the flesh and the world With what exceeding vigilancy then have you need to deal with such a dangerous deceiver when all your happiness and all your hopes is at the stake and if you be deceived you are undone Its force is nothing so perillous as its fraud Ubi vincere aperte Non datur insidias armaque recta parat They that have to do with such a cheater in a case of such everlasting consequence should be suspicious of every thing and trust the world as little as is possible when Qui cavet ne decipiatur vix cavet cum etiam cavet Et cum cavisse ratus est saepè is cautor captus est ut Plaut As Bucholcer was went to say when his friends extolled him terreri se etiam laudationibus illis ut fulminibus So should you possess your Honours and Riches in the world And as the same Bucholcer said to Hubner when he went to be a Courtier Fidem diabolorum tibi commendo credere contremiscere viz. promissionibus aulicis credere sed cautè sed timidè So should you be affected to the world Trust and tremble or rather Trust it not all Nay have you not been deceived by it already And will you be more foolish then the silly fish that will scarcely take the hook that he was once pricked by or then the silly fowls that will be afraid of the net that once they have escaped from and of the Kite that once hath had them in her claws Tranquillas etiam naufragus horret aquas Nay at the present if you take any heed of your souls you may easily perceive what a clog the world is We are commonly better when we have least of it or are leaving it then when we have it at our will A man may see the utmost visible part of the earth and the Horizon at once but if he look on the earth that is near him he cannot see the heavens at that time much less the Zenith Our Own Riches our Present Riches our Nearest and Dearest temporal good is the greatest averter of the mind from heaven We are commonly like Antigonus sick souldier that fought well because he lookt to die but grew a Coward as soon as he was cured So that most of us have need of the counsel which the Bishop of Colen gave the Emperour Sigismund that askt him What he should do to be happy Live saith he as you promised to do when you were last sick of the stone and gowt Even the most notorious sinners seem Saints when they see the world is
he was very Rich. And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful he said How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God Luke 18. 21 22 23 24. Read and consider Luke 12. 15. to 49. And Luke 16. 19 to the end Luke 14. 33 26 27 28. So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be my Disciple Eph. 2. 10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to Good Works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them Jam. 2. 14. What profiteth it my brethren if a man say he hath faith and have not works Can faith save him Tit. 2. 14 Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and sanctifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of Good Works 1 Tim. 6 17 18 19. Charge them that are Rich in this world that they be not high minded nor trust in uncertainty of Riches but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy that they do Good that they be rich in Good Works ready to distribute willing to communicate Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life Heb. 13. 16. But to do Good and to Communicate forget not for with such sacrifice God is well pleased Luke 16. 9 13. I say unto you Make you friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon who will commit to your trust the true Riches ye cannot serve God and Mammon Psal. 41. 1 2 c. Blessed is he that considereth the poor the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble c. Read Deut. 15. 7 8 9 c. 2 Cor. 9. 8 9 c. Dan. 4. 27. Lev. 23. 22. Prov. 22. 9. Prov. 28. 27. He that giveth to the poor shall not lack but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse Read Isa. 58. throughout Jam. 1. 27. Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted of the world Jam. 5. 1 2 3 5. Go to now ye Rich men weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you your Riches are corrupted and your Garments moath-eaten your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire Ye have heaped treasure together for the last daies Ye have lived in pleasure on earth and been wanton you have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter 1 Joh. 3. 16 17 18. We ought to lay down our lives for the Brethren but whoso hath this worlds good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels from him how dwelleth the Love of God in him My little children let us not love in word nor in tongue but in deed and in truth Gal. 6. 6 7 9 10. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all his goods or good things Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap Let us not be weâ—…y in well-doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not As we have therefore Opportunity let us do Good unto all men especially to them who are of the houshold of faith Eph. 4. 28. Let him Labour working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth Mat. 10. 41 42. He that Receiveth a Prophet in the name of a Prophet shall receive a Prophets reward and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous mans reward And whoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a Disciple verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward Read 1 Cor. 9. 4 5. to 16. Mat. 25. 40 45. Verily I say unto you in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of those my Brethren ye have done it unto me Verily I say unto you in as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these ye did it not to me Mat. 6. 3 4. But when thou dost alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth That thy alms may be in secret And thy father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly But this I say Brethren the time is short it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. THE CONTENTS THe Text opened Doctrines deduced and Method propounded pag. 1. to 5 What is not this Crucifying of the world by way of Caution to avoid extreams Sect. 2. p. 5 In what respects the world must be Crucified to us 1. As the creature would be mans felicity or any part of it Sect. 3. p. 10 2. As it is set in competition with God or in the least degree of co-ordination with him p. 11. 3. As it standeth at enmity to God and his waies 4. As it is the matter of our flesh pleasing and fuel of conscupiscence 5. As an Independant or separated good without its due Relations to God p. 14. 15 Eph. 2. 12. Psal. 39. 6. 73. 20. considered p. 18 19 The different successes of sanctified and unsanctified studies and knowledge p. 17 21 The creatures Aptitude to tempt us is inseparable p. 22 Wherein the world's Crucifixion consisteth as to our acts We must use the world as it 〈◊〉 Christ Sect. 4. p. 24 More particularly 1. To esteem the world as an enemy to God and us Sect. 5. p. 31 How this enmity may be apprehended p. 32 2. A deep habituate apprehension of its worthlesness and insufficiency p. 33 3. A kind of Annihilation of it to our selves p. 35 How we must be Crucified to it The difference between this and Natural Death Sect. 6. p. 36 1. Our undue Estimation of the world must be Crucified p. 37 2. And our inordinate cogitations 3. And affections p. 39 1. Our Love 2. Desire 3. Expectations 4. Our Delight p. 43. So in the Irascible 1. Displacency and hatred c. p. 43 4. Our inordinate Seeking and Labour p. 47 Divers Objections and Questions answered Sect. 7. p. 48 How the Cross of Christ doth Crucifie the world And 1. How it is done by the Cross as suffered by Christ Sect. 8. p. 50 2. How by the same Cross believed in and considered p. 54 3. How by the Cross which we suffer in Obedience and Conformity to Christ p. 57 The point proved by experience Sect. 9.
the lice or worms from eating him alive God useth to pour contempt upon Princes when they will not know and submit to the everlasting King He taketh himself as engaged to break down all that would usurp his honour and tumble down the Idols of the world therefore hath he alway so abhorred the two grand abominations Pride and Idolatry above other sins For he will not give his glory to another He will not with patience hear it spoken of an Idol These are thy Gods O Israel that brought thee out of Egypt The first Commandment is not meerly a precept for some particular act of obedience as are the rest but it is the fundamentall Law of God establishing the very Relations of Soveraign and Subject And as this is the first and great command and that which virtually containeth all Thou shalt have no other Gods before me or Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart So he that breaketh this is guilty of all When the Parent of the world would needs become as God he made himself the slave of the Devil You see then I hope sufficient reason why the world must be abhorred and crucified when it is made an Idol and would become our God and why this Crucifixion of it is of absolute indispensable necessity to salvation If it had kept its place and distance and would have been only a stream from the infinite power and wisdom and goodness and a Messenger to bring us the report of his excellencies and a book in which we might read his name and a glass in which we might see his face then might we have esteemed and magnified it But when the Devil and the flesh will make it their bait to draw away our hearts from God and to steal that love desire and care which is due to him and begin to tell us of Rest or Satisfaction or Felicity here its time to cry out Crucifie it crucifie it When it would insinuate it self into our bosom and get next our hearts and have our most delightfull and frequent thoughts and become so dear to us that we cannot be without it when it is the very thing that our minds are bent upon and that lifts us up when we have it and casts us down when we want it and thus disposeth of our affections and endeavours its time to lay such an Idol in the dust and to cast out such a Traytor with the greatest detestation As we our selves shall be exalted if we humble our selves and brought low if we exalt our selves so must we cast down the world when it would exalt it self in our esteem and the right exaltation of it is by the lowest subjecting of it unto God For whoever hath to deal with Infinite Power must think of no other way of exaltation 3. The world must be abhorred and crucified by us as it standeth at enmity to God and his holy waies It is become through mans corruption the great seducer and an impediment to our entertainment of heavenly Doctrine and a means of keeping the soul from God Yea it is become the Interest of the flesh and is set in fullest opposition to our spiritual Interest In what degree soever the world would turn your hearts from God or stop your ears against his word or take you off from the duty which he prescribeth you in that measure must you seek to crucifie it to your selves If Father or Mother would draw us away from Christ though as parents they must be honoured still yet as enemies to Christ they must be contemned When your honours would hinder you from honouring God and your credit doth contend against your conscience and your worldly business contradicteth your heavenly business and your gain is pleaded against your obedience it is time then to use the world as an enemy and to vilifie those honours and businesses and commodities A tender conscience that is acquainted with a course of universall obedience will take notice when these worldly interpositions and a vocations would interrupt his course and a soul acquainted with an holy dependance upon God and Communion can feel when these enticing and deluding things would interrupt his Communion and turn his eye from the face of God and therefore he can feel by the advantage of his holy experience when the world becomes his enemy and calleth him to the conflict 4. The world is to be crucified as it is the matter of our flesh-pleasing or the food of our carnal affections and the fuel of our concupiscence The grand Idol that is exalted against the Lord is Carnal Self This is the God of all the unregenerate This hath their hearts their care their labours The pleasing of this flesh is the end of the unsanctified and therefore the summary capital sin which virtually containeth all the rest Even as the Pleasing of God is the End of every Saint and therefore the summary capital duty which virtually containeth all other duties The world is an Idol subservient to the flesh as being the matter of its delight and the means by which its End is attained as in the contrary state the Mediator is subservient to the Father as being the matter of his delight in whom he is well-pleased and the means by whom he obtaineth his Ends in making his people also well-pleasing in his eyes The Devil also is an Idol of the ungodly but that is in a suberviency to the world and to the flesh as by the bait of worldly things he pleaseth the flesh as in the contrary state the Holy Ghost is in office subordinate to the Son and to the Father in that he bringeth us to Christ by whom we must have access to the Father In the Carnal Trinity then you may see that as the flesh is the Principall and Ultimate End and hath the first place so the world is the nearest means to that End and hath the second place and as there is no coming to the Father or Pleasing him but by the Son so is there no way of Pleasing the flesh but by the world So that by this you may perceive in what relation we stand to the sensual seducing world and on what grounds and how far it is necessary that we crucifie it The fixed determination of our Soveraign is that if we live after the flesh we shall die but if by the Spirit we mortifie the deeds of the body we shall live Rom. 8. 13. To live after the flesh is by loving the world and enjoying it as our felicity and to mortifie the deeds of it by the Spirit is by withdrawing this fuel and food that doth maintain them and by crucifying and killing the world as to such ends Our work is to put on the Lord Iesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Rom. 13. 14. It is the world that is this provision for the fulfilling of our fleshly lusts So far therefore as the flesh must be mortified the
it executed its deceits We must give it the Gall and Vinegar of penitent tears and threatned judgements The vvorld thus despised and rejected Christ making him a man of sorrows and acquainted with our griefs they hid their faces and esteemed him not Isa. 53. 3. He had no form or comeliness in their eyes and when they saw-him there was no beauty that they should desire him Vers. 2. So must we despise and reject the world and hide our faces from it and not esteem it disdaining even to look upon its pomp and vanity and to observe its gawdy alluring dress or once to regard its enticing charms We must think it all into a loathsom vanity till there appear to us no form or comeliness in it nor any beauty for which we should desire it and wonder what they can see in it that so far dote upon it as to part with Christ and salvation to enjoy it The world did even triumph over a crucified Christ and shake their heads at him and say He saved others but himself he cannot save And we must triumph through Christ over the crucified world and say This is it that promised such great matters to its deceived followers that men esteemed before God and glory and now as it cannot save them from the dust or the wrath of God so neither can it save it self from this contempt that Christ doth cast upon it Cast down this Idol out of your hearts and say If he be a God let him help himself Lastly the world when they had crucified Christ did bury him and rowl a stone on his Sepulcbre and seal it up and watch it with souldiers to secure him from rising again if they could And we must even bury the crucified world and be buried to the world and lay upon it those weighty considerations and resolutions and seal thereto with Sacramentall obligations and follow all this with persevering watchfulness that may never permit it to revive and rise again And thus must we learn from the Cross of Christ how the world is to be crucified as it used Christ we must use it For it is the whole course of Christs humiliation that is meant here by his Cross the rest being denominated from the most eminent part and therefore from the whole must we fetch our pattern and instructions by the direction of the Allegory in my Text. SECT V. BUT it will not be unprofitable if we more particularly and orderly acquaint you with those Acts which the crucifying of the world to our selves doth comprehend over-passing those by which Christ did it for us on the Cross till anon in the due place 1. The first act is To esteem the world as an enemy to God and us and so as a Malefactor that deserveth to be crucified And this must not be only by a speculative-conception but by a true confirmed practical judgement which will set all the powers of the soul on work It is the want of this that makes the world to Live and Reign in the hearts of so many yea even of thousands that think they have mortified it A speculative Book-knowledge that will only make a man talk is taken instead of a practical knowledge Almost every man will say The world is a great enemy to God and us but did they soundly and heartily esteem it to be such they would use it as such Never tell me that that man takes the world for his deadly enemy who useth it as his dearest friend Enmity and deadly enmity will be seen Here is no room to plead the command of loving our enemies at least no man can think that he must love it with a Love of friendship and therefore with no love but what is consistent with the hatred of a deadly enemy This serious deep apprehension of Enmity is the very spring and poise of all our opposition We cannot heartily fight with our friend or seek his death There must be some anger and falling out before we will make the first assault and a settled enmity before we will make a deadly war of it This apprehension of enmity consisteth in an apprehension of the hurtfulness of the world to us and of the opposition it maketh against God and our salvation and of the danger that we are in continually by reason of this opposition So far as men conceive of the world as Good for them so far they take it for their friend and love it For no man can choose but love that which he seriously conceiveth to be Good for him This complacency is clean contrary to the Christian hostility But when we conceive of it as that which we stand in continual danger of being everlastingly undone by this will turn our hearts against it It undoes men that they have not these apprehensions of the world and that deeply fixed and habituated in their minds For it is the Apprehension or Iudgement of things that carryeth about the whole man and setteth awork all the other faculties Quest. But what should we do to be so habitually apprehensive that the world is our enemy Answ. 1. You must be sure that you lay up your treasure in heaven That you are so convinced by Faith of the Glory to come and of the true felicity that consisteth in the fruition of God as that you take it for your Portion and make it your very End And when once you have laid up your Hopes in heaven and see that there or no where you must be happy this will presently teach you to judge of all things else as they either help or hinder the attainment of that end For it is the Nature of the End to put a due estimate upon all things else And it is the property of the chief Good to denominate all other things either Good or Evil and that in a greater or lesser measure according as they respect that chiefest Good For there can be no Goodness in any thing else but the Goodness of a Means And the means is so far Good as it is apt and useful for the attainment of the End If once therefore you unfeignedly take God and Glory for your end and felicity you will presently fall upon enquiry and observation what it is that the world will do to help or hâ—nder that felicity 2. And then you need but one thing more to the discovery of the Enmity and that is the Constant experience of your souls A real living Christian doth live for God and is upon the motion to his eternal home There is his heart and that way his affections daily work When he findeth his soul down he windeth it up again and straineth the spring of faith and love And therefore his life and business being for heaven he cannot but be sensible of the rubs that are in his way and take notice of those things that would stop him in this course Whereupon he must needs find by constant experience that the world is that great Impediment and so must
Isa. 42. 8. 48. 11. All sin is hateful to God and none but the cleansed perfect soul shall stand before him in the presence of his glory nor any in whom iniquity hath dominion shall stand accepted in the presence of his Grace But yet no particular sin is so hatefull to him as Idolatry is For this is not only a trespassing against his Laws but a disclaiming or rejecting his very Soveraignty it self To give a Prince unreverent language and to break his Laws is punishable but to pull him out of his throne and set up a scullion in it and give him the honour and obedience of a King this is another kind of matter and much more intollerable The first Commandment is not like the rest which require only obedience to particular Laws in a particular action but it establisheth the very Relations of Soveraign and Subject and requires a constant acknowledgment of these relations and makes it high Treason against the God of heaven in any that shall violate that command Every Crime is not Treason It s one thing to miscarry in a particular case and another thing to have other Gods before and besides the Lord the only God Now this is the sin of every worldling He hath taken down God from the throne in his own soul and set up the flesh and the world in his stead These he valueth and magnifieth and delighteth in These have his very heart while God that made it and redeemed him is set light by And do you think that this is a sin to be endured It is a more horrid thing to wish that God were not God then to wish that Heaven and Earth were destroyed or turned again to Nothing He that would kill a man deserveth death What then deserveth he that would destroy all the world that would pull the Sun out of the firmament or set all the world on fire if it were in his power Yet is not all this so bad as to wish that God should lose his God-head And what less doth that man do that would have his prerogative given to the creature and so would have the creature to be God If God be not the chief Good he is not God And if he be not chiefly to be esteemed and loved he is not the chief Good What then doth that man do but deny God to be God that denyeth him his highest esteem and love And certainly he that giveth it to any creature denyeth it to God For there can be but one Chief and but one God They take him down therefore as much as in them lyeth that set up another So also if God be not the Soveraign Ruler of all he is not God And there can be but one Soveraign What less then do they do that deny him his soveraignty then deny him to be God And he that maketh the flesh or world his soveraign denyeth God to be his soveraign because there can be but one especially seeing also that their commands are contrary I beseech you therefore Sirs be not so unwise as to think that this Mortification or Crucifying of the world is only the perfection or higher pitch of some Believers and not the common state of all Do not imagine that your selves or any other can be true Christians without it You may as well think that that man should be saved that is a flat Atheist and denyeth God and renounceth him as that a worldling should be saved And he that is not dead to the world is a worldling If any one piece of Reformation be essential to a true Christian it is this It is as possible for a Turk or an Insidel to be saved as one that is not dead to the world Yea the case of these is more desperate if more can be for they have not the like means of information ordinarily as our worldly Professors have what can any Persecutor or Idolater do more then set against God and set up his enemies And so doth every worldling while he denyeth God his esteem and chiefest Love and giveth it to the pleasures and profits of this life I beseech you be not so weak as to dream that God is nothing but a bare name or title or that you deny not God if you refuse not to call him God or that none are Atheists that speak God fair and give him all his titles Or that none are impious that give him good words It is the thing and not the bare words the description of God such as we are capable of and not bare names that we must enquire of If you will call your Prince by all his Royal Titles but will set another in the throne and give him the rule over you and obey him alone which of these is it that you take indeed for your Prince If I be a Father saith God where is mine honour If I be a Master where is my fear Mal. 1. 6. Many profess that they know God that in works deny him being abominable and disobedient Tit. 1. 16. God is not taken indeed for your God if he be not taken for your chief Good and Happiness and have not the chief of your desire and Love and if he be not taken for your absolute Soveraign and have not the subjection and obedience of your souls You may easily see then that it is not meet it is not possible that an unmortified person or a worldling can be saved For if they shall be saved that would have God to be no God then no man should be damned for there cannot be a worser man then these Nay if he be not God how should he save them or how should he make them happy if he be not their chiefest Good If God should cease to be God the world and all things would cease to be For if the first cause cease the effects must all cease And if the ultimate end cease the means and all use of means must cease And as the cessation of God as the first efficient would destroy all Natural Being so the cessation of God as the ultimate end would destroy all Moral Good whatsoever Other sins destroy some part or branch of Moral Good but the sin of Idolatry the violation of the first Commandment the taking to our selves some other God this doth at once subvert all goodness and destroy the very being of morality it self Sirs I am afraid many yea most among us have not well considered the nature of worldly mindedness or the greatness of the sin of valuing and loving the Creature before God If they did it would not be a sin of so good repute among us but would have contracted more odium before this time then it hath done There are many sins far smaller then this that men are shamed for and that men are hanged for But we must not judge by outward appearances nor make the judgement of the sinner himself to be the rule by which to discern the greatness or smalness of the sin A
as Lovely that is as Good For it is impossible that there should be an act without its proper object Nothing but appearing Good is Loved If a lost condemned sinner have no hope given him of Gods Reconciliation or his willingness to receive him to mercy it is ex parte objecti an impossible thing that the mind of that sinner should be reconciled to God And therefore the Gospel publisheth Gods Reconcilation to sinners viz. his universal Conditional Reconciliation before it beseech them to be reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5. 19 20. And before they believe we cannot give any one man the least assurance that God is any more reconciled to him then to others that are unconverted or that he is any willinger to Receive him then others This therefore is the great observable means whereby Christ by his Gospel recovereth the Heart of a sinner unto God even by turning the frowning countenance of God by which he deterred the guilty into a more Lovely face as being Reconcilable and Conditionally Reconciled to the world through Christ and so become to all the sinful sons of Adam a fit object to attract their Love and draw off their hearts from the deceiving world to which they were revolted and as being actually reconciled to all true Believers and thereby become a yet more powerful attractive of their Love 7. It doth also more fully reveal the face of God the object of our Love and the transcendent Glory that in him we shall enjoy 8. And it disgraceth the creatures which have diverted our Affections that we may be taken off our false estimation of them 9. It earnestly perswadeth and solliciteth us to obey and calls on us to turn from the world to God 10. It backeth these perswasions with terrible threatnings if we do not forsake the creature and return 11. It prescribeth to us the standing Ordinances and Means by which this work may be further carryed on 12. And lastly it directeth us to the right use of the creatures instead of that carnal enjoying of them that would undo us By all these means which time doth permit me but briefly to mention the Gospel of Christ doth tend to Crucifie the world to us and to recover our hearts to the Chiefest Good And besides all this which the Cross and the Doctrine of Christ do to this End that you may yet fullyer perceive how much it is the End of Christs very office and the execution thereof let me add these two things 1. That it is the End of Christs providential dispensations 2. And the work which he sendeth the Holy Ghost to perform upon the souls of his Elect. 1. As the Mercies of God are purposely given us to lead up our hearts to him that gave them So when we carnally abuse them and adhere unto the creature it is the special use of Affliction to take us off If the rod have a voice it speaks this as plain as any thing whatsoever and if it reprehend us for any sin it is for our overvaluing and adhering to the creature The wounds that Christ giveth us are not to kill us but to separate us from the world that hath separated us from God 2. And that this is the very office or undertaken work of the Holy Ghost is past all controversie His work is to sanctifie us and that is by taking us off the creature to bring us to be heartily Devoted unto God Sanctification is nothing else but our separation from the creature to God in Resolution Affection Profession and Action So that in what measure soever a man hath the Spirit in that measure is he sanctified and in what measure he is sanctified in that same measure is he crucified to the world For that is the one half of his Sanctification or it is his Sanctification denominated from the terminus à quo as many Texts of Scripture do manifest By this time I hope it is plain to you that Mortification is of the very being of Christianity and not any separable adjunct of it and that if you profess not to be Dead to the world you do not so much as profess your selves Christians SECT XIII 1. AND as you see that the Christian Doctrine teacheth this So 2. It is thence clear without any more ado that wherever the Cross and Doctrine of Christ are effectuall the world is Crucified to that man and he to the world There are some great Duties which a man may possibly be saved though he omit them in some cases but this is none such It is a wonder to see the security of worldlings how easily they bear up a confidence of their sincerity under this sin which is as inconsistent with sincerity as Infidelity it self is ◠If they see a man live in common Drunkenness or Adultry or Swearing they take him for a prophane and miserable wretch and good reason for it When in the mean time they pass no such sentence on themselves who may deserve it as much as the worst of these It is one notable cheat among the Papists that occasions the ruine of many a soul that they make a Religious mortified life to be a work of supererrogation and those that profess it and some of their own inventions with it which turn it into sin they Cloyster up from the rest of the world and these they call Religious people and some few even of these that are either more devout or superstitious then the rest they call Saints So rare a thing is the appearance of Religiousness and Sanctity among them that it must be inclosed in Societies not only separated from the world as the Church is but separated as it were out of the Church it self And yet the common people are kept in hope of salvation in their way By which means they are commonly brought to imagine that it is not absolutely necessary to salvation to be a Religious man or a Saint or one that doth really renounce and crucifie the world but that these things belong to certain Orders of Monks and Fryers and that it is enough for other men to honour these devout and mortified Saints and to crave their Prayers and do some lower and easier things And indeed their vows of Chastity and separation and unprofitableness and other Inventions of their own they may well conceive unnecessary to others being noxious to themselves But they will one day finde that none but Religious men and Saints shall be saved and that every true Member of Christ is dead to the world and not only Monks or Votaries or such like And a Conceit too like to this of the Papists is in the minds of many of our Auditors They think indeed that those are the best men that are resolved contemners of all the Riches and Honours and Pleasures of the world but they think of them as the Papists do of their votaries as People of a higher pitch of Sanctity then the rest but think not that it is essential to
Sanctity and to true Christianity it self They confess they should be all contemners of the world but God forbid say they that none but such should be saved But I tell you God hath forbidden already by his Laws and God will forbid hereafter by his sentence and execution that any other but such should be saved Do you think in good sadness that any man can be saved that is not truly dead to the world and doth not despise it in comparison of God and the great things of Everlasting Life Let me satisfie you of the contrary here once for all and I pray you see that your flesh provoke you not to mutter forth such unreasonable self-delusions any more 1 Ioh. 2. 15. Love not the world neither the things that are in the world If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him what can be spoken more plainly or to a worldly minded man more terribly 1 Ioh. 5. 4. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world and this is the victory that overcometh the world even our Faith Jam. 4. 4. Know ye not that the Friendship of the world is enmity with God Whoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God Will not all this serve to convince you of this truth Rom. 8. 5 6 7 13. For they that are after the flesh do minde the things of the flesh but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit For to be carnally minded is death but to be spirituall â—â—nded is life and peace Because the carnal minde is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live Joh. 3. 6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit Gal. 5. 16 17. 6. 8. Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting Col. 3. 1 2 3. If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God Set your affection on things above and not on things on the earth For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God When Christ who is our life shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in glory Mortifie therefore your members which are upon the earth Matth. 6. 19 20 21 24. Lay not up for your selves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for your selves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal for where your treasure is there will your heart be also No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the ore and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other Ye cannot serve God and Mammon Matth. 10. 38 39. He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me He that findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall finde it Mat. 16. 24. If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me Luk. 14. 26 27. If any man come to me and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brethren and Sisters yea and his own life also he cannot be my disciple And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple Verse 33. Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be my disciple Heb. 11. 13 14 15. and to the end But I will cite no more Here is enough to convince you or condemn you If any thing at all be plain in Scripture this is plain that every true Christian is dead to the world and looks on the world as a crucified thing and that God and the life of glory which he hath promised have the Ruling and chiefest interest in their souls Believe it Sirs this is not a work of supererrogation nor such as only tendeth to the perfecting of a Christian but such as is of the essence of Christianity and without which there is not the least hope of salvation SECT XIV Use 2. BY all that hath been said you may perceive what it is to be a Christian indeed and that true Christianity doth set men at a further distance from the world then carnal self-deceiving Professors do imagine You see that God and the world are enemies not God and the world as his Creature but as his Competitor for your hearts and as the seducer of your understandings and the opposer of his interest and the fuel and food of a fleshly minde and that which would pretend to a Being or Goodness separated from God or to be desirable for it self having laid by the relation of a means to God To be a Friend to the world in any of these respects is to be an enemy to God And God will not save his enemies while enemies An enmity to God is an enmity to our salvation for our salvation is in him alone If then you have but awakened consciences if the true love of your selves be stirring in you and if you have but the free use of common reason I dare say you do by this time perceive that it closely concerneth you presently to look about you and to try whether you are crucified to the world or not Seeing my present business is for the securing of your Everlasting Peace and the healing of your souls of that which would deprive you of it let me intreate you all in the fear of God to give me your assistance and to go along with me in the work for what can a Preacher do for you if you will do nothing for your selves How can we convert or heal or save you without you I do foresee your appearance before the Lord a jealous God that will not endure that any Creature should be sweeter and more amiable to you then himself I do foresee the condemnation that all such must undergo and the remediless certain misery that they are 〈◊〉 know there is no way that the wit of man or Angels can devise to prevent the damnation of such a soul but by Crucifying the flesh and world by the Cross of Christ and dethroning these Idols and submitting sincerely to God their Happiness This cannot be done while you are strangers to your selves and will not look into your own hearts and see what abominable work is there that you may
so used You cannot only part with your substance when God calls for it but even take joyfully the spoiling of your goods as knowing that you have a better and more enduring substance in Heaven Heb. 10. 33 44. You will reckâ—n that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us Rom. 8. 18. In a word you can deny your selves for sake all and follow Christ in expectation of a treasure in Heaven Luk. 18. 22. Never tell me that Heaven is your end if there be any thing which you cannot part with to obtain it For that which is dearest to you is your End Why else is it that labour and sufferings yea and the apparent hazard of their salvation seems not to a worldling too dear a price for the purchasing of their present prosperity but because they have laid up a treasure upon earth and earthly things are their chiefest end 8. Lastly that is your ultimate end which you think in your practical Iudgement you can never Love or Labour for too much I know there is scarce a worldling to be found which will not give it you under his hand as his settled judgement that its God and Glory only that cannot be loved too much and he will confess that he loveth the world too much â—ut yet he doth it while he confesseth it and he denyeth his chiefest Love to God while he acknowledgeth it due to him And therefore it is not his practical effectual judgement that is for it but only he hath an uneffectuall Notion or Opinion of it But it s otherwise with the sanctified Philosophers and Divine 〈◊〉 to say that vertue is in the middle between two extreams But that 's only to be interpreted of the subservient vertues which are exercised about the Means But the chiefest Good and ultimate End is such as cannot be loved too much The measure here is as Austin speaks that it be without measure It is our All that is due to that which we esteem and take for our All. God is our All objectively for fruition and the All of our affections and endeavours should be his With all our heart with all our soul and might is the due measure of our Love to him We can never seek our End too diligently nor buy it too dearly nor do too much for it in Gods way And as the Believer thinks he can never have too much of God nor do too much for him so the lives of worldlings tell us that even while they speak disgracefully of the world they think they can never have too much of it nor would they think they could ever do too much for it were it not that overdoing for one part of their worldly Interest doth deprive them of another part I have now told you how you may discern whether it be God or the world that Liveth in your Hearts and whether you are Dead to God or to the world What remaineth but that you take it home and apply it yet closer then I can do and try what God it is that you adore and what felicity it is that you esteem and intend and consequently what you are and what will become of you if you persevere I beseech you make this your serious work and take some time for it purposely when you come home to do it more effectually then now on the sudden hearing may be expected What say you will you take your selves apart some time and purposely search your hearts to the very quick till you have found whether the world be Crucified to you by the Cross of Christ and the hopes of glory If you did but know the usefulness of the discovery I am confident you would not need so much intreating SECT XVI TRuly Brethren it is one of the mysteries of sâ—n and self-deceit that such a multitude of people yea seemingly Religious can think so well of themselves as they do and bear it out with such audacious confidence as if they were the real servants of Christ when it is apparent even to the eyes of others that they are not Crucified to the world but live to it and serve it day by day How anxiously are they contriving for it while their care to please God is so exceeding slender that it takes up but little of their time and thoughts How sweet are their thoughts of a plentiful estate To have the world at will houses and lands and full provisions for themselves and theirs that they may be cloathed with the best and fare of the best and sit with the highest and be honoured and reverenced of all how fine a life doth this seem to them If they have but a fair opportunity to rise how little tender are they of the lawfulness of the Means at least where they are not so wicked as to dishonour them They can believe that to be the truth which befriendeth their worldly Interest and that to be false and erroneous which is against it The world chooseth many of their opinions for them and much of their Religion and telleth them what party they should side with and what not It telleth them how far they shall tolerate other mens sin and how far not how far they shall make profession of their faith and how far they should conceal it from the knowledge of the world And so as Paul saith they account Gain to be Godliness 1 Tim. 6. 5. not only esteeming it better then down-right Godliness but measuring out their Godliness by their Gain making that to seem Religious which fitteth their carnall ends and easily believing that which is for their worldly interest How weak and silly reasons will perswade them that the point is true the cause is good the means is lawful which serveth their turns for worldly ends And the clearest unquestionable Evidences are nothing to them that are brought for the contrary So potent a perswader is worldy Interest that any thing will serve where it takes part and nothing prevail that it doth contradict A powerful disputant that most commonly hath the best whatever side it takes and the cause goes for it be it right or wrong Either they will not read such long and tedious discourses as are against them or they find some passage presently to quarrel with that 's too displeasing and makes them cast away the rest Or if they read the whole or hear you to the last it is with a resisting spirit all the while Before they know what you will say they have consuted you For they have resolved to believe that your reasons are insufficient and their cause is good They read and hear not only with a prejudice answerable to the reasons that formerly resolved them but with an opposing enmity and fixedness of will Had we only their understandings to dispute with it were the less but our main dispute is with Will and Passion which have no ears nor eyes nor brains though sense enough
according to his Laws Know therefore whom the Law condemneth or justifieth and you may know whom Christ will condemn or justifie And seeing all this is so doth it not concern us all to make a speedy tryal of our selves in preparation to this final tryal I shall for your own sakes therefore take the boldness as the Officer of Christ to summon you to appear before your selves and keep an Assize this day in your own souls and answer at the Barr of Conscience to what shall be charged upon you Fear not the tryal for it is not conclusive final nor a peremptory irreversible sentence that must now pass Yet slight it not for it is a necessary preparative to that which is final and irreversible Consequentially it may prove a justifying Accusation an Absolving Condemnation and if you proceed to Execution a saving quickning death which I am now perswading you to undergo The whole world is divided into two sorts of men One that Love God above all and live to him and the other that Love the flesh and world above all and live to them One that lay up a treasure in earth and have their heart there The other that lay up a treasure in heaven and have their heart there One that seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness another that seek first the things of this life One that mind and savour the things of the flesh and of man the other that mind and savour most the things of the Spirit and of God One that account all things dung and dross that they may win Christ another that make light of Christ in comparison of their business and riches and pleasures in the world One that live by sight and sense upon present things Another that live by faith upon things invisible One that have their conversation in Heaven and live as strangers upon earth Another that mind earthly things and are strangers to heaven One that have in resolution forsaken aâ— for Christ and the hopes of a treasure in heaven Another that resolve to keep somewhat here though they venture and forsake the heavenly reward and will go away sorrowful that they cannot have both One that being born of the flesh is but flesh The other that being born of the Spirit is Spirit One that live as without God in the world The other that live as without the seducing world in God and in and by the subservient world to God One that have Ordinances and Means of Grace as if they had none The other that have houses lands wives as if they had none One that believe as if they believed not and love God as if they loved him not and pray as if they prayed not as if the fruit of these were but a shadow The other that weep as if they wept not for worldly things and rejoyce as if they rejoyced not One that have Christ as not possessing him and use him and his name as but abusing them The other that buy as if they possessed not and use the world as not abusing it One that draw near to God with their lips when their hearts are far from him The other that Corporally converse with the world when their hearts are far from it One that serve God who is a Spirit with Carnall service and not in Spirit and Truth The other that use the world it self spiritually and not in a carnall worldly manner In a word One sort are children of this world and the other are the children of the world to come and heirs of the heavenly Kingdom One sort have their Portion in this life And the other have God for their Portion One sort have their Good things in this life time and their Reward here The other have their Evil things in this life and live in Hope of the Everlasting Reward I suppose you know that all this is from the word of God and therefore I need not cite the Texts which do contain it But lest any doubt I will lay them all together that you may peruse them at leisure Matth. 22. 37. 10. 37. 6. 19 20 21. 6. 33. Iohn 6. 27. Isa. 55. 1 2 3. Rom. 8. 5 6 7 13. Phil. 3. 9 10 11. Mat. 22. 5. 2 Cor. 4. 18. Heb. 11. 1. throughout Phil. 3. 19 20 21. Psalm 119 19. Heb. 11. 13. Luke 14. 33. 18. 22. Iohn 3. 6. Ephis 2. 12. 1 Cor. 10. 31. Psalm 16. 8. Ezek. 33. 31 32. 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. Iohn 2. 23 24. Psalm 78. 35 36 37. Iohn 15. 2. 1. 9 10 11. Mat. 15. 8. Psalm 73. 23 24 25. 1 Thes. 5. 17 18. Phil. 3. 21 Matth. 15. 9. Iohn 4. 22 23. 1 Gor. 10. 31. Luke 10. 8. 20. 34. Rom. 8. 16 17. Psalm 17. 14. 16. 5. 73. 26. Luke 16 25. Mat. 6. 5. 5. 12. Luke 18. 22. In these Texts is plainly contained all that I have here said to you Well then Beloved Hearers seeing you that sit here present are all of one of these two sorts let conscience speak which is it that you are of These are the two sorts that shall stand on the right and left hand of Christ in Judgement They that gave Christ his own with advantage and lived to him and studiously devoted their Riches and other Talents to his use as men that unfeignedly made God their End these are they that are set on the right hand and adjudged as Blessed to the Kingdom which they so esteemed And those that hid their talents by keeping or expending them to their private use denying them to Christ and living to themselves these are they that are set on the left hand and adjudged to the everlasting fire with the Devils whom they served It is a desperate mistake of self-deceiving men to think that a state of Holiness consisteth only in external worship or that a state of wickedness consisteth only in some gross sins I tell you from the word of God the difference is greater and lyeth deeper then so If you would know whether you are Christians indeed and shall be saved the first and great question is What is your End What take you for your portion And what is it that hath the prevalent stream of your desires and endeavours As it is not every step that we set out of the way to heaven that will prove us ungodly so is it not any Religiousness whatsoever that standeth in a subserviency to the world that will prove you godly Would you know then what you are And whether you are in the way to Heaven or Hell And what God will judge of you if you so continue Why then deal faithfully with your selves and answer this question without deceit What is it that hath your Hearts your very Hearts What is it that is the matter of your dearest Love And what the matter of your chiefest care What is it that is the very bent and scope of your life Is it for this world or
unthankful to your own Parents disobedient to your superiours unfaithful to your equals and unmerciful to your inferiours There is no trusting a worldling he will sell his friend for money He careth not to wrong you in your life your chastity estate and name for his lustful ambitious and covetous desires For he directly breaketh the tenth Commandment which is the sum of the second Table requiring us to regard the welfare of our neighbour and not to maintain a private selfish interest against it So true is that of Paul 1 Tim. 6. 10. The love of money is the root of all evil As adhering to God is the sum of all Duty and Spiritual Goodness so adhering to the creature instead of God is the sum of all wickedness and disobedience And seeing all this is so I require you here in the name of God to cast out this wickedness and cherish it no longer Bring forth that Traytor that hath dethroned God in your hearts and exalted it self and let it die the death It subverteth Common-wealths and all societies it causeth perjury perfidiousness and sedition it raiseth wars and sets the world together by the ears it overturneth all right order and strikes at the heart of Morality it self and would make every man a Woolf or Tyger to his brother It is a murderer of your own souls and the cause of cruelty both to the souls and bodies of others It is a lyar that promiseth what it cannot perform It is a cheater that would deceive you of your everlasting happiness and tice you into Hell by pretences of furthering your profitâ— and contents It causeth parents to neglect the souls of their children and children to wish the death of their parents or be weary of them or disregard them and causeth Law-suits and contentions between brother and brother and neighbour and neighbour and fills the heart with rancor and malice and turneth families and Kingdoms into confusion it maketh people hate their Teachers and too many Ministers to neglect their flocks It adulterously seeketh to vitiate the spouse of Christ and take up the heart which was reserved for himself It robbeth him of his honour of our affections and obedience and Sacrilegiously defaceth the Temple of the Holy Ghost It will not allow God one free thought nor full affection of your heart nor one hour entirely improved for his honour This is the World and thus is it used by sensual men Judge now whether it deserve not to die the death and to be cast out of your souls and wherher we have not reason to say Crucifie it Crucifie it Ask me no more What evil it hath done You see it is such an enemy to the God of heaven that if you cherish it and let it live in your hearts you are not friends to Christ or your salvation Away with it then without any more ado and use it as the world did use your Lord and as it nailed him on the Cross so go to his Cross for a nail to fasten it and for strength to Crucifie it that you may be victors and super-victors through him that loved you and overcame the world for you Choose not to be slaves when you may be free-men and triumphers Take warning by all that have gone before you serve not a Master that casteth off all his servants in distress and leaveth them all in fruitless complaints of its unprofitablness Think not to speed well where never man sped well before you nor to find content where none have found it If all the worlds followers complain of it at the parting take warning by them and foresee the end Find out one man that ever was made happy by the world in a true and durable happiness before you venture your own hopes and happiness in such hands Put not your selves and all that you have in such a leaking vessel that never yet brought man safe to shore Will neither the experience of your own lives nor the experience of all the world before you delivered in the history of so many thousand years be a sufficient warning to you to avoid the snare What will you take then for a sufficient warning Were not reason captivated one would think that a walk into the Church-yard might satisfie you The sight of a grave or of a dead body should kill and disgrace the world in your eyes Do you see where you must lie and what that flesh which you so regard must be turned to and what is the most that can be expected from the world and in how poor and despicable a case it will then leave you and yet will you doat upon it and neglect and lose the life everlasting for it Will you be wilfully seduced by the vain-glory and oftentation of blinded worldlings when you are certain before-hand that they will not be long of the mind themselves that now they are Name me one man if you can that rejoyceth in his worldly prosperity now and speaketh well of it who rejoyced in it and spoke well of it two hundred years ago It s a child indeed that would have an house builded by every fine flower that he seeth in his way and forgetteth his home his friends and his inheritance When its two to one but the flower will be withered before his house be finished and the pleasure will not answer the trouble and cost Indeed if the world were a better place then that which we are going to I could not then blame any to desire to keep it as long as they can And yet if it were so the certainty of our removall should make us less regard it and look more to the place where we must evermore remain Much more when our home doth exceed this world in worth as much as in continuance It s folly enough to set a mans heart upon the fairest Inn that is in his way but to prefer a swine-stye before a Pallace where his Father dwells and his inheritance doth lie is somewhat worse then meer folly and its meet that such be used according to their choice It s meet indeed that we be patient in our Wilderness and murmure not at God for the sufferings that it casteth us upon But to love it better then the promised Land and to think or speak hardly of our happiness it self and those that would lead us to it this is unreasonable The Israelites were never so foolish as to build Cities in the Wilderness as desiring to make it their fixed habitations but contented themselves with moveable tents What a curse were it if God should put you off with earth and give you no other treasure and felicity but what it can afford You might well then look on your Inheritance as Hiram did on his twenty Cities in Galilee 1 King 9. 11 12. and disliking it call it the Land of Cabul It is the description of miserable wicked men to have their portion in this life Psalm 17. 14. Suppose you had the most that you
must plainly tell you that the case of multitudes not only of the sottish vulgar but of persons of Honour and Worshipful Gentlemen is so palpably miserable in the eyes of impartial discerning men that we are obliged to lament it We hear you speak as contemptibly of the world in an affected discourse as any others but we see you follow it with unwearied eagerness You dote upon it You contrive and project how you may enjoy it You think you have got some great matter when you have obtained it A filthy stir you make in the world some of you to the disquiet of all about you that you may be richer or greater then you are It takes up your heart your time your strength and visibly it is the very work you live for and the great game that you play and the main trade that you drive on and all your Religious affairs come in but on the by and God is put off with the leavings of the world And if you are low in the world or miss of your desires and suffer in the flesh you whine and repine as if you had lost your God and your Treasure If you will deceive your selves by denying tâ—is that bettereth not your case Neither God nor any wise man that seeth your worldly lives and how much you set by worldly things and how little Good you do with your wealth and how much the flesh and your posterity have as devoted unto them and how little God hath devoted unto him I say no wise man that seeth this will believe that you are mortified heavenly men I do here proclaim to you this day from the Word of the Lord that this your way is your folly Psalm 49. 13. Luke 12. 20. and that you are at present in a damnable condition that you are the enemies of God whoever of you are friends to the world and that if you love the world the love of the Father is not in you 1 Iohn 2. 15. and that you must in Affection and Resolution forsake all that you have in the world and look for a Portion in the world to come or you are not Christians indeed nor can be saved Luke 14. 33. It would grieve the heart of a Believing man to see how desperately many civil ingenuous Gentlemen and others delude and destroy themselves insensibly You will I hope all cry shame upon a common swearer drunkard or whoremonger you will hang a Thief a Murderer or a Traytor But you seem not sensible of the misery of your own Condition that are perhaps in a more dangerous case then these I beseech you consider Is not that the most sinful and dangerous state where God hath least of the heart and the creature hath most What know you if you know not this Why it is apparent that there is less Love to the world in many an one of the forementioned wretches then in many Civil Gentlemen that live in good reputation in their Countrey and little suspect so much mischief by themselves That is the most wicked man that hath in his heart the strongest Interest which is opposite unto God and all that is not subordinate is opposite Sin hath not so deep and strong an Interest in some Muderers that kill a man in a passion in some swearers that get nothing by it but swear in a passion or in some thieves that steal in necessity as it hath in many that seem sober and Religious I say again the greater creature â—nterest the more sinful is the estate Alas Sirs the abstaining from some of these crimes and living like Civil Religious men if the world be not Crucified to you and you to it doth but hide your sin and misery and hinder your shame and repentance but not prevent your damnation Nay the very Interest of the flesh it â—elf may make you forbear disgâ—acefull sins and so that may be finally your greater vice which you so much glory in and which is materially your duty All the privâ—ledge of your condition is that you shall serve the Devil in more Golden setters then the poorer and contemned for t of sinners and that you may be the children of wrath with less suspition and that you may go to Hell in more credit then the rest and by your self-deceit you may keep off the knowledge of your misery and the disquiet of soul that would follow thereupon till death make you wiser when it is too late And is this a benefit to rejoyce in Indeed you have your Good things in this life you may be cloathed in the best and fare deliciously and when you are in Hell Torments where you would be glad of a drop of water your kindred on earth may nevertheless honour your name and little suspect or believe your misery And this is the Priviledge that you have above more disgraced offendors You leave a better esteem of you on earth when your souls are in Hell I But alas if a Pope should Saint you and his followers pray to you and worship you as its possible they may do this will not ease your torments I confess I am sensible that this kind of discourse is not very like to please you but it is not my errand to Please but to Profit For my part I bear you as much respect as you are Magistrates or otherwise qualified for the common good as others do But I must deal plainly with you in hope of your recovery or at least of the discharge of my own soul. I confess to you I look upon a worldly Prince or Judge or Justice or Gentlemâ—n or Freeholder yea or Minister as men as wicked before God and in as damâ—able and dangerous a case to their own souls as the thieves that you burâ— in the hand and hang. I am far from extenuating their sin or misery but I am shewing you your own Your sin may be as deep rooted and the interest of the world may be more predominant in you then in them Your lands and houses and hopeful posterity and the other provisions that you have made for your flesh may have more of your hearts then the world hath of the heart of a poor prisoner that never had so much to Idolâ—ze Believe it Gentlemen Christ was not in jest when he so often and earnestly warneth men of your quality of their everlasting peril Even more then ever he did Adulterers or Thieves It s not for nothing â—â—â—t he tells us how the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choak the word that it becometh unfruitful Luke 8. 14 Mat. 16. 2â— The Pharisecs that were covetous derided Christ when others did believe Luke 16. 14. They cannot be true Believers that receive Honour one of another and seek not the honour that cometh from God only Iohn 5. 44. that is who prefer the former It is not for nothing that Christ assureth you that it is as hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as
men can be guilty of such sins as these Answ. Through the remnant of their corruptions and the power of temptations even learned godly men may be made the powerful Instruments of Satan to shatter and destroy your reputation for ever on earth and make even Countries and Kingdoms to believe that of you from Generation to Generation which never entred into your soul and by their means if you were persons of so much note you might be recorded in history to posterity as guilty of the crimes of which you were most innocent yea much more innocent then the reporters themselves So that it will be the work of Christ at the day of Judgement to clear the names of many an innocent one that hath gone under the repute of an Heretick a proud malicious man an Adulterer a Deceiver and a meer unconscionable and ungodly person even from age to age and that among the godly themselves by receiving the slander at first from some one that had the advantage to procure a belief of it It s like it was a seeming godly man that had been Davids own familiar friend in whom he trusted and which did eat of his bread Yet was he used in this kind by such Psal. 41. 6 7 9. And Psal. 55. 12 13 14. he saith It was not an enemy that reproached me then I could have born it neither was it he that hated me that did magnifie himself against me then I would have hid my self from him but it was thou a man mine equal my guide and mine acquaintance we took sweet counsel together and walked to the House of God in company Obj. But perhaps you may think I le walk so carefully and innocently that no man shall have any matter of such reproach Answ. 1. There is none of the imperfect Saints on earth that can be free from giving all occasions of reproach 2. And were you perfectly innocent it would not free you Nay your innocency it self may be the occasion of those reports that proclaim you wicked For it is not that which really is a fault but that which they think so that is the matter of such mens accusations The Apostles of Christ that walked in such eminent holiness and self denyal and consumed themselves for the good of others could not escape the tongues of slanderers but were accounted as the very scum and off-scouring of all things and as a by-word and even a gazing stock to Angels and men And the blessed Son of God who was holy harmless undefiled and separated from sinners was yet reputed one of the greatest of sinners and Crucified as such And he that could challenge them which of you convinceth me of sin was commonly defamed of what he was innocent of If Iohn came fasting they say he hath a Devil If Christ eat and drink temperately with sinners that he might take opportunity to feed their souls they say Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber a friend of publicans and sinners Mat. 11. 18 19. They that saw him eat and drink with sinners had so fair a pretence to raise their reproach that they might the easilyer procure belief though it was perfect innocency it self which they reproached The best men on earth have ever had experience that there is no caution that can defend from a slanderous tongue As Erasmus once calumniated saith Fatalis est morbus calumniandi omnia Et clausis oculis carpunt quod nec vident nec intell gunt Tanta est morbi vis Atque interim sibi videntur Ecclesiae columnae quâ—m nihil aliud quam traducant suam soliditatem pari malitia conjunctam c. How oft was good Melancthon fain to complain that there is no defence against a quarrelsom slanderous tongue and the too much sense of it did almost break his heart Obj. But at least I can say as the Philosopher If they will reproach me and speak evil of me I will so live that no body shall believe them Answ. Wherever there be men to make the report there will lightly be enough to believe it And if they that know you will not believe it yet that 's but a few to the most of them abroad that hear of you and know you not You may see then by this time if Reputation with men be the thing you over-value what a vain uncertain thing it is and how easily God can make your sorrow arise even from thence where you expected your vain applause And you will find by experience if you do not prevent it that while you over-value this or any earthly thing you are in the road to these afflictions It is Gods ordinary dealing with his children and frequently with others to punish them by their Idols and to make them sickest of that which they have most greedily surfeited of Could you but Crucifie the world and use it for God it would have no power thus to vex and crucifie your minds It is you that sharpen it and arm it against your selves and give it all the strength it hath by your over-valuing over-loving it It s like a Spaniell that will love those best that beat him but if you cocker it it will fly in your faces Obj. But I may fall under all these afflictions whether I love the world or not Answ. 1. But your perverse affections do provoke God to multiply such afflictions Had you not rather bear a smaller measure and taste of a cup that hath less of the gaâ—â— 2. And if you were but Crucified to the world the same Afflictions would be as nothing to your mind which now seem so grievous to you and cast you into such vexations and discontents If it did as much to your flesh it could not reach the heart and if all be sound and well within it s no great matter how it is without The very same kind of affliction whether it be poverty sickness slanders or other wrongs are as nothing to a man that is dead to the world which seem intolerable to unmortified men For the heart and soul of the unmortified are the seat and subject of them when the mortified Christian hath a Garrison within and blots the door and keeps them from his heart What great trouble will it be to any man to part with that which he doth not care for especially while he keepeth that which hath his heart It s no great trouble to a worldling to want the love of God or communion with him nor to be without the life of grace nor to lie under the burden of the greatest sins and to be the slave of the Devil because he is dead in sin and dead to God and the things of the Spirit and therefore he perceiveth not the excellency of them but is well content to live without them And if spiritual death can make men so contented without the great unvaluable treasure and can make men set light by God and Glory What wonder if they that are dead to the
world do set as light by such in inconsiderable vanities And if the dead in sin can bear so easily the greatest misery that man on earth is ordinarily capable of as the slavery of the Devil the guilt of sin the curse of the Law the danger of damnation c. what wonder then if they that are Crucified to the world can bear a little poverty or sickness or reproach which is to the other but as the prick of a pin or the scratch of a thorn to a deadly poyson or a stab at the very heart 3. But yet this is not all Your inordinate love of any thing in the world will not only embitter your lives but it will be the horrour of your souls at death and judgement And therefore as ever you would leave the world in peace and as ever you would appear before the Lord your Judge with comfort and as ever you desire that the creatures should not be your Tormentors take heed that you do not over-love them now but see that they be Crucified to â—ou You cannot possibly be sensible now what a pang of horrour it will cast you into at the last when you shall see the world leaving you and see what it was that you ventured your souls and their everlasting welfare for O with what grief and tearing of heart do earthly minded persons part with the world When you are dying that one thing that had your heart will more torment your hearts to remember it then all things else will do Nothing is such a terrour to the thoughts of a a dying covetous man as his money and lands and worldly wealth Nothing so vexeth the ambitious as to think on that shadow of honour which he did pursue Nothing doth so torment the filthy fornicator as the remembrance of that person with whom he committed the beastly sin All other persons or things in the world will not then be so bitter to you as those that stole your hearts from God but at judgement and in hell the remembrance of them will be a thousand fold more bitter And who would now prepare such misery for themselves and glut themselves with that which they can no better digest or bear What wise man would not rather be without the drunkards cups then be fain to spue it up again and part with it with so much sickness and disgrace And why should you desire to be drunk with the profits or pleasures of the world when you know before hand with how much shame and trouble of conscience you must cast it up again at last 4. But yet this is not the worst but if you will needs live to the world you must take it for your portion and look not for any more And therefore as ever you would not be deprived of your hopes of eternal life and be put off with the earthly portion of the wicked see that the world be Crucified to you and you to the world How poor a portion is it that worldlings do possess Even like Nebucadnezar that had his portion with the beasts Daâ— 4. 15. How soon will all their portion be spent and then they will feed with swine yea and be denyed these very husks For they are set in slâ—ppery places and are brought to desolation in a moment Psal. 73. 18 19 20. O how much better a portion might you have had if you had not refused or neglected it when you had your choice Me thinks in your greatest pleasures and abundance it should astonish your souls to think This is my portion I shall have no more When you are past this life and entring into Eternity then where is your â—ortion Alas saith Conscience I have had it already I cannot spend it and have it too You know what you have now but what shall you have hereafter to all eternity Your Portion is almost spent already and what will you do then Oh then to think that the Eternal glory of the Saints might have been yours it was offered as freely to you as to them but you have lost it by preferring the world before it and that after a thousand convictions of your folly O what a cutting thought will this be Luke 16. 25. To remember that you chose your good things in this life will be a sad Remembrance when all is gone The Lord is the protion of his Saints inheritance Psalm 16. 5. even their portion for ever Psalm 73. 26. their portion in the Land of the living Psal. 142. 5. and this was it that encouraged them to labour patience and hope Psalm 119. 52. Lam. 3. 24 25 26. But for the worldling The heaven shall reveal his iniquity and the earth shall rise up against him the increase of his house shall depart and his goods shall slow away in the day of wrath This is the portion of a wicked man from God and the heritage appointed to him by God Iob 20. 37 38 39. If you can be content with such a Portion make much of the world and take your fleshly pleasures while you may But if you hope for the everlasting portion of Believers away with the world and Crucifie it without any more ado and set your hearts on the portion which you hope for SECT XX. HAving said as much as is suitable to the other parts of this discourse to perswade you to be willing to Crucifie the world I shall next give some Directions to those that are perswaded and tell you by what means the work may be done And I beseech you mark them and resolve to practise them Direct 1. OBserve and Practise the Direction intimated in the Text. It is the Cross of Christ that must Crucifie the world to you It s thither therefore that you must repair for help An Infidel may fetch such weapons from reason and experience as shall wound the world and diminish his esteem of it and make it less delightful to him But it is only the Cross of Christ that can furnish us with those weapons that must pierce it to the very heart Or if the Unbeliever were deprived of all earthly delight and brought into despair of ever receiving more comfort from the world as it is with many of them in some extremity and with all at death yet he himself is not Crucified to the world Though his delight in it be gone yet his love to it is not gone Though he be out of Hope of ever having content in it yet his desires after it are the same If he call it vanity and vexation as the Believer doth it is because it denyeth him his desires Not because he takes it heartily for an Enemy but for an unkind Lover that dealeth hardly with him that hath given it his heart If he look upon it as Dead and unable to help him yet doth he behold it as the carkaise of a friend with grief and lamentation It is his greatest trouble that the world cannot give him that which he would have And therefore he
callings and about all the creatures Think with your selves Here is now a lesson in my hands if I can but learn it Here is somewhat that may shew me both God himself and my duty if I could but skilfully open it and understand it And so bethink your selves What it is that God would teach you or command you by that creature and especially to what use he requireth you to put it And remember that if you should think of God all the day long and yet not intend him and refer your labours and your riches to his service and give them up to his use this is not sanctifying God in the creature but hypocriticall abusing of him For it is not all thinking of God that will serve the turn 6. As you use to take account of your servants how they do your work so I would advise you every night or as often as you can to take an account of your selves as you are the servants of the God of heaven and ask your Consciences What have I done this day for God and how have I observed and sanctified him in his works So much for the fifth Direction Direct 6. REmember alwaies that the world is the enemy of your salvation and that if you be damned it is like to be through its enticements and therefore labour to be alwaies sensible that you go in continual danger of it And this will make you use it as an enemy and walk in a constant fear least it should over-reach you And see also that you endeavour as clearly as you can to find out wherein its enmity doth consist and then you will perceive that it is especially in seeming more Lovely then it is as it is the fewel of concupiscence and the provision of the flesh And when you understand this you will perceive that your danger lyeth in over-loving it and that it killeth by its embracements And this will direct you which way to bend the course of your opposition and what you must do to be saved from its snares To call the world an enemy is easie and common but so far as your very hearts apprehend it as an enemy so far you are out of danger of it An easie enemy that is conquered by understanding that it is an enemy And the way of its conquest is by enticing men to take it for a friend And also remember how great a part of your Christian life consisteth in keeping up the comâ—ate with this enemy and how certainly and miserably you will perish if you be overcome Direct 7. TO â—e much in the house of mourning and see the end of all the living will help us towards the Crucifying of the world Go among the sick and hear what they say of the world Stand by the dying and see what it will do for them and think now whether God or the world be better Look on the corpses of your deceased friends and think now Whether the soul be ever the better for all the riches and pleasures of the world Take notice of the graves and bones of the dead and think what a worthless thing is the world and all the glory and delights that it affords which will so turn us off and leave our bodies in such a plight as that Take notice of the frailties and diseases of your own flesh that tell you how shortly it must lie down in the dust And then compare this world and that to come where your abode will be everlasting It s a shame for a wise man to live as a stranger to so great a change and to look so much after a world that he is leaving and so little after the world that he shall abide in Direct 8. IT will much avail to the Crucifying of the world to you that you study the improvement of all your Afflictions Do not repine at them and think them a greater evil then they are but believe that they are a special advantage to your souls for the mortifying of your inordinate affections to the world and if you have but the wisdom and hearts to make use of them they may do you more good then all the prosperity of your lives hath done If you fall into poverty or fall under slanders or reproach from men if your friends prove false to you if those that you have done good to prove unthankful if the wickedness and frowardness of men do make you even weary of the world remember now what an advantage you have for Mortification When you have experience it self to disgrace the creature to you and your very flesh doth seem to be convinced Now see that you observe the teachings of this providence and come off from the world when you see it is so little worth and set as light by it as it doth by you Bethink you now that God doth this to lead you to himself and thankfully accept his call and close with him as your portion and be content with him alone and let them take the world that can get no better You see that adversity will make even a worldling speak hardly of the world as men will do of their friends when they fall out with them How much more should it help the gracious soul to a fuller sense of its vanity and nothingness and of the necessity and excellency of more certain things It s a great sin and folly in us that we strive more to have afflictions removed then sanctified and so we lose the gain that we might have got Though affliction alone will do little good yet grace doth make such use of affliction that thousands in heaven will have cause to bless God for them that before they were afflicted went astray and were deceived by the flatteries of the world as well as others Abundance that have been convinced of the vanity of the world have lingered long before they would forsake it till affliction hath rowsed their sleepy souls and by a lowder voice hath called them away Direct 9. BE very suspicious of a prosperous state and be more afraid of the world when it smiles then when it frowns Some are much perplexed for fear left they should not stand in adversity that too little fear being ensnared by prosperity They are afraid what they should do in a time of tryal and do not consider that prosperity is the great tryal Adversity doth but shew that love of the world which was in mens hearts in time of prosperity When men forsake Christ for fear of suffering and because they will not forsake the world they do but shew the effects of that disease which they had catcht long before When the world pleased them they fell so deep in love with it that now they will venture their souls to keep it It is prosperity that breeds the disease though adversity shew it Love not the world and you will easily part with it and so will easily suffer for Christ And prosperity is liker to tice your Love to it then
adversity This is a great reason why worldly Prosperity and true Holiness do so seldom go together and so few of the great ones of the world are saved O how hard is it to have the world at will and not to be ensnared by it and over-love it How hard is it heartily and practically to contemn a prosperous condition How hard to have serious lively thoughts of the great things of eternity and serious preparations for death and judgement when we have health and wealth and all the accommodations which our flesh doth desire Satan knows this well enough and therefore he is willing that his servants shall have prosperity He knows that it is not the way to get him servants to beat them and use them hardly but to please them by flatteries and fulfill their lusts that they may be enticed to imagin his service to be the best It s the custom of harlots to set out themselves to the best and to adorn themselves for the tempting of their lovers and not to go in an homely dress which no one will be taken with No wonder then if Satan the Pandor of the world do adorn it with the best cloathes and present it to you in the most enticing garb he can If the lips of this harlot did not drop as an honey-comb and her mouth were not smoother then â—yl she could not lead such multitudes to her end which is bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword her feet go down to death her steps take hold of hell lest men should ponder the path of life Prov. 5. 3 4 5 6. And it is no wonder that God to save his people from this delusion doth dress the world to them in a courser attire and when he seeth them in danger to be enamoured on it as well as others if he present it to them in the rags of poverty and in the scabs of its corruption confusion and deformity that they may see the difference between it and their home It s strange to see how highly prosperity is regarded by the most how earnestly they desire it pray for it or contrive it and how much they are troubled when they fall into adversity when yet they know or say they know that the love of the world is the bane of the soul and that it killeth men by deceiving them Can you keep your affections as loose from the world when you have houses and lands and all things at your will as you could if it were otherwise Remember I beseech you that the poyson of the world is covered by its sweetness and that it killeth none but those that love it Be suspitious therefore that there is danger where you find delight If your estate be such as is pleasing to your flesh believe it is not likely to be safe to your souls If therefore your health your wealth your honours be such as your flesh would have them if your houses your accomodations your friends be suited to your carnal desires believe it your souls are in no small hazzard and therefore look about you as you love your salvation and fear the snare The great enemy of your souls hath not baited his hook with so curious and costly a bait for nothing The cautelous fish that is afraid to swallow yea or to taste or to come neer till he knows what is under it doth save his life when that which boldly ventures and fearlessly devoureth the bait is destroyed It s not for nothing that Solomon chargeth the man that is given to his appetite to put his knife to his throat at a feast and not to be desirous of the dâ—inties which are deceitfull Prov. 23. 1 2 3. A prudent man foreseeth the evil even when it is covered with the pleasantest bait and so he hideth himself and escapeth when the simple passeth on and is punished Prov. 22. 3. It is part of the description of the sensual a postates in Iude 12. that in their feasts they fed themselves without fear And it is as dangerous a thing to cloath your selves without fear to seek after wealth and honours without fear to possess your houses and lands without fear to see any thing that 's carnally pleasing to you or hear your own prayses without fear when other men must needs have things to their will do you study your duty and let the will of God be your will and if he give you a plentiful estate without seeking it or give you reputation and the praise of men without your affecting it receive them not without fear Think with your selves What a snare is here now for my soul Though it be good in it self and as it comes from God yet what an advantage hath the Deceiver here against me How easily may such a carnal heart as mine be enticed to the inordinate love of these and to be more remiss about higher and greater things and to be forgetful or insensible about the matters of my endless state How many men of worldly wisdom yea how many that seemed Religious have been thus deceived and perished before me Yea this is the common road to hell And is it not time for me then to look about me The old Christians were so jealous of the world and afraid of being mortally poysoned by its delights that they sold what they had and gave to the poor and voluntarily thrust themselves into poverty as thinking it better to go poor to heaven then to say in Hell that once they had riches I commend not any extream to you for indeed I have ever thought that its greater self-denyal to devote and use our riches for God then at once to cast them away or shut our hands of them and that he is a better steward that improveth his Masters slock then he that rids his hands of it out of an injurious fear of his Masters austerity But yet I must say that the other extream is more common and more dangerous And they that out of excess of fear betook themselves to poverty and to wildernesses were in a far better case then many that seem now to be zealous professors and yet are looking after the pleasures and riches and glory of the world I have many a time wondered at some eminent professors that are as constant and seraphicall in the outside of duty even to admiration as almost any I know and yet as closely and busily grasping at the world and labouring to be rich as if they were the wretchedst worldlings on earth I have oft wondered how they can quiet their consciences and how they make shift so constantly to delude such knowing souls The Countrey sees them drowned in earth and the generality of their godly friends lament them as meer hypocriticall earth-worms and yet because they can carry it on smoothly and not be noted for any palpable oppression or deceit they wipe their lips they bless themselves and with gracious words would cloak their covetousness as if men did but uncharitably
that goeth believingly into the Sanctuary may see their end Surely they are set in slippery places and cast down into destruction How are they brought to desolation as in a moment and consumed with terrours Psalm 73. 12 17 18 19. And in that very day do all his thoughts perish Psalm 146. 4. Then shall they eat the fruit of their own way and be filled with their own devices for the turning away of the simple shall slay them and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them Prov. 31. 32. See then that you be not eager for prosperity and if God cast it on you use it with fear And if ever you feel the creature begin to grow too sweet and delightful to you then spit it out as the poyson of the soul and presently take a mortifying antidote before you are past remedy As you feel the working of poyson by its burning or griping or other effects agreeable to its nature by which it seeketh the extingushing of life so you may feel when the world is poyson to your souls by its creeping into your affections and insinuating into your hearts with present delight or future hopes by seeming more Lovely and more Necessary then it is As soon as ever you feel it thus creep into your hearâ—s its time to rise up against it with holy fear and to cast it out if you love your souls And that which I would advise you to at present when the world hath got too deep into your hearts before you are aware is this Do something extraordinary in such a necessity for its crucifixion and your recovery Though a careful diet may serve to preserve health while you have it yet if you have lost it and sickness be upon you you must have recourse to Physick for your cure If honour or preferment or house or land or friends or gain or recreations begin to seem too sweet and dear to you and your hearts begin to hug them with delight or make out after them with keen desires you must now have recourse to extraordinary helps and in particular try these following 1. Withdraw your selves to some more frequent and serious meditation of the brevity and vanity of the world then you have been used to steep your thoughts longer in mortifying considerations till the bent of your hearts begin to change 2. Be ofter with God in secret and publick prayer and give up a larger portion of your time to holy things then ordinarily you have done that acquaintance with heaven may wean your mind from earth and the Love of God may drown your worldly Love When you have taken any extraordinary cold you will get nearer the fire then ordinary and be longer at it and drive it out by heating things And when the world hath insinuated into your affections and chilled and cooled them to God and heaven its time to draw nearer God then before and to be longer with him and to strive harder in every duty then you did till spiritual life do work more vigorously and expell that earthly distemper which had possessed you 3. And at such a season let prayer be furthered by fasting and extraordinary humiliation which may help down the flesh which causeth you so much to over-value the world Even an Aâ—ab found some ease by a common humiliation when he had taken a mortal surfeit of Naboths Vineyard and his Blood Much more may a true Christian find much help by special humiliation when he hath surfeited on any creature whatsoever 4. And I think it would be a very good course at such a time as that to be at some more cost for God then you were before When you feel your love to the world increase Give somewhat extraordinary then to the poor or to pious uses according to your ability Yea what if it were so far as might a little pinch your selves This were a real opposition to the world and you might turn a very temptation to a gain and get much good by occasion of a sin It might do much to dis-hearten and repell the tempter when he seeth that you over-shoot him in his own bow and make such use as this of his temptations as to do the more good and use your wealth the more for God and deny your selves more then you did before If you would but faithfully practise these few directions you would find it the surest way of recovery when you begin to be infected with this earthly disease Direct 10. THE last Direction that I shall give you for the Crucifying of the world is this Be sure to keep off the means of its livelihood and keep it still under the mortifying means Lay siege to it and stop up all the passages by which the worlds provision would come in and keep it still under the strokes of enmity and the influence of that which is contrary to it Some particulars I will but briefly mention 1. Keep a constant guard upon your senses for this way the world creeps in to your hearts It is by gazing on alluring objects or hearing or tasting or the like that the flames of concupiscence are kindled in the heart By gazing upon beauty or comliness of perâ—â—n the heart of the wanton is infected with lust and so incited to the damnable practises of uncleanness The sight of the cup doth set an edge on the desires of the drunkard and the sight of enticing meats doth awaken and enrage the appetite of the gluttonous and by the presence of the bait their disease is set awork as worms in the body are by some kind of food Clemens Alexandr saith of these men that their disease is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is A madness about the throat And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is A madness in the belly And saith of them that are given to fulness or fineness of diet for the pleasing of their bellies that they are ruled by a Belly-Devil which saith he is the worst and most pernicious of all Devils Lay siege then to this belly-Devil and starve him out It is by the sight of gawdy fashions and curious apparel that the minds of vain effeminate persons are provoked to desire the like And the sight of pomp and honours doth kindle the fire of ambition and the sight of buildings and money and lands doth help to provoke the desires of the Covetous See therefore that you alwaies keep a watch upon your eyes Let them not run up and down like a master-less dog nor roul as the eyes of the lascivious that are hunting after the prey of lust If you have cause to pray as David Psal. 119. 37. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity You must practise according to your prayers and endeavour your selves to turn them away Have not the best of us as much reason as Iob to make a Covenant with our eyes Iob 31. 1. What wonder if the Garrison surrender not where the besieged have free passage and continual supplies And what
then satisfie one Whence also comes the Theevery the Lying for the sake of Commodity the over-witting and over-reaching of each other but from this sin Whence is it that most Ale sellers and Vintners will make a trade of poysoning souls and will nourish that odious vice which is the ruine of mens bodies the impoverishing of their families the dishonour of God and the shame and danger of the towns and Common-wealths in which they are committed but only for the love of a sordid gain And were it not more for fear of men then God the most of them by far would make the Lords day their chief Market-day for they care not to rob even God himself for this unprofitable gain And it s well if Butchers and many other Tradesmen would not do the like if the Laws of the Land and the severity of Magistrates did not restrain them This is the Love they have to God and eternal Glory Thus you may see whether they are dead to the world or rather to Christ Gehezi thought himself wiser then his Master when he went after Naaman for his prize And Achan thought himself wiser then all Israel when he hid the gold And Saul thought it wisdom to spare Agag and the best things from destruction But the Leprosie taught one and the stones taught another and Gods rejection taught the third to know that by experience which they would not learn by the warnings of the Lord. The like may be said of contentious Law-suits the common effects of Covetousness and Revenge and so of all other unlawfull gain If indeed you are dead to the world do not so much as tell a lie to get all the riches of the world Remember also the commands of God Lev. 19. 13. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour neither rob him the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night And 1 Thes. 4. 6. That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter because that the Lord is the avenger of all such as we also have forewarned you and testified And 1 Cor. 6. 7 8 9. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you because ye go to Law one with another Why do ye not rather take wrong Why do ye not rather suffer your selves to be defrauded Nay you do wrong and defraud and that your Brethren Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God These lessons would be better learnt if covetousness did not stop mens ears But it s a befooling stupifying vice It makes men lose themselves for gain For as Austin saith Avarus antequam lucretur seipsam perdit antequam aliquid capiat capitur And all this is for the pleasing of their fancy that they may have more then they need For Avarus est caecus credendo enim dives est non videndo Amas pecuniam O caece quam nunquam videbis caecus possides caecus morituruses c. Idem And when they pretend Necessity it is but the voice of Covetousness For saith the same Austin Non est in carendo difficultas nisi cum fuerit in possidendo cupiditas Et alibi Pauperiorem se judicat abundans quia sibi deâ—sse arbitratur quicquid ab aliis possidetur toto mundo eget cujus non capit mundus cupiditatem 6. IF you are Crucified to the world let us see it by your improving all for God and not employing it to the pleasing of your flesh Use all that you have as men that must be accountable for them Remember that you receive them from your Master for his use Resolve therefore so to expend and employ them as may most further his service Look about you and see what good is to be done and then consider how far you are furnished and enabled to do it and accordingly lay out the talents which you are entrusted with Seek after such work and do not stay till it be brought to your hand If you love Christ indeed me thinks you should not stay for an invitation to do him service nor should you need that men come a begging to you to awaken your charity when you know before that it is a charitable and necessary work that is before you Two sorts of persons I would especially direct this advice to First to the rich and powerful in the world Secondly To all that are professors of Religion For the first sort let them consider that their Riches are snares to them and will prove a certain means of their damnation if they devote them not to God Tythes and Oblations and First-fruits were devoted to God under the Law but all is expresly devoted to him under the Gospel Which was expressed by the Primitive Christians selling all and laying down at the Apostles feet For as Life and Immortality is brought to light more abundantly in the Gospel So also is the means of obtaining it and the duty which we owe to him that giveth it And as Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ and the greatest mercies are revealed by the Gospel So the greatest holiness comes by Christ and the greatest obligations are laid on us in the Gospel Especially to self-denyal and an hearty Devoting our selves and all we have to God I beseech you observe the distinction which Christ useth Luke 12. 21. between Laying up Riches to your selves and being Rich to God and how dreadful the Application is If almost all your Riches be expended on your selves and yours or laid upin store as for provision for your flesh its plain then that you Lay up riches for your selves and so are concluded by the sentence of Christ among the miserable fools that are there described But if you are Rich to God you will study to improve your Riches for God and often bethink your selves which way they may be employed to his greatest service He that cannot spare his wealth for the service of his Redeemer and the good of his Brother and the furthering of his own salvation is very far from being Crucified to the world 2. And it is not only the great ones that have need of this advice but all in their places that are entrusted with Gods Mercies Think not your selves excused from works of Charity because you have but one talent for one talent must be proportionably improved as well as ten or else you will be condemned as unprofitable servants People of the lower rank do commonly think that God requireth nothing of them but to receive what others give them and to labour for themselves And when they have reviled sufficiently at Rich men for worldliness they often shew themselves as worldly by denying their mites and by unmercifulness to those that are poorer then themselves as the Richer do by denying their larger proportions The scarcity and defectiveness of charitable works with all sorts of men from the highest to the lowest even those that seem more forward in verbal devotions do shew us too evidently how common
perswade you to part with it to supply his wants At least you will never be perswaded to part with all and follow Christ till the Belief of a Treasure in Heaven do perswade you to it Luke 18. 21 22. Can you say from your hearts Let all go rather then the Love of God And in a case of tryal do you certainly find that There is nothing so dear to you which you cannot part with for God and the hopes of everlasting life This is a sign of an effectual Faith For neither nature nor common grace did ever bring a soul so high 3. It is also a certain evidence of unfeigned Love For wherein is Love so clearly manifested as in the highest adventures for the person whom we Love and in the costlyest expressions of our Love when we are called to it Then it will appear that you Love God indeed when there is nothing else that you prefer before him and nothing but what you lay down at his feet When the greatest professors that love the world do shew that the love of the Father is not in them 1 Iohn 2. 15. So far as it is loved 4. To be Crucified to the world and alive to God is the very Honesty and Chastity and Iustice of the soul. This is your Fidelity to God in keeping the holy Covenant that you have made with him in Christ. This is your keeping your selves unspotted from the world and undefiled by it When the friends of it live in its Adulterous embracements Iam. 4. 4. Thus do you give the Lord his own even both the creature and your hearts when worldlings do unjustly rob him of both This is the great command and request of God Prov. 23. 26. My Son give me thy heart Give him but this and he will take it as if you gave him all For indeed the rest will follow this But if you give the world your hearts God will take all the rest as Nothing Benefit 2. THE second Benefit is this If you are truly Crucified to the world Your minds will be free for God and his service When the minds of worldlings are like imprisoned hampered things What a toylsom thing is it for a man to travail in fetters or to run a race with a burden on his back But knock off his fetters and how easily will he go and take off his burden and how lightly will he run Do you not feel your selves that the world is the clog of your souls and that this is it that hindereth you from duty and hindereth you in duty and keepeth you from the attainment of an heavenly conversation When you should chearfully go to God in secret or in your families the world is ready to pull you back Either it calleth you away by putting some other business into your hands or else it dulleth and diverteth your Affections so that you have no heart to duty or no life in it or else it creepeth into your Thoughts in duty and taketh them off from the work in hand and makes you do that which you seem not to be doing And if you shake off these thoughts and drive them out of your way they are presently again before you and meet you at the next Turn But in that measure as you have Crucified the world you are freed from these disturbances The Apostle Peter describeth the miserable estate of Apostates 2 Pet. 2. 20. to be like a bird or beast that had escaped out of the snare that he was taken in and after is taken in the same again Having escaped the pollution of the world c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are again entangled therein as a beast in a snare that cannot escape or help himself So 2 Tim. 2. 4. its said no man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. So that you see that the world is a snare that entangleth mens souls and holdeth them as in captivity The table of the wicked becometh a snare to them and so do all the bodily mercies which they possess But the mortified Christian may look back on all these dangers and say Blessed be the Lord that hath not given us as a prey to their teeth Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers the snare is broken and we are escaped Psal. 124. 6 7. Oh with what ease and freedom of mind may you converse with God in holy Ordinances when you are once disâ—entangled from this snare Now that which formerly drew off your hearts and clog'd your affections is Crucified and dead that enemy that kept your souls from God and was still casting baits or troubles in your way is dead As the Apostle saith of sin Rom. 6. 7. He that is dead is freed from sin So I may say of the world He that is dead to the world in that measure as he is dead to it is freed from the world Let us therefore lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us and then we may run with Patience the race that is set before us Heb. 12. 1. This makes a poor Christian sometimes to live in more content and comfort in the depth of adversity then he did before in the midst of his prosperity because though his flesh hath lost his soul hath gain'd though he want the fleshly accommodations which he had yet the world is now more Dead to him then before and so his mind is freer for God and consequently more with him How blessed a life is it to converse with God with little disturbances and interruptions A runner in a race is willing to be rid of his very cloathes that should cover him and keep him warm because they are a burden and hinderance to him in his race But the lookers on would be loath to be so stript Take away prosperity from an unmortified man and you take away the comfort of his life When if the same things be taken from the mortified believer he loseth but his burden How readily will that man obey that is dead to the world when he is commanded to do good to relieve the poor according to his power to suffer wrongs to let go his right to forgive and requite evil with good to forsake all and follow Christ. When to another man these duties are a kind of impossibilities and you may as well perswade a Lyon to become a Lamb or a beast to die willingly by the hand of the Butcher as perswade an unmortified worldling to these things They think when they hear them These are hard sayings who can bear them Or at least they are duties for a Peter or a Paul and not for such as we There is a very great part of Christian obedience that will be easie to you when you are Dead to the world which no man else is able to endure nor will be perswaded to submit to Benefit 3. ANother Benefit of this Crucifixion is this The
of heaven in it The stones and earth are useful for you to tread upon though they are unfit for you to feed on or too hard to rest upon So though the world be unfit to Rest or feed your souls it may be made a convenient way for you to travail in It is unmeet to be Loved but it is meet to be Used when you have learned so to use it as not abusing it When self is throughly down and denyed and God is exalted and your souls brought over so clearly to him that you are nothing but in him and would have nothing but in and with him and do nothing but for him then you shall be able to see that glory and amiableness in the creature that now you cannot see I or you shall see the Creator himself in the creature Benefit 10. WHEN once you are truly Crucified to the world You will have the honour and the comfort of an heavenly life Your thoughts will be daily steeped in the Coelestial delights when other mens are steept in Gall and Vinegar You will be above with God when your carnal neighbours converse only with the world Your thoughts will be higher then their thoughts and your waies then their waies as the heaven where you converse is higher then the earth When you take flight from earth in holy Devotions they may look at you and wonder at you but cannot follow you for whither you go they cannot come till they are such as you You leave them groveling here on earth and feeding on the dust and striving like children or rather like swine or dogs about their meat When you are above in the Spirit on the speedy wings of Faith and Love beholding that face that perfecteth all that perfectly behold it and tasting that Joy which fully reconcileth all that fully do enjoy it which we must here contend for but none do there contend about it What a noble employment have you in comparison of the highest servants of the world How sweet are your delights in comparison of the Epicures O happy souls that can see so much of your eternal happiness and reach so near it Were I but more in your condition I would not envy Princes their glory nor any sensualists and worldlings their contents nor desire to be their partner I could spare them their troublesom dignities and their burdensom Riches and the unwholsom pleasures which they so often surfet on and the wind of popular applause which so swelleth them Yea what could I not spare them if I might be more with you O happy poverty sickness or imprisonment or whatever is called misery by the world if it be nearer Heaven then a sensual life and if it will but advantage my soul for those contemplations which are the imployment of mortified heavenly men Yea if it do but remove the impediments of so sweet a life I know by some little too little experience I know that one hours time of that blessed life will easily pay for all the cost and one believing view of God will easily blast the beauty of the world and shame all those thoughts as the issues of my dotage that ever gave it a lovely name or turned mine eye upon it with desire or caused me once with complacency to behold it or ever brought it near my heart O Sirs what a noble life may you live and how much more excellent work might you be employed in if the world were but dead to you and the stream of your souls were turned upon God Had you but one draught of the Heavenly consolations you would thirst no more for the pleasures of the world Yea did you but taste of it as Ionathan of the honey from the end of his rod 1 Sam. 14. 27. your eyes would be enlightened and your hearts revived and your hands would be so strengthened in your spiritual warfare that your enemies would quickly perceive it in your more resolute prevailing opposition of their assaults And experience will tell you that you will no further reach this heavenly life then you are Crucified to earth and flesh God useth to shew himself to the Coelestial inhabitants and not to the Terrestrial And therefore you will see no more of God then you get above and converse in Heaven And if faith had not this elevating power and could not see further then sense can do we might talk long enough of God before we had any saving knowledge of him or relish of his Goodness And doubtless if we must get by faith into Heaven if we will have the reviving sight of God then we must needs away from earth For our hearts cannot at once converse in both Believe it Sirs God useth to give his heavenly Cordials upon an empty stomack and not to drown them in the mud and dirt of sensuality When you are emptyest of creature-delights and love you are most capable of God And fasting from the world doth best prepare you for this heavenly Feast Let Abstinence and Temperance be imposed upon your senses but command a totall Fast to your Affections And try then whether your souls be not fitter to ascend and whether God will not reveal himself more clearly then before It may seem a paradox that the vallies should be nearer Heaven then the Hills But doubtless Stephen saw more of it then the high Priests And Lazarus had a fairer prospect thither from among the dogs at the Rich mans gate then the Master of the house had at his plentiful table And who would not rather have Lazarus's sores with a fore-sight of Heaven then the Rich mans fulness without it yea with the fears of after misery A Heavenly life is proper to the mortified Benefit 11. MOreover those that are Crucified to the world are most fruitfull unto others and blessings to all within their reach They can part with any thing to do good with They are rich to God and their Brethren if they be rich and not to themselves If a mortified man have hundreds or thousands by the year he hath no more of it for himself then if he had a meaner estate He takes but necessary food and rayment he shunneth intemperance and excess Nay he often pincheth his body if needfull that he may tame it and bring it into subjection to the Spirit and the rest he layes out for the service of God so far as he is acquainted with his will Yea his necessary food and rayment which he receiveth himself is ultimately not for himself but for God Even that he may be sustained by his daily bread for his daily duty and fitted to please his Master that maintaineth him If they have much they give plenteously If they have but little they are faithfull in that little And if they have not silver and gold they will give such as they have where God requireth it But the unmortified worldling is like some spreading trees that by drawing all the nutriment to themselves and by dropping on the rest
so as that we give the Glory to God and not to our own corrupted wills 6. And when we are called hereto we must do it very cautelously as Paul doth 1 Cor. 4. 4. I know nothing by my self yet am I not hereby justified Signifying that we do it with holy intentions for the good of the hearers and the honour of God as he doth 1 Cor. 4. 1 2 6 8. to the end And 2 Cor. 2. 5 6 c. 1 Cor. 9. throughout 2 Cor. 3. 1 2 c. And we must so do it as to confess it is like to folly it being the custom of proud fools to be boasters of themselves And so Paul when he is called to mention his priviledges calls it his folly in this sense 2 Cor. 11. 1 17 19 23. lest others should be encouraged to sinfull boasting by his example if he did not brand it by the way with the note of folly though it was but materially so in him being the matter that folly is by others exprest in but formally in the proud 2 HAving told you How we may Glory in our own Mortification I shall next give you the proof of the point that we may so do And first it is proved by the example of Paul himself both here in my Text and in many other places 2 Cor. 5. 11 12 13. 2 Cor. 11. throughout 2 Cor. 12. throughout Vers. 5 6. Of such a one will I glory yet of my self I will not glory but in mine infirmities that is not in any thing that seemeth to advance me in the eyes of the world lest it should seem a carnal Glorying or men should be drawn thereby to overvalue me but in such things as men rather pitty or villifie for even my worldly meanness and contemptibleness and sufferings for Christ though before God these are honourable and therefore I will glory in them openly as secretly I may do in all other graces So it followeth For though I would desire to Glory I shall not be a fool for I will say the truth But now I forbear lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be or that he heareth of me And so Vers. 9 10 11. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me that is that my Glorying may magnifie that Power of Christ that is manifest in sustaining me and not my self therefore I take pleasure in infirmities in reproaches in necessities in persecutions in distresses for Christs sake for when I am weak that is in the flesh and the eye of the world then am I strong that is in the Spirit and the work of Christ I am become a fool that is like a fool in Glorying Ye have compelled me For I ought to have been commended of you For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest Apostles though I be nothing Yea 1 Cor. 9. 15. he saith he had rather die then any should make his glorying void concerning his self-denyal for the advantage of the Gospel 2. I also prove it thus We may and must glory in the blessed effects of the blood of Christ. Or else we shall not give him his honour But our own Mortification is one of the blessed effects of the blood or Cross of Christ therefore we may must glory in it 3. We may and must glory in the certain tokens of the Love of God But our own Mortification is one of the certain tokens of the Love of God therefore we may and must glory in it 4. We may and must Glory in Christ dwelling in us and the effects of his indwelling For if we may glory in Christ Crucified then also in Christ as our Head to whom we are united and from whom we receive continual influence and communication of graces But our own mortification is the certain fruit of Christ dwelling in us therefore we may glory in it 5. We may glory in the image of God upon our souls For as it is our glory so it is the livelyest representation of God himself But our Mortification is part of Gods Image upon us therefore we may glory in it 6. We may glory that we are the temples of the Holy Ghost and that the Spirit of Christ is in us and we may glory in his fruits and works But our Mortification is a principal fruit of the Spirit which sheweth that he dwelleth in us therefore we may glory in it 7. There is no doubt but Christians may glory in the cessation of their sin against God and that as to the dominion of sin they do not dishonour him by breaking his Laws abusing his Son his Spirit and his Mercies as formerly they did But all this is conteined in our Mortification therefore we may glory in it 8. No doubt but we may glory in the Honour of God when his wisdom and goodness and power are demonstrated to the confusion of his foes and the encouragement of his people but this is done in the Mortification of his Saints In them he conquereth and in him that loveth them they are super-victors Rom. 8. 37. If we must glorifie the workman as such then must we also glorifie the work If Moses and all Israel must sing such a song of praise to God for overthrowing Pharaoh and his Hoast in the red Sea much more must we sing his praise that conquereth Satan and all our corruptions And the work it self must be magnified in order to the Conquerours praise If Deborah must sing Gods praises for the conquest of weak men much more must we for the conquest of the world by faith and for subduing the powers of darkness to us There is more of Gods love and power seen in the Spiritual victories of a poor mortified Christian that is taken no notice of or despised in the world then in the bodily conquests of the famous Princes of the world who most of them perish everlastingly after all because they are conquered by the world and their own flesh Though it be the design of the Devil and the slanderous world to obscure or villifie the work of grace on the souls of the sanctified yet must it be the care of Believers to counter-work them and maintain and manifest the lustre of that grace to the glory of the author He that magnifieth the Cure doth honour the Physitian but he that slighteth or disregardeth it doth dishonour him To debase the work of Creation is a reproach to the Creator yea to over-look it and not admire and magnifie it is an injury to him To villifie the work of the Redeemer is horrible insidelity and ingratitude and to slight it and not to magnifie it is damnable And must it not be so then to villifie or not to magnifie the works of the Sanctifyer Why should it not be our duty to magnifie the work of Sanctification as well as the work of Creation and Redemption Especially when it is the end which the other
will it do any man to know that heaven is promised to Believers if it cannot be known whether we are Believers or not But if you confess that it may be known why should we so despise the comfort of the promise as not to search after and observe the qualification which must evidence that it is ours Will you apply this promise to all or to some or to none If to none then it s made in vain If to all you will deceive the most I mean if you absolutely promise them the benefit For it is not all that are Believers nor all that shall have everlasting life You dare not absolutely tell all men in the world that they shall not perish It must needs therefore be the proper benefit of some and how will you know but by the Text who those are There is no way of applying it that the Text or common reason will allow of but by discerning that we are Believers to conclude thereupon that we shall not perish If you say that all are bound to believe that they shall not perish I answer then most should be bound to believe a falshood which cannot be They are only bound to believe the truth of the Gospel and accept of Christ as offered therein and then discerning this faith in themselves to conclude that they shall be glorified 8. Should we not observe the lower mâ—râ—iâ—s that we possess it were great unthankfulness much more to overlook the special mercies that accompany salvation We must bless God for the very health and strength of body that is within us for our understandings and memories How much more for the graces that are within us 9. Our Mortification is part of our Salvation and our Holiness is a beginning of our Happiness and when we come to heaven we shall be perfected herein If therefore we may not take comfort in this we may not take comfort in heaven it self which is the perfection of it 10. Lastly consider that Sanctification is that mercy that makes us capable of glorifying God for the rest of his mercies and receiving the comfort of them An unsanctified man cannot give any honour sincerely to Christ. And may we not observe and glory in that mercy that enableth us to give God the glory of all mercies Can it be a wrong to Christ to rejoyce in that without which we can do nothing but wrong him and to take comfort in that without which we are uncapable of true comfort By this time I hope it is evident to you that it is an injurious dealing against Christ and his Saints for any to reproach them for Glorying in Gods graces even that they are Crucified to the world and the world to them SECT XXV Use 2. FRom hence also many disconsolate Christians may see their errour who cannot Glory in a Mortified state They can see matter of comfort in a state of exaltation when they perceive themselves prosper in all that they undertake and find a present answer of their prayers and enjoy the sense of the Love of God but to be Crucified to the world and the world to them doth seem to them but an uncomfortable state and they cannot see the greatness of the mercy It is easie to perceive the excellency of those mercies that participate of the ultimate End and are known by proper fruition and have nothing in them but pure sweetness and delight And therefore a state of Joy declareth it self But as for those mercies that have the Nature of a Means whose excellency is in order to their end and those that have some wholsom bitterness mixt because they are less grateful to sense and valued only by faith therefore we are too prone to overlook their worth and to neglect the comforts which the consideration of them might afford us and so to deny God the thanks that is his due Every sensual man can rejoyce in the having and enjoying of outward prosperity And every Christian can rejoyce in the fruition of God whether in foretaste here or in fulness hereafter But to rejoyce in the absence of worldly prosperity in that we are dead to it and have learned to set light by it and to Rejoyce in the absence of God in that we have hearts that are set upon him and cannot be satisfied without him and are desiring after him and in progress towards him and hope ere long that we shall be with him this is the joy that must be expected by believers here on earth Though an Enjoying foretaste may now and then afford them a feast yet is it this Believing desiring seeking Joy that must be their ordinary sustentation And if in this world they have no other they have cause to be abundantly thankful for this To Rejoyce in the fruition of God especially when it is full is the part of the Glorified Saints in heaven To Rejoyce in the creature as accommodating their flesh is the Joy of the Carnal Unsanctisied here on earth A remnant of which is in the imperfect Saints To rejoyce in meer outward Ordinances and the false conceits of special Grace is the Joy of hypocrites and common prosessors To be without Ioy is the part of some of the ungodly under the terrours of their consciences and of true Christians that know not their own sincerity or are under some great desertions of God To be out of all hope and possibility of Ioy is the part of the Devil and damned men But to Rejoyce in the true mortification of the flesh and in the holy contempt of worldly things and in the desires and hopes of the glory to come this is the part of the Saints on the earth and the present joy that cometh by believing And this kind of joy is most suitable to our present condition as Fruition is suitable to our Heavenly End The comforts of travailers is not of the same kind with those of a man that is at home He that is at home would have his wealth about him But you would not carry your houses with you in your journey nor would you drive your cattle with you or carry all your goods and riches with you A travailer would have as fair a way as he can get and as good a guiâ—e and necessaries for his journey and no more but all the rest he would have at home that he may find it when he comes thither It is his benefit in the way to want no more and to have no more For the more he needeth and hath the more he must be burdened and troubled Mark the descriptions of our present blessedness that you find in the Scriptures and you may see that they consist in our present Mortification to things below and desires and hopes of things to come rather then in a state of enjoyment here whether it be of the world or of God Though still the reason of our Blessedness in a mortified estate is the tendency that it hath to a glorified estate because it is