bleeding Innocence of a Saviour than with the Tragical Chimaeras of a Dramatick Poem How great and manifold is the guilt of being niggardly and cold in our love to him whom to love is so easy so advantageous nay whom 't is hard not to love What a sin against nature not to love them that love us What a sin against Reason not to love such an object as we confess is most lovely What a sin against Grace not to love even Him who hath poured out upon us the Spirit of love and so hath offer'd us at least the Grace to love him What a sin against Gratitude not to love Him who so loves us as that he loves to forgive us the scandalous littleness of our Love What a sin to be wanting in love to Him who dyed to expiate our want of love to him What a barbarous sin is it to love him lamely and with indifference who stands knocking at our Door and importunes us to open with much Intreaty and that from morning till midnight until his Head is fill'd with Dew and his locks with the drops of the night what an amazing sin is it and almost incredible to love our Saviour any whitless than we love our sins To have a much weaker love for the Proper object of our love than we are wonted to bestow on the proper object of our Hatred Yet is there any thing more usual than for many not to love Christ who are called Christians and to demonstrate they do not love him by their not keeping his Commandments So very great reason there is to put a strong Emphasis on the Particle If that even the best of us perhaps may call our love into Question whether it is such as will serve the turn whether such as does employ us in the due keeping of the Commandments Sect. 9. And therefore for a conclusion let us thus reckon within our selves That in as much as without Faith it is impossible to please God and seeing no Faith is true but that which worketh by love and seeing no love will prove effectual but that which brings forth obedience to the Commandments of Christ in which respect 't is called fitly the fulfilling of the Law seeing also we must know that Christ is in us or among us which we can very hardly do but by the love we bear to him as well as by the love which he bears to us Shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which he hath given us And seeing by consequence that our love appears to be one of the greatest Hinges upon which the very Door of our Hope does turn it concerns us as much as Salvation comes to that we raise up our hearts to things invisible and future and that we work up our affections towards the right hand of God where Jesus sitteth and is inthron'd by all the Instruments and Engines to be imagin'd Never must we cease from our work of Faith which is obedience from our labour of love which is Industry and diligence in that obedience from our Patience of Hope which is indurance unto the end in that industrious way of obedience until the Flame of our Affection has burnt up all unclean Fires obstructing the passage 'twixt us and Christ and made its way to Immortality in contempt of all Ifs or Peradventures that it may never more be said If we love him but because we love him and because we cannot but love him we are resolv'd not to be able not to keep his Commandments Sect. 10. For by the Custom of our obedience that I may touch before hand on what will properly be handl'd in other places we shall contract unto our selves so great an easiness to obey that 't will be difficult and hard to be disobedient We shall be ready to object to any masterful temptation what Ioseph did to his tempting Mistress how can we do this great wickedness and sin against God wilful sin will become such a stranger to us we shall so lose its acquaintance by discontinuing to commit it that we shall neither have the heart nor the Face to own it I say by a long and constant practice in the keeping of the Commandments and going on a great while in the path of Righteousness we shall forget the way back to our old Rebellions and shall arrive at an averseness to those enticements with which we were wont to converse with Pleasure Ever saying when we are tempted with the spouse in the Canticles we have cast off our coat how shall we put it on We have washt our feet how shall we defile them An inveterate habit of the soul like such an habit of the Body as it is not quickly gotten so when it is it is hardly lost And as the habit of living wickedly turns our wickedness into our nature that to cease from doing wickedly all things in us must become new so the habit of doing well does so rivet and ingrain the love of Piety in our hearts that 't is well nigh as difficult to raze it out as for a Leopard to change his spots or an Aethiop his skin Is there any among us who has been so accustom'd to any sin as that it has got the dominion over him let him but have the Curiosity to make an obvious experiment for the sole want of which he understands not the pleasures of vertuous living and my life for his it will set him free Let him accustom himself as much to the keeping of the Commandments as he has don unto the Breach and Transgression of them and he will find himself as perfectly an humble servant unto Righteousness as before he was a servant and slave to sin Righteousness will get the Dominion over him 't will Rule and Reign in his mortal body it will so lift up his reason above his Passions and so bring down his Appetite to a subjection under his Will as that the law in his members will but timorously war against the law in his mind He will be passionately in love both with the Burthen and the yoke as with the Beauty and the Love of his master Christ. And like the Bondman in Exodus at the great year of Manumission will rather be bored through the ear than be free from Christ. The Apostles word is He will be a new Creature and even those which heretofore were his most formidable Duties will now at last so become his supream delights that as he will not indure to do the things which he abominates so as little will he be able to abstain from the duties he so much loves Thus at last he will be brought into that blessed disability of wilful sinning of which S. Iohn speaks in his first Epistle He that is born of God sinneth not neither can he saith the Apostle and that because he is born of God That is he cannot sin wilfully so as still to be regenerate
that such a thing should be suppos'd as that a Christian should not love the Lord Iesus Christ Let us examin if you please how very natural 't is to love him that so our wonder may be the less at the severity of the Curse which our Apostle thunders out against as many as love him not Sect. 6. First 't is natural for us as men to love the gifts of the Almighty because by them we have the pleasure of staying our hunger and our thirst the pleasure of giving Satisfaction to all our Appetites and Needs Next 't is every whit as natural to love that Love of the Almighty from whence those gifts are derived to us And then how natural is the Transition from our love of his Love unto a yet greater love of Him that loves us For such a free Lover of Souls must needs Himself be more lovely than all his Love as much as the Agent than the Act or the Cause than the Effect Sect. 7 Again be we never so debauch't we cannot possibly abstain from being kind unto ourselves And as little from being kind unto the benefits and Blessings which we injoy And being so kind unto the benefits we should as little methinks abstain from being kind to the Benevolence from which those Benefits must needs proceed How much less should we be able to abstain from being kind to the Benefactor who is the Sourse and the Fountain of that Benevolence Certainly nothing can be viler than to love the meer Gifts above the Giver nothing more contumelious to him that Gives them Sect. 8. And if 't is natural for us as men to love our God as God only or at least as the Giver of our Injoyments how much more as God in Christ Reconciling us all unto Himself He is the Maker and the Preserver and so at least the Benefactor of all things else but the Redeemer the Restorer the Reconciler only of us As God Incarnate he conversed with men on Earth and as such in special manner we still converse with him in Heaven I therefore say in special manner because to address our selves to God as he is Infinite and Invisisible a self-subsisting Existence from everlasting to everlasting is not only apt to dazzle but to distract our understandings Our Thoughts are lost in this Ocean as the drops of a Bucket And where our Thoughts are hardly fixt 't is hard to fasten our Affections But now to address ourselves to God in the man Christ Iesus as he is manifest in the Flesh and hypostatically united to human Nature to settle our Affections and Thoughts upon him both as our Sacrifice and our Priest our Elder Brother and our Advocate as one incessantly pleading for us and reconciling us to Himself This is to take him at the advantage of his descending to our Infirmities and as it were to lay hold both on his Majesty and his Mercy whilst he is thus stooping down to our low embraces And therefore if any man shall be found so void of Grace and good Nature as not to love the God of Heaven both as a Bridegroom and a Redeemer who never had bought but to espouse us and courts our kindness under the Title of The Lord Iesus Christ he cannot deserve a milder Curse than that of Anathema Maranatha Which though the frightful'st and the most dismal that any poor Caitiff can undergo is yet the mildest and the most gentle that our Apostle could in Conscience condemn Them to who should be found NOT TO LOVE the Lord Jesus Christ. Should the very Souls of men be wholly dissolv'd into Love â—…twould be no more than He deserves for the excess of whose Love to the Souls of men the Holy Ghost hath affirmed that He is Love And considering how much the Cause is more noble than the Effect as I said before 't is very evident that our Saviour should be much dearer to us than our Salvation The name of Iesus a Saviour how delicious to our mouths ought it to be when e're we speak it How melodious to our Ears when e're we hear it And what a Iubily to our Hearts whensoever we do ruminate or think upon it Having therefore such a name as is above every name the name of Iesus a Saviour nor that temporal but eternal he needs must challenge such a Love as is above every Love not only of our Sins but of our selves too And therefore well might S. Paul upon the foulest supposition that can be made of a Malefactor pronounce the formidabl'st Sentence that can be uttered by any Iudge If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha Sect. 9. These words of the Apostle which I have thought a fit Subject for the second Part of my Design are first of all to have a general and then a more special Consideration Their Parts in the General are briefly Three First the necessary Duty which is incumbent on a Christian and that is the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Next the Latitude or Extent of the obligingness of the Duty which does not reach only to some but to all in general And this is imply'd in the Indefinite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If any man love him not Thirdly the dreadfulness of the Danger to whosoever shall despise or neglect the Duty And this is expressed in the sentence of esto Anathema Maranatha So that in order to the more plain and useful handling of the Text which is propos'd only to profit and not to please us we are to fasten our present Thoughts upon these three subjects of Meditation First the Nature of the Love which is here requir'd Next the Quality of the Curse which is here denounc't Thirdly the means we are to use to attain the first and in consequence of that to escape the second CHAP. I. Sect. 1. TO understand the first aright we are to view the Grace of Love by several steps of Gradation First of all we are to view it as it is fasten'd upon God and so is contradistinguish't to all other Love Such as is the love of men whether our Neighbours or our selves the love of our Bodies and of our Souls and so of all other Creatures not only such as are unlawful and under a special prohibition but also such as are commanded and of necessity to be lov'd It must be opposite to the former and hugely transcendent unto the later And then it is the Grace of Love as fastned in general upon God But we are secondly to consider it in its particular application I mean its Appropriation to the Lord Iesus Christ. And this again in a threefold respect as he is Dominus the Lord who is to rule and reign over us and as Iesus the Saviour who is like Ioshua and the Iudges at once to deliver and to conduct us and as Christ the Messias in all his Offices at once in that of Teaching and Blessing and Swaying his Scepter
higher than by reflecting much and often on him who lov'd us in such a measure I might have said so out of measure as to have hated even Himself in a comparative signification For neither was his life so dear nor was his Bloud so pretious to him but that he was prodigal of them both when both might fall to our Advancement Methinks there is nothing more expressive of God's obliging us to love him than that word of S. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He SPARED not his own Son but delivered him up for us all We know his Son was Himself as to the unity of the Godhead yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He did not spare him Should we not think that Father cruel and void of natural Affection who would not spare his own Son no not his Beloved and only Son no not when 't was in his choice and his power to spare him yet when Abraham being commanded was ready to Sacrifice his Isaac 't was not his Cruelty but his obedience and that was the fruit of such a Faith as did work by love I mean a love of his God and not at all of his Isaac whom in that case he was to prosecute with a comparative Detestation And in like manner when the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ could not so wisely shew his Mercy for all aeternity upon us as for a time by shewing none upon the Lord Iesus Christ it was the highest and best expression not of his Cruelty but of his Love For he could never have spared us his adopted Sons if he had spared that Son who was his only-Begotten Nor could it be Cruelty even to Him not to be spared by his Father because volenti non fit injuria he was willing yea and desirous not to be spared for a Time rather than millions of men and women should certainly fail of being spared to all aeternity What then shall we return him for so astonishing a Love as is now describ'd Shall we spare any thing that is ours when 't is well-pleasing unto Him that we should not spare it Suppose he would not be pleas'd unless we gave our first-born for our Transgressions the fruit of our Body for the sin of our Soul Should we spare our own child in so great a Case How then comes it to pass we are so sparing to our lusts and do so grumble to be parted from our Destroyers Are those enemies of our Souls so extreamly dear to us as that we cannot find in our hearts either to send them out of our Bosomes or to deliver them up to a Crucifixion no not in love to that God who sent his Son out of his Bosom and delivered him to be crucified in love to us Sure if our Souls were all Flint yet being smitten with such a love they should yield some Fire Or if our Hearts were all Iron yet one would think that such a load-stone should draw them up Or however if it will not yet let us try a Fourth Engine for the winding up of our Affections Let us shame our selves out of our Coldness and Indifferency to Christ by duly reflecting upon our warmth to Inferiour things Not inferiour only to Him but to the Dignity of our Nature A Nature common to us with Him being consider'd in his Humanity and by so much the worthier both of our Care and our Respect too What Love do we bestow upon the vanity of the Creature to please a Palate an Eye an Ear a Fancy And shall we have so much love to fasten upon the Surface and outside of Dust and Ashes whilst so little for a Saviour as to permit it to be a Doubt if we have any for him or not All the noble men of Greece would ly like dogs at the door of the Corinthian Harlot and pay obedience to Her Commands notwithstanding they did lead in the paths of Death And shall a Question be made of our love to Christ whose very deformities make him fairer than the children of men I mean his wounds and his Bruises which should to us be more lovely than all the Roses of Sharon and the Lillies of the Valley as having been wholly suffer'd by him on our Account Or shall a Question be ever made of our obedience to his Commands which if a man do he shall live in them yet how many Trifles do we love and with what vehemence of Affection of which the best consequent is this that we shall heartily repent our having lov'd them and what a madness what a shame what a disparagement and a discredit must it needs be unto our Reason to lay out the Treasures of our Love upon those Allectives which we cannot but hope we shall be heartily sorry for because we cannot but fear that if we are not both truly and timely sorry we shall be hopelesly sorry when 't is too late but how much a greater madness is it to be so negligent and illiberal in our Affection towards Him whom the longer we shall love we shall love so much the more and shall have nothing to repent of but that we ever lov'd him less and that withal it was so late before we lov'd him shall we be able to say less of our Love to Christ than the Apostle S. Paul could say of his to his Corinthians observe him speaking to that unkind and ingratefull People Most gladly will I spend and be spent for you though the more abundantly I love you the less I be lov'd 'T was strange on their parts that they should love so much the less the more abundantly they were lov'd But somewhat more strange on His that he should spend and be spent and both most gladly notwithstanding the discouragements of their Return which was of nothing but of Hatred for the excesses of his Goodwill Lord how happy were it for us had we but half so much love for the Lord Iesus Christ as that expression of S. Paul does amount unto it is impossible for our Saviour to love us the less the more we love him So very far he is from that that he did spend and was spent and both most gladly for the love he bare to us when we had none And therefore the least that we can do is both to spend and to be spent to part with all that we have and with all we are too for the love we bear him who so dearly loves us It is an hard heart indeed which is so far from bestowing that it will not repay or return Affection We will spend and be spent for our darling sins although they love us the less the more abundantly we love them for the more we still love them the more degrees of Damnation they threaten to us Let us therefore even for shame have as much kindness for our Preserver as we have had for these Authors of our Destruction If in a very free manner we have been
we love the brethren 1 Joh. 3. 1 4. Hereby we know we are of the Truth and have Confidence towards God if we keep his Commandments And this is his Commandment that we love one another v. 19. to v. 23. Sect. 18. Hence we see it is evident There is not a clearer Demonstration of our loving God with all our hearts than the loving our Neighbour as our selves From whence it follows that every sin must needs argue some want of Love For if against the first Table it is through a want of some love to God And if against the second it must needs be for want of some love to Men. Again it follows on the contrary that where Love is perfect and entire no Commandment can be broken For loving God with all our hearts we shall keep the first Table and loving our Neighbour as our selves we shall not fail to keep the second Sect. 19. What I have shew'd in the Great I can easily shew in the Retail too to wit that Love is the fulfilling of the Law For if we love God as we ought to do we shall certainly have no God but Him Much less shall we worship a Graven Image We shall not lift up his Name in vain Nor shall we fail to keep holy his Holy Dayes And if we love our Neighbour as Christ requires we shall be sure to render to every man his Due And so by consequence we shall honour all our Parents and Superiors whether publick or private Ecclesiastical or Civil Then for the Neighbour who is equal or in any degree inferiour to us we shall be sure not to injure him in any kind From whence it follows we shall not kill for that were to injure him in his Life Nor commit Adultery for that were to injure him in his Wife Nor steal or Plunder for that were to injure him in his Goods Nor bear false Witness for that were to injure him in his good Name And as we shall not thus injure him either in Deed or in Word so if we love him as our selves or as Christ lov'd us we shall not do him any injury no not so much as in our Thoughts we shall not covet or be desirous of any thing that is our Neighbours Thus the four Precepts of the first Table and the six Precepts of the second or if there is any other Precept besides these Ten they all are briefly comprehended in this one word Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Sect 20. And now I do not doubt but we are all of one mind as touching the Character and Badge by which we may be known to be Christ's Disciples The peculiar Note of Distinction by which we are taken from out the world as it were sever'd and set apart from all exorbitant societies and sorts of men whether their Ring-leaders and Masters are Jews or Gentiles First for the Gentiles we may know the Disciples of Zoroastres by their belief of two gods and Incestuous wedlocks We may know the Disciples of the Brachmans by their unparallel'd self-denials in food and rayment We may know the Disciples of Pythagoras by their Reverence to the numbers of four and seven The Disciples of Plato by their fanciful Idaea's in the concave of the Moon The Disciples of Zeno by their Dreams of Apathie and Fate The Disciples of Mahomet as well by the filthiness of their Paradise as by their desperate Tenet of God's decrees And then for the Iews we may know the Disciples of the Scribes by their Traditional corruptions and Expositions of the Law We may know the Disciples of the Pharisees by their Form of godliness and their appearing righteous unto men We may know the Disciples of the Sadduces by their denial of Providence and dis-belief of the Resurrection We may know the Disciples of the Esseni by their overstrict Sabbatizing The Disciples of the Nazarites by their abstinence from the flesh of all living creatures And the Disciples of the Hemerobaptists by their every day washings from Top to Toe We may know the Disciples of Iohn the Baptist by their remarkable Fastings and other Austerities of Life But by this shall all men know that we are all the Disciples of Iesus Christ If we love one another even as Christ hath loved us CHAP. II. Sect. 1. WHilst I am thinking what proper Lessons we are to draw from Christ's words the words of S. Paul which he writ to Timothy do straight occur to my remembrance All Scripture saith he is by divine Inspiration and is profitable for Doctrin for Reproof for Correction for Instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be furnished unto all good wooks 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. For were there no other Scripture than that which hath given me my present subject I should think it very profitable for each of those ends and think the workman well furnished for every good work Sect. 2. First 't is profitable for Doctrin because it teacheth such as are ignorant the true importance of Christianity which does not consist as some would have it in our being born of godly Parents believing the History of the Gospel making profession of zeal to Christ posting up and down from Sermon to Sermon making many and long prayers or whatsoever is comprehended under the Form of Godliness that is the Image the Picture the Counterfeit of Devotion as the word in the Original does very naturally import 2 Tim. 3. 5. For many profess to know God who in their works deny him And let a mans profession be what it will yet if he acts in contradiction to the Commandments of Christ that very acting is nothing better than a Denial of the Faith And so 't is call'd by the Apostle 1 Tim. 5. 8. Christianity does not consist then in such a sanguin presumption as some call Faith in such a carnal security as some call Hope in such a parcel of fair words as some call Charity in such a worldly sorrow as some call Repentance but it consist's in such a Faith as worketh by Love in such an Hope as does cleanse and purifie in such a Charity as worketh no ill to his Neighbour but is on the contrary the fulfilling of the Law and in such a Repentance as shew's it self by amendment and change of life bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance Whatever some Mockers are wont to say we find by the Tenor of the Gospel that a material part of Godliness is moral honesty The chief ingredients in a Christians life are acts of Iustice and works of Mercy than which there was nothing more conspicuous in the life of Christ. The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first Our chiefest duty towards God is our duty towards our Neighbour God will have Iustice and Mercy to be perform'd to one another before he accepts of any sacrifice which can be offer'd unto
THE Signal Diagnostick WHEREBY We are to judge of our own Affections And as well of our Present as Future State OR THE LOVE of CHRIST PLANTED Upon the very same TURF on which It once had been Supplanted by The Extreme Love of Sin BEING The substance of several Sermons deliver'd at several Times and Places and now at last met together to make up the Treatise which ensues By Tho. Pierce D. D. LONDON Printed by R. N. for R. Royston Bookseller to the Kings most Excellent Majesty 1670. A Premonition to the Reader HAVING been many times importun'd since the Fire of London both to permit a new Impression of my Sinner Impleaded and to gratifie my Stationer with some Inlargement I could not think of a fitter Subject in relation to the Method I first proposed to my self than that of which I am writing this brief Account My method was avowedly That of the Husbandman in the Parable who does not only think fit to cleanse the fallow ground of the Heart before he sowes it but sowes it throughly when it is clean too And so accordingly having indeavour'd in my first Practical Essay and in hope of God's Blessing on it to weed out of mine own and out of other mens Natures the Love of Sin I was to labour in my second and by the same Blessing of God on which alone we depend for any Proportionable success to Stock the very same ground with the Love of Christ. It being certainly not enough however absolutely needful not to sow among Thorns or meerly to break up the fallow ground but as the same Prophet words it we must sowe in Righteousness to reap in Mercy And to be Positively glorified we must not think it of force sufficient that we be negatively good 'T is vain and fruitless that we endeavour to eradicate out of our hearts the love of our Sins and Sensualities unless it be that our Love of Christ may therein take both the deeper and faster Root And because the Love of Christ does seem as rarely understood as 't is often talk't of we must be taught wherein it lyes and the several wayes of its Attainment To the Knowledge of the First and to the Practice of the Second I have directed both the First and Second Part of my Inlargement As they are now put together I know not at present what more to add besides my humble and hearty Prayers unto the Lord of the Vineyard in which we labour and whose Harvest we are in one sense as well as his Husbandry in the second and his Labourers in a third that whilst we are Plowing what we have fallow and are Planting what we have Plow'd and are Watering what we have Planted He who is said to rain Righteousness will bless our Labours with Increase A Table of Particulars in the SIGNAL DIAGNOSTICK A ANtinomianism an Epidemical disease 1 Introd Sect. 1. its Antidote Sect. 2. its danger pag. 68 69. Aemulation its use p. 113 114 110 120. Affections things indifferent in themselves p. 112 113. Assurance how to be founded p. 75 76 77 129 137. B Beauty even that of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul p. 109 110. how to behold That above p. 111 112. C Caution to be used about the object and measure of our Love p. 58. Charity see Love Christ how natural to love him p. 7. 8 9 88 89. wherein his love consists most p. 15 16 c. and ours to him p. 41 42. how to make his yoak smooth p. 62 63. as a Bridegroom most apt to melt p. 85 89 90 126. Christians capable of Friendship with Christ p. 24 43 44. their character 41 42 63 64 72 73. their lot 95 96. their characteristic 133 c. 142 143 c. 154 c. Christianity little of it even in Christendom 156 157 c. Commandments the art of making them pleasant 11 12. the keeping of them is the strongest Argument of our Love 13 14. Christ's command to keep them the strongest Proof of his Love 15 16 c. to keep them is a reward 18 19 20 c. the best expression of our love 37 38 c. the Art of keeping them entire 80 81. Conversation of what importance 61 122 123 c. 127. Curse due to them who love not Christ 99 100. Custom how an artificial nature 10 11 61 62 122 123 c. D Danger how made to save us 101. David how he valued the Commandments 20 21 c. 80 81. Decrees the influence on practice which our opinions of them have 102 103. Devils how we may profit by their example 3 4. Disobedience the greatest expression of our hatred 41. Duty how 't is our happiness to do it 31 32. how to make it delightful to us 61 62 c. wherein the whole of it does stand 79. not impossible to be don 112 113. its ease and pleasure 124 125. E Election how to know it and make it sure 74 75 c. Enemies how they are a sort of Friends 142 143. Epicurus and Eudoxus how Proselytes to vertue 61. Excommunication threefold among the Iews 99 100 Experience of vertue apt to make her most converts 19 20 c. 61 62 63 123 124. F Faith how easily mistaken 68 69 c. 74 75. in what sense 't is all in all 79 80. little of it in the world 164. Fear how made wholsom 83. and saving to us 101. Flatterers Christ's distinction 'twixt them and his friends 37 38. how many Christ has and how few true friends 65 66. Friendship instances of its force 138 139. of its counterfeits 140. its ground Religion 145. G God in Christ more endearing than God as God 89 90. Godliness a material part of it is moral honesty 155 c. Goodness how it commands Affection 50 51 72 73. Gospel the Christian school 149. Grace sufficient in them in whom it is not effectual 45 46 104 105 112 113. Gratitude how we should work our selves to it 83. H Happiness Desired by men of all Sects 29 30. wherein it properly does consist 31. how 't is our duty to be happy 32. Heathens a shame to many Christians 158. 165. Heart its deceitfulness 65 66 67 68 c. Humility the greatest honour 34 35. I Jews how they shame Christians by mutual Love 158 165. Industry and Indeavour how conducible to Salvation 104 105 106 107. Infallibility how mistaken 75 76 c. Ingratitude ugly enough to fright us from it self 8 9 47 48. Invisible how to be convers'd with 110 111 124 125. Justice how it yields the greatest pleasure 34 35. K Knowledge how it differs from Love and how many wayes p. 49. L Liberty wherein it really consists 23. 24. Love ever jealous of its repute 2 c. why it ought to be disinteressed 5 6 7. how the fulfilling of the Law 33 149 150 c. wherein it really consists 38 39 c. we have both means and motives to it 46.
47. ever attended with obedience 49 50 c. A fire 54. and is according to the fewel on which it feeds 55 56 c. it s proper Touchstone 65 66 c. 71 72 c. more worthy than Faith and hope 85 86. it s other Prerogatives 87 88. in what degree it is due to Christ 93 94. the several means of attaining that pitch of Love to Christ Iesus which is required 108 109 c. examples of it in Paul and Magdalene 113 114 115. in God himself 116 117. what begins in the flesh may be perfected in the spirit 125. unites and inebriates 127 128 129. of man to man 131 132 c. 141 c. M Magdalen her love to Christ 114 115 c. Man as man does love vertue 8 9. Martyrdom how it may stand with prosperity 97. Mercy how it yields the most profit to shew it unto others 34 35. Method of great Moment in Christian practice 107 108 109. N Nature its good inclinations even in its state of depravation 8. how far it is able to work with grace 104 105 106 107. O Obedience pleasant and a reward unto it self 18 19 20 c. 't was every thing to David by which he could be made happy 21 22. c. the great condition on which the promises are made 25 c. the one infallible proof of Love 38 39 c. 73 74. the art of getting it 80 81. it must be Impartial and Universal 82 94 95. Orthodoxy nothing worth without obedience 73 74 95. P Perseverance its necessity 76 77. Persecution how to sweeten it 82 83. how it reigns amongst Christians 156 157. Pleasures the greatest are the most innocent 19 20 62 63 64. Poverty a Preference due to it 163 164 165. Prayer how to make it most infallibly effectual 25 26 c. 124. Preaching to whom of no use 102 103. to whom useful 104 105. Promises the greatest that Christ could make 26 27. not absolute but conditional 28 29 77. Prosperity how reconcilable with sufferings 97. 98. R Rebellion the greatest Tyrant 23. Redemption universal 141. 142. S Salvation its Requisites 1 Introd Sect. 2. p. 10. 75. 76. Security the disease of most Christians 1 Introd Sect. 1. its danger 69. 70. 102. 103. Self-love its mischievous effects 57. how commonly more than our Love to God 125. 126. Self-denial how to be learnt 60. 61. c. how â—… supplies the place of Martyrdom 97. 98. Shame how subservient to Love p. 3. 4. c. 9. 47. 48. 60. 115. 118. 119. 120. 126. Sin what pains we take to make it seem lovely 56. 57. Sincerity the great Requisite of Love 146. V Virtue of greatest Sensuality 19. 61. 62. c. W Will how God works on it not as on agents meerly Natural 43. 44. c. How it works with God 104. 105. 106. 107. 124. World how to wean our selves from it 59. 60. 61. 108. 109. c. Imprimatur Tho. Tomkyns R. Rmo. in Christo Patri ac Domino Dno Gilberto divinâ Providentiâ Archi-Episc Cantuar. à sac dom Ex Aedib Lambethanis Martii 13. 1669. THE INTRODUCTION TO The First Part. Sect. 1. AS nothing is easier to a Christian than the gross knowledge of his Duty so there is nothing more difficult than a just Decorum in the Performance And this is certainly the reason that though the Kingdom of Grace hath been found by many who never sought it yet the Kingdom of Glory hath been sought by more who never found it It being the custom of most Professors in their Spiritual Travels only to gaze with greedy eyes on their Iourneys end without Employing their Indeavonrs to hit the way Like some of Those under the Pole in an half years night who have in storie been so blinded at the return of the Sun as not to see their way towards him we behold the glorious Promises of our exalted Sun of Righteousness with both our eyes but are so dazl'd with their Brightness as in comparison of Them to have scarce a glimmering of his Precepts We look on the other side our Work we are so Partially Supinely taken up with our Wages and do so sasten our Sanguin memories upon Christs love to us that we forget the great Requisites of ours to Him Whilst God is speaking from mount Gerizim we listen to him with willing Ears But are as deaf as any Adders when he calls to us from mount Sinai Our Saviour is welcom to us still in his Priestly office which is to Bless us but in his Kingly which is to Rule us he finds a different entertainment Every man hath his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or naked Appetite of the End but cares not greatly for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Consultation about the Means We would arrive at our Haven but not encounter with the Tempest preserve our Vessel but not cast away our Fraught pass over into Canaan but not through the Wilderness or the Red-sea Dye the Death of the Righteous we would all by all means but without either the care or the pains to live like him And would gladly ly with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom but are contented that the Dogs should have the licking of his Sores We love to put a misconstruction on several Articles of our Creed and take the Captain of our Salvation to have sinally so subdued our Ghostly enemy as to have left for his Souldiers no harder Task than the easy Injoyment of the Spoyl As if the Apostle had exhorted us to follow Christ without the Camp not to Fight but Triumph not to strive for the Masterie but supinely to receive it Sect. 2. Whereas it ought to be remember'd that as the way which leads to Heaven is both narrow and Incumber'd which the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does well import So the Gate that opens to it is Low and streight And being so it admits not of all Promiscuous comers but as Low of such as are Lowly and as streight of such as are Slender The Ambitious man therefore has too much stature and the Worldling has too much Bulk Through the one they are too high and through the other too unweildy They would Both enter in but upon their own Termes For the first would not be Lower nor the second Less Not at all laying to heart what our Lord himself has told us in his Sermon upon the Mount that Bliss and Glory are for the Meek and the Poor in Spirit for them that mourn and are merciful for them that make Peace and are Pure in heart for them that even hunger and thirst after Righteousness and for them that suffer hardship for Righteousness sake that is to say in fewer words for them alone that Love Christ and that keep his Commandments When he compares the Kingdom of Heaven unto a Treasure hid in a Field though perhaps it may be found for little or no Cost at all yet he
effect of discharging his duty and so 't is our duty to be happy and therefore an happiness to do our Duty The summ of our duty towards our Neighbour is to love him as our selves and the effect of this duty is full contentment and satisfaction For we are neighbours unto all for whom Christ dyed and he dyed for our enemies as well as Friends and if we love all the world for which Christ dyed with such a singleness of love as we love our selves with we cannot fail of observing that other Precept of our Saviour Matth. 7. 12. which is the doing unto others as we would that others should do to us And then by a consequence unavoidable we shall not covet another mans goods because we would not that another should covet ours And coveting nothing that is anothers we cannot choose but be satisfied and contented with our own And in contentment or satisfaction which are Synonymous it will be granted by all the world that real happiness does consist Sect. 20. Now if the loving of one another even as Christ hath loved us and as our selves do love our selves does infer our loving God with all our heart as S. Iohn does clearly intimate 1 Ioh. 4. 20. And if the Commandments of our Lord do amount all to this that we love one another with such a love as our Lord does clearly intimate in the 13 14 15 and 17. chapters of S. Iohn's Gospel then we discern the great reason of those expressions of S. Paul He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law And all the law is fulfilled in this one word thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self And if these things are so then all the moral law of Moses which is withal the law of Christ does make it our Duty to be content and by consequence to be happy and by consequence an happiness to do our Duty For he that saith in plain terms thou shalt not only not rob or defraud thy neighbour of his life his wife his goods or his good name but thou shalt also not coveâ—… any thing that is anothers doth clearly say in effect and substance thou shalt be satisfied with thine own thou shalt not be in any want of the things without but shalt have happiness within thee all thy desires shall be fulfill'd thou shalt have absolute contentment and satisfaction and the Angels of Heaven can have no more This is the precept which I command and this the Duty thou art obliged to perform Thou shalt not covet what is not thine that is to say in other words Thou shalt be as happy as I would have thee And thus at last I have proceeded unto the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or thing proposed to be prov'd Sect. 21. Another way whereby to prove it will be to argue from that Trichotomie in the 6. chapt of Micah at the 8. verse where the whole Body of the Commandments is compendiously divided into these three members to do Iustice to love Mercy and to walk humbly with our God The first of which bestows upon us a full Serenity of mind the most desirable felicity of being satisfied with our selves and so by consequence it yields us the greatest pleasure The second is not only to make our Donor to become our Debtor but to lend him our Riches upon Increase nor that for ten in the hundred but for an hundred-fold the Principal Mat. 19. 20. and by consequence it yields us the greatest gain The third is that which speaks us masters of our selves by speaking us servants to a master whose service is not only Freedom but Empire too Illi servire est regnare saith Espensaeus And giving us the advantage of that most honourable subjection which in Tacitus his judgment does place the Subjects above their Prince makes us Favorites in the Court of the King of Heaven and by consequence it yields the greatest Honour So that unless we are professedly Platonick Lovers of Disobedience all our Duties are conformable to the very unruliest of our Desires The doing of Iustice does comply with our Sensuality the loving of Mercy with our Avarice and to walk humbly with our God is very agreeable to our Ambition Sect. 22. Lest this should seem at first hearing to be but a phansiful way of arguing I shall shew it once more by a clearer light As for the first the doing of Iustice it entertains its entertainers with peace of Conscience which in the wise man's Judgment is a continual Feast It is so acceptable and pleasant to reflect in a mans Thoughts upon his having don well having wronged no man defrauded no man but dealt righteously with all that any man whose understanding hath not quite lost its Tast may make as pleasant a meal on a mess of Honesty I speak of likeness and not equality as if he had din'd that day in Paradise and taken his Supper in Heaven it self Sect. 23. The second the loving of Mercy is the giving our selves a Right to what we have by our parting with the possession For non videtur cujusquam id esse quod casu auferri potest saith Caius the Lawyer Nothing is properly our own which can possibly cease to be so by being entrusted unto a Treasurie where rust and moth can corrupt or where thieves break through and steal From whence it follows that 't is the Thrift if not the Avarice of a merciful man to make Heaven his Coffer and to Inventory his Goods by the number of the persons to whom he hath been a Benefactor For in propriety of speech we are worth no more than we have wisely given away And that the parting with our possession is no infringing of our Right appears not only by Gods but Iustinians Law For eum habere dicimus qui Rei dominus est aeque ac eum qui Rem tenet saith Ulpian And this Rule of the Civilians you may interpret out of S. Paul For when saith he we are poor by making many rich we are as having nothing and yet possessing all things Sect. 24. Lastly for the Third the walking humbly with our God it is not only the safest but noblest temper not only the most christian but the most hansome quality And thence is call'd by S. Peter not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is profitable or gainful in relation to God of whom it looks for its Reward but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too that is hansome or comly in the sight of men 1 Pet. 3. 4. Where having said wherein comliness does but negatively consist not in the plaiting of the hair or putting on of our apparel he proceeds to inform us wherein it positively consists to wit in the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the Ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit 'T is this that makes us like the Queens Daughter all glorious within And therefore when Celsus upbraided Origen with that degenerous modesty of the Christians for
Shall we convert that noble liberty which he hath given us into looseness And take occasion to be Rebellious from His leaving us to be free Shall we so very ill requite him for his great Favour and Partiality as to become the very worst of all his Creatures under Heaven because He made us the very best Methinks it should melt us into Obedience that God is pleas'd to deal with us as noble Creatures as Creatures capable of Friendship as Creatures made of the most liberal and most ingenuous Constitutions That he is pleased to persuade where he hath power to Compel and so far forth to command us as still to leave us Free-men That he is pleas'd to speak to us as here he does not in the stile of an absolute Soveraign If ye cannot resist me nor in the stile of an Angry Iudge If ye stand in fear of me but rather in the stile of a zealous Bridegroom If ye love me keep my Commandments This is most for our Glory as well as His that we be not only punctual but cheerful also in our duties and that we give him our Obedience as the natural Issue of our Love It being a bravery of Devotion and a generous nobleness of Spirit to be afraid of Disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ not so much because a Iudg able to terrifie and drive us from our Corruptions as because he is a Saviour who rather draws us to himself by the Bands of Love But now 't is time that I proceed to another Emphasis of the words from whence will arise another Inference That having shew'd how our Obedience is the greatest Expression of our Love I may prove it in the next place an unavoidable Effect too And that as it appears already to be the best and the most solid so it may also be found to be the most Inseparable instance of our Affection CHAP. IV. Of Love and Obedience in a Christian as two inseparable Companions every whit as inseparable as the Cause and the Effect or whatsoever else they are whereof the one doth of necessity infer the other Sect. 1. AND first because there is a Fallacy which many impose upon themselves whilst they think it as possible to love their Saviour without the keeping of his Commandments as to know or apprehend him without the keeping of his Commandments I shall begin with the great Difference betwixt the two natures of Love and Knowledge The end of Knowledge is to possess that which is True but the end of Love is to possess that which is Good Knowledge is an act of the Understanding but Love a motion of the Appetite Knowledge is seated in the Head but Love especially in the Heart Both are possessed of their objects by way of union but the union of Knowledge seems meerly passive as being made in the understanding which being possest of its object is quite at Rest. Whereas the union of Love is wholly Active as being made in the Appetite and by consequence in the Heart which being possessed of its object by an Intentional union is so very far from resting content with That that it employs every Faculty to gain the object that is belov'd not only by an intentional but real union So great and wide is the difference 'twixt Love and Knowledge that knowledge is but an idle unfruitful thing till it is quickned by the Industry and Heat of Love Our Knowledge of Christ as we are taught by sad experience is often Barren But 't is as evident by experience that the Love we bear to him is ever Fruitful and the Fruit it brings forth is ever the keeping of his Commandments For Sect. 2. Secondly This we are taught by the light of Nature That to perfect our union with what we love by our Injoyment of its possession we are to use the best means whereby to make ourselves lovely that so the person whom we love may himself be a Lover as well as we And sure the most effectual means whereby to make our selves lovely is our Conformity to the Humour and Disposition of what we love For a reciprocated love implyes a Harmony and Concord between two parties whereby each object is Agent too and each person lov'd becomes a Lover by the Conformity which he finds unto all his own humours in That which loves him Nor need we labour after this as a thing gainable by Art for nothing but flattery can stand in need of such help and flattery is no more than the Ape of Love just as Art is no more than the Ape of Nature But if indeed we do intensely and truely Love it will not be an artificial but a most natural issue of it To frame our manners and Conversations in proportion to the temper of our Beloved Now if Christ is the object we truely love we shall long after an union and earnestly labour to possess him by being first possessed by him Because till he stoops to our embraces we cannot possibly rise to His. And being convinc t he will not have us until he finds us worth the having or at least in a capacity of being Had how shall we search after the means whereby to be fitted for his Acceptance we shall incessantly cast about which way to please him and frame the course of our Lives to what we think He loves best We shall strive and contend after the knowledge of his Will with this intent only that we may do it And having found that his Commandments are the Transcriptions of his Will we shall compose our whole selves to the keeping of them And having don all we can shall never think we have don enough for that our Love being Infinite can never satisfie itself with any expressions which are not such So that if we love Christ with the whole Treasure of our Affection our obedience will know neither end nor measure but will be coveting to demonstrate itself as Infinite as is that object which doth attract it And this will farther appear by a Third way of arguing For Sect. 3. Whatsoever 'tis we love we love as Beautiful and Good Goodness is Beauty in its perfection The Soveraign beauty then of Goodness does by an absolute kind of Empire command Affection at least from as many as have eyes whereby to behold it as it is And seeing that which is so strong as to command our Love must needs predominate over all that our Love Commands Therefore to love is to be subject and as being in subjection to pay Obedience The truth of this universally may be the better understood by a few particulars For whâ—…soever loves Honour or worldly greatness does live a Feudatorie or Vassal to his Ambition Whosoever loves mony is basely a servant unto his Avarice and to that is most ready to pay obedience He who loves the hansom outside of dust and ashes lives in subjection to his Lust and does but go in those Errands on which It sends him So whosoever he
is that loves to live a sober and righteous and godly life is most affectionately a servant to the Lord Iesus Christ and does bestow his whole Time in doing the things that he Commands Let the object of our Love be what it will whether God or the World the Flesh or the Spirit still the Rule of the Apostle will be unalterably true That to whom we yield our selves servants to obey His servants we are to whom we obey whether of Sin unto Death or of Obedience unto Righteousness Love is ever so sure to beget obedience that when our Saviour would give a reason why no one man can serve two masters meaning those two call'd God and Mammon he made his reason to stand in this that no one man can love two Masters For either he will hate the one and love the other or will hold to the one and despise the other So that if we love God we shall be sure to hate Mammon and if again we hold to Mammon we shall rebel against God Whereas if it were possible to love them Both it would also be as possible to serve them Both because by the persons whom we love we cannot but love to be employ'd The love of Christ doth constrain us saith our Apostle to his Corinthians And as Christ's love of us so ours of Him doth even press upon us and urge us to keep his Commandments and to do those things which are pleasing in his sight But let us farther make it appear by a fourth way of arguing For Sect. 4. Whatsoever we love the most is either present or absent And as when it is present we most delight in it so whilst it is absent we do long the most after it But the Apostle tells us expresly that whilst at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by Faith and not by sight So that if we love Christ we shall long after his presence and if we truly long for it we shall indeavour its attainment And if we indeavour to reach the end there will be nothing more natural than to inquire after the means And finding the means to be obedience we shall undoubtedly obey The Helkesaitae prov'd nothing but that themselves were stupid sinners in conceiving it possible to deny Christ with the Mouth and yet to love him with the Heart For the Heart in a Man like the Spring in a Watch is that that sets all on work both Tongue and Eyes and Hands and Feet too If with the heart a man believeth unto righteousness 't is very certain that with the mouth he will confess unto Salvation He will obey his dear Master in every kind both by speaking and living and dying for him If he is but once mounted on the wing of pure Love he cannot choose but be transported by the wing of desire too and will incessantly be flying in every errand upon which his Beloved shall please to send him Which may once more appear by a fifth way of arguing For Sect. 5. Carnal fear is the greatest and strongest Barr to our Obedience But there is no fear in love perfect love casteth out fear 1 Iohn 4. 18. And as it casteth out fear so it establisheth a Hope too And Hope is evermore a Spur by which we are urged to our Obedience from its expectance of our Reward It was this Love and Hope which made S. Paul follow Christ through every rough passage by sea and land He was so amorous of his Saviour and so piously ambitious of the Glory to be reveal'd that he rejoyc'd in his afflictions and was readier to dye for the name of the Lord Jesus than to fail in any point of yielding Obedience to his Commands Nor is it truer of S. Paul than of all the meanest Souldiers in the Army of Martyrs That neither distress nor persecution nor nakedness nor famin nor peril nor sword nor life nor death nor any other Creature had any power to step in betwixt their Love and their Obedience The reason of it is obvious as t is to say that they were Members of Jesus Christ not only reputed but real members And 't is natural for a member as to love its own Head so to live in Obedience to its Direction Sect. 6. Thus I seem to my self to have made it evident that Love is ever that cause of which Obedience is the most natural and most inseparable effect 'T is still as ready to obey as water is to wet or fire to Burn. Nor can it better be represented than by the nature of that active and subtle Element Knowledge we may say is a kind of light but Love is more properly a sort of Fire and with that when the Heart is once sufficiently inflam'd it cannot but send up those sparks of Zeal and devotion to its Beloved which do inkindle a special Pleasure in doing the things that he commandeth The Psalmists Heart was hot within him so hot that he tells the fire was kindled and though he long held his Peace yet his love did so burn he was not able to suppress it and so at last he spake with his Tongue We may say therefore of Love what the spowse in the Canticles doth say of Iealousie which is but one of Loves Daughters The Coals thereof are Coals of Fire which hath so vehement a Flame that many waters cannot quench it neither can the flouds drown it Love indeed is such a flame as must evaporate or expire or burn out its way through all that labours to keep it in A thing so busie and industrious as that in truth it can no longer be called Love than it is doing somewhat or other in complaisance and compliance with its Beloved Sect 7. Having now passed through the Proof proceed we briefly to the use we are to make of this Inference And first of all let us consider that if Love and Obedience are two inseparable Companions the former as the Cause and this later as the Effect It concerns us as much as our Souls are worth to take a care that our Love be rightly fixt and directed For it transforms us into the Image of whatsoever thing it is that we love the most And according as our object is good or evil It either put 's us upon the noblest or meanest offices in the world If its object is right we are the best sort of men but if it is wrong the worst of monsters It being with love as it is with fire which in proportion to the matter on which it feeds doth send up the sweetest or noysom'st vapours If it feeds on such matter as Grass and Tallow it cannot choose but have a noxious and stinking breath if on Cinnamon and storax it fills the Air with a perfume And just thus it is with the flame of Love If it fixes upon Christ it breaths forth nothing but pure obedience and so abounds with good works which are
pray for them that despightfully use you But how incapable are we of that whilst we are wanting in our love unto Christ himself who is so far from being an enemy to any of us that 't is a kind of a Meiosis to call him Friend Again 't is another of his Commandments that we rejoyce in persecutions that we deny our own selves and that taking up his Cross we do so follow him as to hate our own lives in comparison of Him which though absolutely necessary to our being his Disciples yet how incapable are we of doing unless we love him a great deal better then both our ease and our Pleasures our Reputations and ourselves too And then how highly does it concern us to wean ourselves from this world with whose love the love of Christ is said to be utterly inconsistent Iam. 4. 4. shall we then be verier Babes than our sucking children by being fonder of the world which is a strange and a cruel Nurse than they are ever wont to be of the Mothers Breast from which they draw the very substance and means of Life shall we not wean our selves from the world from whence we suck nothing but Poison and the preparatories of Death by the same Art and Method which we use in the weaning our sucking Infants Is it not a very sad and unexcusable Absurdity that the Tall Parents should go to School to their poor Brat of a span long and yet complain of too hard a lesson That they should lay upon their Infant an heavier burthen than they are willing to bear themselves That the Babe of a year old who is not able to distinguish between a Fish and a Scorpion should be put upon the practice of self-denyal whilst themselves however aged are hardly yet ripe for the doctrin of it An absurdity very shameful but no whit strange because our customary experience that so it is does extenuate the wonder that so it should be And yet as we never can obey Christ until we love him so the true love of Christ can never enter into our Hearts untill the love of this world hath had its Exit Nor can we cease from our love of a tempting world until as children from the Breast we are weaned from it And hence it was that the Cradle became the Pulpit from whence the sucking child preach't to the Prophet David whose choisest learning was to refrain and to keep his soul like as a child that is weaned from his Mother And from this very Topick did God upbraid his people Israel who were rather of years than of discretion to be men Isa. 28. 9 10. For sooner will a Babe who is not weaned from the Breast attain to knowledge than his Parents to Religion being not weaned from the world Now to enable our selves the better for the transforming of our love from the world to Christ Sect. 10. Let us be resolute in the third place to converse with it less and more with him than we are wont For a competent familiarity ingenders love though too much of it begets contempt But Discontinuance breeds coldness and indifferency in our Affections As therefore the way to wean an Infant is to sever him from the Breast whereof the Infant grows careless when sufficiently accustomed to other meat so to wean our selves also from the embraces of the world we must abandon its company and discontinue our Acquaintance and accustom ourselves to another diet that is to say to the law of Christ. And then by being so accustomed we shall be careless if not forgetful of worldly Pleasures and Delights I do the rather crave leave to dwell on this somewhat the longer notwithstanding what I have spoken to the same end and purpose in other places because there are who do impose so great a Fallacy on themselves as to conclude against the pleasures of living strictly meerly from their own want of a due experience A thing of so very great importance that even Eudoxus and Epicurus though the great Patrons of Sensuality did recommend a life of vertue to all their Followers not from a Principle of Piety but Pleasure only Not as the nobler way of life but the more voluptuous The reason is they had try'd both courses and so were Proselytes not to vertue consider'd simply in it self but to the Pleasure and Convenience they met with in it So important a thing it is to make an essay of a method before we rashly conclude against it But how can any man pass a judgment touching Colours and Shapes which he never saw or touching the savour of a dish which he never tasted or touching the happiness of a life of which he never had the Patience to make a tryal Let Christ but have as fair quarter as the God of this world is wont to meet with let the keeping of his Commandments be try'd as much and as farr as the breaches of them and then if the greatest Apolausticks do not subscribe to the delights of a new obedience we may venture to give up our Christian Cause For though the yoke of Christ's Precepts is somewhat rough at the beginning yet there are thousands who can attest that it grows smooth by being worn and much the fitter for our necks too In every thing that can be nam d be it an Art or a Science a Faculty or a Trade we know 't is usage and practice which breeds perfection He who first learns to write or read will find it troublesom to the Flesh which yet by using much and often he will not find inconsistent with ease and pleasure And exactly thus it is in the School of Christ where the very same lesson which is most irksom in the beginning is by use and experience made most delightful We may be wedded to the best things as we are commonly to the worst by such a custom of conversing with them alone as will become an artificial acquir'd Nature For as a sinner when you reprove him for his swearing or drinking or any other vitious Habit will say he is so us'd to it as not to be able to abstain So if a man be as much us'd to the Commandments of Christ and is able to say with David all the day long is my study in them he will not be able to abstain from thrusting his neck into the yoke of his Master Christ. The yoke will keep his Neck so warm he will not dare to leave it off and that for fear of catching so great a cold that is to say so great an Absence of love to Christ as will carry him for warmth to the Fire of Hell If he is askt why he refuseth his partion of velâ—…ptuousness eates the course Bread of Honesty or wears away himself in Meditation and self-denial his answer is he is so us'd to this course of life victorious custom hath so subdned him and conscience keeps him so much in Awe that what with Fear on the
of Humility with S. Paul of Obedience with Abraham and of chastity with Ioseph Nor let this pass for a meer fancyful and conceited way of reasoning For 't is confirm'd by the Judgment of old and Orthodox Divines Sanguinem si semel pro Christo ponere non potes saltem mitiori quodam sed longiori Martyrio pone If thou canst not all at once lay down thy life for the Love of Christ lay it down for him by a milder but longer Martyrdom For to forsake thine own will to send a Bill of Divorce to thy wedded pleasures to crucify thy Flesh with the Affections and Lusts and so to mortifie its members which are upon the earth is such a profitable and wholsom persecution of thy self and if it be any is such a prudent Abbreviation of thy life as does most of all tend to its Preservation 'T is better Policy saith the Father to lose thy life that thou mayest keep it than by keeping it for a time to lose it finally and for ever CHAP. II. Sect. 1. HAving already spoken enough touching the Nature and Degree of our Love to Christ 't will next be needful to consider the sad condition of the Curse to which the want of such Love is here affirm'd to make us liable And in order to the right understanding of it we are to know the three degrees of excommunicating sinners among the Iews which were accommodated of old to the use of Christians The first of these they call'd Niddui the second Cherem the third Shammatha And this last in signification is exactly the same with Maranatha in the Text. For Shem in the Chaldee imports as much as Marà n in Syriac And Athà we see is affixt to both Niddui signified an exclusion but for four paces only and from no greater privilege than that of ordinary converse Cherem signified exclusion with the addition of Imprecations out of which notwithstanding there was a hope of being freed by a sound Repentance Whereas Shammatha or Maranatha was not only a giving up but also a finally giving over the anathematiz'd person unto eternal condemnation Maran Atha is an expression under which the Lords coming and the most terrible of his Iudgments are Synecdochically contain'd And for the better clearing of it it may be explicated thus The Lord is come and hath suffer'd and he who now loves him not is for ever unworthy of his Love Or let the Lord come as Cornelius à Lapide or the Lord shall come to judge and punish him Or let such a sinner be Anathema at the coming of the Lord as Zegerus words it For though Atha is the Preterperfect tense yet 't is common amongst the Hebrews to set the Preterperfect for either the Present or the future or as here in an Optative which has also the force of an Imperative signification Sect. 2. So that the Duty and the Danger being thus explicated asunder will if we take them in conjunction admit of this Paraphrase If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ so as a Saviour does deserve with all his heart and his Soul so as to keep the very sowrest and most unpleasant of his Commandments as farr as the taking up his Cross and holding close to him in Times of Tryal if any man love him not so intirely as to hate his own life for the love he bears him let him sink under the weight of the heaviest Censures of the Church Let all the Curses light upon him which once were heard from Mount Ebal Let him not only be Anathema which answers to the Hebrew Cherem and notes a giving up to Satan for the destruction of the Flesh but Anathema Maranatha which notes an absolute cutting off an utter Excision or Extirpation from the Body of Christ. Let him not only be Anathema a severity intended to purge the sinner of his Sin but Maran Atha which is severer as being intended to rid the Church of a Sinner Let him be cast out of the Favour as well of the Bridegroom as of the Bride Let him for ever be destroy'd not only in this but the other world Sect. 3. And now by this time I suppose we all are well enough acquainted as well with the Duty we are under as with the Danger we are in as well with the nature of the Love which is here requir'd as with the quality of the Curse which is here denounc't Sect. 4. And if the danger is so great of not performing this duty of loving Christ what kind of means should we not use for the obtaining of the one and in consequence of that for the escaping of the other By fervent Prayers and Importunities and by watching thereunto with all Perseverance how should we wrestle and contend as Iacob did with the Almighty resolving never to let him go till he hath bless't us with an ability to love the Lord Iesus Christ as he requires if there are any wayes and methods if any stratagems of Reason if any Pulleys of the Will whereby to wind up our Affections to things above Lord how incessantly should we labour to put such Instruments into use How much more does it concern us than all the Riches and the Pomps of the world are worth to be as obstinate as it is possible not only in the use of the means of Grace but also in the practice of all those methods unto which we may be prompted by Art or Nature never abating of our Indeavours in using the Artifice and the Empire both of the Intellect and the Will untill we find that God's Grace hath crown'd our Indeavours with Success Or if we cannot love him so sensibly as we love many carnal and trivial things so as to spend all our Time in conversing with him or so as evermore to fasten our Thoughts upon him yet atleast let us so love him as to afford him all the offices and fruits of Love even by doing what he commands and by forbearing what he forbids and by thankfully induring what he shall suffer or appoint to be laid upon us For wheresoever these are they are the Arguments and the Proofs as well of our Faith as our Affection Sect. 5. But here perhaps some will say we cannot possibly be in love with the Lord Iesus Christ untill the Image of his Beauty shall have been character'd in our Souls because his Beauty is the Allective which is to draw up the Soul to a desire of its Fruition And we must certainly see our object e're we are able to affect it But our object being Invisible cannot possibly be seen unless it be by the Eye of Faith and Faith is intirely the work of Grace a Gale that comes from that spirit which only bloweth where it listeth Ioh. 3. 8. And seeing Love as well as Faith is the work of Grace which is not a thing at our own disposal how can we fasten our Affections on things invisible or how
himself For what saith our Saviour If thou bring thy gift to the Altar and there remembrest that thy Brother hath ought against thee leave there thy gift before the Altar and go thy way first be reconciled to thy Brother and then come and offer thy gift As if he should have said Get thee gon and be Honest before thâ—…u talk'st of being Godly Now together with this compare S. Iohn's way of reckoning In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the Devil whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God neither he that loveth not his Brother And we know that we have passed from Death unto Life because we love the Brethren Nor does our Saviour say thus by this shall all men know ye are my Disciples if they see ye love God but by this they shall know it is ye love one another Because our love of one another does presuppose we love God which 't is impossible that we do in case we love not one another For he that hateth his Brother is a Murderer and abideth in Death 1 John 3. 14 15. Thus we see how this Scripture is profitable for Doctrin Sect. 3. And as for Doctrin so also for Reproof Because it serves to convince us of the small proportion of Christianity which is to be found amongst men who are commonly call'd Christians How much there is of the word and how little of the thing When the son of man cometh shall he find Faith on the Earth Yes store of that Faith which will ever be common to men with Devils But when the Son of man cometh shall he find Iustice shall he find Mercy shall he find Love upon the Earth shall he find that Faith which worketh by Love and which worketh by such a Love as is the mother of Obedience and the mother of such obedience as is impartially due to the Law of Christ Alas how frequent a thing is it for Christians to persecute their fellow-Christians and then to reckon it as the character of their Discipleship under Christ As if they read the Text backwards or understood it by an Antiphrasis supposing Christ had meant thus By this shall all men know ye are my Disciples if ye Hate one another It is a Crime the more enormous to hate and persecute a Neighbour under colour of Devotion and zeal to God because it breaks the Commandments against each other For if the same God who saith Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart does also say in the same instant Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self It cannot but follow that to persecute or hate a Neighbor in pretense of affection and zeal to God is to take up the Second Table in anger and to dash it in pieces against the first And what is that in effect but to make the Law it s own Transgressor The character of a Christian recommended here to us by Christ himself is not certainly such a praedatorie and ravenous love of one another as was that of the Scribes and Pharisees wherewith they lov'd widdows Houses so far forth as to devour them and eat them up Nor such a cruel kind of love as that of the Canibals in Herodotus who glutted themselves with the flesh of men because they lov'd it as well as Ven'son For when Professors are transported with such an unnatural kind of love as gives them an appetite to bite and devour each other as the Apostle speaks to the Ephesians or to eat up God's people as if they would eat Bread as the Psalmist thought fit to phrase it it hath a tendency to nothing but mutual Ruin No the note of distinction whereby to know a sincere and a solid Christian is such a divine kind of love as tends to Unity and Peace and so by a consequence unavoidable to mutual safety and preservation If we are rooted and grounded in such a love to one another as that of Christ unto us all we shall be known by the fruit we bear to have been grafted into him who is indeed the true vine We shall not only do to no man what we would that no man should do to us which was the Motto an Heathen Prince would needs have carved in all his Plate But what we wish that all men would do to us we shall earnestly endeavour to do to all men we shall love them for God's sake whom for their own sakes we cannot love If we are mearly weak brethren we shall manifest by our weakness we are not wilful And if strong we shall bear the Infirmities of the weak We shall walk in wisdom towards them that are without I mean the Enemies of Christ both Iewes and Gentiles that we may neither be in danger of being corrupted by their secular and sensual baits nor heighten their prejudice to the Gospel by any matter of scandal in our converse Will it not be a very sad and a shameful thing if Iewes and Gentiles shall rise in judgment against a great part of Christendom whilst Christendom shall justifie both Iewes and Gentiles First for the Jews they are so much at unity amongst themselves that however covetous in their particulars and however cruel to us Christians yet they are kind to one another and full of good works too They suffer not the needy to go without his relief nor the Captive without his ransom Nay the Esseni amongst the Jewes had all things in common and living Virgins themselves bestow'd their cost and their care in breeding other solks children This was one of the Jewish Maximes as the most elegant of their Writers hath set it down that Godliness and Honesty or the love of God and the love of men are a kind of Twin-sisters which every Creature is to espowse who is not so wedded to the world as to admit of a Divorce from the caelestial Bride-groom 'T was never allow'd unto the Jewes to abhor an Edomite or an Egyptian or to count any man as an Enemy although he were scaling the City-walls till he had absolutely refus'd their solemn offers of Reconcilement Then secondly for the Gentiles Homer describes the love of Enemies The Pythagoreans gave it in precept and Antius Restio's brave servant reduc't the doctrin into practice Whilst some of the Heathens do love their Enemies were it not well if some Christians would love their Friends What a scandal is it at this day to the Disciples of Mahomet that grand Impostor that the Spirit of Division should seem to reign more amongst Christians than amongst them Nay are there not diverse great Potentates who profess to be the followers and friends of Christ and yet are ready at any rate to buy peace of the Turk to the end they may break it with one another Or not to go so far from home how little is there of Christianity except the syllables and the sound even in
tells us that all must be sold to buy it Mat. 13. 44 Whatsoever that Treasure shall stand us in be it our Pleasures or Reputations be it our Livelyhoods or our Lives 't is plain the Master of the Treasure is still to have his own Asking and if we resolve upon the Iewel we must not stand upon the Price When our Master does vouchsafe to liken himself unto a Merchant and Eternity in a Parable is put to sale Love and Obedience are the two Talents wherewith Eternity is to be Purchac't Not that the Iewel is worth so little but the Merchant exacts no more That is to say without a parable Love and Obedience are the Conditions on which the Promises are made And obedience is the Criterion by which alone we are enabled to know our Love So that as soon as a wealthy Ruler put this Question to our Saviour What shall I do that I may inherit Eternal life our Saviour gave him this in answer If thou wilt enter into life keep the Commandments And no sooner had He made this glorious Promise to his Disciples That he would give them whatsoever they should ask in his name but straight he added the Condition which was the way to its Attainment If ye love me keep my Commandments Sect. 3. Which words though they are few are so full of matter that here is hardly any word which is not weighty and emphatical and hardly an Emphasis on a word which affords not matter of Meditation Let us put our first Emphasis upon the Particle If a conjunction conditional For 't is not Peremptorily said my Love to you hath been so great and my Favours to you so many as that ye cannot choose but love me or ye must love me of necessity but the Proposal is ex hypothesi Our Saviour does not say Because but If ye love me thereby making it a question whether we love him or love him not And this deserves to be the Subject of no small Trouble or Humiliation whilst we pretend to be the Followers and Friends of Christ that we should be of such barbarous and inhuman dispositions as to be able to be cold in our affection towards Him who is inflamed towards us in His affection A second Emphasis is to be put on the Pronoun me If ye love me keep my Commandments One would have thought he should have said If ye love your own selves if ye love your own souls if ye will escape the Payns of Hell or if ye will attain the Ioyes of Heaven and so if ye love your own Interest keep my Commandments For what is it to Him whether we keep them or keep them not He is not the better for our obedience and sure our Rebellions can much less hurt him Hath He need of our Salvation to make him happy no no more can our Injoyments improve his Bliss than can our Miseries interrupt it And yet he saith if ye love me keep my Commandments From whence ariseth this second Inference That the greatest expression of our Lords love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto Our selves that we will love him at least so well as to do our selves good that we will not once meddle with that which hurts us but let miserie alone and apply our selves wholly to do those things wherein our only true happiness must needs Consist Let us put a third Emphasis upon the keeping of his Commandments as that relates in this place to the supposed Love we bear him And let this our third Emphasis be subdivided into three For it will easily afford us a threefold Importance of the words and thence will follow a threefold Inference First the words may be thus pronounced If ye love me if ye have any the least affection or kindness for me do so much as observe what I have appointed you to Perform And this is as if the words were spoken in the Optative mood O that ye were wise that ye knew those things which do belong unto your Peace that ye would but so love me as to keep my Commandments from which Acception of the words the Inference certainly must be this That the best Instance and Expression of our Love to Christ is to do those things which he Injoyns us Or else the words may be accented thus as if indicatively spoken and by way of Asseveration If ye love me in good earnest not in word but in Reality If ye affect me from the Heart and not from the Teeth-outwards ye will be sure to do whatsoever I Command you Your obedience then will be infallible I shall not miss of its Emanations And hence ariseth this other Inference That Love and Obedience in a Christian are two inseparable Companions every whit as inseparable as Hippoclides and Polystratus or as the Parent rather and the Child the Cause and the effect or whatsoever else they are which are Relata secundum esse whereof the one does of necessity infer the other Or the words may be read and expounded thus as being in the Imperative mood If ye love me be sure ye keep my Commandments make it evident that ye love me give me the Proof of your Affection by doing that which I require No other Love will I accept than what does prove its own Truth by the constant keeping of my Commandments From which Acception of the words the Inference cannot but be This That our obedience to the Precepts of Jesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his Person This will teach us what mettle our Love is made of And because by the force of our Love to Christ if it is solid and sincere there is a mutual Cohabitation betwixt Him and Us He in us as our Head and We in Him as his Members this will also become a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us as other Rules are wont to do in what it most of all imports us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Having thus far proceeded in laying out the several matters in which I think is swallow'd up the whole Importance of the Text I shall begin my Contrivance with the Conjunction Conditional and try how much to our Advantage a word so commonly overlook't may be made to serve CHAP. I. A Question made of our Love to Christ. Sect. 1. INdeed if we never have been Lovers we may hear those words with unconcernment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye love me But if we are any whit acquainted with what it is to be in love if we have any kind jealousies any Pantings and yernings and gaspings of soul after Him who is the Bridegroom of all our Souls we cannot choose but take it tenderly that the sincerity of our Love should once be question'd When Agabus prophesyed of the Bonds which Paul should suffer at Ierusalem and thereupon
so it was in his Accompt their withdrawing themselves from publick Business and refusing the honours of the Court or the Commonwealth Origen answers that they did it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as keeping themselves for a diviner and a more honourable employment For seeing Christ was the Master whom 't was their Pride and their Glory and their Happiness to serve they were most ambitious of that Quality which made them fittest for their obedience Sect. 25. Thus have I shew'd in some particulars how the Goodness of every Action is very sufficient for the Reward too And how obedience to the Commandments were it not itself an abundant Recompense hath enough of Heaven in it to give us happiness without one In so much that our Saviour might well have said not if ye love me but If ye love your own selves keep my Commandments even because the keeping of them can add no otherwise to His than as it makes for Our advantage And having hitherto consider'd our Saviours Precept touching the keeping of his Commandments as the greatest expression of his love to us I am next to consider the keeping of them as the greatest expression of ours to Him And so by consequence am to proceed to the third Inference I propos'd CHAP. III. That as the greatest expression of Christ's Love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto ourselves so the greatest expression of ours to him is to do those things which he enjoyn's us Sect. 1. ANd sure the Truth of this Inference will not need much labour to make it evident For all expressions of our Love however many or great in point of number or degree are comprehensively reducible unto one of these Heads either Formal or Real In shew or in substance in word or deed And in respect of these two our Blessed Saviour does distinguish betwixt his flatterers and his Friends We have an example of the former Luke 6. 46. Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not the things that I say We have an example of the later 1 Iohn 15. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you And an example of both together Mat. 21. 28 29 30 31. Where the servant that said he would not go but went is more justified than the other who said he would but went not Our Saviour's flatterers then are they who make Profession of their Love who give him very good words who in their Prayers and Predications breath out nothing less than kindness and Admiration but not proceeding any farther than the bare wording and professing and breathing out of their Affection they cannot challenge a better character than that they love him from the teeth outwards and this because their Expressions are meerly verbal Whereas the Friends of Christ are they who add the Proof of Love to the due Profession study to live by his Example and in obedience to his Commands espowse a Fellowship with his Death and a conformity to his Sufferings are rather for Christ though at the Barr than for a Pilate though on the Bench very much rather for the oppressed than for the persecuting side Which evinceth that their Love must needs be Real and from the Heart because they are sturdily at the cost and the pains to prove it Sect. 2. That this indeed is the difference betwixt the flatterers and Friends of Christ as betwixt a meer verbal and Real Love we have a full confirmation from the words of S. Iohn My little children saith he Let us not love in word neither in Tongue but in Deed and in Truth That is let our Love be without dissimulation let it be legible in our Actions not only audible in our Voice Let us demonstrate our love to Christ by shewing our love unto his Members Nor that by speaking them fair and paying Civility to persons But by opening the Bowels of our compassion to their needs S. Iames in his Epistle hath set it out to the life If a brother or sister saith he be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you say unto him depart in peace be ye warmed and filled but ye give him not those things which are needful to the Body what doth it profit There we have in S. Iames by way of Instance what we found in S. Iohn by way of Advice and Exhortation For he that saith go in Peace be ye Warm or full he expressly is the man that loves in word and in tongue But he that gives those things which are needful to the Body he is properly the man that loves in Deed and in Truth Sect. 3. Now that which is the greatest proof of our Love to Christs Members does carry with it the greatest Proof of our Love to Christ. Who what is don unto his Members does take as don unto Himself He that persecutes and plunders his Fellow-Christian does persecute and plunder his Master Christ. And Christ hath said what he will say to such as these in the Day of Judgment In as much as ye have don it unto one of the least of these ye have don it unto me Mat. 25. 40. So that the reason is very evident why S. Paul sets out our Love as the fulfilling of the Law And summ's up all the Commandments into this one Precept Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Because the Proof of our obedience to the Commandments of the Law is our doing unto others in Acts of Justice and works of Mercy as we would that others should do to us In a word so very strict is the Connexion betwixt the Love we have to God and our love to one another as well as betwixt the Love of Both and the keeping of the Commandments that S. Iohn sets them down as the Marks and Tokens of one another 1 Iohn 5. 1 2 3. The Love of our Neighbour is a sign of our Love to God v. 1. Our Love to God is a sign that we love our Neighbour v. 2. And our keeping his Commandments is the clearest Diagnostick and Sign of Both. v. 3. Sect. 4. To make it yet more apparent that our Obedience is the best Argument and highest Expression of our Love let us compare the way of reckoning by our Saviour in the Text with that most general way of reckoning which we observe amongst our selves Do we not ever reckon Him the lovingst Subject to his Soveraign whom we find the most exact in keeping the Oath of his Allegiance And who in reverence to his Loyalty despiseth his Livelihood and his Life too Do we not worthily reckon Him the lovingst Son unto his Parents who obey's them in all things without Exception And conforms to their will however cross unto his own Do we not justly reckon Him the lovingst Servant to his Master who goes as soon as he is sent and comes as soon as he is call'd and does exactly as he is bid And does not our Saviour in the Text take the
a sweet-smelling savour such a sacrifice of Incense as with which God is well pleas'd In which respect alone it is that the Bridegroom in the Canticles is thus exprest to court his spouse How fair is thy love my sister my spouse How much better is it than wine and the smell of thy garments than all spices A garden inclos'd is my sister my spouse Thy plants are an Orchard of Pomgranates with pleasant Fruits Camphire and Spikenard Calamus and Saffron with trees of Frankincense Myrrh and Aloes Thus our Saviour is suppos'd in Solomons elegant Hypotyposis to set out the Graces of his Church and so of every Soul in it espousing Christ for her Bridegroom and his Commandments for her guide Whereas if our Love does fix and feed upon the Creature it seâ—… forth a dangerous and loathsome stench a stench so odious to God Almighty that sin for this reason only is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Scripture which does equally signify what is abominated and stinks Yet in this very mire men of swinish affections delight to wallow For whatsoever 't is we love be it as ugly as the Devil we paint it hansom in our thoughts and blot out all its deformities with our Imaginations and so we love it not as it is but rather as it is disguis'd and sancyed by us And hence it is that we are able to be so passionately in love with some Bosom sins though so much uglier than the Devil that sin alone hath been able to make him ugly For when our Spirits are so unworthy as to ask Counsel of our Flesh our flesh presents it to us as lovely And from that instant forwards we look upon it with a Fleshly that is to say with a Lovers eye And sure the Eye of a Lover sees no defect in its Beloved The blackest Crow in the world is much more doated on by a Crow than whatsoever we can commend in the whitest Turtle But this is only a similitude cannot deserve to be a Proof For we as Sinners do owe to Industry what the Crow does to Nature Being naturally unable to doat on sin as it is sin we are fain to dress it up with some Turtles Feathers And having so don we are fain to use our wits to make ourselves become stupid Speaking no better of sin than this that it has comeliness in its kind and is proportionably hansom and comparatively good too Not good in itself nor good in others but yet the Flesh represents it as good for us Avarice is good to increase our Treasure Ambition is as good to advance our Credit Luxury good to banish Melancholy and Sadness Another mans Avarice is flat Idolatry but our own is Good-husbandry because our own Another mans Knavery deserves a Gallows but when it lyes in our Bosom 't is a most necessary Prudence We hate the Proud and the Aspiring the most that may be whereas in us 't is but Bravery to be Ambitious Another man's Excess is a scandalous Sin whilst our own is but an Argument of the Right which we have to the Creature-comforts Now by what are we betray'd to all these mischiefs but by the meer misapplying of our Affections And what then have we reason to be more afraid of than of setting our Affections upon the Earth We find by evident Experience and in all manner of Cases that such as is our Love such will be our Submissions whether to that which is above or which is infinitely below us 'T is This hath made so many womanish uxorious Husbands so many childish indulgent Parents so very many servile obedient Masters 'T was this made Ahab I do not say the Husband but the Wife of Iezebel and Eli a slave unto both his Sons Herod though a King an humble servant to Herodias Darius though an Emperor meanly gaping upon Apame and Hercules though an Hero submitting tamely to the blowes of a feeble Omphale Nor will it be otherwise with ourselves who are called Christians who having the Earthiness of their Love shall not be able not to stoop to their Idols too If we love Herod as He Herodias we shall keep his Commandments as He did Hers though this be one of his Commandments that we slay our own Infants put to flight the child Iesus and joyn ourselves with a Pilate to plot his Death too But if we love the same Iesus as much as Herod did Herodias we shall obey him as exactly as He did Her For we shall turn the right cheek to him that strikes us on the left To him that takes away our cloak we shall yield our coat also When we do well and are beaten we shall not threaten but intreat We shall lay up our Treasure not in earth but in Heaven And whethersoever Christ calls us to Herod's Court or Pilate's Hall to the Garden or the Cross we shall esteem it our greatest Riches To leave all we have and to follow Him Sect. 8. Seeing therefore 't is so evident that wheresoever there is Love there cannot choose but be obedience and that our obedience cannot choose but be agreeable to our Love our first Indeavour is to be this that we beware what we love And since t is natural for us to love the individuals of our own species who do carry God's Image as well as we and betwixt whom notwithstanding there is very great difference let it be our next Indeavour that we beware whom we love Lastly because we are commanded to love our enemies and therefore more than permitted to love our Friends let it be our third Indeavour that we beware how we love We must love one another or else we cannot love Christ not at least in such sort as to keep his Commandments one of the chief of which is this that we love one another Our love is to abound more and more towards all men especially towards all the houshold of Faith But we must love them in measure not at all in perfection not in such an high pitch as to keep their Commandments without exception We are in some cases oblig'd to call no man Master upon Earth and to obey him that saith be ye not the Servants of men We are to love one another for Christ's sake only and only Christ for his own Now to prevent our being careless whether we love him or love him not or whether so as will suffice for the due keeping of his Commandments Sect. 9. Let us secondly consider the unspeakable danger of our Defect As first the perfect impossibility of ever entring into his Glory without the keeping of his Commandments next the equal impossibility of ever keeping his Commandments whilst we are cold in our Affection to Him or Them One of the chief of his Commandments which he deliver'd to us as Christians and by which we are distinguish't from Iews and Gentiles is love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and
that which is True The vulgar sort of professed Christians who are the speculative Solifidians will not submit to any Tryal unless their own Fansie may sit as Iudge And being destitute of obedience to the Commandments of Christ which should be a witness from without of the love they bear to him whereby they might prove it to other men they appeal to the strength of their own perswasion call'd a witness from within of their Love to Christ and whereby they pretend to prove it inwardly to themselves But this is an Error so full of danger and indeed so void of sense that I know not if I may judge it more extravagant in itself or more pernicious in its effects For 't is apt to place presumption on the right hand of Faith and does make the sanguin'sts Hypocrites to pass in disguise for the holiest men Mistake's a callous and a sear'd for a quiet Conscience and sets up every mans heart as the great Touchstone of his Affections though itself needs a Touchstone the most of any For what saith God by the Prophet Ieremie The Heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Touching our heads and our hands and other parts of our composition we may be easily supposed to have some knowledge But God alone is the searcher of all our hearts Ier. 17. 10. And are not they in a goodly way of being rectified in judgment both concerning themselves and their love to Christ who take their measures from the Fountain of all deceit God was never more angry in the Times of the Law than with them who were Prophets of the deceit of their own Heart Ier. 23. 25. Those Plaisterers of Satan whose custom 't was to dawb with untemperd morter and to heal the wounds of the people slightly speaking peace to their Consciences before their Consciences had Peace with God And t is as evident from the words of the wise King Solomon Prov. 24. 24. that nothing but Woes and Imprecations belong to those Temporizing and Popular Teachers who do nourish themselves with the peoples Favour by nourishing the people with their deceits For there is no higher way whereby to gratifie the Devil and make him glad than by lulling poor souls into carnal security Nor can a speedier course be taken to make them carnally secure than by making them believe that let their Sins be what they can be they may be lovers of Christ and vessels of absolute Election and can never fall totally much less finally from Grace and that for this reason because they think so because they are inwardly perswaded because 't is set upon their Hearts as they use to word it because they take it for granted and do not make the least doubt A way of reasoning I cannot tell whether more common or more irrational For to say they are assured because they stedfastly believe or that they know they shall be sav'd because they are strongly perswaded of it is to argue that they know even because they know not For Faith and Knowledge in the proper acception of the words cannot be conversant at once about the very same object And that men may take that for the voice of Conscience or else for the whisper of God within them which yet is nothing in the world but either a forgerie of the Head or a Deceitfulness of the Heart is very evident from the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament For there we read of a Generation who are pure in their own eyes yet are not washed from their filthiness Who bless themselves in their own Hearts saying we shall have peace even whilst they persevere in adding Drunkenness to Thirst. We read of the Hypocrites having an Hope but we read too that it shall perish We read of Priests teaching for hire and Magistrates judging for reward whilst yet they lean upon the Lord and say is not the Lord among us none evil can come upon us Many will plead their great merit who yet shall be damn'd in the day of Judgment Matth. 7. 22 23. And even the children of the Devil may think that God is their only Father Ioh. 8. 11. All which being consider'd I cannot approve of their skill or kindness whereof we have an account in Print who taught an horrible Malefactor to please himself with this Syllogism after his sentence of Condemnation for wilful murder God hath said whosoever repenteth and believeth shall find mercy and be saved My Conscience telleth me and witnesseth to me that I repent and believe and am one of those whosoever therefore Christ is mine I shall find mercy and be saved Now admit that this Murderer was in a very safe state yet sure he took not the way to prove it but only the way that he had been taught For what he took to be the dictate or suggestion of his Conscience might be possibly nothing more than the delusion of his Phansie or the pleasant deceit of his Imagination And this is certain that unless by Repentance he meant Amendment which he could not well discover as he was hastening to the Gallows and unless by believing he meant an Operative Faith such as worketh by love and by such a love too as is the fulfilling of the law which he could not well be sure of as he was going into his Grave there was not so much as a possibility that he should prove himself sure of having an interest in Christ. The murderer should therefore have argued thus Whosoever believeth and repenteth and does both sincerely so as to lead a new life and to bring forth fruits meet for Repentance He hath an interest in Christ and is in a state of Salvation But I believe and repent and I hope sincerely and also hope that if I live I shall lead a new life therefore I humbly hope I have an interest in Christ and in consequence of that am in a state of Salvation In the mean time he should have pray'd and his Teachers should have helpt him both by their Prayers and their advice that God would deliver him from the danger of being deceived by his own Heart into security and presumption which would only have betray'd him into a mischievous consolation he having deserved by his Impieties to be one of their number who are delivered up unto strong delusions and wholly left to believe a lye This I say should have been don because there is nothing more agreeable to the condition of such a Penitent as had been lately by his Confession at once a Robber and a cheat a fornicator and a blasphemer and even a murderer of his brother sleeping innocently by him in the very same bed than to mingle his Faith with pious Fear and his Hope with that holy trembling wherewith we all are to work out our own Salvation Now having hitherto made an Amulet for the contagion of the Times by the negative part
evidenc'd by charity and the keeping of the Commandments All agreeable to the words of our Blessed Saviour that men do not gather grapes from Thorns and every Tree is known by its fruit But the fruit of all Graces is the keeping of the Commandments and therefore by that we may know them all Now then let us consider that if the keeping of the Commandments is the true Touchstone of our Love whereby alone we may prove it to be sincere and withal the great Requisite for the making of our Callling and Election sure then is the keeping of the Commandments the sum and upshot of all that is call'd Duty So that when Solomon being penitent turned his Throne into a Pulpit and of a King became a Preacher He was not able with all his wisdom either to teach or to learn either a plainer or higher lesson than Fear God and keep his Commandments For this saith he in the next words is the whole Duty of Man Men may spend their whole lives in inventing Sermons and Systems and other discourses of Divinity both from the Pulpit and from the Press But the sum and conclusion of all is This Fear God and keep his Commandments It concerns us therefore extreamly to make a strict examination whether we find within our selves such a sincere love of Christ as does not only shew it self in our mouths and fancies but especially in our Hearts and our Conversations Such a love as carries with it a ready obedience to his Commands and does by consequence amount unto the whole Duty of Man It being so natural for a Lover to seek the benefit or pleasure and satisfaction of his Beloved by doing that which he desires that obedience and love disobedience and hatred are promiscuously used in holy Scripture For what S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Corinthians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments the same S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Galatians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but Faith which worketh by Love So that Faith is all in all as it worketh by Love And Love is all in all as it brings forth Obedience to the Commandments of Christ. But obedience to his Commandments is all in all as including and supposing both Faith and Love Christianity it self is nothing worth without Faith nor Faith it self without Love nor Love it self without obedience to the Commandments of Christ. For being not kept they must needs be broken And they that break his Commandments are said to hate him as they that keep them are said to love him Exod. 20. 5 6. So the carnal mind of man is called enmity to God Rom. 8. 7. And that for this very reason in the next words following Because it is not subject to the law of God And This may prompt us to descend unto a second consideration that seeing love and obedience disobedience and hatred are terms equivalent put the one for the other in holy Writ then as we hope not to be reckoned amongst the enemies and haters of God in Christ we must employ our utmost study upon the keeping of his Commandments And keep them we must with the greater care because like Porcellane they are of very great worth and the soonest broken Besides which they have a property of being so wholsom or so destructive that whilst we keep them intire they keep us too in our integrity and if we customarily break them they grind us certainly to powder The Prophet David had so smarted by having broken two of the number the one with Bathshebah and the other against Uriah as to have made a new Covenant with God Almighty that if he would teach him once more the way of his statutes he would not fail for the future to keep them whole unto the end And to the end he might keep them the more exactly he laid them up in a sure place wherein the serpents piercing eye should not be able to find them out He lock't them up in a Cabinet of which God only could keep the key For so we have him speaking to God himself Psal. 119. 11. Thy word have I hid within my heart that I might not sin against thee Exactly so did blessed Mary by the sayings of Christ her Son and Lord too which she kept saith the Text and laid them up in her heart After the very same manner let us manifest the love which we bear to Christ and demonstrate the esteem which we pretend to his Commandments first by keeping them in our eyes that we may evermore see and be mindful of them next by fixing them in our Heads that we may rightly apprehend them lastly by hiding them in our Hearts that no thievish lust may deprive us of them Let our love be the ingraver to carve his Commandments in our Souls to carve them in such deep and indelible characters as no kind of Engin or Tool of Satan may be able to efface them or raze them out Are not they bold people who dare be damn'd who take the confidence to sleep amidst the breaches of the Commandments whilst their Calling and Election are not only not ensur'd but even neglected and undervalued as if so cheap and so easie as to be got only by gaping that is by saying Lord Lord or upon any cheaper terms than those of keeping his Commandments Let us religiously beware that we be none of their number And because S. Iames tells us that whosoever will be a Friend of this present world is not only not the Friend but the Enemie of God Tremble we most at those Felicities which are most generally courted Take we heed of nothing more than of our living too much at ease If we are serious lovers of Christ let us not laugh and be merry with them that hate him but rather shut up ourselves in such a solitude and silence as in which we may enjoy him without disturbance or interruption Whenever we suffer in his behalf from our selves or others let this be one of our Rewards that he tells our sighs and counts the number of our attritions puts our Tears into his Bottle and enters our sorrows into his Book Let our Ambition be to please him by all means possible by observing his precepts by accusing our selves before him for any precept unobserv'd by importuning him incessantly for ghostly strength and by thanking him for that which we now injoy by hating our Rebellions already pass't and by making him vowes of new obedience Which Vowes having made let us not fail to pay them all how deerly soever they may cost us Let 's not reckon it enough to be almost-Christians with King Agrippa nor yet with King Saul to give God the Refuse of what we owe him But as we are debtors to him for all so let us not niggardly withhold the least things from him which he expects much
over our Hearts This is properly the love of our Lord Iesus Christ. And this again must be considerâ—…d in that degree of perfection wherein 't is taken in the Text. As a love of Christ unto the Death a love which casteth out Fear and such as does not wax cold in the sharpest winter of Tribulation For the curse which here follows seems to relate unto the Gnosticks and to as many of their posterity as should at any time be infected by their opinion Such as were Prodicus and the Adamites and the Sect of the Helkesaitae who were totally for a prosperous not for a persecuted Religion zealous Followers of Christ in Times of Peace but in Times of Persecution Forsakers of him Sect. 2. The sum and upshot of all is this The Love of Christ which is requir'd for the escaping of the Curse is such a Love of his Person as is attended with a Love of his precepts too And such a love of his precepts as shews it self in an Obedience without Exception or Reserve and obedience both active and passive too Nor with respect only to some but in the words of the Psalmist unto all his Commandments Our love of Christ must be set off with a comparative detestation of all below him For if any man come to me saith Christ himself to his Disciples and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 26. There we see though we are bound to love our livelihood and our Lives yet we are bound to hate Both in comparison of the Love which we owe to Christ. And that so high a degree of love is indispensably required many parallel words of Christ do put it out of all Question As He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Whosoever shall deny me before men him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven Is any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross daily and follow me For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words of him shall the son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his own Glory and in his Fathers and of the holy Angels And when 't is said by the Apostle If we suffer we shall reign it is imply'd we shall not if we do not suffer As therefore he who puts to sea let his design be what it will is to resolve before hand to run the risque of the foulest weather and not to go but to be carried nor so much whither the Pilot shall please to steer him as whither the wind and the waves shall be pleased to drive him so before we do resolve to ingage our selves in Christianity we ought in prudence to make a Reckoning as well of the Price that it will cost us as of the Profit and Advantage 't will bring us in If we conceive that our Reward though yet but future and invisible will yet prove at last an abundant Recompence for whatsoever we can do or suffer here for Christ's sake then resolve we with S. Paul to reckon all things but Dung for the winning of it Ever pressing towards the mark by Mortifications and Self-denials and laying aside the every weight which doth so easily beset us by a fellowship with his sufferings and a conformity to his Death for the Prize of the high Calling of God in Christ Iesus But if on the other side we esteem it too hard a bargain which Christ hath made in the New Testament And that to drink of his deadly Cup will be a bitterer potion than all his Love and his Promises will be able to sweeten then let us never so much as enter into a Covenant with Christ but rather than begin and only begin to do him service fairly leave it unto those who have the patience and the courage to go quite through it He is a mad kind of chapman who makes a contract with Christ for a participation of his Kingdom without resolving upon his Cross too Himself hath told us what 't is like Luke 14. 31. It is just like a King who going to war against another King doth not first sit down and consult whether he be able with Ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with Twenty thousand For even so saith our Saviour at the 33. verse of that chapter whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath be it his Pleasure his Reputation his livelihood or his life he cannot be my Disciple Sect. 3. Yet let not any man here object against his hope of Salvation and ground of Comfort Infoelix ego sum infausto tempore natus sad and evil is my Condition because I live in good times I cannot possibly be a Martyr for want of a Nero or a Domitian a Dioclesian or a Cromwel whereby to evidence my Love of the Lord Jesus Christ and to exercise my Faith with a fiery Trial. For that I may take him out of the Agony which he possibly may be in whilst he considers how great a Love is indispensably requir'd for the escaping of the Curse which is here denounced any man living however prosperous may be a Confessor or Martyr by a generous Resistance of his Prosperities by being under a persecution he wisely brings upon Himself by destroying his wicked Appetites though dearer to him than his Eyes and by retrenching those darling habitual lusts which are as hardly parted with as his hands and feet Be not therefore like King Polycrates too much afflicted with thy Prosperityes nor like the Emperor Mauritius so much terrified from within for want of Troubles from without as to conclude thy self a Bastard in God's account through a defect of that chastisement which is the character of a Son For if thou usest those Talents of Grace and Reason which God hath given thee thy Ambition may be the Nero whom thou resistest unto Bloud Or thy Avarice the Domitian by whom thou art plagu'd for thy Non-compliance Or thy lust the Dioclesian from whom thou suffer'st for thy Dissents Or thy Cruelty may be the Cromwel whom thou refusest to obey at thy great Expense Wilt thou know by what martyrdom thy Love to Christ may be expressed in Times of Peace and how to suffer for God though never persecuted by men Be but contented with all Events and ever rise with an Appetite from the most warrantable Injoyments Envy no mans preferment nor ambitiously covet to make it Thine pay Obedience to thy Superiours though they may seem never so froward do whatever God bids thee though it shall seem never so hard resist the Dalliance of the Flesh though never so pleasant or Importuning and then in all these together thou art a Martyr of Patience with holy Iob of Abstinence with Daniel
as we are rational and in what Instance can we be rational wherein 't is possible for us to cease from being voluntary Agents It does concern us therefore as such to ask for Grace when it is wanting and to use it when it is granted and again to pray God to increase our Talent and to beware that we receive not his Grace in vain too 2 Cor. 6. 1. And therefore as such we are injoyn'd as well as intreated by S. Paul not to grieve not to resist not to quench the Spirit of God when he begins to kindle in us that love of Christ which he requires plainly intimating unto us that when the Spirit of God is ready to shed abroad in our hearts such a saving love it lyes in us to shut a Casement that is an Eye to open a Dore that is an Ear to yield up a Castle that is a Heart to draw a Curtain that is a Prejudice to put Impediments out of the way and by the assistance of the same Spirit to employ the noble Faculties which God hath given us unto the noblest of the Ends for which he gave them We are able as we are men to presentiate our Saviour within our selves and so to meditate upon Him as we ordinarily do upon other objects we can frame Idaeas of him in our Imaginations and thereby bring him into our Heads by an Intentional Union although the Grace of God alone can unite him really to our Hearts by servent love and Faith unseigned Seeing therefore the Scripture saith in justification of the praemisses That we are Labourers and Workers together with God and again that we are Stewards of the manifold Grace of God and are diligently to look least any man fail of the Grace of God and again that every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour Let us never cease to labour in the great work of our Salvation till by the help of God's Grace which never fails to work with any who do not fail to work with it we have wrought our selves up to a Love of Christ. Being comparatively neglectful of all other duties until we have throughly attain'd to this We must remember that as our Faith is pre-required to our Love so is our Love to our obedience and our obedience unto our Bliss And we must perfect our Foundation before we build For debile Fundamentum fallit opus the weakness of a Foundation must needs betray the whole strength of a superstructure In vain shall we labour to raise the Fabrick of obedience unless we have a firm love whereupon to build it And therefore first let us be sure of loving Christ in Sincerity before we take upon our selves the effectual keeping of his Commandments And let us use the best engines whereby to screw our Love up to the Pitch requir'd For what we do not much Love we cannot much long for nor can we very much care to espowse the means of its Attainment And therefore in spight of the objection which has an aptness in its Nature to breed a carelesness of our Actions an unconcernment in our end and a contempt of those Assistances which onr Authorized Teachers are wont to yield us let us not cast away the care we ought to have of our Immortality nor be so blinded with the Opinion that all the actions of our Lives were pre-determin'd from Aeternity as thereupon to despair of being the better for our Indeavours and by consequence to resolve never to do our selves any Good But let us labour on the contrary after the Duty of loving Christ for the escaping of the Danger I mean the Curse and the Damnation denounced here to all Persons that love him not And to press this forwards with at least some Hope as well as Ambition of good Success will deserve to be the work of another Chapter CHAP. III. Sect. 1. WHen we are setting about the means which do most of all conduce to our greatest Ends we must be sure of right method as well as of Diligence in our Indeavours And because we are to cease from being Enemies to our Saviour before we can be in a possibility of being denominated his Friends First let us summon-in our Affections which are scatter'd abroad upon the world the love of which S. Iames saith is perfect Enmity with Christ. They that mind earthly things must needs be Enemies to his Cross and being Enemies to his Cross they cannot be Friends unto his Person For the Apostle tells us of such that their end is Destruction The reason of this is very evident For whilst we have Friendship with the world which is Christ's Rival and Competitor our Souls are Adulteresses and Harlots to use the language of S. Iames in the place before cited as being false and disloyal to him who betrothed us to himself and is verbally acknowledg'd to be our Bridegroom Love is evermore so sure to be the Mother of Obedience to whatsoever object it is which is much belov'd that as when we love Christ we will keep His Commandments so when we also love the world we will keep the Commandments of the world to wit the statutes of Omri and all the works of the House of Ahab So that our first labour must be for 't is indeed a great labour to disentangle our Affections to take them off from the things of this tempting world and as it were twisting them all together like the Rayes of the Sun in an Optick Pyramid strive to concenter them so united in the Soveraign Beauty of a Saviour Now one of the proper Engines for this I mean the rescuing of our love from what is worldly and to be seen is to chew and to ruminate long enough in our Thoughts upon this great Truth that even our love of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul And the titular Beauty of the Flesh must be confessed by the most sensual to lye intirely in the spirit For if we except the sole case of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Herodotus which yet was not love but another thing and that perhaps but a Fable too who ever heard of any Lover fixing his love upon the Body so much as one short minute after the vanishing of the Soul Did the Corinthians court their Lais when nothing was left them but her Body Did Demosthenes take a Iourney in kindness to her when she was dead no there was nothing then desirable besides Forgetfulness and a Grave Nothing then but the Worms was able to covet her Embraces Methinks that this one observable were it as patiently consider'd as it is easily understood should conduce extremely much to the spiritualizing of our Affections For if we love nothing that we can see of our dearest Friends but for the love of somwhat else which cannot possibly be seen what better reason can we give of it than that the Part which is material is arrant Rottenness and Corruption nor only not
lovely but loathsom too when abstracted from the part which is immaterial and for this reason it is that the zealousest Lover of what is worldly and who hath nothing in him of Christ whereby to qualifie and inable him for Spiritual love He I say would not be able to love the Body above the Soul if the Beauty of the Soul did not shine through the Body And if we do not only hear this but lay it up in our Hearts too nor only assent to it as True but consider it also as useful it will be sure of great moment first for the raising of our Thoughts and after that of our Affections from the things that are seen which are temporal to the things that are not seen which are eternal And then believing with S. Paul for without such Belief no such love can be imagin'd That our Life is hid with Christ in God we shall be still making thither to find it out Our Love of Christ will not leave him for being but gon out of our sight but will rather soar up in pursuit of him as far as Heaven and find him out pleading for us at the right hand of God And there beholding him as he is full of Grace and Truth and unimaginable Glory such as eye hath not seen nor Ear heard nor hath ever enter'd into the heart of man to conceive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Loves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Longings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Plotinus what Exiliencyes of Soul will then transport us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with what weightiness of Bliss shall we then be smitten whilst we love him as he is Good we shall desire him as he is lovely and never cease from desiring till we enjoy him as he is Blessed I mean as the Fountain of Bliss and Glory If any man shall here ask by what means he may behold the unspeakable Beauty which is above that so beholding he may be ravish't with the sweet violence of its Attractions the answer to it may be had from the same Plotinus No man saith he can see true Beauty but by casting the sight of his eyes behind him And again saith that learned and pious Heathen we are to fly from those Pleasures which are but common to us with Brutes as once Ulysses from the charms of Circe and Calypso which if he had not wisely don he had never gone back to his native Countrey And we must do exactly like him if we are bound for that Countrey from whence we came and would fain see the place of our first extraction Now what but Heaven is our Countrey there dwels our Father from thence we came and what we commonly call our life is indeed our Pilgrimage For in the words of the Psalmist we are but strangers upon Earth So as the way to go thither from whence we came in a kind of Exile is to leave both our Horses and Feet behind us saith the Platonist And swiftly mounting up ourselves on the wings of Love and Desire guide we our course with those Eyes which are not without us but within us and with which if any of us are not accustomed to see it is not because we want such Eyes but only because we will not use them Unless we are got into their Classis in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds in which case only our eyes are darkned that we not only will not but cannot use them But this is so wilful a Disability that whatsoever are the occasions we ourselves are the Causes of it For when a people are abandon'd to vile affections and severely given over to a reprobate mind it is because of their refusing the fear of the Lord and because of their not liking to retain God in their Knowledge Rom. 1. 26 28. where S. Paul's expression is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They did not think good to have God in their acknowledgment But till then the Apostle tells us the invisible things of God are clearly seen v. 20. not indeed with those eyes we carry outwardly in our Heads but with those other more Angelical which we have inwardly in our Hearts To sum up all in a word Our affections in themselves are indifferent things apt to be cleaving to any object whether evil or good as they shall happen to be directed by carnal Appetite or Reason And if it were not in our power to set our love upon the world in despight of God's Grace or to take it from off the world by making use of its assistance the Apostle would never have exhorted us with so much earnestness as he does To love neither the world nor the things in the world To set our Affections on things above and not to set them on things below To mortifie in our selves our earthly members To cast off the old man to put on the new To cloath our selves with Love as with the bond of Perfection To let the Peace of God reign in our Hearts To afford the word of God an Habitation and Dwelling within our selves From all which together 't is very natural to inferr that if we have not yet wasted the Talent of Grace which God hath given us which undoubtedly of itself is sufficient for us and does competently arm us with Ghostly strength we can see and we can love and can delight in the Lord Jesus and by consequence if we will we can escape the sad effects of being Anathema Maranatha But now 't is time that after the first we put in practice a second instrument whereby to raise up our Love to the Lord Iesus Christ. That is as much as in us lyes we must provoke our selves to jealousie and a religious Aemulation by considering how others have lov'd our Saviour to whom he could not be a Saviour with more obligingness than he is ours We find S. Paul was so inflam'd with the love of Christ who yet a little while before had been a virulent Blasphemer and Hater of him and did so long after a time of being admitted into his presence that in comparison of Christ he counted all things but loss and all things Gain on the contrary which might any way help him in his approach That though there is nothing in the world which Nature hates more than the terrible Face of a Dissolution yet there was nothing which that Apostle did so much long for Not at all for the love of a Dissolution which he detested in one sense whilst he desir'd it in another but for the love of that Christ from whom he was absent in the Body and could not so well be present with as by the favourable Help of a Dissolution That indeed was his Cordolium There it was his shoo pinch't him 'T was his most passionate aspiring to be with Christ which made him groan so very earnestly under the Burden of
his Mortality He did not groan to be uncloath'd with any desire of being naked but as a necessary condition of being cloathed upon with his House from Heaven It was for this and this only his extreme love of Christ that he did glory in Tribulations that he rejoyced in his Sufferings that he took pleasure in Persecutions and lov'd to bear in his Body the Dying of the Lord Iesus For this alone did S. Iohn embrace his Banishment into Pathmos S. Stephen his very stones and the men that threw them S. Thomas his saw and S. Peter his Crucifixion It was for this that S. Ignatius could bid defiance to salvage Beasts that Anacharsis brake forth with a kind of Triumph into his Tunde and that others being tormented would not let go their Sufferings not so much as accept of such a thing as a Deliverance when they might innocently have had it for taking up For this it was that Mary Magdalen perfum'd the Head of her blessed Lord and kiss't his Feet with the same affection and also wash't them with her Tears and after wip't them with her hair administred to him of her Substance closely follow'd him all along as far as from Galile to Ierusalem from thence to Golgotha and from thence unto his Grave too forgetting the tenderness of her Sex the tedious passages of the way the ghastly presence of the night the waking jealousie of the Elders the barbarous violence of the Guard and being afraid of just nothing unless of not finding Him whom with the pantings of her Soul she did love and long for Would ye know now the reason of so much love to the end it may affect you with somewhat like it She had been a great sinner and He had sav'd her from her Sins She had been seiz'd by seven Devils and her dear Lord had dispossess't her Had had the members of an Harlot which by a more than creative power He had converted into a Temple She had purchac't a place in Hell and He had given her an Inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven Or to give you the sum of all in our Saviours own words She loved much because much had been forgiven her Now what Marbles rather than Men may we be worthily esteem'd if such Examples as I have nam'd cannot provoke us to aemulation Seeing Christ is our Saviour as well as theirs what should hinder us from loving him as well as they Can we think so hardly of him as to believe he did decree that such as they only should love him did he not love that we should love him as well as S. Peter and S. Paul And did he therefore necessitate our want of kindness Did he accordingly praedetermin the several means of our disaffection or give us any discouragements from being kind Let us expostulate with ourselves as God himself was pleas'd to do with his People Israel Hath Iesus Christ been a wilderness to any of us or have we found him a wither'd Tree which hath not afforded us any Fruit What kind of Iniquity have we ever seen in him Which part of his Covenant hath he not punctually performed Did he ever yet forsake us when we forsook him not first What hath he don unto us and wherein hath he wearied us He desires us if he hath that we will testifie against him Mic. 6. 3. Nay who was ever more belov'd than he was pleas'd to love us For whose sake hath he don better or suffer'd worse than he did for ours Hath he forgiven us lesser sins than Mary Magdalen was forgiven Why then should we requite him with lesser Instances of Affection Or if the Affectionateness of others will not provoke us to aemulation and that we have not any Impatience of coming after them in Loyalty as much as Time yet let us try by a third Indeavour how to make up the defects of the first and second Let us display before our selves the several excellencies of Christ That so if any spark of Love is now discoverable within us we may by the Grace which he hath given us blow it up into a Flame To speak of his Loveliness in Himself would be the business of an Age and therefore must not be set about in this poor Remnant of an Hour But yet a little let us consider his great obligingness to us because the powerfull'st Incentive to Love is Love When Love was suppos'd by the old Poets to have brought down their Gods from Heaven to earth it was the highest flight of fancy their Wits could take whereby to celebrate the vertue and Power of Love But we can say without the help of either a Fable or a Figure that 't was the love of our Souls I mean the love of their safety which made the God of all Glory to bow the Heavens and come down to take upon him not the likeness but the essentials of a man yea to become a man of sorrows an intimate acquaintance with Grief and Miseries and this in the Form of a poor servant yea and in the disguise of a sinner too Sure if the Heavens had not bow'd unto the Scepter of his Love his Love was so strong it must needs have broke them When he reflected upon the Torments he was to suffer soon after for our Injoyment he shew'd the vehemence of his Love by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How am I streightn'd how am I press't how am I terrifi'd and pain'd till it be accomplish't He long'd to drink of the cup of Trembling He thirsted after the Potion of Gall and Vinegar He gladly suck't the very dregs of the wine of Gods wrath Not at all for its own sake because 't was bitter for as such it made him wish that the Cup might pass from him but because our Redemption was sweeter to him than any thing else could be bitter by which 't was purchacâ—…t Is not he a rare Physician for skill and kindness and certainly if it be possible more for kindness than for skill who takes no more unto Himself than the Rancidity of the Medicine and leaves his Patient to injoy the pleasant effects of a Recoverie Yet this was perfectly our case with the great Physician of the Soul He took the nauseousness of the Physick which made for the Cure of our Diseases We were desperately sick and He would needs swallow the ugly Pills That we might be purged from our filthiness He would needs drink up the filthy potion Would have the noisomest Ingredients as it were strain'd through His body that we might have nothing to pledge him in but the sweet Restorative of his Bloud Now what can more excite our Love than thus to meditate upon His As there is no better way whereby to keep up our Patience than by looking up to Him who did indure with so much Patience such contradiction of Sinners against himself so is there no better way whereby to keep up our love and to raise it
spending upon our sins both to nourish and to adorn them with Food and Rayment Let us spend upon our Saviour in a more liberal proportion and that in such manner as he directs us Let us spend out of our Treasures to feed and cloath him in his members Let us spend to pay him Homage in as many of his members as under Him are our Heads And let us be spent for him as freely like Epaphroditus and S. Paul both by watching and fasting by meditating and praying by suffering paines and persecutions whensoever he shall call or expose us to them not by the leaving of our lives for the paying unto Nature her common Debt but by the laying of them down for the paying to our Saviour our Debt of Grace And as we may help to shame our selves into a love of the Lord Iesus by reflecting on our love to inferiour things so our love to the Lord Iesus just as our love to other things is very apt both to be bred and to be very much nourish't by conversation For Ignoti nulla Cupido We cannot possibly desire him whilst we are ignorant of his beauty And of that we must be ignorant whilst we are strangers to his converse So that the reason why most Professors are wont to love Christ so little doth seem especially to be This their having so little of his Acquaintance Enough of that will so charm us as to beget in us a loathing of all that makes a separation 'twixt Him and us Unto how many things and persons are many men passionately addicted if not absolutely enslav'd for which they can give us no better reason than that of their having been wonted to them let us but wont our selves as much unto an heavenly conversation and we shall find it just as harsh to be weaned from it Hence it follows that we must read and not only read but strictly search into the Scripture not only resting in its literal but also diving into its moral and soaring up too into its mystical significations whereby to acquaint ourselves throughly with the Lord Jesus Christ and more and more to comprehend the great variety of his Perfections And then to the end that his Perfections may so affect us as they deserve nor only float in our Brains but deeply sink into our Bowels we must imprint them within our selves by mental Prayer and Meditation To each of which we must be resolute to be so wonted and inur'd as not to be able without regret to admit of any long Avocation from them Nor can we pardonably excuse our gross neglects of conversing with Jesus Christ by alledging our Inability of taking delight in his converse For conversation must be made easie ere it can possibly be delightful And the easiness of any thing must come by use First 't is the diligence of our converse by which we come to love Christ and then 't will be natural for our Love to make us delight in his converse It argues a shallowness of Reason and a great want of perspicacity to think there are not any Pleasures upon the Mount of Contemplation as Gerson calls it because we cannot yet perceive them at the Foot of the Hill or in the Act of contending to climb up thither 'T is as great weakness as to conclude against the Pleasure of reaping a goodly Harvest from the labour of Cultivation and charge of seed Or to inferr there is no contentment in inhabiting a pleasant and well-built house from the cost of the Materials and Care of putting them together Nemo Montis Cacumen uno faltu conscendit The Hill of Sion is a fair place and Mount Tabor is a delicious one But we must not think to reach the Top of either at a Leap For as the lower and more earthy our pleasures are they must needs be attain'd with the greater ease so we must use the greatest patience and we must take the greatest paines to overcome the steep ascent of the highest pleasures All the Duties of a Christian I mean the Acts and not the Habits are so many steps and degrees to the Hill I speak of Which Acts of Duty whilst they are yet but Acts only will cost the natural man Pain and make him see he hath need of patience But after a competent tract of Time as soon as the Acts have been so numerous as to produce their respective Habits the Acts arising from those Habits will requite the said Patience with ease and pleasure Shall I exemplifie what I say by any one important duty which at first gives us Trouble and after rewards us with Delight I cannot instance in a fitter than that of Prayer because 't is one of the chiefest means whereby to enter and to continue and to complete our conversation with him that bought us How many are there in the world who turn their backs on this Duty upon no better Ground than their erroneous Imagination that 't is of no use to pray till they can do it with Devotion A way of reasoning as irregular as if a man who is very cold should conclude it wholly useless to make a Fire till he is warm Want we Devotion in our Prayers we are to pray for Devotion and Devotion is apt to grow from our customary Praying for other things From when in spite of our Indifferency and perhaps our Averseness to such a Duty we use the Empire of our Wills in the work of Prayer and casting our selves upon our Knees are very resolutely bent to perform the Duty how much soever against the stream of our Inclinations God will reward our Resolution by turning our Labour into delight and so will make it as great a Pleasure in time to come as it has been in time pass't a self-denial If any man shall here ask how we can possibly converse with things invisible or have a Languor after him whom we never saw let them answer saith S. Ierom who have read the answer to it in the Book of Experience and have not been able to forbear crying out with David Wo is me that I am constrained to dwell in Mesech O that I had wings to fly away and be at rest my soul is athirst for the living God And even panteth after Him as the Hart panteth after the water-Brooks O when shall I appear before the Presence of God! Devout S. Bernard himself confess 't that in the beginning of his Conversion he was frequently of an hard and frigid Heart who yet being accustomed to converse with Christ by Grace could not but thirst with great impatience to injoy him also in his Glory Yea that love which of necessity does begin in the Flesh may saith he by Degrees be well consummated in the Spirit For not to mention the seven degrees which are assign'd by Ubertinus as being too nice to be truly useful First 't is natural for a man as he is carnal and depraved to love himself above all things and above
are thirdly to observe the important Lesson which here is Taught and which is now of all Lessons the most worth learning especially if we reflect on the Times we live in by what certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or way of proof we may make men to know we are Christs Disciples This is deliver'd in the first and last words of the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it even by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye bear love to one another From these three parts there are as many Propositions into which the whole Text is very naturally resolv'd That all who are Auditors of Christ or all to whom he is reveal'd do stand oblig'd by that means to be really his Disciples That their Discipleship if it be real will be eminent also and exemplary so far forth as to be known and taken notice of by All. That the surest Testimony and Proof of sincere Discipleship under Christ and the principal Instance or effect wherein its eminence doth consist and that which by Christ is here pronounced as an unerrable mark or Criterion of it is this Divine Qualification of mutual Love And this alone must be the Subject upon which I am to fasten the following part of my Design because it seems to comprehend I say not only the prime but whole Importance of the Text as we may judge by comparing the proposition with the fourfold Emphasis which may be put upon the words For first our Saviour does not say Men shall guess or conjecture that ye are mine but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it Nor secondly does he say Your Discipleship shall be known as a special Secret to very few but as the Sun in his Meridian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men shall know it Nor thirdly does he say All men shall know ye seem to be by a Disguise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye are my Disciples without a fiction Last of all he does not say Your Discipleship shall be known by such deceivable Tokens as your Assembling your selves in the House of Prayer your crying Lord Lord your doing wonders in my name your being Orthodox in Judgment and jumping together in Opinions but by This it shall be known as by a Token which never fails 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye have Love for one another CHAP. I. Sect. 1. THE Proposition to be consider'd though last in order is first in dignity And being as the Heart of the whole Body of Christianity deserves to be like the Heart in the body of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first thing that lives and the last that dyes in our consideration For can there be any thing in the world of greater consequence than This which gives us a Token whereby to know we have an Interest in Christ and such a sure token too as cannot possibly deceive us yet even such is that Love of which I am now about to treat and which if we take into our hearts as well as into our memories It will I doubt not carry with it that peace of Conscience which is to all that feed on it an endless Feast Sect. 2. But since there is hardly any word that is more equivocal than this I must Anticipate an Objection by shewing what Love it is which our Saviour meant when he appointed it for the measure by which his Scholars are to be scann'd Sect. 3. And to shew the better what it is I must first shew what it is not For all sorts of men pretend to Love not only Christians but the professed Enemies of Christ and the nominal as well as real Christians Nay in one kind or other they all have Love in their possession and many times the worst in the greatest measure For greater Love than this our Saviour tells us there is none that a man lay down his life for his friend And plentiful store of this Love we commonly find in our reading amongst the Heathen Their great Philosophers did prescribe it and not a few of their people obeyâ—…d the Precept Sect. 4. To save a Friend ready to perish we find Episthenes in Xenophon ready to lay down his life And such was the love of Artapates to Cyrus Iunior that he perfectly hated his own life as soon as Cyrus had quitted His. Nor would Lucius Petâ—…onius out-live his friend Pomponius Laetorius dyed a couple of Martyrs for Caius Graâ—…chus And Titus Volumnius followed Lucullus into his grave Terentius preferrâ—…d the life of Brutus by many degrees before his own And Valerius tells us of divers servants who for the saving of their Masters destroyed themselves What transcendent lovers of one another were Menedemus and Hipsides Cleonymus and Archidâ—…mus Agasias and Xenophon Bagooâ—… and Mentâ—…k Hippoclides and Polystratus Asclâ—…piodotus and Soranus 'T were easie to name as many more as would make a man weary to heart them nam'd Nor do I speak only of Couples but of Societies and Sects whose astonishing Love to one another hath rais'd them Monuments in story will last as long as the Sun and Moon Such as the Cimbri and Celtiberians in Valerius Maximus the friends of Cyrus in Xenophon the Athonians in Thucydides the Megalopolitans in Polybius the men of Saguntum and Petellia the many Societies reckon'd up by Alexander ab Alexandro who had all things in common of every kind and as well their Sufferings as their Injoyments Insomuch that if one did lose a limb by any accident all the rest were to cut off theirs that in every Circumstance of Adversity they might all be equall and alike Sect. 25. Thus there were multitudes of men who lov'd each other unto the Death and some beyond it as far as Hell Yet very far were those Pagans from being known by such love to have been either the Disciples of Christ or Moses 'T was little better than the love of King Porus his Elephant and other generous beasts which have expos'd their own lives to save their Rider's There is a natural kindness and Generosity which is common to men with the meanest Creatures and so hath nothing of affinity with what is intended in the Text. Sect. 6. Nay if we reflect upon our selves upon whom the name of Christ is call'd we must not imagin we have attain'd unto that excellent Love which is here requir'd because we find upon inquiry that we are loving to our friends or because we have often our solemn meetings or stand fast to one another as drivers-on of a design For as there are many sorts of love which are not rational and pure as not proceeding from a right principle so there are many things too which are but the Counterfeits of love and yet are call'd by that Name because they look extremely like it The Devils themselves have their combination are still
are to argue à minori ad majus For if our Love must extend thus to Enemies how much more to such as are friends friends to our Persons and to our God too The love of Christ had degrees and so must ours As the Apostle tells us of Christ he is the Saviour of all but especially of them that believe so the very same Apostle does also tell us of our selves we must do good unto all men but especially to them who are of the houshold of faith And even of those that are faithful a primary care is to be taken for them that are of our own Countrey It was not only for Gods sake that David was kind unto Ierusalem but for his Brethren and Companions sake he prayed to God for her and did his utmost to do her good Psal. 122. 8. Our Saviour being himself an Israelite did ‖ prefer the lost sheep of the House of Israel How kind was Moses to His Countreymen when he became for their sakes extremely cruel unto Himself Lord saith he if thou wilt forgive their Sin and if not blot me I pray thee out of the book which thou hast written Exod. 32. 32. As if salvation it self could hardly please him unless his Countreymen might have it as well as He. Nor was the passion of S. Paul inferiour to it who for the love he bare unto His Countreymen whom he calls his brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh was ready to wish himself accursed and utterly c̄ut off from the body of Christ. Rom. 9. 2. As if he car'd not what became of him so that his Countreymen might be sav'd Sect. 12. But many times our neerest Countreymen may become our worst Neighbors and in respect of their Religion dwell farthest off too To a man born in Iudaea a good Samaritan ought to be dearer than an hard-hearted Iew. S. Paul and the Christians of Thessalonica were never us'd with more rigour than by the men of their own Countrey And our Saviours words are very remarkable that except it be in his own Countrey a Prophet is never without honour Matt. 13. 57. But let him be in his own Countrey and he hath no honour at all John 4. 44. Christ himself had least there and there he did the fewest Miracles but that he did not more there than in other places the only Cause was their unkindness Sect. 13. This is therefore the firmest Bond whereby to hold us together in peace and love not that we are of one Countrey but that we are of one Christ And can say of our selves with better reason than it was anciently said of the Lomnini that in all our bodies there is no more than one soul or to express it with S. Paul that we have all but one Faith one Baptism one Spirit one Lord one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all Eph. 4. 4 5 6. If we will manifest to the world and prove convincingly to our selves that we are really the Followers and Friends of Christ. It must be by a burning and shining Love A love of men and not of God only And a Love of men it must be in which the true Love of God is not excluded but presuppos'd Not a love of our selves only condemn'd so much by the Apostle but a Love of others as our selves if not as much yet as well if not in that measure yet in the very same manner in which we are obliged to love our selves And it must be Dilectio Amoebaea a mutual Love a giving and taking of affections Indeed rather than fail we must pledge them in Love who do begin to us in hatred But to make up such a Love as is especially here requir'd such as with which the blessed Apostles did once adorn both the Doctrin and the Discipleship of Christ It must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love interchanged with one another For in how many things soever there may be a seemingness of Religion S. Iames assures us that it's Purity does consist in these two the relief of the needy in their Afflictions and the keeping our selves unspotted from the world Nor can we be told a better course either for brevity or clearness whereby to be possessed of both together than that of measuring and dealing our love to others by such a natural proportion as we have commonly for ourselves For this is perfectly the scope of that Law to which as Christians we must be subject I say we must so much the rather because what soever a man soweth that shall he reap And with what measure we mete it shall be measur'd to us again As 't is the mercy of good men which is said to triumph over Gods Iudgment so there is Iudgment without mercy for them that shew little or none Sect. 14. The chiefest requisites of our Love must be Sincerity and Fervour As S. Paul speaks to the Romans we must be kindly affectioned one towards another so as our love may be brotherly and without dissimulation Rom. 12. 9 10. we must not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 double-sould men Jam. 1. 8. but carry our meaning in our foreheads and hold our hearts in our hands Not love in word neither in Tongue but in deed and in Truth We must not look every man at his own things only but every man at the things of others Phil. 2. 4. If we are owners of such a love as is a Testimony and proof of our real Discipleship under Christ The same mind will be in us which was in Christ Iesus Phil. 2. 5. And if so we shall be ready to stoop as he did to the meanest offices of love even to wash and to wipe the very feet of our Inferiors we shall willingly bear one anothers burdens Gal. 6. 2. by love serving one another Gal. 5. 13. And in honour preferring one another Rom. 12. 10. Nay if the same mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus as S. Paul tells us it ought to be our love will be so Intensive as to make us lay down our lives for the Brethren And so S. Iohn tells us we ought to do 1 Iohn 3. 16. Sect. 15. If no diviner love of one another were meant by our Saviour under the Gospel then what was so frequently exacted under the paedagogie of Moses our Saviour certainly would have said An Old Commandment I give unto you it having been said to them of old Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Levit. 19. 18. But here he calls it a New Commandment which we cannot imagin he would have don had there been nothing in its subject but what was old No he might very well call it a New Commandment not only for that reason which I find given by S. Austin because it prescribes us such a love as by which we cast off the old man and put on the new but because it prescribes
keep his Commandments Now the man being nam'd who hath not broken the condition it will be easy to name the man in whom the promise hath been accomplish't In the very same measure we mete to Christ it is but just he should mete to us If we will needs reject his Precepts how can he do less than neglect our prayers with what modesty can we expect that he should give us what we desire whilst we pay him not the tribute which He commands what incouragement has our Saviour to be still gratifying of us whose common practice it is to incense or grieve him nay to deal freely with our selves and but ingenuously with Christ what man is there amongst us who is not ready to confess that we have cross't his will more than he hath cross't ours had not he been more inclinable to grant our Prayers than we commonly have been to yield obedience to his commands what should we many times have don for Food and Rayment how could we sow in the spring with any expectation to reap in Autumn this may therefore be sufficient to free his promise from the objection that he performes more of it than we have don of the condition on which 't was made Nay as his promise is vastly greater than we have the goodness to deserve so his performance of it is more than we have the Impudence to require For if we love him but little he grants us much if we obey him but seldom he thanks us often And if he gives us not all we ask it is because we do not love him with all the love that he requires such as employ's our whole strength in the constant keeping of his commandments Sect. 16. The objection being thus answer'd and the promise of our Saviour thereby made clear I proceed from the second to the third Topick which I propos'd that is to such a kind of reasoning as the natural man himself will not easily contradict Sect. 17. First t will be granted by all the world as well by the Iew as by the Christian as well by the heathen as by the Iew as well by the Atheist as by the Heathen all will say with one mouth that they desire to be happy and that happiness is so lovely they cannot choose but desire it Perfect happiness is the object which alone cannot fall under the liberty of the will It is as natural to desire it as for a stone to tend downwards Indeed 't is easie to mistake but 't is impossible to refuse it I say 't is easy to mistake a false happiness for a true and to refuse the true happiness in adherence unto a false one But happiness cannot be refus'd by any man who does believe it is truly such Consummate happiness is the center towards which we all travail let our errors and vices be what they will and however we may differ about the way that leads to it yet we agree in our Intentions to hit the end For though there are that seek death and with Hell are at agreement and pull destruction upon themselves with the work of their Hands yet 't is because they mistake their Bliss not because they prefer their miserie Every man in the world does love the quenching of his thirst Desire is the thirst of every mans Soul Satisfaction is the quenching of all Desire And though a man wanders never so much in the way that he is going yet the end of his Iourney is satisfaction So that ayming as we do at being happy and setting out as we do from the pure hands of a Creator we should not be able to miss of happiness were there not many ways of erring betwixt the circumference and the center Epicurus went one way Eudoxus another Diodorus a third Herillus a fourth the Stoicks a fifth the Peripateticks a sixth as hath been elsewhere observed the Gymnosophists a seventh the Herodians an eighth the Mahomedans a ninth and we who are Christians do go a tenth but all agree in their desires of being as happy as it is possible This I therefore set down as my first postulatum and as that which will be granted by men of all sects that though happiness is mistaken by several sects and as diversly defin'd as 't is misunderstood yet to be absolutely happy in the general notion of the word is the common desire of all the world Sect. 18. It will secondly be granted by men of all sects that a mans happiness does consist in the complete satisfaction of his desires For our desires are our capacities or our emptiness of soul. How much soever we do desire so much we want and stand in need of Now because there is nothing which nature hates more than to be empty or in want there can be nothing more natural than to covet a fulness or satisfaction But the largest of Vessels can want no more than it will hold nor can it covet more than will make it full And therefore the filling of our desires vessels of infinite capacity cannot choose but be that wherein our happiness does consist Which fulfilling of our desires is nothing else but contentment or satisfaction Sect. 19. Now hence it follows unavoidably that if a mans Happiness does consist in the complete satisfaction of his desires and if that is nothing else but an absolute contentment or self-sufficience and if the Commandments of Christ do ty us up or oblige us to such contentment then his Commandments of necessity do make it our duty to be happy and by consequence an happiness to do our Duty In this there is nothing to be deny'd no not so much as by the Atheist unless it be that Christs commandments do oblige us to contentment or self-sufficience and that will easily be prov'd by the Tenor of them which himself hath sum'd up in the 12 chap. of S. Mark v. 30 31. where all the law and the Prophets are said to hang upon these two hinges Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart with all thy mind with all thy soul and with all thy strength and thy Neighbour as thy self Now he that loves God with all his heart will in him set up his Rest his whole delight will be in him his whole dependence will be on him he will not love either the world or the things of the world in whatsoever state he is he will be sure to be content he will not with Martha be sollicitous and careful of many things but espowse with Mary the one thing that is necessary He will be inwardly full of joy in the Holy Ghost his conversation will be in Heaven and the tranquillity of his Conscience will be the beginning of his Bliss Thus it must needs be with him who is perfectly amorous of his Maker and perfectly amorous of his Maker he needs must be who loves him with all his heart and soul. This is the summ of our whole Duty towards God and this is the