all your life-time that should make a wise man judge you Reasonable Is that your Reason to be penny wise and pound foolish to be wise to do evil and to have no knowledge to do good Jerem. 4. 22. To run up and down for I know not what and to leave that undone that you were created and redeemed for Can you think that it is Reasonable to make such ado for the air of dying mens applause and to be well thought of or to live like Gentlemen or to the contentment of a fleshly mind when you know that you are just ready to pass out of this world into an endless life of Joy or Torment yea certainly of torment if you thus hold on Where all these things will afford you no relief or benefit but the memory of your course will be the fuell of your misery Can that man be wise that damns his soul Can he deserve the name of a sober man that will sell his salvation for so short so small so filthy a pleasure as sin affordeth Is he worthy the name or reputation of a wise man that hath not wit enough to scape eternal fire nor wit enough to forbear laying hands upon himself and doing all this against his own soul What think you is not the case here plain enough Be not offended if I speak yet plainlyer to you for in a case so lamentable how can we be too plain or serious Suppose you knew a Prince or Lord that had an itch upon him which the Physicion offereth speedily and easily to cure but he hath so much pleasure in scratching that he doth not only refuse the cure lest it deprive him of his delight but he will give his Kingdom or Lordship to one that will scratch him but a little while though he be sure to live a beggar after it all his dayes I put it to your selves What name you would give this man or what esteem you would have of him Do you think that any ungodly worldly person is wiser than this man Alas their case is so much worse that there is no comparison They are more foolish then your hearts can now conceive or then I am able fully to express You have now the itch of Pride and Lust and your throats must be pleased in your meats and drinks and you itch after riches and honour and recreations and Christ telleth you by his Word that these are but your sick desires and that the pleasing of them tends to kill you and he offereth you for nothing a safe and certain and speedy cure But you refuse it and will not hearken to him You must be scratcht whatever it cost you You must have your riches and honour and fleshly pleasure as the felicity which you cannot part with though it cost you your salvation Though God be neglected and his favour lost and your souls be lost and the One thing needful cast aside you must have your carnal imaginations gratified And is this your wisdom The Lord bless us from such a kind of wisdom Yet this is not the worst I will shew you one strain more of the distraction of the ungodly world If these men do but see one person of an hundred that are more diligent for Heaven then carth to fall into Melancholy or distress of soul or suppose it were into some loss of reason they presently cry out against Religion and strictness and preciseness and making so much ado to be saved and say it is the way to make men mad Hence comes the proverb of the Papists Spiritus Calvinianus est spiritus melancholicus and of the prophane among our selves that A Puritane is a Protestant frightned out of his wits They dare not study the Scripture so much nor meddle with such high matters as their salvation nor be so godly nor meditate on the world to come lest it should drive them out of their wits O miserable men As if it were possible for you to be more dangerously mad then you are already Unless by growing unto greater wickedness Do you lay out your wit and strength and time in feeding a corruptible body for the grave and spend your lives in running after your own shaddows while your everlasting life is forgotten or neglected Do you sell your Saviour with Judas for a little money and change your part in God and Glory for the brutish pleasures of sin for a season And are you afraid of altering this course of life and turning to God lest it should make you mad Lord what a besotting thing is sin What a cunning cheater is the Devil What a deluded distracted sort of people are the ungodly Will you run from God from Christ from Grace from mercy from Scripture from the godly and from Heaven it self for fear of being mad Why what greater madness can you fear then this What worse is humane nature capable of Unless it be the addition of a further measure of the same and unless it be to hold on in that way and persecute the contrary with such like aggravations of your madness I know not of any worse that you should fear Will you run to Hell to prove your selves to be in your wits Again I say the Lord bless us from such a kind of wit Nay Hell it self hath no such distractedness as yours The difference between the One thing needful and your many things is there better though too late understood Is Loving God the way to be mad and loving the world and fleshly pleasures the way to be wise Is conversing with God in humble prayer and believing his love and loving him and delighting in him and speaking of his name and word and works unto his praise and hoping to live with him for ever I say is this which is the work of a Believer a liker course to make men mad then serving the Devil and drudging in the world and living under the curse of God and in continual danger of damnation What men are they that dare entertain such horrid and unreasonable suggestions I confess we are not unacquainted with the sadness and melancholy that some persons have contracted by Religious employments and perhaps one of a thousand may lose their wits But I must tell you all these folowing points that will shew you that Religion is not to be blamed for it nor avoided 1. It is ordinarily persons of the weaker sex or of very weak brains and very strong passions that are naturally inclined to it and are not able to bear any long and serious thoughts about matters of that moment which are apt to make the deepest impressions But persons that naturally are of sound and calme dispositions are seldom troubled with any such affects 2. It is usually the case of persons that mistake the nature of Religion though not in the main yet in some particulars of great concernment That study not sufficiently the Love of God declared to us in our Redeemer but feed their griefs and troubles only by
theirs Many a time hath he offered this mercy to them and many a time hath he urged them to accept â—…t He hath set before them life and death and given them their choice and directed and perswaded them to choose aright Impossibility of attainment is not their hinderance for Mercy beâ—eecheth and importuneth them to accept it and grace and salvation are brought unto their hands O wonderful What then â—s left to take off a reasonable creature from minding and preferring its own everlasting great concernments Is it because they have done their work already and having made sure of heaven have time to turn themselves to other matters Alas no the most are far from any such assurance and have done but little to procure it If they were to die this hour they know not where their souls shall be the next And if death even now should lay its terrible hands upon them they have no other comfort then to yield â—â—to necessity and leave their souls by a short security to 〈…〉 passage of their unavoidable change Unless they are comâ—… by such presumptuous self-deceit which the next moment after death will vanish and never return unto them more Job 8. 13 14. 11. 20. 27. 8. Prov. 11. 7. This is the case of the miserable world but they have not hearts to 〈…〉 themselves nor can we make them willing to be delivered â—…use we cannot make them know their case If a man fall in 〈…〉 pit we need not spend all the day to perswade him that he is there and to be willing to be helpt out of it But with these fleshlyâ—â—iserable souls the time that should be spent by themselves and us for their recovery must be spent to make them believe that they are lost and when all is done we leave them lost and have lost our labour because we cannot prevail with them to believe it Drown they will and perish everlastingly because the time that should be spent in saving them must be spent in making them know that they are sinking and after all they will not believe it and therefore will not â—ay hold on the hand that is stretched forth to pull them out The Narrative of the savage people of Soldania doth notably represent their state Those people live naked and feed upon the carrion-like carkasses of beasts and hang the stinking guts about their â—ecks for ornamentâ— and wear hats made of the dung and carve their skins and will not change these loathsom customs Some of them being drawn into our Ships were carried away for England when they came to Landon and saw our stately buildings and cloathing and provisions they were observed to sigh much which was thought to have been in compassion of their miserable Countrey which so much differed from ours When they had stayed long among us and got so much acquaintance with our civility and order and all that belongs to the life of man as that they were thought fit to communicate it to their Countrey-men the next Voyage they were brought back and set on shoare in their own Countrey to draw some of the rest to come into the Ships and see and enjoy what they had done who had purposely been used as might most content them But as soon as they were landed they lept for joy and cryed Soldania and cast away their cloathes and came again in the sight of our Ships with dung on their heads and guts hanging about their necks triumphing in their sordid nakedness Just so do worldly sensual men in the matters of salvation If against their wills they are carryed into cleaner wayes and company and the beauty of holiness and the joyes of heaven are opened to them they are aweary of it aâ— the while and when we expect they should delight themselves in the felicity that is opened to them and draw their old acquaintance to it and be utterly ashamed of their former base and sinful state they are gone when the next temptation comes and return with the dog unto their vomit and with the washed Swine to wallow in the mire 2 Pet. 2. 21 22. and glory in their filth and shame and only mind their earthly things Phil. 3. 18. Use 3. BY this time you may see your selves that the disease of sinners is in their own hearts and it is that that must be healed if they will be saved But what should we do to get into those hearts to search your sores and work the cure I come now to the principal part of my message to you but will you indeed entertain it if it prove it self to be from God How the case standeth with mankind you have heard in my Text from Christ himself How One thing is needful and how the busie-idle world is diverted from this One thing by many needless troublesom things to their own destruction If hence I warn you of your danger and tell you of your duty and exhort you to take another course then you have done I hope you will confess I do but what is needfull both for you and me and what you have no reason to contradict Come then for the Lords sake and let us treat practically and successfully about so great a business and make something of it before we leave it and end not till we amend what we find amiss What course then will you take for the time to come Will you go on to trouble your selves about Many things and neglect the One thing needful as you have done Dare you harbour such a purpose Or dare you stifle those thoughts and motions that would tend to better purposes Or may I not hope that the Light hath shamed your sleepiness and works of darkness and that you are grieved at the heart for the sinful negligence of heart and life and resolved now to be new men For Gods sake Resolve Sirs What will you do Waver not but Resolve It s more then a thousand lives that lyeth on your Resolution I come to you this day as the Minister of the great Pastor of the flock that spake these words not only to acquaint you if you know not or to remember you if you know that One thing is needful but also with authority to command you in his name to Value it to Love it to Choose it to seek it and labour for it as the One thing needful What say you will you or will you not This unspeakable mercy I offer you from the Lord He is willing to put up at your hands all that is past and to lay all your sins on the score of Christ and freely to forgive you through the vertue of his blood if you will now at last bethink you better and come to Christ and live as men that know what they have to do If you will but see your former folly and heartily bewail it and set your hearts on the One thing needful he will encourage you and help you and bid you welcome and number you with his
Are you yet resolved to seek this One thing with the chiefest of your desires and care and labour or are you not Dare any one of you say that you have not heard that which should resolve a sober considerate man I think you dare not But if you dare I am sure you shall never be able to make it good and justifie your words to God or to your Consciences at last or to any wise impartial person Now take your choice whether you will now be SAINTS and for ever like ANGELS or now be like BRUTES and for ever like DEVILS For one of these must be your case as sure as you have heard these words FINIS A SAINT OR A BRUTE The Second Part. Clearly Proving by Reason as well as Scripture 1. In general that Holiness is Best and Necessary to our felicity 2. Particularly that it is Best 1. For Societies 2. For individual persons And more distinctly 1. That it is the only way of Safety 2. Of Honesty 3. The most Gainful way 4. The most Honourable 5. The most Pleasant And therefore to be chosen by all that will obey true Reason and be Happy LONDON Printed Anne Dom. 1662. A Saint or a Brute The Second Part. CHAP. 1. Holiness and its fruits are the Best part Wherein the Happiness of Saints confisteth Luke 10. 42. But One thing is Needful and Mary hath chosen the good part which shall not be taken away from her THough I have before taken up this latter part of the Text by way of Motive in the Conclusion of the former Part of this Treatise I am very loth that a subject of so great importance should be so lightly passed over And therefore by Gods assistance I shall attempt a fuller handling of it The Necessity of Holiness I have spoken of already It is the Goodness of it that I am next to speak of And before I enter upon it let me intreat thee Reader whoever thou art that openest this Book to remember that I am writing and thou art reading of the greatest and highest matters in the world and therefore come not to it with common affections and read not this as thou wouldst do a History or a Rheroricall Oration to find delight for a curious mind but confessing thy self a Scholar to Christ with reverence take thy Lâ—… from him as that which thou camest into the world to Lâ—… which all thy comforts thy hopes thy safety and thy evâ—… happiness depend upon And here in the entrance I will freely tell you what more me to fall upon this subject and be so earnest with you in thâ—â— point One thing is the observation of the carelesness and wilfulness of the most that live in the neglect of Holiness and Everlasting Life for all that can be said to perswade them to a wiser course While they all profess themselves to be Christians and to take the Scripture for the Word of God and confess this Word in particular to be true that it is Heaven and Holiness that are the most Necessary and most to be desired and sought after yet will they not be moved to Live according to this Profession nor to Love that Most which they confess to be the Best nor to seek that first which they confess to be most Needful They have the case here decided by the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ himself and as plainly and fully and peremptorily decided â—â— they could wish If they were Infidels and understood but the Law of Nature even Reason might tell them that there is no doubt of it but that Eternal Life is more to be sought after then transitory things And yet they live as if the case had never been decided by Christ or by reason or as if they had never heard of any Life but this Look into most Towns and see whether there be not more at Martha's work and worse then at Mary's Look into most families and see whether they be not 〈…〉 Martha troubling themselves with many things when the 〈…〉 part is almost cast aside Even in the Families of Lords Kâ—… and Gentlemen that are doubly obliged to God and prâ—… be wiser then the ignorant Vulgar the matters of their 〈…〉 are turned out of doors or thrust into a corner and the 〈◊〉 of their bodies do take up the day How many Martha's â—â— one Mary shall we find among both Rich and Poor Yea that is not the worst but they that are so blind and wicked as to choose the worser part themselves would have all about them do so too And as Martha grudged at Mary's practice and conplaineth to Christ against her so these repine at the choice of the Godly and think them but melancholy crack-brâ—ind people that make more ado for their salvation then they need And thâ—â— are not content to keep such ungodly thoughts in their breaâ—… to their Own damnation but they must be the Devils mouth to spit reproach in the face of Holiness and consequently in the face of Christ as if they bid defiance to the Lord and would make it their employment to jeere and scorn mens souls from Heaven If one in a family do with Mary choose the better part though without any neglect of their calling in the world the rest make a wonder of them and some deride them and some hate and vilifie and threaten them and few will imitate them and who more forward to distaste and despise them then the Masters of the Families that are bound to teach and lead them in that way so that a poor soul even in a Land and Age that countenanceth Holiness more then almost any other in the world can scarcely sit at the feet of Christ and Learn his word and seek his Kingdom and Righteousness first but they are gazed at and censured and derided as if they did some very foolish needless yea or wicked thing As if it were the only folly for a man to follow Jesus Christ and obey his God and save his soul and do that work with greatest diligence for which he is a man for which he hath his Life and Time and Mercies and which if he neglect he is lost for ever The Lord have Mercy upon the poor deluded world whence comes this general dampe and dottage upon the understandings and the hearts of men of Great men of Learned men of men that are accounted wise in the world It is Good and Evil that constituteth all that wonderful difference that is between the Reasonable creatures both here and hereafter The Good of Holiness and the evil of sin do make the difference between the Godly and the wicked the Good of Everlasting Happiness and the Evil of Everlasting Misery doth make the difference between the Glorified and the Damned Goodness in General is so naturally the object of mans will that Evil as Evil cannot be desired and Good as Good cannot be hated What then is the matter that few attain the greatest good and few will scape the
is the highest and best condition on earth He is the best and happyest man that is likest to the glorified Saints and Angels And judge your selves whether a dejected or a rejoycing Christian be liker to these inhabitants of Heaven Object But you will say by that rule we should not mourn at all for they do not Whereas God delighteth in the contrite soul Christ blesseth mourners and weepers Answ 1. Your resemblance of the Saints in Heaven must be propertionable in all the parts You must labour first to be as like them as you can in Holiness and then in Joy If you could be as far from sin as they you need not mourn at all But because you cannot you must have moderate regular sorrows and humiliation while you have sin But yet withall you must endeavour to imitate the heavenly Joyes according to the measure of your Grace received 2. And it is such a regular contrition consisting in humble thoughts of our selves and tending to restore us from our falls and sorrows unto our integrity and joy which God delighteth in And it is such mourners as these and such as suffer for righteousness sake from men that Christ pronounceth blessed But the inordinate troubles of the soul that exclude a holy delight in God though he pardon yet he never doth encourage 6. Consider also that a great part of your Religion yea and the most high and excellent part doth consist in the causes form and effects of this holy joy and chearfulness 1. As to the causes of it they are such as in themselves are requisite to the very being of the new creature Faith and Love which are the Head and Heart of sanctifying grace are the causes of our spiritual joy An unwilling heavy forced obedience may proceed from meeâ— Fears and this will not prove an upright heart But when once we Believe Everlasting Glory and Love Christ as our Saviour and the Father as our Father and felicity and Love a holy frame of heart and life as the image of God and that which pleaseth him then our obedience will be chearful and delightful unless accidentally we trouble our selves by our own mistakes If you can truly make God and his will and service your Delight you may be sure you Love him and are beloved by him as being past the state of slavish fear 2. And I have shewed you that Joy in the Holy-Ghost is it self one part of that grace in which Gods Kingdom doth consist Though not such a part as a Christian cannot possibly be without yet such as is exceeding suitable to his state and necessary to his more happy being 3. And without this holy Delight and Joy you will deny God a principal part of his service How can you be thankful for the great mercies of your Justification Sanctification Adoption and all the special graces you have received or for your hopes of Heaven it self as long as you are still doubting whether any of these mercies are yours or not and almost ready to say that you never received them Nay you will be less thankful for your health and life and food and wealth and all common mercies as doubting leâ—t they will prove but aggravations of your sin and misery And for the great and excellent work of Praise which should be your daily sacrifice but specially the work of each Lords day how unfit is a doubting drooping distressed soul for the performance of it You stiffle holy Love within you and stop your mouthes when they should be speaking and singing the praises of the Lord and disable your selves from the most high and sweet and acceptable part of all Gods service by your unwarrantable doubts and self-vexations And when all these are laid aside how poor and lean a service is it that is left you to perform to him Even a few tears and complaints and prayers which I know God will mercifully accept because even in your desires after him there is Love but yet it is far short of the service which you might perform Nay your Heavenly-mindedness will be much supprest as long as you are sadly questioning whether ever you shall come thither and it will be yours or not 7. Are you not ashamed to see the servants of the Devil and the world so jocund and your selves so sad that serve the Lord Will you go mourning so inordinately to Heaven when others go so merrily to Hell Will you credit Satan and Sin so much as to perswade men by your practice that sin affordeth more pleasure and content then Holiness 8. You could live merrily your selves before your Conversion while you served sin And will you walk so dejectedly now you have repented of it As if you had changed for the worse or would make men think so I know you would not for all the world be what you were before your change Why then do you live as if you were more miserable then before 9. You would be loth so long to resist the sanctifying work of the Spirit And why should you not be loth to resist its comforting work It is the same Holy Ghost that you resist in both Nay you dare not so open your mouthes for wickedness and plead against Sanctification it self as you open them on the behalf of your sinful doubtings and plead for your immoderate dejections If you should how vile would you appear 10. Lastly consider that God will lay sufferings enow upon you for your sins and suffer wicked men to lay enow on you for well doing and you need not lay more upon your selves You have need to use all means for strength to bear the burdens that you must undergo and it is the joy of the Lord and the hopes of Glory that are your strength And will you cast away the only supports of your soul and sink when the day of suffering comes How will you bear poverty or reproach or injuries how will you meet approaching death if you feed your doubts of your salvation and of the Love of God in Christ which must corroborate you O weaken not your souls that are too weak already Weaken not your souls that have so much to do and suffer and that of so great necessity and importance While you complain of your weakness encrease it not by unbelieving uncomfortable complaints Gratifie not the Devil and wicked malicious men so far as to inflict on your selves a greater calamity then all their malice and power could inflict It is a madness in them that will please the Devil to the displeasing of God though the pleasing of their own flesh be it that moveth them to it But for a man to please the Devil and displease God even when he displeaseth his own flesh by it also and bringeth nothing but sorrow to himself by it this is in some respects more unreasonable then madness it self Many cast away their souls for Riches and Honours and carnal accommodations but who would do it for poverty sickness or disgrace So
every word of thy mouth and every penny of thy wealth in the way that he requireth it is it any more then is his due Should not he have all that is Lord of all Quest 2. Is it not the first and great Commandment Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and might And do not heathens confess this by the light of nature And hath not thy tongue confest it many a time And doth not thy conscience yet bear witness that it is thy duty And is it possible thou shouldst thus Love him with all thy heart and soul and might and yet not seek and serve him with all thy heart and soul and might Or can the most sanctified person do any more if he were perfect Quest 3. Dost thou not confess that we are all sinners And that the best is still too bad And that he that loveth and serveth God most doth yet come exceeding short of his duty And yet wouldst thou have such men come shorter and darest thou perswade them to do less Must not the best confess their daily failings and beg pardon of them from the Lord and be beholden to the blood of Christ and lament their imperfections And yet wouldst thou have them be such odious hypocrites as to think they serve God too much already while they confess that they come so short Shall they confess their failings and reproach those that endeavour to avoid the like Shall the same tongue say Lord be merciful to me a sinner and Lord I am good enough already What need there so much ado to please and serve thee any better What would you think of such a man Quest 4. Is it not an unquestionable duty to grow in grace and to press towards perfection as men that have not yet attained it 2 Pet. 3. 18. Phil. 3. 12 13 14. And must Paul and Peter and the holyest on earth still seek to grow and labour to be more holy and shall such a one as thou say What need I be any more holy that art utterly unsanctified Quest 5. Is it not one of the two grand Principles of faith and all Religion without which no man can please God Heb. 11. 6. Whoever cometh to God must believe first that God is that there is a God most powerful wise and good secondly that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him yea this is one of natures principles It is the Diligent seekers of God that he will reward And yet dare a fleshly negligent sinner reproach the diligent seeking of God and take it for a needless thing and say What needs all this ado Are not these the Atheists seconds even next to them that deny that there is any God or that blasphemâ— him And indeed if he be not worthy of all the Love and service that thou canst give him he is not the true God! Consider therefore the tendency of thy words and tremble Quest 6. Doth not that wretch set up the flesh and the world aboâ—â— the Lord that thinks not most of his thoughts and cares and words and time and labour for the world to be too much ado and yet thinks less for God and heaven to be too much And dost thou think in thy conscience that the flesh is better worthy of thy Love and care and labour then the Lord or that earth will prove a better reward to thee then Heaven Who thinkest thou will have the better bargain in the end The fool that laid up riches for himself and was not rich to God and shall lose all at once that he so much valued and so carefully sought Luke 12. 20 21. or he that laid up his treasure in Heaven and there set his heart and sought for the never fading Crown Matth. 6. 20 21 33. and counted all as loss and dung for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ Phil. 3. 8. Do you think that there is any thing more worth your care and time and labour or can you more profitably lay it out Quest 7. Have you not immortal souls to save or lose And are not your bodies for their service and to be used and ruled by them And should not your souls then have more of your care and diligence then corruptible flesh that must turn to dirt Quest 8. Dare any one of you say that you are wiser then the All-knowing God Is not thy wisdom less to his then a glow-worms light is to the Sun And hath not God most plainly and frequently in his Word commanded thee a holy life Yea every part and parcell of it is nothing else but the obeying of that Word For if it be not prescribed by the Lord it is not Holiness nor that which I am pleading for And when the living God hath told the world his mind and will shall a sinful man stand up and say I am wiser then my Maker I know a better way then this What need there all this stir for Heaven What dost thou less then thus blaspheme and set up thy folly above the wisdom of the Lord when thou condemnest or reproachest the holiness which he commandeth Quest 9. Dare you say that God is not only so unwise but so unrighteous and tyranical as to give the world unnecessary Laws and set them upon a needless work What King so tyranical as would require his subjects on pain of death to go pick straws against the wind What Master or Parent so foolishly cruel as to command their servants or children to weary themselves with hunting butter-flies and following their own shadows And darest thou impute such foolish tyrannie to the God of heaven as if he had made a world and set them upon a needless work and commanded them to tire themselves in vain Quest 10. Can a man be too diligent about that work which he was made for and is daily preserved and maintained for and for which he hath all the mercies of his life Thou hadst never come into the world but on this business even to serve and please God and prepare for everlasting happiness And are you afraid of doing this too diligently Why is it thinkest thou that God sustaineth thee Why dyedst thou not many years ago but only that thou mightest have time to seek and serve him Was it only that thou mightest eat and drink and sleep and go up and down and fill up a room among the living Why beasts and fools and mad-men do all this as well as thou Why hast thou thy Reason and understanding but to know and serve the Lord Is it only to know how to shift a little for the commodities of the world Or is it not to know the way to life eternal Look round about thee on all the creatures and on all the mercies which thou dost possess every deliverance and priviledge and accommodation every bit of bread thou eatest and every hour of thy precious time are all given thee for this One thing needful And yet wilt thou
judgement more regardable then a hundred yea many hundred 2. Nay it is no One at all Those that you say turn off arâ— only such as tryed an Opinionative Religiousness and some of the Outward duties of Christianity but they never tryed the power of a living rooted faith nor the predominant Love of God in the soul nor a Living Hope of the Heavenly Glory nor the sweetness of a Heavenly life nor the mortification of the fleshly inteâ—â—â—â— and true self-denyal These are the vital parts of Christianâ—â—â— which these few Apostates never tryed though some of them have had some acquired counterfeits of them and some good gifts of common grace and think that none had more then they had Sinner I beseech thee for the Lords sake deal faithfully with thy poor soul when all lies at the stake Wilt thou take the judgement of a swaggering Gallant or a scoffing worldly or ungodly Sot that none of them ever truly tried a state of Holiness And wilt thou refuse the judgement of God and of all his servants that have tryed it Go to any Godly man and ask him which of these wayes he hath found by experience to be best and hear what he will say to thee He will be ashamed to hear thee make a Question of it He will tell thee Alas friend I was once deceived by sin and deceived with the pleasures of my flesh and the glittering glory and riches of this world as you are now I once was a stranger to the life of faith and the Hopes of Heaven and the Holiness of the Saints But it was by the meer delusion of the Devil and it was the fruit of the blindness and deadness of my heart I knew not what I did nor where I stood nor what I chose nor what I set light by I never well considered of the matter but carelesly followed the sway of my fleshly inclination and desires But now I seee I was the Devils slave and my Pleasures were my fetters and my own corrupt affections were my bondage and I now find that I did but delude my soul I got nothing by all that the world did for me but provision for my after-sorrows I had been now in Torments if I had but dyed in that condition I would not be again in the case that I was in for all this world or a thousand such worlds That life that once I thought the best hath cost me dear even the breaking of my heart and a thousand thousand fold dearer would have cost me if the dearest blood and recovering Grace of my dearest Lord had had not prevented it O had I not been unspeakably beholden to the Mercy of the Lord even to that Mercy which I then made light of I had been undone for ever I had been laid under Everlasting desperation before this Now I find that there is no life so sweet as that which I then was so loth to choose Now it is my only grief that I was holy no sooner and can be no more Holy then I am O that I had more of that quickning comforting saving Grace O that I were further from my former sinful fleshly state O that I could get nearer God though I parted with all the prosperity of this world I now find what I lost by my continuing in sin so long but then I knew it not O friend as you love your soul take warning by me and make use of my experience and give up your self to God betimes This or to this purpose would the answer of an experienced person be if you should ask him Which is the better way But if you say that thus we would be our selves the Judges and bring the matter into our own hands I answer you 1. It is true we would be our selves your Helpers and do the best we could for your salvation And if you will neither help your selves nor give us leave to help you take what you get by it we have done our part But 2. I will not yet so part with you I will further make you this reasonable offer I demand of thee whoever thou art that Readest these words Whether thou know of any man on earth that thou thinkest to be a wiser man then thy self If not thou art so like the Devil in Pride that no wonder if thou be near him in malignity and misery If thou do know of any wiser then thy self go with me or with some faithful Minister to that man and ask him Whether a diligent holy life be not much Better then any other life on earth and if he do not say as I say here and as Christ saith in my Text that the godly choose the better part or else if I prove him not a very sot before thy face I will give thee leave to brand my understanding in thy esteem with the notes of inâ—amy and contempt Yea more then so I will allow thee to go to one that differeth from me in the way of his Religion Ask an Anabaptist if thou think him more impartial whether A Holy and Heavenly heart and life be not the best and try whether he will not say as I do Ask those that you call Episcopal or Presbyterian or Independents or Separatists Ask an Arminian or one of the contrary mind Yea ask a Papist and see whether he will not say as I do It is true they are every one of them of minds somewhat different about some points in the order and manner of their seeking God But all of them that are but sober men will confess as with One mouth that God should be loved above all and sought and served above all and that all should live a Holy Diligent Heavenly life 2. But yet if all this will not satisfie you I will come yet lower Who is it that you would have to be Judge or Witness in thâ—… case Is it thy malignant or worldly or drunken and ungodly friend I am contented that the case be referred even to him and to as many of them as thou wilt upon condition that he will but first Try the way that he is to judge of Let him but make an unfeigned tryal of a life of Holy Faith and Love and Obedience and Self-denyal as long as I have done and we will receive his Testimony Nay more let him thus try a life of Holiness inwardly and outwardly but one year yea or but one moneth or day or hour and we will take his Testimony But to be judged by a man in a matter of salvation that speaks of what he never knew nor tryed one hour but speaks against he knows not what this is a motion too bad to be made to a very Bedlam 6. If yet you are not resolved which is the Better part and way to whom do you desire to referr it Shall Heathens Jews and Infidels be Judges Why if they be they will give the cause against you Jews and most of the Heathen world do profess to believe a
eyes He discerneth not the Lords body He only quieteth and deludeth his conscience with the outward form He hath not faith to feed on Christ But to a lively faith what sweetâ— ness doth such a Feast afford We have here Communion with the blessed Trinity in thâ—… three parts of this Eucharistical Sacrament As the Father 〈…〉 both our Creator and the offended Majesty and yet he hath 〈…〉 his Son to be our Redeemer so in the first part which 〈…〉 the CONSECRATION we present to our Creator the creatures of Bread and Wine acknowledging that from him we receive them and all and we desire that upon our Dedication by his Acceptance they may be made Sacramentally and Representatively the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ In the second part of the Eucharist which is the COMMEMORATION of the sacrifice offered on the Cross we break the bread and pour forth the wine to Represent the breaking of Christs Body and shedding of his Blood for the sin of man and we beseech the Father to be Reconciled to us on his Sons account and to accept us in his Beloved and to accept all our sacrifices through him So that as Christ now in Heaven is Representing his sacrifice to the Father which he once offered on the Cross for sin so must the Minister of Christ Represent and plead to the Father the same sacrifice by way of Commemoration and such Intercession as belongeth to his Office The third part of the Eucharist is the OFFER and PARTICIPATION in which the Minister Representing Christ doth by Commission deliver his Bedy and Blood to the penitent hungry believing soul and with Christ is delivered a sealed â—â—â—don of all sin and a sealed gift of life Eternal All which are received by the true Believer An unbeliever knoweth not what transactions there are between the Lord and a holy soul in this Ordinance where the appearances are so small A bit of bread and a sup of wine are indeed small matters But so is not this Communion with God the Father Son and Holy Ghost What a comfort is it that the offended Majesty will accept a sacrifice at our hands and enter a treaty of Peace with the offendours Yea that he will provide the sacrifice himself and the preciousest in the whole world that he will signifie this his acceptance of the sacrifice and how he is pleased in his well-beloved Son and that he accepteth his Sons Intercession in the Heavens and his Ministers intercession and his Churches prayers on earth through Christ Seeing Christ 〈…〉 be glorified with his Father and not continue visible among 〈…〉 what could we desire more from him then the three fold Reâ—â—â—sentative which he hath left behind him to supply the room â—â— his Bodily presence Even the Representation of himself by 〈…〉 by his Ministers and by the Holy Ghost which is 〈…〉 substitute within for the efficacy of all O what unspeakable mysteries and treasures of mercy are here-presented to us in a Sacrament Here we have Communion with a Reconciled God and are brought into his presence by the great Reconciler Here we have Communion with our blessed Redeemer as Crucified and Glorified and offered to us as our quickning preserving strengthening Head Here we have Communion with the Holy Ghost applying to our souls the benefits of Redemption drawing us to the Son and communicating light and life and strength from him unto us increasing and actuating his graces in us Here we have Communion with the Body of Christ his sanctified people the heris of life When the Minister of Christ by his Commission Representeth a Crucified Christ to our eyes by the Bread and Wine appointed to this use we see Christ Crucified as it were before us and our Faith layeth hold on him and we perceive the Truth of the Remedy and build our souls upon this Rock When the same Minister by Christs Commission doth offer us his Body and Blood and Benefits it is as firm and valid to us as if the mouth of Christ himself had offered them And when our souls Receive him by that Faith which the Holy Ghost exciteth in us the participation is as true as that of our bodies receiving the Bread and Wine which represent him O do but ask a drooping soul that mourns under the fears of Gods displeasure how he would value a voice from Heaven to tell him that all his sins are pardoned and that he is dear to God and judge by his answer what is contained and offered in a Sacrament Ask him how he would take it if Christ should speak those words himself to him which he hath given his Minister Commission in his name to speak Take eat this is my Body which is broken for you It is the same Christ the same pardon and salvation that is offered us by the Messengers of Christ and which he personally offered himself to his Disciples When you must all appear at the Barr of God O what would you not give for a sealed pardon which in a Sacrament is given freely now to the believing soul Judge now by this whether it be a Joyous Ordinance When the poorest Christian this day receiveth that which the greatest Prince that is ungodly would then give all the world for it he had it For want of that pardon Christian which thou must now receive many thousands will tremble at the barâ— of God and be overwhelmed with his wrath for ever Ask a soul that groaneth under the languishings of his grace and the burden of any strong corruption how he would value the mortifying and quickning grace of the Holy Ghost that would break his bonds and give him light and life and strength and by his answer judge of the value of a Sacrament We have here the greatest mercies in the world brought down to us in sensible Representations that they might be very neer us and the means might be suited to the frailty and infirmity of our present state If the sealed message of Gods Reconciliation with us and a sealed pardon of all our sins and a sealed grant of Everlasting life be not more pleasant and desirable to your thoughts then all that earth and flesh can yield you it is because your are alive to sin and dead to God and want that spiritual sence and appetite by which you might be competent judges If God if Christ if grace if the foretasts of glory can afford no pleasure to the soul then Heaven it self would not be pleasant But if these are sweet the Sacrament is sweet that doth convey them Well poor stubborn carnal sinners you have been invited to this feast as well as others we are sent to call you and even compel you to come in though upon the terms and in the way of Christ but you have no great list but somewhat else doth please you better And will it prove better indeed to you at the end Well take your own choice If an Alehouse be better then the Table of the
Sing unto the Lord sing Psalms unto him talk of all his wonderous works Glory ye in his holy name let the heart of them rejoyce that seek the Lord Psal 105. 1 2 3. The Saints shall shout aloud for joy Psal 132. 9 16. Be glad in the Lord O ye righteous and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart Psal 32. 11. Behold my servants shall rejoyce but ye shall be ashamed Behold my servants shall sing for joy of heart but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart and shall houle for vexation of spirit Isa 65. 13 14. Abundance such passages tell you what manner of persons it is that God delighteth in and what he would have you be and doe These I have recited to shame the godly out of their undecent troubles and dejectedness as you would shew a child his face in a glass when he cryeth that he may see how he deformeth it The very Kingdom of God consisteth in righteousness and Peace and joy in the Holy Ghost If you would live as is most pleasixg unto God and as beseemeth those that are indeed believers let the joy of believers be as far as is possible your ordinary frame And if by sin you wound your souls and bring smart upon your selves dwell not in that wounded smarting state but go to your Physicions and beg of God that he will restore to you the joy of his salvation and make you to hear the voice of joy and gladness that your broken heart and bones may rejoyce Psa 51. 8 12. And take notice throughout all the Scripture whether you find the servants of God so much complaining of their want of assurance and of their frequent doubtings of their own sincerity and his love I think you will find this a very rare thing in the ancient Saints They were sensible of sin as well as we and they were as sensible of Gods afflicting hand and oft as Job David Hezekiah c. complained under it perhaps with some excess and too much questioning Gods favour to them as if he had forsaken them But besides and without any such affliction to live in ordinary trouble of mind through the doubting of their sincerity and of Gods special love and to be exercised in the complaining and disconsolate way as now abundance of Christians are this I find little of the Scripture Saints The reason was not because they had more holiness and less sin than many that now are thus cast down For the Gospel time excelleth theirs in degrees of grace and I think the greater care that Christians have of their hearts and of inward rectitude and communion with God and their fuller apprehensions of the life to come and so of their greatest hopes and dangers is one great cause But yet there are worse concurring causes The Love of God and his readiness to shew mercy should not be more questioned now when it is so abundantly revealed by Christ then it was in times of darker revelation The servants of God did formerly conceive that nothing but sin could make man miserable and therefore when they had sinned they repented and instead of continuing doubts and fears they bent their resolutions against their sins and having cast away their gross and wilful sins and continuing the conflict against their unavoidable infirmities which they hated they knew that the door of mercy was still open to them and that if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father who is the propitiation The time that is now spent in doubting and complaining and asking How shall I know that I sincerely repent was then spent in Repenting and reforming and using the means that God hath appointed for the conquering of sin and then trusting to his grace and Covenant in the blood of Christ for pardon And it would be better with us if we did thus Judge now by all these Scriptures and by the course of former Saints how God would have you behave your selves Do you not read an hundred times of their joy and thanks and praising God and calling upon others to praise him for once that they perplexedly question their sincerity But perhaps youâ—le say that your strength is so weak and your sins and enemies so strong and all your duty so imperfect and unworthy that having such continual cause of trouble you cannot choose but walk in heaviness and in fears I answer you 1. But why do you not tell what you have as well as what you want Have you not greater cause to say My sins being mortified at the root and all forgiven and my soul renewed and reconciled unto God and I being made an heir of Heaven how can I choose but live in joy 2. Are you heartily willing to forsake your sins and overcome the things of which you so complain or are you not If you are not why do you complain of them and why will you not consent to let them go and use Gods means to overcome them If you are willing then they are but your pardoned infirmities For that 's the difference between infirmities and reigning sins Whatsoever sin consisteth with a greater Habitual willingness to avoid that and all other sin then to keep them is but an Infirmity for it stands with present saving grace and is always Habitually or virtually repented of and actually when grace by knowledge and consideration hath opportunity and advantage to produce the act 3. And when once you are truly ingraffed into Christ he is your worthiness and your righteousness and the treasury of your souls and what you want in your own possession you have in his hands and as what you have is but his gift so what you want he is able and ready to supply Look not too much to your selves as if your safety and happiness were principally in your own hand God hath given us eternal life and this life is in his son He that hath the son hath life 1 Joh. 5. 10 11. It is through him that we can do all things so far as he strenghteneth us and without him we can do nothing Make use of him therefore as the Lord of life and joyfully acknowledge all that you receive and stand not dejectedly lamenting that you need him If you would have the waters of life goe to the fountain and do not sit down and fruitlesly vex your selves with complaining of your wants instead of seeking for supplyes Is there not an all sufficient Physicion of souls at hand Doth he not freely offer you his help what though you are not suddenly cured wounds may be caused in an hour but they use not to be cured in an houre Stay his time and use his remedies and cheerfully trust him and you shall find the cure successfully go on though it will not be finished till death 5. Consider also that it must needs be the best and most desirable life which is likest to our life in Heaven And therefore as Heaven is a state of Joy so Joy
fancie that it is an excellent thing to be Rich and Renowned and to rule over others or to have plenty of all accommodations for your flesh and then because God satisfieth not these carnal fancies you think he neglecteth you oâ— deals hardly with you As if every person in the Town should murmur because they are not Bâ—yliffs or Justices when if they had the wit to know it they are but kept from a double encumberance and from a burden which perhaps would break their backs When the people are thus befooled by the flesh into brutish conceits of the nature of felicity and into an over-valuing of these worldly things they are then always eitheir tickled by deluding pleasures or troubled for the crossing of their carnal wills so that they grow out of relish and liking with the true and durable delights Take heed therefore of this carnality Dir. 4. Study the greatness of the mercy which you have received You abound with mercies and yet undervalue them and over look them and sweeten not your souls with the serious observation and remembrance of them you study principally your afflictions and your wants And thus when you live in a land that floweth with milke and honey you will not feed on the prepared feast but keep still the gall and wormwood in your mouths and how then should you be acquainted with the pleasures of a holy life Yea you must use to look more to the spiritual part of all your mercies and see the love of God that appeareth in them and taste the blood of Christ in them and lose not the kernel and take not up with the common carnal part which every wicked man can value and enjoy Consider in all your mercies what there is in them for the benefit of your souls much rather then how they accommodate your flesh Could you do thus you would find the benefit of afflictions and that the denyal of what you have accounted your necessary mercies is not the smallest of your mercies And thus judging truly by the spirit and not by the flesh there is no condition except that of sin in which you might not find cause of joy Dir. 5. Take heed of sinning Keep still upon your watch against temptation sin is the cause of all your sufferings when it promiseth you delight it is preparing for your sorrow when it flattereth you into presumption it is preparing for despair when it promiseth you secresie and security it prepareth for your shame and be sure your sin will find you out Numb 32. 23. If therefore you have offended delay not your Repentance and spare not the flesh in your return but unless the honour of God forbid it take shame to your selves by free confession and make the fullest reparation of the injury that you can to God and man If you would thus get out the thorn that vexeth you the ways of God would be more pleasant Dir. 6. Daily live in the exercise of faith upon the everlasting pleasures Dwell as at the gates of Heaven as men that are waiting every hour when they are called in and when death will draw aside the vaile and shew them the blessed face of God And take heed that the enmity of interposing Death prevail not against the Joys of faith But look to Christ that hath conquered it and will conquer it for you And if thus you could live as strangers here and as the Citizens of Heaven that are ready to step into the immortal pleasures you would then taste the Pleasures of a holy life in the first fruits and foretasts thereof It is your Treasure that must Delight you As your Heart must be there so your pleasure must be derived thence Strangers to Heaven will be strangers to the Believers Joys As the pleasure of the Carnal world consisteth in the sense of what they have in hand so the pleasure of Believers consisteth in the fore-apprehensions of what they shall enjoy with God for ever If therefore you exercise not those apprehensions if you look not frequently seriously and believingly into the world that you must live in for ever how can the comforts of that world illustrate and refresh you in this present world The Light and Heat which is the Beauty and Life of this lower world proceedeth not from any thing in this world but from the Sun which is so far above us and sends down hither its quickning influence and rays They are not the genuine comforts of Christianity which are not fetcht from the world above Dir. 7. If you would have the experience of the Pleasures of a life of Faith and Holiness neither desire nor cherish any fears or sorrows but such as as are subservient to Faith and Hope and Love and preparatory to Thankfulness and Joy Think not Religion consisteth in any other kind of sorrows Nay if any other should assault you be so far from taking them for your duty or religion as to resist them and lament them as your sin That is true and saving Humiliation 1. which makes you vile in your own eyes and loath your selves for sin 2. And maketh you more desirous to be delivered and cleansed from your sin than to live in it how sweet or gainful soever it may seem and 3. which maketh you set more by a Saviour to deliver you than by all the pleasures riches and honours of the world What ever want of Grief or tears you find if you have these signs your Repentance and humiliation is sincere Do not therefore refuse your Peace because you have not greater sorrows nor disturb your souls by strugling for excessive sorrow Take not part with them but do your best to cast them out if they are such as would destroy your Love and Joy and drive you from Christ and hinder your Thansgivings Know that the Life of your Religion consisteth in the Holy Love of God and of his Image and servants and holy ways Love is your duty and your felicity and reward Therefore let all tend to the exercise of Love and value most those means which most promote it and think your selves best when you abound most in Love and not when you are overwhelmed with those Fears and Griefs which hinder Love Study therefore above all the Love of God revealed in Christ which is the best attractive of your Love to him and hate all suggestions which would represent God unlovely and undesirable to you Dir. 8. Use cheerful company Not carnal but holy not such as waste their time in unprofitable frothy speeches or filthy or prophane or scornful jeastings But such as have most of the sense of Love and mercy on their hearts and are best acquainted with a Life of Faith and whose speeches and cheerful conversations do most lively manifest their sense of the Love of God and of the Grace of Christ and the eternal happiness of the Saints There is a delightful and encouraging virtue in the converse of joyful thankful heavenly believers Use
Erroneous Sectaries are blinded in some particular points by the seducing words of men And ungodly sensualists are blinded in the main and damnably err from the necessary practical doctrines of salvation being deceived by the inclination of their own concupiscence Errors are multifarious and abound even in many that inveigh most fiercely against the erroneous But Truth is simple We have One Teacher to instruct us One Spirit to enlighten us One Word of God to be our Rule One Light to guide us through all the darkness and mazes of the world and recover our deluded darkened minds Thousands are ready to draw us away from God Temptations lye thick on every hand Within us and without us before us and on each side Which way can you look or go but you will meet with baits and snares And if Eve be once deceived Adam is the easilier overcome When the appetite and senses are ensnared by their objects and the imagination corrupted the understanding is in danger of deceit You may go into an Hospital and see variety of diseases but Health is one and the same One hath the pestilence and another hath the leprosie and another a palsie and another is distracted but among a thousand people in Health you see no such difference Health only is formally the cure of all What abundance of miserable sinners be in the world that are almost at Hell already But only one sort of men even the regenerate are rescued by grace and shall be saved from it Many inventions have men found out for their destruction but there is no way but by Christ through faith and holiness to their salvation Set as light by Christ and Holiness as you will and deride it as foolishly and perversly as you please you will find at last that this way or none must bring you to Heaven Either ignorance or pride or covetousness or malice or gluttony or drunkenness or voluptuousness or lust or any one sin of an hundred may be your ruine But there is only One salve to heal these sores and only one cordiall or antidote that can expell these several sorts of poison from your hearts Godliness is profitable to all things 1 Tim. 4. 8. Drudge for the world as long as you will and gape after honour and applause from men and try a thousand wayes for your content but when you have all done you must return by sound Repentance into the way of holiness or you are lost for ever When you have slighted grace you must give up your selves to the power of that grace When you have set light by a life of holy Love to God and the fruition of him in Glory you must make it your treasure and delight and your hearts must be upon it or you are undone Matth. 6. 21. When you have made a jeast of a Holy life you must come about and take your selves that course that you jeasted at though you be as much jeasted at by others yea and make it the principal business of your lives or perish in hell under the vengeance of the Almighty whose justice you provoked and whose mercy you neglected Choose you whether but one of them will be your part Even as Saul that was exceeding mad against Believers and persecuted them even to strange Cities Acts 26. 10 11. was glad to become one of them himself though he suffered as much as he had caused them to suffer and accounted it the greatest mercy of his life that God vouchafed him such a change what ever it cost him IV. Quest But is nothing necessary but this One Are not other things also Needfull in their places Answ I told you that other things are not other so far as they stand in due subordination to this one or are the parts of it He that saith to a sick man You would do well if you had such a skilfull man for your Physicion doth not by these words intend to exclude his Apothecary or his medicines or the taking of them or the instruments and means by which they are applyed but rather includeth and implyeth all these in the One thing mentioned to which they do subserve So all Gods graces and all the means of grace and Christian duties are contained or implyed in the One thing Necessary or supposed to it Because it is One thing that is necessary as the End therefore many means are necessary to the obtaining of it Though there be also a kind of unity as hath been shewed among those means Quest But are not outward things also necessary Must we not have food and rayment and must we not labour and provide it and take care for our families and follow our callings Must we not by lawfull means avoid reproach and poverty in the world Answ In the way of Duty it is as necessary that we labour in our callings and provide things honest and subserve Gods providence for the maintenance of our selves and others And the things of this life and Needful so far as Life is needful that we may have Time and strength to do our works and be supported while we seek the One thing needful But that which is not Necessary for it self but for another thing is not simply or principally Necessary So far as Heaven may be obtained and the work of Christianity done without the accommodations of the flesh so far these worldly things are needless There is no Necessity that you be Rich or Honourable or that you live in Health or Wealth or that you escape the hatred and reproach and trouble of a malicious world There is no Necessity that you should save your lives when Christ requireth them For he that so saveth his life shall lose it Matth. 16. 25. And that Usefulness which you may in a lower sense call Necessity that any of these things are of is but in their respect to the One thing Necessary as they are sanctified means to the service of God and our salvation If your daily bread be to be called Necessary it is not for it self or for your flâ—shly pleasure nor ultimately for your life it self but to sustain your life while you are seeking after life eternal and serving him that is the Lord of life Your Credit or Honour or Pleasure in the world are no further Necessary or Usefull to you then they promote this great End for your selves or others Nothing but God is simply Necessary for himself and Nothing else is any way truly Necessary but for him And therefore as by Necessity of precept you must labour in your Callings and seek provision for your selves and families you must most carefully watch your Hearts that your desires and labours be not carnal as tending only to carnal ends â—ut that you sincerely subject the things desired to the One thing necessary for which you must desire them and therefore that you desire but such measures and proportions as are most suitable to that End which is only for it self desireable Even life it self must
O for a few daies or hours more to make sure of this One thing which you should have spent your lives in making sure of Will you then think thus and yet can you now afford to cast away twenty or thirty years upon Nothing If Time be worth Nothing your Lives are worth Nothing And why should a man desire to Live for Nothing You Love your lives too much and yet will you so contemptuously cast them away He hath lost his life who hath lost the End of his life The loss of an hundred pound in money is not to your selves so great a loss as the loss of a dayes or hours time What then is the loss of so many years Did you ever well consider of this If you live a thousand years it is all lost if you have not spent it in making sure of the One thing Necessary For is not that lost and worse a thousand times then lost that is spent in crossing the End that it is given for and which is no comfort but terrour in the review and which leaveth no fruit but grief and disappointment Let me tell you if you hold on thus unto the end you will wish and wish a thousand times either that you had never had an hours time or else that you had had hearts to have better perceived the worth and use of it then to cast it away as you have done upon nothing It is but One thing that is worth your Time and Lives 2. Whatsoever else you have been doing you have lost all your Labour with your Time if this One thing Needful have been neglected No doubt you have been busie since you came into the world but to little purpose You might as well have been idle as so laboriously doing nothing No doubt many a journey you have rode and gone and many a hard daies labour you have taken and sharpened perhaps with care and grief But you have lost it all if it were an hundred times more if it have not been â—aid out upon the One thing necessary And is it not a pittiful thing that men of reason should vex themselves and coil their bodies and suffer hunger and thirst and weariness and make such a stir and pudder in the world and all for nothing and in a vain shew How many mornings have you risen to your labour and how many dayes and years have you spent in it and now it is all lost How many thoughts and fears and cares have possessed and pestred your minds and now they are all lost Some of you have followed your trades and some your husbandry and some have run up and down after recreations some of you have been scraping riches and some contriving to keep up their reputation and some to satisfie their appetites and live in pleasure and contentment to the flesh and now look back upon all that you have done and gotten and tell your selves whether all this be not lost yea alas much worse then lost If you be not ready to pass this conclusion at the very heart it is because your hearts are yet blinded and hardened in sin but God will soon bring that to your hearts that shall convince you of it If God have made use of any worldly sensual person of you for publick good of Church or state as men do of thorns for hedging to their lands or of bryars to stop a gap or of fire-wood to warm their family yet as to any durable benefit to your selves I may well say that all your Labour is lost And this is not all but the pains also that you have taken in your formal hypocritical Religion your hearing reading receiving Sacraments and pretended prayer all the thoughts that ever you had of death and judgement and the life to come and all that you have done with reservations and by halves for your own salvation this also is all lost Except as a less measure of misery may go for gain If you miss of the One thing necessary you do but lose your labour whatever else you seem to gain A great stir you make in seeking for preferment or dominion over others or about your lands your honours or your delights so great that your neighbours can scarce live quietly by you and the Kingdom cannot be quiet for some of you nor your own consciences be quiet within you for the desperate work that you engage them in which they know must be heard of another day And when all is done you will find you have been but hunting of a feather You would see this now if God would open your eyes by grace but if you miss of so seasonable an information you will see it too late in the land of darkness When death hath opened your eyes and your impenitent souls do suddenly awake in another world you will understand that you made all this stir but in your sleep As busily and seriously as you acted the parts of Lords and Ladies of Gentlemen Tradesmen or Husbandmen in the world if you did not seriously and first do the work of true Believers for the world to come you will then find too late that your labour is lost and all was acted but as in a dream Do you believe this now or do you not If you do will you yet go on If you do not believe it shew me now what you have gotten by all the stir that you have made in the world that will follow you one step further then the grave and that you can say shall be your own to morrow If you were to die this hour will it be any lasting comfort to you that you have laboured to be Rich or Honourable or that you have attained it or that you had your glut of sensual delights and a merry life as to the fleshly pleasure as long as it would last Will you dye the more comfortably for any of this or much the less That yet you are alive is the great mercy of God and not to be ascribed to any of these And when you cease to live then these will be your greif and torment Beloved Hearers I have no desire the Lord knows to discompose your minds or to disquiet you with any molesting unnecessary scruples nor causelesly to dishonour either you or your imployments But I must needs say that it is a dolefull case that men in their wits should spend a life of precious time and also a great deal of care and labour in doing Nothing and much worse then Nothing when they have a work of everlasting consequence to do and they know that the Devils chiefest hopes do consist in the success of these diversions I must seriously profess to you that I am constrained by the word and teachings of God and by undenyable reason it self to look upon all the labour of your lives the highest and the busiest but as the picking of straws or playing with a feather or riding upon a staff or a hobby-horse or such like actions as
wailing and gnashing of teeth Mat. 13. 42 50. You are treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgement of God who will give to every man according to his works Rom. 2. 5 6. You are sowing in pleasure to the flesh in eating and drinking and mirth and honour but you shall reap in corruption lamentation and woe Gal. 6. 7 8. For woe to you that now laugh for you shall mourn and weep Woe to you that are rich and have no better but want the everlasting riches for you have received your conselation Woe to you that are full and yet are empty of Christ and grace for you shall hunger Luke 6. 24 25. These are the words of Christ himself and therefore true if Christ be true Yea more then this let me have leave to tell you for why should I not tell you of your greatest folly and that which is necessary for you to know As long as you neglect the One thing necessary you are acting the part of the most deadly enemies against your selves No enemy that you have in all the world could do that against you as you do against your selves You abhorr the Devil and I blame you not for his malice and enmity deserveth it But you do much worse against your selves then the Devil himself could ever do To tempt you to sin is not so much as to Consent to it and commit it He can but entice you and not constrain you It is you that are the neglecters of your Maker and Redeemer and the wilful rejecters of your own felicity Satan doth bad enough against you by temptation but you do worse by yielding and sinning much worse then all the Devils in hell could do against you For God hath not given all of them so much power over you as he hath given you over your selves Lord what a distracted case is the ungodly world in They hate any man else that they do but imagine is their enemy Though he do but diminish their worldly wealth or honour they cannot forgive him If a man give one of them a box on the ear he cannot bear it And as for the Devil who is the common enemy they spit at his name and think they bless themselves from him And yet these same men do spend all their care and time and labour in doing more against themselves then all their enemies could do in earth or hell and are worse then Devils to themselves and yet they never fall out with themselves for it but can forgive themselves as easily as if they did themselves no harm This is true too true Sirs as harsh as it seemeth to your ears And if it displease you to hear of it bethink your selves what it is to do it and how God and all wise men must judge of you that have no more mercy on your selves Certainly it is much worse to do it then to tell you what you do God tells men of their sin and God doth nothing but what is good but it is themselves only that commit it I beseech you do but understand what you are doing as long as the One thing necessary is neglected by you 4. Consider also that whatsoever else you have been doing in the world if you have not done the One thing needful you have unman'd your selves and lived below your Reason and in plain English you have lived as be sides your wits I give you no harder language then God himself hath frequently given you in his Word and then you will shortly give your selves if you repent not yea and sooner if you do repent If you have in this the use of your Reason you must needs know what you have your Reason for And I beseech you tell me for what you have it if not to serve and please your Maker and prepare for your everlasting state Is it only that you may know how to plow and sow and follow your trades and pleasure in the world and satisfie your flesh a little while and then die as the beasts that perish None of you I suppose will say so that calls himself a Christian If God had made you for no higher things then beasts he would have given you no higher faculties and endowments As they be not made to enjoy God so they have no knowledge of him he sendeth not his Word to them and calleth them not to learn the knowledge of his will But you know or may know that there is a God and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him and are capable of Loving him intending him and serving him and therefore of enjoying him Beasts are not ruled by the hopes and fears of a life after this For their nature and end do not require it But men must be thus ruled or else there can be no sufficient ruling of them in an ordinary way Which shews that the Nature of man is capable of the things which are the matter of their hopes and fears Verily Sirs I think as to any good that cometh by it there is very little difference between having Reason and having none if we had nothing to do with it but cunningly to lay up our food and make provision for this corruptible flesh and had not another life to mind It were no such great difference in my opinion as it commonly goes for whether we were men or dogs if it were only for the matters of this transitory life For though I may not deny but yet man were the nobler creature yet alas the difference would be but graduall and small as an Ape or Dog excells a Swine And as to his Happiness it is doubtful whether Man would not have the worst of it For as brutes have not mans knowledge so they have not his toil and trouble of mind his care and fear and griefs and disappointments Nor have they so terrible fore-thoughts of death through all their lives as man must have much less such fears of what would follow after death And therefore I may boldly say that you have thrown away your wits and laid by your Reason as to the principal use of it if you have forgot or have not chiefly sought the One thing necessary Where were your wits when a lump of flesh was preferred before immortal souls and when the trouble and dung of a transitory world was more esteemed then God and endless Glory Where were your wits when you might have had Christ and Life in him and his pardoning healing sanctifying grace and you had no mind of him and were not sensible of your necessity and past him by with as much neglect as if you could have been saved without him When you might long ago have made sure of Heaven and now you are even ready to drop into Hell and stay but for a Feaver or Consumption or some other disease to cut the thred and turn the key unless a speedy sound conversion shall yet prevent it What have you done in
the thoughts of their own infirmities and that consider not that the chief part of Religion doth consist in Love and Joy in the Holy Ghost and in Thanksgiving and delightful praising our Creator So that it is not long of Religion if men will leave out the chief parts of Religion and make themselves a Religion of so much only as may breed their trouble 3. And I must further tell you that as I have had opportunity of knowing the state of as many troubled distempered minds as any one of you whoever he be so I must needs bear witness that I have met with many that have been distracted by worldly cares or sorrows or discontents for one that ever I knew distracted with the cares about the matter of their salvation And yet though it be worldly care and sorrow that most commonly bringeth death and madness you will not therefore give over your Callings and resolve that you will meddle no more with meat or drink or cloathes or houses or lands or friends or children Nay it were well if you would be brought to moderation and taken off your inordinate desires 4. And yet in the conclusion I must tell you that though I know that the loss of a mans understanding is a very grievous affliction and such as I hope God will never lay upon me yet I had a thousand times rather go distracted to Bedlam with the excessive care about my salvation then be one of you that cast away the care of your salvation for fear of being distracted and will go among the infernal Bedlams into hell for fear of being mad The height of your carnal wisdom is more deplorable then their distraction For God will condemn no man because he is distracted nor so much as blame him for it unless as it is the fruit of sin no more then he will condemn or blame an Ideot or a beast because they have no use of reason If David had been as he seigned himself to be 1 Sam. 21. 13 14. it would not have cast him out of Gods favour so far as one sin did much less so far as the ungodly are A man may go to Heaven from such a madness But you that have Reason for the world but none for God that are wise to do evil that have wit to destroy your selves and serve the flesh but none to look after your recovery and salvation it s you that shall have the stripes the many the great the endless stripes You that have so much wit as that you glory in it and think your selves wiser then the rest of the world and yet have not wit to know and love and serve your maker nor to value and seek first the One thing necessary it is you that will prove the miserable fools If you had not had a natural capacity of understanding you had had no sin But now you have no cloak for your sin when you have the worldly wisdom which is foolishness with God and have a sinning self-destroying wit and are wilfully void of the wisdom that should save you 1 Cor. 1. 25. 3. 19. Jer. 8. 9. when you have not a necessitated but a voluntary distraction and this is your condemnation that Light is come into the world and you have loved darkness rather then Light because your deeds were evil John 3. 19. If you think this wilfull and sensless neglect of the One thing needfull is not a sufficient evidence to prove that miserable distraction which I charge upon you will you but believe your Maker and let the word of God be Judge between us and mark what language it giveth to such as I now describe 2 Thess 3. 2. Jer. 4. 22. Eccles 7. 25. 2 Pet. 2. 12. Psalm 92. 6. 94. 8. Jer. 10. 8. 14. Deut. 32. 6. Psalm 73. 3. 22. 2 Sam. 14. 10. In these places your course hath no better titles than unreasonable foolish brutish sottish c. even from the God of Wisdom himself who is the fittest to give you the character that you deserve When you have truly considered of your way if indeed you find that you have dealt like wise men hold on and say so at the last when you have eaten the fruit of your doing and have seen the End 5. Furthermore Consider that what ever else you have been doing in the world if the one thing necessary be yet undone you have lost and abused all the mercies that God hath bestowed on you Many a thousand pretious mercies have been given you And to what use but to help you to everlasting mercy and to prevent your everlasting misery This is the End and this is the Life and excellency of all your mercies For all present mercies have the Nature of a Means to a further End And the Goodness and nature of the Means consisteth in its fitness to promote the End And therefore you have lost all the Mercies that you have received if you are never the nearer your End for them and if they have not promoted the Love of God and your salvation You have had health and strength and time and peace and liberty and some of you also wealth and honour in the world But you have lost them all if your salvation be not furthered by them Many a preservation you have had when others have been cut off before your faces and many a deliverance from dangers known or unknown and much of the fruit of that Patience of God which hath till now attended you in your sin Many a Sermon you have heard and many a warning you have had and you have been planted in God Vineyard and daily watered with the Ordinances of grace But all these are lost if the One thing necessary hath been neglected Nothing in this world doth you good indeed any further then it promoteth your Everlasting good And do you think that you have dealt kindly or justly with God to deal so contemptuously with all his mercies as to cast them away and tread them under foot When you want but food or rayment or liberty or health you value them and pray for them and when you have them what do you with them but throw them as in the channel and sacrifice them to your lusts and enemies When Death looketh you in the face you begin to know the worth of Time and then O what would you not give for a little more and that God would try you a few years longer And when you have Time what do you with it but serve the Devil and cast it away for nothing and spend it in preparing for everlasting sorrows How can you for shame cry to God for Mercy in your next distress when you have contemptuously thrown away the Mercies of twenty or thirty or forty years already If your own children should ask you for meat or drink and when they have it should throw it to the dogs or ask you for money and cast it into the dirt and do thus an hundred
and an hundred times over would you go on to give it them because they cry for it O Sirs that you could but use your Reason in the matters for which it was given you by your Maker Either time and mercy is worth something or nothing If it be worth nothing never beg for it and never be sad when it is taken from you Why make you such a stir for that which is nothing worth I mean your corporal mercies for spiritual mercies you can be too well content to be without But if they be worth any thing why do you cast them away and make no better use of them What good do you with them or what good do they do you Believe it sinners God doth not despise his mercies as you do He will not alway give you meat and drink and health and strength and life to play with and do nothing with He will teach you better to value them before he hath done with you Not that he thinks them too good for you but he would have them be better to you then you will let them be He would have every bit you eat to be used to strengthen you in your walk to heaven and every hour of your time to help you towards eternal happiness and every present mercy to further your everlasting mercy that so by the improvement their value may be advanced and they may be mercies indeed to you Be ruled by God and you shall receive more in one mercy then you do now in a thousand But if you will do nothing with them blame him not if he take them from you and leave you destitute of what you knew not how to use Nay your sin is greater then meerly to cast away your mercies You do not only lose them but turn them all into a curse and undo your souls with that which is given for the sustentation of your bodies While you know no better use of mercies then to please your senses and accommodate the flesh and forget the One thing needful which is the End of all you turn them all into sin and fight against God by them and strengthen his enemy and your own and block up your way to Heaven by them and treasure up wrath for the dreadful day when your wealth shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire Jam. 5. 1 2 3. Rom. 2. 5. You contemptuously cast that bread to dogs which he giveth you to supply your own necessities You treacherously carry over his provision to the enemy Consider this you that say you hope to be saved because God is merciful You have found indeed that God is merciful by large experience But if you do not learn and quickly learn to make a better use of his mercies abused mercy will prove your everlasting misery O what a reckoning will you have What a load to press you down to Hell Unless you would have used them better it had been easier for you if these temporal mercies had been denyed you Can that man look to be saved by mercy that would not be intreated to consent that mercy should save him in the day of salvation in the accepted time but served the Devil with those very mercies that would have saved him God sendeth you his mercies to kill your sins and sanctifie you and engage you to himself and if you will feed your sins with them and make them your idols and forsake God for them and be false to him to your Covenant and your duty and neglect that One thing for which he gave them to you you do not only lose them but turn them to a curse And alas poor sinners what will you have to fly to to trust in or to comfort you when mercy abused hath not only forsaken you but falls upon you as a mountain and feedeth your aggravated endless misery 6. Moreover whilest you neglect the One thing necessary you neglect Christ himself and reject the saving benefit of his bloodshed and refuse the healing work of his Spirit and the precious benefits which he hath offered you in the Gospel And how can you escape if you neglect so great salvation Heb. 2. 3. How will you be saved when you refuse the only Saviour There is indeed enough in Christ to heal and save the humbled soul that thirsteth for his righteousness and salvation and valueth and seeketh him as a Saviour and if you would thus come to him you might have life John 5. 40. But whiles you give your selves to please the flesh and follow the world and look so little after Christ or after the ends and benefits of his sufferings and grace Christ is as no Christ to you and Grace is as no Grace to you and the Gospel is as no Gospel to you and you will be never the more saved then if there had no Saviour ever come into the world or there had never Grace been given to the world or there had never been promise made or Gospel preached to the world For Christ will not save them that continue to neglect him and set light by all the mercy that he offereth and the salvation which he hath purchased and do not esteem and use him as a Saviour and cannot find enough in God and Glory to take off their hearts from the pleasures and idols of the flesh If Christ would have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and you would not Matth. 23. 37. you will be as far from being saved by him as if you had never heard of his name And yet that is not all If you prevent it not by true Conversion you will wish a thousand and a thousand times that this were all But there is worse then this For Christ will not leave a man of you as he finds you If you are so far in love with worldly wealth and fleshly pleasure that you can taste no sweetness in his Grace and see no desirable glory in his Kingdom he will make you taste the bitterness of his wrath and feel the weight of his severest justice The most compassionate Saviour is the most dreadful Judge to those that will not be saved by his grace It will be easier for Sodome and Gomorrah in the day of Judgement then for those that were the obstinate refusers of his Gospel Matth. 6. 11 12. He that despised Moses Law dyed without mercy under two or three witnesses of how much sure punishment shall he be thought worthy that hath trodden under foot the son of God Heb. 10. 28 29. See therefore that ye refuse not him that speaketh For if they escaped not that refused him that spake on earth how much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven Heb. 12. 23. 7. As long as you neglect the One thing Needful whatever good conceits of your selves you have entertained and whatever hopes or peace or comfort you have built upon those conceits they are all
sons though you have lived as his enemies Though you have lived like Swine and Serpents he will put you into his bosom if you will but be washed and changed by his grace Though you have set more by your worldly riches then by his glory and have set more by the favour of mortal man then by his favour and though you have set more by your bellies and your brutish pleasures and little toyes then you have done by everlasting life he will yet be merciful to you and put up all these indignities at your hands and take you into his dearest love if you will but Now become new creatures and give your hearts to him that made them and seek that first that is worth the finding and lose not the rest of your lives and labour upon unprofitable things What can you say against this offer Is it not unconceivable and unspeakable mercy O what would the damned give for such an offer O what would you your selves give another day for such an offer if you now neglect it What say you then will you accept of this offer of mercy while it may be had and close with Grace while Grace would save you or will you not As ever you look for mercy in the hour of your distress when nothing but mercy can stand your souls in any stead take mercy now while it may be had Refuse it not when it is offered you as you would not be refused by it when Hell and Desparation would devour you If you slight it because it is free you slight it because it is great and therefore greatly to be valued Think not hereafter to have it at your beck if you neglect it now when it seeks for your acceptance Do not say I will a little longer keep my sins and a little longer enjoy my pleasures for I can have Christs offer at any time before I die O little dost thou know what a stab such a trifling purpose may give to the very heart of all thy hopes and happiness and how terribly God may make thee know how ill he taketh thy unthankfulness and contempt and how dear one other week of sinful pleasure may cost thy soul In the name of God I warn you do not so despise everlasting happiness Do not so trample on the blood of Christ if you would be saved by it Do not abuse the Spirit of Grace if you would be sanctified by it Play not any longer with the consuming fire the wrath of a jealous and Almighty God Jest not with damnation Though Grace be now offered you it will not be at your command Despise this motion and you may be out of hearing before the next What can you expect if you will slight such mercy but either that Death should shortly bring you to your reckoning or that God should leave you to your selves and give you up to the hardness of your hearts And if you will needs choose the world and fleshly pleasure and God and Glory shall be thus contemptuously past by you may take your choice and see what you will get by it But remember what an offer you had this day and that heaven was once within your reach and that it might have been yours for ever if you would But because I am loth to leave you so I will try by some such Arguments as the Reason of man must needs approve Whether yet you may not be brought to your selves and yield to grace that you may be saved And they shall be the Arguments that lie before you here in the Text. 1. REmember it is Necessity that is pleaded with you in my Text. One thing is Necessary Necessity and your own Necessity is such an Argument as one would think of it self should turn the scales and fully resolve you and put you past any further deliberation or delay If Necessity your own Necessity and so great Necessity to so great an End will not prevail with you What will Necessity is that ingens telum that natural reason taketh to be unresistible Men think they may do almost any thing if they can say Necessity commandeth it Omnem legem frangit magnum illud humanae imbecillitatis patroeinium saith Seneca What is it that Necessity seemeth not sufficient to justifie with the most And we will grant the Argument to be undenyable if it be from absolute Necessity indeed and if men will not dream that it is more Necessary to be Rich or Honourable or to Live then to be Holy and to be Blessed with God and to please him that created them Ubi necessitas incumbit non ultra disputandum est sed celerrimè fortiter agendum Words signifie nothing against Necessity Reason is but hindering troublesom folly when it pleadeth against Necessity Omni arte omne ratione officacior necessitas Curt. In worldly matters how quick-sighted how resolute how active is Necessity What conquerable difficulties will it not overcome What labour will it not endure if it have but the encouragement of hope And yet this Necessity is indeed no true Necessity at all For that which is Necessary but to my credit or estate or health or life can be no more Necessary then is my credit and estate and health and life it self When men do but fancy a Necessity where there is none yet that will carry them through thick and thin But O Sirs you have a real undenyable Necessity to be Holy and to set your selves to the work of your salvation such a Necessity as is founded in your Nature and laid on you by your Maker and as all the true Reason in the world will confess to be indispensable Necessity Faxis ut libeat quod est necesse Make no more words then but Resolve and stirre when it is a matter that must be done It is pitty and shame that the Amiableness of God and Holiness will not prevail with you of themselves But if you cannot yet perceive them to be Delectable acknowledge them to be Necessary Be ashamed that pretended Necessity for the Body should be more powerful with others then real Necessity for salvation is with you Look upon almost all the travel and labour that is under the Sun and all the diligence that is used here in the world and consider Whether it be not a thousand fold smaller Necessity then I am now pleading with you that setteth almost all on work The Rich will not toil and labour but will take their ease because they think they are under no Necessity but the poor will labour because they must Though the command of God to Rich and poor should make them equally diligent in their several callings in obedience to their Creator yet many thousands that labour all the year in obedience to their own Necessities would soon give it over and take their ease if they could but be well maintained without it notwithsanding the commands of God And the poor that reproach the rich for idlendss would be idle themselves
perisheth in the using and flyeth from us when we have greatest need That is the good part which all men will say is good in the Conclusion which the wicked themselves that are now of another mind will confess at last to be the best and not that which is commended only in prosperity while the frensy or dream of sensuality doth beguile men â—â—â— which they will all cry out against at last If you would know which is the best part take counsel of God and see what he saith and ask men of wisdom and of greatest experience that have tried both and men that have staid the end and seen what fleshly pleasures and profits and honours can do for them For how can men make so true a judgement that do not either stay the end or else foresee the end by faith Do not take their judgements that are drunk with their sensual delights and that will confess they must repent themselves and therefore confess they must be of another mind Take not their judgements that neither have seen nor yet foresee the end the worst is yet to come with them Their states and minds are near a change The day is near when they will say that heaven was the better part and be convinced by punishment that would not be convinced by instruction Surely Sirs it is so easie a Question to reason it self where sin hath not blinded it whether God or the world be the better part that one would think there should be left no room for doubting Dare any of you speak out and say that earth is better then heaven or sin then grace or temporal pleasure then eternal happiness I think you dare not Shame will forbid you and Conscience will contradict you if you should say so And will you commend God by your words and discommend him by your lives Will you say heaven is best and yet seek the world before it and not let it have the best of your affections and endeavours Shall it be highest in your mouthes and lowest in your hearts and lives Shall it have the first place in your prayers and the last in your labours Why then you commend God but to his dishonour and your condemnation You extoll heaven and heavenly things but to the confusion of your own faces that your own confessions may be brought in hereafter as witnesses against you In the name of God therefore I charge you if you know which is the better part condemn not your selves by making choice against your knowledge 4. COnsider also that this good part is offered you and you have your choice whether God or the world whether heaven or earth shall be your portion It is not Purchasing or proper meriting but choosing the good part that you are called to It is not Mary hath purchased or merited the better part but hath chosen the better part Two things are here contained 1. That it is not matter of Impossibility that you are called to you are not excluded from the hopes of salvation by any exceptions that God hath put in against you in his promise but it is conditionally made as well to you as to others 2. And the condition is not any thing â—â—reasonable but your own consent Christ and salvation are offered to your choice If you will but prefer them before the trifles of the world you may have them The door of Grace is open to you as well as to others if you will but enter you may live you are not left in a remediless case nor given over to desperation you cannot say Repenting and Believing will do us no good we cannot have Christ though we were never so willing You cannot say We would fain have Christ and his Spirit to sâ—nctifie us but we cannot we are willing to be his Disciples but he is not willing to accept us and to be our Saviour you cannot say so and say truly you cannot say he is set to sale to you and that he expecteth such a price as you are unable to give for you are called to take him freely and though this be sometimes called buying yet it is a buying without money and without price Isa 55. 1 2 3 4. And though you must sell all you have for this unvaluable pearl Matth. 13. 46. yet that is but a Metaphorical selling a parting with your sin and fleshly pleasure as troubles and impediments that would keep you from salvation As a sick man sells his diseases for health or at least as he hath health by forbearing some hurtful things that please him Or as a prisoner purchaseth the liberty that is freely given him by consenting to come forth and cast off his fetters Your hands are full of dirt and God offers you gold and you cannot receive it till you throw away the dirt This is your Purchase You give God nothing as a valuable price for his mercy but you throw away the sin that is inconsistent with your happiness Still I shall tell you you may have Christ if you will pleasures and profits are flattering you to your destruction and God calls you from them and offereth you his son and everlasting life and intreateth you to accept them And here you have your choice The offer is whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely Rev. 22. 17. And if you will but chuse that happiness that is offered you and Christ the way to that happiness all the world cannot bereave you of your choice It is brought to your hand and urged on you You have now your choice whether you will have Christ or the flesh grace or sin heaven or hell As you chuse so you shall have And if you miss of life it will be because you did not chuse it Even because you would not come to Christ that you might have life John 5. 40. and would not have him to rule over you Luke 19. 27. and would not have the Lord indeed for your God Pâ—â—â—m 81. 11. and did not chuse the fear of the Lord Prov. 1. 29. yea when Christ would have gathered you you would not be gathered Matth. 23. 37. It is this turning away of the simple that doth slay them because they refuse when Christ calls them and regard not when he stretcheth forth his hand but set at naught his counsel and will have none of his reproof Prov. 1. 24 25 32. See therefore that you refuse not him that speaketh for if you turn away from him that speaks from heaven and neglect or make light of so great salvation how do you think it possible you should escape Heb. 12. 25. 2. 3. Mat. 22. 5. But perhaps some of you will think to excuse your selves for want of Free-will and say How is it in our choice when God must give us to will and to do and we can do nothing of our selves have we free-will or power to chuse the better part You must not set up the power or will of man too high Answ
and all right reason required of thee For surely he that made thee hath in wisdom proportioned thy time to thy work and hath not given thee an hour too much A long life is short enough to prepare for everlasting And shall a loytering Rebell that hath wasted so much of his little time cry out What needs so much ado Quest 25. Is it not the graceless miserable sort of men that cry out What needs all this ado Certainly it is For Scripture and Reason and Experience tell us that all that are godly are of another mind The more grace they have the more they would have The more they love God the more they would love him The more good they do the more they would do Do you not see how they labour after more grace and hear how they complain that they are no better O how it would glad them to be more Holy and more Heavenly It is therefore the strangers and despisers of grace that never knew by experience the nature and power and sweetness of it than say It is more ado then needs And is it not a most unreasonable thing for a man that hath no saving grace and holiness at all to cry out against excess of holiness And for a man that is in the captivity of the Devil and ready suddenly to drop into Hell if death do but strike the fatal blow before he be regenerate to talk against doing too much for heaven And for a man that never did God one hours pleasing service Heb. 11. 6. to prate against serving God too much O poor wretch were thy eyes but opened thou wouldst see that of any man in the Town or Countrey this language ill beseemeth thee When God hath been so long offended and thy soul is almost lost already and death and hell is hard at hand and may swallow thee up in endless desperation for ought thou knowest before thou hast read this Book to the end or before thou see another year or moneth or day is it time for such a one as thee to say What needs so much ado One would think if there be any life in thee thou shouldst stir as for thy life and if thou have a voice to cry thou shouldst cry out to God hoth day and night in the fervour of thy soul even now while mercy may be had lest time should over-slip thee and thou be shut up in the place of torment If Hell-fire will not make thee stir What will Should a weak Christian that is cast behind hand by his negligence but once speak against a diligent life he were exceedingly too blame But for thee that art yet in the gall of bitterness and the misery of an unregenerate state to speak against holy diligence for salvation when thou art in such great and deep distress and like a man that is drowning or a house on fire that must presently have help or perish this is a madness that hath no name sufficient to express it by which its a wonder that a rational soul should be guilty of Quest 26. Art thou not afraid of some sudden vengeance from the Lord for thus making thy self his open enemy and contradicting him to his face Mark his language and then mark thine Christ saith Enter in at the strait gate For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go iâ— thereat because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it Matth. 7. 13 14. Strive to enter in at the strait gate for many I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able Luke 13. 24. See then that ye walk circumspectly or exactly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time Ephes 5. 15 16. For I say unto you thâ—â— except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribâ—s and Pharises ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of heaven Matth. 5. 20. Wherefore brethren give all diligence to make your Calling and Election sure 2 Pet. 1. 10. Workout your salvation with fear and trembling Phil. 2. 12. Seeing then all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness looking for and hasting to the coming of the day of God 2 Pet. 3. 11 12. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear 1 Pet. 4. 18. Lay not up for your selves a treasure on earth c. but lay up for your selves a treasure in heaven c. For where your treasure it there will your hearts be also Matth. 6. 19 20 21. Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness Matth. 6. 33. Labour not for the meat that perisheth but for that which endureth to everlasting life John 6. 27. The Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force Matth. 11. 12. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all but one receiveth the prize So run that ye may obtain And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things Now they do it to obtain a corruptible Crown but we an incorruptible I therefore so run not as uncertainly so fight I not as one that beateth the air but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when I have preached to others I my self should be a cast-away 1 Cor. 9. 24 25 26 27. Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread and your labour for that which satisfieth not Hearken diligently unto me eat ye that which is good and let your soul delight it self in fatness encline your ear and come unto me hear and your soul shall live and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you Isa 55. 1 2 3. Be servent in spirit serving the Lord. Rom. 12. 11. For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and sanctifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Tit. 2. 11 12 13 14. Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully Jer. 48. 10. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might For there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whether thougoest Eccles 9. 10. These and such like are the sayings of God by which thou mayst easily understand his mind concerning the necessity of a serious diligent holy life And shall a blind and wretched worm come after and dare to contradict him and unsay all this and say What needs so much ado What! darest thou thus openly resist God to his face What art thou and
what is thy word that we should regard it before the Word of God Quest 27. Dost thou not know that by thy speaking against a diligent holy life thou gratifyest the Devil and openly servest him and saist the very things that he would have thee say What can more please him and advance his Kingdom and suit his malicious ends then to stop and cool men in the service of the Lord and make them believe that holiness is but a needless thing If the Devil might have leave to walk visibly among men and speak to them in their language he would speak to them as thou dost and say the same things which he 〈…〉 into thy mouth and would do all that he could to keep men from a holy life And darest thou thus openly play his part Quest 28. Canst thou think when eternal life is at the stake that a man so weak in the midst of so many hindrances and enemies hath cause to count his diligence unnecessary When Satan like a roaring Lyon is seeking day and night to devour thee 1 Pet. 5. 8. when his malice subtilty and diligence is so great and so unwearied when his instruments are so many so subtile and so powerful when the world aboundeth round about thee with such dangerous enticing snares and baits when thy trayterous flesh so near thee is thy most perilous enemy uncessantly drawing thee from God unto the creature and when thou art so impotent to resist all these assaults art thou then in a condition fit to cry out against the greatest diligence for thy soul Should a man going up the sleepest hill when it is for his life be afraid of going too fast When thou hast done all thou canst it is well for thee that ever thou wast born if it suffice If weaknesses and enemies cause such a difficulty that the righteous themselves are scarcely saved that is with much ado is it then time for thee to ask What needs so much ado Quest 29. Dâ—st thou not deal exceeding unthankfully and unequally with God When he thinks not the Sun and Moon and all the creatures too good to serve thee nor all his mercies too great for thee no not the blood of his beloved Son nor his Spirit nor Heaven it self if thou wilt accept them in his way wilt thou think thy best too good for him and thy most diligent service to be too much When thy All is next to Nothing and thy Best doth not profit the Almighty but thy self and the gain will be thy own If a man should think it too much to put off his hat and thank thee when thou hast given him a thousand pound or to go a mile for thee when thou hast saved his life thou wouldst say he were not a man but a monster of ingratitude But thy unthankfulness is ten thousand-fold worse to God who would deliver thee from everlasting torments and give thee everlasting glory and save thee from Satan and all thy sins if thou wilt but take his safe remedies and thou churlishly refusest as if all were not worth so much ado Quest 30. Dost thou know what a life it is that thou accountesâ— an unnecessary toil It is a life of the greatest Safety Commodity Honour and Delight besides the justice and honesty of it of any in the world and indeed thou canst not choose any other but at thy peril and to thy greatest loss and ruine and to thy present and everlasting shame and sorrow It is the sweetest and most pleasant life on earth that thou ignorantly accountest such a tedious toyl The manifestation of this shall be my work in the second Part of this Discourse And now I dare affirm that when the dreadful God shall shortly judge thee who hast read or heard these words it will be found indelibly written upon thy Conscience that thou hadst here such Reasons laid before thee to prove the Necessity of a serious diligent holy life as all the wit in earth or Hell is not able solidly to confute and that an ungodly sensual life is most unreasonable and that if after this thou continue in an unsanctified fleshly state thou shall justly perish as one that wilfully refused salvation as in despight of God his mercies and his messengers and of the plainest undenyable Truth and Reason And that in refusing to be a SAINT thou madest thy self in the greatest matters no better then a BRUTE wilfully subjecting thy Reason to thy sensuality and judging thy self unmeet for everlasting Happiness BUt here I know the self-deceiving Hypocrite will object That all this that I am proving so diligently is confest and nothing to the point in question Which is not Whether One thing be needful and Holiness be of Necessity to salvation For who denyeth this But the question is Whether it be this Puritanical precise way of serving God which only deserves the name of Holiness and Whether they be net as truly godly and sanctified that say their prayers morning and night and go to Church on Sundayes and follow their businesses the rest of the week without any more ado Answ Either it is the substance of holy duties or but the circumstances which you quarrel at as Puritanical and precise If it be only the circumstances as Whether we should receive the Lords Supper standing or kneeling or sitting Whether we should pray publickly without Book or on the Book and Whether a Scripture-form or another be better and Whether a continued speech or versicles anthems and oft-repeated words and sentences be better What form of Church Government is best â— by Diocesane Bishops or by all the Pastors and the like It is not of such things as these that I am pleading with thee Though some of them are matters of considerable moment for the helping or hindring men in godliness yet it is greater matters then these that I am now contending for Agree with us practically in the substance in Faith Repentance Love Obedience Mortification Heavenliness Humility Patience and serious diligence and zeal in all and then I am none of those that will condemn or censure you but one that will rejoyce in you as those that I hope to rejoyce with for ever But if it be the substantial duties of godliness that you resist while you own but the Name of godliness in the general I must tell you that it is not Names and Generals that will save you nor prove that you have your selves one spark of Grace Nothing more eafie and common then for the most ungodly to say they are all for a godly life and God forbid that any should be against it when yet they hate and reject it indeed when it comes to the practice of those particular duties in which it doth consist It is not godliness that they hate and reproach but it is fervent prayer holy conference meditation self-denyal mortification of the desires of the flesh heavenly mindedness c. In general they will say that Gods Law must be
Knowledge If I referr my health to thee as my Physicion thou must not refuse to try my pulse and see my urine and use the means to find out the disease Wouldst thou be my Lawyer and refuse to read my Evidences and study my case And wilt thou needs be judge thy self of the matters of thine own felicity or misery and yet refuse to read and hear and pray and meditate and use the necessary means of understanding Wilt thou lie in bed and work out thy salvation Wilt thou make use of no ones eyes but thy own and yet wilt thou wink or draw the Curtains or shut the windows and cast away thy spectacles and neither come into the sunshine nor use a candle This is but to say I will willfully condemn my soul and none shall hinder me 2. But yet another condition I must propose If thou wilt but as I said before of others a while make Tryal of a holy life and try in thy self what Faith and Hope and Charity are and try what selfdenyal is I will then referr the matter to thy self Go back from God if thou find any Reason for it and turn from Christ and Heaven and Holiness if thou do not like them But if thou wilt needs be the judge and wilt not be perswaded to try the thing thou art a partial self-deceiving judge 3. But it this much cannot be obtained at least be Considerate in thy judging If thou wilt but take thy self aside from the noise of wordly vanities and deceits and commune seriously with thy heart and bethink thee as before the Lord and as one that knows he must shortly dye Whether Heaven or Earth should be sought most carefully and Whether God or thy flesh should be served most resolvedly and diligently and if thou wilt but dwell so long upon these manlike thoughts till they are digested and Truth have time to shew its face I dare then leave the question to thy self The next time that the Sermon or any affliction comes near thee and awakeneth thy Conscience do but withdraw thy self into secret and soberly bethink thee of the matter what hopes thou hast from the world and what thou 〈◊〉 have from God what Time is and what Eternity is and give â—â—â— Conscience leave to speak and then I will venture the issue upon thy Conscience For thee I mean though I must stick to a better judge my self Doth not Conscience sometime tell thee that the Holyest persons are the wisest and that thy labour is liker at last to be lost and repented of than theirs Doth not Conscience sometime make thee wish that thou wert but in as safe a case as they and that thou mightest but die the death of the Righteous and that thy last end might be as theirs 4. But if all this will not serve the turn thou shalt be Judge thy self but it shall be when thou art more capable of judging If God by Grace shall Change thy heart I will stand to thy Judgement If he do not when thy graceless guilty soul shall pass out of thy pampered dirty flesh and appear before the dreadful God I will then leave the case to thy Conscience to judge of To all Eternity it shall be partly left to the judgement of thy Conscience whether sin or Holiness be better and whether Saints or careless sinners were the wiser and whether it had not been be ter sor thee to have spent that life in preparing for thy Endless life which thou spentst in slighting it and caring for the world and flesh Then thou shalt be Judge thy self of these matters but under a more severe and righteous judge And so as shall make thy tearing heart to wish with many a thousand groans that thou hadst judged wiselier in time But because that Judgement will be to desperation and too late for hope or any help let Conscience speak when thou lyest sick and seest that thou art a dying man Then judge thy self whether a Holy or a worldly life be better and whether it had not been thy wiser course to have sowed to the spirit that so thou maist reap everlasting life then to have sowed to the flesh from which thou now lookst to reap no better then corruption Be not deceived God is not mocked whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap Gal. 6. 6 7. But because it will be very late to stay till thy own Death draw so neer thee go but to thy neighbours that lie in sickness looking for the stroak of death Yea to thy companions in sin and folly and ask them then which way is better Ask them then which is the better part Whether now they had rather be the Holyest Saints or such as they have been Whether now they had not rather they had spent their time in the most careful seeking for Everlasting life then in doing as they have done Say to thy old companion now Brother I see you are near your end the mortal stroak of death is coming you are now leaving all the pleasures of this world I pray you tell me now your Judgement whether mirth and sport and feasting and drinking and wealth and honour be more to be sought then life eternal and whether Hearing and Reading the word of God and Praying and meditating and flying from sin be as bad or as needless a thing as we have formerly taken it to be Had you rather appear before the Lord in the case of those that we derided as Puritans and too precise for making such a doe about salvation or in the case that you and I have lived in Ask but this Question to thy old companions and try whether the Consciences of almost all that approach their end do not bear witness against ungodliness and do not justifie the holy diligence of the Saints It is but two days since a poor drunkard of a neighbour Parish being ready to pass out of this world did send hither and to other Parishes in the terrours of his soul to desire our Congregations to take warning by him and to strive with God if possible for some mercy for his soul that was passing in terrours into another world because of the guilt of his odious sin Well sirs I have gone along with you to all the creatures in this world that have any fitness to judge in this case and if all these will not serve we must go to another world for Judgement or stay till you come there 11. And really do you think if we could speak with Angels or departed Souls that they would not consent with God and all Believers in their Testimony O how they would rebuke their madness that make any doubt of so great so plain so sure a truth as this of the necessity and the excellency of a Holy life None are so fully resolved of this question as they that have tasted the End of both and past the righteous judgement of the Lord. They that are feeling the anguish of their
Eagles shall eat it To be without natural affections is the brand of highest wickedness Rom. 1. 31. and 2 Tim. 3. 3. And do you not know that it is worse to be without holy affections to the God that made you and the Christ that bought you and to despise forsake or abuse the Lord Thou hadst thy Being more from him then from thy Parents They knew not how thy parts were formed It was he that gave thee thy immortal soul It is by him that thou hast lived until now much more then on the food thou eatest or the air thou breathest in And art thou so unnatural as to be ungodly and deny him thy love and care and service that hath made thee and to call a holy heavenly life a needless toyl Deut. 32. 6. Do you thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unwise Is he not thy Father that hath bought thee hath he not made thee and established thee If an unholy man be an honest man that is so unnatural as to cross the end of his Creation and deny his service to the Lord that made him then he is honest that spits in his Fathers face and despiseth his Mother that brought him forth 4. Do you think that he is an honest man that is unthankful It is agreed on by all the world that unthankfulness is a principal point of dishonesty He is no honest man that will abuse or despise those by whom he liveth or that have engaged him by kindness If you were so used your selves by one whose lives or estates you had preserved would you not say What an unworthy wretch is this have I deserved this usage at his hand Why all the unthankfulness against men in the world is not to be compared to thy unthankfulness against God What are the Benefits which man hath given thee in comparison of his Did ever man do any thing for thee that is comparable to thy Creation and Redemption and offering thee salvation from everlasting misery and a room with Angels in everlasting glory besides every hourâ— mercy that ever thou hadst here in this world And is that an honest man that will requite this God with prophaneness and ungodliness and return him sin for all his mercies and refuse to live a holy life Doth thy flesh deserve all thy care and labour and is this God unworthy of it and dost thou call his service a needless work If ingratitude can make a man dishonest thou art then a dishonest man But it is the business of the godly to give up themselves to him that made them and to exercise their thankfulness in their capacities for these greatest mercies 5. Do you think that a cruel unmerciful man or a loving and merciful man is the more honest Surely I shall here have all your voices He that hateth those that hurt him not and would kill them and set their houses on fire and carryeth malice in his face and speeches will be called an honest man but by few And he that is Loving and studyeth to do Good to all about him will be counted Honest Why try the ungodly and the Saints by this No more malicious men in the world then the ungodly They have an enmity even to the God that made them Col. 1. 21. and to the Christ that bought them Luke 19. 27. and to the Word of God that offereth them salvation and would lead them to eternal life and hate the Knowledge of the way of life Prov. 1. 22. They are enemies to the servants of the Lord and hate the upright that desire their salvation and would but draw them from their sins Prov. 29. 10. 9. 8. They curse those that bless them and persecute those that pray for them Matth. 5. 44. The first wicked man that was born into the world did kill his brother because his own works were evil and his brothers righteous 1 John 3. 12. But this is not their greatest cruelty They are enemies to their own salvation They will run into Hell in despight of Christ and all the Preachers in the world For there is but one way thither the way of ungodliness and that way they will go Yea that is not all but bloody wretches they would have all the Countrey do as they do and be damned with them They are angry with a man if he will not live an ungodly life and tipple and swear and do as they They revile him if he will not give over his diligent serving of the Lord which is all one as to fall out with men because they will not forseit heaven and run from God and damn their souls and all for nothing When they might more mercifully scorn us because we will not give over eating or that we will not cut our own throats And are these cruel persons honest men Is that merciless wretch an honest man that is not content to cast away his own everlasting happiness for nothing upon his fond conceits but must needs have others do so too That is not content to wrong the Lord but would have others wrong him also The Devil is Honest if these be Honest But for the Godly it is their desire their care their work to save themselves and further the salvation of all others O how they long to hear of the Conversion of Towns and Countries and how glad are they when they hear it Not for any worldly commodity to themselves but because they rejoyce at the good of others And what would they not do to promote it which they could do 6. Do you think that a perfidious unfaithful man or a faithful man that will not be hired to break his word is the honester man Sure this is no hard question neither A Knight of the Post that will say and unsay swear and forswear and will betray his dearest friend for a groat is taken by few for an honest man in comparison of him that will rather die then lye or be unfaithful Why nothing is more plain then that all you that are ungodly are treacherous to the Lord himself You are perfidious Covenant-breakers You owe him your selves wholly on the grounds that I before expressed and yet you are unfaithful to him You have all from him and you serve his enemy with it You call him your God and will not Love nor honour nor serve him as your God Mal. 1. 6. You bound your selves to him in your Baptism and many a time since by a solemn Vow or Covenant but you live in the treacherous breach of it continually You Covenanted to take the Lord for your God and yet you will not seek him nor be Ruled by him You Covenanted to take Jesus for your saviour and yet will not be saved by him from your sins Matth. 1. 21. You Covenanted to take the Holy-Ghost for your Sanctifier to purifie your hearts and lives and yet you resist his holy motions and hate his sanctifying word and work and some of you will mock at Sanctification
Judgements of the Lord God hath begun to take away the reproach of Holiness and through his great mercy to us it is more Honourable in England then formerly it hath been Is it Honoured by you Or are you hardened to perdition Fearfull is the case of him whoever he be that after all the gentle and terrible warnings of the Lord dare think or speak reproachfully of a Holy life Yet hear the calls of the Eternal Wisdom Prov. 1. 20 21 22 c. How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity and the scorners delight in scorning and fools hate knowledge Turn you at my reproof But mercies and judgements are lost on the hard-hearted Isa 26. 10 11. Let favour be shewn to the wicked yet will he not learn righteousness in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly and will not behold the Majesty of the Lord. When the hand of the Lord is lifted up they will not see but they shall see and be ashamed for their envy at his people and the enemies own fire shall devour them And then as they set at nought his counsell and would none of his reproof but mocked them that feared God so will he also laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh For that they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord Prov. 1. 25 26 27 29. I will add but this one word of terror To scorn at Holiness is to scorn at the Holy Ghost whose office or work it is to sanctifie us As the Father hath commanded us to be Holy as he is Holy 1 Pet. 1. 16. and made it his Image on us and as the Son hath come to destroy unholiness 1 John 3. 8. and give us an example of perfect holiness and sanctifie to himself a peculiar people Titus 2. 14. so is it the undertaken work of the Holy Ghost as sent therefore from the Father and the Son to make Holy all that God will save And though I say not that it is the unpardonable Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to scorn his very work and office yet I say it is a Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost so near that which is unpardonable that the thoughts of it should humble all that have been guilty and make men fear so horrible a sin But Bessed is he that walketh not in the Counsel of the Ungodly â—or standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful but his delight is in the Law of the Lord and in his Law doth he meditate day and night The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked but he blesseth the habitation of the just Surely he scorneth the scorners but he giveth grace unto the lowly Prov. 3. 33 34. These are the true sayings of the Lord. I thought not meet to pass by this necessary reproof of the contempt of Holiness which this Land hath been so guilty of and which hath undone so many souls and made such desolations in the Land And now you shall see that I am able to make good the grounds of this reproof and that Holiness is no Dishonourable thing 1. The Holy servants of the Lord have the most Honourable Master in all the world This only is sufficient to weigh down all the Honours of the world if it were ten thousand worlds When the builders of the Temple were asked their names by the Officers of King Darius Ezra 5. 10 11. their answer was We are the servants of the God of Heaven and Earth No King on Earth no Angel in Heaven hath a more honourable Master To be the highest Officer of the greatest Prince is a Title as much more base then this as man is baser then the Infinite God If God can not put sufficient Honour on those that are Related to him tell us who can When Moses went to Pharaoh for the Israelites deliverance he was to speak in the name of the Lord and when Pharaoh spake contemptuously of the Lord as one that he knew not and would not obey how wonderously doth God vindicate his honour his people Let other men be called Knights and Lords and Kings and Emperours may I but be truly called the servant of the God of Heaven I shall not envy them their honours Our relation to so glorious a Majesty doth put an unexpressible Honour upon the poorest person and the lowest works A servant of the Lord is more Honourable in ragâ— in a smoaky cottage or the meanest state then the Emperour of Constantinople or Tartary is in all their Wealth and Worldly Glory And if you think not so your selves why do you so much honour them when they are dead What was Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles but poor despised men in the world that travailed about to preach the Gospel and what was their honour but to be the Holy Servants of the Lords Yet now they are dead you are desirous to keep Holy dayes in an honourable memorial of them and Kings and Princes reverence their names What were the Martyrs whose memories are now so Honourable with us but a company of hated persecuted men that were used by others as Butchers do their beasts and worse But because they were the servants of the Lord and suffered for his truth and cause their names are honourable and the names of their greatest persecutors do even stink It s said of Constantine the Great who himself was Greater by his Holiness then his Victories that he was wont to reverence the Bishops that had been sufferers for Christ and kissed the place where the eye abode that one of them had lost for the Gospels sake The Christian Princes that ruled the world were wont to Honour the poorest mortified retired servants of Christ that had cast off the world as perceiving that he is more Honourable that contemneth it then he that enjoyeth it The nearest to God undoubtedly are the most Honourable 2. Consider that as it is God that the Saints are thus Related to so their Relation is so near and their Titles so exceeding high which God himself hath put upon them that it advanceth them to the greatest height of Honour that men on earth can reasonably expect Yea with holy admiration we must say it so wonderful is the Honour which the Glorious God hath put upon his poor unworthy servants thar they durst not have owned it nor thought such Titles meet for men if God himself had not been the Author of them Nor could they have believed that God would so advance them if he had not both revealed it and given them faith to believe his revelation As if it were not enough for us to be his servants he calleth us his friends Joh. 15. 13 14 15. Greater Love hath no man then this that a man lay down his life for his friends Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you Henceforth I call you not servants For the servant knoweth not what his Lord
no relief 3. Another duty that Holiness consisteth in is Thanksgiving and Praise to the God of our salvation He that knows not that this work is Pleasant is unacquainted with it If there be any thing Pleasant in this world it is the praises of God that flow from a believing loving soul that is full of the sense of the mercies and goodness and excellencies of the Lord Especially the â—â—animous conjunction of such souls in the high praises of God in the holy Assemblies Is it not pleasant even to Name the Lord to mention his Attributes to remember his great and wonderous works to magnifie him that rideth on the Heavens that dwelleth in the light that cannot be approached that is cloathed with Majesty and Glory that infinitely surpasseth the Sun in its â—rightness that hath his Throne in the Heavens and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain him and yet he delighteth in the humble soul and hath respect to the contrite yea dwells with them that tremble at his Word Is any thing so pleasant as the Praises of the Lord How sweet is it to see and praise him as the Creator in the various wonderful creatures which he hath made How pleasant to observe his works of providence to them that read them by the light of the Sanctuary and in Faith and Patience learn the interpretation from him that only can interpret them But O how unspeakably Pleasant is it to see the Father in the Son and the God-head in the man-hood of our Lord and the Riches of Grace in the glass of the holy Gospel and the manifold wisdom of God in the Church where the Angels themselves disdain not to behold it Ephes 3. 10 11. The praising of God for the incarnation of his Son was a work that a chore of Angels were employed in as the instructors of the Church Luke 2. 13 14. There is not a promise in the book of God nor one passage of the Life and Miracles of Christ and the rest of the History of the Gospel nor one of the holy works of the spirit upon the soul nor one of those thousand mercies to the Church or to our selves or friends that infinite Goodness doth bestow but contain such matter of Praise to God as might fill believing hearts with Pleasure and find them most delightful work Much more when all these are at once before us what a feast is there for a gracious Soul O you befooled fleshly minds that find no pleasure in the things of God but had rather be drinking or gaming or scraping in the world awaken your souls and see what you are doing With what eyes do you see with what hearts do you think of the Works and Word and Wayes of God and of the Holy employments that you are so much against For my own part I freely and truly here profess to you that I would not exchange the Pleasure that my soul enjoyeth in this one piece of the holy Work of God for all your mirth and sport and gain and whatever the world and sin affords you I would not change the delights which I enjoy in one of these holy dayes and duties in the mentioning of the eternal God and celebrating his praise and magnifying his Name and thinking and speaking of the riches of his Love and the glory of his Kingdom no not for all the pleasure of your lives O that your souls were cured of those dangerous diseases that make you loath the sweetest things You would then know what it is that you have set light by and would marvail at your selves that you could taste no sweetness in the sweetest things Can you think that your work or your play your profits or your sports are comparable for pleasure to the Praises of the Lord If Grace had made you competent Judges I am sure you would say There is no comparison Hear but the testimony of a holy soul yea of the Spirit of God by him Psal. 147. 1. Praise ye the Lord for it is good to sing Praises to our God for it is pleasant and praise is comely Psalm 149. 1 2. Praise ye the Lord sing unto the Lord a new song and his Praise in the Congregation of Saints Let Israel rejoyce in him that made him let the children of Zion be joyful in their King For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people he will beautifie the meek with salvation Let the Saints be joyful in Glory let them sing aloud upon their beds Let the high Praises of God be in their mouth c. Psal 95. 1 2 3. O come let us sing unto the Lord let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise to him with Psalms For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all Gods Psalm 96. 1 2 3 4. O sing unto the Lord a new song Sing unto the Lord all the earth Sing unto the Lord bless his Name shew forth his salvation from day to day Declare his glory among the Heathen his wonders among all people For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised Honour and Majesty are before him strength and beauty are in his Sanctuary Did not this holy Prophet find it a Pleasant work to Praise the Lord Yea all that Love the Name of God should be Joyful in him Psalm 5. 11. Every one of his upright ones may say with the Prophet Isa 61. 10. I will greatly rejoyce in the Lord My soul shall be joyful in my God For he hath cloathed me with the garments of salvation he hath covered me with the robes of righteousness as a Bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments and as a Bride adorneth her self with her Jewels For as the earth springs forth her bud and as the Garden causeth the things sown in it to spring forth so the Lord will cause Righteousness and Praise to spring forth before all the Nations It is a promise of Joy that is made in Isa 56. 6 7 8. To the sons of the stranger that joyn themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the Name of the Lord to be his servants every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my Covenant Even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my House of Prayer What a joyful thing is it to a gracious soul when he may see the reconciled face of God and feel his Fatherly reviving Love and among his Saints may speak his Praise and proclaim his great and blessed name even in his Temple where every man speaketh of his Glory Psalm 29. 9. If the Proud are delighted in their own praise how much more will the humble holy soul be delighted in the Praise of God! When the Love of God is shed abroad in the heart and Faith doth set us as before his Throne or at least doth somewhat withdraw the veil and shew us him that lives
thing which we most excessively love is ordinarily our sharpest scourge That friend whom we most excessively love is usually our greatest sorrow either by their failing our expectations or by our failing theirs or our insufficiency to accomplish the good which we desire of them If they prove unkind it is more grievous then the unkindness of many others If they prove faithful how deeply do we suffer with them in all their sufferings Their wants do pinch us as our own Their reproaches are our shame Their losses take as much from us Their sickness paineth us Their death half killeth us And he that is so happy as to have many such friends is so unhappy as to have more burdens fears and griefs to suffer and more deaths to die then other men But especially to ungodly men these earthly comforts are uncomfortable because they have none of the Divine delights that are the kernel and the spirits but take up with the shell or husk And because their mirth is mixt with their own misery which conscience sometime gripes them for with such deep remorse as cools their comforts And some thoughts of the shortness of their pleasures will be stepping in and ending them before their time So that the bitterness of worldly things surpasseth the delight 4. The Delights of Holiness are Deep and Solid and therefore do stablish and corroborate the Hearts But sensual delights are like childrens laughter they are slight and outside and flitting and vain As children laugh in one breath and cry in the next so worldly joys are followed at the heels by sorrows For they lie not deep and fortifie not the heart against distresses as the delights of faith and holiness do 5. The Pleasures of the Saints are the gift of God and allowed of by him commanded by his word and promoted by his promises and mercies and are but the fruits of his Everlasting Love And being so Divine they must needs be excellent But the Pleasures of ungodly worldly men are partly forbidden and condemned by God and partly contradicted and confounded by his terrible threatnings and the discovery of his wrath There is no Peace saith the Lord to the wicked Isa 48. 22. 57. 21. God doth disown and protest against their peace If they will keep it and make it good it must be against his will He forbiddeth joy to a rebellious people Hos 9. 1. Rejoyce not O Israel for joy as other people for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God He calleth them to weeping and mourning and renting of the heart Joel 2. 12 13. Hear what God saith to them in their greatest pleasures Jam. 5. 1 2 3 4 5. Go to now ye rich men weep and howle for your miseries that shall come upon you Your riches are corrupted and your garments moath-eaten Your gold and silver is cankred and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eate your flesh as it were fire yee have heaped treasure together for the last days Yee have lived in pleasure on earth and been wanton Yee have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter A man would think it should either Turn them or Torment them and fill their hearts with continual horrour to sind God thus solemnly protesting against their peace and sentencing them to woe and sorrows 6. The Pleasures of the Godly are clean and noble and honest and honourable They delight in things of greatest worth for which they had their Natures their Time and all But the Pleasures of sinners are base and filthy They Delight as swine in wallowing in the mire and as the dog to eat his own Vomit 2. Pet 2. 22. They delight to wrong the God that made them and by whom they live and to cross the ends of their lives and mercies and to drive away all true delights and to undo themselves This is the matter of their delight 7. The Devil is a great enemy to the Delights of Holiness which is a sign that they are excellent He doth what he can to keep men from the Holy State lest they should meet with the Happiness that attends it And if he prevail not in this his chief design he doth what he can to fill up the lives of believers with calamities All the enemies that he can raise up against them shall by temptations scorns or injuries assault their comforts All the storms that he can raise shall be sure to fall upon them How busie is he to fill them with fears and doubtings and to cast perplexing thoughts into their minds or to misâ—ead them into some perplexing ways and fasten on them entangling doctrines or disquieting principles How cunningly and diligently will he argue against their peace and comforts and seek to hide the Love of God and dishonour the blood and grace and covenant of Christ and cross the comforting workings of the spirit How subtilly will he question all our Evidences and extenuate all Gods comforting mercies and do all that he can that the godly may have a Hell on Earth though they shall have none hereafter It is sure an excellent Joy and Pleasure which Satan is so great an enemy to 8. The Delights of Holiness do make us better They are so far from disordering the mind and leading us to sin that they compose and purifie the mind and make sin much more odious to us then before No man hates sin so much as he that hath seen the pleased face of God and tasted most the sweetness of his grace and tryed the pleasant paths of life And therefore it is that when a believer comes from fervent prayers or from heavenly conference or meditation or from hearing the blessed word of life laid open plainly and applyed powerfully to his soul he would then abhor a temptation to sensual delights if they were set before him Till we lose the relish of Holy things and suffer our Delight in God to fade we are seldome taken in the snares of any fleshly vanities Money is dirt to us and honour a smoak and lust doth stink as long as we maintain our delight in God He is the best and highest Christian that hath most of these spiritual delights But fleshly Pleasures make men worse They intoxicate the mind and fill it with vanity and folly They are the snares to entrap us and the harlots that do bewitch us and defile the soul that should be chaste for God The noise of this sensual foolish mirth doth drown the voice of God and Reason so that in the needfullest matters they cannot be heard In their hunting and hawking diâ—ing and carding drinking and revelling feasting and dancing how little of God or heaven is on the sinners mind seldome is the soul so unfit for duty so uncapable of instruction so hardened against the word and warnings of the Lord as in the depth of sensual delights Then it is that they are foolish disobedient and deceived when they are serving divers lusts and pleasules as
you are everlastingly shut out How can you for shame beg of God to glorifie you when you take the Glory that he hath promised for a misery If you think that there is a Heaven of such sensual pleasures as you desire or that any shall be saved that only choose Heaven as a less and more tolerable misery then Hell you will shortly find your expectations deceived Lay all these five considerations together and you may perceive what miserable souls those are that can find pleasure in perishing trifles of the world and none in a Holy and Heavenly life Be assured of this whosoever thou art that if God and Heaven and a Holy life be not a thousand times sweeter and more delightful to thee then any thing that this world can afford to thy contentment it is not for want of matter of superabundant delight to be found in God and in his holy ways but it is for want of reason or faith or consideration or a sutable Heart in thee which may make thee fit to know and taste the pleasures which now thou art unacquainted with And is it not pitty that such infinite delights should be set before men and they should lose them all for want of a Heart and appetite to them and should perish by choosing the lowest vanities before them I do therefore earnestly beseech thee that readest these words if thou be one of these unhappy souls that canst find no pleasure in God and Holiness that thou wouldst speedily observe and lament that blindness and wickedness of thy heart that is the cause of this infatuation and corruption of thine apprehension and rational appetite and that thou wouldst presently apply thy self to Christ for the cure of it To which end I advise thee to these following means Direct 1. IF you would taste the pleasure of a holy life bethink you better of the necessity and excellency of it and cast away your prejudice and false conceits which have deceived you and turned your minds against it A child may be deluded to take his own Father for his enemy if he see him in an enemies garb or be perswaded by false suggestions that he hateth him A man may be perswaded to hate his meat if you can but make him believe that it is poyson or to hate his cloaths if you can make him believe they are infected with the plague If you will suffer your understandings to be deluded so far as to overlook the amiable nature of holiness and to think the image of God is but a fancie or that a heavenly life is nothing but hypocrisie and that it is but pride that maketh men seek to be holyer then others and that makes them they cannot goe quietly to Hell in despight of the commands and mercies of the Lord as others do I say if the Devil the great deceiver can possess you with such frantick thoughts as these what wonder if you hate the very name of Holiness How can you find pleasure in the greatest good while you take it for an evil If you will believe all that the Devil and his foolish malicious instruments say of God and of a holy life you shall never love God nor see any loveliness or taste any sweetness in his service Dir. 2. Come neer and search into the inwards of a holy life and try it a little while your selves if you would taste the pleasure of it and do not stand looking on it at a distance where you see nothing but the out side nor judge by bare hearsay which giveth you no taste or relish of it The sweetness of honey or wine oâ— meat is not known by looking on it but by tasting it Come neer and try what it is to live in the Love of God and in the belief and hope of life eternal and in universal obedience to the laws of Christ and then tell us how these things do relish with you You will never know the sweetness of them effectually as long as you are but lookers on It was the similitude which Peter Martyr used in a Sermon which converted the Noble Neopolitane Marquess of Uicum Galeacius Caracciolus who forsook wife and children and honours and lands and countrey and all for the liberty of the Reformed Religion at Geneva saith he If you see the motion of dancers a far off and hear not the Musick you will think they are frantick but when you come near and hear the musick and observe their harmonical orderly motion you will take delight in it and desire to joyn with them So men that judge at a distance of the truth and holy ways of God by the slanderous reports of malignant men will think of the godly as Festus of Paul that they are beside themselves But if they come among them and search more impartially into the reasons of their course and specially if they joyn with them in the inwards and vital actions of religion they will then be quickly of another mind and not go back for all the pleasures or profits of the world In the works of Nature and sometimes of Art the outside is so far from shewing you the excellencies that it is but a comely vaile to hide them Though you would have a handsome cover for your watch yet doth it but hide the well ordered frame and useful motions that are within You must open it and there observe the parts and motions if you would pass a right judgement of the work You would have a comely cover for your Books but it is but to hide the well composed letters from your sight in which the sense and use and excellency doth confist You must open it if you will read it and know the worth of it A common spectator when he seeth a Rose or other flower or fruit-tree thinketh he hath seen all or the chiefest part But it is the secret unsearcheable motions and operations of the vegetative life and juice within by which the beauteous flowers and sweet fruits are produced and wonderfully differenced from each other that are the excellent part and mysteries in these natural works of God Could you but see these secret inward causes and operations it would incomparably more content you He that passeth by and looketh on a Bee-hive and seeth but the Cover and the laborious creatures going in and out doth see nothing of the admirable operations within which God hath taught them Did you there see how they make their wax and honey and compose their combs and by what laws and in what order their Common-wealth is governed and their work carryed on you would know more then the out side of the â—ive can shew you So it is about the life of Godliness If you saw the inward motions of the quickening spirit upon the soul and the order and exercise of every grace and by what laws the thoughts and affections are governed and to whom they tend you would then see more of the beauty of Religion then you can see
it therefore if you can have it Dir. 9. In your addresses to God in holy worship be sure that Praise and Thansgiving have its due proportion They are the chief and most excellent and acceptable part and therefore let them not have the smallest room Though your sins and wants be as great as you imagine in your complaints it is yet your duty to Praise the Excellencies and Attributes and works of your Creator and to be Thankful for the preparations made by Christ and freely offered you so that they shall certainly be yours if you accept them But much more Thankful should you be that have but the evidence of Desire and Consent to prove your Interest in Christ and in his Covenant I would intreat poor troubled fearful souls to Resolve upon this one thing which is reasonable necessary and in their power that when they are upon their knees with God they will spend as much of their Time and words in confessing mercies and Praising God as in confessing sin and condemning themselves and lamenting their wants and weaknesses and distress Though they cannot do it cheerfully as they should let them do it as they can And at last while they keep in the right way of duty and use themselves to the commemoration of that which is sweet and grateful to the soul Religion it self will become sweet and grateful and chearfulness of heart will be promoted by our own considerations expressions The same I desire of them as to their Thoughts that they will do their best to spend as many thoughts and as much time upon Mercy as upon sin and misery and upon the Goodness and Love of God in Christ as upon his threatnings and terrous Dir. 10. If you would taste the comforts of a holy life be sure that you give up your selves to Christ without reserve and follow him fully and place all your hopes and confidence in his promised rewards Serve him with your best yea with your all and not with some cheap and heartless service Comforts are the Rewards of faithfulness They that do God the most sincere and costly service and save nothing from him which he calleth them to lose are likest to be encouraged by his sweetest comforts It is sluggish neglects and unfruitfulness doing no good in the world but thinking to be saved by a dull profession that makes so many uncomfortable professors as there be Though I know that on the other extream too many live in pining sadness by not understanding the Covenant of Grace which accepteth of sincerity and secureth the weak and infants in the family of Christ But yet the barren unprofitable Christians I mean that comparatively are such though they be sincere shall find that God will not encourage any in sloathfulness by his smiles and consolations Direct 11. If you would know the Rest and Comfort of Believers see that you Rest in the Will of God in all Conditions as the Center and only bottom for your souls His will is not to be reduced to yours strive therefore to bring yours most fully and quietly to his Gods Will is the Universal Original and End of all things and there is no Felicity or Rest for man but in the fulfilling and pleasing and disposals of his will Be not too desirous of the fulfilling of your own wills and murmure not against the disposals of the Will of God It cannot but be Good which proceedeth from that will which is the Spring of good The accomplishment of Gods Will is the perfection of all created beings being that End for which they are all created If you Rest in your own wills your Rest will be imperfect disturbed and short of duration For your wills are the wills of weak and vicious men They are frequently misguided by an ignorant mind and perverted by a corrupt and byassed heart But Gods will is never misguided nor ever determined of any thing but for the best If you Rest here you Rest in safety you may be sure you shall never be deceived by him You may Rest in constant peace and quietness for God is unchangeable and will not be off and on with us as we are with him and with our selves As you pray that his Will may be done acquiesce in the doing of his Will and whatever befall you repose and satisfie your hearts in this Direct 12. Lastly let me add that when you have all the Directions that can be given you trust not too much to your own understanding and skill for the application of them to your selves in any weighty difficult cases But as you will not think it enough for the health of your bodies to have Physick Books and Physick Lectures unless you have also a Physicion who knoweth more then you to direct you in the application so think it not enough that you have the best Books and Sermons unless you have also a faithful and judicious Pastor whose advice you may crave in particular difficulties and who may direct you in the discovery of your own diseases and applying the fittest remedies in their seasons and measures with such Rules and Cautions as are necessary to the success If God had not known that there would still be many children and weak ones in his family that would stand in need of the instruction support and encouragement of the strong he would never have settled Pastors in his Church to watch over all the flocks and to be alwayes ready at hand for the confirmation and encouragement of such as need their help There had been no Physicions if there had been no diseases Tire not your Physicions with needless consultations for easie and ordinary cases but be not without them in your greater straits and wants and doubts And blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of Mercies and the God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we our selves are comforted of God For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ And whether we be afflicted it is for your consolation and salvation which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer or whether we be comforted it is for your consolation and salvation 2 Cor. 1. 4 5 6. While you are sick or infants the stronger must support you You cannot stand or go or suffer of your selves And God is so tender of his weak and little ones that he hath not only given strength to others for their sakes and commanded the strong to bear the burdens and infirmities of the weak Gal. 6. 1 2. Rom. 15. 1 2 3 4. but also established the Ministerial office much for this end Mal. 2. 7. For the Priests lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the Law at his mouth for he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts Not that we should disclose our Consciences and depend for guidance on every ignorant or ungodly man that hath the name and place of a Priest Even among the Papists men have leave to choose such Confessors as are fittest for them If the Priests depart ouâ— of the way and cause many to stumble at the Law and corrupt the Covenant of Levi the Lord will make them contemptible and base before all the people according as they have not kept his wayes but been partial in the Law Mal. 2. 8 9. But use those that are qualified and sent by the Spirit of God who in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly wisdom but by the Grace of God have had their conversation in the world especially to you-wards 2 Cor. 1. 12. Such as you have acknowledged in part that they are your rejoycing as you also are theirs in the day of the Lord Jesus vers 14. Not using them as such as have dominion over your faith but as those that by office qualification and willingness and disposition are Helpers of your Joy vers 24. In the saithful practice of these Directions you will find that Holiness is the most Pleasant way and that the Godly choose the better part and that the ungodly sensualists do live as BRUTES while they unreasonably refuse to live as SAINTS FINIS I. C. Scaliger Epidorp 1. 7. p. 296. Hoc quod Valeo Non queo quod debeo Quid 〈◊〉 Mensura meaâ—es tu Domine immensa potestas Non ego tua Quodque habeâ— tu mihi dedisti Quodque do non do sed accipis hoc enim dedisti Tu solus tibi satis es tu mihi tibique Nec te laudo ubi laudo sed ipse te ipse laudas Me persiciens non tua sic laudibus ornans Queis me ad te trahis haud ego te traho super me Me praeveniens hic ades ut mihi superfis
Let him take all there is no living quietly by 〈…〉 A dog at his carrion or a swine in his trough is not more greedy then many of these sensualists that labour of the Caninus appâ—titus to their trash But to Holiness they have no appetite and are worse then indifferent to the things that are inâ—…sirable They have no covetousuess for the things which 〈…〉 commanded earnestly to covet 1 Cor. 12 31. They have â—…tle hunger and thirst after righteousness that a very little or none will satisfie them Here they are pleading alwayes for â—â—deration and against too much and too earnest and too long And all is too much with them that is above stark naught or dead hypocrisie and all is too earnest and too long that would make Religion seem a business or would engage them to seem serious in their own profession or put them past jeast in the worship of God and the matters of their salvation Let but their servants or children neglect their worldly business which I confess they should not do and they shall hear of it with both ears But if they sin against God or neglect his Word or Worship they shall meet with more patience then Eli's sons did A cold reproof is usually the best and it is well if they be not encouraged in their sin and if a child or servant that begins to be serious for salvation be not rebuked derided and hindred by them If on their dayes of labour they over-sleep themselves they shall be sure to be called up to work and good reason but when do they call them up to prayer When do they urge them to read or consider or conferr of the things that concern their everlasting life The Lords own day which is appointed to be set apart for matters of this nature is wasted in idleness or worldly talk Come at any time into their company and you may have talk enough and too much of news or of other mens matters of their worldly business sports and pleasures But about God and their salvation they have so little to say and that so heartlesly and on the by as if they were things that belonged not to their care and duty and no whit concerned them Talk with them about the renovation of the soul and the nature of holiness and the life to come and you shall find them almost as dumb as a fish or as dry as a chip or as erroneous or insensible as those that speak but words by rote to shew you how little they savour or mind the things of the Spirit The most understand not matters of this nature nor much desire or care to understand them If one would teach 〈…〉 personally they are too old to be catechized or to learn though not too old to be ignorant of the matters which they were made for and are preserved for in the world They are too wise to learn to be wise and too good to be taught how to be good â—…ough not too wise to follow the seducements of the Devil â—…he world nor too good to be the slaves of Satan and the deâ—…rs and enemies of goodness If they do any thing which theâ—… a serving of God it is some cold and heartless use of wordâ—…ake themselves believe that for all their sins they shall be saved so that God will call that a serving of their sins and abomination which they call a serving of God Some of them will confess that Holiness is good but they hope God will be merciful to them without it And some do so hate it that it is a displeasing irksom thing to them to hear any serious discourse of holiness and they detest and deride those as fanatick troublesome Precisians that diligently seek the One thing necessary So that if the Belief of the most may be judged by their practices we may confidently say that they do not practically believe that ever they shall be brought to Judgement or that there is any Heaven or Hell to be expected and that their confession of the truth of the holy Scriptures and their profession of the Articles of the Christian Faith are no proofs that they heartily take them to be true Who can be such a stranger to the world as not to see that this as the case of the greatest part of men And which is worst of all they go on in this course against all that can be said to them and will give no impartial considerate hearing to the truth which would recover them to their wits but live as if it would be a felicity to them in Hell to think that they came thither by wilful resolution and in despight of the remedy And is it not a sad prospect to a man that believeth the Word of God and the life to come to look upon such a distracted world O Sirs if Jesus Christ be wise that condemneth their course and them then certainly all these men are fools And if Christ knew what he said we must needs think that they know not what they do O what is the matter that reasonable men should have no more use of their reason in things of such importance then thus to neglect their everlasting state for a thing of naught Did God make them unreasonable or give them understandings uncapable of things of such high concernment Or rather have 〈…〉 not drowned their reason in sensuality and wilfully poisoâ—…th malicious aversness to God and Holiness What is â—…ter that the One thing needful is no more regarded Hath God made them believe that they shall dwell here for ever and never die No surely this is so gross a lye that the Devil himself cannot make them believe it They know that they musâ—… sure as they are alive And yet they prepare not but wâ—…eir dayes in scraping in this dunghill world as if they werâ—…o no further Did God never warn them by a Sermon or 〈…〉 to prepare for the life which they must live for ever Yes â—…y a time but they would take no warning Did God never â—â—ll them that after this life there is another where they must live in endless joy or torment Yes and they professed that they did believe it They heard it an hundred times over till they were weary of hearing it Did God make them believe that they shall die like beasts that have no further to go nor any other life to live No if they do believe this it is the Devil and not God that maketh them believe it What then is the matter that the One thing needful is no more regarded Hath God shut up their souls in desperation so that it is in vain to seek or trouble themselves for that of which there is no hope Oh no! his compassion hath provided them a full remedy by the death of his Son Redemption is procured and he hath made them a deed of gift of Christ and pardon and eternal life and tendred it to them that upon theâ—â— acceptance it may be