of whatever you do or think His Glory It is true we may have subordinat Ends consisting with our Duty but let what tends directly and immediatly to the Glory of God have the first and great Room in your heart and when you repeat the Lords Prayer let your heart go out more earnestly in desiring that His Name may be Hallowed His will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven and His Kingdom come then you desire He may give you your daily Bread and forgive you your sins c. This may seem hard to be required that we desire any thing more earnestly than the Salvation of our Souls but if our Love be in any degree as it ought we will surly see it to be our Duty which being performed our Salvation is secured to us in and for Christ's sake and there can be no surer Mark of our Hearts being right with God than our truly finding that really above all things whatsoever we longingly desire that God's Name may be hallowed his Kingdom come and his Will be done The saying of that holy Man Quench Hell and burn Heaven yet will I love and fear my God did hold forth the most desireable frame of his heart and that it did flow from a right and excellent Principle Herein he acted meerly from a principle of Love to God without the immediat prospect of his eternal or temporal Advantage there is indeed nothing more certain than that either Salvation or utter Destruction will in end be the irretrivable Doom of all Mankind and that we are called with our power to endeavour the avoiding of that Sentence and the goodness of God is unexpressibly great in promising his Spirit enabling us to Duty in living up to his Precepts which even in relation to our temporal Beeing are so advantageous as it is obvious that if there were neither Heaven nor Hell the ways of true Wisdom have in themselves an excellencie and desireableness a thousand degrees beyond what is possible to find in giving way to our wicked Inclinations and living as may be pleasing to corrupt and depraved Nature Be you intreated by me not to make the Practice of such as only own themselves to be Christians your Rule Minde what is said Prov. 23.17 18. Let not thy heart envy Sinners but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long For surely there is an end and thine Expectation shall not be â—ut off Let all your thoughts and Actions be aâ— minding you are in the presence of a dreadfully just albeit merciful God and endeavour with all your Strength that your heart may be filled with knowledge of Christ faith in and love to him and be diligent in using the means of Grace which in providence you are trysted with I have hinted at some things of your Duty and you have the benefite of the Word preached publick Prayer and Praise and the administration of the Sacraments which I pray God in his mercy may continue to this Land you have also the benefite of many Pieces of practicall Divinity written by serious and Godly Men such as Flavel's Writings the two Allens Joseph and Richard and many others the serious reading of which with Prayer for a Blessing upon your doing thereof will be Strength to your Soul and at the hour of Death unexpressibly more savourie than the Consideration of having done what is generally the Practice of the world I desire ye may write over a Double of this and keep the Principal carefully by you for I have no exact Copy thereof And that you at sometimes read what I have written to you and whilst you are at the Colledge stint your self to the reading thereof excepting what is Advice relating to a married state once in the Week Let me know with your first Conveniencie if Joseph Allen's Allarum to unconverted Sinners be to be had in any Stationers Shop where you are and if it be not I will endeavour the sending it to you within a short time Make conscience of reading it seriously and diligently and when fitness of Frame in your heart enables you engage your self to God in the terms set down by that seriously holy Man But see to it that your whole heart go out after God in the Duty The Sin of an unfitted Frame of heart in what ever we do is great in Gods sight but in so solemn Approaching to him the doing of it unsuitably is a great Aggravation thereof I think it not amiss that sometime ye put in write to be kept by you what may evidence your Frame at such occasions if you have a suitable sense of Sin or your heart go out after God in Faith for Mercy or if in the expectation of particular Mercies or the Receit thereof you engage your self to any particular Duty or in the general more solemnly to serve God I think ye would put down in Writ your Engagements to God and what may evidence your Frame of Heart at these occasions I have my self considered with satisfaction even some few Petitions which may heart has gone out after God in the desire of and which at the time I have set down in Write not so much with a design more fully to imprint on my Memorie the Expressions of my Desires albeit my Memorie be very frail as to have the satisfaction of knowing by my reading them that at such times my heart did in some measure go out with earnestness in these desires and that my Remembrance of the Endeavours albeit frail and faint I have had to bring my Heart to that Frame might afterward shame me from any Sluggishness of Temper or any proness to gratisle my many Corruptions so as may be inconsistent with what God at the time enabled me to attain to Make Conscience always your Friend it is Gods witness within you beware of doing what may harden or kill it depend upon God that it may be in you according to knowledge and so walk in every thing as it may witness for you in the day of your greatest need I do intreat your whole Life and Conversation may be humble and serious in the sight of God have always upon your Heart a Sense of your unexpressibly great misery which will stir you up to the performance of Duty in which you must ever be most intent and serious And besides your daily Performance set at times some Hours and at some times one day a-part for your wrestling with God that He for Christs sake may subdue Corruption in you and give knowledge in every Duty and Grace to perform it and I hope our good God in his mercy will so far discover to you the filthiness of Sin and how Desireable Lovely and Advantageous it is to serve him That times so set a-part will be your delight for your direction in such Duties you have many means as Scudders daily walk and the Works of many other serious and godly Divines both of this and the English Nation and that
to and keeping it in a tender frame yea the advantages thereof are so great as may stir up to the redeeming time for the exercise thereof even from what may lawfully be allowed to our worldly Concerns or bodily Refreshment and how much more then ought we when we are alone guard against our minds going out after foolish and vain fancies if not what is grossly sinful in the sight of God Surely if we had an awful sense of his omnipresence and omniscience we would dare to be thinking upon what is unallowable in his sight and if we had a sense of our miserable condition through sin our hearts would ever be ready to take hold of all occasions of serious thinking how we should evite the Curse and Wrath of God to all eternity which unavoidably will be the Portion of hardned sinners not coming to God in and through Christ David in Ps 4.4 Requires we stand in aw and sin not and that we commune with our hearts upon our beds whereby you may be satisfied it hath been the practise of the Godly seriously to meditate at all times The subject Matter for your meditation is obvious and will easily occur as the Debt we ow to the Justice of God for sin the certainty of Death and after that of Judgment the misery of such as shall be Doomed to Hell with the Devils and so for ever separate from the Presence of God His incomprchensible Mercy to lost sinners in Jesus Christ and the Fulness of the unspeakable Joys that is secured to such as heartily and humbly lays hold thereof yea innumerable are the Subjects of that exercise that will with ease offer themselves and I advise for your Direction and encouragement to that Duty that you read the last Part of Mr. Baxter's Saints rest which doth fully Treat thereof 8. Every Evening set some short time apart and state your self as before God's Tribunal take a back-look upon your Actions of that day and what you have done towards God or your Neighbour amiss acknowledge it with contrition and brokenness of heart and seek of God Grace enabling you to a due Reparation either by a sorrowful even publick acknowledgment thereof in so far as they are sins against our good God providing the same may tend to the Edification of His Church and People or by repairing the prejudice of any hurt done to your Neighbour in so far as it is possible within your power and in your Evening Prayer acknowledge the goodness of God throughout all the days of your time and in particular acknowledge Him for the Mercies of that day and enlarge your self in Prayer as in the Morning 9. As you are called to own a Profession of Godliness so you are to avow the publick performance of Duty wherever Providence shall tryst your Being yet for the most part you would endeavour its Being as retired and as private as possible at least beware that to be seen or heard of men or any self end be not a Motive to your doing thereof I remember to have heard of a woman meeting with godly Mr. Fox upon the Street and after some discourse she pulling out her Bible told him she was going to hear a Sermon upon which he said to her if you will be advised by me go home but said she when shall I then go to Church To whom he answered when you tell no body of it 10. Beware of Hypocricie and be assured God will not be dissembled with he hath in many places of Scripture ranked Hypocrites with the worst of sinners you will find Mat. 23.13 they are amongst the number of such against whom our Lord denounces a Wo and in Chap. 14.51 the misery of their condition is held forth in the Sentence of the unjust Servant where as an aggravation of his punishment it is said his portion shall be with the hypocrites where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Do not you appear to be what you are not and let the design of being thought religious or the making use of a Profession to cloak your carnal and worldly ends be far from you I acknowledge to be morally honest is not to be religious but mind that without endeavouring to be so in all your Actions there is no Religion And it is the height of folly for any to think that their being of a Perswasion with those that are the most godly or their own practising even with much appearing sincerity the Duties of Religion where there is not Moral Honesty doth so much as truly entitle them to the name of Christians it is true every man is subject to Failings and an entire doing of what is required of us is not within the power of sinful man but as truly are our Failings in Moral Duties either where they are customary and habitual or not repented of and endeavoured against difect indications of the want of Religion and that our Lord notwithstanding the Name and Profession of such will disown them in their greatest extremity and you may see the Prophet Micah holding forth that the outward performing of what was legally required of the Jews was not the principal part of their Duty and says in Chap. 6.7 8. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God And God by the Prophet Jeremiah Chap. 4.24 saith Let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness judgement and righteousness in the earth for in these things I delight saith the Lord. Yea our Lord himself in that most excellent Sermon upon the Mount hath said Mat. 7.21 Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven 11. Mind what you are engaged to in your being Baptized and live up to that solemn engagement you are to fight out your Warfare under the Banner of Christ our Lord and renounce the Devil the World and the Flesh seek of God for Jesus sake that He may give you knowlegde and enable you to see and live up to the solemn Tyes you are under through your baptismal Covenant and as ye will answer to our good God at the day of your Appearance before his Tribunal be not among the number of such as never thinks of Baptism being otherwise useful then as a Ceremony for their having a Name 12. I expect that you will be able as the Apostle requires to give an Answer to every man that asketh you a Reason of the Hope or Belief that is in you with Meekness and Fear Forbeâ—â— Debates and Disputings upon Controversies in Religion what
God you may with all your strength endeavour I have reason to fear that my corrupt wretched heart may not in my Directions to you have had the sole prospect of His Glory in your eternal Well-being and the vain Imaginations thereof in what I do may justly provoke to His keeping back His Blessing upon my Endeavours to your doing of Duty which I pray my good God in His Mercy may avert and I earnestly intreat you may so walk as you be not an Offence to the professing the Name of Christ for my Endeavours in relation to you howbeit faint and frail will tend to your advantage if you seriously mind them and seek of God strength enabling you to live up to Duty in your Station and if this you do not my heart is afraid you will thereby provoke God to leave you to your self and they will witness against you to your eternal undoing I did in the end of the last Sheets I wrot to you send you the Double of some Apothegms and short Sayings but want of time and the Paper I wrot upon having failed I have herein sent you some that I have found written by several Persons and albeit you may consider that your having them to read being printed might have spared my Labour yet being what of Sayings of that kind I judged fittest to be under your consideration I have been at the pains of writing them and of contracting some of them and of altering others thereof which makes me expect you will so peruse them as to imprint the same upon your Memory 12. It is a never failing Rule of decerning a man to be in the state of Grace when he finds every thing that befalls him draws him nearer to God 13. We may safely expect God in His ways of Mercy when we are in His ways of Obedience 14. We do truly honour God when we see nothing for us but rather all things contrary to what we look for than to shut our eyes to all inferior things and to look altogether to His All-sufficiency 15. In what we are called to we ought to do our own Work and depend upon God for Success Diligence in what is required of us and trust in Him is only our Duty Let us then with cheerfulness perform our part and our Merciful God will beyond all doubting in His own due time make the Event our advantage and comfort 16. It is folly to think that we should have Physick and Health both at once God's time is the best time resolve therefore your waiting upon it after a weary Week comes a Sabbath and after Fight comes Victory 17. It is an evidence of true trust when we can wait God's time and not make haste 18. A man can be in no Condition wherein God cannot Supply if Comforts be wanting He can Creat them not only out of nothing but even make Afflictions the cause of Comfort 19. The only way to have our Will is to bring it to God's Will No Sin but is easier kept out then cast out 20. What we are afraid to do before Men we should be afraid to think before God 21. The humble and thankful acknowledgement of the Goodness of God in His several Dispensations is advantagious for such as retain the memory of Mercies seldom loses the sight of them 22. He that cannot abound without Pride is unable to suffer Want without too much dejection 23. The frequent meditating upon the certainty of Death will stir up so to live as the horrour thereof will be found swallowed up in the Death and Sufferings of our Blessed Saviour 24. If you would have God hear your Prayers do you hear the Requests of the Needy 25. He that carelesly regards the misfortunes of other Men ought not to think it strange if others look upon his Misfortunes without Compassion 26. Prosperity makes others know what we are and Adversity makes us know who are our true Friends 27. If you do not easily bear with the failings of others ye will render your own failings unsufferable 28. He that will not know his Friends in his Prosperity deserves to meet with none in his Misery 29. He that boasts of his good Qualities loses the merit of them by his Pride and he that hides them adds to their Esteem by his Modesty 30. Temperance and Exercise are the best means of Health 31. An able Cook is as much to be feared in time of Health as an ignorant Physician in time of Sickness 32. Flatter not thy self in thy Faith to God if thou wantest Charity for thy Neighbour and think not thou hast Charity for thy Neighbour if thou wantest Faith to God where they are not both together they are both wanting and both are dead if once divided 33. If thou hope to please all thy Hopes are vain if thou fears to displease some thy fears are idle the way to please thy self is not to displease the best and the way to displease the best is to please the most if thou canst fashion thy self to please all thou shalt displease Him that is all in all 34. If thou hast any Business of Consequence in agitation let thy care be reasonable and seasonable continual standing Bent weakens the Bow too hastie drawing breaks it put off thy Cares with thy Cloaths so shall thy Rest strengthen thy Labour and so shall thy Labour sweeten thy Rest 35. If thou desire not to be too poor desire not to be too Rich he is Rich not that possesses much but he that covets no more and he is not poor that enjoys little but he that wants too much the contented Mind wants nothing which it hath not the covetous mind wants not only not what it hath not but likewise what it hath 36. If thou desire that unestimable grace of saving Faith detest that insatiable Vice of damnable Covetousness It is impossible a heart though never so double should lodge both Faith possesses thee of what thou hast not Covetousness disposesses thee of what thou hast thou canst not serve God unless Mammon serve thee 37. If any hard Affliction hath surprized thee cast one Eye upon the hand that sent it and the other upon the Sin that brought it if thou thankfully receive the Message he that sent it will discharge the Messenger 38. Trust not the Promise of a common Swearer for he that dars sin against his God for neither Profite nor Pleasure will trespass against thee for his own Advantage 39. So use Prosperity as Adversity may not abuse thee if in the one Security admits no fears in the other Dispair will afford no hopes he that in Prosperity can foretell a Danger can in Adversity foresee Deliverance 40. If thy Faith hath no doubts thou hast just cause to doubt thy Faith and if thy doubts have no hope thou hast just reason to fear Dispair when therefore thy Doubts shall exercise thy Faith keep thy Hopes firm to qualifie thy Doubts so shall thy Faith be secured from Doubts so
God may enable you to the sanctified use of every mean of Grace and bless the same to his glory in your eternal Wel-being is and my God enabling me shall be whilst I live the Prayer of Your affectionat Father January 8. 1691. SON WHat I have written to you in thir few Sheets I intreat you do not neglect the perusal thereof as I have desired it is far from my intention to do what may agravat guilt in you but if you consider not seriously what I have written with a full resolution and endeavour to put the same in practice however imperfect it may be yet it will witness against you in the day of your appearance before Gods Tribunal But I hope our good God will by his Grace enable you so to live as the most desireable and only Saviour of Sinners in that day will be found to be your Portion you know I have sometimes endeavoured to hold forth to you your Engagements in Baptisme and you may remember what partciularly you engaged your self to in Write under your hand that day I did with your dear and most tenderly affectionat Mother whose Rememberance ought ever whilst you live to be savourie to you I say when we did joyntly endeavour in Prayer cordially to devote you to God and lest ye may not have kept by you the Double of what by writ you have engaged your self to I send you the words thereof under-written â— A. B. having it represented to me by my Parents the Engagements I am under by my being baptized That I shall renounce the Devil the World and the Flesh and live Godly and Righteously and soberly do here declare I believe in one God the Father and Son and Holy Ghost and does devote my self to him my Creator and reconciled Father in Jesus Christ who 's Blood signified by the Water in my Baptism can only cleanse me from Sin And I promise in his Strength He for Christ's sake enabling me to live up to my Engagements in Baptism to strive against all sinfull inclinations in me a wicked and corrupt Creature and to hate every Sin not only because it procures a temporal Curse and the ruine of my Soul to Eternity but especially because it is hateful to and contrair the holy Nature and Precepts of my blessed God And I do hereby expresly promise He by his Grace strengthening me to live in obedience to His holy Will revealed in the Scriptures and explained in the Confession of Fath and Catechism presently professed in this Church and I humbly beg O my most merciful God! for Christ's sake that thou would enable me to the performance of what I have hereby engaged to and to every Duty required of me in my Station and that I may ever have thy Grace in my heart and for my Portion here and to all Eternity an Interest in Christ thy Son my Blessed Glorious and lovely Lord and Saviour A. B. November 28. 1689. MInd that you have thus engaged your self and I intreat you may not by your being forgetful thereof and not living up there to draw down a Curse upon you You would at least every Sabbath set some short time apart for thinking upon your Baptismal Engagements and read over the Double of what you have subscribed and in a humble sense of your Sin anâ— Unworthiness upon your Knees seek by Prayer with earnestness of heart that God for Jesâ— Sake may enable you to every Duty I am seâ—sible I have written to you more in some thing then is at this time necessar and that I have not in what is more necessar suitably presse your Dut under your present Circumstance which makes me again require your remembriâ— my desire to you in forbearing bad Company Neglect not private Prayer and know that you unreverent going about that Duty with a waâ—â— dering faithless loveless heart and the was of a due consideration of what a wretched Sinnâ—â— you are and what God is whose Presence yoâ— dare to approach will but aggravat your Guilâ—â— in stead of procuring to you a Blessing And also desire you mind your being moderate 〈◊〉 the time you allow for your Recreations 〈◊〉 them be so harmless as may be vindicable in 〈◊〉 sight of God and Man and you would your seâ—â— not only forbear altogether the going to drink Taverns or Ale-houses but even forbear 〈◊〉 Company of such as do's it for often is thâ— Practice an In-let to and the beginning of avitice and debauched Life yea shun all appearance of Evil for the bent of the Inclination in frâ—â— Man is ready where there is the least of yieâ—â—ing to hurry us forward to every Wickedness and whatever may be the desirableness of the humour of any Comerade or complacency in his Converse if there be in his fellowship any thing inducing to the slghting of the due attendance upon your Book but especially to the doing of what is sinful and so dishonourable to God I do strictly enjoyn your forbearing all familiarity with such I have written to you more then I intended and shall now end again intreating you may unbyasedly enquire in what may be your Duty in all your Concerns and therein debar Self which is almost undecernable in its workings to our ruine and may be truly said to be the Devils Bait for the destruction of Soul and Body and that ye so live as in your whole Conversation you evidence the due apprehension you have of the certainty of Death the uncertainty of the time thereof and that you have an Immortal Soul that will be miserable to all Eternity unless you so walk as Christ may be your Portion and in your so doing you have even whilst in the World the advantage of the Crowd therein that pursues so eagerly after what is truly and undeniably Vanity for your heartily and humbly endeavouring after what is Duty in the sight of God and your being content with what He in His Providence is pleas'd to tryst you with and your using it to the end of His giving thereof is what the World reaches not as is apparent to those that has but the use of little Reason for almost every man be he Great or Mean in the World is grasping at what when obtained proves but a Shaddow and yields nothing of what he proposed as the end of his having it Ask the Ambitious man why he covets Honour and the Covetous Riches the Voluptuous and Carnal their Pleasures suitable to their Desires and Appetites And all will be answered that they may have Contentment and their Minds satisfied in having and using according as they project to themselves what they so eagerly seek after and how Notour and uncontraverted a Truth is it that when their Projects are attained they are not nearer but surther from Contentment and Satisfaction of mind then before their seeking after them I pray God in Christ may be your Portion I am c. SON YOu may believe what I have written to you to be