of these As a student that is weary hath variety of Books and Studies to recreate his mind so hath every Christian variety of holy employment on the Lords day And all of it excellent profitable and delightful Christian believe not that Minister or Man whatever he be that telleth thee that Christs Yoak is heavy or that his Commandments are grievous Hath he done so much to deliver us from the strait Yoak the heavy Burden and the grievous Commandments and now shall we accuse him of bringing us under a toylesome task Is it a toile to love or count your money to love and look upon your Corn and Cattle to love and converse with your Friend to feast your Body on the pleasantest Food If not why should it be a toile to any but a wicked heart to spend a day in Loving God and hearing the Messages of his Love to us and in the foresight and foretasts of everlasting love Caviller come but unto Christ and cast off the wearisome toilesome burden of thy sin and Satans drudgery and take Christs Yoak and Burden on thee and learn of him and try then whether his daies and work be grievous Come and spend but a day in Loving God as thou dost in talking of him and try whether Love and the holiest Love be a wearisome work But if thou wilt make a Religion of all Shell and no Kernel all Carkass and no Life like that which the Jansenists charge the Jesuites with that say We are bound to love God but once in four or five years or once in all our lives no wonder if thou be weary of such a Religion 6. But I will tell them that are the Teachers of the people an honester way to Cure the peoples weariness than to send them to a Piper or to a Play to cure it Preach with such life and awakening seriousness Preach with such grateful holy eloquence and with such easie method and with such variety of wholesome matter that the people may never be aweary of you Pour out the rehearsal of the Love and benefits of God open so to them the priviledges of faith and the Joyes of hope that they may never be aweary How oft have I heard the people say of such as these I could hear him all day and never be aweary They are troubled at the shortness of such Sermons and wish they had been longer Pray with that Heavenly life and fervour as may rap up the souls of those that joyne with you and try then whether they will be aweary Praise God with that joyful alacrity which beseemeth one that is ready to pass into Glory and try whether this will not Cure the peoples weariness Misunderstand me not I am now speaking to none but guilty hypocrites and not to any faithful holy Ministers And to such I say when you have done nothing but coldly read over the publick Prayers or as coldly and crudely added your own and tired the hearers with a dry a sapless lifeless unexperienced discourse and then send them as a wearied people to dancing and sports for a needful recreation is this like the work of a Pastour of Souls When you have cryed down other mens Praying and Preaching and then tell the people that the Praying and Preacing which you recommend to them as better will not digest well without a Dance or Recreation after it to expel the peoples weariness is not this to disgrace your own Prayers and Preaching which you before commended to them And when you have done if after this you speak against others for their long Praying and for so much Preaching and Hearing as if they never had enough is not this to commend what you discommend and to tell the people that those mens Praying and Preaching whom you revile is such as doth not weary their Auditours when yours is such as will tiremen if it be long or if they be not Recreated after it with a Piper a â—idler or a Dance O that the Ithacian Bishops of the World and all the Clergie of their mind would at least hear Hooker in the Preface to his Eccles. pol. how little their cause is beholden to such Patrons and how well it might spare them For my own part as my flesh is weak so my heart is too bad too backward to these Divine and Heavenly works And yet I never have time to spare God knoweth that it is my daily groans How great is work yea and how sweet and how short is the day the week the year How quickly is it night How fast do weeks and years roll away And shall any man that is called a Minister of Christ perswade poor Labourers and Servants who have but one day for retirement from the world to converse with God without distraction that this one day is too long and that their work must be â—ased by carnal sports Nay shall a man that would be called a Minister or a Christian perswade men against all the experience of the World that the diversions and interruptions of a Dance or May game or a Race or a Comedie will dispose their minds to return to God with more Heavenly alacrity and purity than before or than variety of holy exercises will do Or rather are we constrained to say though it displease that Hypocrites are all for Imagery and hypocritical Religion and that whether he be at Church or at home in Praying or in drinking and sensuality and voluptuosness a Worldling is every where a Worldling still and an hypocrite is an hypocrite still And it is not his Book or Pulpit that maketh him another man And that as the man is such will be his Work Operari sequitur esse And that the Jesuites are not the only men in the world that would make a Religion to suite mens lusts and would serve Satan and the flesh in the livery of Christ. But I fear I have been too long on this objection IV. The Lords day must not be spent in Idleness not in unnecessary sleep or in vain walking or vain talking or long dressings or too long feastings or any thing unnecessary which diverteth our souls from their Sacred seasonable work It is not a Jewish Ceremonious Sabbath of bodily rest which we are to keep But it is a day of holy and spiritual works of the needfullest work in all the world To do that which is ten thousand times more necessary and excellent than all our labours and provision for the flesh And if no man hath time to spare on the week day but he that knoweth not aright what it is to be a Christian or a man or why God maintaineth and continueth him in the world What shall we think of them that can find time to spare on the Lords own day and can walk and idle away the most precious of all their time If it be folly to cast away your Silver it is not wisdom to cast away your gold O that God would but open mens eyes to see what
which he would have man chiefly study for the knowledge of his Maker and his Will But sin having introduced disorder confusion and a curse upon part of the Creation for mans sake God purposed at once both to notifie to man what he had done by sin in bringing disorder and a curse upon the Creature and blotting the Book of Nature which he should have chiefly used and also that it was his good pleasure to set up a clearer Glass even Christ Incarnate in which man might see his Makers face in a representation suitable to our need not now as smileing upon an Innocent man nor as frowning on a guilty man but as reconciled to Redeemed man and to Write a Book in which his will should be more plainly read than in the blotted Book of Nature Yea in which he that in the Creature appeared most eminently in Power might now appear most eminently in LOVE even redeeming reconciling adopting justifying and saving Love So that though God did not change the day till the Person of the Incarnate Mediator with his perfect last edition of the Covenant was exhibited and set up as this clearer Glass and Book yet then as the seasonable time of Reformation Heb. 9 10 11. he did it To teach man that though still he must honour God as the Creator and know him in the Glass and Book of the Creature yet that must be now but his secondary study for he must primarily study God in Christ where he is revealed in Love even most conspicuous wonderous Love And how suitable this is to man after sin and curâ—e and wrath may thus evidently appear 1. We were so Dead in sin and utterly deprived of the spiritual Life that the Book of the Creatures was not a sufficient means of our reviving But as we must have the QUICKNING SPIRIT of Jesus the Mediator so we must have a suitable means for that Spirit to work by which that the cursed mortified Creature is not appeareth in the experience of the case of Heathens 2. We were so Dark in sin that the Creature was not a sufficient means of our Illumination But as we must have the ILLUMINATING SPIRIT of Jesus so we must have a Glass and Book that was suited to that illuminating work 3. We were so alienated from God by Enmity and malignity and loss of LOVE that as it must be the spirit of Jesus which must regenerate us unto LOVE so it must be a clearer demonstration of LOVE than the Creature maketh in its cursed state which must be the fit means for the spirit to work by in the restitution of our LOVE Where further note 1. That LOVE is Holiness and Happiness it self and the operations of Divine Love are his Perfective operations and so fit for the last perfective act 2. That man had many wayes fallen from LOVE As he had actually and habitually turned away his own heart from God and as he had fallen under Gods wrath and so lost those fullest emanations of Gods Love which should cherish his own Love to God and as he had forfeited the assistance of the spirit which should repair it and as he was fallen in Love with the accursed Creature and lastly as he was under the Curse or threatning himself and the penalties begun It being impossible to Humane Nature to Love a God who we think will damn us and feel doth punish us in order thereunto So that nothing could be more suitable to Lapsed man or more perfective of the Appearance and Operations of God than this demonstration of Reconciling saving Love in our Incarnate Crucified Raised Glorified Interceding Redeemer All which sheweth that Gods removal of the sanctified day from the seventh to the first of the Week and his preferring the Commemoration of Redemption and our use of the Glass and Book of an Incarnate Saviour before that of the now accursed Creature is a work of the admirable wisdom of God and exceeding suitable to the nature of the things II. Now I come to consider of what you say against all this You Cite the numbers of many Chapters and Verses contrary to your grand principles these divisions being Humane Inventions in all which there is nothing about the Controversie in hand The Texts speak not of the Decalogue only but of the Law and of Gods Commandments and Christs Commandments Now I must tell you before-hand that I will take no mans word for the Word of God nor believe any thing that you say God speaketh without proof Prove it or it goeth for nothing with me For as I know that adding to Gods Word is Cursed Rev. 22. 18. as well as taking away so it I must once come to believe that God saith this or that without proof I shall never know whom to believe For twenty men may tell me twenty several tales and say that God saith them all I expect your proof then of one of these two assertions for which it is that you hold no man can gather by your own words or citations 1. That all the Law which was in being at Christs Incarnation was confirmed and continued by him which yet I do not Imagine you to hold 〈◊〉 all Pauls Epistles and especially the Ep. to the Heb. do so fully plead against it 2. Or else that by the Law in all those Texts is meant all the Decalogue and the Decalogue alone The Texts cited by you prove no more than what we hold as confidently as you viz 1. That all the Law of Nature where the Matter or Nature of the things continue is continued by Christ and is his principal Law 2. That the Decalogue as to that matter of it is continued as it is the Law of Nature which is almost all that is in it but not as the Jewish Law given by Moses hands to the Political body 3. That the Natural part of all the rest of Moses Law is continued as well as the Decalogue 4. That all Moses Law as well as the Decalogue shall be fullfilled and Heaven and Earth shall sooner pass away than one jot or tittle of it shall pass till it be fulfilled 5. That the Elements Shadows Predictions Preparations c. are all fulfilled by the coming of Christ and by a more perfect Administration For Christ fulfilled all Righteousness Mat. 3. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is sometimes put materially for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 6. That a change may be two waies made 1. By destroying a thing 2. By perfecting it And that by the Law in Matth. 5. 17 c. Christ meaneth the whole body of Gods Law then in force to the Jews considered as one frame consisting of Natural and Positive parts Of which he saith that he came not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to dissolve pull in pieces or destroy the Law as a licentious Teacher that would take off Gods obligations and leave the Wills and Lusts of men to a Lawless liberty which was it that the Pharises imputed to such as were
To call them together before they go to the solemn Assembly and to Pray with them and praise God and if there be time to read the Scripture and tell them what they have to do in publick 3. To see that Dinner and other common employments make no longer an intermission than is needful And to advise them that at their meat and necessary business they shew by their holy speeches that their minds do not forget the day and the employments of it 4. To sing Gods praises with them if there be time and bring them again together to the Church-assembly 5. When they return either to take some account of them what they have learned or to call them together to pray for a blessing on what they have heard and to sing praises to God and to urge the things which they have heard upon them 6. At Supper to behave themselves soberly and piously And after Supper to shut up the day in Prayer and Praise And either then or before either to examine or exhort inferiours according as the case of the persons and families shall require For in some Families it will be best on the same day to take an account of their profiting and to Catechize them And in other Families that have leisure other daies may be more convenient for Catechising and Examinations that the greater works of the Lords day may not be shortened IV. So much of the day as can be spared from publick and family worship must be spent in secret holy duties such as are 1. Secret Prayer 2. Reading of the Scriptures and good Books 3. Holy Meditation 4. And the secret Conference of bosome friends Of which I further adde 1. That where publick or family worship cannot be had as in impious places there secret duties must be the chief and make up the defect of others And it is a great happiness of good Christians who have willing minds that they have such secret substitutes and supplies That they have Bibles and so many good Books to read That they may have a friend to talk with of holy things But much more that they have a God to go to and a Heaven to Meditate on besides so many Sacred Verities 2. That my judgement is that in those places where the publick Worship taketh up almost all the day it is no sin to attend on it to the utmost and to omit all such Family and secret exercises as cannot be done without omission of the publick And that where the publick exercises allow but a little time at home the Family duties should take up all that little time except what some shorter secret Prayers or Meditations may have which will not hinder family duties And that it is a sinful disorder to do otherwise Because the Lords day is principally set apart for publick worship And the more private or secret is as it were included in the publick Your Families are at Church with you The same Prayers which you would put up in secret you may usually put up in publick and in Families And it is a turning Gods Worship into a Ceremony and Superstition to think that you must necessarily put up the same Prayers in a Closet which you put up in the Family or Church when you have not time for both Though when you have time secret prayer hath its proper advantages which are not to be neglected And also what secret or family duty you have not time for on that day you may do on another day when you cannot come to Church Assemblies And therefore it is an Errour to think that the day must be divided in equal proportions between Publick Family and Secret Duties Though yet I think it not amiss that some convenient time for Family and Secret duties be left on that day but not so much as is spent in publick nor nothing neer it If any shall now object I do not believe that we are bound to all this ado nor so to tire out our selves in Religious exercises Where is all this ado commanded us I answer 1. I have proved to you that in Nature and in Scripture set together as great a proportion of time as this for holy exercises is required 2. But O what a Carnal unthankful heart doth this objection signifie What do you account your Love to God and the Commemoration of his Love in Christ a toile What if God had only given you leave to lay by your worldly business and idle talk and Childish play for one dayes time and to learn how to be like Christ and Angels and how to make sure of a Heavenly Glory should you not gladly have accepted it as an unspeakable benefit O what hearts have these wretched men that must be constrained by fear to all that is good and holy and spiritual and will have none of Gods greatest mercies unless it be for fear of hell And they shall never have them indeed till they love them What hearts have those men that had rather be in an Ale-house or a Play-house or asleep than to be in heart with God That can find so much pleasure in jesting and idle talking and foolery that they can better endure it than to peruse a Map of Heaven and to read and hear the Sacred Oracles Who think it a toile to praise their Maker and Redeemer and a pleasure to game and dance and drink Who turn the glass upon the Preacher and grudge if he exceed his hour and can sit at a Tavern or Alehouse or hold on in any thing that 's vain many hours and never complain of weariness Do they not tell the world what enemies they are to God who love a pair of Cards or Dice or Wanton Dalliance better than his Word and Worship Who think six dayes together little enough for their worldly work and profit and one day in seven too much to spend in the thoughts of God and life Eternal Who love the dung of this present World so much better than all the joyes above as that they are weary to hear of Heaven above an hour at a time and long to be wallowing in the dirt again Is it not made by the Holy Ghost a mark not only of wicked men but of men notoriously wicked to be Lovers of pleasures more than of God 2 Tim. 3. 4. O Sinners that in these workings of the wickedness and malignity of your hearts you would at last but know your selves Is it not the Carnal mind that is thus at enmity to God and neither is nor can be subject to his Law Rom. 8. 6 7 8 Which will you take to be your friend Him that loveth your company or him that is a weary of it and is glad when he hath done with you and is got away What would you think of Wife or Child or Friend if they should reason as you do and say What Law doth bind 〈◊〉 to be so many hours in the House or Company or 〈◊〉 of my Husband my Father or my Friendâ—
You do not use if you have a Feast or a Cup of Wine before you to ask Where doth God Command me to Eat or Drink it You can do this without a Command If you hear but of a gainful Market you ask not Where doth God make it my duty to go to it If one would give you Money or Land you would scarcely ask How prove you that I am bound to take it You would be glad of Leave without Commands If the King should say to you Ask what you will and I will give it you you would not say Where am I bound of God to ask And when God saith Ask and it shall be given you you say How prove you that I am bound to ask You can sing ribbald Songs and Dance without a Command You can Feast and Play and Prate and Sleep and Loyter in idleness without a Command But you cannot learn how to be saved nor praise your Redeemer without a Command A Thief can Steal a Fornicator can Play the Bruit a Drunkard can be Drunk an Oppressour can make himself hateful to the Oppressed not only without Law but against it But you cannot Rejoice in God nor live one day together in his Love and Service without a Law no nor with it neither For because you had rather not Love him it is certain that you do not Love him And because you had rather play than pray and serve the flesh than serve your Maker it is a certain sign that you do not serve him with any thing which he will accept as Service For while he hath not your hearts he hath nothing which he accepteth Your Knee and Tongue only is forced against your will to that which you call serving him But your Hearts or Wills cannot be forced When you had rather be elsewhere and say When will the Sermon and Prayer be done that I may be at my Work or Play God taketh it as if you were there where you had rather be I pray you deal openly and tell me you that think a day too long for God and are weary of all holy work What would you be doing that while if you had your choice Is it any thing which you dare say is better Dare you say that playing is better than Praying and a Piper or Dancing is better than praising God with Psalms Or that your Sleep or Games or Chat or Worldly business is better than the Contemplation of God and Glory And will those deceivers of the people also say this who teach them that it is a tedious uncommanded thing to serve God so long I think they dare not speak it out If they dare let them not grudge that they must be for ever shut out of Heaven where there will be nothing else but holiness But if you dare not say so Why will you choose the worse before the better Why will you be weary of well doing that you may do ill Why are you not more weary of every thing than of holiness unless you think every thing better than holiness Especially those men 1. Whose judgement is for will-worship should not ask where is there a Command for any good which they are willing of But doth not this shew that you had rather there were no Command for it Be judges your selves 2. And they that are for making the Churches a great deal more work than God hath made them O what abundance hath Popery made and what a multitude of new Religious particles methinks should not for shame say that God hath tired them out and made them too much work already Do you cry out What a weariness is this one day when you would adde of your own such a multitude of more dayes and more work Yet though I talk of doing it willingly if you had no forcing Law of God but bare leave to receive such Benefits my meaning is not that God hath left any such things indifferent or made them only the matter of Counsels and not of Commands For he hath made it our duty to receive our own benefits and to do that which tendeth to our own good and Salvation But if it had been so that we had only leave to receive so great mercies without any other penalty for refusing than the loss of them it should be enough to men that Love themselves and know what is for their good Much more when commands concurr CHAP. X. How the Lords day should not be spent Or What is unlawful on it AS to the resolving of this Question also I would wish for no greater advantage on him that I dispute with but that he be a man that Loveth God and Holiness and knoweth somewhat of the difference between things temporal and things Eternal and knoweth what is for the good of his soul and preferreth it before his body and hath an appetite to relish the delights of Wisdom and of things most excellent and Divine And that he be one that knoweth his own necessities and repenteth of his former loss of time and liveth in a daily preparation for death that is that he be a real Christian And then by all this it will appear how the Lords day must not be spent or what things are unlawful to be done thereon I. Undoubtedly it must not be spent in wickedness In gluttony or drunkenness chambering or wantonness strife or envying or any of those works of the flesh which are at all times sinful An evil work is most unsuitable to a holy day And yet alas what day hath more ryotting and excess of meat and drink and wantonness and sloth and lust than it II. It ought not to be spent in our worldly businesses which are the labours allowed us on the six dayes unless Necessity or Mercy make them at any time become such duties of the Law of Nature as Positives must for that time give place to For how is it a day separated to holy employments if we spend it in the common business of the world It is the great advantage that we have by such a separated day that we may wholly call off our minds from the world and set them on the world to come and exercise them in holy communion with God and his Church without the interruptions and distractions of any earthly cogitations A divided mind doth never perform any holy work with that integrity and life as the nature of it requireth Heavenly contemplations are never well managed with the intermixture of diverting wordly thoughts So great a work as to converse in Heaven to be rapt up in the admirations of the Divine perfections to kindle a fervent Love to God by the contemplation of his Love and Goodness to triumph over sin and Satan with our triumphing glorified Head to Commemorate his Resurrection and the whole work of our Redemption with a lively working faith doth require the whole heart and will not consist with aliene thoughts and the diversion of fleshly employments or delights Nay had we no higher
Scriptures and to learn their Catechisms and the Word of God Surely it better beseemeth any man that believeth another life a Heaven and a Hell to say Poor Labourers have so little time to Learn to Meditate to Read to Pray on the week dayes that if they do not follow it close upon the Lords day they are like to perish in their ignorance For if the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost 2 Cor. 4. 3. which do you think it better to leave undone if one of them must be left undone Whether the learning of Gods Word or the Pleasures and Recreations of the flesh 3. It is either their Bodies or their Minds that need Recreation When the Body is tired with toilesome labour it is ease rather than toilesome Dancings or Plays that are fit to recreate it Or else God will be charged with mistake in the reasons of the ancient Sabbath But if it be the Mind that needeth recreation why should not the Learning of Heavenly truth and the Joyful Commemoration of our Redemption and the foresight of Heaven and the Praises of God be more delightful than the noise of Thornes under a pott even than the laughter and sport of fools or than the Dancings and Games that now you plead for But the truth is It is not the Minds of poor labouring men that are over-workt and tired on the week dayes but it is their bodies And therefore there is no Recreation so suitable to them as the ease of the body and the holy and joyful exercise of the mind upon their Creator their Redeemer and their Everlasting Rest. 4. But if you will needs have daies of temptation and sinful sports and pleasures for them let Landlords abate their Tenants as much Rent as one dayes vacancy from labour in a Month or a Fortnight will amount to or let the Common ` Saints dayes which of the two are more at mans disposal be made their sporting dayes and rob not their souls of that one weekly day which God hath separated for his Worship Obj. But there are Students and Lawyers and Ministers and Gentlemen whose labour is most that of the Brain and not the Plow-mans bodily toile and these have need of bodily Recreation Answ. And there are few of these so poor but they can take their bodily Recreation on the week dayes And many of them need as much the whole Lords day for their souls Edification as any others And no one that knoweth himself will say that he needs it not If any men need remission of Studies and bodily Exercise it is Ministers themselves And is it themselves that they plead for Sports and Dancing for Would they be companions of the vain in such like vanities Obj. But the mind of man is not able to endure a constant intension and elevation of devotion all the day long without recreation and intermission And putting men upon more than they can do will but hinder them when a little recreation will make them more fresh and fervent when they return to God Answ. O what an advantage is it to know by experience what one talketh of And what an inconvenience to talk of Holiness and Heavenliness by hearsay only 1. To poor people that have but one day in seven that one day should not seem too long 2. If it be from a Carnal enemity to God and spiritual things shortness and seldomeness will be no Cure But they have need rather to be provoked to diligence till they are cured than to be indulged in that averseness and floth which till its cured will prevail when you have done your best against it 3. But if it be a weariness of the flesh as the Disciples when they slept while Christ was Praying or a weariness through such imperfection of Grace and Remnant of Carnality which the sincere are lyable to then giving way to it will increase it and resisting it is the way to overcome it 4. How many necessary intermissions are there which confute this pretense of weariness Some time is taken up in dressing And some with poor Servants in waiting on their Masters and Mistrisses and in preparing Meat and drink some in going to Church and coming home some in eating usually more than once some in preparing again for sleep besides what Cattle and by-occasions will require And is the remainder of one day in a week yet too much for the business which we are Created preserved and Redeemed for and on which our endless life dependeth O that we knew what the Love of God is and what it is to regard our souls according to their worth Would not a soul that loveth God rather say Alas how short is the Lords day How quickly is it gone How many interruptions hinder my delight Shall I think a Week short enough for my worldly labours and one day thus parcelled too long to seek the face of God I see blind Worldlings and sensualists can be longer unwearied at Market in their Shops and Fields especially when their gain comes in and at Cards and Dice and Bowling and idle Prating c. And shall I be weary so soon of the most noble and necessary Work and of the sweetest pleasures upon Earth An Hypocrite that draweth near to God but with the lips whilest his heart is far from him as he never truly seeketh God so he never truly findeth him and hath none of the true spiritual delights of holiness nor ever feeleth the pleasure of exercising his Love to God by the help of faith in the hopes of Heaven And therefore no wonder if he be weary of such unprofitable sapless and unpleasant work as his dead formalities and affectations are But it is not so with the sincere experienced Christian who serving God in spirit and truth hath true and spiritual recreation pleasure and benefit in and by his Service And therefore we see that the holy experienced believers are still averse to these sensual diversions and do not think the Lords da or his Service too long And O Christian what happy advantage in such controversies have you in your holy sincerity and sweet experience 5. But yet I am not such a stranger to man to my self or others as to deny that our naughty hearts are inclined to be weary of well doing But mark what a cure God in Wisdom and mercy hath provided for us As it is but one day in seven which is thus to be wholly employed with God and as much of this day is taken up with the bodily necessaries aforesaid so for the rest God appointeth us variety of exercises that when we are weary of one another may be our recreation When we have heard we must pray and when we have prayed we must hear again We must Read we must Sing and speak Gods Praises we must celebrate the memorial of Christs death in the Sacrament we must Meditate we must Conferr we must instruct our Families And we have variety of subjects for each