had been meer Heathens and looked for no other Life and if we had no fear of Judgment Nay have we stuck at those sins that Turks and Heathens do abhor It 's a true though a shameful confession And now shall we pity a suffering and not abhor a sinful People Hath the Lord broke in upon us before many a fair warning we have had ubera many times before we have felt verbera we have had lightning before thunder Are not all these Examples that he hath set before us both in sacred and prophane Writ so many Warning-pieces shot off to prevent the approaching Enemy Doth he not say to us by his Word as he did to the Rebellious Jews Jer. 7.12 Go ye now unto Shiloe where I set my Name at the first and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my People Israel Go ye to the City and Temple of Jerusalem and see what I have done for the wickedness thereof Go ye to Sodom to the old World see how their sins have found them out Consult the several Nations to which the Prophets pronounced their several burdens and see how they have sped for their Iniquities Cast thine Eye upon Greece and other parts of Christendom upon whom the Lord hath let in the overflowing Scourge the barbarous Turk for their kicking at his Sacrificies and negligence in his Worship Look upon Germany where the Lord made such fearful Desolation time not yet out of mind Remember the late unnatural War and Bloodshed in our own Nation how it emptied the Nation plagued the Inhabitants for wickededness burneth as the fire it shall devour the Bryers and Thorns Esay 9.18 How long hath the Lord waited on us expecting fruit looking for Reformation Think not that the Lord dealeth hardly charge him not foolishly if he call for the Sicle for the Harvest is ripe the Presses are full the Fat 's overflow for our Iniquities are risen high Joel 3.13 What could the Lord have done more for us in a way of mercy than he hath done and therefore no wonder that Judgment follow us Thus if thou hast a worthy Remembrance of God thou wilt consider his more remarkable Providences and plead the cause of his Justice in the present sad condition into which sin hath brought us Vse Exhortation If then it be such a sin to forget God as there hath been proof enough it is then let this stir us up to more frequent thoughts of God and to a more worthy Remembrance of him What such a Remembrance doth import I think I need not waste time to shew since it is opposed to forgetfulness and contraries do discover each other by these two known and obvious Rules 1. Contraries in or about the same Subject and the subject of the one is neither larger nor scanter than the other e. g. Sight and Blindness are about the Eye The same Air is the Subject both of Light and Darkness and Vertue and Vice are subjected in the same Soul though not at the same time 2. Though Contraries are about the same Subject yet they have contrary Affections e. g. If Vertue be lovely Vice is Odious If Light discovers all things than Darkness covers all things Since therefore 1. As I said Forgetfulness is not an act of the Memory only so neither is Remembrance And 2. As every degree of Remembrance doth not acquit a Man from the odious guilt of Forgetfulness so neither is every degree of Forgetfulness inconsistent with this Remembrance If God have the Soveraignty and Preheminence in thy Heart he will accept it otherwise it is not a Remembrance worthy of him I need say no more for if we know what it is to forget God we cannot but know what is to Remember him If we know who they are that forget God we must needs know who they are that Remember him But least what hath been spoken should not be so Remembered and set together I shall only give a short draught of the Duty or rather bring it fresh to your Remembrance that you may know whether the Exhortation tendeth and not be excited to you know not what In a word therefore This Remembrance of God implies such frequent and worthy thoughts of God as command the Affections of our Hearts and the Actions of our Lives more than any thing else besides And is it not pity that the Heart of Man should be so backward to this duty and so hardly prompted to such a sightly and becoming work and that all that can be spoke to recommend this duty and to spur up to this Remembrance unless God set it home is like to be at best but like the beating or cutting the Air which seems to receive a wound but it presently closeth again and no abiding impression is left behind Alas alas that we should stuff our Hearts with Feathers and think upon vanity and never tire and that the bias of our Souls should be quite another way than towards God! That he that should be our sweetest Meditation is so great a stranger to us How seldom do we erect a thought to him or think on him with pleasure and delight We can even lose our selves in vain and earthly thoughts and think on nothing else almost from morning to night But he that is our support all the day long is ever about our Paths and about our Bed for our defence and safety hath a poor little share in our Thoughts and Affections Art thou not fully satisfied that he is to be loved with all thy Heart and Soul and Strength and that he is worthy of Love and Obedience and a thousand fold more than thou art able to give The excellency of his Nature and Goodness unto thee must needs exâ—ort this confession How can we better employ our Thoughts than upon him that gave us our Thinking Faculty To what better purpose canst thou use thy Reason than to fetch something from every Object that is presented to thee to put thee in mind of God Every thing is big with Instruction and proffers its help to bring thee nearer unto God if thou wilt be taught Thou canst take no better course to advance thy self than to advance him in thy thoughts Thou canst make no better use of Creatures than to make them a means to bring God and thy Heart together To the Heavens and to the Earth and to all that is in them and if they teach thee not this Lesson it is because they are Traytors and not Creatures but the fault is thine and not theirs Thou canst not make a better use of Scripture than to imprint God deeper in thy Remembrance To the Laws and to the Testimonies if they teach thee not thus much it is because thou wilt not learn and there is no light in thee Esay 8.20 As thou lovest thy self and thine own welfare make thine advantage of every thing to promote him higher in thy Mind and Heart Since thou hast so much Instruction round about thee to
Sabbath-breaking careless performance of his Service and Worship Selfishness Inordinate love of and Adulterous Affections to any Creature and hiding Pride from Man and turning our Eyes from a fond Admiration of Creatures and laying them in the dust They will not endure it but fret and murmur in their hearts and are ready to say as the Rebellious Followers of Korah did to Moses Wilt thou put out these Eyes of ours We will not come down we will not deny our selves nor be crossed in our wills nor leave our shame When God is putting the Bridle into their Mouths and laying a Curb and Restraint upon their Intemperance Pride and Luxury and bringing into contempt their Gallantry and swaggering Bravery they will not endure the Curb but rage and foam and grow mad and bite the Bridle that holds them in and reply as the remnant Jews did after the Captivity when they sent Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord for their Direction and liked not the Answer that he brought Jer. 44.16 17. We will not hearken to thee but will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth of our own Mouth we will let our Hearts with a full rein to any thing they desire for when we have done thus we were well and saw no evil when we leave off to shew favour and courtesie to our selves who shall befriend us when we begin to cry shame on our selves all men will cry shame on us and if once we come down and lie in the dust all men will trample upon us Those are some of the shifts that carnal Wisdom and Reason alledgeth whereby it would frustrate the Invitations of Mercy When God is calling for the Plumb Line and meting out a Nation for Destruction Amos 7.7 when he is drawing the lines of confusion in a place 1 Sam. 2.8 and marking it for Judgment they cry as the Inhabitants of Ephraim once did The Bricks are fallen down but we will build with hewen Stones the Sycamores are cut down but we will change them into Cedars Esay 9.10 And though we may not be gotten up to such a degree of wickedness as this is it will concern us to make search and inquiry whether there be no seed of this wicked nature in us I am too much out of doubt that there is much of crossness and contradiction to the will of God in the best heart and too loth are the best to veil and stoop to the will of God when it crosseth ours but it will be fitter to help on this search in the Application 4. Lastly They overlook both his Attributes Word and Works all at once that put him off with shadows instead of substance that give him a few flattering words and shews for the inward worship and purity of their hearts This is the very instance of the Psalm a part of which we have now before us What an affront is this to remember him with the Mouth that he may be cast out of the Heart where he will have more to do than all the World or else abhor that person and his service whose heart it is To wash the outside with the paint of an external profession and to have a Heart full of Pride and unmortified Lusts full of putrid noisom Filth is not to play the Christian but the Pharisee To profess God at Home and at Church in our Houses and his House and to joyn with his Servants in the Externals of his Worship to read his Word and sing his Praises with our Lips and in Heart and Life to subvert the Christian Faith is not to be a Disciple but a Judas To give God the most glorious Attributes and Titles and call him thy Creator Lord and Governour and to acknowledge thou hast all from his Bounty and yet to deny him the Service and Obedience due to his Laws this is not to remember but to forget him If I be a Father where is mine Honour If I be a Master where is my fear saith God Mal. 1.6 Is not the Lord a Spirit and will he be put off with a meer bodily service only I know he will have the service of the body also he will have the Tongue and the Knee and an External Reverence that may be of good Example to others But thou art guilty of Hypocrisie and Folly both if this be all that thou canst spare if thou go not further thou mayst be a very devil in thy heart when thou haâ—st Oyl and Butter in thy Mouth and when thou speakest the smoothest words to God thou mayst have war and enmity to him in thy heart thou mayst fetch a sigh or a groan for sin at a pretty easie rate but God will not take this instead of Self-denial and mortification of thy Lusts but will abhor their shews and complements that cover hatred with lying Lips When God calls to the proud Person to come down and sit in the dust and humble himself will it be an acceptable service if he would offer him something else or will he take the fruit of the Body for the sin of the Soul Mich. 6.7 I mean a shew of humility in going softly speaking faintly looking sadly instead of true lowliness and poverty of Spirit I speak not against the outward signs they are good when accompanied with the thing signified but when we deceive our selves with these and think to deceive God also True humility consists in a universal submission to the Will of God and ready obedience to all his Laws when they cross our interest in the world as when they do promote it And he that hath not this in a prevailing measure and degree God will look upon him afar off let him come as near as he will with his Tongue or Knee Psal 138.6 and he will plentifully reward as a proud doer Psal 40.4.31.23 When God calleth to search our hearts and try our ways and remember our doings It will not serve turn to remember the doings of others and to seâ—â—ch and censure them to lay heavy burdens upon the City or Countrey and not to touch them with one of our Fingers not but we may and must confess the sins of the whole Nation when Gods hand is upon a whole Nation and calls it to repentance but if we remember not our own sins with a weeping heavy heart also and do not loath our selves for all our own abominations Ezek. 36.31 and feellingly confess with shame and detestation the sins that lie nearest our hearts and take it for a mercy to have the scourge of a just and smarting rod as well as the charge of a holy convincing word that we have not only threatning which we have made a shift to slight so often but some execution to make sin odious to us and to recover us to a due sense and apprehension of it If we have brought our selves to such a death in sin that we cannot understand what it is until we feel it it 's a mercy to feel that we may understand But let
Death doth not deprive the Soul of all gracious and vertuous Sense and Motion but renders it unfit for the Spirit of true Vertue Grace and Holiness to dwell in and so there must needs follow a Devorce and Separation between them And as in the Natural Life there is a Union between the Soul and Body so in the Moral there is a Union between the Soul and God Death Metaphorical is the privation of all the comfortable effects of Life whether it be Natural or Moral whilst bear Life doth still remain and the presence of all those evils that may afflict or imbitter it And all these are either 1. Temporal 2. Eternal From what hath been spoken for the explication of these two terms Life and Death you may perceive what a priviledge and unspeakable favour it is to be translated from Death to Life 1. If thou Remembrest God The sting of a Natural Death is pulled out and though thou art not 〈◊〉 from the part of the penalty of sin whereby the Body is deprived of all sense and separated from the Soul yet thou art delivered from that which is most terrible in Death 〈◊〉 the misery or Death that will follow after and it is a comfortable passage for them that Remember God to endless Joy and Happiness and sometimes a welcome Messenger to them They may truly say as Agag 1 Sam. 15.32 The bitterness of Death is past 2. They are translated from the Death of Sin to the Life of Grace and Holiness and are united unto God and are disposed by Faith and Love to that Holiness which is the Divine Perfection and the way to the highest Happiness and Honour that the Heart of Man can wish or desire Though this Life will be imperfect whilst we stay here And if there be such pleasure in the Union between the Soul and Body then there is much more in the Union between the Soul and God 3. As Death is put for Misery and the bitter and uncomfortable effects of the endless Life to come so they are passed from Death to Life The Sentence of Death that God hath passed against sin is so far revers'd And as for the Miseries and Evils of this Life though materially they may have more than other Men yet as to the formal and most essential part of them they feel them not so much as other Men because they are allay'd and sweetned 1. By the inward Peace and Comfort that God gives to those that Remember him 2. By the benefit and advantage they get by those outward Sufferings For as their outward Man is afflicted so their inward man is renewed strengthened and confirmed day by day 2 Cor. 4.16 For their light Affliction which is but for a moment worketh for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory even in the beginnings of it here ver 17.3 It lessens their short and momentary sufferings that by them they escape so much Temptation and all the â—aiâ—s of sin are become the less taking If thou art one in whose Remembrance God is advanced above all other things thou shalt not die but live and declare the works of the Lord Psal 118.17 And though the Lord may chasten and correct thee yet he will not give thee over unto Death ver 18. For God is the Fountain of Life and in his Light thou shalt see Life Psal 36.9 O what a Mercy is it to be delivered from the power of Death and Darkness and to be translated into the Kingdom of his dear Son where thou shalt grow up from one degree of Life to another till thou come to everlasting Life Col. 1.13 At thy first entrance into this Kingdom Death is sentenced and some execution is done upon every sort of Death which will be perfected as this remembrance of God grows up to perfection in thee O Death I will be thy Plague O Grave I will be thy Destruction Hos 13.14 Which as it was verified of Christ personally understood so it is of Christ mystically understood 1. As Christ overcame Death in his Person so every true Believer such are all and only they that have God in their Remembrance hath gotten some conquest over Death which shall grow up to a full Victory and therefore Paul in the Name of the whole Church doth acknowledge this mercy Thanks be to God that giveth us the victory thorough our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 15 5 7. Whilst the wicked forgetters of God are dead in trespasses and sins and dead to all soul and solid Joy and Comfort and designed to an eternal death Thou that thinkest upon God and remembrest his Love in Christ art entred into a state of Life and hast such a Promise that contains more in it than all the rich Indian Mines Because â—e hath set his Love upon me With long life will I satisfie him and shew him my Salvation Psal 91.16 If thou didst but know what a treasure is hid in thâ—â— Remembrance thou wouldst throw out every thing of thy Memory and Heart that hinders this Remembrance of God This one priviledge of being translated from Death to Life is big with a number more 1. It implies that thou art reconciled to God and he is at peace with thee and thou needest no more to fear him as thine Enemy All his Attributes of Power Justice Holiness Vengeance Majesty that sound so terrible to the forgetters of God do but the better secure thee of thine Happiness 2. It implies also thy present Justification in title of Law God hath acquitted thee by the law of Grace and Act of the Gospel from the guilt of sin and dissolved the Obligation to condemnation Who can lay any thing to thy charge if God absolve thee Who can do thee any hurt when Christ is become thy Advocate Rom. 8.33 3. With this mercy doth concur the mercy of Adoption and Sonship It 's no small Honour to be one of his menial Servants but to be a Son yea a Heir is a priviledge not easily valued and understood 4. The gift of the Spirit to dwell within thee is here also implied to mortifie all sin and to work all gracious habits that may fit thee for a state of Glory In a word 5. All real and relative Grace so far as is necessary to Salvation is thine either in Title Possession 1. The Righteousness of Imputation is thine whereby thou art made fit for Pardon and the Righteousness of Implantation is thine whereby thou art made fit for his Love and Complacency and sweetest Communion with him Secondly If thou art one that Remembrest God all things shall co-operate and conspire for thy good Every Age every state and condition of Life every Place and Company every Change and Alteration in the World Prosperity and Adversity Friends and Enemies Health and Sickness Honour and Dishonour every Relation thou art plac'd in shall help forward thy Joy and Felicity and some Foundation God is laying in every one of these whereupon to
bones which thou hast broken may rejoyce So Psa 22.14 15. what a sad Lamentation have you I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joynt my heart is like wax it 's melted in the midst of my bowels my strength is dried up like a Potsheard and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of death So Psa 31.9 10. Have mercy on me O Lord for I am in trouble mine eye is consumed with grief yea my Soul and my Belly for my life is spent with grief and my years with sighing my strength faileth because of mine iniquity and my bones are consumed But if you look into the 88 Psal the case of Heman seems there to be far more sad because it was more constant and uninterrupted than David's was vers 14 15 16. c. Lord why castest thou off my Soul why hidest thou thy face from me I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up whilst I suffer thy terrours I am distracted Thy fierce wrath goeth over me thy terrours have cast me off they came round about me daily like water they compassed me about together Lover and Friend hast thou put far from me and mine Acquaintance into darkness And how pitifully doth the Church complain under the effects of Gods sharp displeasure as you may see in the Book of the Lamentations So that you may perceive by these few instances that the wrath of God even on this side Hell is not to be slighted and if a drop or two light so heavy upon men that had such grace courage and fortitude to bear up under it how heavy must it needs be when it falls with its whole weight upon men in the state of torments Wo be to them on whom it falls it will grind them to powder If a little sickness be so sharp and terrible sometime that it makes a stout heart to speak trembling and turns a fresh coloured face into paleness and makes the beauty thereof to consume away like a Garment fretted by a Moth How will men speak and look under the pains of the second death How restless are men under some Acute Distempers they toss up and down and tell the hours and watch for the Morning Light in hope the Sun should rise upon them with healing in its wings And if men roar under a Fit of the Gout or Collick what then shall they do in Hell And as the torments of Hell are no Flea bite nor to be slighted by any the stoutest heart so neither are they unavoidable for then I should not recommend them to your Consideration But when the misery of that place cannot find a tongue to utter and express it nor set forth the greatness of it and Consideration is such a certain way to escape it who but a Mad-man or one that doth not believe it will refuse at least some time to think seriously on it till he hath some well grounded hope to escape it I will take it for granted that that man is resolved to try his strength and see how well he can bear it that will not endure the sober deliberate thoughts of it in his mind O Sirs if when an Angel of light descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the mouth of the Sepulchre where our Saviour was buried and sate upon it the guilty Keepers for fear of him did shake and became as dead men Mat. 28.2 4. How will such as are condemned to Hell shake and tremble when Angels of Darkness shall continually appear before them That horrible sight together with the inward terrours of their own despairing Consciences will fright them into everlasting trembling and fearfulness If thou hast a mind to escape that place of perpetual darkness and despair consider it well now and let it sink into thy serious thoughts Lastly Consider the infallible truth and certianty of all this I confess there is something that is dubious and uncertain in every one of these particulars but yet there is something also that is of the highest certainty something that you may well make a question of but yet something that 's past all controversie and question among Christians Let me give you a brief Recapitulation 1. There 's nothing more certain than that there is a God and that he is Infinite in all perfections that he hath made all Creatures and that he is the absolute Lord and Governour of Mankind and his principal Benefactor Thus much is unquestionable But it is a very great question whether thou dost acknowledge him sincerely for thy Owner Soveraign and one that hath every way obliged thee and art truly devoted to him in heart and life 2. It 's most certain that he hath made thee for no lower Ends than his service and that he hath given thee a Law to teach thee how he will be served and that he expecteth thou shouldest be heartily subject to him and obedient to his Laws and that thou should'st believe and patiently wait for his rewards in so doing But it is a matter of Enquiry and Self-examination whether thou hast answered this Intention of God in thy Creation and obeyed his Laws in a confident expectation of his Rewards 3. It is past doubt that thou hast broken the Law of thy Creation corrupted thy Nature lived in Disobedience and cast off the Yoke of thy Creator that thou hast by Original and Actual Transgressions forfeited thy life and all thy other mercies and deserveth to be dealt with as a Rebel and a Traytor to thy Soveraign Lord and Ruler But it is a matter of doubt and therefore should be seriously enquired by thee whether thou dost acknowledge from thy heart and art sensible of thy sin and misery thereby All the world are miserable but they are but few that are affected with their misery 4. It is certain that Christ hath shed his Blood to redeem all Mankind and that Pardon and Remission is offered to all that do heartily repent and believe That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life John 3.16 That none are excepted in this Act of Oblivion and Free-grace but such as refuse the Mercy offered and continue in wilful impenitency and unbelief You will not come unto me that you may have life John 5.40 But it is a matter of very great doubt and question whether thou hast any sincere Repentance towards God and Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ whether thou hast sufficiently bewailed thy corrupt Nature that was born with thee into the world and thy Rebellion against thy Maker in the course of thy life and wilful transgression of his Laws and whether thou art so deeply wounded with the bitter sense of thy sin as to submit to the Yoke and Government of Christ that he may deliver thee from the bondage of thy sins For though Christ be offered to all and
such a Case How much more would a sinner bewail his Offences committed against him that is his Creatour and Sovereign and hath absolute dominion over him and the power of Eternal Life and Death in his hands Thou canst not endure his displeasure if he doth but frown Nor live without his favour if he should totally withdraw it but an hour As he commandeth the Sun to shed his light and influence upon thee so he clotheth the Heaven with blackness and maketh Sackcloth their covering when he pleaseth Isaiah 50.3 If thou didst but know and consider the one half of the infinite Mercies he doth bestow upon thee and the worth of them it would make thee sure to break into bitter complaints for all thy odious Transgressions especially when thou knowest before-hand That the Penitent are so sure to speed and find Mercy with him This is a Third Act That Godly Sorrow if it be sincere doth imply even a deep sense of all the Obligations every one of us lies under to abstain from all Appearance of Evil. Fourthly He that would bewail his sin aright must be sensible how shameful it is and destructive to his own Soul and Body It prevents his Reason and makes him far more vile than a Creature that wants that Faculty It animates his Senses to all insolency it makes his Passions masterless and unruly it destroys the Health of the Body the Peace and Composure of the Mind it fills the Conscience with perpetual Remorse and Unquietness And all these Effects do as naturally flow from it as Poyson doth from a Toad or Serpent And thus it would punish it self although God should inflict no other punishment than what will inevitably follow such sinful inordinate Acts and such abuse of the Reason and Faculties that Man is possessed of It procures the hatred of God and the shame of Men and breeds a continual Worm at home that will gnaw in twain the Thred of this Life and will then feed upon Soul and Body to their everlasting pain and torment hereafter Fifthly He that is truly penitent and doth lament his sin as he ought doth know and consider the Merit of his sin and what Wages it deserves He is sensible that the least sin committed against such a Majesty by a Creature so much obliged and enabled to the contrary deserves damnation and that he can make God no recompence for the wrong and injury it doth him And he understands in some good measure what Eternal Damnation doth imply And then when he calls to mind the infinite Number he hath committed and how oft he hath deserved such a dreadful Reward and that yet he is invited to Repentance and knows that he shall find Mercy if he repent from the bottom of his Heart This melts him into Tears and dissolveth his rocky Heart and maketh it to feel what heretofore he made light matter of Sixthly As the penitent sinner is sensible of all the foregoing Particulars so he is acquainted with his own personal Transgressions not only that he is a sinner in general but what actual wickedness he is every day guilty of How little his Thoughts Words or Actions come up to the Rule at the best and how often they utterly thwart and contradict the Rule and what are his Master-Corruptions and where the strength of his sin lies He is also deeply sensible of his sinful Nature that he brought with him into the World and how cross it is to the Will of God expressed in his Word and Law and altogether unlike the Nature that God gave Man at the first Seventhly He doth hereupon judge himself exceeding vile and even loath himself for his Abominations Ezek. 36.31 When he thinketh upon his odious ways he is heartily ashamed and counteth himself unworthy of any outward Mercy and wondreth at the Mercies that God doth bestow so contrary to his deserts He seriously judgeth himself more wretched and miserable by reason of his sin and an Object of greater shame and contempt than if he had liv'd in the greatest poverty and want without sin as knowing that one makes him contemptible only to such as judge according to outward appearance but the other to those that judge righteous judgment He knows that sin makes him a Beast or a Devil in Humane shape and is a Disgrace and Reproach to all his Faculties and quite perverts the very frame and design of them For what is sin but an absurd and unreasonable Act Actus debito ordine privatus as the School-men define it and supposeth the Senses and their Objects to be in chief power and command and the nobler Part I mean his Rational and Immortal Spirit to be chained up and lye by as a Prisoner in Fetters or which is worse to be a voluntary Servant and Drudge to the stinking corruptible part of Man What Lord that hath the Spirit of a Man would endure to be a drudge to his Servant It 's a sad sight to see a Prince a Captive to his Subjects or a Lord to be in the hand and power of his Slaves led up and down in Chains at the will and pleasure of him that is but of a base and degenerate Breed compared with himself It was a great aggravation of Job's pitiful Condition that contemptible persons had him in derision whose Fathers he would have disdained to have set with the Doggs of his Flock Job 30.1 That Children of Fools and Base Men that were viler than the Earth made him their Song and By-word and that they did abhor him and flee far from him and not spare to spit in his Face vers 8 9 10. It was a very doleful pitiful sight to see Edward the Second so barbarously entreated by Gourney and made to sit upon a Mole-hill whilst the Barber shaved him and to take cold Water out of a Ditch to wash him with which the patient King seeing told them that in despight of them he would have warm Water at his Barbing and therewithal poured down Tears in abundance It 's a much sadder Spectacle to see Sense trample upon Reason and the Flesh that is of so base a descent to domineer over the Soul that 's born of God and is of the Blood-Royal made to rule and govern as the very Heathen could tell Animi imperio Corporis servitio utimur saith Salast And what 's the Fruit of such a Monstrous Disorder when Flesh and Sense do exercise such an oppressive usurping Power and that Faculty that makes a Man is perfectly cow'd Why This unspeakable Mischief is the Fruit thereof Earth is preferr'd before Heaven The Creature before the Creator The momentary pleasures of Sin before the durable and everlasting Felicity And Men chuse rather to be Termers in these decaying Comforts that expire with their Lives than to have the Propriety of an Eternal Inheritance hereafter that shall never be out-dated These and the like Considerations make the sinner to judge himself a vile Person a Reproach to Humane
easily force thee to an Acknowledgment of thy Pride and Worldliness and filthy Lusts which thou doest so carefully conceal and the hainous dishonour thou hast done to his Name He could make thine own Conscience fall upon thee and condemn thee in despight of thee and thy Tongue to fall upon thy self But he loves to deal with every Creature according to the Nature he hath given them He leaves thee to thine own choice having given thee Reason to discern what is fittest to be done and his infallible Word to guide thee He useth Arguments to perswade rather than Power to compel and draws thee with Cords of a Man as the Prophet expresseth it Hosea 11.4 That if Love and Ingenuity will not prevail with thee to do thy Duty to him Shame and Ingenuity might perswade thee to repent thee of the Folly There is some ingenuity in a free and open confession of thy sin and a proportionable sorrow for it and endeavour to vindicate the Name of God which thou hast dishonoured after thou hast been so disingenious to dishonour him by thy Transgressions He that can harden himself against his dearest Friend and blot his precious Name with any foul Aspersions and then justifie and defend what he hath done or at least manifest himself to be altogether insensible of such behaviour deserves to be thrust out of the Society of Men And all Men would take him for a Monster and degenerate piece of Humanity But it 's a thousand times worse to play such Tricks with God who will lay them to Heart and not let them go unpunished And when he sees thou art past all Ingenuity and hast out grown the Heart of a Man and there is nothing to be done with thee without stripes and blows he will deal with thee as Masters use to deal with a Scholar that will no longer be moved by any other Arguments make them the common whipping-Blocks of the School that by their just punishment the other that have some ingenuity still left may take warning or else turn such untractable Disciples quite out of their Tuition O my Brethren your Case would be sad indeed if it should once come to any of these The Heathen could say Q. Curt. Illum ego perisse dico â—â—i periit pudor He that hath lost all shame is utterly lost And he that hath lost all ingenuity is quite shameless I beseech you look into your Hearts and search Can you find no Motions to Sorrow and Complaints and bitterness of Spirit for all those Hours you have foolishly spent in the Service of the Flesh or the World and the Devil which are the professed Enemies of him who is your greatest Friend Surely you cannot reflect upon those rebellious sinful Courses you have taken and not be moved with indignation against your corrupt Inclinations that have so much seduced you Surely you can never be vile enough in your own Eyes that have so much villified and despised the just Commands of him that holdeth your Soul in life and keepeth you every moment If you are past all sorrow for sin you are past all hope and are become like a broken Vessel that can never be made up again Peter indeed was so disingenious to deny his dearest Master the effect of whose sweetest Love he had so often tasted But it was when he was in a fright and passion He no sooner thought upon his odious disingenuity but the poor Man melts into Tears and weeps bitterly There 's no sin but is curable but this of Final Impenitance and Unbelief It 's possible that though seven Devils have got possession of thee they may be cast out It was Mary Magdalen's case and she yet found mercy with the Lord but then remember how she wept and wiped the very Feet of Christ with the Hair of her Head Luke 7.44 But if thou want Tears for thy sin and a penitent bleeding Heart for thine iniquities thy case is a thousand times worse than if thou hadst the greatest sins and yet couldst bewail them and humble thy self for them For this would shew that there is some ingenuity left in thee which the Lord loveth where ever he sees it And will not let the person perish that confesseth from his heart that he hath deserved to perish and is afflicted for what he hath done Fourthly Consider there 's no Evil or Misery whatsoever calls for Grief and Sorrow so much as Sin doth And yet we can weep our Eyes out almost for some petty Evils and Miseries that sometimes do afflict us What an absurd and preposterous sorrow is it to cry for the death of a Friend to howl for the loss of a Child and to be overwhelmed with grief when an intimate dear Acquaintance is snatch'd away from thee And yet to be heart-whole when God is provoked to depart from thee and thou art in danger to lose thy Soul We take the Person for a Child or a Fool that whines and makes a stir for a Trifle and makes sad Complaints for a Scratch or a Flea-bite and is little or no whit moved for the loss of his Credit or good Name or something that 's far better This as well as all other Passions in Man should be governed by Reason otherwise they are no more regardable than the howling of a Dog And how is that Passion guided by Reason that makes a great Noise and is moved with much Violence for a Matter of nothing and is very quiet when it hath much more cause to be moved Is that a rational sorrow or doth become a Creature that hath understanding that brings a Man down even to death's door for the departure of some worldly comfort and leaves him without Tears and Sighs when he is losing that which is a thousand times more desirable Understand thy self aright and thou wilt be ashamed of such a ridiculous sorrow as this Sin is the cause of all other Evil that comes upon thee and therefore must needs be far worse it self and much more to be lamented It takes away thy Friend from thy side thy Child from thy bosom It bereaves thee of thy Health deprives thee of thy Credit and Estate It parts between thy Soul and Body and makes the most lamentable divorce of all between God and thy Soul As I live saith the Lord though the Son of Jehoiakim King of Judah were the Signet upon my right hand yet would I pluck him thence Jerem. 22.24 And why is this but because he had provoked God by his sin It is sin that is our greatest Enemy It 's our Comfort against all other Enemies that they can pursue us no further than the Grave and there the weary be at rest Job 3.17 There we shall feel our worldly troubles no longer But this Enemy begins then to rage most when all other Cruelties cease Then it comes upon us like a Tempest It follows us beyond the Grave and will never leave us till it hath compleated our Misery and
2 Tim. 3.16 and shew how by Doctrine Reproof Correction and Instruction in Righteousness all the visible Creatures would help on this Remembrance of God and therefore forgetfulness of God hath the greater sin by how much it prevailes against the greater means vouchsafed by God for its cure But least that way shâ—uld not seem so intelligible and convincing I shall chuse rather to nominate four other ways whereby the several Creatures do provoke man to have God highest in their Remembrance 1. They all offer themselves to his sight and by that to his understanding to inform him in the glorious Perfections of God which they palpably discover and therefore are very serviceable in the work of Contemplation No one so sottish as to imagine they could make themselves then they must be made by another that 's God but such infinite variety and such rare and excellent works must suppose and therefore put any one that thinks on them in mind of infinite Wisdom and Skill infinite Goodness and Power in the creating of them 2. They serve for his Food and Rayment and are the means to keep him alive that could not live a day without them Let him that thinks he is least of all beholding to the Creatures consider whether he could live an hour without the Air he sucks in or how many days he could live without Food which one Creature or another serves in every day and then let him think who hath made and doth supply every Creature to him and forget God if he can 3. They serve for his other necessary uses in great delightful variety The Horse to fetch in and carry out both himself and other things and to remove his Luggage from place to place The Wood and Stones to build his Habitation and the Art and Workmanship of Man to adorn it the Dog to keep it and all things conspire together to make him as happy as he can be in the absence of God even a Lord on Earth because God hath appointed him so to be and hath he not yet enough to advance his great Benefactor in his Heart 4. They serve also for his Recreation and sober Pleasure and Refreshment when he hath been tired by his more serious Employments and yet to forget God whose Praise and Service these Creatures do so constantly bespeak by their so beneficial service to us All these steps lead up the sin to a higher guilt In a word to have all the Senses assaulted by the several Objects that God hath furnished to them The Eye to be fed with so many delightful sights of several things The Ear with such various Harmony and Sound The Taste with so many distinct and grateful Relishes of things which the wisdom of the Creator hath provided and offered to that Sense And the Objects of the other Senses are multiplied to as great a variety And is it not monstrous for the mind of man to have so many Monitors and yet to forget God in despight of all 3. Thirdly He hath moreover given us his Son that we might not want an Argument of the greatest force to provoke a remembrance of him When we were like to withstand all other Arguments and to lose the sense of all his other mercies towards us and to perish in a wicked oblivion and forgetfulness of God for ever He hath taken such a course that one would think should create a memory of him where there was none at all of him before and should recover those that are the most desperately gone in forgetfulness and force them to say that the love of Christ constraineth them 2 Cor. 5.14 Would not a Malefactor that 's sentenced and condemned to die take it for a favour indeed and place that man high in his Remembrance that should step between him and death and release him with the loss of his own life especially if he were a Person of Honour and Degree And doth it not deserve a Remembrance not a Customary but a substantial Remembrance when the highest and most honourable Person that ever lived in the World hath laid down his life in the room of ours Sure we think we are not so beholding to him as we are when such an obligation as this wiâ—l prevail no more to exalt God in our Hearts If this be not an obligation that doth inforce a gracious Remembrance now I am sure it is such a one that will enforce a tormenting Remembrance hereafter When the thought of such a mercy so wickedly slighted shall be a raging fire in their Bowels and then they shall not be able to forget it What 's the matter that such a motive is put off and not regarded by too many I am sure there 's nothing but flat downright wickedness can make a man so sleepy and forgetful If such a Breath as this will not kindle the love of God in our Hearts if such a spur will not prick us forward to the duty of Remembrance It 's not because we want Arguments but because we want Grace and how we should want Grace if we were apprehensive of the mercy would be very difficult to resolve and how we should not be apprehensive if we did but think frequently of it would be as impossible to determine So that you see the wickedness of this sin is ultimatly resolved into not thinking or bending our selves to think what we have received Well we are left to take our choice the death of Christ will either oblige us to the duty of Remembrance or aggravate the sin of forgetfulness Lastly We have the Spirit Word and all the Ordinances of God to beget and cherish this Remembrance of God I joyn all these together because I would not multiply particulars too much Obj. But you may say Though the Death of Christ and the Gift of the Spirit are Arguments of great strength and may do good service to quicken up a Believer that 's backward to this work yet how can they compel a wicked man or one that forgets God since Christ died for none but the Elect and none can know themselves to be such but such as have true Faith and know they have it and so also for the Spirit and therefore these Arguments are cogent to none but such as these Answer That Christ gave himself intentionally for all men and that God accepted his Sacrifice to that universal end is so plain in Scripture that scarce any truth is plainer 1 Tim. 2.6 Who gave himself a ransom for all 1 John 2.2 And he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole World But because some evade those places by distinguishing of All and World that All is sometimes taken for some and World for part of the World As if the Apostle fore-saw such Quirks and meant to stop every Mouth his words are not liable to evasion Heb. 2.9 That he by the Grace of God should taste of Death for every Man And to make mention
when Conscience hath stirred thee when Sickness hath awakened thee when thou hast seen the fruits of a heart unacquainted with God and seldom conversant with him hast thou not promised and engaged to become more heavenly This thou hast done many and many a time or thou hast withstood the Light and shut thine Eyes wilfully against all the Calls of God by his Word or Rod and wilful ignorance will be as high an aggravation of thy sin as misimproved and abused knowledge and since it was thy duty every time thou didst approach to God to reinforce thy vow and promise if thou hast obstinately refused thou art virtually guilty of so frequent a breach of promise as it was thy duty to have promised And this is the first aggravation of the sin of forgetting God on their part that do forget taken from their breach of Vow and Covenant with him Secondly They that cherish not a worthy Remembrance of God are as highly guilty of Perjury as they are of perfidiousness Now an Oath is a faster obligation than either Promise or Covenant He that tieth himself by Oath to any performance doth ipso facto devote himself to all those Judgments that God shall think meet to bring upon him in case he swear falsly though it be in any little matter And God himself when he would give the highest security to Abraham for the confirmation of his Faith he takes an Oath Heb. 6.13 14. when God made Promise to Abraham because he could swear by no greater he swore by himself saying Surely in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying c. and it 's said Verse 17 18. God being willing more abundantly to shew unto the Heirs of Promise the Immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an Oath That by two immutable things that is Covenant and Oath in which it was impossible for God to lie we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the Hope set before us and therefore as a Promissory Oath is here supposed to be a firm ground of confident expectation of the thing promised and to be the end of all distrust so an Assertory Oath is said vers 16. to be the end of all strife and the breach of this Bond is intolerable in all Societies And it is one of those sins which God chargeth upon the Ten Tribes when Hosea is sent to tell them the lamentable Tydings of their divorce from God in the Terms 〈◊〉 Râ—â—â—ama and Lo-Ammi 〈◊〉 they shall be no more his People and God will shew no more mercy to them Hos 10.4 They have spoken words swearing falsly in making a Covenant and this sin had perverted Judgment and turned it into Hemlock And the flying roll that is the terrible Curse of God was to enter into the House of the Thief and into the House of him that swareth falsly and to remain in the midst of it and consume it with the Timber thereof and the Stones thereof Zach. 5.4 And Jerusalem could stand no longer but must spue out the Inhabitants after Zedekiah had broke the Oath of the Lord made to the King of Babylon Ezek. 17.16 As I live saith the Lord God surely in the place where the King dwelleth that made him King whose Oath he despised and whose Covenant he brake even with him in the midst of Babylon shall he die and Verse 18 19 20. seeing he despised the Oath by breaking the Covenant when lo he had given his hand he shall not escape Therefore thus saith the Lord As I live surely mine Oath that he hath despised and my Covenant that he hath broken even it will I recompence upon his own head And I will spread my Net upon him and he shall be taken in my snare and I will bring him to Babylon and will plead with him there for his trespass that he hath trespassed against me And you know it cost Saul seven of his Sons that were hung up to revenge the Oath he had broken to the Gibonites 2 Sam. 21.6 And 't is noted by Plutarch as one chief cause why Philip King of Macedon with all his posterity were so quickly destroyed because he made no Account of keeping his Oaths but swore and unswore as might stand with his interest And the story of Vladiflaus King of Hungary who had made a league with Amurath the Great Turk and bound himself to it by an Oath is notorious When the Turk began to be worsted Amurath drew the League out of his Bosom and lift up his Eyes to Heaven and said O thou Crucified Christ behold this is the Covenant thy Christians in thy name have made with me which they have violated If thou be God as they say thou art revenge the wrong now done unto thy Name and Me and shew thy Power upon thy Perjured People who in their Deeds deny thee their God Immediately after the King was slain and all his Army routed as may be seen in the Turkish History What a sin is it then to violate an Oath not made to Man but God himself and that in a matter of the highest moment in the VVorld 1. Fealty and Allegiance to him from those that are indebted to him no less than all they have or hope for And he that forgets God breaks this Oath of Fealty and Allegiance due to God for the meer benefits of his production and maintainance but signally renewed and expressed in Baptism for the mercy of Redemption by Christ under whose Command we did then list our selves and to whom we did sware Love and Obedience The word Sacramentum signifies such an Oath and this Sacrament is an allusion to the custom of VVar where every Souldier was to bind himself by a Military Oath to be true to his General To this Custom Christ the more fitly alludeth it in that Christianity is a Spiritual Warfare What a high Provocation must it needs be then to forget the Lord to whose Service and Remembrance we have so tied our selves VVhoever thou art that livest under the sound of the Gospel and that hast been sprinkled with the VVater of Baptism Thou hast avouched the Lord to be thy God thou art under Vow Covenant and Oath to exalt God in thine Heart and throw out all other things to manage a daily VVarfare against all his Enemies and to subdue every Lust that would wipe out the Memory of God thy Redeemer and Saviour out of thy Heart This Oath hath been renewed also so oft as thou hast taken the other Sacrament So that thou hast all this weight to stand under in the day of the Lord if thou be found amongst those that forget the Lord. Thirdly Beside the Bonds of Vow Covenant and Oath thou hast the higher Obligations of a constant open Profession to shame thee for thine unmindfulness of God which must needs be a greater aggravation of this sin because it implies all the other and superadds pretended reallity in all these when it is nothing
bring God to thy Remembrance and such a light both in Nature and in Scripture to discover it and such Assistance to fetch it in by Meditation into thine Understanding and Affections and such opportunities to learn what is thus suggested and when there is such sweetness in the very act of Learning and the benefits that directly flow from thence are so incomparable the final reward so unspeakable refuse not to apply thy Heart to the highest Wisdom All other thoughts that are not subordinate to this Remembrance have a greater or lesser tendency to discontent and vexation but these are the only comforting and reviving Meditations If thou dost not forget thy self thou wilt remember him If thou dost not forget thy later end thou wilt remember him If thou wilt but remember the days of Anguish and Trouble that are coming on thee thou wilt remember him Thou wilt then say be not far from me when trouble is near and there is none to help O let him not be far from thee now keep him in the midst of thy Heart renew thy thoughts of him as thou sittest in thy House as thou walkest by the way as thou liest down and as thou risest up Deut. 6.8 Imagine thou seest him in his Word Suppose that thou beholdest him in his Works think thou hast a taste of him whilst thou art feeding thy self and refreshing thy Body with its daily Food and Sustenance For thou livest not by Bread alone nor by such dead things as these but by the Word and Blessing of God that only can give thee life Deut. 8.3 Matth. 4.3 Oh how much doth man undervalue himself whilst he remembers not whose Coin he is and whose Stamp he bears He turns the fairest Gold into a Counter and uncoins himself and can never understand his own worth if he leave God out of his thoughts If thou wouldst think of thy own reasonable nature and put that question to thy self which was maliciously put to our Saviour by the Phariseâ—s and some of Herod's Disciples Mark 12.16 Whose is this Image and Superscription And this would bring God to thy Remembrance that hath fearfully made thee Psal 139.14 Thou art Brass indeed if thou canst impute such a stamp as this to any other cause and give away this Divine Royalty as thou dost if thou forget the Mint out of which thou camest and where thou wast stamped if thou remembrest any thing or hast any kindness or respect for thy own Soul acquaint thy self with God remember him and be at peace Job 22 21. To provoke to this Duty besides what hath been already hinted I shall only suggest thus much further by way of Interrogation First Doth God remember thee every hour and canst thou make shift for all that not to remember him If thou didst not need the Heavens that hang over thy Head nor the Earth that hangeth under thy Feet nor any of those Creatures that stand round about thee If thou wouldst spare the light and influence of the Sun and want the Air that 's turned in and out at thy Nostrils and keep in the little spark of Life without the Meat and Drink that feedeth it every Day and the hot Embers that cover it every Night I mean the warm Bed and Sleep wherewith it is cherished and refreshed or if thou couldst bid all Creatures to go and come at thy pleasure then it were a more excusable sin not to remember God but when it is so great a certainty that these are all the means and instruments that he hath made and doth use to conveigh his Blessings to us and that we cannot live a moment without one or other of them thou art an Atheist in Judgment or Practice if thou forget him Thou mayst as well stand without a Foundation or see without Eyes or hear without the hearing Faculty as live without one or other of his Mercies every moment If thou hadst nothing else to endear the thoughts of God to thee and to make the Remembrance sweet even the mercies of a meer private nature have a mighty force to one that doth but consider them If we do but acknowledge what we have deserved it 's no contemptible mercy nor to be slighted to be freed from those evils which are so many ways incident to us and which we have so well deserved not to be stricken with Blindness or Deafness not to be smitten with Distraction or Madness not forsaken of Health and Friends all outward Comforts not driven to pinching necessities of Hunger Thirst Cold and Nakedness as many are These privative mercies should amplifie the goodness of our Redeemer to us and make the thoughts of God more welcome Not to want any Member of thy Body nor Faculty of thy Soul nor a very good portion of Food Health and Friends especially if they be Friends indeed nor other Provision for a comfortable Life and yet to want an Eye to look to the Fountain nor to remember the Giver that deals with us so contrary to our deservings is a fearful case and condition The Church in her Captivity when she was in the hands of cruel Tyrants and Oppressors yet even in that condition could find out a Not that did not a little affect his Heart with thankfulness It is of the Lords mercies that we are not consumed Lam. 3.22 As if she had said we are in distress but we might have been in Hell we are cast down but we might have been utterly cast off A Soul truly convinced of his sin and humbled knows the value of such mercies as these Not tormented with those acute Diseases that gives us no rest day nor night not afflicted with the Stone or Gout or Iliack Passion not seized on with a hand of Judgment from Heaven not visited with the Plague or any other dreadful Sickness What an Indictment made up of such Mercies might be drawn up against one that blots God out of his Remembrance And if mercies of this kind are such an obligation to this duty what are the positive mercies of a whole life yea of a year month or but a day It 's hard to reckon up the kinds and sorts unless we should insist upon meer generals that comprehend numbers under them Such as are Temporal Spiritual Personal or Relative it 's not very easie to reckon them up The comforts of Life Health to those that have it Estate Name mercies of Food and Rayment Friends House Recreation Protection but the particulars under these who can recite Our relative mercies how various Never a one relation but would puzzle our thoughts to muster up the mercies thereof and give in the particulars the good we do them the good we receive of them every sight of them every enjoyment of their company discourse love to us our love to them In a word All our comforts are theirs and theirs reciprocally ours and so each have the mercies twice over See now whether we have brought the matter and in what a
perfect Obedience It was said of Luther that he could do what he would with God by Prayer If God be promoted in thy Heart as high as he was in Luth. thou shalt prevail with him as much as ever Luth. did I know thou hast no ground from the word to expect that God should satisfie thy desires in temporal things when they will not consist with the welfare of thy Soul But every desire that is honourable to God to grant and profitable to thy Soul to receive thou shalt have And when he denies thee what thou dost express he will give what thou dost imply and mean When he granteth not thy particular Request he will give thee thy general Request whatsoever thou askest it 's happiness that thou meanest that 's the general intent and meaning and this he will fulfil though not always in the same method it may be that thine own Wisdom suggesteth he will give thee money or money worth Thou shalt have thy desire in kind or value yea a frequent Remembrance of God will teach thee to pray so as thou shalt prevail and the knowledge of his Attributes and Perfections which the Remembrance of God doth imply will make thee so ingenious as to ask nothing that shall cross the Wisdom Justice or Holiness of God or be the least prejudicial to the merciful design of thy Salvation O what a priviledge is it to have such an open free access to him that can strangely turn things about when it pleaseth him and is wonderful in Counsel and mighty in Working Esay 28.29 with a promise to be heard to plead with God and get the Blessing for thy Self for thy Relations and for the Land of thy Nativity and by this means to be one of the Props and Pillars of the Nation of which thou art a Member This is an Honour indeed and an unvaluable Mercy which yet thou shalt partake of in that degree and measure as thou dost Remember him Fourthly To Remember God is the ready way to entail the Blessing of Heaven and Earth upon thy Seed and Posterity Children speed ordinarily according to their Parents interest or want of interest in God Those that die in Infancy it 's more than probable that they speed according as their Parents or those that have the nearest interest in them are in Covenant with God or out of Covenant And those that live beyond an Infants state have cause to count amongst the greatest of their early Blessings that they have either one or both Parents that are true Believers especially where the Faith of their Parents is gotten up to some degree of Eminency I would not intimate that the Lord doth never shew special love and mercy to the Posterity of the Wicked nor that he doth always impart saving Grace to the Children of the godly But I believe it will prove a rare case if one instance can be produced that all the Children of Believers if they have several are finally forsaken of God and denyed his saving Grace yea many times they are all remembred It is the Argument that Peter useth to perswade Faith and Repentance to his hearers in the first Sermon which he preached after Christs Assention and the Descension of the Holy Ghost that by this means Parents would bring their Children to participate in gospel-Gospel-mercy with themselves Acts 2.39 Repent and be Baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost For the Promise is to you and your Children And it hath the most general testimony of the soundest Writers that the Faith of the Parents is the condition of the Childrens right to Baptism The Profession of it in the Court of Men the Possession of it in the Court of Heaven * See the Reverend Mr. Baxters Dispu of right to Sacrament But be it how it will I am sure it 's a doleful condition to be the Child of wicked Parents that forget God and a mercy better than the biggest Portion can be left them to be the Seed of Parents that Remember him Thus saith the Lord c. Fear not O Jacob my Servant for I will pour my Spirit upon thy Seed and my Blessing upon thine off-spring Esa 44.3 And as the special Promise was made to Isaac so even Ishmael fared the better for being Abraham's Seed And as it is threatned in one of the Prophets that the Seed of evil doers shall never he Renowned so the Posterity of those that Remember God are the most likely to be Remembred even in this Life and to be famous in their Congregation Men of Renown Num. 16.2 I do not mean for their worldly Pomp and Splendor but for their Grace Wisdom and Usefulness to the World To which sometime such a measure of these outward Blessings are added as may make their Grace more resplendent and them more serviceable to him that will most eminently reward it If therefore your own Bowels are dear to you and you desire that your Posterity should be blessed here and had in Eternal Remembrance hereafter advance God in your Remembrance Lastly This Exercise of thy Thoughts and Affections in the Remembrance of God is thy greatest Happiness as well as thy greatest interest I mean it will yield thee the highest Pleasure as well as the highest Profit I know to the ignorant that have no competent knowledge of God and such as are unwonted to these thoughts and have their Affections buried in the World and are loaden with divers Lusts no work is more unpleasant nothing that they will more decline Light it self is unpleasant to a sore and distempered Eye but those that are pretty well acquainted with the amiable Nature and Perfections of God and with such Thoughts and Meditations of him as will amount to a worthy Remembrance of him would not be untaught this Art for all the Pleasures which the World can supply to them These are the most reviving these are the most comforting these are the most satisfying Thoughts These are the most illuminating instructing perfecting Thoughts These are the Thoughts that best improve our present Comfort and our future Hopes From all these Heads I might particularly and distinctly shew how the sincere Remembrance of God doth make way for the greatest Pleasure viz. In that it doth 1. Clear and perfect the Understanding 2. Purifie and rejoyce the Heart 3. Revive the Spirit and actuate it to greater Life and Life is sweet 4. In that it doth quiet and satisfie the very Soul 5. Multiply and improve our present Comforts 6. And our future Happiness All these ways and many other doth this Remembrance of God contribute to our immediate Pleasure and Happiness That Soul must needs abound most with Life and Joy and Pleasure that hath most frequent access to the Fountain of all Life and Pleasure who enjoy themselves more than they if other things concur that are most under the power and command of
such thoughts Such as these have their Hearts frequently filled with Laughter and their Tongues with Rejoycing Psal 126.2 Hence those unimitable strains of David so frequent in the Psalms I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live I will sing praise unto my God whilst I have my being My Meditation of him shall be sweet I will be glad in the Lord Psal 104.33 34. The more bright and glorious the Object is upon which the thoughts do dwell the more it doth exhilerate and refresh In a word The more God is in thy Remembrance the more of Content and substantial Joy thou shalt feel in thy Heart So much for the means by way of consideration to help forward in this duty I now come to the means by way of Exercise or the more practical Directions And these are either more positive and such as directly concern the Duty or else negative and such as comprize the hinderances which are to be carefully avoided And as these are first in practice so they shall be first in the directions First If you would get the pleasure of these Thoughts into your Heart you must not allow your selves to live in any known sin whatsoever because such sin is of an oblivious nature and will extinguish the Memory of God The love and voluntary entertainment of an Enemy and Traytor will not consist with the Love and Loyalty we owe to God and which a worthy Remembrance doth imply Even Men will question your Love and Friendship and take you for a double dealer and a false hearted dissembler if you take an utter Enemy of theirs into your Fellowship and use him as your Intimate and Companion And though it may consist with Friendship to fall into the company of one that is an Enemy to your Friend now and then when it is not your choice and seeking but surprize or some other reason drew you into his company not any special love to or complacency in his Person and you are glad when you have an opportunity to be rid of such a Guest yet you plainly violate such Love and Friendship and are like to lose all interest in your Friend if you chose his known Adversary for your allowed ordinary Companion And as Love will not consist with such allowance and tolleration of that which is destructive of the thing or person which you love so much less is Loyalty and true Subjection consistent with wilful and allowed Contradiction to the command of him that hath just Rule and Authority over us A discret Master will not take him for a Servant but for a Rebel that will ordinarily oppose and cross his Just and Righteous Command Neither will a Parent that doth not dote take that for an obedient Child that lives in the constant violation of a reasonable Command And thus it is in all Government here on Earth and there can be no true Subjection where there is such perpetual Contradiction in any one particular that falls within Bond and Obligation and is plain Duty Though the case is otherwise if the point be disputable and it is no Rebellion if any one case there be 1. No Command 2. No right to Command if a Servant does that to which he believes he hath no contrary Command or humbly refuseth that which his Master hath no right to command him his Credit is still good notwithstanding in any mans account that judgeth Righteous Judgment I know it argues a Rebellious Inclination and some degree of Disloyalty to question that Command where it 's plain and evident yet where it 's certain we have no Command from God it 's as certain that we are under no Obligation But there is a deeper taint of Rebellion in the Heart and more of enmity to God that lives in the constant breach and violation of a known Duty and allows himself in the practice of that which he knows God is displeased with This will not suffer him to live in the Remembrance of God whom he doth daily provoke If you are therefore such as can live constantly in known sin you will thrust all thoughts of God out of your mind as those which will but create fear and terror in you But if you have a sincere though not a perfect respect to all Gods Commands you may take Comfort and Pleasure in the Thoughts and Remembrance of God though you do fail if you allow it not but oppose your sin and confess it and pray and strive against it this will consist with the Love of God which must be in the Heart that will worthily Remember him Secondly As you must in the General resist all known Sin so in Particular Ignorance or want of the knowledge of God is an utter Enemy to this Remembrance and therefore must be carefully avoided Can a Man think that which he hath no knowledge of and love where he sees no Beauty and obey he knows not whom nor why He that knows not the Holy Nature of God and what a Perfection and Happiness it is to be like him yea what an absolute necessity there lies upon every man to be like him if he will be happy must make haste and get a cure for such Ignorance or else he can never perform the Duty we are upon If you know not that you are indebted to God for all that you have that he gave you your Being and Reason and expects Obedience and will judge you according to your present Life and Conversation and that he doth spy out the thoughts of the Heart and knows all your Imaginations If you know not what bowels of Compassion are in him and how much he taketh pleasure in your welfare and what course he hath taken to bring it to pass If you know not what Christ hath suffered for Sin and Sinners that God might pardon it without any Dishonour to his Justice and Holiness if the Sinner do repent and beg mercy you can never Remember God aright and therefore Ignorance is fearfully threatned in Scripture as the Mother of all Ungodliness And the Prophet Esay complains of this sin in the Jews and pronounces a heavy Sentence on them for it Esay 27.11 It is a People of no understanding saith he what then therefore he that made them will not have mercy and he that formed them will shew them no favour If you love your selves and have any compassion for your own Souls or do believe a Life to come take heed of this sin for without knowledge the Soul cannot be good Prov. 19.2 There are so many and excellent Books that are fitted to the cure of this Distemper that will shame this sin one day and leave it without all excuse The truths that are necessary to Salvation are so few and so plain and so agreeable to the very light of Reason and are pressed so much in the writings of so many that he or she that can but read cannot miss instruction yea they that cannot read though their case be sad yet
It 's the Lord that giveth understanding but it is to such as consider and no other And as neither of the former will speed without the frequent repeated act of Consideration not Correction not Instruction so neither 3. Will his Favour and Mercies properly so called for I know both the former may be called Mercies and Favours in a larger sense These I say that are Mercies to present sense and feeling will do no good or else a great deal of hurt without Consideration God will lose our acknowledgment of them and we the blessed comfortable fruits of them What the Prophet saith of a wicked Man I may well say of an Inconsiderate Man Esay 26.10 Let Favour be shewed to such a one yet will he not remember whence it is nor learn Righteousness And therefore Samuel presseth this Duty as the fittest to bring the stupid Israelites to the Remembrance of God implied in the terms Fear and Service Only fear the Lord and serve him in truth for consider how great things he hath done for you 1 Sam. 12.24 And as Consideration is the likeliest means to bring a Man home to the Remembrance of God in Christ at first and to improve Correction Instruction and Mercy to the end so it is as successful to recover a Man after a Relapse into Forgetfulness To this Remedy David was beholding though never a whit the less to God who put him upon the use of it I thought on my wars saith he and turned my Feet unto thy Testimonies Psal 119.59 And Peter was thus recovered after his shameful Forgetting of Christ and Denial of him and Peter remembred 1. Thought upon and considered the words which Jesus said unto him Before the Cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice and he went out and wept bitterly Mat. 26.75 And Elihu proposeth this to Job as a proper Remedy to abase and humble him that so much insisted upon his own vindication and remembred not his infinite distance from God as he should have done and therefore brought him to the Bar of his own perverted Judgment Hearken unto this O Job stand still and consider the wondrous works of God Job 37.14 And this course cured him I have heard of thee saith he with the hearing of the Ear but now mine Eyes seeth thee Wherefore I abhor my self and repent in Dust and Ashes Job 42.5 6. He did before stretch his own Righteousness so far and confine the Soveraignty of God as if he had done unjustly or cruelly in afflicting one so innocent as he was But when he had more attentively considered the Majesty and Glory of God and his wonderful Power according to the scheme and draught that Elihu had set before him Then the Bladder was prick'd and he was humbled in his own thoughts and saw that for his very Integrity which he held so fast and justified so much he was beholding to God for And as Consideration is a means to bring the Heart to God at first and to recover the Heart to him when it begins to depart by unbelief so it is an excellent help to increase and strengthen this Remembrance to strain it to a higher peg and make it more intense and vigorous My Heart was hot within me while I was musing the Fire burned then spake I with my Tongue Psal 39.3 The Consideration of Gods immutable Goodness and everlasting Favour and the brevity and vanity of all other things stirr'd the Fire and awakened his Heart to a more savoury Remembrance of God when he had considered how many disgraces Riches did lie open to and what a blast Mans Life is he subjoyns And now O Lord what wait I for my hope is even in thee Psal 39.7 And while the thoughts of Believers are inditing good matters their Tongue is as the Pen of a ready Writer quick to express the praises of God Psal 45.1 And Davids desires after God grew more strong and impetuous when he thinks on the Pleasure and Priviledge of Communion with God from which he was banished in the Wilderness When I think on or remember these things I pour out my Soul in me for I had gone with the multitude with the voice nf Joy and Praise He means to the publick and solemn Worship of God And now the Consideration of his want of these Priviledges cut this gash in his Heart and made this gaping of his desires after God Caution I know there are other means to be used besides Consideration but this is 1. The leading act to bring on all the other that have any subserviency to this Remembrance of God And 2. The act that inspires Life and Soul into all other means whither they be such as are near to the end such as are near Repentance Mortification Faith and all internal Grace Holiness or such as are more remote from the end As Reading Hearing Prayer Holy Conference whose success doth usually depend upon Consideration and as it is the leading act 3. So it is the act in which most are defective and for want of which so many do miscarry and lose themselves for ever and therefore I call it a principle means to beget and cherish the Remembrance of God as I have proved And so much for the Reasons I come now to the Application 1. Reproof FIrst If Consideration be a means so necessary to the Remembrance of God then here 's sad tidings to the Inconsiderate Such Men must needs Forget God unless he were to be seen with Corporal Eyes and his glorious Perfections did lie open unto sense But alas what a poor superficial Beauty can that discover it can pierce no farther than the surface of a bodily Object and the external Accidents it 's a meer stranger to the inward make and composition of such gross beings as these are and discerns not that which is most essential to them Much less can sense discern the Nature of Spirits and find out the infinite depths of the Divine Nature and search out the Dimensions of his Glory It 's usually such persons as these that make use of no other fool than sense to build themselves up in knowledge that have so much Atheism in their thoughts But it 's another Eye that must inform us of the Being and Perfections of God and make known to us both his Immensity and Eternity whereby all his other Attributes and Perfections become bottomless and unsearchable This Eye is two fold according to the double light that is afforded to us for discovery The Eye of 1. Reason 2. Faith According to the double light of 1. Nature 2. Scripture which doth discover the Object to these two Eyes There are but three ways by which we can come to gain any knowledge of God or any other thing either 1. By sense so we come to know that the Snow is white or that Grass is green Or 2. By way of Deduction or Inference or Ratiocination so we come to know the Sun is up though we see it not because we see
of him may be our sweetest daily Exercise and Imployment But without Consideration you cannot approach him nor get any transforming reviving sight of him His Ways are in the Seas and his Paths are in the deep Waters and Foot-steps cannot be known nor track'd without frequent Exercise of your Considering Faculty Psal 77.19 Secondly As we have the matters of greatest importance and necessity to Consider so we have many special advantages to excite and awaken Consideration One would think the worth and weightiness of the Object should be spur enough to quicken us to this Work and command our thoughts if there were no other motive to prick us forward but we have many current helps many a loud call from the Word of God set on by his appointed Servants that are sent forth on purpose upon this Errand Many providential help both sweet and terrible and something besides the common course strange and unusual and therefore more fit to set the Mind a thinking from what cause they come and what they drive at The veryest Atheist is sometime blank'd at some strange and unheard of events and knows not what interpretation to make of them nor whether to refer them for having denied the true Author of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They become vain in their imanations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And their foolish Heart is darkned Rom. 1.21 Yea that arch Opposer of Providence Epicurus himself had not made such a progress in Forgetfulness of God and the denial of a Deity governing and over-ruling the Affairs of the Earth but that he was so startled by some effects that he observed that he could not utterly wipe the notion of a Providence out of his Mind When a Blasphemer is struck dead in the very Act of his Blasphemy and Vengeance lights upon another with a fearful imprecation in his Mouth and some effects are so anomalous and besides the course of Nature that it is no thanks to the most Atheistical to bring in their Witness and to confess the Wisdom and Power and Justice of God Let a Man that truly worshippeth and feareth God in such a time of dreadful and publick Calamity as this is applaud the Justice of God and freely confess his handy work and assign the notorious publick allowed and encouraged sins of the City and Nation for the meritorious and provoking Cause It may be a purblind thick sighted Beast whose God is his Belly and whose Glory is his Shame that is drunk with Sensual Pleasure Phil. 9.13 will tell you that such a mortality comes about in the revolution and circle of so many years and will rake the Kennel for the Cause and ascribe the effects to the naughtiness of the Streets rather than to the naughtiness of their Hearts or look up to the true efficient to whom these causes they usually fasten upon are but subservient and all that they might hide their shame and that they might perswade themselves and others that their sin hath no hand in bringing such a scourge upon us but yet for all that when the Judgment comes a little nearer to them and begins to find them out and awaken them to Consideration which they had no time for when they were running from one brutish pleasure to another then they begin to see and to be confounded with shame They cannot now laugh out of their Hearts all serious thoughts of a Life to come nor make a jest of a Holy Life as they did in the day of their delusion but would give a World if they had it to die the death of the Righteous No wonder that strange and extraordinary Providences whether they be of Mercy or Judgment jostle the most sottish and inconsiderate Mind and awaken it to think other thoughts of all things than they did before and enforce an Heathenish Earthly Mind that spent all its thoughts upon vanity before to say that all is but vanity and God's Favour is the only ground for true Contentment if this good fit would last which Consideration hath brought him to But alas â—o sooner is the Providence over that brought him to Consider but he grows careless again and sleeps into Atheism and whilst things run in a constant Channel and keep a constant course God is not in all his thoughts Psal 10.4 Now they think that Repentance and Faith and Self-denial are the work of Cowards yes and such as believe that God hath as great hand in the orderly course and motion of things as when they go out of order and Water that is a fluid body and should run stands still and Fire that should burn doth not Let but a Man consider and it 's as easie to believe that it s as great a power must enable the Sun to run it's race as to stand still or go backward to preserve the Societies of Men as destroy and waste them with a devouring Plague All the difference is Men now consider that would not before and conclude at least that it 's the safest course to live the Life of the Righteous though there were no God and oh that all would so conclude and hold fast such a conclusion and live accordingly then they would quickly see more and more evidence of God in the Word and the necessity of his Service and the excellency of his ways and rise up to a higher conclusion That when as before they could say it was the safest way to renounce worldly Pleasure and to mortifie their Lusts and to addict themselves to the Love and Service oâ— God now they would be able to say that it 's perfect madness not to take this course It 's a Wisdom to be laughed at to be wise for this Life and neglect the Life to come A little Consideration would shew the nakedness of such pretended Wisdom and among other helps this of Publick Calamity where Plague or Famine or any extraordinary Judgment sweeps away thousands calls the rest to come and behold the works of the Lord what Desolations he hath wrought among us Psal 46.10 Be still and know that I am God I will be exalted among the People I will be acknowledged by these careless and Atheistical Sinners ver 11. And if the Lethargy of Mens Minds be not great they will consider those that were even lost before for want of attention to the Word and Works of God will awaken now or it 's too much to be feared never shall I call it therefore a Judgment or a Mercy which the compassionate God hath sent upon this Nation that gives us so much advantage to come to sober thoughts Doth it not give some check whether we will or not to the external acts of Pride Luxury and Uncleanness whereby the inward Acts are weakened and we have time to reason with our selves and are better disposed to consider when freed from the clog of worldly cares and from the fumes of a surfeited Body overcharged with Meat and Drink and from the flattering Friend that make us
force nor power with him to restrain his Corruption because he feels it not though he might as certainly foresee it as that which he now feels And he will do more to be rid of the Tooth-ach or some present Affliction than to prevent one that 's a thousand times greater Is he guided by Reason or Sense and doth he live like a Man that hath Understanding or like a Bruit that hath none that will take more care and pains and be at more cost to be freed from present Pain and Sickness and to get out of Poverty or Hardship when it pincheth him and to throw off any present Burthen that he feels himself oppressed with than to escape the Damnation of Hell though he must otherwise most certainly feel it ere long Judge impartially whether this be not to be like the Horse and Mule and other meer sensitive Creatures that have no Understanding Let them have what they have at present and feel no present Pain and you please them well enough though you feed them for the Slaughter You cannot Shoe an Ox unless you bind and cast him down and force him though it be to keep his Feet from hurt Your Horse is not pleased when you let him Blood though it save his Life because you hurt them for the present The Man that considers not will be too like these Brutish Creatures and run into Eternal Misery to avoid a little present Affliction Moreover 3. It 's an Argument of Pride not to Consider Psal 10.4 The wicked through the pride of his Countenance will not seek after God God is not in all his thoughts thy Judgments are far above out of his sight God hath set Heaven and Earth before him and set such variety of things on purpose to be Considered And the Inconsiderate Man shuts his Eyes and will not behold the Glory of the Lord nor give him the Honour due to his Name If it be foolish Pride to undervalue any Creature what Arrogancy is it to despise and overlook the most absolute and perfect Being things of the highest value and most worthy our Observation Fifthly It 's easie to Consider your Thoughts will run some way whether you will or not The Soul of Man is a busie active thing and will not be idle it will rather be impertinently employed than not at all and the bare work of thinking is no hard matter It 's rather a work of difficulty to restrain them especially from the things that we have the highest Love and Respect for If God and thy Soul were valued and loved by thee above all other things as they must be if thou art a Christian at the Heart thou couldst not but think and think again how to please the one and save the other If things that are more worth than the whole Frame of Heaven and Earth and all that 's visible to the Eyes are not worthy thy most prizing pleasing Thoughts they are worth nothing and if thou thinkest so thou art either an ignorant Sot or an Atheist It 's a cheap purchase to gain the highest Wisdom and the Love of God and to save thy Soul for ever at the expence of a few sober serious thoughts If you stick at Consideration which it must cost you if ever you be saved you judge your selves unworthy of Eternal Life It 's easie enough to you to turn your Thoughts to an Object of Gain or Pleasure and is there any greater Gain than to save your Souls What will it profit you to win the whole World and lose your Souls Mat. 16.26 It 's a rational question that the greedy Heart of Man shall never be able to answer without Self-condemnation if he run his Soul upon destruction though he should get to be the happiest man upon Earth O unhappy Soul that couldst consider and Judge no better Wast thou master of no more Brains and Wit than what could inform thee how to Feed and Trick up thy Carkass and commend it to the Eyes of a few dying men And to live in a little Credit whilst thou art above ground though thy Name stink for ever afterwards Was this the upshot of all thy Thoughts Couldst thou think to better for thy poor Soul that might be Eternally Happy if you would not fly consideration but turn your Thoughts to those things for which God gave to you your faculty to Think O remember that it 's easie and very natural to consider how you may save your Soul if you were not become unnatural and cruel to your selves And it will shame you unto the deepest silence when God shall ask you Why you did not Consider of those things when the matters were so great and the work so easie Sixthly You will consider when it is too late and wish that you had made more hast when it would have done you good It would not be such a perfect degree of madness in us not to consider how wonderfully God hath made us how deeply we stand Indebted to him for no less than all that we have or hope for and how wickedly we have departed from him and what our sin hath deserved and what our Saviour hath done save us from the woful consequents thereof it would not be so absurd to put these Thoughts out of our Minds now if we could always keep them out But in the latter end we shall consider Jer. 23.20 It would not be so great a sin to be inconsiderate now if we could be ever so But alas stupidity and insensibleness of such things as these is the disease only of this present Life and will last no longer than the day of Grace And woe to us a thousand times if it last so long But when the day of Mercy is past be stupid if thou canst and harden thy heart against such Thoughts if thou art able Consideration is now our duty and the fittest instrument to show us the evil of Sin and the worth of Grace but if it be here neglected it shall be our punishment hereafter and the most cruel instrument to torment us Believe it then we shall passionately wish that we had considered a little sooner and had let these things sink into our hearts O that we had pondered them whilst we had the day But now the fearful night is come upon us and we are Sentenced everlastingly to such dismal Thoughts If we had spent a few serious Thoughts what this misery is to which we are now condemned we had escaped these Torments If we had considered what it is to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the Glory of his power 2 Thes 1.9 and to be forsaken of all comfort for ever we had not been now pouring forth these bitter cryes and complaints But alas what are they now worth who regardeth them or is moved to any the least compassion towards Yea the righteous God will laugh at your calamity Prov. 1.26 and the Saints will praise him and say
pine away thy self from day to day with earnest desires and endeavours after it Thou wert made for God and thy Soul will be restless till it return to him Consideration would convince thee that thus it is think then more frequently what is that work thou wert made for Thirdly The next thing worth your most serious Consideration is how well you have answered the end of your Creation You see what a wise just holy and impartial God you have to do with and that you are his Creatures and wherefore he hath made you and endued you with such Faculties and given you such various helps and encouragements Now consider how well you have used them how you have improved your several Talents and served your Maker and kept the Statutes and Judgments he hath given you Have you had your heart in Heaven or in Earth ever since you came hither Have you lived to God or without God in the world Have you lived in the love and praises of your Maker and in perfect obedience to his Laws or have you not rather extinguished all love of God in your hearts and violated all his righteous Laws and preferred the wisdom of the Flesh before the wisdom of the Spirit and set your selves to oppose his Government Though it may be you have not sinned against him on set purpose and directly opposed him yet have you not neglected to consult his will and when you have known your duty in many particulars have you not refused to obey Let your own Consciences be the Judge Have you kept the fear of God always before your eyes Hath no corrupt communication proceeded out of your mouth Have no idle blasphemous wicked thoughts crept into your hearts Have you been just and righteous in all your dealings towards God and Men Have you stood up for the honour of God against all his Enemies and faithfully reproved Sin and done all your works with respect to Gods glory or have you not overlooked that and minded your own worldly interest and cherished revengeful proud ambitious thoughts in your own hearts and countenanced Sin in others at least have you not been silent when Gods Name hath been lightly used in every trivial matter and his Sabbaths profan'd and his Word derided There 's none of us but must confess we have neglected this great work too much at the best how much more at the worst Our Hereditary Corruption was enough to make us odious in the pure Eyes of God for ever what then shall we plead for our Actual Sins which are multiplied to such a number that we cannot reckon them up So that there is no man that is not liable to the Wrath of God and the Condemning Sentence of his Law Consider whether you have not been treasuring up Wrath all your days and destroying your selves and preferring Dung and Dross before him Did he make thee to affront and dishonour him and prefer a trifle before him Did he make thee to scrape after the world to make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Bethink thy self and consider whether thou hast discharged thy Duty and answered the Ends of thy Creation and done all to the glory of God and you will see Cause enough to abhor your self Fourthly Being thus obnoxious to Gods displeasure and liable to Death and Condemnation consider in the fourth place whether you are sensible of your Sin and Misery and whether you have accepted the grace which the Gospel offers to you There 's no remedy but you must perish for ever and have the Judgment of Everlasting Condemnation if Consideration do not bring you to Repentance and wound your hearts with the bitter sense and feeling of your Sin O consider that it was the mere mercy of God that any such terms were offered to you he might have left you as he did the fallen Angels and therefore if now you shall slight a pardon and refuse to lay your sin to heart and to be humbled and broken for it and to come to Christ with a loving and thankful heart that he would cleanse and purifie you by his Word and Spirit your case condition will be the more doleful your Judgment at the Great Day will be more Intolerable I know you have verbally Renounced the World the Devil and the Flesh in your Baptismal promise but have you Really and Unfeignedly Renounced them in heart and life Are you Convinced that nothing can wash away the stain of any the least of your Sins but the Blood of Christ much less wipe away the Sins of your whole Life Have you throughly considered the necessity of his Blood to procure your Pardon the necessity of his Spirit to Sanctifie you And that there is no Name under Heaven by which you can be saved but his but if you be such that loath your selves for all former Sins and are weary of a corrupt and sinful Nature and Christ be the chiefest among ten Thousand to your Soul then though you have so much crossed the end of your Creation and committed so much Sin it shall not be charged on you the Blood of Christ will certainly cleanse you from all your Sin If this faith be not yet wrought in you consideration must open and soften your Heart and make way for it If you did but frequently consider what priviledges they are forthwith admitted to that do believe and what a fearful looking for of Judgment there remaineth for unbelievers you would hasten to make your escape from the Stormy Wind and Tempest Suppose that some Mortal distemper had seized on you and this will certainly be your case ere long do but a little consider what the priviledges of a believer will be worth to you then how sweet the promise of forgiveness by Christ will be to your tast Yea sweeter than the Honey to your throat Psal 119.103 Do but let your thoughts run upon this Subject and tell you How happy you would count your self if you were united to Christ and a true member of his body reconciled to God and pardoned adopted into his family and received into his especial protection what would you give then to be acquitted from all your former sins to have the sting of Death pull'd out to land safe at your desired Harbour to dye in the Lord and to have a Convoy of blessed Angels to carry your soul to endless Joy say what you would give then to be secured from the sensible sears of Hell and Death and to lie down in the Grave in Peace and Safety and to have nothing then to make you afraid Why if you are a Penitent Believer and belong to Christ there will be comfort for you in the Hour when all the World shall signifie nothing to you Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from fear of evil Prov. 1.33 When natural strength will be sure to fail you and your Soul is going out from your Body where it hath so long dwelt
Excellency and Perfection may justly challenge our greatest Love and Esteem yet the unparallel Good he hath done us doth call for much more Nimii durus est Animas saith Seneca qui si Amorem non velit impendere nolit rependere It 's a base Nature indeed and highly unreasonable that will not pay Love with Love Can we be content to receive all from God and to repay nothing back again He that gives him not the prime and choice of his Affections gives him nothing in the Scripture Account yea he is reputed a Hater of him Luke 14.26 If any Man come to me and hate not that is love them not less his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brethren and Sisters and his own Life also he cannot be my Disciple Let but some of those Numberless Favours which thou hast received from him be but a while considered and it will utterly shame and put to silence this odious sin And the unthankful hard-hearted sinner that is not melted by such love as this must needs be confounded in the serious thoughts thereof either here or hereafter Here in Repentance or hereafter in Torment 1. Thou hast thy very Being from him without which thou wert uncapable of any Love or Kindness from God or any Creature He gave thee that very Heart which thou deniest him and whereby thou slightest him He gave thee thy Memory to remember him Thy Mind to think upon him He gave thee that Faculty of Love that it might burn continually towards him Ungrateful Soul to set any thing above him in thy Love and Esteem That hadst been a Brute and no Man if it had pleased him and might'st then have wanted such a gift to bestow on him or any other thing 2. The same Hand that gave thee thy Being at the first doth yet continue it and preserve thee every Day and Night every Hour and Moment If he should but subtract his Hand thou would'st soon dye and return to thy Dust again Thou hast forfeited Life and deserved Death over and over How oft hast thou run upon destruction and he hath saved thee and reversed the Sentence of Death when the Law hath condemned thee And lengthned out this Life to thee that thou might'st repent and live for ever And dost thou live by his meer grace and favour every day and yet lovest him not above all other things This is highly absurd and unreasonable 3. Thy Life and all other Comforts are not only the Fruit of his Bounty but of his meer Grace and Mercy They have been all forfeited a thousand times over Every Sin calls for Sentence and Execution upon the sinner and condemns him to universal want and misery But the Blood of God hath purchased them back again to thee and the hand of God hath restored them and recovered so base a Wretch into a state of favour and condition of hope And under each of these comprehensive Mercies infinite particulars might be reckoned up And now what canst thou set up in Competition with Him Thy Wit Thine Understanding Thy Health Strength Beauty Friends Riches Honour Life Or any Provision that 's made for it These all belong to him They are his Talents Art thou a Debter to all or any one of these that thou shouldst serve love or esteem them more than him who is so incomparably thy Benefactor Reason 3d. Thirdly God deserveth our greatest love because he is to us The most suitable Good Now that 's the most suitable good that doth most fitly and fully supply all our Necessities and satisfie our most rational Desires Now who or what can pretend to compare with him in this respect or stand in a competition with him There are Two great Necessities which every Soul lies under 1. The one is in respect of Sin The 2d in respect of Suffering and Misery which Two comprize all the Wants and Necessities of Man Both which none is capable of removing but Christ our Redeemer who is God-Man blessed for evermore And for the first Sin It exposeth every sinner to two great Wants The One of Pardon The Other of Sanctification In the want of either of which it 's plainly impossible that any Man should be happy And this needs no other Proof that the bare Explication of what Pardon and Sanctification are 1. Pardon is but the Removal of Guilt which every Sinner doth contract Now Guilt being an Obligation unto Punishment Pardon must needs be the dissolving or nulling of that Obligation which if it should continue and not be removed the guilty sinner must needs be terrified and affrighted with the sense of his obnoxiousness to God's displeasure who perfectly hates Sin and loves Justice and Righteousness more than all his Creatures and therefore must needs resent any Affront done to them as it were to the Apple of his Eye where such Guilt lies upon any Creature which sense cannot but arise in every Sinner when Conscience is awake which will be sooner or later And then he that knows God is his Enemy cannot sure be happy since he hath infinite power and wisdom against him And this is the very Case of every one that lies under Guilt unremoved he hath Almighty God for his Enemy And as the want of Pardon cannot consist with Happiness so neither can the want of 2. Sanctification For as he that hath God for his Enemy cannot be happy so neither can he that is an Enemy unto God And such a one is every unsanctified and unrenewed Soul who being unlike to God cannot take pleasure in him nor have any complacency in those things which are suited to his blessed Nature But loves them just as the Bird doth the Snare from whence he will fly and escape with all the speed he can But he that cannot love God above all and delight chiefly in his Ways can never be happy because these are the only Ways that can perfect his Nature and make him happy Pardon and Sanctification being thus explained it evidently follows by clear consequence that without these two the sinner cannot be happy but such a one is every Man and therefore without these two Supplies no Soul can be happy Thus much being evident and demonstrable it is as plain that none can remove the Guilt and Filth that sin implies but God who alone can remit sin and sanctifie the sinner and dispose him by Holiness to the Love of God and all Righteousness wherein his chief happiness doth consist The Second grand Necessity which Man lies under which indeed comprehends all Necessities whatsoever is Misery or Suffering which comprizeth all that Evil in Effect which sin doth in the Cause All that Sickness and Sorrow and Trouble and Fear and Discontent and Death and those sad Expectations after it are the Fruit and Effect of Sin by Resultancy oftentimes and always by way of a Righteous Punishment and Compensation Yea Sin is such a Monster that it not only deserves but also inflicts Evil upon
the Letters of which every Word we read is composed or as it is to give restorative Food to a distempered Body before the peccant Matter be purg'd out that is the cause of the Distemper But then though it be the first step in Religion and the first acceptable Service we can perfornâ—â—â— God It is not there that we must rest we are not there to sit down and advance no further as if we were gotten to Hercules Pillaâ—s and there were no higher Perfection to be attained in Religion And to mistake the subordinate and subservient part of God's Service for that which is more perfect and principal for hereby Sin and the Devil will get these Two great Advantages 1. God will be misrepresented both to our selves and others and he that is so full of Compassion and Mercy and all amicable and lovely Perfections will be thought by the Religion which he preserâ—bes to be cruel and unmerciful and to delight in the Torment and Affliction of his Creatures For Men will be drawing his Image by such a false Pencil And then 2. They that make it their whole endeavour to weep and mourn and afflict themselves for their sins will thereby disable both Body and Soul for any Service of God at all and both destroy their Bodily Health and overthrow their Reason And so whilst they are bewailing their Sin and as they think are conquering of it they do but entangle themselves the more and utterly waste that strength that should mortifie and subdue it And the reason why God doth speak so much in his Word in approbation of the sorrowful broken and contrite Heart which I doubt is the Reason of these Mens mistake is because such Persons have need of such Encouragement and might otherwise faint under the Anguish and Burthen of their Spirits and therefore because he would not break the bruised Reed nor quench the smoaking Flax till he hath brought forth Judgment unto Victory He gives these Cordials to such as are under the Pangs of the New Birth But he had much rather that Men would leave the Principles of the Doctrin of Christ and not stick always at the Foundation of Repentance from Dead Works and of Faith towards God Not that we are to shake hands with Repentance and sorrow for Sin after we are once heartily converted unless we could be sure to commit no more sin But then sin will need a more short and transient sorrow when we presently bewail it so soon as ever it is committed But our first Repentance and Sorrow will cost us hotter Water and put us to â—â—â—e trouble If a Man that hath a long Journey to go should set out a quite contrary way to the place whither he is to go and so travel on till he hath spent half or more of the time that is allotted for his Journey you must needs think that will cost him more vexation and trouble to get into his right way than after he is gotten in if he should chance to step out a Mile or two A small Errour is more speedily corrected than a great one of long continuance But yet it is always true That it 's better to prevent sin and keep out of it at the first than to get out of it by Repentance Though by Accident and through the Mercy of God it may sometimes prove better to the sinner that he did fall into sin if he doth afterwards heartily rerepent of it But absolutely and in it self it is not better And he that should presume to let loose the Reigns to Sin upon that account I believe would find it much worse But before I produce those Considerations which through the Blessing of God may stir up and strengthen this Affection which must prepare the way for Faith in Christ which lays the Foundation for all Joy and Peace I will first shew what this Godly Sorrow doth imply or what Acts are included in it if it be such as will work Repentance never to be repented of And here let me Note That Repentance is sometimes taken by a Synechdoche for the whole Work of Conversion and then it includes Faith in it so it 's taken Luke 15.7 There shall be joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance So Luke 13.3 5. Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish where Faith also is implied So Acts 11.18 Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life where Repentance is named as the only condition of Life which without Faith also in Christ cannot be had and therefore it is included Sometime Repentance is taken only for Contrition and then usually Faith is joyned with it So Acts 20.21 Testifying to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ And in this latter sense I here take the word Repentance when I make use of it And so Repentance or Godly Sorrow is a deliberate Act of the Soul performed upon the Motions or by the Assistance of the good Spirit of God whereby a Man being touched with unfeigned Sorrow and Remorse for all that he hath sinned whither in his Parents or in himself either inwardly and in secret or else openly and in the sight of Men is now resolved to close with Christ as his only Remedy against the Guilt and Power of it So that you may perceive by this Description that sincere Repentance and Sorrow for Sin must imply these following Acts or otherwise it can never be an advised and deliberate Act nor conclude in a firm resolution and purpose to take Christ as his only sufficient Saviour First It implys a deep Conviction of the Holiness of God and his sin-hating Nature And that you may as soon reconcile Light and Darkness as God and the least Sin whether you take it in its Material or Formal Consideration In its Material Consideration it 's nothing but Deformity and Absurdity and Contradiction to all Right and Reason And in its Formal Respect it 's a thwarting God's Will that 's supreme and governed with infinite wisdom and a breach of his righteous Law And in both these Respects it must needs be the Object of Divine Hatred and Abhorrence surely he must needs abhor to see a Creature cross his own Will and oppose his own Government and when he hath endued him with reason to see him act so absurdly Hence the Psalmist tells us That such as are foolish cannot stand in his sight he hateth all the workers of iniquity Psalm 5.5 And if an imperfect Saint such a one as David hath such an aversation to such Works and the doers of them that he can say depart from me all ye workers of Iniquity much more doth he that is of spotless purity hate all Filthiness and Pollution which every sinner hath some degree of If the Lord were not an utter Enemy to all Iniquity he had never turned so many Angels
yield them I do not say that Tears are always an inseparable Concomitant of Repentance But unfeigned sorrow for sin if it be in that degree that our sin requireth will for the most part produce Tears What a Flood did St. Austin pour forth at his first Conversion The story is very remarkable you may find it in his Confessions After he had strugled with himself a good while and had met with stiff opposition from the World and the Flesh with the Lusts thereof that he was given to which were still tugging and drawing to keep their hold of him But the good Man knowing that they would prove his utter destruction if they were not forsaken prayed earnestly to God to deliver him from their Bondage And hearing by Pontition a Christian Courtier of the virtuous Life of St. Anthony a Man of little Learning but of strict and exemplary Piety began to be more enflamed with a desire after Conversion And walking in a Garden with his Friend Alipius he crys out to him Quid hoc est Quid patimur Sargunt indocti c. 1. What 's the Matter What unhappy Men are we Poor simple illiterate Men Rise up and get the Kingdom of Heaven by force and we with all our Learning wallow in the Mire of Lust and Corruption Afterwards going forth into an Orchard all his former pleasures mustered up and seemed to present themselves before his Eyes and thus to set upon him Dimittesne nos a momento isto c. What wilt thou leave us quite And must we never after this time see thee any more What filth saith he and shameful pleasures did they lay before mine Eyes which he entreated God to pardon At length after a tedious difficult Conflict a marvellous Tempest of Tears came upon him and Rivers of Water ran down his Eyes as he lay under a Figg-tree and there he poured forth his Soul to God and prevailed and threw off his beloved Lusts and Corruptions and never returned to them any more All these Acts must concur where there is true sorrow for sin such as the Gospel doth require as a condition without which there can be no forgiveness though perchance every one of these distinct Acts may not be taken notice of by him that is sincerely penitent yet he feeleth the force and power of them in his afflicted broken Heart But yet some of the forgoing Acts that are in the understanding it may be stick closer than the others and prevail more to bring on the after Acts that are in the Will and Affections and are expressed in the outward Actions But though some degrees of this forementioned Sorrow may and do always go before Faith in Christ yet your Repentance is never compleated and perfected till Christ be heartily closed with and received with loving subjection of the Soul for then the Soul is enabled by the Spirit that he bestoweth to bring forth that Repentance which it had brought but to the Birth before There must be some sense of the evil of sin and fear of God's displeasure and the miseries that it already hath and will moreover bring upon us and some loathing of a Man's self before ever Christ will be welcome to you and before you will consent that he shall be your Soveraign Lord and Saviour and take his Yoke on you You must feel the intolerableness of the other Yoke of Sin and Satan before you will change it for Christ's and come to him for ease and Relief So that you see some Acts of Repentance are preparatory to Faith viz. Such as Self-love and the Fear of Hell and Damnation can produce But it is the Love of God in Christ that must kindly melt the Heart for sin and antidote it against the poyson thereof for the future and settle the Resolution to forsake it and follow after holiness whereby the soul is made like to God So much for the Nature of Repentance or what Acts it is made up of I come next to the Considerations that should provoke and stir up this Holy Affection First then Consider the flat necessity of Repentance without which there is no Pardon nor Peace with God to be expected whatever he dispense withal this he will not dispense with He hath indeed dispensed with the Law of Works that required perfect sinless Obedience or threatned Damnation And hath promised thee that thou shalt not dye nor the threatning be executed on thee if thou wilt submit to the Gospel or the New Law of Christ thy Redeemer That is in other words if thou wilt from thy Heart acknowledge thy sins and repent of them and come to Christ for strength and resolution to forsake them But he will never dispense with thee here in case thou wilt not submit to this gracious offer Thy sins must be felt and that more than all worldly sufferings otherwise Christ will be no Physician to thee nor shalt thou ever feel the admirable power of his Blood Thy sin must be felt either here by Repentance or else hereafter in eternal Desparation Now the stain and filthiness of thy most hainous sins may be washed out by the Blood of Christ if thou comest with a penitent Heart to that sovereign healing Fountain But then the stain can never be got out nor thy reproach be ever wiped away though thou shouldst pour forth Rivers of Tears Behold I have foretold thee Let not thy Heart deceive thee nor think that after thou hast displeased God so often by thy sin that thou mayest scape and find Mercy though thou art never heartily displeased with thy self for thy foolish shameful ways Never any person found favour with God nor obtained Mercy that did not drink of this bitter Potion of Repentance and was not more afflicted in Heart and Soul for Disobedience to God than for any worldly Misery that ever befel him It is an unpleasant work to a Man yet in his sins and a narrow passage unto life but he that will enter into the Heavenly Kingdom must pass through this streight Gate The bitterness of this Repentance will quickly be over but the unspeakable comfort thereof if it be sound and enable thee to forsake thy sins will abide with thee for ever Who would not submit to hard Terms to save his Estate though it were never so little or his Life though it were unhealthy and uncomfortable But who would not consent to harder Terms to procure a more plentiful Estate and a more healthful comfortable Life And is there any thing more necessary or doth half so much concern thee as to have God thy reconciled Friend and to save thy Soul from Eternal Death anâ— thy self from utter destruction of Body and Soul for ever and ever And to get the possession of Eternal Life and Joy Consider I beseech O my Soul And do not reject the offer of Repentance lest the refusal cost thee a Repentance a thousand times more sharp and bitter The pangs of the New Birth will
put us beyond all hope And shall this trouble us no more Well might our Saviour bid the Daughters of Jerusalem not to weep for him but for themselves and for their sins Luke 23.28 They had some womanish Tears to command when they saw him led away to Execution but might have shed them far more acceptably for their sins whereby they had brought such a horrid thing to pass It 's a lamentable sight to see Men endued with reason to ring their hands and weep for almost nothing and to be cruelly hard-hearted when they have the greatest cause to weep What a vast difference is there between a little bodily suffering and the intolerable pains of thy Soul between a little Scratch in thy Flesh and the Wounds of thy Spirit A wounded Spirit who can bear saith Solomon Prov. 18.14 Shewing by this Question the incomparable difference between all external griefs and those which are internal and seated in the Spirit What a wide difference is there between the loss of some temporal finite good and the loss of that which is infinite and eternal Thou mayest repair the one but thou canst never repair the other It 's far more tolerable to be scorned by Men than to be contemned by God To be fâ—ighted by thy Friends and Acquaintance when thou art in misery and distress and doest expect some pity and relief from them than that God should laugh at thy Calamity and mock when thy Fear cometh And yet in such like cases as these we want no sorrow but have Tears and Sighs and bitter Expostulations at command O Sirs stop your Tears cease your Complaints forbear your Sighs when it is but the Flesh or outward Man that is concerned Keep these in store for your outward sins which far better deserve them and do you a thousand times more wrong Noli tristari nisi quam male feceris Keep them in store for a time of greater Necessity The Sorrow of the World worketh Death 2 Cor. 7.10 These Tears give your Heart no ease but rather make way for greater sorrow The time is coming when you will wish you could have â—â—â—ghted all other Evils but that of sin Fifthly Consider This is one great End for which Christ shed his Blood and suffered the shameful Death upon the Cross that he might bring Sinners to Repentance He knew they could never be happy till they should get a true sight of the Sin and Misery and till their Hearts were throughly broken for their Transgressions And that they must part with their Corruptions or part with God Being therefore moved with wonderful pity and compassion towards them and loth that they should go on and perish in their Rebellion against God hath undertook to bring them to Repentance If the work could have been done by him alone it would have been a matter of far less difficulty to effect and bring to pass But he well knew before he began to make the least attempt that it was a far easier task to shed his blood and satisfie for his sins pass'd than to bring us to future obedience If it had been only to lay down his Life for us so great was his compassion to us that he could easily have parted with it But this was not all no nor the one half He had a worse work to do the stubborn rebellious Heart of Man to change and to renew He must be brought to see and confess and renounce his sins and come again and submit himself to his Maker whom he had provoked or else his Blood would be spilt in vain O my Brethren this was a work indeed and sets forth the wonderful amazing Love of our Redeemer that he would undertake such a Task as this If he had had no more to do but to fulfil the Law of God in his own Person and our Nature and to have fought with the Devil and Death and to have laid down his Life for us he could have conquered these with a far less power than he could have conquered the rebellious untructable Hearts of sinners It was much easier for him to have confounded all the Powers of Hâ—ll and Darkness than to break in pieces a stoâ—â— sensless Heart and to bring a sinner to Repentance and Reformation But yet he hath undertook the work notwithstanding And what course doth he tâ—ke to mollifie a flinty Heart and to make a sensless sinner feel the odiousness of his sin and to bend such a perverse and obstinate will as ours is Why he undergoes the most horrible Sufferings that the Ear of Man ever heard of And then he causeth the History of them to be written and set before us And withal doth most affectionately beseech us by all these sufferings to consider the Folly of our former Ways â—â—d to lay them to heart till we begin to yield and acknowledge our sins and are stedfastly resolued to follow his Directions and depend upon 〈◊〉 Assistance till we can perfectly overcome our Corruptions and serve the Lord that made us with singleness and sincerity of heart for the suâ—â—â—â— To this 〈◊〉 he sets up an Office on purpose to 〈◊〉 us in remembrance of the bitter Pangs and Sorrows that he hath undergone for us And he both commanded this to be Preached publickly 〈◊〉 the World He hath moreover instituted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to represent 〈◊〉 â—â—e his Sufferings to us To tell us what Poverty land Shame he hath endured what malicious Usage from the Jews how he was wounded for our Transgressions and bruised for our Iniquities and how the chastisement of our peace was upon him that through his stripes we might be healed Isa 53.5 How the Lord laid on him the Iniquities of us all vers 6. How he was made sin for us that knew no sin that we might be made the Righteousness of God through him 2 Cor. 5.21 How he trod the Wine-press of his Father's wrath Isa 63.3 and drunk off the dregs of the bitter cup of his displeasure and swet drops of Blood while he was conflicting with the Terrours of God's wrath And is not that Man a block indeed that cannot be moved with such Rhetorick as this is Is that Man fit to be pardoned or to find any Mercy at God's hands that stoppeth his Ears to one that hath thus befriended him when he is pleading with him to make his Heart give and relent for all his former sins It 's certain that Mans case is desperate that will not yield to such an Argument as this is But alas sad and woful experience tells us how many Thousand slight it and are no more moved with the real story of Christ's Passion than with a Romance or Fable no nor many I fear half so much O how must this needs Crucifie our Lord afresh to see his love and tender compassion so much slighted and his Blood trampled under feet O wretched unworthy sinner Canst thou find in thy heart to run the bloody Spear and to strike
the Nails afresh into his Side and Hands and to persecute him whom God hath wounded yea and that for thy sin Hast thou the Heart of a Man or fierce Savage Beast that canst add Sorrow to such Afflictions Is it Nothing to thee that he was such a Man of Sorrows and so despised of Men and smitten of God What when thou thy self art the Person for which he hath borne all this Is it no matter to thee though he was led as a Lamb to the slaughter and as a Sheep dumb before the shearer Isa 53.7 Wo to thee that ever God made thee a Man if thou art become such a hard-hearted Rock He submitted to all this that he might prevail with God on the one side to be reconciled unto sinners and that he might prevail with sinners on the other side to repent and be reconciled unto God The former part of his Work he hath already done He hath gained his Father's Consent And wilt not thou Consent to lay by thine Enmity to God to confess thy former sins and to return to thy Obedience It shall be more tolerable surely for the Devils themselves that never had such Mercy offered them in the Day of Judgment than for such hard-hearted impenitent sinners But this is not all that Christ does for them he bears with them in wonderful patience sometimes he casts a gracious Look upon them as once he did upon Peter as if he would melt them in despight of all their obstinacy And seems to say to them What sinner shall I suffer and wilt thou suffer too rather than repent and live Shall I bleed to the very death to save thee from destruction and wilt thou have no Mercy upon thy self Turn thee Turn thee Why wilt thou dye O impenitent sinner Sometimes he frowns upon the sinner and threatens him with a sorer and heavier Condemnation if he will not repent and all that he might gain his Consent He assaults him on all sides that he might recover him by Repentance unto that happy state which he doth so much desire to see him possessed of He sets the Motives of Eternal Life and Death before him and gives him many a precious Hour to ponder and consider them He sends his Spirit also to knock at the door of his Heart that he may be let in Wo a thousand Times to that Man that will not be invited to Repentance by all these Means Good it had been for that Man or Woman if they had never been born Sixthly It is the End of all the Ordinances of God and every Providence to work this Godly Sorrow in our Minds and Hearts and bring us to Repentance It is the First intention of the Ministry of the Word to kill sin in us by Repentance and then to bring us on to the Life of Faith and Holiness And all the Doctrines that are taught and delivered to us in the Ministry of the Word are to drive on this Design The Doctrine of God's Attributes and Perfections is but the better to inform us of our Duty and what Service is due to such a Majesty so related to us and to qualifie and prepare our Hearts to a reverend and humble Performance of our Duty And to shew us what a sin it is either to neglect it or slight it over And consequently to bring us to judge abhor and condemn our selves when we have any of this Guilt upon us All the Doctrines that concern our selves and that teach us what we were by Nature and what we are by Practice and what we may be through the Grace of God and the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus serve effectually to shame and humble us and to break our very Hearts in the sense of that Misery that sin hath brought upon us If God made us such beautiful lovely Creatures and we have made our selves such deformed loathsome sinners doth it not become our Duty and highly beseem us to afflict our souls with the bitter remembrance thereof especially when God offereth Mercy to such penitent afflicted sinners All the Doctrines that concern our Brethren what do they serve for but to teach us the Extent of our Duty to them and the hainousness of our sin that have so much failed in all the respects that we owe to God and Men That so the more distinct sight and knowledge of our sin may make our Repentance more sound and compleat To what end are all the Terrible Threatnings of God's Word against Sin and Sinners but either to prevent the Sin or else to humble the Sinner after he is fallen under the Threatning and to work upon the Passion of Fear that by it the sinner may be awakened to consider what he hath done And whither to serve all the Promises but to perfect that work more kindly which the Fear of Judgment hath begun There 's not a Doctrine that 's Preached and Published to us by the Ministry of the Word but what comes on this very Errand and hath a subserviency to this End and should be effectually managed to such a purpose by all that are intrusted with this Sacred Office Some helpful Considerations to provoke to the Sublime and Excellent Duty of Joy and Delight in God To Sing his Praise and to be Thankful to him Judaei dicunt prohibitum esse homini ulla refrui in hoc Mundo sine benedictione Et quicunque fruitur re aliquâ ex hoc Mundo sine benedictione perinde est acci spotiaret Deum Berach fol. 35. Scriptures enjoyning Joy and Delight in God with Thankfulness and Praise First Joy and Delight in God Psal 37.4 Delight thy self in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart Deut. 28.47 Because thou servedst not the Lord God with joyfulness and gladness of heart for the abundance of all things therefore thou shalt serve thine enemies in hunger and thirst c. Phil. 4.4 Rejoyce in the Lord always yea and again I say rejoyce Hab. 3.17 18. Although the Fig-tree should not blossom neither should Fruit be in the Vine though the labour of the Olive should fail and the Field should yeild no Meat although the Flock should be cut off from the Fold and there should be no Herd in the Stalls v. 18. Yet I will rejoyce in the Lord I will joy in the God of my salvation Psal 68.3 But let the righteous be glad let them rejoyce before God yea let them exceedingly rejoyce Isa 64.5 Thou meetest them that rejoyce and work righteousness Rom. 14.17 The kingdom of God is said there to consist in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost John 15.11 These things have I spoken that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full 1 Thess 5.16 Rejoyce evermore Nehem. 8.10 The joy of the Lord is our strength Psal 32.11 Be glad in the Lord and rejoyce ye righteous and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart Psal 66.1 2. Make a joyful noise
whose death the sting of death is taken out and by whose Resurrection ours is secured even the Resurrection to Life to all his true and faithful Members And as the First-Fruits were as it were the Pledge and Earnest of the Harvest that was to follow after so the Resurrection of Christ is the Gage and Assurance of ours 4. Having not spared his Son but given him a ransome for us he hath with him given us all other things we receive Mercies without number from him every day And that 1. Privative in guarding us from the many Mischiefs that the desert of our sin and the desire and endeavour of our Enemies would bring upon us And 2. Positive in bestowing on us the good things which we deserve not and which the malice of our Enemies would keep from us How many dangers have we oft-times escaped which we have both known and feared but they are far more that we have escaped which we have neither known nor feared We see not the Enemies that lurk continually about our Paths and Beds and that are always plotting and endeavouring to devour us which the secret Power of one that 's stronger than they hath hitherto prevented How oft hath Satan thirsted for our Blood and desired to sift us as Wheat But Christ hath interceded for us and infatuated all his Counsels that they have not prospered hitherto When he hath dug low to hide his Counsel from the Lord and laid his design deep and covered it with the greatest cunning and secresie when he hath thought certainly now he should prevail and swallow us up he hath miss'd his purpose and gone away disappointed and God hath shewed us a way how to escape Every Beam of Light that shineth on us every Breath we fetch every Minutes Health we do enjoy every Bit we eat and are refreshed with the House that covereth us the Air that we suck in the Bed we lye on the Friends that comfort us every Sweetness that we tast either in the Acts of Sense or Understanding together with the continuance of all our Faculties In a word every Comfort that befriendeth us is a distinct Mercy of God vouchsafed to us in Jesus Christ What shall I say How numberless are these which I have but generally touched If I should insist upon the several Circumstances and Degrees of them with the frequent Repetition of every one of them But these are not the one half of what our Redeemer doth bestow The Mercies that concern our Souls are far more numberless So that though I have seemed to name but three or four Instances of the Bounty of God towards us yet these are all so comprehensive especially those of Creation Redemption and Providence that they contain more under them than can be reckoned up in the Individuals by any humane Art or Skill There are some few of those infinite ways whereby God's goodness is demonstrated to us I might further shew how much the goodness of God is manifest towards us in all our Sufferings Streights Necessities Afflictions Sickness Death which breed the only quarrel between us and the goodness of the Lord and will not let us speak out and acknowledge it freely as we ought It's easie to vindicate the goodness of the Lord even in these to such as will but bring an impartial ear Neither doth his Wisdom and Power towards us come much behind his goodness Doth it not require infinite Wisdom and Power to govern such a perverse piece as sin hath made Man to be And to make him serviceable either willingly or without his Will to the glorious Ends of Order and Government in the World And that both in his Commerce 1. with God 2. with Men 3. with other Creatures either bridling or conquering his Corruptions without any impeachment of his liberty that they do not confound and destroy all Piety Justice and Sobriety out of the World It must be no less than the Power of God that must bring down the Proud that would otherwise trample all under feet That must govern the Savage Nations and tame and restrain the barbarous and bloody minds and make the wretched devices of the Enemies of his Church to be of none effect It must be a mighty Power indeed that must turn a furious persecuting Saul into an humble penitent and faithful Saul What a wisdom is seen in making Man so great and yet so little in designing him for so high an end and yet training him up for it by such low and despicable means But I will run out no further on this Argument lest I find no end FINIS