would fill mens ears with the constant lamentations of their miserable state and despairing accusations against themselves as if they had been the most humble people in the world and yet be as passionate in the maintaining their innocency when another accuseth them and as intolerably peevish and tender of their own reputation in any thing they are blamed for as if they were the proudest persons on earth still denying or extenuating every disgraceful fault that they are charged with This cherishing of sin doth hinder Assurance these four ways 1. It doth abate the degree of our Graces and so makes them more undiscernable 2. It obscureth that which it destroyeth not for it beareth such sway that Grace is not in Action nor seen to stir nor scarce heard speak for the noise of this Corruption 3. It puteth out or dimmeth the eye of the Soul that it cannot see its own condition and it benummeth and stupifieth that he cannot feel its own case 4. But especially it provoketh God to withdraw himself his Comforts and the Assistance of the Spirit without which we may search long enough before we have Assurance God hath made a separation betwixt Sin and Peace Though they may consist together in remiss degrees yet so much as Sin prevaileth in the Soul so much will the Peace of that Soul be defective As long as thou dost favour or cherish thy Pride and Self-esteem thy aspiring projects and love of the world thy secret lusts and pleasing the desires of the flesh or any the like unchristian practise thou expectest Assurance and Comfort in Vain God will not encourage thee by his precious gifts in a course of sinning This worm will be crawling and gnawing upon thy Conscience It will be a freting devouring canker to thy Consolations Thou mayst steal a spark of false comfort from thy worldly prosperity or delights or thou mayst have it from some false Opinions or from the delusions of Satan But from God thou wilt have no more Comfort then thou makest Conscience of sinning However an Antinomian may tell thee That thy Comforts have no such dependance upon thy Obedience nor thy discomforts upon thy disobedience and therefore may speak as much Peace to thee in the course of thy sinning as in thy most conscionable walking yet thou shalt find by experience that God will not do so If any man set up his Idols in his Heart and put the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face and cometh to a Minister or to God to enquire for Assurance and Comfort God will Answer that man by himself and in stead of comforting him he will set his Face against him he will Answer him According to the multitude of his Idols Read Ezek. 14.3 4 5 6 7 8 9. SECT XVIII 9. ANother very great and common Cause of want of Assurance and Comfort is When men grow Lazy in the spiritual part of duty and keep not up their Graces in constant and lively Action As Dr Sibbs saith truly It is the lazy Christian commonly that lacketh Assurance The way of painful duty is the way of fullest Comfort Christ carryeth all our Comforts in his hand If we are out of that way where Christ is to be met we are out of the way where Comfort is to be had These three ways doth this Laziness debar us of our Comforts 1. By stopping the Fountain and causing Christ to withhold this blessing from us Parents use not to smile upon children in their neglects and disobedience So far as the Spirit is Grieved he will suspend his Consolations Assurance and Peace are Christ's great Encouragements to faithfulness and obedience And therefore though our Obedience do not Merit them yet they usually rise and fall with our Diligence in duty They that have entertained the Antinomian dotages to cover their Idleness and Viciousness may talk their non-sence against this at pleasure but the laborious Christian knows it by experience As prayer must have Faith and Fervency to procure its success besides the Bloodshed and Intercession of Christ Jam. 5.15 16. so must all other parts of our Obedience He that will say to us in that Triumphing day Well Done Good and Faithful Servant c. Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord Will also clap his Servants upon the back in their most Affectionate and Spiritual Duties and say Well Done Good and Faithful Servant take this Fore-taste of thy Everlasting Joy If thou grow seldom and customary and cold in Duty especially in thy secret Prayers to God and yet findest no abatement in thy Joys I cannot but fear that thy Joys are either Carnal or Diabolical 2. Grace is never apparent and sensible to the Soul but while it is in Action Therefore want of Action must needs cause want of Assurance Habits are not felt immediately but by the freeness and facility of their Acts Of the very Being of the Soul it self nothing is felt or perceived if any more Be but only its Acts. The fire that lyeth still in the flint is neither seen nor felt but when you smite it and force it into Act it is easily discerned The greatest Action doth force the greatest Observation whereas the dead or unactive are not remembred or taken notice of Those that have long lain still in their graves are out of mens thoughts as well as their sight but those that walk their streets and bear Rule among them are noted by all It is so with our Graces That you have a Habit of Love or Faith you can no otherwise know but as a consequence by reasoning but that you may have the Acts you may know by Feeling If you see a man lie still in the way what will you do to know whether he be drunk or in a swoun or dead Will you not stir him or speak to him to see whether he can go Or feel his pulse or observe his breath Knowing that where there is life their is some kind of motion I earnestly beseech thee Christian observe and practise this excellent Rule Thou now knowest not whether thou have Repentance or Faith or Love or joy Why be more in the Acting of these and thou wilt easily know it Draw forth an Object for Godly sorrow or Faith or Love or Joy and lay thy heart flat unto it and take pains to provoke it into suitable action and then see whether thou have these Graces or no. As Doctor Sibbs observeth There is somtimes Griefe for sin in us when we think there is none it wants but stirâ—ing up by some quickening word The like he saith of Love and may be said of every other Grace You may go seeking for the Hare or Partridge many hours and never find them while they lie close and stir not but when once the Hare betakes him self to his legges and the bird to her wings then you see them presently So long as a Christian hath his Graces in lively Action so long for the most
having lost their strength and Afflictions less grievous as having lost their sting and every Mercy will be better known and relished Reader it is under God in thine own choice now whether thou wilt live thus blessed or not and whether all this pains which I have taken for thee shall prosper or be lost If it be lost through thy laziness which God forbid be it known to thee thou wilt prove the greatest looser thy self If thou value not this Heavenly Angelical life how canst thou say that thou valuest Heaven And if thou value not it no wonder if thou be shut out The power of godliness lieth in the actings of the soul Take heed that thou stick not in the vain deluding form O man VVhat hast thou to minde but God and Heaven Art thou not almost out of this world already Dost thou not look every day when one disease or other will let out thy soul Doth not the Bier stand ready to carry thee to the Grave and the VVorms wait to feed upon thy face and heart What if thy Pulse must beat a few strokes more and what if thou have a few more breathes to fetch before thou breathe out thy last and what if thou have a few more nights to sleep before thou sleep in the dust Alas what will this be when it is gone And is it not almost gone already Very shortly thou wilt see thy glass run out and say thy self My life is done my time is gone its past recalling there 's nothing now but Heaven or Hell before me O where then should thy heart be now but in Heaven Didst thou but know what a dreadful thing it is to have a strange and doubtful thought of Heaven when a man lies dying it would sure rowze thee up And what other thoughts but strange can that man have that never thought seriously of Heaven till then Every mans first thoughts are strange about all things Familiarity and acquaintance comes not in a moment but is the consequent of Custom and frequent Converse And strangeness naturally raiseth dread as familiarity doth delight What else makes a Fish or a wilde Beast flie from a man when domestick Creatures take pleasure in his company So wilt thou flie from God if thou knewest how who should be thy onely happiness if thou do not get this strangeness removed in thy life time And is it not pity that a childe should be so strange to his own Father as to fear nothing more then to go into his presence and to think himself best when he is furthest from him and to flie from his face as a wilde Creature will do from the face of a man Alas how little do many godly ones differ from the world either in their comforts or willingness to die and all because they live so strange to the place and Fountain of their comforts Besides a little verbal or other outside duties or talking of controversies and doctrines of Religion or forbearing the practice of many sins how little do the most of the Religious differ from other men when God hath prepared so vast a difference hereafter If a word of Heaven fall in now and then in their conference alas how slightly is it and customary and heartless And if their Prayers or Preaching have heavenly expressions they usually are fetcht from their meer invention or memory or Books and not from the experience or feeling of their hearts O what a life might men live if they were but willing and diligent God would have our joyes to be far more then our sorrows yea he would have us to have no sorrow but what tendeth to joy and no more then our sins have made necessary for our good How much do those Christians wrong God and themselves that either make their thoughts of God the in-let of their sorrows or let these offered joyes lie by as neglected or forgotten Some there be that say It is not worth so much time and trouble to think of the greatness of the joyes above so we can make sure they are ours we know they are great But as these men obey not the Command of God which requireth them to have their Conversation in Heaven and to set their Affections on things above so do they wilfully make their own lives miserable by refusing the delights that God hath set before them And yet if this were all it were a smaller matter if it were but the loss of their comforts I would not say so much But see what abundance of other mischiefs do follow the absence of these Heavenly Delights First It will damp if not destroy our very love to God so deeply as we apprehend his bounty and exceeding love to us and his purpose to make us eternally happy so much will it raise our love Love to God and delight in him are still conjunct They that conceive of God as one that desireth their blood and damnation cannot heartily love him Secondly It will make us have seldom and unpleasing thoughts of God for our thoughts will follow our love and delight Thirdly And it will make men to have as seldom and unpleasing speech of God For who will care for talking of that which he hath no delight in What makes men still talking of worldliness or wickedness but that these are more pleasant to them then God Fourthly It will make men have no delight in the service of God when they have no delight in God nor any sweet thoughts of Heaven which is the end of their services No wonder if such Christians complain That they are still backward to Duty that they have no delight in Prayer in Sacraments or in Scripture it self If thou couldst once delight in God thou wouldst easily delight in duty especially that which bringeth thee into the neerest converse with him But till then no wonder if thou be weary of all further then some external excellency may give thee a carnal delight Doth not this cause many Christians to go on so heavily in secret duties like the Ox in the Furrow that will go no longer then he is driven and is glad when he is unyoaked Fifthly Yea it much endangereth the perverting of mens judgments concerning the ways of God and means of Grace when they have no delight in God and Heaven Though it be said Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum That Judgment perisheth when things pass into Affection yet that is but when Affection leadeth the Judgment and not when it followeth Affection holdeth its object faster then bare Judgment doth The Soul will not much care for that Truth which is not accompanied with suitable goodness and it will more easily be drawn to believe that to be false which it doth not delightfully apprehend to be good which doubtless is no small cause of the ungodlies prejudice against the ways of God and of many formal mens dislike of extemporate Prayers and of a strict observation of the Lords day Had they a true
my Aphorisms of Justification shew which I wrote to cut the unobserved Sinews of Antinomianism and open the true Scripture Mean in that point and which I am more confirmed in the truth of now then ever by the weakness of all that I can yet hear against it and yet if I should zealously press my judgment on others and seek to make a partie for it and disturb the Peace of the Church and separate from my Brethren I should fear lest I should prove a fire-brand in Hell for being a fire-brand in the Church And for all the interest I have in your Judgments and Affections I here charge you That if God should give me up to any factious Church-rending course against which I daily pray that you forsake me and follow me not a step And for Peace with one another follow it with all your might If it be possible as much as in you lieth live peaceably with all men Rom. 12.18 mark this When you feel any sparks of discontent in your brest take them as kindled by the Divel from Hell and take heed you cherish them not If the flames begin to break forth in Censoriousness Reproaches and hard Speeches of others be as speedy and busie in quenching it as if it were fire in the Thatch of your houses For why should your houses be dearer to you then the Church which is the house of God or then your souls which are the Temples of the Holy Ghost If any heart-burnings arise do not keep strange but go together and lovingly debate it or pray together that God would reconcile you or refer the matter to your Minister or others and let not the Sun go down on your wrath Hath God spoke more against any sin then unpeaceableness If ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive you which made Endovicus Crocius say That this is the measure and essential propertie of the lest degree of true Faith Syntag. lib. 4. cap. 16. If you love not each other you are no Disciples of Christ nay if you love not your enemies and bless not them that curse you and pray not for them that hurt and persecute you you are no Children of God The Wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable gentle easie to be intreated c. Jam. 3.17 O remember that piercing example of Christ who washed his Disciples feet to teach us that we must stoop as low to one another Sure God doth not jest with you in all these plain Scriptures I charge you in the Name of Christ if you cannot have peace otherwise That you suffer wrongs and reproaches that you go and beg peace of those that should beg it of you yea that you beg it on your knees of the poorest beggar rather then lose it And remember Rom. 16.17 18. 7. Above all be sure you get down the pride of your hearts Forget not all the Sermons I preached to you against this sin No sin more natural more common or more deadly A proud man is his own Idol onely from pride cometh contention There is no Lâ—ving in peace with a proud person Every disrespect will cast them into a Feaver of discontent If once you grow wise in your own eyes and love to be valued and preferred and love those best that think highliest of you and have secret heart-risings against any that disregard you or have a low esteem of you and cannot endure to be flighted or spoke evil of never take your selves for Christians if this be your case To be a true Christian without Humilitie is as hard as to be a man without a Soul O poor England How low art thou brought by the Pride of Ignorant Zealots Dear Friends I can foretel you without the gift of prophecy That if any among you do fall from the Truth mark which are the proudest that cannot endure to be contradicted and that vilifie others and those will likely be they And if ever you be broke in pieces and ruined Pride will be the cause 8. Be sure you keep the mastery over your flesh and senses Few ever fall from God but flesh-pleasing is the cause Many think that by flesh the Scripture means onely our in-dwelling sin when alas it is this sensitive appetite that it chargeth us to subdue Nothing in the world damneth so many as flesh-pleasing while men generally chuse it as their Happiness in stead of God O remember who hath said If ye live after the flesh ye shall die and Make no provision for the flesh to satisfie its desires Rom 8.5 6 7. and 13.14 Think of this when you are tempted to drunkenness and gluttony and lustfulness and worldliness and when you would fain have your dwellings and states more delightful You little think what a sin it is even to please your flesh further then it tends to help you in the service of God 9. Make conscience of the great duty of reproving and exhorting those about you Make not your souls guilty of the oaths ignorance and ungodliness of others by your silence Admonish them lovingly and modestly but be sure you do it and that seriously This is the first step in Discipline Expect not that your Minister should put any from the Sacrament whom you have not thus admonished once and again Punish not before due process 10. Lastly Be sure to maintain a constant delight in God and a seriousness and spirituality in all his Worship Think it not enough to delight in Duties if you delight not in God Judg not of your duties by the bulk and number but by this sweetness You are never stable Christians till you reach this Never forget all those Sermons I preached to you on Psal 37.4 Give not way to a customary dulness in duty Do every duty with all thy might especially be not slight in secret Prayer and Meditation Lay not out the chief of your zeal upon externals and opinions and the smaller things of Religion Let must of your daily work be upon your hearts Be still suspicious of them understand their mortal wickedness and deceitfulness and trust them not too far Practise that great duty of daily watching pray earnestly That you be not lead into temptation Fear the beginings and appearances of sin Beware lest Conscience once lose its tenderness Make up every breach between God and your consciences betime Learn how to live the life of Faith and keep fresh the sense of the love of Christ and of your continual need of his Blood Spirit and Intercession And how much you are beholden and engaged to him Live in a constant readiness and expectation of death and be sure to get acquainted with this Heavenly Conversation which this Book is written to direct you in which I commend to your use hoping you will be at the pains to read it as for your sakes I have been to write it And I shall beg for you of the Lord while I live on this Earth That he will perswade
with the way All Motion ends at the Center and all Means cease when we have the End Therefore prophecying ceaseth tongues fail and knowledg shall be done away that is so far as it had the nature of a Means and was imperfect And so faith may be said to cease not all faith for how shall we know all things past which we saw not but by beleeving how shall we know the last Judgment the resurrection of the body before hand but by beleeving how shall we know the life everlasting the Eternity of the joys we possess but by beleeving But all that faith which as a Means referred to the chief End shall cease There shall be no more prayer because no more necessity but the full enjoyment of what we pray'd for Whether the soul pray for the bodies resurrection for the last judgment c. or whether soul and body pray for the eternal continuance of their joys is to me yet unknown Otherwise we shall not need to pray for what we have and we shall have all that is desirable Neither shall we need to fast and weep and watch any more being out of the reach of sin and temptations Nor will there be use for Instructions and Exhortations Preaching is done The Ministry of man ceaseth Sacraments useless The Laborers called in because the harvest is gathered the tares burned and the work is done The Unregenerate past hope the Saints past fear for ever Much less shall there be any need of laboring for inferior ends as here we do seeing they will all devolve themselves into the Ocean of the ultimate End and the lesser good be wholy swallowed up of the Greatest SECT II. 2. THis Rest containeth a perfect freedom from all the Evils that accompanied us through our course and which necessarily follow our absence from the chief good Besides our freedom from those eternal flames and restless miseries which the neglecters of Christ and Grace must remedilesly endure an inheritance which both by birth and actual merit was due to us as well as to them As God will not know the wicked so as to own them so neither will Heaven know iniquity to receive it for there entereth nothing that defileth or is unclean all that Remains without And doubtless there is not such a thing as Grief and Sorrow known there Nor is there such a thing as a pale face a languid body feeble joynts unable infancy decrepit age peccant humors dolorous sickness griping fears consuming cares nor whatsoever deserves the name of evil Indeed a gale of Groans and Sighs a stream of Tears accompanyed us to the very Gates and there bid us farewel for ever We did weep and lament when the world did rejoyce but our Sorrow is turned into Joy and our Joy shall no man take from us God were not the chief and perfect good if the full fruition of him did not free us from all Evil. But we shall have occasion to speak more fully of this in that which follows SECT III. 3. THis Rest containeth the Highest Degree of the Saints personal perfection both of Soul and Body This necessarily qualifies them to enjoy the Glory and throughly to partake the sweetness of it Were the Glory never so great and themselves not made capable by a personal perfection suitable thereto it would be little to them There 's necessary a right disposition of the Recipient to a right enjoying and affecting This is one thing that makes the Saints Joys there so great Here Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard nor Heart conceived what God hath layd up for them that wait for him For the Eye of flesh is not capable of seeing it nor this Ear of hearing it nor this Heart of understanding it But there the Eye and Ear and Heart are made capable else how do they enjoy it The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object The more perfect the Appetite the sweeter the Food The more musical the Ear the more pleasant the Melody The more perfect the Soul the more Joyous those Joys and the more Glorious to us is that Glory Nor is it onely our sinful imperfection that is here to be removed nor onely that which is the fruit of sin but that which adhered to us in our pure naturals Adams dressing the Garden was neither sin nor the fruit of sin Nor is either to be less Glorious then the Stars or the Sun â—n the Firmament of our Father Yet is this the dignity to which the Righteous shall be advanced There is far more procured by Christ then was lost by Adam It 's the misery of wicked men here that all without them is mercy excellent mercies but within them a heart full of sin shuts the door against all and makes them but the more miserable When all 's well within then all 's well indeed The neer Good is the best and the neer evil and enemy the worst Therefore will God as a special part of his Saints Happiness perfect themselves as well as their condition SECT IV. 4. THis Rest containeth as the principal part our nearest fruition of God the Chiefest Good And here Reader wonder not If I be at a loss and if my apprehensions receive but little of that which is in my expressions If to the beloved Disciple that durst speak and enquire into Christs secrets and was filled with his Revelations and saw the new Jerusalem in her Glory and had seen Christ Moses and Elias in part of theirs If it did not appear to him what we shall be but only in general that when Christ appears we shall be like him no wonder if I know little When I know so little of God I cannot know much what it is to enjoy him When it is so little I know of mine own soul either it's quiddity or quality while it 's here in this Tabernacle how little must I needs know of the Infinite Majesty or the state of this soul when it 's advanced to that enjoyment If I know so little of Spirits and Spirituals how little of the Father of Spirits Nay if I never saw that creature which contains not something unsearchable nor the worm so small which afforded not matter for Questions to puzzle the greatest Phylosopher that ever I met with no wonder then if mine eye fail when I would look at God my tongue fail me in speaking of him and my heart in conceiving As long as the Athenian Superscription doth so too well suite with my sacrifices To the unknown God and while I cannot contain the smallest rivelet It 's little I can contain of this immense Ocean We shall never be capable of clearly knowing till we are capable of fully enjoying nay nor till we do actually enjoy him What strange conceivings hath a man born blind of the Sun and its light or man born deaf of the nature of sounds and musick So do we yet
and mercy shall follow them all the days of their lives and then they shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever Psal. 23.6 Oh Christians beleeve and consider this Is Sun and Moon and Stars and all creatures called upon to praise the Lord What then should his people do Surely they are nearer him and enjoy more of him then the bruits shall do All his works praise him but above all let his Saints bless him Psal. 145.10 Oh let them speak of the glory of his Kingdom and talk of his power To make known to the sons of men his mighty Acts and the Glorious Majesty of his Kingdom Vers. 11.12 Let his praise be in the Congregation of his Saints Let Israel rejoyce in him that made him let the children of Zion be joyful in their King Let the Saints be joyful in Glory let them sing aloud upon their beds Let the high praises of God be in their for the Lord taketh pleasure in his people and will beautifie the meek with salvation Psal. 149.1 2 5 6 4. This is the light that is sown for the Righteous and gladness for the upright in heart Psal. 97.11 Yea this honour have all his Saints Psalm 149.9 If the estate of the Devils before their fall were not much meaner then this and perhaps lower then some of their fellow Angels surely their sin was most accursed and detestable Could they yet aspire higher And was there yet room for discontent What is it then that would satisfie them Indeed the distance that we sinners and mortals are at from our God leaves us some excuse for discontent with our estate The poor soul out of the depth cries and cries aloud as if his Father were out of hearing sometime he chides the interposing clouds sometime he is angry at the vast gulf that 's set between sometime he would fain have the vail of mortality drawn aside and thinks death hath forgot his business he ever quarrels with this Sin that separates and longs till it be separated from his Soul that it may separate God and him no more Why poor Christian be of good chear the Time is Near when God and thou shall be Near and as Near as thou canst well desire Thou shalt dwell in his family is that enough It 's better to be a door-keeper in his house then enjoy the portion of the wicked Thou shalt ever stand before him about his Throne in the room with him in his presence chamber Wouldst thou yet be nearer Thou shalt be his child and he thy Father thou shalt be an heir of his Kingdom yea more the Spouse of his Son and what more canst thou desire Thou shalt be a member of the body of his Son he shall be thy Head thou shalt be one with him who is one with the Father Read what he hath desired for thee of his Father John 17.21 22 23. That they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us and the Glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me What can you desire yet more except you will as some do abuse Christs expression of oneness to conceive of such a union as shall Deifie us Which were a sin one step beyond the aspiring Arrogancy of Adam and I think beyond that of the Devils A Real Conjunction improperly called Union we may expect And a true Union of Affections A Moral Union improperly still called Union And a true Relative Union such as is between the members of the same political body and the Head yea such as is between the husband and the wife who are called one flesh And a real communion and Communication of Real Favors flowing from that Relative Union If there be any more it is acknowledged unconceiveable and consequently unexpressable and so not to be Spoken of If any can conceive of a proper Real Union and Identity which shall neither be a unity of Essence nor of person with Christ as I yet cannot I shall not oppose it But to think of Such a Union were high Blasphemy Nor must you think of a Union as some do upon natural Grounds following the dark mistaking principles of Plato and Plotinus If your thoughts be not guided and limited by Scripture in this you are lost Quest. But how is it we shall enjoy God Ans. That 's the fifth and last we come to SECT V. 5. THis Rest containeth A Sweet and constant Action of all the Powers of the Soul and Body in this fruition of God It is not the Rest of a stone which ceaseth from all motion when it attains the Center The Senses themselves as I judg are not only Passive in receiving their object but partly Passive and partly Active Whether the external Senses such as now we have shall be continued and imployed in this work is a great doubt For some of them it 's usually acknowledged they shall cease because their Being importeth their use and their use implyeth our estate of Imperfection As there is no use for eating and drinking so neither for the taste But for other Senses the Question will be harder For Job saith I shall see him with these eyes But do not all senses imply our imperfection If Job did speak of more then a Redemption from his present distress as it 's like he did yet certainly these eyes will be made so Spiritual that whether the name of Sense in the same sence as now shall befit them is a question This body shall be so changed that it shall no more be flesh and blood for that cannot inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 15.50 but a spiritual body vers 44. That which we sow we sow not that body that shall be But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him and to every seed his own Body 1 Cor. 15.37 38. As the Oar is cast into the fire a stone but come forth so pure a mettal that it deserves another name and so the difference betwixt it and the Gold exceeding great So far greater will the change of our bodies and senses be even so great as now we cannot conceive If Grace make a Christian differ so much from what he was that the Christian could say to his Companion Ego non sum ego I am not the man I was how much more will Glory make us differ We may then say much more This is not the body I had and these are not the senses I had But because we have no other name for them let us call them Senses call them Eyes and Ears Seeing and Hearing But thus much conceive of the difference That as much as a Body Spiritual above the Sun in Glory exceedeth
necessary That thy Lord had sweeter ends and meant thee better then thou wouldst believe And that thy Redeemer was saving thee as well when he crossed thy desires as when he granted them and as well when he broke thy Heart as when he bound it up Oh no thanks to thee unworthy Self but shame for this received Crown But to Jehovah and the Lamb be Glory for ever Thus as the memory of the wicked will eternally promote their torment to look back on the pleasures enjoyed the sin committed the Grace refused Christ neglected and time lost So will the Memory of the Saints for ever promote their Joys And as it 's said to the wicked Remember that thou in thy life time receivedst Thy good things So will it be said to the Christian Remember that thou in thy life time receivedst thine evils but now thou art comforted as they are tormented And as here the Remembrance of former good is the occasion of encreasing our grief I remembred God and was troubled I called to Remembrance my Songs in the night Psal. 77.3 6. So there the Remembrance of our former sorrows addeth life to our Joys SECT VIII BUt Oh the full the near the sweet enjoyment is that of the Affections Love and Joy It 's near for Love is of the Essence of the Soul and Love is the Essence of God For God is Love 1 John 4.8 16. How near therefore is this Blessed Closure The Spirits phrase is God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him Vers. 16. The acting of this affection wheresoever carryeth much delight along with it Especially when the object appears deserving and the Affection is strong But O what will it be when perfected Affections shall have the strongest perfect incessant actings upon the most perfect object the ever Blessed God Now the poor soul complains Oh that I could love Christ more but I cannot alas I cannot Yea but then thou canst not chuse but love him I had almost said forbear if thou canst Now thou knowest little of his Amiableness and therefore lovest little Then thine eye will affect thy heart and the continual viewing of that perfect beauty will keep thee in continual ravishments of Love Now thy Salvation is not perfected nor all the mercies purchased yet given in But when the top stone is set on thou shalt with shouting cry Grace Grace Now thy Sanctification is imperfect and thy pardon and Justification not so compleat as then it shall be Now thou knowest not what thou enjoyest and therefore lovest the less But when thou knowest much is forgiven and much bestowed thou wilt Love more Doth David after an imperfect deliverance sing forth his Love Psal. 116.1 I love the Lord because he hath heard my voyce and supplications What think you will he do eternally And how will he love the Lord who hath lifted him up to that Glory Doth he cry out O how I love thy Law My delight is in the Saints on earth and the excellent Psal. 16.3 How will he say then O how I love the Lord and the King of Saints in whom is all my delight Christians doth it not now stir up your love to remember all the experiences of his Love To look back upon a life oâ— mercies Doth not kindness melt you and the Sun-shine of Divine Goodness warm your frozen hearts What will it do then when you shall live in Love and have All in him who is All O the high delights of Love of this Love The content that the heart findeth in it The satisfaction it brings along with it Surely Love is both work and wages And if this were all what a high favour that God will give us leave to love him That he will vouchsafe to be embraced by such Arms that have embraced Lust and Sin before him But this is not all He returneth Love for Love nay a thousand times more As perfect as we shall be we cannot reach his measure of Love Christian thou wilt be then brim full of Love yet love as much as thou canst thou shalt be ten thousand times more beloved Dost thou think thou canst overlove him What! love more then Love it self Were the Arms of the Son of God open upon the Cross and an open passage made to his Heart by the Spear and will not Arms and Heart be open to thee in Glory Did he begin to love before thou lovedst and will he not continue now Did he love thee an enemy thee a sinner thee who even loathedst thy self and own thee when thou didst disclaim thy self And will he not now unmeasurably love thee a Son thee a perfect Saint thee who returnest some love for Love Thou wast wont injuriously to Question his Love Doubt of it now if thou canst As the pains of Hell will convince the rebellious sinner of Gods wrath who would never before believe it So the Joys of Heaven will convince thee throughly of that Love which thou wouldst so hardly be perswaded of He that in love wept over the old Hierusalem neer her Ruines with what love will he rejoyce over the new Hierusalem in her Glory O methinks I see him groaning and weeping over dead Lazarus till he force the Jews that stood by to say Behold how he loved him Will he not then much more by rejoycing over us and blessing us make all even the damned if they see it to say Behold how he loveth them Is his Spouse while black yet comely Is she his Love his Dove his undefiled Doth she ravish his heart with one of her eyes Is her Love better then wine O believing soul study a little and tell me What is the Harvest which these first fruits foretel and the Love which these are but the earnest of Here O here is the Heaven of Heaven This is the Saints fruition of God! In these sweet mutual constant actings and embracements of Love doth it consist To Love and be beloved These are the Everlasting Arms that are underneath Deut. 33.27 His left hand is under their heads and with his right hand doth he embrace them Cant. 2.6 Reader stop here and think a while what a state this is Is it a small thing in thine eyes to be beloved of God to be the Son the Spouse the Love the delight of the King of Glory Christian believe this and think on it Thou shalt be eternally embraced in the Arms of that Love which was from everlasting and will extend to everlasting Of that Love which brought the Son of Gods Love from Heaven to Earth from Earth to the Cross from the Cross to the Grave from the Grave to Glory That Love which was weary hungry tempted scorned scourged buffetted spit upon crucified pierced which did fast pray teach heal weep sweat bleed dye That Love will eternally embrace thee When perfect created Love and most perfect uncreated love meet together O the blessed meeting It will
weeping may endure for a night darkness and sadness go together but Joy cometh in the morning Psal. 30.5 Oh blessed morning thrice blessed morning Poor humble drooping Soul how would it fill thee with Joy now if a voyce from Heaven should tell thee of the Love of God of the pardon of thy sins and should assure thee of thy part in these Joys Oh what then will thy Joy be when thy actual Possession shall convince thee of thy Title and thou shalt be in Heaven before thou art well aware When the Angels shall bring thee to Christ and when Christ shall as it were take thee by the hand and lead thee into the purchased possession and bid thee welcom to his Rest and present thee unspotted before his Father and give thee thy place about his Throne Poor Sinner what sayest thou to such a day as this Wilt thou not be almost ready to draw back and to say What I Lord I the unworthy Neglecter of thy Grace I the unworthy dis-esteemer of thy blood and slighter of thy Love must I have this Glory Make me a hired servant I am no more worthy to be called a son But Love will have it so therefore must thou enter into his Joy SECT X. ANd it is not Thy Joy onely it is a Mutual Joy as well as a Mutual Love Is there such Joy in Heaven at thy Conversion and will there be none at thy Glorification Will not the Angels welcom thee thither and congratulate thy safe Arrival Yea it is the Joy of Jesus Christ For now he hath the end of his undertaking labor suffering dying when we have our Joys When he is Glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that beleeve We are his seed and the fruit of his Souls travel which when he seeth he will be satisfied Isa. 53.10 11. This is Christs Harvest when he shall reap the fruit of his labors and when he seeth it was not in vain it will not repent him concerning his sufferings but he will rejoyce over his purchased inheritance and his people shall rejoyce in him Yea the Father himself puts on Joy too in our Joy As we grieve his Spirit and weary him with our iniquities so is he rejoyced in our Good Oh how quickly Here doth he spy a Returning Prodigal even afar off how doth he run and meet him and with what compassion falls he on his neck and kisseth him and puts on him the best robe and ring on his hands and shoes on his feet and spares not to kill the fatted Calf that they may eat and be merry This is indeed a happy meeting But nothing to the Embracements and the Joy of that last and great Meeting Yea more yet as God doth mutually Love and Joy so he makes this His Rest as it is our Rest. Did he appoint a Sabbath because he rested from six days work and saw all Good and very Good What an eternal Sabbatism then when the work of Redemption Sanctification Preservation Glorification are all finished and his work more perfect then ever and very Good indeed Oh Christians write these words in letters of Gold Zeph. 3.17 The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty He will Save He will Rejoyce over thee with Joy He will Rest in his Love He will Joy over thee with Singing Oh well may we then Rejoyce in our God with Joy and Rest in our Love and Joy in him with Singing See Isai. 65.18 19. And now look back upon all this I say to thee as the Angel to John What hast thou seen Or if yet thou perceive not draw neerer Come up hither Come and see Dost thou fear thou hast been all this while in a Dream Why these are the true sayings of God Dost thou fear as the Disciples that thou hast seen but a Ghost in stead of Christ a Shadow in stead of Rest Why come neer and feel a Shadow contains not those Substantial Blessings nor rests upon the Basis of such Foundation-Truth and sure word of Promise as you have seen these do Go thy way now and tell the Disciples and tell the humble drooping Souls thou meetest with That thou hast in this glass seen Heaven That the Lord indeed is risen and hath here appeared to thee and behold he is gone before us into Rest and that he is now preparing a place for them and will come again and take them to himself that where he is there they may be also Joh. 14.3 Yea go thy ways and tell the unbeleeving world and tell thy unbeleeving heart if they ask What is the hope thou boastest of and what will be thy Rest Why this is my Beloved and my Friend and this is my Hope and my Rest. Call them forth and say Behold what Love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be the Sons of God 1 Joh. 3.1 and that we should enter into our Lords own Rest. SECT XI BUt alass my fearful heart dare scarce proceed Methinks I hear the Almighties voyce saying to me as Elihu Job 38.2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledg But pardon O Lord thy Servants sin I have not pryed into unrevealed things nor with audacious wits curiously searched into thy counsels but indeed I have dishonored thy Holiness wronged thine Excellency disgraced thy Saints Glory by my own exceeding disproportionable pourtraying I bewail from heart that my conceivings fall so short my Apprehensions are so dull my thoughts so mean my Affections so stupid and my expressions so low and unbeseeming such a Glory But I have onely heard by the hearing of the Ear Oh let thy Servant see thee and possess these Joys and then I shall have more suitable conceivings and shall give thee fuller Glory and abhor my present self and disclaim and renounce all these Imperfections I have now uttered that I understood not things too wonderful for me which I knew not Yet I beleeved and therefore spake Remember with whom thou hast to do what canst thou expect from dust but Levity or from corruption but defilement Our foul hands will leave where they touch the marks of their uncleanness and most on those things that are most pure I know thou wilt be sanctified in them that come nigh thee and before all the people thou wilt be glorified And if thy Jealousie excluded from that Land of Rest thy servants Moses and Aaron because they sanctified thee not in the midst of Israel what then may I expect But though the weakness and unreverence be the fruit of mine own corruption yet the fire is from thine Altar and the work of thy commanding I looked not into thine Ark nor put forth my hand unto it without thee Oh therefore wash away these stains also in the blood of the Lamb and let not Jealousie burn us up lest thou affright thy people away from thee and make them in their discouragement to cry out How
they disobeyed whose Ministers they abused whose Servants they hated now sitting to judg them When their own Consciences shall cry out against them and call to their Remembrance all their misdoings Remember at such a time such or such a sin at such a time Christ sued hard for thy Conversion the Minister pressed it home to thy heart thou wast touched to the quick with the Word thou didst purpose and promise returning and yet thou casts off all When an hundred Sermons Sabbaths Mercies shall each step up and say I am witness against the Prisoner Lord I was abused and I was neglected Oh which way will the wretched sinner look Oh who can conceive the terrible thoughts of his heart Now the world cannot help him his old companions cannot help him the Saints neither can nor will onely the Lord Jesus can but Oh there 's the Soul-killing misery he will not Nay without violating the truth of his Word he cannot though otherwise in regard of his Absolute power he might The time was Sinner when Christ would and you would not and now Oh how fain would you and he will not Then he followed thee in vain with entreaties Oh poor Sinner what dost thou Wilt thou sell thy Soul and Saviour for a lust Look to me and be saved Return why wilt thou dye But thy Ear and heart was shut up against all Why now thou shalt cry Lord Lord open to us and he shall say Depart I know you not ye workers of iniquity Now Mercy Mercy Lord Oh but it was Mercy you so long set light by and now your day of Mercy is over What then remains but to cry out to the mountains fall upon us and to the hills O cover us from the presence of him that sits upon the Throne But all in vain For thou hast the Lord of Mountains and hils for thine enemy whose voyce they will obey and not thine Sinner make not light of this for as true as thou livest except a through change and coming in to Christ prevent it which God grant thou shalt shortly to thy unconceiveable horror see that day Oh Wretch Will thy cups then be wine or gall Will they be sweet or bitter Will it comfort thee to think of all thy merry days and how pleasantly thy time slipt away Will it do thee good to think how rich thou wast and how honorable thou wast or will it not rather wound thy very Soul to remember thy folly and make thee with anguish of heart and rage against thy self to cry out Oh Wretch where was thine understanding Didst thou make so light of that sin that now makes thee tremble How couldst thou hear so lightly of the Redeeming Blood of the Son of God How couldst thou quench so many motions of his Spirit and stifle so many quickening thoughts as were cast into thy Soul What took up all that Life's time which thou hadst given thee to make sure work against this day What took up all thy heart thy love and delight which should have been layd out on the Lord Jesus Hadst thou room in thy heart for the worâ—d thy friend thy flesh thy lusts and none for Christ Oh Wretch whom hadst thou to love but him What hadst thou to do but to seek to him and cleave to him and enjoy him Oh wast thou not told of this dreadful day a thousand times till the Commonness of that doctrine made thee weary How couldst thou slight such warnings and rage against the Minister and say he preacheth Damnation Had it not been better to have heard and prevented it then now to endure it Oh now for one offer of Christ for one Sermon for one day of Grace more But too late alass too late Poor careless Sinner I did not think here to have said so much to thee for my business is to refresh the Saints But if these lines do fall into thy hands and thou vouchsafe the reading of them I here charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judg the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom that thou make hast and get alone and set thy self sadly to ponder on these things Ask thy heart Is this true or is it not Is there such a day and must I see it Oh what do I then Why trifle I Is it not time full time that I had made sure of Christ and comfort long ago should I sit still another day who have lost so many Had I not at that day rather be found one of the Holy faithful watchful Christians then a worldling a good-fellow or a man of honor Why should I not then choose it now Will it be best then and is it not best now Oh think of these things A few sad hours spent in serious fore-thoughts is a cheap prevention It 's worth this or It 's worth nothing Friend I profess to thee from the Word of the Lord That of all thy sweet sins there will then be nothing left but the sting in thy Conscience which will never out through all eternity except the blood of Christ beleeved in and valued above all the world do now in this day of grace get it out Thy sin is like a Beautiful Harlot while she is young and fresh she hath many followers but when old and withered every one would shut their hands of her she is onely their shame none would know her So will it be with thee now thou wilt venture on it what ever it cost thee but then when mens rebellious ways are charged on their Souls to death O that thou couldst rid thy hands of it O that thou couldst say Lord it was not I Then Lord when saw we thee hungry naked imprisoned How fain would they put it off Then sin will be sin indeed and Grace will be Grace indeed Then say the foolish Virgins Give us of your Oyl for our Lamps are ouâ— Oh for some of your faith holiness which we were wont to mock at But what 's the answer Go buy for your selves we have little enough would we had rather much more Then they will be glad of any thing like Grace and if they can but produce any external familiarity with Christ or Common gifts how glad are they Lord we have eat and drunk in thy presence prophecyed in thy name cast out devils done many wonderful works we have been baptized heard Sermons professed Christianity But alas this will not serve the turn He will profess to them I never knew you Depart from me ye workers of iniquity Oh dead hearted sinner is all this nothing to thee As sure as Christ is true this is true Take it in his own words Math. 25.31 When the Son of man shall come in his Glory and before him shall be gathered all Nations and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on the right hand and
and my last end might be like his Never take heed therefore what they think or say now for as sure as they shall dye they will one of these days think and say clean contrary As we regard not what a drunken man says because it is not he but the drink and when he hath slept he will awake in another minde so why should we regard what wicked men say now who are drunk with security and fleshly delights When we know before hand for certain that when they have slept the sleep of death at the furthest they will awake in another minde Onely pity the perverted understandings of these poor men who are beside themselves knowing that one of these days when too late experience brings them to their right mindes they will be of a far different Judgment They ask us What are you wiser then your fore-fathers then all the Town besides then such and such Great men and learned men And do you think in good sadness we may not with better reason ask you What are you wiser then Henoch and Noah then Abraham Isaac Jacob Samuel then David and Solomon then Moses and the Prophets then Peter Paul all the Apostls and all the Saints of God in all Ages and Nations that ever went to Heaven yea then Jesus Christ himself Men may be deceived but we appeal to the unerring Judgment of Wisdom it self even the wise All-Knowing God whether a day in his Courts be not better then a thousand elsewhere and whether it be not better to be door-keepers there then to dwell in the Tents of wickedness Nay whether the very Reproaches of Christ even the scorns we have from you for Christs sake and the Gospel be not greater riches then all the Treasures of the World If Wisdom then may pass the sentence you see which way the cause will go and Wisdom is justified of all her children SECT IX 9. LAstly Another Rule in Reason is this That Good which containeth all other Good in it must needs it self be best And where do you think in Reason that all the streams of Goodness do finally empty themselves Is it not in God from whom by secret springs they first proceed Where else do all the Lines of Goodness concenter Are not all the sparks contained in this fire and all the drops in this Ocean Surely the time was when there was nothing besides God and then all Good was onely in him And even now the creatures essence and existence is secondary derived contingent improper in comparison of his who Is and Was and Is to Come whose Name alone is called I AM. What do thine eyes see or thy heart conceive desireable which is not there to be had Sin indeed there is none but darest thou call that good Worldly delights there are none for they are Good but for the present Necessity and please but the bruitish Senses Brethren do you fear losing or parting with any thing you now enjoy What do you fear you shall want when you come to Heaven shall you want the drops when you have the Ocean or the light of the Candle when you have the Sun or the shallow Creature when you have the perfect Creator Cast thy bread upon the waters and after many days thou shalt There finde it Lay abroad thy tears thy prayers pains boldly and unweariedly as God is true thou dost but set them to usury and shalt receive an hundred fold Spare not man for State for Honor for Labor If Heaven do not make amends for all God hath deceived us which who dare once imagine Cast away Friends House Lands Life if he bid thee Leap into the Sea as Peter if he command thee Lose thy life and thou shalt save it everlastingly when those that saved theirs shall lose them everlastingly Venture all man upon Gods Word Promise There 's a Day of Rest coming will fully pay for all All the pence and the farthings thou expendest for him are contained with infinite advantage in the massie Gold and Jewels of thy Crown When Alexander had given away his Treasure and they asked him where it was he pointed to the poor and said in scriniis in my chests And when he went upon a hopeful expedition he gave away his Gold and when he was asked what he kept for himself he answers spem majorum meliorum The hope of greater and better things How much more boldly may we lay out all and point to Heaven and say it is in scriniis in our everlasting treasure and take that hope of greater and better things in stead of all Nay lose thy self for God and renounce thy self and thou shalt at that day finde thy self again in him Give him thy self and he will receive thee upon the same terms as Socrates did his Schollar Aeschines who gave himself to his Master because he had nothing else accipio sed ea lege ut te tibi mâ—liorem reddam quam accepi that he may return thee to thy self better then he received thee So then this Rest is the Good which containeth all other Good in it And thus you see according to the Rules of Reason the transcendent Excellency of the Saints Glory in the General We shall next mention the particular Excellencies CHAP. VII The Excellencies of our Rest. SECT I. YEt let us draw a little neerer and see more immediately from the pure fountain of the Scriptures what further Excellencies this Rest affordeth And the Lord hide us in the Clefts of the Rock and cover us with the hands of indulgent Grace while we approach and take this view and the Lord grant we may put off from our feet the shoes of unreverence and fleshly conceivings while we stand upon this holy ground SECT I. 1. ANd first it 's a most singular honor and ornament in the stile of the Saints Rest to be called the Purchased Possession That it is the fruit of the Blood of the Son of God yea the chief fruit yea the end and perfection of all the fruits and efficacy of that Blood Surely Love is the most precious ingredient in the whole composition and of all the flowers that grow in the Garden of Love can there be brought one more sweet and beautiful to the Garland then this Blood Greater Love then this there is not to lay down the life of the Lover And to have this our Redeemer ever before our Eyes and the liveliest Sense and freshest Remembrance of that dying-bleeding-Love still upon our Souls Oh how will it fill our Souls with perpetual Ravishments To think that in the streams of this Blood we have swam through the violence of the world the snares of Satan the seducements of flesh the curse of the Law the wrath of an offended God the accusations of a Guilty Conscience and the vexing doubts and fears of an unbeleeving heart and are passed through all and here arrived safely at the brest of God!
Now we are stupified with vile and sensless hearts that can hear all the story of this Bloody Love and read all the dolors and sufferings of Love and hear all his sad complaints and all with dulness and unaffected He cries to us Behold and see Is it nothing to you O all ye that pass by Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow Lamen 1.12 and we will scarce hear or regard the dolorous voyce nor scarce turn aside to view the wounds of him who turned aside and took us up to heal our wounds at this so dear a rate But Oh then our perfected Souls will feel as well as hear and with feeling apprehensions flame again in Love for Love Now we set his picture wounded and dying before our eyes but can get it no neerer our hearts then if we beleeved nothing of what we read But then when the obstructions between the eye and the understanding are taken away and the passage opened between the head and the heart surely our eyes will everlastingly affect our heart and while we view with one eye our slain-revived Lord and with the other eye our lost-recovered Souls and transcendent Glory these views will eternally pierce us and warm our very Souls And those eyes through which folly and lust hath so often stole into our hearts shall now be the Casements to let in the Love of our dearest Lord for ever Now though we should as some do travel to Jerusalem and view the Mount of Olives where he prayed and wept and see the Dolorons way by which he bare his Cross and enter the Temple of the Holy Grave yea if we should with Peter have stooped down and seen the place where he lay and behold his Relicts yet these Bolted doors of sin and flesh would have kept out the feeling of all that Love But Oh! that 's the Joy we shall then leave these hearts of stone and Rock behinde us and the sin that here so close besets us and the sottish unkindness that followed us so long shall not be able to follow us into that Glory But we shall behold as it were the wounds of Love with eyes and hearts of Love for ever Suppose a little to help our apprehensions that a Saint who hath partaked of the Joys of Heaven had been translated from as long an abode in Hell and after the experience of such a change should have stood with Mary and the rest by the Cross of Christ and have seen the Blood and heard the Groans of his Redeemer What think you Would love have stirred in his Brest or no Would the voyce of his dying Lord have melted his heart or no Oh that I were sensible of what I speak With what astonishing apprehensions then will Redeemed Saints everlastingly behold their Blessed Redeemer I will not meddle with their vain audacious Question who must needs know whether the glorified body of Christ do yet retain either the wounds or scars But this is most certain that the memory of it will be as fresh and the impressions of Love as deep and its workings as strong as if his wounds were still in our eyes and his complaints still in our ears and his blood still streaming afresh Now his heart is open to us and ours shut to him But when his heart shall be open and our Hearts open Oh the Blessed Congress that there will then be What a passionate meeting was there between our new-risen Lord and the first sinful silly woman that he appears to How doth Love struggle for expressions and the straitned fire shut up in the brest strive to break forth Mary saith Christ Master saith Mary and presently she clasps about his feet having her heart as neer to his heart as her hands were to his feet What a meeting of Love then will there be between the new glorified Saint and the Glorious Redeemer But I am here at a loss my apprehensions fail me and fall so short Onely this I know it will be the singular praise of our inheritance that it was bought with the price of that blood and the singular Joy of the Saints to behold the purchaser and the price together with the possession Neither will the views of the wounds of Love renew our wounds of sorrow He whose first words after his Resurrection were to a great sinner Woman why weepest thou knows how to raise Love and Joy by all those views without raising any cloud of sorrow or storm of tears at all He that made the Sacramental Commemoration of his Death to be his Churches Feast will sure make the real enjoyment of its blessed purchase to be marrow and fatness And if it afforded Joy to hear from his mouth This is my Body which is given for you and This is my Blood which was shed for you What Joy will it afford to hear This Glory is the fruit of my Body and my Blood and what a merry feast will it be when we shall drink of the fruit of the Vine new with him in the Kingdom of his Father as the fruit of his own Blood David would not drink of the waters which he longed for because they were the blood of those men who jeoparded their lives for them and thought them fitter to offer to God then to please him But we shall value these waters more highly and yet drink them the more sweetly because they are the Blood of Christ not jeoparded onely but shed for them They will be the more sweet and dear to us because they were so bitter and Dear to him If the buyer be judicious we estimate things by the price they cost If any thing we enjoy were purchased with the life of our dearest friend how highly should we value it Nay if a Dying Friend deliver us but a token of his Love how carefully do we preserve it and still remember him when we behold it as if his own name were written on it And will not then the Death and Blood of our Lord everlastingly sweeten our possessed Glory Methinks England should value the plenty of the Gospel with their Peace and Freedom at a higher rate when they remember what it hath cost How much precious blood How many of the Lives of Gods worthies and our most dear friends besides all other cost Methinks when I am with freedom preaching or hearing or living I see my dying friends before mine eyes whose blood was shâ—d for this and look the more respectively on them yet living whose frequent dangers did procure it Oh then when we are rejoycing in Glory how shall we think of the blood that revived our Souls and how shall we look upon him whose sufferings did put that Joy into our hearts How carefully preserve we those prizes which with greatest hazard we gained from the enemy Goliahs sword must be kept as a Trophie and layd up behinde the Ephod and in a time of need David says There 's none to that Surely when
admire that patience could bear so long and justice suffer him to live Sure he will admire at this alteration when he shall finde by experience that unworthinesse could not hindâ—r his salvation which he thought would have bereaved him of every mercy Ah Christian There 's no talk of our worthiness nor unwornesse If worthiness were our condition for admittance we might sit down with S. John and weep because none in heaven or earth is found worthy But the Lion of the tribe of Judah is worthy and hath prevailed by that title must we hold the inheritance We shal offer there the offering that David refused even praise for that which cost us nothing Here our Commission runs Freely ye have received Freely give But Christ hath dearly received yet Freely gives The master heals us of our leprosie freely but Gehazi who had no finger in the cure will surely run after us and take somthing of us and falsly pretend it is his masters pleasure The Pope and his servants will be paid for their Pardons and Indulgencies But Christ will take nothing for his The fees of the Prelats Courts were large and our CoÌ„mutation of Penance must cost our purses dear or else we must be cast out of the Synagogue and soul and body delivered up to the Devil But none are shut out of that Church for want of money nor is poverty any eye-sore to Christ An empty heart may bar them out but an empty purse cannot His Kingdom of Grace hath ever been more consistent with despised poverty then wealth and honour and riches occasion the difficulty of entrance far more then want can do For that which is highly esteemed among men is despised with God And so is it also The poor of the world rich in faith whom God hath chosen to be heires of that Kingdom which he hath prepared for them that love him I know the true labourer is worthy of his hire And they that serve at the Altar should live upon the Altar And it is not fit to muzzle the Ox that treadeth out the corne And I know it is either hellish malice or penurious baseness or ignorance of the weight of their work and burthen that makes their maintenance so generally Incompetent and their very livelihood and subsistance so envied and grudged at and that it 's a meer plot of the Prince of darkness for the diversion of their thoughts that they must be studying how to get bread for their own and childrens mouths when they should be preparing the bread of life for their peoples souls But yet let me desire the right aiming Ministers of Christ to consider what is expedient as well as what is lawfull and that the saving of one soul is better then a thousand pound a year and our gain though due is a cursed gain which is a stumbling block to our peoples souls Let us make the Free-Gospell as little burthensome and chargeable as is possible I had rather never take their Tythes while I live then by them to destroy the souls for whom Christ dyed and though God hath ordained that they which preach the Gospell should live of the Gospell yet I had rather suffer all things then hinder the Gospell and it were better for me to dye then that any man should make this my glorying voyd Though the well-leading Elders be worthy of double honour especially the laborious in the word and doctrine yet if the necessity of Souls and the promoting of the Gospel should require it I had rather preach the Gospell in hunger and ragges then rigidly contend for what 's my due And if I should do so yet have I not whereof to Glory for necessity is laid upon me yea wo be to me if I preach not the Gospell though I never received any thing from men How unbeseeming the messengers of this Free-Grace and Kingdom is it rather to lose the hearts and souls of their people then to lose a groat of their due And rather to exasperate them against the message of God then to forbear somewhat of their right And to contend with them at law for the wages of the Gospell And to make the glad-tidings to their yet carnall hearts seem to be sad tidings because of this burthen This is not the way of Christ and his Apostles nor according to the self denying yeelding suffering Doctrine which they taught Away with all those actions that are against the main end of our studies and calling which is to win souls and fie upon that gain which hinders the gaining of men to Christ. I know flesh will here object necessities and distrust will not want arguments but we who have enough to answer to the diffidence of our people let us take home some of our answers to our selves and teach our selves first before we teach them How many have you known that God suffered to starve in his Vineyard But this is our exceeding consolation That though we may pay for our Bibles and Books and Sermons and it may be pay for our freeâ—dom to enjoy and use them yet as we paid nothing for Gods eternal Love and nothing for the Son of his Love and nothing for his Spirit and our grace and faith and nothing for our pardon so we shal pay nothing for our eternal Rest. We may pay for the bread and wine but we shal not pay for the body and blood nor for the great things of the Covenant which it seals unto us And indeed we have a valuable price to give for those but for these we have none at all Yet this is not all If it were only for nothing and without our merit the wonder were great but it is moreover against our merit and against our long endeavoring of our own ruine Oh the broken heart that hath known the desert of sin doth both understand and feel what I say What an astonishing thought it will be to think of the unmeasurable difference between our deservings and our receivings between the state we should have been in and the state we are in To look down upon Hell and see the vast difference that free-grace hath made betwixt us and them to see the inheritance there which we were born to so different from that which we are adopted to Oh what pangs of love will it cause within us to think yonder was my native right my deserved portion those should have been my hideous cries my doleful groans my easless pains my endless torment Those unquenchable flames I should have layen in that never dying worm should have fed upon me yonder was the place that sin would have brought me to but this is it that Christ hath bought me to Yonder death was the wages of my sin but this Eternal life is the Gift of God through Jesus Christ my Lord. Did not I neglect Grace and make light of the offers of Life and sleight my Redeemers Blood a long time as well as yonder suffering
us His face shall be the Scripture where we shall read the Truth and himself instead of Teachers and Councels to perfect our understandings and acquaint us with himself who is the perfect Truth No more Error no more Scandal to others no more Disquiet to our own spirits no more mistaking zeal for falshood because our understandings have no more sin Many a Godly man hath here in his mistaken zeal been a means to deceive and pervert his Brethren and when he sees his own Error cannot again tell how to undeceive them But there we shall all conspire in one Truth as being one in him who is that Truth And as we shall rest from all the sin of our understandings so of our wills affection and conversation VVe shall no more retain this rebelling principle which is still withdrawing us from God and addicting us to backsliding Doubtless we shall no more be oppressed with the power of our corruptions nor vexed with their presence No Pride Passion Sloathfulness Senselesness shall enter with us no strangness to God and the things of God no coldness of affections nor imperfection in our love no uneven walking nor grieving of the Spirit no scandalous action or unholy conversation we shall Rest from all these for ever Then shall our understandings receive their Light from the face of God as the full Moon from the open Sun where there is no Earth to interpose betwixt them then shall our wills correspond to the Divine VVill as face answers face in a Glass and the same his will shall be our Law and Rule from which we shall never swerve again Now our corruptions as the Anakims dismay us and as the Canaanites in Israel they are left for pricks in our sides and thorns in our eyes and as the bond-woman and her son in Abrahams house they do but abuse us and make our lives a burden to us But then shall the bond-woman and her son be cast out and shall not be heirs with us in our Rest. As Moses said to Israel Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day every one whatsoever is right in his own eyes For ye are not as yet come to the Rest and to the Inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you Deut. 12.8 9. I conclude therefore with the words next to my Text. For he that is entered into his Rest he also hath ceased from his own works as God from his So that there is a perfect Rest from sin SECT IX 2. IT is also a perfect Rest from suffering When the cause is gone the effect ceaseth Our sufferings were but the consequents of our sinning and here they both shall cease together I will shew particularly ten kindes of suffering which we shall there rest from 1. We shall Rest from all our perplexing doubts and fears It shall no more be said That doubts are like the Thistle a bad weed but growing in good ground they shall now be weeded out and trouble the gracious soul no more No more need of so many Sermons Books and marks and signes to resolve the poor doubting soul The full fruition of Love it self hath now resolved his doubts for ever We shall hear that kinde of language no more What shall I do to know my state How shall I know that God is my father That my heart is upright That Conversion is true That Faith is sincere O I am afraid my sins are unpardoned O I fear that all is but in hypocrisie I fear that God will reject me from his presence I doubt he doth not hear my prayers How can he accept so vile a wretch So hard-hearted unkinde a sinner Such an under-valuer of Christ as I am All this kinde of language is there turned into another tune even into the praises of him who hath forgiven who hath converted who hath accepted yea who hath glorified a wretch so unworthy So that it will now be as impossible to doubt and fear as to doubt of the food which is in our bellies or to fear it is night when we see the Sun shining If Thomas could doubt with his finger in the wounds of Christ yet in Heaven I am sure he cannot If we could doubt of what we see or hear or taste or feel yet I am sure we cannot of what we there possess Sure this will be comfort to the sad and drooping soul whose life was nothing but a doubting distress and their language nothing but a constant complaining If God would speak peace it would ease them but when he shall possess them of this peace they shall rest from all their doubts and fears for ever SECT X. 2. WE shall rest from all that sense of Gods displeasure which was our greatest torment whether manifested mediately or immediately For he will cause his fury towards us to rest and his jealousie to cease and he will be angry with us no more Ezek. 16.42 Surely Hell shall not be mixed with Heaven There is the place for the glorifying of Justice prepared of purpose to manifest wrath but Heaven is onely for Mercy and Love Joh doth not now use his old language Thou writest bitter things against me and takest me for thine enemy and settest me up as a mark to shoot at c. O how contrary now to all this David doth not now complain That the arrows of the Almighty stick in him that his wounds stink and are corrupt that his sore runs and ceaseth not that his moysture is as the drought of Summer that there is no soundness in his flesh because of Gods displeasure nor rest in his bones because of sin that he is weary of crying his throat is dried his eyes fail in waiting for God that he remembreth God and is troubled that in complaining his spirit is overwhelmed that his soul refuseth to be comforted that Gods wrath lieth hard upon him and that he afflicteth him with all his waves O how contrary now are Davids Songs Now he saith I spake it in my haste and this was my infirmity Here the Christian is oft complaining O if it were the wrath of man I could bear it but the wrath of the Almighty who can bear O that all the world were mine enemies so that I were assured that he were my Friend If it were a stranger it were nothing but that my dearest Friend my own Father should be so provoked against me This wounds my very soul If it were a Creature I would contemn it but if God be angry who may endure If he be against me who can be for me And if he will cast me down who can raise me up But O that blessed day when all these dolorous complaints will be turned into admiring thankfulness and all sense of Gods displeasure swallowed up in that Ocean of infinite Love when Sense shall convince us that fury dwelleth not in God And though for a little
Law of the most high God dishonorable to him and destructive to the sinner Now the sinner reads and hears no more the reproofs of sin as words of course as if the Minister wanted something to say to fill up his Sermon but when you mention his sin you stir in his wounds he feels you speak at his very heart and yet is contented you should shew him the worst and set it home though he bear the smart He was wont to marvel what made men keep such a stir against sin what harm it was for a man to take a little forbidden pleasure he saw no such hainousness in it that Christ must needs die for it and most of the world be eternally tormented in Hell He thought this was somewhat hard measure and greater punishment then could possibly be deserved by a little fleshly liberty or worldly delight neglect of Christ his Word or Worship yea by a wanton thought a vain word a dull duty or cold affection But now the case is altered God hath opened his eyes to see that unexpressable vileness in sin which satisfies him of the reason of all this 2. The Soul in this great work is convinced and sensible as of the evil of sin so of its own misery by reason of sin They who before read the threats of Gods Law as men do the old stories of forraign wars or as they behold the wounds and blood in a picture or piece of Arras which never makes them smart or fear Why now they finde it s their own story and they perceive they read their own doom as if they found their names written in the curse or heard the Law say as Nathan Thou are the man The wrath of God seemed to him before but as a storm to a man in the dry house or as the pains of the sick to the healthful stander-by or as the Torments of Hell to a childe that sees the story of Dives and Lazarus upon the wall But now he findes the disease is his own and feels the pain in his own bowels and the smart of the wounds in his own soul. In a word he findes himself a condemned man and that he is dead and damned in point of Law and that nothing was wanting but meer execution to make him most absolutely and irrecoverably miserable Whether you will call this a work of the Law or Gospel as in several senses it is of both the Law expressing and the Gospel intimating and implying our former condemnation Sure I am it is a work of the Spirit wrought in some measure in all the regenerate And though some do judg it an unnecessary bondage yet it is beyond my conceiving how he should come to Christ for pardon that first found not himself guilty and condemned or for life that never found himself dead The whole need not the Physitian but they that are sick Yet I deny not but the discovery of the Remedy as soon as the misery must needs prevent a great part of the trouble and make the distinct effects on the soul to be with much more difficulty discerned Nay the actings of the soul are so quick and oft so confused that the distinct order of these workings may not be apprehended or remembred at all And perhaps the joyful apprehensions of mercy may make the sense of misery the sooner forgotten 3. So doth the spirit also convince the soul of the creatures vanity and insufficiency Every man naturally is a flat Idolater our hearts turned from God in our first fall and ever since the Creature hath been our God This is the grand sin of Nature when we set up to our selves a wrong end we must needs erre in all the means The Creature is to every unregenerate man his God and his Christ. He ascribeth to it the Divine prerogatives and alloweth it the highest room in his soul Or if ever he come to be convinced of misery he flyeth to it as his Saviour and supply Indeed God and his Christ have usually the name and shall be still called both Lord and Saviour But the reall expectation is from the Creature and the work of God is laid upon it how well it will perform that work the sinner must know hereafter It is His Pleasure his profit and his Honour that is the natural mans Trinity and his Carnal self that is these in unity Indeed it is that Flesh that is the Principal Idol the other three are deified in their relation to our selves It was our first sin to aspire to be as Gods and it s the greatest sin that runs in our blood and is propagated in our nature from Generation to Generation When God should guide us we guide our selves when he should be our Soveraign we rule our selves The Laws which he gives us we would correct and finde fault with and if we had the making of them we would have made them otherwise When he should take care of us and must or we perish we will care for our selves when we should depend on him in daily receivings we had rather keep our stock our selves and have our portion in our own hands when we should stand to his disposal we would be at our own and when we should submit to his providence we usually quarrel at it as if we knew better what is good or fit for us then he or how to dispose of all things more wisely If we had the disposal of the events of Wars and the ordering of the affairs of Churches and States or the choice of our own outward condition it would be far otherwise then now it is and we think we could make a better disposal order and choice then God hath made This is the Language of a carnal heart though it do not always speak it out When we should study God we study our selves when we should minde God we minde our selves when we should love God we love our carnal selves when we should trust God we trust our selves when we should honor God we honor our selves and when we should ascribe to God and admire him we ascribe to and admire our selves And instead of God we would have all mens eyes and dependance on us and all mens thanks returned to us and would gladly be the onely men on Earth extolled and admired by all And thus we are naturally our own Idols But down falls this Dagon when God doth once renew the soul It is the great business of that great work to bring the heart back to God himself He convinceth the sinner 1. That the Creature or himself can neither be his God to make him happy 2. Nor yet his Christ to recover him from his misery and restore him to God who is his happiness This God doth not onely by Preaching but by Providence also Because words seem but winde and will hardly take off the raging senses therefore doth God make his Rod to speak and continue speaking till the
disproportionable to the justice of the Law but Christs doth extend to every title If he intercede there is no denial such is the dignity of his person and the value of his merits that the Father granteth all he desireth He tells us himself that the Father heareth him always His sufferings being a perfect satisfaction to the Law and all power in Heaven and Earth being given to him he is now able to supply every of our wants and to save to the uttermost all that come to him Quest. How can I know his death is sufficient for me if not for all And how is it sufficient for all if not suffered for all Answ. Because I will not interrupt my present discourse with controversie I will say something to this Question by it self in another Tract if God enable me 3. The Soul is also here convinced of the perfect excellency of Jesus Christ both as he is considered in himself and as considered in relation to us both as he is the onely way to the Father and as he is the end being one with the Father Before he knew Christs excellency as a blinde man knows the light of the Sun but now as one that beholdeth its glory And thus doth the Spirit convince the Soul SECT IIII. 3. AFter this sensible conviction the Will discovereth also its change and that in regard of all the four forementioned objects 1. The sin which the understanding pronounceth evil the will doth accordingly turn from with abhorrency Not that the sensitive appetite is changed or any way made to abhor its object but when it would prevail against the conclusions of Reason and carry us to sin against God when Scripture should be the rule and Reason the Master and Sense the Servant This disorder and evil the will abhorreth 2. The misery also which sin hath procured as he discerneth so he bewaileth It is impossible that the soul now living should look either on its trespass against God or yet on its own self-procured calamity without some compunction and contrition He that truly discerneth that he hath killed Christ and killed himself will surely in some measure be pricked to the heart If he cannot weep he can heartily groan and his heart feels what his understanding sees 3. The Creature he now renounceth as vain and turneth it out of his heart with disdain Not that he undervalueth it or disclaimeth its use but his idolatrous abuse and its unjust usurpation There is a twofold sin One against God himself as well as his Laws when he is cast out of the heart and something else doth take his place This is it that I intend in this place The other is when a man doth take the Lord for his God but yet swerveth in some things from his commands of this before It is a vain distinction that some make That the soul must be turned first from sin secondly from the Creature to God For the sin that is thus set up against God is the choice of something below in his stead and no Creature in it self is evil but the abuse of it is the sin Therefore to turn from the Creature is onely to turn from that sinful abuse Yet hath the Creature here a twofold consideration First As it is vain and insufficient to perform what the Idolater expecteth and so I handle it here Secondly As it is the object of such sinful abuse and the occasion of sin and so it falls under the former branch of our turning from sin and in this sense their division may be granted but this is onely a various respect for indeed it is still onely our sinful abuse of the Creature in our vain admirations undue estimations too strong affections and false expectations which we turn from There is a twofold Error very common in the descriptions of the work of Conversion The one of those who onely mention the sinners turning from sin to God without mentioning any receiving of Christ by Faith The other of those who on the contrary onely mention a sinners believing and then think they have said all Nay they blame them as Legalists who make any thing but the bare believing of the love of God in Christ to us to be part of this work and would perswade poor souls to question all their former comforts and conclude the work to have been onely legal and unsound because they have made their changes of heart and turning from sin and Creatures part of it and have taken up part of their comfort from the reviewing of these as evidences of a right work Indeed should they take up here without Christ or take such change in stead of Christ in whole or in part the reprehension were just and the danger great But can Christ be the way where the Creature is the end Is he not onely the way to the Father And must not a right end be intended before right means Can we seek to Christ for to reconcile us to God while in our hearts we prefer the Creature before him Or doth God dispossess the Creature and sincerely turn the heart therefrom when he will not bring the soul to Christ Is it a work that is ever wrought in an unrenewed soul You will say That without Faith it is impossible to please God True but what Faith doth the Apostle there speak of He that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him The belief of the Godhead must needs precede the belief of the Mediatorship and the taking of the Lord for our God must in order precede the taking of Christ for our Saviour though our peace with God do follow this Therefore Paul when he was to deal with the Athenian Idolaters teacheth them the knowledg of the Godhead first and the Mediator afterwards But you will say May not an unregenerate man believe that there is a God True and so may he also believe there is a Christ But he can no more cordially accept of the Lord for his God then he can accept of Christ for his Saviour In the soul of every unregenerate man the Creature possesseth both places and is both God and Christ. Can Christ be believed in where our own Righteousness or any other thing is trusted as our Saviour Or doth God ever throughly discover sin and misery and clearly take the heart from all Creatures and Self-righteousness and yet leave the soul unrenewed The truth is where the work is sincere there it is intire and all these parts are truly wrought And as turning from the Creature to God and not by Christ is no true turning so believing in Christ while the Creature hath our hearts is no true believing And therefore in the work of Self-examination whoever would finde in himself a through-sincere work must finde an entire work even the one of these as well as the other In the
of supplication to be importunate with him I doubt not but most Christians that observe the spirit and providences are able to attest this prevalency of prayer by their own experiences Object Perhaps you will say If these rare examples were common I would believe Answ. First If they were common they would be slieghted as common wonders are Secondly Importunate prayer is not common though formall babling be Thirdly The evident returns of prayer are ordinary to the faithfull Fourthly If wonders were common we should live by sense and not by faith Fifthly I answer in the words of Austin God letteth not every Saint partake of Miracles lest the weak should be deceived with this pernicious error to prefer Miracles as better then the works of Righteousness whereby eternall life is attained CHAP. VII The fourth Argument SECT I. MY Fourth and last Argument which I will now produce to prove the Scripture to be the Word and perfect Law of God is this Either the Scriptures are the written Word and Law of God or else there is no such extant in the world But there is a written Word and Law of God in the world Ergo This is it Here I have these two Positions to prove First That God hath such a written Word in the world Secondly That it can be no other but this That there is such a Word I prove thus If it cannot stand with the welfare of mankinde and consequently with that honor which the wisdom and goodness of God hath by their welfare that the world should be without a written Law then certainly there is such a written Law But that it cannot stand with the welfare of the creature or that honor of God appears thus That there be a certain and sufficient Revelation of the VVill of God to man more then meer Nature and Creatures do teach is necessary to the welfare of man and the aforesaid honour of God But there is now no such certain and sufficient Revelation unwritten in the world therefore it is necessary that there be such a Revelation written The proof of the Major is the main task which if it be well performed will clearly carry the whole cause for I believe all the rest will quickly be granted if that be once plain Therefore I shall stand a little the more largely to prove it viz. That there is a necessity for the welfare of man and the honor of Gods VVisdom and Goodness that there be some further Revelation of Gods VVill then is in meer Nature or Creatures to be found And first I will prove it necessary to the welfare of man And that thus If man have a Happiness or Misery to partake of after this life and no sufficient Revelation of it in Nature or Creatures then it is necessary that he have some other Revelation of it which is sufficient But such a Happiness or Misery man must partake of hereafter which Nature and Creatures do not sufficiently reveal either end or means therefore some other is necessary I will stand the largelier on the first Branch of the Antecedent because the chief weight lyeth on it and I scarce ever knew any doubt of Scripture but they also doubted of the immortal state and recompence of souls and that usually is their first and chiefest doubt I will therefore here prove these three things in order thus First That there is such a state for man hereafter Secondly That it is necessary that he know it and the way to be so happy Thirdly That Nature and Creatures do not sufficiently reveal it For the first I take it for granted that there is a God because Nature teacheth that and I shall pass over those Arguments drawn from his righteousness and just dispensations to prove the variety of mens future conditions because they are commonly known and I shall now argue from sense it self because that works best with sensual men and that thus If the devil be very diligent to deceive men of that Happiness and bring them to that misery then sure there is such a Happiness and Misery but the former is true Ergo the later They that doubt of the Major Proposition do most of them doubt whether there be any devil as well as whether he seek our eternal undoing I prove both together First By his Temptations Secondly Apparitions Thirdly Possessions and dispossessions Fourthly His Contracts with Witches I hope these are palpable Discoveries 1. The temptations of Satan are sometime so unnatural so violent and so importunate that the tempted person even feels something besides himself perswading and urging him He cannot go about his calling he cannot be alone but he feels somewhat following him with perswasions to sin yea to sins that he never found his nature much inclined to and such as bring him no advantage in the world and such as are quite against the temperature of his body Doth it not plainly tell us that there is a Devil labouring to deprive man of his Happiness when men are drawn to commit such monstrous sins Such cruelty as the Romans used to the Jews at the taking of Jerusalem So many thousand Christians so barbarously murdered such bloudy actions as those of Nero Caligula Sylla Messala Caeracalla the Romane Gladiatores the French Massacre the Gunpowder Plot the Spanish Inquisition and their murdering fifty millions of Indians in fourty two years according to the Testimony of Acosta their Jesuite Men invading their own neighbours and brethren with an unquenchable thirst after their blood and meerly because of their strictness in the common professed Religion as the late cruel wars in England have declared I say how could these come to pass but by the instigation of the Devil When we see men making a jâ—st of such sins as these making them their pleasure impudently and implacably against Knowledg and Conscience proceeding in them hating those ways that they know to be better and all those persons that would help to save them yea chusing sin though they believe it will damn them despairing and yet sinning still Doth not this tell men plainly that there is a Devil their enemy When men will commit the sin which they abhor in others which Reason is against when men of the best natures as Vespasian Julian c. shall be so bloody murderers when men will not be stirred from sin by any intreaty though their dearest friends should beg with teares upon their knees though Preachers convince them and beseech them in the name of the Lord though wife and children body and soul be undone by it Nay when men will be the same under the greatest judgments and under the most wonderful convincing Providences as appears in England yea under Miracles themselves Surely I think all this shews that there is a Devil and that he is diligent in working out ruine Why else should it be so hard a thing to perswade a man to that which he is convinced to be good SECT II. 2. BUt
of those forlorn wretches How they will even tear their own hearts and be Gods Executioners upon themselves I am perswaded as it was none but themselves that committed the sin and themselves that were the onely meritorious cause of their sufferings so themselves will be the chiefest executioners of those sufferings God will have it so for the clearing of Justice and the aggravating of their distress even Satan himself as he was not so great a cause of their sinning as themselves so will he not be so great an instrument as themselves of their torment And let them not think here that if they must torment themselves they will do well enough they shall have wit enough to ease and favor themselves and resolution enough to command down this violence of their passions Alas poor souls They little know what passions those will be and how much beyond the power of their resolutions to suppress Why have not lamenting pining self-consuming persons on earth so much wit or power as this Why do you not thus perswade despairing soul who lye as Spira in a kinde of Hell upon earth and dare not eat nor drink nor be merry but torment themselves with continual terrors Why do you not say to them Sir why will you be so mad as to be your own Executioner and to make your own life a continual misery which otherwise might be as joyful as other mens Cannot you turn your thoughts to other matters and never think of Heaven or Hell Alas how vain are all these perswasions to him how little do they ease him you may as well perswade him to remove a mountain as to remove these hellish thoughts that feed upon his spirit it is as easie to him to stop the stream of the Rivers or to bound the overflowing waves of the Ocean as to stop the stream of his violent passions or to restrain those sorrows that feed upon his soul. O how much less then can those condemned souls who see the Glory before them which they have lost restrain their heart-renting self-tormenting Passions So some direct to cure the Toothach Do not think of it and it will not grieve you and so these men think to ease their pains in Hell O but the loss and pain will make you think of it whether you will or no. You were as Stocks or Stones under the threatnings but you shall be most tenderly sensible under the execution O how happy would you think your selves then if you were turned into Rocks or any thing that had neither Passion nor Sense O now how happy were you if you could feel as lightly as you were wont to hear and if you could sleep out the time of Execution as you did the time of the Sermons that warned you of it But your stupidity is gone it will not be SECT V. 5. MOreover it will much increase the torment of the damned in that their Memories will be as large and strong as their Understandings and Affections which will cause those violent Passions to be still working Were their loss never so great and their sense of it never so passionate yet if they could but lose the use of their Memory those passions would dye and that loss being forgotten would little trouble them But as they cannot lay by their life and beeing though then they would account annihilation a singular mercy so neither can they lay aside any part of that beeing Understanding Conscience Affections Memory must all live to torment them which should have helped to their Happiness And as by these they should have fed upon the Love of God and drawn forth perpetually the Joys of his Presence so by these must they now feed upon the wrath of God and draw forth continually the dolours of his absence Therefore never think that when I say the hardness of their hearts and their blindness dulness and forgetfulness shall be removed that therefore they are more holy or more happy then before No but Morally more vile and hereby far more miserable O how many hundred times did God by his Messengers here call upon them Sinners consider whether you are going Do but make a stand a while and think where your way will end what is the offered Glory that you so carelesly reject will not this be bitterness in the end And yet these men would never be brought to consider But in the later days saith the Lord they shall perfectly consider it when they are ensnared in the work of their own hands when God hath Arrested them and Judgment is past upon them and Vengeance is poured out upon them to the full then they cannot chuse but consider it whether they will or no. Now they have no leasure to consider nor any room in their Memories for the things of another life Ah but then they shall have leasure enough they shall be where they have nothing else to do but consider it their Memories shall have no other imployment to hinder them it shall even be engraven upon the Tables of their Hearts God would have had the Doctrine of their eternal State to have been written on the posts of their doors on their houses on their hands and on their hearts He would have had them minde it and mention it as they rise and lye down as they sit at home and as they walk abroad that so it might have gone well with them at their latter end And seeing they rejected this counsel of the Lord therefore shall it be written always before them in the place of their thraldom that which way soever they look they may still behold it Among others I will briefly lay down here some of those Considerations which will thus feed the anguish of these damned wretches SECT VI. FIrst It will torment them to think of the greatness of the Glory which they have lost O if it had been that which they could have spared it had been a small matter or If it had been a losse repairable with any thing else If it had been health or wealth or friends or life it had been nothing But to lose that exceeding Eternall weight of Glory SECT VII SEcondly It will torment them also to think of the possibility that once they were in of obtaining it Though all things considered there was an impossibility of any other event then what did befall yet the thing in it self was possible and their will was left to act without constraint Then they will remember The time was when I was in as faire possibilitie of the Kingdome as others I was set up on the stage of the world If I had plaid my part wisely and faithfully now I might have had possession of the inheritance I might have been amongst yonder blessed Saints who am now tormented with these damned fiends The Lord did set before me life and death and having chosen death I deserve to suffer it The prize was once held out before me If I had run well I
which will never be quite broken but will be the beginning of thy everlasting Peace and not perish in thy perishing as the groundless peace of the world will do SECT V. FOurthly Another additionall loss aggravating their loss of Heaven is this They shall lose all their carnall Mirth Their merry vein will then be opened and emptied They will say themselves as Solomon doth of their laughter Thou wast mad and of their Mirth What didst thou Eccl. 2.2 Their witty jests and pleasant conceits are then ended and their merry tales are all told Their mirth was but as the crackling of throns under a pot Eccles. 7.6 It made a great blaze and unseemly noise for a little while but it was presently gone and will return no more They scorned to entertain any saddening thoughts the talk of death and Judgment was irksome to them because it dampt their mirth they could not endure to think of their sin or danger because these thoughts did sad their spirits They knew not what it was to weep for sin or to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God They could laugh away sorrow and sing away cares and drive away these Melancholy thoughts They thought if they should live so austerely and meditate and pray and mourn as the godly do their lives would be a continuall misery and it were enough to make them run mad Alas poor souls VVhat a misery then will that life be where you shall have nothing but sorrow Intense heart-piercing multiplied sorrow VVhen you shall have neither the Joyes of the Saints nor your own former Joyes Do you think there is one merry heart in hell or one joyfull countenance or jesting tongue You cry now A little mirth is worth a great deal of sorrow But sure a little godly sorrow which would have ended in eternal Joy had been more worth then a great deal of your foolish mirth which will end in sorrow Can men of gravity run laughing and playing in the streets as little children do or wise men laugh at a mischief as fools and mad men Or men that are sound in the brain fall a dauncing as they will do in a Viti Saltus till they fall down dead with it No more pleasure have wise men in your pittifull mirth For the end of such mirth is sorrow SECT VI. FIfthly Another additional loss will be this They shall lose all their sensuall contentments and delights That which they esteemed their chiefest good their heaven their God that must they lose as well as Heaven and God himself They shall then in despite of them fulfil that command which here they would not be perswaded to obey Rom. 13.14 of making no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof O what a fall will the proud ambitious man have from the top of his honors As his dust and bones will not be known from the dust and bones of the poorest beggar so neither will his soul be honoured or favoured any more then theirs VVhat a number of Right Honourable Lords Right VVorshipful Kinghts and Gentlemen Right Reverend Fathers and Learned Doctors are now shut out of the presence of Christ If you say How can I tell that VVhy I answer because their judg hath told me so Hath he not said by his Apostle 1 Cor. 1.26 That not many wise men after the flesh not many mighty not many noble are called And if they be not called they be not predestinate or justified or glorified Rom. 8.30 Sure that rich man Luk. 16. hath now no humble obeysance done him nor titles of honor put upon him nor do the poor now wait at his gates to receive of his scraps They must be shut out of their wel-contrived houses and sumptuous buildings their comely Chambers with costly hangings their soft beds and easie couches They shall not finde there their gallant walks their curious Gardens with varity of beauteous odoriferous fruits and flowers their rich Pastures and pleasant Meadows and plenteous Harvest and Flocks and Herds Their tables will not be so spread and furnished nor they so punctually attended and observed They have not there variety of Dainty fare now severall courses nor tempting dishes prepared to please their appetites to the full the rich man there fareth not deliciously every day Neither shall he wear there his purple and fine linnen The jetting gorgeous well drest gallant that must not have a pin amiss that stands as a picture set to sale that take themselves more beholden to the Tailor or Semster for their comeliness then to God they shall then be quite in a different garb There is no powdering or curling of the hair nor eying of themselves nor desirous expecting the admiration of beholders Sure our voluptuous youths must leave their Cards and Dice behinde them as also their Hawks and Hounds and Bowls and all their former pleasant sports They shall then spend their time in a more sad imployment and not in such pastimes as these Where will then be your Maygames and your Morrice daunces your Stage Playes and your Shewes What mirth will you have in remembring all the Games and Sports and Dauncings which you had on the Lords Days when you should have been delighting your selves in God and his work O what an alteration will our Joviall roaring swaggerers then finde What bitter draughts they will have in stead of their Wine and Ale If there were any drinking of healths the Rich man would not have begged so hard for a drop of water The heat of their lust will be then abated They shall not spend their time in courting their Mistresses in lascivious discourse in amorous songs in wanton dalliance in their lustful embracements or brutish defilements Yet they are like enough to have each others company there But they will have no more comfort in that company then Zimri and Cosbi in dying together or then lewd companions have in being hanged together on the same Gallows O the doleful meeting that these lustful wantons will have there How it will even cut them to the heart to look each other in the face And to remember that beastly pleasure for which they now must pay so dear So will it be with the Fellowship of Drunkards and all others that were play-fellows together in sin who got not their pardon in the time of their lives VVhat a direful greeting will there then be Cursing the day that ever they saw the faces of one another Remembring and ripping up all their lewdness to the aggravation of their torment O that sinners would reâ—member this in the midst of their pleasure and jollity And say to one another VVe must shortly reckon for this before the jealous God VVill the remembrance of it then be comfortable or terrible VVill these delights accompany us to another world How shall we look each other in the faces if we meet in Hell together for these things VVill not the memoriall of them be then our torment
acquainted then in their own brests 3. Besides many come to the work with forestalling conclusions They are resolved what to judge before they Try They use the duty but to strengthen their present conceits of themselves and not to find out the truth of their condition Like a bribed Judge who examines each party as if he would Judge uprightly when he is resolved which way the cause shall go before hand Or as perverse disputers who argue only to maintain their present opinions rather then to try those opinions whether they are right or wrong Just so do men examine their hearts 4. Also men are partial in their own Cause They are ready to think their great sins small and their small sins to be none their gifts of nature to be the work of Grace and their gifts of common grace to be the special grace of the Saints They are straight ways ready to say All these have I kept from my youth And I am rich and increased c. Rev. 3.17 The first common excellency that they meet with in themselves doth so dazle their eyes that they are presently satisfied that all is well and look no further 5. Besides most men do search but by the halves If it will not easily quickly be done they are discouraged and leaveoff Few set to it and follow it as beseems them in a work of such moment He must give all diligence that means to make sure 6. Also men try themselves by false Marks and Rules not knowing wherein the truth of Christianity doth consist some looking beyond and some short of the Scripture standard 7. Moreover there is so great likeness betwixt the lowest degree of special grace and the highest degree of Common Grace that it is no wonder if the unskilful be mistaken It is a great Question whether the main difference between special grace and common be not rather gradual then specifical If it should be so as some think then the discovery will be much more difficult However to discern by what principle our affections are moved and to what ends and with what sincerity is not very easie there being so many wrong Ends and motives which may excite the like Acts. Every grace in the Saints hath its counterfeit in the Hypocrite 8. Also men use to Try themselves by unsafe Marks either looking for a high degree of grace instead of a lower degree in sincerity as many doubting Christians do or else enquiring only into their outward Actions or into their inward Affections without their ends motives and other qualifications The sure evidences are Faith Love c. that are Essential parts of our Christianity and that lie neerest to the heart 9. Lastly Men frequently miscarry in this work by setting on it in their own strength As some expect the Spirit should do it without them so others attempt it themselves without seeking or expecting the help of the Spirit both these will certainly miscarry in their Assurance How far the Spirits Assistance is necessary is shewed before and the several Acts which it must perform for us SECT X. FUrther Causes of doubting among Christians Because the Comfort of a Christians life doth so much consist in his Assurance of Gods Special Love and because the right way of obtaining it is so much controverted of late I will here proceed a little further in opening to you some other Hinderances which keep true Christians from Comfortable Certainty besides the forementioned Errors in the Work of Examination Though I would still have you remember and be sensiâ—le That the neglect or slighty performance of that great duty and not following on the seaâ—ch with Seriousness and Constancy is the most common Hinderance for ought I have yet found I shall add now these Ten more which I find very ordinary Impediments and therefore desire Christians more carefully to Consider and Beware of them 1. One Common and great Cause of doubting and uncertainty is The weakness and small measure of our Graces A little Grace is next to None Small things are hardly discerned He that will see a small needle a hair a mote or atome must have clear light and good eyes But houses and Towns and Mountains are easily discerned Most Christians content themselves with a small measure of Grace and do not follow on to spiritual strength and manhood They Believe so weakly and Love God so little that they can scarce find whether they Believe and Love at all Like a man in a swoun whose pulse and breathing is so weak and obscure that it can hardly be perceived whether they move at all and consequently whether the man be alive or dead The chief Remedy for such would be To follow on their duty till their Graces be increased Ply your work Wait upon God in the use of his prescribed means and he will undoubtedly bless you with Increase and Strength Oh that Christians would bestow most of that time in getting more Grace which they bestow in Anxious doubtings whether they have any or none And that they would lay out those Serious Affections in Praying and seeking to Christ for more Grace which they bestow in fruitless Complaints of their supposed Gracelesness I beseech thee Christian take this advice as from God And then when thou Believest strongly and Lovest fervently thou canst not doubt whether thou do Believe and Love or not No more then a man that is burning hot can doubt whether he be warm or a man that is strong and lusty can doubt whether he be alive Strong Affections will make you feel them Who loveth his friend or wife or child or any thing strongly and doth not know it A great measure of Grace is seldom doubted of Or if it be you may quickly find when you seek and try SECT XI 2. ANother Cause of uncomfortable living is That Christians look more at their present Cause of Comfort or Discomfort then they do at their Future Happiness and the way to attain it They look afâ—er Signs which may tell thâ—m what they are more then they do at Pâ—ecepts which tell them what they should do They are very desirous to know whether they are Justified and beloved or not but they do not think what course they should take to be Justified if they be not As if their present Case must needs be their Everlasting Case and if they be now unpardoned there were no Remedy Why I beseech thee consider this Oh doubting Soul What if all were as bâ—d as thou dost fear and none of thy sins were yet pardoned Is not the Remedy at hand May not all this be done in a moment Dost thou not know that thou mayst have Christ and pardon when ever thou wilt Call not this a loose or strange doctrine Christ is willing if thou be willing He offereth himself and all his benefits to thee He presseth them on thee and urgeth thee to accept them He will condemn thee and destroy thee if thou
to pass and he worshipped Daniel and offered oblations to him because he foretold them When Christ had told his Disciples that one of them should betray him how desirous are they to know who it was though it were a matter of sorrow How busily do they enquire when Christs Predictions should come to pass and what were the Signs of his coming With what gladness doth the Samaritan woman run into the City saying Come and see a man that hath told me all that ever I did though he told her of her faults When Ahaziah lay sick how desirous was he to know whether he should live or dye Daniel is called a man greatly beloved therefore God would reveal to him things that long after must come to pass And is it so desireable a thing to hear Prophecies and to know what shall befall us hereafter and is it not then most especially desireable to know what shall befall our Souls and what place and state we must be in for ever Why this you may know if you will but faithfully Try. 2. But the Comforts of that Certainty of Salvation which this Tryal doth conduce toward are yet far greater If ever God bestow this blessing of Assurance on thee thou wilt account thy self the happiest man on earth and feel that it is not a Notional or empty mercy For 1. What sweet thoughts wilt thou have of God All that Greatness and Jealousie and Justice which is the terror of others will be matter of encouragement and Joy to thee As the son of a King doth rejoyce in his fathers Magnificence and Power which is the awe of Subjects and terror of Rebels When the thunder doth roar and the lightening flash and the earth quake and the signs of dreadful omnipotency do appear thou canst say All this is the effect of my Fathers power 2. How sweet may every thought of Christ and the blood that he hath shed and the benefits he hath procured be unto thee who hast got this Assurance Then will the Name of a Saviour be a sweet Name and the thoughts of his gentle and loving nature and of the gracious design which he hath carried on for our Salvation will be pleasing thoughts Then will it do thee good to view his wounds by the eye of faith and to put thy finger as it were into his side when thou canst call him as Thomas did My Lord and my God! 3. Every passage also in the Word will then afford thee Comfort How sweet will be the Promises when thou art sure they are thine own The Gospel will then be Glad Tydings indeed The very threatnings will occasion thy Comfort to remember that thou hast escaped them Then thou wilt cry out with David Oh how I love thy Law It is sweeter then honey More precious then gold c. And as Luther That thou wilt not take all the world for one leaf of the Bible When thou wast in thy sin this Book was to thee as Micaiah to Ahab It never spoke Good of thee but Evil and therefore no wonder if then thou didst hate it But now it is the charter of thy Everlasting Rest how welcom will it be to thee and how beautiful the very feet of those that bring it 4. What boldness and comfort then mayst thou have in prayer When thou canst say Our Father in full Assurance and knowest that thou art welcom and accepted through Christ and that thou hast a promise to be heard when ever thou askest and knowest that God is readier to grant thy requests then thou to move them With what comfortable boldness mayst thou then approach the Throne of Grace Especially when the case is weighty and thy necessity great this Assurance in prayer will be a sweet priviledg indeed A despairing Soul that feeleth the weight of Sin and Wrath especially at a dying hour would give a large price to be partaker of this Priviledg and to be sure that he might have Pardon and Life for the asking for 5. This Assurance will give the Sacrament a sweet relish to thy Soul and make it a refreshing feast indeed 6. It will multiply the sweetness of every mercy thou receivest when thou art sure that all proceeds from Love and are the beginnings and earnest of Everlasting Mercies Thou wilt then have more comfort in a morsel of bread then the world hath in the greatest abundance of all things 7. How comfortably then mayst thou undergo all Afflictions When thou knowest that he meaneth thee no hurt in it but hath promised that All shall work together for thy Good when thou art sure that he chasteneth thee because he loveth thee and scourgeth thee because thou art a Son whom he will receive and that out of very faithfulness he doth afflict thee What a support must this be to thy heart and how will it abate the bitterness of the Cup Even the Son of God himself doth seem to take comfort from this Assurance when he was in a manner forsaken for our sins and therefore he cries out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And even the Prodigal under his guilt and misery doth take some Comfort in remembring that he hath a Father 8. This Assurance will sweeten to thee the fore-thoughts of death and make thy heart glad to fore-think of that entrance into Joy when a man that is uncertain whither he is going must needs dye with horror 9. It will sweeten also thy fore-thoughts of Judgment when thou art sure that it will be the day of thy absolution and Coronation 10. Yea the very thoughts of the flames of Hell will administer matter of Consolation to thee when thou canst certainly conclude thou art saved from them 11. The fore-thoughts of Heaven also will be more incomparably delightful when thou art certain that it is the place of thine Everlasting abode 12. It will make thee exceeding lively and strong in the Work of the Lord With what courage wilt thou run when thou knowest thou shalt have the prize and fight when thou knowest thou shalt conquer It will make thee always abound in the work of the Lord when thou knowest that thy labour is not in vain 13. It will also make thee more profitable to others Thou wilt be a most chearful encourager of them from thine own experience Thou wilt be able to refresh the weary and to strengthen the weak and speak a word of Comfort in season to the troubled Soul Whereas now without Assurance in stead of comforting others thou wilt rather have need of support thy self So that others are losers by thy Uncertainty as well as thy self 14. Assurance will put life into all thy Affections or Graces 1. It will help thee to Repent and melt over thy sins when thou knowest how dearly God did Love thee whom thou hast abused 2. It will enflame thy Soul with Love to God when thou once knowest thy near Relation to him
if he were sure that Heaven should be his own he would desire to depart and to be with Christ as being the best stâ—te of all And if God would set before him an Eternity of Earthly pleasures and contents on one hand and the Rest of the Saints on the other hand and bid him take his choyce he would refuse the world and chuse this Rest Psal. 16.9 10. Rom. 8.23 2 Cor. 5.2 3. Phil. 3.20 Thus if thou be a Christian indeed thou takest God for thy chiefest Good and this Rest for the most amiable and desireable state and by the foresaid means thou mayst discover it But if thou be yet in the flesh and an unsanctified wretch then is it clean contrary with thee in all these respects Then dost thou in thy Heart prefer thy worldly happiness and fleshly delights before God And though thy tongue may say that God is the chief Good yet thy Heart doth not so esteem him For 1. The world is the chief End of thy Desires and Endevors Thy very heart is set upon it Thy greatest Care and Labor is to maintain thy estate or credit or fleshly delights But the life to come hath little of thy care or labor Thou didst never perceive so much excellency in that unseen Glory of another world as to draw thy heart so after it or set thee a laboring so heartily for it But that little pains which thou bestowest that way it is but in the second place and not the first God hath but the worlds leavings and that time and labor which thou canst spare from the world or those few cold and careless thoughts which follow thy constant earnest and delightful thoughts of earthly things Neither wouldst thou do any thing at all for Heaven if thou knew'st how to keep the world But lest thou shouldst be turned into Hell when thou canst keep the world no longer therefore thou wilt do something 2. Therefore it is that thou thinkest the way of God too strict and wilt not be perswaded to the constant labor of conscionable walking according to the Gospel rule And when it comes to tryal that thou must forsake Christ or thy worldly happiness and the wind which was in thy back doth turn in thy face then thou wilt venture Heaven rather then Earth and as desperate Rebels use to say thou wilt rather trust Gods Mercy for thy Soul then mans for thy body and so wilfully deny thy obedience to God 3. And certainly if God would but give thee leave to live in health and wealth for ever on Earth thou wouldst think it a better state then Rest Let them seek for Heaven that would thou wouldst think this thy chiefest happiness This is thy case if thou be yet an unregenerate person and hast no Title to the Saints Rest. SECT IV. THe second Mark which I shall give thee to try whether thou be an Heir of Rest is this As thou takest God for thy chief Good so Thou dost heartily accept of Christ for thy onely Saviour and Lord to bring thee to this Rest The former Mark was the sum of the first and great Command of the Law of Nature Thou shalt Love the Lord with all thy heart or above all This second Mark is the sum of the Command or Condition of the Gospel which saith Beleeve in the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved And the performance of these two is the whole sum or essence of Godliness and Christianity Observe therefore the parts of this Mark which is but a Definition of Faith 1. Dost thou finde that thou art naturally a lost condemned man for thy breach of the first Covenant and dost beleeve that Jesus Christ is the Mediator who hath made a sufficient satisfaction to the Law and hearing in the Gospel that he is offered without exception unto all dost heartily consent that he alone shall be thy Saviour and dost no further trust to thy Duties and works then as conditions required by him and means appointed in subordination to him not looking at them as in the least measure able to satisfie the Curse of the Law or as a Legal Righteousness nor any part of it But art content to trust thy Salvation on the Redemption made by Christ 2. Art thou also content to Take him for thy onely Lord and King to govern and guide thee by his Laws and Spirit And to obey him even when he commandeth the hardest duties and those which most cross the desires of the flesh Is it thy sorrow when thou breakest thy resolution herein and thy Joy when thou keepest closest in obedience to him And though the world and flesh do sometime entice and over reach thee yet is it thy ordinary Desire and Resolution to Obey So that thou wouldst not change thy Lord and Master for all the world Thus it is with every true Christian. But if thou be an Hypocrite it is far otherwise Thou mayst call Christ thy Lord and thy Saviour But thou never foundest thy self so lost without him as to drive thee to seek him and trust him and lay thy Salvation on him alone Or at least thou didst never heartily consent that he should Govern thee as thy Lord nor didst resign up thy Soul and Life to be Ruled by him nor takest his Word for the Law of thy Thoughts and Actions It is like thou art content to be saved from Hell by Christ when thou dyest But in the mean time he shall command thee no further then will stand with thy credit or pleasure or worldly estate and ends And if he would give thee leave thou hadst far rather live after the world and flesh then after the Word and Spirit And though thou mayst now and then have a Motion or Purpose to the contrary yet this that I have mentioned is the ordinary desire and choyce of thy heart And so thou art no true Beleever in Christ For though thou confess him in words yet in works thou dost deny him being disobedient and to every Good Work a Disapprover and a Reprobate Tit. 1.16 This is the Case of those that shall be shut out of the Saints Rest. But especially I would here have you observe That it is in all this the Consent of your Hearts or Wills which I lay down in this Mark to be enquired after For that is the most essential Act of Justifying Faith Therefore I do not ask whether thou be Assured of Salvation nor yet whether thou canst beleeve that thy sins are pardoned and that thou art beloved of God in Christ These are no parts of Justifying Faith but excellent fruits and consequents which they that do receive are comforted by them but perhaps thou mayst never receive them whilest thou livest and yet be a true heir of Rest. Do not say then I cannot beleeve that my sin is pardoned or that I am in Gods favor and therefore I am no true Beleever This is a most mistaking conclusion The Question is Whether thou
it If in case of his bodily distress you must not bid him go and come again to morrow when you have it by you and he is in want Prov. 3.27 28. how much less may you delay the succor of his Soul If once death snatch him away he is then out of the reach of your Charity SECT VI. 3. LEt thy Exhortation proceed from Compassion and Love and let the manner of it clearly shew the person thou dealest with that it hence proceedeth It is not jeering or scorning or reproaching a man for his faults that is a likely way to work his reformation Nor is it the right way to convert him to God to rail at him and vilifie him with words of disgrace Men will take them for their enemies that thus deal with them And the words of an enemy are little perswading Lay by your Passion therefore and take up compassion and go to poor sinners with tears in your eyes that they may see you indeed believe them to be miserable and that you do unfeignedly pity their case Deal with them with earnest humble intreatings Let them see that your very bowels do yearn over them and that it is the very desire of your hearts to do them good Let them perceive that you have no other end but the procuring of their everlasting Happiness and that it is your sense of their danger and your love to their Souls that forceth you to speak even because you know the terrors of the Lord and for fear lest you should see them in eternal torments Say to them Why friend you know it is no advantage of my own that I seek The way to please you and to keep your friendship were to sooth you in your way or to speak well of you or to let you alone but Love will not suffer me to see you perish and be silent I seek nothing at your hands but that which is necessary to your own happiness It is your self that will have the gain and comfort if you come in to Christ c. If men should thus go to every ignorant wicked neighbor they have and thus deal with them Oh what blessed fruits should we quickly see I am ashamed to hear some lazy hypocritical wretches to revile their poor ignorant neighbors and separate from their company and communion and proudly to judg them unfit for their society before ever they once tryed with them this compassionate Exhortation Oh you little know what a prevailing course this were like to prove and how few of the vilest drunkards or swearers would prove so obstinate as wholy to reject or despise the Exhortations of Love I know it must be God that must change mens hearts But I know also that God worketh by means and when he meaneth to prevail with men he usually fitteth the means accordingly and stirreth up men to plead with them in a prevailing way and so setteth in with his grace and maketh it successful Certainly those that have tryed can tell you by experience that there is no way so prevailing with men as the way of Compassion and Love So much of these as they discern in your Exhortation usually so much doth it succeed with their hearts And therefore I beseech those that are faithful to practise this course SECT VII 4. ANother Direction I would give you is this Do it with all possible plainness and faithfulness Do not dawb with men and hide from them their misery or danger or any part of it Do not make their sins less then they are nor speak of them in an extenuating language Do not encourage them in a false hope or faith no more then you would discourage the sound hopes of the righteous If you see his case dangerous tell him plainly of it Neighbor I am afraid God hath not yet renewed your Soul and that it is yet a stranger to the great work of Regeneration and Sanctification I doubt you are not yet recovered from the power of Satan to God nor brought out of the state of wrath which you were born in and have lived in I doubt you have not chosen Christ above all nor set your heart upon him nor unfeignedly taken him for your Soveraign Lord. If you had sure you durst not so easily disobey him you could not so neglect him and his worship in your family and in publique you could not so eagerly follow the world and talk of almost nothing but the things of this world while Christ is seldom mentioned or sought after by you If you were in Christ you would be a new Creature old things would be passed away and all things would become new you would have new thoughts and new talk and new company and new endeavors and a new conversation Certainly without these you can never be saved You may think otherwise and hope better as long as you will but your hopes will all deceive you and perish with you Alas it is not as you will nor as I will who shall be saved but it is as God will and God hath told us That without holiness none shall see him and except we be born again we cannot enter into his Kingdom and that all that would not have Christ raign over them shall be brought forth and destroyed before him Oh therefore look to your state in time Thus must you deal roundly and faithfully with men if ever you intend to do them good It is not hovering at a distance in a general discourse that will serve the turn It is not in curing mens Souls as in curing their bodies where they must not know their danger lest it sadden them and hinder the cure They are here agents in their own cure and if they know not their misery they will never bewail it nor know how much need they have of a Saviour If they know not the worst they will not labour to prevent it but will sit still or loiter till they drop into perdition and will trifle out their time in delays till it be too late And therefore speak to men as Christ to the Pharisees till they knew that he meant them Deal plainly or you do but deceive and destroy them SECT VIII 5. ANd as you must do it Plainly so also Seriously Zealously and Effectually The exceeding stupidity and deadness of mens hearts is such that no other dealing will ordinarily work You must call loud to awake a man in a Swoun or Lethargy If you speak to the common sort of men of the evil of their sin of their need of Christ of the danger of their Souls and of the necessity of Regeneration they will wearily and unwillingly give you the hearing and put off all with a sigh or a few good wishes and say God forgive us we are all sinners and there 's an end If ever you will do them good therefore you must sharpen your exhortation and set it home and follow it with their hearts till you have rouzed them up and made
temper of the person All meats are not for all stomacks One man will vomit that up again in your face which another will digest 1. If it be a learned or ingenious rational man you must deal more by convincing Arguments and less by passionate perswasions 2. If it be one that is both ignorant and stupid there is need of both 3. If one that is convinced but yet is not converted you must use most those means that rouze up the affections 4. If they be obstinate and secure you must reprove them sharply 5. If they be of timorous tender natures and apt to dejections or distraction they must be tenderly dealt with All cannot bear that rough dealing as some can Love and Plainness and Seriousness takes with all but words of terror some can scarce bear This is as we say of stronger Physick Hellebore Colloquintida c. nec puero nec seni nec imbecillo sed robusto c. not fit for every complexion and state 3. You must be wise also in using the aptest expressions Many a Minister doth deliver most excellent necessary matter in such unsavory harsh and unseemly language that it makes the hearers loath the food that they should live by and laugh at a Sermon that might make them quake Especially if they be men of curious ears and carnal hearts and have more common wit and parts then the speaker And so it is in private Exhortation as well as publique If you cloath the most amiable beautiful Truth in the sordid rags of unbeseeming language you will make men disdain it as monstrous and deformed though it be the off-spring of God and of the highest nature SECT X. 7. LEt all your Reproofs and Exhortations be backed with the Authority of God Let the sinner be convinced that you speak not from your selves or of your own head Shew them the very words of Scripture for what you say Turn them to the very Chapter and Verse where their sin is condemned and where the duty is commanded Press them with the Truth and Authority of God Ask them whether they beleeve that this is his Word and that his Word is true So much of God as appeareth in our Words so much will they take The voyce of man is contemptible but the voyce of God is awful and terrible They can and may reject your words that cannot nor dare reject the words of the Almighty Be sure therefore to make them know that you speak nothing but what God hath spoken first SECT XI 8. YOu must also be Frequent with men in this Duty of Exhortation It is not once or twice that usually will prevail If God himself must be constantly solicited as if importunity could prevail with him when nothing else can and therefore require us always to pray and not to wax faint the same course no doubt will be most prevailing with men Therefore are we commanded to Exhort one another dayly and with all long-suffering As Lypsius saith The fire is not always brought out of the flint at one stroke nor mens affections kindled at the first exhortation And if they were yet if they be not followed they will soon grow cold again Weary out sinners with your loving and earnest entreaties Follow them and give them no rest in their sin This is true Charity and this is the way to save mens Souls and a course that will afford you comfort upon review SECT XII 9. STrive to bring all your Exhortations to an Issue Stick not in the work done but look after the success and aim at that end in all your speeches I have long observed it in Ministers and private men that if they speak never so convincing powerful words and yet their hearts do not long after the success of them with the hearers but all their care is over when they have done their speech pretending that having done their duty they leave the Issue to God these men do seldom prosper in their labors But those whose very heart is set upon the work and that long to see it take for the hearers conversion and use to enquire how it speeds God usually blesseth their labors though more weak Labor therefore to drive all your speeches to the desired Issue If you are reproving a sin cease not till if it may be you have got the sinner to promise you to leave it and to avoyd the occasions of it If you are exhorting to a Duty urge the party to promise you presently to set upon it If you would draw them to Christ leave not till you have made them confess that their present unregenerate state is miserable and not to be rested in and till they have subscribed to the necessity of Christ and of a change and till they have promised you to fall close to the use of means O that all Christians would be perswaded to take this course with all their Neighbors that are yet in the flesh that are enslaved to sin and strangers to Christ SECT XIII 10. LAstly Be sure that your Examples may Exhort as well as your words Let them see you constant in all the Duties that you perswade them to Let them see in your lives that difference from sinners and that excellency above the world which you perswade them to in your speeches Let them see by your constant Labors for Heaven that you do indeed beleeve that which you would have them to beleeve If you tell others of the admirable Joys of Heaven and your selves do nothing but drudg for the world and are as much taken up in striving to be rich or as quarrelsom with your Neighbors in a case of commodity as any others who will then beleeve you or who will be perswaded by you to seek the everlasting riches Will they not rather think that you perswade them to look after another world and to neglect this that so you might have the more of it to your self Let not men see you proud while you exhort them to be humble nor to have a seared Conscience in one thing while you would have theirs tender in another An innocent life is a continual powerful reproof to the wicked And the constant practice of a holy and heavenly life is a constant disquietment to the Conscience of a Worldling and a constant solicitation of him to change his course And thus I have opened to you the first and great part of this Duty consisting in private familiar Exhortation for the helping of poor Souls to this Rest that are out of the way and have yet no Title to it and I have shewed you also the maner how to perform it that you may succeed I will now speak a little of the next part SECT XIV BEsides the duty of private admonition you must do your utmost endevors to help men to profit by the publique Ordinances And to that end you must do these things 1. Do your endevors for the procuring of Faithful Ministers where
in my own words but in his that I know you dare not dis-regard 1 Thes. 5.11 12 13. Wherefore comfort your selves together and Edifie one another even as also ye do And we beseech you Brethren to know them which labour among you and are Over you in the Lord and admonish you And to esteem them very highly in Love for their Works sake and be at peace among your selves Obey them that have the Rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your Souls as those that must give an account that they may do it with Joy and not with grief for that is unprofitable for you Heb. 13.17 Thus you see part of your duty for the Salvation of others SECT XVIII ANd now Christian Reader seeing it is a Duty that God hath laid upon every man according to his ability thus to exhort and reprove and with all possible diligence to labour after the Salvation of all about him judg then whether this work be conscionably performed Where shall we find the man almost among us that setteth himself to it with all his might and that hath set his heart upon the Souls of his brethren that they may be saved Let us here therefore a little enquire What may be the Causes of the gross neglect of this Duty that the Hinderances being discovered may the more easily be overcome 1. One Hinderance is Mens own Gracelesness and Guiltiness They have not been ravished themselves with the heavenly delights how then should they draw others so earnestly to seek them They have not felt the wickedness of their own natures nor their lost condition nor their need of Christ nor felt the transforming renewing work of the Spirit How then can they discover these to others Ah that this were not the case of many a learned Preacher in England and the causes why they preach so frozenly and generally Men also are guilty themselves of the sins they should Reprove and this stops their mouth and maketh them ashamed to reprove 2. Another Hinderance is A Secret Infidelity prevailing in mens hearts Whereof even the best have so great a measure that causeth this duty to be done by the halves Alas Sirs we do not sure believe mens Misery We do not believe sure that the threatnings of God are true Did we verily believe that all the unregenerate and unholy shall be eternally tormented as God hath said Oh how could we hold our tongues when we are among the unregenerate How could we chuse but burst out into tears when we look them in the face as the Prophet did when he looked upon Hazael Especially when they are our kindred or friends that are near and dear to us Thus doth secret unbelief of the truth of Scripture consume the vigour of each grace and duty Oh Christians if you did verily believe that your poor carnal ungodly neighbors or wife or husband or child should certainly lie for ever in the flames of Hell except they be throughly recovered and changed and that quickly before death do snatch them hence Would not this make you cast off all discouragements and lie at them day and night till they were perswaded and give them no rest in their carnal state How could you hold your tongue or let them alone another day if this were soundly believed If you were sure that any of your dear friends that are dead were now in Hell and perswading to repentance would get him out again would you not perswade him day and night if you were in hearing And why should you not do as much then to prevent it while he is in your hearing but that you do not believe Gods Word that speaks the danger Why did Noah prepare an Ark so long before and perswade the world to save themselves but because he believed God that the flood should come and therefore saith the Holy Ghost By faith Noah prepared the Ark. And why did not the world hearken to his perswasion and seek to save themselves as well as Noah but because they did not believe there would be any such deluge They see all fair and well and therefore they thought that threatenings were but wind The rich man in Hell cries out Send to my brethren to warn them that they come not to this place of torment He felt it and therefore being convinced of its truth would have them prevent it But his brethren on earth they did not see and feel as he and therefore they did not believe nor would have been perswaded though one had risen from the dead I am afraid most of us do believe the predictions of Scripture but as we believe the predictions of an Almanack which telleth you that such a day will be rain and such a day wind you think it may come to pass and it may be not and so you think of the predictions of the damnation of the wicked Oh were it not for this cursed Unbelief our own Souls and our neighbors would gain more by us then they do 3. This faithful dealing with men for their Salvation is much Hindered also by our want of Charity and Compassion to mens Souls We are hard-hearted and cruel towards the miserable and therefore as the Priest and the Levite did by the wounded man we look on them and pass by Oh what tender heart could endure to look upon a poor blind forlorn sinner wounded by sin and captivated by Satan and never once open our mouths for his recovery What though he be silent and do not desire thy help himself yet his very misery cries aloud Misery is the most effectually suitor to one that is compassionate If God had not heard the cry of our Miseries before he heard the cry of our prayers and been moved by his own pity before he was moved by our importunity we might have long enough continued the slaves of Satan Is it not the strongest way of arguing that a poor Lazare hath to unlap his sores and shew them the passengers all his words will not move them so much as such a pitiful sight Alas what pitiful sights do we dayly see The Ignorant the prophane the neglecters of Christ and their Souls their sores are open and visible to all that know them and yet do we not pity them You will pray to God for them in customary duties that God would open the eyes and turn the hearts of your ignorant carnal friends and neighbors And why do you not endeavor their conversion if you desire it And if you do not desire it why do you ask it Doth not your negligence convince you of hypocrisie in your prayers and of abusing the high God with your deceitful words Your neighbors are neer you your friends are in the house with you you eat and drink and work and walk and talk with them and yet you say little or nothing to them Why do you not pray them to consider and return as well as pray God to convert and turn them
afford that solid comfort as the converting of a few sinners by our unwearied compassionate exhortations Two men in a frosty season come where a company of people are ready to starve the one of them laps himself and taketh shelter for fear lest he should perish with them the other in pity falls to rub them that he may recover heat in them and while he laboreth hard to help them he getteth far better heat to himself then his unprofitable companion doth 7. With many also pride is a great impediment If it were to speak to a great man they would do it so it would not displease him But to go among the poor multitude and to take pains with a company of ignorant beggars or mean persons and to sit with them in a smoaky nasty cottage and there to instruct them and exhort them from day to day where is the person almost that will do it Many will much rejoyce if they have been instruments of converting a Gentleman and they have good cause But for the common multitude they look not after them As if God were a respecter of the persons of the rich or the souls of all were not alike to him Alas these men little consider how low Christ did stoop to us When the God of Glory comes down in flesh to wormes and goeth Preaching up and down among them from City to City Not the sillyest woman that he thought too low to confer with Few rich and noble and wise are called It is the poor that receive the glad tidings of the Gospel 8. Lastly With some also their Ignorance of the duty doth hinder them from performing it Either they know it not to be a duty or at least not to be their duty Perhaps they have not considered much of it nor been prest to it by their teachers as they have been to hearing and praying and other duties If this be thy case who readest this that meer Ignorance or inconsiderateness hath kept thee from it then I am in hope now thou art acquainted with thy duty thou wilt set upon it Object O but saith one I am of so weak parts and gifts that I am unable to manage an exhortation especially to men of strong natural parts and understanding Answ. First Set those upon the work who are more able Secondly Yet do not think that thou art so excused thy self but use faithfully that ability which thou hast not in teaching those of whom thou shouldst learn but in instructing those that are more ignorant then thy self and in exhorting those that are negligent in the things which they do know If you cannot speak well your self yet you can tell them what God speaketh in his word It is not the excellency of speech that winneth souls but the authority of God manifested by that speech and the power of his word in the mouth of the instructer A weak woman may tell what God saith in the plain passages of the word as well as a learned man If you cannot preach to them yet you can turn to the place in your Bible or at least remember them of it and say Thus it is written One of mean parts may remember the wisest of their duty when they forget it David received seasonable advice from Abigail a woman When a mans eyes are blinded with passion or the deceits of the world or the lusts of the flesh a weak instructer may prove very profitable for in that case he hath as much need to hear of that he knoweth as of that which he doth not know Object It is my superiour that needeth advice and exhortation and is it fit for me to teach or reprove my betters must the wife teach the husband of whom the Scripture biddeth them learn or must the childe teach the parents whose duty it is to teach them Answ. First It is fit that husbands should be able to teach their wives and parents to teach their children and God expecteth they should be so and therefore commandeth the inferiours to learn of them But if they through their own negligence do disable themselves or through their own wickedness do bring their souls into such misery as that they have the greatest need of advice and reproof themselves and are objects of pity to all that know their case then it is themselves and not you that break Gods order by bringing themselves into disability and misery Matter of meer order and manners must be dispensed with in cases of flat necessity Though it were your Minister you must teach him in such a case It is the part of parents to provide for the children and not children for the parents and yet if the parents fall into want must not the children relieve them It is the part of the husband to dispose of the affaires of the family and estate and yet if he be sick or besides himself must not the wife do it The rich should relieve the poor but if the rich fall into beggery they must be relieved themselves It is the work of the Physitian to look to the health of others and yet if he fall sick some body must help him and look to him So must the meanest servant admonish his master and the childe his parents and the wife her husband and the people their Minister in cases of necessity Secondly yet let me give you these two cautions here 1. That you do not pretend necessity when there is none out of a meer desire of teaching There is scarce a more certain discovery of a proud heart then to be forwarder and more desirous to Teach then to Learn especially toward those that are fitter to Teach us 2. And when the Necessity of your superiors doth call for your advice yet do it with all possible humility and modesty and meekness Let them discern your reverence and submission to their superiority in the humble maner of your addresses to them Let them perceive that you do it not out of a meer teaching humor or proud self-conceitedness An Elder must be admonished but not rebuked If a wife should tell her husband of his sin in a masterly railing language or if a servant reprove his master or a childe his father in a sawcie disrespective way what good could be expected from such reproof But if they should meekly and humbly open to him his sin and danger and intreat him to bear with them in what God commandeth and his misery requireth and if they could by teares testifie their sense of his case What father or master or husband could take this ill Object But some may say This will make us all Preachers and cause all to break over the bounds of their callings every boy and woman then will turn preacher Ans. 1. This is not taking a Pastoral charge of souls nor making an office or calling of it as Preachers do 2. And in the way of our callings every good Christian is a Teacher and hath a charge of his neighbors soul. Let
therefore now it doth not much trouble you but alas they feel it though you feel it not May not many a Papist rise up in judgment against us and condemn us They will give their lands and estates to have so many Masses said for the souls of their deceased friends when it is too late to bring them out of a feigned Purgatory And we will not ply them with perswasions while we may to save them from real threatned condemnation Though this cheaper means may prove effectual when that dearer way of Papists will do no good Jeremy cryed out My bowels My bowels I cannot hold my peace because of a temporall destruction of his people And do not our bowels yearn and can we hold our peace at mens eternall destruction 2. Consider What a rate Christ did value souls at and what he hath done towards the saving of them He thought them worth his blood and sufferings and shall not we then think them worth the breath of our mouths VVill you not set in with Christ for so good a work Nor do a little where he hath done so much 3. Consider What fit objects of pity they are It is no small misery to be an enemy to God unpardoned unsanctified strangers to the Churches special priviledges without hope of salvation if they so live and dye And which is yet more they are dead in these their trespasses and miseries and have not hearts to feel them or to pity themselves If others do not pity them they will have no pity for it is the nature of their disease to make them pitiâ—less to their own souls yea to make them the most cruel destroyers of themselves 4. Consider It was once thy own case Thou wast once a slave of Satan thy self and confidently didst go on in the way to condemnation What if thou hadst been let alone in that way Whither hadst thou gone and what had become of thee It was Gods Argument to the Israelites to be kinde to strangers because themselves were sometime strangers in Egypt so may it perswade you to shew compassion to them that are strangers to Christ and to the hopes and comforts of the Saints because you were once as strange to them your selves 5. Consider The Relation that thou standest in toward them It is thy neighbor thy brother whom thou art bound to be tender of and to love as thy self He that loveth not his brother whom â—e seeth daily most certainly doth not love God whom he never saw And doth he love his brother that will stand by and see him go to hell and never hinder him 6. Consider What a deal of guilt this neglect doth lay upon thy soul. First Thou art guilty of the murder and damnation of all those souls whom thou dost thus neglect He that standeth by and seeth a man in a pit and will not pull him out if he can doth drown him And he that standeth by while theeves rob him or murderers kill him and will not help him if he can is accessory to the fact And so he that will silently suffer men to damn their souls or will let Satan and the world deceive them and not offer to help them will certainly be Judged guilty of damning them And is not this a most dreadful consideration O Sirs how many souls then have every one of us been guilty of damning What a number of our neighbors and acquaintance are dead in whom we discerned no signs of sanctification and we never did once plainly tell them of it or how to be recovered If you had been the cause but of burning a mans house through your negligence or of undoing him in the world or of destroying his body how would it trouble you as long as you lived If you had but killed a man unadvisedly it would much disquiet you We have known those that have been guilty of murder that could never sleep quietly after nor have one comfortable day their own consciences did so vex and torment them O then what a heart maist thou have that hast been guilty of murdering such a multitude of pretious souls Remember this when thou lookest thy friend or carnal neighbor in the face and think with thy self Can I finde in my heart through my silence and negligence to be guilty of his everlasting burning in Hell Me thinks such a thought should even untye the tongue of the dumb 2. And as you are guilty of their perishing so are you of every sin which in the mean time they do commit If they were converted they would break off their course of sinning and if you did your duty you know not but they might be converted As he that is guilty of a mans drunkenness is guilty of all the sins which that drunkenness doth cause him to commit So he that is guilty of a mans continuing unregenerate is also guilty of the sins of his unregeneracie How many curses and oathes and scornes at Gods wayes and other sins of most hanious nature are many of you guilty of that little think of it You that live godlily and take much pains for your own souls and seem fearful of sinning would take it ill of one that should tell you that you are guilty of weekly or daily whoredomes and drunkenness and swearing and lying c. And yet it is too true even beyond all denial by your neglect of helping those who do commit them 3. You are guilty also as of the sin so of all the dishonor that God hath thereby And how much is that And how tender should a Christian be of the Glory of God the least part whereof is to be valued before all our lives 4. You are guilty also of all those Judgments which those mens sins do bring upon the town or countrey where they live I know you are not such Atheists but you believe it is God that sendeth sickness and famine and war and also that it is only sin that moveth him to this indignation What doubt then is there but you are the cause of Judgments who do not strive against those sins which do cause them God hath stayed long in patience to see if any would deal plainly with the sinners of the times and so free their own souls from the guilt But when he seeth that there is almost none but all become guilty no wonder then if he lay the Judgment upon all We have all seen the drunkards and heard the swearers in our streets and we would not speak to them we have al lived in the midst of an Ignorant worldly unholy people and we have not spoke to them with earnestness plainness and love No wonder then if God speak in his wrath both to them and us Eli did not commit the sin himself and yet he speaketh so coldly against it that he also must bear the punishment Guns and Canons speak against sin in England because the inhabitants would not speak God pleadeth with us with fire and sword because
we would not plead with sinners with our tongues God locketh up the clouds because we have shut up our mouthes The earth is grown hard as Iron to us because we have hardened our hearts against our miserable neighbors The cryes of the poor for bread are lowd because our cryes against sin have been so low Sicknesses run apace from house to house and sweep away the poor unprepared inhabitants because we swept not out the sin that breedeth them When you look over the woful desolations in England how ready are you to cry out on them that were the causers of it But did you consider how deeply your selves are guilty And as Christ said in another case Luk. 19 40. If these should hold their peace the stones would speak So because we held our peace at the Ignorance ungodliness and wickedness of our places therefore do these plagues and Judgments speak 7. Consider What a thing it will be to look upon your poor friends eternally in those flames and to think that your neglect was a great cause of it and that there was a time when you might have done much to prevent it If you should there perish with them it would be no small aggravation of your torment If you be in Heaven it would sure be a sad thought were it possible that any sorrow could dwell there To hear a multitude of poor souls there cry out for ever O if you would but have told me plainly of my sin and danger and dealt roundly with me and set it home I might have scaped all this torment and been now in Rest O what a sad voice will this be 8. Consider What a Joy is it like to be in Heaven to you to meet those there whom you have been means to bring thither To see their faces and joyn with them for ever in the praises of God whom you were instruments to bring to the knowledge and obedence of Christ. What it will be then we know not But sure according to our present temper it would be no small Joy 9. Consider how many souls have we drawn into the way of damnation or at least hardened or setled in it And should we not now be more diligent to draw men to life There is not one of us but have had our companions in sin especially in the dayes of our Ignorance and unregeneracy We have enticed them or encouraged them to Sabbath-breaking drinking or revellings or dancings and stageplayes or wantonness and vanities if not to scorn and oppose the godly We cannot so easily bring them from sin again as we did draw them to it Many are dead already without any change discovered who were our companions in sin we know not how many are and will be in hell that we drew thither and there may curse us in their torments for ever And doth it not beseem us then to do as much to save men as we have done to destroy them and be merciful to some as we have been cruel to others 10. Consider how diligent are all the enemies of these poor souls to draw them to Hell And if no body be diligent in helping them to Heaven what is like to become of them The Divel is tempting them day and night Their inward lusts are still working and withdrawing them The flesh is still pleading for its delights and profits Their old companions are ready to entice them to sin and to disgrace Gods wayes and people to them and to contradict the doctrine of Christ that should save them and to encrease their prejudice and dislike of holiness Seducing Teachers are exceeding diligent in sowing tares and in drawing off the unstable from the doctrine and way of life so that when we have done all we can and hope we have won men what a multitude of late have after all been taken in this snare And shall a seducer be so unwearied in Proselyting poor ungrounded souls to his Fancies And shall not a sound Christian be much more unwearied in laboring to win men to Christ and Life 11. Consider The neglect of this doth very deeply wound when conscience is awaked When a man comes to dye conscience will ask him VVhat good hast thou done in thy life time The saving of souls is the greatest good work what hast thou done towards this How many hast thou dealt faithfully with I have oft observed that the consciences of dying men do very much wound them for this omission For my own part to tell you my experience when ever I have been neer death my conscience hath accused me more for this then for any sin It would bring every ignorant prophane neighbor to my remembrance to whom I never made known their danger It would tell me Thou shouldst have gone to them in private and told them plainly of their desperate danger without bashfulness or dawbing though it had been when thou shouldest have eaten or slept if thou hadst no other time Conscience would then remember me how at such a time or such a time I was in company with the ignorant or was riding by the way with a wilful sinner and had a fit opportunity to have dealt with them but did not or at least did it by the halves and to little purpose The Lord grant I may better obey conscience hereafter while I live and have time that it may have less to accuse me of at death 12. Consider further It is now a very seasonable time which you have for this work Take it therefore while you have it There are times wherein it is not safe to speak it may cost you your liberties or your lives It is not so now with us Besides your neighbours will be here with you but a very little while They will shortly dye and so must you Speak to them therefore while you may set upon them and give them no rest till you have prevailed Do it speedily for it must be now or never A Roman Emperor when he heard of a neighbor dead he asked And what did I do for him before he dyed and it grieved him that a man should dye neer him and it could not be said that he had first done him any good Me thinks you should think of this when you hear that any of your neighbors are dead But I had far rather while they are alive you would ask the question There is such and such a neighbor alas how many that are ignorant and ungodly what have I done or said that might have in it any likely-hood of recovering them They will shortly be dead and then it is too late 13. Consider this is a work of greatest charity and yet such as every one of you may perform If it were to give them moneys the poor have it not to give if to fight for them the weak cannot if it were to suffer the fearful will say they cannot But every one hath a tongue to speak to a sinner The poorest may be thus charitable as well as the
rich 14. Consider also the happy consequences of this work where it is faithfully done To name some 1. You may be instrumental in that blessed work of saving souls a work that Christ came down and died for a work that the Angels of God rejoyce in for saith the holy Ghost If any of you do erre from the truth and one convert him let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins Jam. 5 19 20. And how can God more highly honor you then to make you instruments in so great a work 2. Such souls will bless you here and hereafter They may be angry with you at first but if your words prevail and succeed they will bless the day that ever they knew you and bless God that sent you to speak to them 3. If you succeed God will have much glory by it He will have one more to value and accept of his Son on whom Christs bloud hath attained its ends He will have one more to love him and daily worship and fear him and to do him service in his Church 4. The Church also will have gain by it There will be one less provoker of wrath and one more to strive with God against Sin and Judgment and to engage against the Sinners of the Times and to win others by Doctrine and Example If thou couldest but convert one persecuting Saul he might become a Paul and do the Church more service then ever thou didst thy self however the healing of Sinners is the surest method for preventing or removing of Judgments 5. It is the way also to the purity and flourishing of the Church and to the right erecting and executing the Discipline of Christ if men would but do what they ought with their neighbours in private what a help would it be to the success of the Publike endeavors of the Ministry and what hope might we have that daily some would be added to the Church and if any be obstinate yet this is the first course that must be taken to reclaim them who dare separate from them or excommunicate them before they have been first throughly admonished and instructed in private according to Christs Rule Matth. 18.15 16. 6. It bringeth much advantage to your selves First It will increase your graces both as it is a course that God will bless and as it is an acting of them in this perswading of others He that will not let you lose a cup of water which is given for him will not let you lose these greater works of Charity Besides those that have practised this duty most conscionably do finde by experience that they never go on more speedily and prosperously towards heaven then when they do most to help others thither with them It is not here as with worldly treasure the more you give away the less you have but here the more you give the more you have The setting forth Christ in his fulness to others will warm your own hearts and stir up your love The opening of the evil and danger of sin to others will increase your hatred of it and much engage your selves against it Secondly And it seemeth that it will increase your Glory as well as your Grace both as a duty which God will so reward For those that convert many to Righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever Dan. 12.3 and also as we shall there behold them in heaven and be their associates in blessedness whom God made us here the instruments to convert Thirdly However it will give us much peace of Conscience whether we succeed or not to think that we vvere faithful and did our best to save them and that vve are clear from the bloud of all men and their perishing shall not lye upon us Fourthly Besides that is a vvork that if it succeed doth exceedingly rejoyce an honest heart He that hath any sense of Gods Honor or the least affection to the soul of his brother must needs rejoyce much at his conversion vvhosoever be the Instrument but especially vvhen God maketh our selves the means of so blessed a vvork If God make us the Instuments of any temporal good it is very comfortable but much more of eternal good There is naturally a rejoycing followeth every good work answerable to the degree of its goodness â—e that doth most good hath usually the most happy and comfortable life If men knew the pleasure that there is in doing good they vvould not seek after their pleasure so much in evil for my own part it is an unspeakable comfort to me that God hath made me an instrument for the recovering of so many from bodily diseases and saving their natural lives but all this is yet nothing to the comfort I have in the success of my labors in the conversion and confirmation of souls it is so great a joy to me that it drowneth the painfulness of my daily duties and the trouble of my daily languishing and bodily griefs and maketh all these with all oppositions and difficulties in my work to be easie and as nothing and of all the personal mercies that ever I received next to his love in Christ and to my soul I must most joyfully bless him for the plenteous success of my endeavors upon others O what fruits then might I have seen if I had been more faithful and plied the work in private and publike as I ought I know we have need to be very jealous of our deceitful hearts in this point lest our rejoycing should come from our pride and self-ascribing Naturally we would every man be in the place of God and have the praise of every good work ascribed to our selves but yet to imitate our Father in goodness and mercy and to rejoyce in that degree we attain to is the part of every childe of God I tell you therefore to perswade you from my own experience that if you did but know what a joyful thing it is to be an instrument for the converting and saving of souls you would set upon it presently and follow it night and day through the greatest discouragements and resistance Fifthly I might also tell you of the honorableness of this work but I will pass by that lest I excite your pride instead of your zeal And thus I have shewed you what should move and perswade you to this duty Let me now conclude with a word of Intreaty First to all the godly in general Secondly To some above others in particular to set upon the conscionable performance of this most excellent Work CHAP. XII An advice to some more specially to help others to this Rest prest largely on Ministers and Parents SECT I. UP then every man that hath a tongue and is a Servant of Christ and do something of this your Masters Work Why hath he given you a tongue but to speak in his Service And how can you serve
doth lye upon you You that neglect this important work and talk to your Families of nothing but the world I tell you the bloud of souls lyes on you make as light of it as you will if you repent not and amend the Lord will shortly call you to an account for your guiltiness of your childrens everlasting undoing and then you that could finde in your hearts to neglect the souls of your own children will be judged more barbarous then the Irish or Turks that kill the children of others 8. Consider also what a world of sorrows do you prepare for your selves by the neglect of your children First You can expect no other but that they should be thorns in your very eyes and you may thank your selves if they prove so seeing they are thorns of your own planting Secondly If you should repent of this your negligence and be saved your selves yet is it nothing to you to think of the damnation of your children You know God hath said That except they be born again they shall not enter into the Kingdom of God Methinks then it should be a heart-breaking to all you that have unregenerate children Methinks you should weep over them every time you look them in the face to remember that they are in the way to eternal fire Some people would lament the fate of their children if but a Wizard should foretel them some ill fortune to befall them and do you not regard it when the Living God shall tell you That the wicked shall be turned into hell and all they that forget God Psal. 9.17 Thirdly Yet all this were not so doleful to you if it were a thing that you had no hand in or could do nothing to help but to think that all this is much long of you that ever your negligence should bring your childe to these everlasting torments which the very damned man Luke 16. would have had his brethren been warned to escape if this seem light to thee thou hast the heart of a hellish Fiend in thee and not of a man Fourthly But yet worse then all this will it prove to you if you die in this sin for then you shall be miserable as well as they and O what a greeting will there be then between ungodly Parents and children what a hearing will it be to your tormented souls to hear your children cry out against you All this that we suffer was long of you you should have taught us better and did not you should have restrained us from sin and corrected us but you did not what an addition will such out-cries be to your misery 9. On the other side do but think with your selves what a world of comfort you may have if you be faithful in this duty First If you should not succeed yet you have freed your own souls and though it be sad yet not so sad for you may have peace in your own consciences Secondly But if you do succeed the comfort is unexpressible For first Godly children will be truly loving to your selves that are their Parents when a little riches or matters of this world will oft make ungodly children to cast off their very natural affection secondly Godly children will be most obedient to you They dare not disobey and provoke you because of the command of God except you should command them that which is unlawful and then they must obey God rather then men thirdly And if you should fall into want they would be most faithful in relieving you as knowing they are tied by a double bond of Nature and of Grace fourthly And they will also be helpers to your souls and to your spiritual comforts they will be delighting you with the mention of heaven and with all holy conference and actions when wicked children will be grieving you with cursing and swearing or drunkenness or disobedience fifthly Yea when you are in trouble or sickness and at death your godly children will be at hand to advise and to support you they will strive with God in prayers for you O what a comfort is it to a Parent to have a childe that hath the Spirit of Prayer and interest in God how much good may they do you by their importunity with God And what a sadness is it to have children that when you lye sick can do no more but ask you how you do and look on you in your misery sixthly Yea all your Family may fare the better for one childe or servant that feareth God yea perhaps all the Town where he liveth As Josephs case proveth and Jacobs and many the like when one wicked childe may bring a Judgment oâ— your house seventhly And if God make you instruments of your childrens conversion you will have a share in all the good that they do through their lives all the good they do to their brethren or to the Church of God and all the honor they bring to God will redound to your happiness as having been instruments of it eighthly And what a comfort may it be to you all your lives to think that you shall live with them for ever with God ninthly But the greatest joy will be when you come to the possession of this and you shall say Here am I and the children thou hast given me And are not all these comforts enough to perswade you to this duty 10. Consider further That the very welfare of Church and State lyeth mainly on this duty of well educating children and without this all other means are like to be far less successful I seriously profess to you that I verily think all the sins and miseries of the Land may acknowledg this sin for their great Nurse and Propagator O what happy Churches might we have if Parents did their duties to their children then we need not exclude so many for ignorance or scandal nor have our Churches composed of members so rude then might we spare most of the quarrels about Discipline Reformation Toleration and Separation any reasonable government would do better with a well-taught people then the best will do with the ungodly It is not good Laws and Orders that will reform us if the men be not good and Reformation begin not at home when children go wicked from the hands of their Parents thence some come such to the Universities and so we come to have an ungodly Ministry and in every profession they bring this fruit of their Education with them when Gentlemen teach their children onely to Hunt and Hawk and game and deride the godly what Magistrates and what Parliaments and so what Government and what a Commonwealth are we like to have when all must be guided by such as these some perverse inconsiderate persons lay the blame of all this on the Ministers that people of all sorts are so ignorant and profane as if one man can do the work of many hundreds I beseech you that are Masters and Parents do your own duties and free Ministers from these
lest they should be thought proud As if a Schoolmaster should let his Scholars do what their list or a Pilot let the Seamen run the Ship whither they will for fear of being thought proud in exercising their authoritie Secondly But a far greater clog then this yet doth lie upon the Ministers which â—ew take notice of and that is The fewness of Ministers and the greatness of Congregations In the Apostles times every Church had a multitude of Ministers and so it must be again or we shall never come neer that Primitive patern and then they could preach publikely and from house to house But now when there is but one or two Ministers to many thousand souls we cannot so much as know them much less teach them one by one It is as much as we can do to discharge the publike Work So that you see you have little reason to cast your Work on the Ministers but should the more help them by your diligence in your several families because they are already so over burdened SECT XIV 3. BUt some will say We are poor men and must labor for our living and so must our children and cannot have while to teach them the Scriptures we have somewhat else for them to do Answ. And are not poor men subject to God as well as rich and are they not Christians and must they not give account of their ways and have not your children souls to save or lose as well as the rich cannot you have while to speak to them as they are at their work have you not time to instruct them on the Lords day you can finde time to talk idlely as poor as you are and you can finde no time to talk of the way to Life you can finde time on the Lords day for your children to play or walk or talk in the streets but no time to minde the life to come Me thinks you should rather say to your children I have no Lands or Lordships to leave you nothing but hard labor and povertie in the world you have no hope of great matters here be sure therefore to make the Lord your portion and to get interest in Christ that you may be happy hereafter if you could get riches they would shortly leave you but the riches of Grace and Glory will be everlasting Me thinks you should say as Peter Silver and gold I have none but such as I have I give you The Kingdoms of the world cannot be had by beggers but the Kingdom of Heaven may O what a terrible reckoning will many poor men have when Christ shall plead his cause and judg them May not he say I made the way to worldly honors unaccessible to you that you might not look after it for your selves or your children but Heaven I set open that you might have nothing to discourage you I confined riches and honors to a few but my Blood and Salvation I offered to all that none might say I was not invited I tendered Heaven to the poor as well as the rich I made no exception against the meanest begger that did not wilfully shut out themselves Why then did you not come your selves and bring your children and teach them the way to the eternal Inheritance Do you say you were poor Why I did not set Heaven to sale for money but I called those that had nothing to take it freely onely on condition they would take me for their Saviour and Lord and give up themselves unfeignedly to me in obedience and love What can you answer Christ when he shall thus convince you Is it not enough that your children are poor and miserable here but you would have them be worse for everlasting too If your children were beggers yet if they were such beggers as Lazarus they may be conveyed by Angels into the presence of God But beleeve it as God will save no man because he is a Gentleman so will be save no man because he is a begger God hath so ordered it in his providence that riches are exceeding occasions of mens damnation and will you think poverty a sufficient excuse The hardest point in all our work is to be weaned from the world and in love with heaven and if you will not be weaned from it that have nothing in it but labor and sorrow you have no excuse The poor cannot have while and the rich will not have while or they are ashamed to be so forward the young think it too soon and the old too late and thus most men in stead of being saved have somewhat to say against their salvation and when Christ sendeth to invite them they say I pray thee have me excused O unworthy guests of such a blessed feast and most worthy to be turned into the everlasting burnings SECT XV. 4. BUt some will object We have been brought up in ignorance our selves and therefore we are unable to teach your children Answer Indeed this is the very sore of the Land But is it not pitty that men should so receive their destruction by tradition would you have this course to go on thus still 〈◊〉 parents did not teach you and therefore you cannot teach your children and therefore they cannot teach theirs By this course the knowledge of God should be banished out of the world and never be recovered But if your parents did not teach you why did not you learn when you came to age The truth is you had no hearts to it for he that hath not knowledge cannot value it or love it But yet though you have greatly sinned it is not too late if you will but follow my faithful advice in these 4. points 1. Get your hearts deeply sensible of your own sin and misery because of this long time which you have spent in ignorance and neglect Bethink your selves sometime when you are alone Did not God make you and sustain you for his service should not he have had the youth and strength of your spirits Did you live all this while at the door of Eternity What if you had dyed in ignorance Where had you been then What a deale of time have you spent to little purpose Your life is near done and your work all undone You are ready to dye before you have learned to live Should not God have had a better share of your lives and your souls been more sadly regarded and provided for In the midst of these thoughts cast down your selves in sorrow as at the feet of Christ bewaâ—â— your folly beg pardon recovering grace 2. Then think as sadly how you have wronged your children If an unthrift that hath sold all his lands will lament it for his childrens sake as well as his own much more should you 3. Next set presently to work and learn your selves If you can read do if you cannot get some that can and be much among those that will instruct and help you be not ashamed to be seen among learners though it
them to God and the Redeemer 17. That the means by which Christ worketh and preserveth this Grace is the Word Read and Preached together with frequent â—ervent Prayer Meditation Sacraments gracious Conference and it is much furthered also by special Providences keeping us from temptations fitting Occurrences to our advantage drawing us by Mercies and driving us by Afflictions and therefore it must be the great and daily care of every Christian to use faithfully all the said Ordinaces and improve the said providences 18. That though the new Law or Covenant be an easie yoak and there is nothing to be grievous in Christs Commands yet so bad are our hearts and so strong our temptations and so diligent our enemies that whosoever will be saved he must strive and watch and bestow his utmost care and pains and deny his flesh and forsake all that would draw him from Christ and herein continue to the end and overcome And because this cannot be done without continual supplies of Grace whereof Christ is the onely Fountain therefore we must live in continual dependance on him by Faith and know That our life is hid with God in him 19. That Christ will thus by his Word and Spirit gather him a Church of all the elect out of the world which is his body and spouse and he their head and husband and will be tender of theâ— as the apple of his eye and preserve them from dangers and continue among them his presence and ordinances And that the members of this Church must live together in most entire Love and Peace delighting themselves in God and his worship and the fore-thoughts and mention of their everlasting happiness forbearing and forgiving one another and â—â—â—ieving each other in need as if that which they have were their brothers And all men ought to strive to be of this society Yet will the visible Churches be still mixt of good and bad 20. That when the fall number of these elect are called home Christ will come down from heaven again and raise all the dead and set them before him to be judged And all that have loved God above all and believed in Christ and been willing that he should reign over them and have improved their mercies in the day of grace them he will Justifie and sentence them to inherit the Everlasting Kingdom of Glory and those that were not such he will condemn to Everlasting fire Both which sentences shall be then executed accordingly This is the Creed or brief sum of the doctrine which you 〈◊〉 teach your children SECT XVIII THen for matter of practice teach them the meaning of the Commandments especially of the great Commands of the Gospel shew them what is commanded and forbidden in the first table and in the second toward God and men in regard of the inward and the outward man And here shew them 1. The Authority commanding that is the Almighty God by Christ the Redeemer They are not now to look at command as coming from God immediatly meerly as God or the Creator but as coming from God by Christ the Mediator who is now the Lord of all and only Lawgiver seeing the father now Judgeth no man but hath committed all Judgment to the Son John 5.22 23 24. 2. Shew them the tearms on which duty is required and the ends of it 3. And the nature and duties and the way to perform them aright 4. And the right order that they first love God above all and then their neighbor first seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness 5. Shew them the excellencies and delights of Gods service 6. And the flat necessity 7. Especially labor to get all their hearts and teach them not only to speak the words And for sin shew them its evil and danger and watch over them against it Especially 1. The sins that youth is commonly addicted to 2. And which their nature and constitution most leads them to 3. And which the time and place do most strongly tempt to 4. But specially be sure to kill their killing sins those that all are prone to and are of all most deadly as Pride Worldliness Ignorance Profaneness and Flesh-pleasing And for the manner you must do all this 1. Betime before sin get rooting 2. Frequently 3. Seasonably 4. Seriously and diligently 5. Affectionatly and tenderly 6. And with authority compelling where commanding will not serve and adding correction where instruction is frustrate And thus I have done with this Use of exhortation to do our â—tmost for the Salvation of others The Lord give men compassionate hearts that it may be practiced and then I doubt not but he will succeed it to the increase of his Church FINIS THE SAINTS Everlasting REST. The Fourth Part. Containing a Directory for the getting and keeping of the Heart in Heaven By the diligent practice of that Excellent unknown Duty of Heavenly Meditation Being the main thing intended by the Author in the writing of this Book and to which all the rest is but subservient And Isaac went out to meditate in the Field at the Eventide Gen. 24 63. In the multitude of my Thoughts within me thy Comforts delight my soul Psal. 94.19 When I wake I am still with thee Psal. 139 18. For our Conversation is in Heaven from whence also we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious Body according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself Phil. 3.20 21. For where your Treasure is there will your Heart be also Matth. 6.21 Master it is good for us to be here Mark 9.5 London Printed by Rob. White for T. Vnderhill and F. Tyton and are to be sold at the sign of the Bible in great Woodstreet and at the three Daggers in Fleetstreet 1649. TO MY Dearly beloved friends in the Lord The Inhabitants of the Town of SHREWSBVRY Both Magistrates Ministers and People As also Of the Neighbouring Parts Rich. Baxter Devoteth this Practicall Part of this Treatise As a Testimony of his Love to his Native Soyl And to his many Godly and Faithfull Friends there living HEartily praying the Lord and Head of the Church to keep them in Unity Peace Humility Vigilancy and Stedfastness in the Truth and to cause them to contribute their utmost endeavours for the setting up of able faithfull Teachers and building up the House of God which hath so long been neglected and which hath now so many hands imployed to divide and demolish it And that the Lord would save them in this hour of Temptation that they may be approved in this tryall and not be found Light when God shall weigh them And that he would acquaint them with the daily serious exercise of this most precious spirituall soul-exalting work of HEAVENLY MEDITATION and that when the Lord shall come he may finde them so doing The Introduction IN the former Part I have
dark and our faith in him exceeding feeble so is our love to him but little and therefore are our desires after him so dull SECT IV. 3. IT appears we are little weary of sinning when we are so unwilling to be freed by dying Did we take sin for the greatest evil we should not be willing of its company so long did we look on sin as our cruellest enemy and on a sinful life as the most miserable life sure we should then be more willing of a change But O how far are our hearts from our doctrinal profession in this point also We preach and write and talk against sin and call it all that naught is and when we are called to leave it we are loth to depart We brand it with the most odious names that we can imagine and all far short of expressing its vileness but when the approach of death puts us to the tryal we chuse a continuance with these abominations before the presence and fruition of God But as Nemon smote his Souldier for railing against Alexander his enemy saying I hired thee to fight against him and not to rail against him So may God smite us also when he shall hear our tongues reviling that sin which we resist so slothfully and part with so unwillingly Christians seeing we are conscious that our hearts deserve a smiting for this let us joyn together to chide and smite our own hearts before God do judg and smite them O foolish sinful heart Hast thou been so long a sink of sin a cage of all unclean lusts a fountain uncessantly streaming forth the bitter and deadly waters of transgression and art thou not yet aweary Wretched Soul hast thou been so long wounded in all thy faculties so grievously languishing in all thy performances so fruitful a soyl for all iniquities and art thou not yet more weary Hast thou not yet transgressed long enough nor long enough provoked thy Lord nor long enough abused love wouldst thou yet grieve the Spirit more and sin against thy Saviours blood and more increase thine own wounds and still lie under thy grievous imperfections Hath thy sin proved so profit able a commodity so necessary a companion such a delightful employment that thou dost so much dread the parting day Hath thy Lord deserved this at thy hands that thou shouldst chuse to continue in the Suburbs of â—ell rather then live with him in light and rather stay and drudg in sin and abide with his and thy own professed enemy then come away and dwell with God May not God justly grant thee thy wishes and seal thee a lease of thy desired distance and nail thy ear to these doors of misery and exclude thee eternally from his glory Foolish sinner who hath wronged thee God or sin who hath wounded thee and caused thy groans who hath made thy life so woful and caused thee to spend thy days in dolor is it Christ or is it thy corruption and art thou yet so loth to think of parting shall God be willing to dwell with man and the Spirit to abide in thy peevish heart and that where sin doth straiten his room and a cursed inmate inhabit with him which is ever quarrelling and contriving against him and shall man be loth to come to God where is nothing but perfect Blessedness and Glory Is not this to judg our selves unworthy of everlasting Life If they in Acts 13.46 who put the Gospel from them did judg themselves unworthy do not we who flie from life and glory SECT V. 4. IT shews that we are insensible of the vanity of the Creature and of the vexation accompanying our residence here when we are so loth to hear or think of a removal VVhat ever we say against the world or how grievous soever our complaints may seem we either beleeve not or feel not what we say or else we should be answerably affected to it VVe call the world our enemy and cry out of the oppression of our Task-masters and groan under our sore bondage but either we speak not as we think or else we imagine some singular happiness to consist in the possession of worldly things for which all this should be endured Is any man loth to leave his prison or to remove his dwelling from cruel enemies or to scape the hands of murderous robbers Do we take the world indeed for our prison our cruel spoyling murderous foe and yet are we loth to leave it Do we take this flesh for the clog of our spirits and a vail that 's drawn betwixt us and God and a continual in dwelling traitor to our souls and yet are we loth to lay it down Indeed Peter was smitten by the Angel before he arose and left his prison but it was more from his ignorance of his intended deliverance then any unwillingness to leave the place I have read of Josephs long imprisonment and Daniels casting into the Den of Lyons and Jeremies sticking fast in the Dungeon and Jonahs lying in the belly of the VVhale and David from the deep crying to God but I remember not that any were loth to be delivered I have read indeed That they suffered cheerfully and rejoyced in being afflicted destitute and tormented yea and that some of them would not accept of deliverance But not from any love to the suffering or any unwillingness to change their condition but because of the hard terms of their deliverance and from the hope they had of a better resurrection Though Paul and Sylas could sing in the stocks and comfortably bear their cruel scourgings yet I do not beleeve they were unwilling to go forth nor took it ill when God relieved them At foolish wretched soul Doth every prisoner groan for freedom and every Slave desire his Jubilee and every sick man long for health and every hungry man for food and dost thou alone abhor deliverance Doth the Seamen long to see the Land doth the Husbandman desire the Harvest and the laboring man to receive his pay doth the traveller long to be at home and the runner long to win the prize and the Souldier long to win the field And art thou loth to see thy labors finished and to receive the end of thy Faith and sufferings and to obtain the thing for which thou livest Are all thy sufferings onely seeming have thy gripes thy griefs and groans been onely dreams if they were yet methinks we should not be afraid of waking Fearful dreams are not delightful Or is it not rather the worlds delights that are all meer dreams and shadows Is not all its glory as the light of a Glow-worm a wandering fire yielding but small directing light and as little comforting heat in all our doubtful and sorrowful darkness or hath the world In these its latter days laid aside its ancient enmity Is it become of late more kinde hath it left its thorny renting nature who hath wrought this great change and who
hath made this reconciliation Surely not the great Reconciler He hath told us in the world we shall have trouble and in him onely we shall have peace VVe may reconcile our selves to the world at our peril but it will never reconcile it self to us O foolish unworthy soul who hadst rather dwell in this land of darkness and rather wander in this barren wilderness then be at rest with Jesus Christ who hadst rather stay among the VVolves and daily suffer the Scorpions stings then to praise the Lord with the Hosts of Heaven If thou didst well know what Heaven is and what Earth is it would not be so SECT VI. 5. THis unwillingness to dye doth actually impeach us of high Treason against the Lord Is it not a chusing of Earth before him and taking these present things for our happiness and consequently making them our very God If we did indeed make God our God that is our End our Rest our Portion our Treasure how is it possible but we should desire to enjoy him It behoves us the rather to be fearful of this it being utterly inconsistent with saving Grace to value any thing before God or to make the Creature our highest End Many other sins foul and great may possibly yet consist with sincerity but so I am certain cannot that But concerning this I have spoke before SECT VII 6. ANd all these defects being thus discovered what a deal of dissembling doth it more over shew We take on us to believe undoubtedly the exceeding eternal weight of Glory We call God our chiefest Good and say we love Him above all and for all this we fly from Him as if it were from Hell it self would you have any man believe you when you call the Lord your onely Hope and speak of Christ as All in All and talk of the Joy that is in Presence and yet would endure the hardest life rather then dye and come unto him What self-contradiction is this to talk so hardly of the world and flesh to groan and complain of sin and suffering and yet fear no day more then that which we expect should bring our finall freedom what shameless gross dissembling is this to spend so many hours and dayes in hearing Sermons reading Books conferring with others and all to learn the way to a place which we are loth to come to To take on us all our life-time to walk towards Heaven to run to strive to fight for Heaven which we are loth to come to What apparent palpable hypocrysie is this to lye upon our knees in publike and private and spend one hour after another in prayer for that which we would not have If one should over-hear thee in thy daily devotions crying out Lord deliver me from this body of death from this sin this sickness this poverty these cares and feares how long Lord shall I suffer these and withall should hear thee praying against death can he believe thy tongue agrees with thy heart except thou have so far lost thy reason as to expect all this here or except the Papists Doctrine were true that we are able to fulfil the Law of God or our late Perfectionists are truly enlightned who think they can live and not sin but if thou know these to be undoubtedly false how canst thou deny thy gross dissembling SECT VIII 7. COnsider how do we wrong the Lord and his Promises and disgrace his ways in the eyes of the world As if we would actually perswade them to question whether God be true of his Word or no whether there be any such glory as Scripture mentions when they see those who have professed to live by Faith and have boasted of their hopes in another world and perswaded others to let go all for these hopes and spoken disgracefully of all things below in comparison of these unexpressable things above I say when they see these very men so loth to leave their hold of present things and to go to that glory which they talked and boasted of how doth it make the weak to stagger and confirm the world in their unbelief and sensuality and make them conclude sure if these Professors did expect so much glory and make so light of the world as they seem they would not themselves be so loth of a change O how are we ever able to repaiâ— the wrong which we do to God and poor souls by this scandal And what an honor to God what a strengthning to Believers what a conviction to Unbelievers would it be if Christians in this did answer their professions and chearfully welcome the news of Rest SECT IX 8. IT evidently discovers that we have been careless loyterers that we have spent much time to little purpose and that we have neglected and lost a great many of warnings Have we not had all our life time to prepare to die So many years to make ready for one hour and are we so unready and unwilling yet VVhat have we done why have we lived that the business of our lives is so much undone Had we any greater matters to minde Have we not foolishly wronged our souls in this would we have wished more frequent warnings How oft hath death entered the habitations of our neighbors how oft hath it knockt at our own doors we have first heard that such a one is dead and then such a one and such a one till our Towns have changed most of their Inhabitants And was not all this a sufficient warning to tell us that we were also Mortals and our own turn would shortly come Nay we have seen death raging in Towns and Fields so many hundred a day dead of the Pestilence so many thousands slam of the Sword and did we not know it would reach to us at last How many distempers have vexed our bodies frequent Languishings consuming Weaknesses wasting Feavers here pain and there trouble that we have been forced to receive the sentence of death and what were all these but so many Messengers sent from God to tell us we must shortly dye as if we had heard a lively voyce bidding us Delay no more but make you ready And are we unready and unwilling after all this O careless dead hearted Sinners unworthy neglecters of Gods Warnings faithless betrayers of our own souls All these hainous aggravations do lye upon this sin of unwillingness to dye which I have laid down to make it hateful to my own soul which is too much guilty of it as well as yours And for a further help to our prevailing against it I shall adjoyn these following Considerations SECT X. 1. COnsider not to dye were never to be happy To escape death were to miss of blessedness Except God should translate us as Henoch and Elias which he never did before or since If our hopeth in Christ were in this life onely we were then of all men most miserable The Epicure hath more pleasure to his Flesh then
he hath chosen him for his Portion his thoughts are on Eternity his desires there his dwelling there he cryes out O that I were there he takes that day for a time of imprisonment wherein he hath not taken one refreshing view of Eternity I had rather dye in this mans condition and have my soul in his souls case then in the case of him that hath the most eminent gifts and is most admired for parts and dutie whose heart is not thus taken up with God The man that Christ will finde out at the last day and condemn for want of a wedding Garment will be he that wants this frame of heart The question will not then be How much you have known or professed or talked but How much have you loved and where was your heart Why then Christians as you would have a sure testimony of the love of God and a sure proof of your title to Glory labor to get your hearts above God will acknowledg that you really love him and take you for faithful friends indeed when he sees your hearts are set upon him Get but your hearts once truly in Heaven and without all question your selves will follow If sin and Satan keep not thence your affections they will never be able to keep away your persons SECT IIII. 2. COnsider A heart in Heaven is the highest excellency of your spirits here and the noblest part of your Christian disposition As there is not only a difference between men and beasts but also among men between the Noble and the Base so there is not only a common excellency whereby a Christian differs from the world but also a peculiar nobleness of spirit whereby the more excellent differ from the rest And this lyes especially in a higher and more heavenly frame of spirit Only man of all inferior creatures is made with a face directed heaven-ward but other creatures have their faces to the earth As the Noblest of Creatures so the Noblest of Christians are they that are set most direct for Heaven As Saul is called a choice and goodly man higher by the head then all the company so is he the most choice and goodly Christian whose head and heart is thus the highest Men of noble birth and spirits do mind high and great affairs and not the smaller things of low poverty Their discourse is of the councels and matters of State of the Government of the Common-wealth and publike things and not of the Countrey-mans petty imployments O to hear such an heavenly Saint who hath fetcht a journey into heaven by faith and hath been wrapt up to God in his contemplations and is newly come down from the veiws of Christ what discoveries he will make of those Superior regions What ravishing expressions drop from his lips How high and sacred is his discourse Enough to make the ignorant world astonished and say Much study hath made them mad And enough to convince an understanding hearer that have seen the Lord and to make one say No man could speak such words as these except he had been with God this This is the noble Christian. As Bucholcers hearers concluded when he had preached his last Sermon being carried between two into the Church because of his weakness and there most admirably discoursed of the Blessedness of souls departed this life Caeteros concio naetores a Bucholcero semper omnes illo autem die etiam ipsum a sese superatum That Bucholcer did ever excel other preachers but that day he excelled himself so may I conclude of the heavenly Christian He ever excelleth the Rest of men but when he is neerest Heaven he excelleth himself As those are the most famous mountains that are highest and those the fairest trees that are talest and those the most glorious Pyramides and buildings whose tops do reach neerest to Heaven so is he the choisest Christian whose heart is most frequently and most delightfully there If a man have lived neer the King or have travelled to see the Sultan of Persia or the great Turk he will make this a matter of boasting and thinks himself one step higher then his private neighbors that live at home What shall we then judg of him that daily travels as far as Heaven and there hath seen the King of Kings That hath frequent admittance into the Divine presence and feasteth his soul upon the tree of life For my part I value this man before the ablest the richest the most learned in the world SECT V. 3. COnsider A heavenly minde is a joyful minde This is the neerest and the truest way to live a life of comfort And without this you must needs be uncomfortable Can a man be at the fire and not be warm or in the Sun-shine and not have light Can your heart be in Heaven and not have comfort The countreys of Norway Island and all the Northward are cold and frozen because they are farther from the power of the Sun But in Egypt Arabia and the Southern parts it is far otherwise where they live more neer its powerful rayes What could make such frozen uncomfortable Christians but living so far as they do from heaven And what makes some few others so warm in comforts but their living higher then others do and their frequent access so neer to God When the Sun in the Spring draws neer our part of the earth how do all things congratulate its approach The earth looks green casteth off her mourning habit the trees shoot forth the plants revive the pretty birds how sweetly sing they the face of all things smile upon us and all the creatures below reioyce Beloved friends if we would but try this life with God and would but keep these hearts above what a Spring of joy would be within us and all our graces be fresh and green How would the face of our souls be changed and all that is within us rejoyce How should we forget our winter sorrows and withdraw our souls from our sad retirements How early should we rise as those birds in the spring to sing the praise of our Great Creator O Christian get above Believe it that Region is warmer then this below Those that have been there have found it so and those that have come thence have told us so And I doubt not but that thou hast sometime tryed it thy self I dare appeal to thy own experience or to the experience of any soul that knows what the true Joys of a Christian are When is it that you have largest comforts Is it not after such an exercise as this when thou hast got up thy heart and converst with God and talkt with the inhabitants of the higher world and veiwed the mansions of the Saints and Angels and filled thy soul with the forethoughts of Glory If thou know by experience what this practice is I dare say thou knowest what spiritual Joy is David professeth that the light of Gods countenance would make his
same and if we took the right course for fetching in our comfort from these sure our comforts would be more setled and constant though not always the same Whoever thou art therefore that Readest these lines I intreat thee in the name of the Lord and as thou valuest the life of constant Joy and that good conscience which is a continual feast that thou wouldest but seriously set upon this work and learn this Art of Heavenly-mindedness and thou shalt finde the increase a hundred fold and the benefit abundantly exceed thy labor But this is the misery of mans Nature Though every man naturally abhorreth sorrow and loves the most merry and joyful life yet few do love the way to Joy or will endure the pains by which it is obtained they will take the next that comes to hand and content themselves with earthly pleasures rather then they will ascend to heaven to seek it and yet when all is done they must have it there or be without it SECT VI. 4. COnsider A heart in heaven will be a most excellent preservative against temptations a powerful means to kill thy corruptions and to save thy conscience from the wounds of sin God can prevent our sinning though we be careless and keep off the temptation which we would draw upon our selves and sometime doth so but this is not his usual course nor is this our safest way to escape When the minde is either idle or ill imployed the devil needs not a greater advantage when he finds the thoughts let out on Lust Revenge Ambition or Deceit what an opportunity hath he to move for Execution and to put on the Sinner to practise what he thinks on Nay if he finde the minde but empty there 's room for any thing that he will bring in but when he finds the heart in heaven what hope that any of his motions should take Let him entice to any forbidden course or shew us the baite of any pleasure the soul will return Nehemiaes Answer I am doing a great work and cannot come Neh. 6.3 Several ways will this preserve us against Temptations First By keeping the heart imployed Secondly By clearing the Understanding and so confirming the Will Thirdly By prepossessing the Affections with these highest delights Fourthly And by keeping us in the way of Gods blessing First By keeping the heart employed when we are idle we tempt the devil to tempt us as it is an encouragement to a Thief to see your doors open and no body within and as we use to say Careless persons make Theeves or as it will encourage an High-way Robber to see you unweaponed so may it encourage Sathan to find your hearts idle but when the heart is taken up with God it cannot have while to hearken to Temptations it cannot have while to be lustful and wanton ambitious or worldly If a poor man have a suit to any of you he will not come when you are taken up in some great mans company or discourse that 's but an ill time to speed If you were but busied in your lawful Callings you would not be so ready to hearken to Temptations much less if you were busied above with God Will you leave your Plow and Harvest in the Field or leave the quenching of a fire in your houses to run vvith children a hunting of Butterflies vvould a Judg be perswaded to rise from the Bench vvhen he is sitting upon life and death to go and play among the Boys in the streets No more will a Christian vvhen he is busie vvith God and taking a survey of his eternal Rest give ear to the alluring charms of Sathan Non vacat exiguis c. is a Character of the truly prudent man the children of that Kingdom should never have vvhile for trifles but especially vvhen they are imployed in the affairs of the Kingdom and this employment is one of the Saints chief preservatives against temptations For as Gregory saith Nunquam Dei amor otiosus est operatur enim magna si est Si verò operari renuit non est amor The Love of God is never idle it vvorketh great things vvhen it truly is and vvhen it vvill not vvork it is not love Therefore being still thus working it is still preserving Secondly A heavenly minde is the freest from sin because it is of clearest understanding in spiritual matters of greatest concernment A man that is much in conversing above hath truer and livelyer apprehensions of things concerning God and his soul then any reading or learning can beget Though perhaps he may be ignorant in divers controversies and matters that less concern salvation yet those truths vvhich must stablish his soul and preserve him from temptation he knows far better then the greatest Scholars he hath so deep an insight into the evil of sin the vanity of the creature the brutishness of fleshly sensual delights that temptations have little power on him for these earthly vanities are Satans baites which though they may take much with the undiscerning world yet with the clear-sighted they have lost their force In vain saith Salomon the net is spread in the sight of any bird Pro. 1.17 And usually in vain doth Satan lay his snares to entrap the soul that plainly sees them when a man is on high he may see the further we use to set our discovering Centinels on the highest place that 's neer unto us that he may discern all the motions of the Enemy In vain doth the Enemy lay his Ambuscado's when we stand over him on some high Mountain and clearly discover all he doth When the heavenly-minde is above with God he may far easier from thence discern every danger that lyes below and the whole method of the devil in deceiving Nay if he did not discover the snare yet were he likelier far to escape it then any others that converse below A net or baite that 's laid on the ground is unlikely to catch the bird that flyes in the Air while she keeps above she 's out 〈◊〉 of the danger and the higher the safer so is it with us Sathans temptations are laid on the earth earth is the place and earth the ordinary baite How shall these ensnare the Christian who hath left the earth and walks with God But alas we keep not long so high but down we must to the earth again and then we are taken If conversing with wise and learned men is the way to make one wise and learned then no wonder if he that converseth with God become wise If men that travel about the earth do think to return home with more experience and wisdom how much more he that travels to heaven As the very Air and Climate that we most abide in do work our bodies to their own temper no wonder if he that is much in that sublime and purer Region have a purer soul and quicker sight and if he have an understanding full of light who liveth with
lye by thee as if thou hadst forgot it O that our hearts were as high as our Hopes and our Hopes as high as these infallible Promises SECT XII 10. COnsider It is but equal that our hearts should be on God when the heart of God is so much on us If the Lord of Glory can stoop so low as to set his heart on sinful dust sure one would think we should easily be perswaded to set our hearts on Christ and Glory and to ascend to him in our daily affections who vouchsafeth to condescend to us O If Gods delight were no more in us then ours is in him what should we do what a case were we in Christian dost thou not perceive that the Heart of God is set upon thee and that he is still minding thee with tender Love even when thou forgettest both thy self and him Dost thou not finde him following thee with daily mercies moving upon thy soul providing for thy body preserving both Doth he not bear thee continually in the arms of Love and promise that all shall work together for thy good and suit all his dealings to thy greatest advantage and give his Angels charge over thee And canst thou finde in thy heart to cast him by and be taken up with the Joyes below and forget thy Lord who forgets not thee Fye upon this unkinde ingratitude Is not this the sin that Isaiah so solemnly doth call both heaven and earth to witness against The Ox knoweth his owner and the Ass his Masters Crib but Israel doth not know my People doth not consider If the Ox or Ass do straggle in the day they likely come to their home at night but we will not so much as once a day by our serious thoughts ascend to God When he speaks of his own respects to us hear what he saith Isai. 15.16 When Zion saith The Lord hath forsaken me my Lord hath forgotten me Can a woman forget her sucking childe that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb yea they may forget yet will I not forget thee Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands thy walls are continually before me But when he speaks of our thoughts to him the case is otherwise Jer. 2.32 Can a Maid forget her Ornaments or a Bride her Attire yet my People have forgotten me days without number As if he should say you would not forget the cloathes on your backs you will not forget your braveries and vanities you will not rise one morning but you will remember to cover your nakedness And are these of more worth then your God or of more concernment then your eternal life and yet you can forget these day after day O brethren give not God cause to expostulate with us as Isai. 65.11 Ye are they that have forsaken the Lord and that forget my holy Mountain But rather admire his minding of thee and let it draw thy minde again to him and say as Job 7.17 What is man that thou shouldest magnifie him and that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him and that thou shouldest visit him every morning and try him every moment ver 18. So let thy soul get up to God and visit him every morning and thy heart be towards him every moment SECT XIII 11. COnsider Should not our interest in Heaven and our Relation to it continually keep our hearts upon it Besides that excellency which is spoken of before VVhy there our Father keeps his court Do we not call him our Father which art in Heaven Ah ungratious unworthy children that can be so taken up in their play below as to be mindless of such a Father Also there is Christ our Head our Husband our Life and shall we not look towards him and send to him as oft as we can till we come to see him face to face If he were by Transubstantiation in the Sacraments or other ordinances and that as gloriously as he is in Heaven then there were some reason for our lower thoughts But when the Heavens must receive him till the restitution of all things let them also receive our hearts with him There also is our Mother For Jerusalem which is above is that mother of us all Gal. 4.26 And there are multitudes of our elder Brethren There are our friends and our ancient acquaintance whose society in the flesh we so much delighted in and whose departure hence we so much lamented And is this no attractive to thy thoughts If they were within thy reach on earth thou wouldst go and visit them and why wilt thou not oftner visit them in Spirit and rejoyce beforehand to think of thy meeting them there again Saith old Bullinger Socrates gaudet sibi moriendū esse propterea quod Homerum Hesiodum alios praestantissimos viros se visurum crederet quanto magis ego gaudeo qui certus sum me visurum esse Christum servatorem meum aeternum Dei filium in assumtâ carne praeterea tot sanctissimos eximios Patriarchas c. Socrates rejoyced that he should die because he believed he should see Homer Hesiod and other excellent men how much more do I rejoyce who am sure to see Christ my Saviour the eternal Son of God in his assumed flesh and besides so many holy and excellent men When Luther desired to dye a Martyr and could not obtain it he comforted himself with these thoughts and thus did write to them in prison Vestra vincula mea sunt vestri carceres ignes mei sunt dum confiteor praedico vobisque simul compatior congratulor Yet this is my comfort your Bonds are mine your Prisons and Fires are mine while I confess and Preach the Doctrine for which you suffer and while I suffer and congratulate with you in your sufferings Even so should a Believer look to heaven and contemplate the blessed state of the Saints and think with himself Though I am not yet so happy as to be with you yet this is my daily comfort you are my Brethren and fellow Members in Christ and therefore your joyes are my joyes and your glory by this neer relation is my glory especially while I believe in the same Christ and hold fast the same Faith and Obedience by which you were thus dignified and also while I rejoyce in Spirit with you and in my daily meditations congratulate your happiness Moreover our house and home is above For we know if this earthly house of our Tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens Why do we then look no oftner towards it and groan not earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven 2 Cor. 5.1 2. Sure if our home were far meaner we should yet remember it because it is our home You use to say Home is homely be it never so poor and should such a home then be no more remembred If
known duties either publike private or secret Art thou a slave to thine appetite in eating or â—rinking or to any other commanding sense Art thou a proud Seeker of thine own esteem and a man that must needs have mens good opinion or else thy minde is all in a combustion Art thou a wilfully peevish and passionate person as if thou wert made of Tinder or Gun powder ready to take fire at every word or every wry look or every supposed sleighting of thee or every neglect of a complement or curtesie Art thou a knowing deceiver of others in thy dealing or one that hast set thy self to rise in the world not to speak of greater sins which all take notice of If this be thy case I dare say Heaven and thy Soul are very great strangers I dare say thou art seldom in Heart with God and there is little hope it should ever be better as long as thou continuest in these transgressions These beams in thine eyes will not suffer thee to look to Heaven these will be a cloud between thee and God When thou dost but attempt to study Eternity and to gather comforts from the life to come thy sin will presently look thee in the face and say These things belong not to thee How shouldst thou take comfort from Heaven who takest so much pleasure in the lusts of thy flesh O how this will damp thy joyes and make the thoughts of that day and state to become thy trouble and not thy delight Every wilful sin that thou livest in will be to thy comforts as water to the fire when thou thinkest to quicken them this will quench them when thy heart begins to draw neer to God this will presently come in thy minde and cover thee with shame and fill thee with doubting Besides which is most to the point in hand it doth utterly indispose thee and disable thee to this work When thou shouldst wind up thy heart to Heaven alas it s byassed another way it is intangled in the lusts of the flesh and can no more ascend in Divine Meditation then the bird can flie whose wings are clipt or that is intangled in the Lime-twigs or taken in the snare Sin doth cut the very sinews of the soul therefore I say of this heavenly life as Master Bolton saith of Prayer Either it will make thee leave sinning or sin will make thee leave it and that quickly too For these cannot continue together If thou be here guilty who readest this I require thee sadly to think of this folly O man what a life dost thou lose and what a life dost thou chuse what daily delights dost thou sell for the swinish pleasure of a stinking lust what a Christ what a glory dost thou turn thy back upon when thou art going to the embracements of thy hellish pleasures I have read of a Gallant addicted to uncleanness who at last meeting with a beautiful Dame and having enjoyed his fleshly desires of her found her in the morning to be the dead body of one that he had formerly sinned with which had been acted by the devil all night and left dead again in the morning Surely all thy sinful pleasures are suche The devil doth animate them in the darkness of the night but when God awakes thee at the farther at death the deceit is vanished and nothing left but a carkass to amaze thee and be a spectacle of horror before thine eyes Thou thinkest thou hast hold of some choice delight but it will turn in thy hand as Moses rod into a Serpent and then thou wouldst fain be rid of it if thou knewest how and wilt â—â—ie from the face of it as thou dost now embrace it And shall this now dream thee from the high delights of the Saints If Heaven and Hell can meet together and if God can become a lover of sin theâ—â— maist them live in thy sin and in the tastes of glory and maist have a conversation in Heaven though thou cherish thy corruption If therefore thou finde thy self guilty never doubt on it but this is the cause that estrangeth thee from Heaven And take heed least it keep out thee as it keeps out thy heart and do not say but thou wast bid Take heed Yea if thou be a man that hitherto hast escaped and knowest no raigning sin in thy soul yet let this warning move thee to prevention and stir up a dread of this danger in thy spirit As Huâ—nius writes of himself That hearing the mention of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost it stirred up such fears in his spirit that made him cry out What if this should be my case and so rouzed him to prayer and tryal So think thou though thou yet be not guilty what a sad thing it were if ever this should prove thy case And therefore watch SECT II. 2. A Second hinderance carefully to be avoided is An Earthly minde For you may easily conceive that this cannot stand with an Heavenly minde God and Mammon Earth and Heaven cannot both have the delight of thy heart This makes thee like Anselmne's Bird with a stone tyed to the foot which as oft as she took flight did pluck her to the Earth again If thou be a man that hast fancied to thy self some content or happiness to be found on Earth and beginnest to taste a sweetness in gain and to aspire after a fuller and a higher estate and hast hatched some thriving projects in thy brain and art driving on thy rising design Beleeve it thou art marching with thy back upon Christ and art posting apace from this Heavenly life Why hath not the World that from thee which God hath from the Heavenly When he is blessing himself in his God and rejoycing in hope of the glory to come then thou art blessing thy self in thy prosperity and rejoycing in hope of thy thriving here When he is solacing his soul in the views of Christ of the Angels and Saints that he shall live with for ever then art thou comforting thy self with thy wealth in looking over thy Bills and Bonds in viewing thy Money thy Goods thy Cattel thy Buildings or large Possession and art recreating thy minde in thinking of thy hopes of the favor of some great ones on whom thou dependest of the pleasantness of a plentiful and commanding state of thy larger provision for thy children after thee of the rising of thy house or the obeisance of thine inferiors Are not these thy morning and evening thoughts when a gracious soul is above with Christ Dost thou not delight and please thy self with the daily rolling these thoughts in thy minde when a gracious soul should have higher delights If he were a fool by the sentence of Christ that said Soul take thy rest thou hast enough laid up for many yeers What a fool of fools art thou that knowing this yet takest not warning but in thy heart speakest the same words Look them over seriously and
circumstances though to some they may seem small things doth much conduce to our hinderance or our help Christ himself thought it not vain to direct in this circumstance of private duty Mat. 6.4 6 18 If in private prayer we must shut our door upon us that our Father may hear us in secret so is it also requisite in this Meditation How oft doth Christ himself depart to some mountain or wilderness or other solitary place For occasional Meditation I give thee not this advise but for this daily set and solemn duty I advise that thou withdraw thy self from all society yea though it were the society of godly men that thou mayest a while enjoy the society of Christ If a student cannot study in a crowd who exerciseth only his invention and memory much lesse when thou must exercise all the powers of thy soul and that upon an object so far above nature When thy eyes are filled with the persons and actions of men and thine ears with their discourse its hard then to have thy thoughts and affections free for this duty Though I would not perswade thee to Pythagoras his Cave nor to the Hermets Wilderness nor to the Monks Cell yet I would advise thee to frequent solitariness that thou mayest sometimes confer with Christ and with thy self as well as with others We are fled so far from the solitude of superstition that we have cast off the solitude of contemplative devotion Friends use to converse most familiarly in private and to open their Secrets and let out their affections most freely Publike converse is but common converse Use therefore as Christ himself did Mark 1.35 to depart sometimes into a solitary place that thou maist be wholly vacant for this great employment See Mat. 14.23 Mark 6.47 Luke 9.18 36. John 6.15 16. We seldom read of Gods appearing by himself or his Angels to any of his Prophets or Saints in a throng but frequently when they were alone And as I advise thee to a place of retiredness so also that thou observe more particularly what place and posture best agreeth with thy spirit Whether within doors or without whether siting still or walking I beleeve Isaacs example in this also will direct us to the place and posture which will best suit with most as it doth with me viz. His walking forth to meditate in the field at the eventide And Christs own example in the places forecited gives us the like direction Christ was used to a solitary Garden that even Judas when he came to betray him knew where to finde him John 18.1 2. And though he took his Disciples thither with him yet did he separate himself from them for more Secret devotions Luke 22.41 And though his meditation be not directly named but onely his praying yet it is very clearly implied Matth. 26.38 39. His soul is first made sorrowful with the bitter meditations on his death and sufferings and then he poureth it out in prayer Mark 14.34 So that Christ had his accustomed place and consequently accustomed duty and so must we Christ hath a place that is solitary whither he retireth himself even from his own Disciples and so must we Christs meditations do go further then his thought they affect and pâ—erce his heart and soul and so must ours Onely there is a wide difference in the object Christ meditates on the suffering that our sins had deserved that the wrath of his Father even passed through his thoughts upon all his soul But the meditation that we speak of is on the glory he hath purchased that the love of the Father and the joy of the Spirit might enter at our thoughts and revive our affections and overflow our souls So that as Christs meditation was the sluce or flood-gate to let in Hell to overflow his Affections so our meditation should be the sluce to let in Heaven into our affections SECT IX SO much concerning the Time and Place of this duty I am next to advise thee somewhat concerning the preparations of thy heart The success of the work doth much depend on the frame of thy heart When mans heart had nothing in it that might grieve the Spirit then was it the delightful habitation of his Maker God did not quit his residence there till man did expel him by unworthy provocations There grew no strangeness till the heart grew sinful and too loathsom a dungeon for God to delight in And were this soul reduced to its former innocency God would quickly return to his former habitation yea so far as it is renewed and repaired by the Spirit and purged of its lusts and beautified with his Image the Lord will yet acknowledg it his own and Christ will manifest himself unto it and the Spirit will take it for his Temple and Residence So far as the soul is qualified for conversing with God so far it doth actually for the most part enjoy him Therefore with all diligence keep thy heart for from thence are the issues of life Prov 4.23 More particularly when thou fettest on this duty First Get thy heart as clear from the world as thou canst wholly lay by the thoughts of thy business of thy troubles of thy enjoyments and of every thing that may take up any room in thy soul. Get thy soul as empty as possibly thou canst that so it may be the more capable of being filled with God It is a work as I have said that will require all the powers of thy soul if they were a thousand times more capacious and active then they are and therefore you have need to lay by all other thoughts and affections while you are busied here If thou couldst well perform some outward duty with a piece of thy heart while the other is absent yet this above all I am sure thou canst not Surely if thou once address thy self to the business indeed thou wilt be as the covetous man at the heap of Gold that when he might take as much as he could carry away lamented that he was able to bear no more So when thou shalt get into the Mount in contemplation thou wilt finde there as much of God and Glory as thy narrow heart is able to contain and almost nothing to hinder thy full possession but onely the uncapableness of thy own Spirit O then wilt thou think that this understanding were larger that I might conceive more that these affections were wider to contain more it is more my own unfitness then any thing else which is the cause that even this place is not my Heaven God is in this place and I know it not This Mount is full of the Angels of God but mine eyes are shut and cannot see them O the words of love that Christ hath to speak O the wonders of love that he hath to shew But alas I cannot bear them yet Heaven is here ready at hand for me but my uncapable heart is unready for Heaven Thus wouldst thou lament that the
canst and say to it Behold the Ancient of days the Lord Jehovah whose name is I am This is he who made the Worlds with his Word this is the Cause of all Causes the Spring of Action the Fountain of Life the first Principle of the Creatures Motions who upholds the Earth who ruleth the Nations who disposeth of events and subdueth his foes who governeth the depths of the great Waters and boundeth the rage of her swelling Waves who ruleth the Winds and moveth the Orbs and causeth the Sun to run its race and the several Planets to know their courses This is he that loved thee from Everlasting that formed thee in the Womb and gave thee this Soul who brought thee forth and shewed thee the Light and ranked thee with the chiefest of his earthly Creatures who endued thee with thy understanding and beautified thee with his gifts who maintaineth thee with life and health and comforts who gave thee thy preferments and dignified thee with thy honors and differenced thee from the most miserable and vilest of men Here O here is an object now worthy thy love here shouldst thou even pour out thy soul in love here thou maist be sure thou caust not love too much This is the Lord that hath blest thee with his benefits that hath spred thy table in the sight of thine enemies and caused thy cup to overflow This is he that Angels and Saints do praise and the Host of Heaven must magnifie for ever Thus do thou expatiate in the Praises of God and open his Excellencies to thine own heart till thou feel the life begin to stir and the fire in thy brest begin to kindle As gazing upon the dusty beauty of flesh doth kindle the fire of carnal love so this gazing on the Glory and Goodness of the Lord will kindle this Spiritual love in the-soul Bruising will make the Spices odoriferous and rubbing the Pomander will bring forth the sweetness Act therefore thy soul upon this delightful object toss these cogitations frequently in thy heart rub over all thy Affections with them as you will do your cold hands till they begin to warm What though thy heart be Rock and Flint this often striking may bring forth the fire but if yet thou feelest not thy love to work lead thy heart further and shew it yet more shew it the Son of the living God whose name is Wonderful Counsellor The Mighty God The Everlasting Father The Prince of Peace shew it the King of Saints on the Throne of his Glory who is the first and the last who is and was and is to come who liveth and was dead and behold he lives for evermore who hath made thy peace by the blood of his Cross and hath prepared thee with himself an Habitation of Peace His office is to be the great Peace-Maker his Kingdom is a Kingdom of Peace his Gospel is the Tydings of Peace his Voice to thee now is the Voice of Peace Draw neer and behold him Dost thou not hear his voyce He that called Thomas to come neer and to see the print of the Nailes and to put his finger into his Wounds He it is that calls to thee Come neer and view the Lord thy Saviour and be not faithless but believing Peace be unto thee fear not It is I He that calleth Behold me behold me to a rebellious people that calleth not on his Name doth call out to thee a Believer to behold him He that calls to them who pass by to behold his Sorrow in the day of his Humiliation doth call now to thee to behold his Glory in the day of his Exaltation Look well upon him Dost thou not know him why it s He that brought thee up from the pit of hell It s He that reversed the sentence of thy Damnation that bore the Curse which thou shouldest have born and restored thee to the blessing that thou hadst forfeited and lost and purchased the Advancement which thou must inherit for ever And yet dost thou not know him why his Hands were pierced his Head was pierced his Sides were pierced his Heart was pierced with the sting of thy sins that by these marks thou mightest always know him Dost thou not remember when he found thee lying in thy blood and took pitty on thee and drest thy wounds and brought thee home and said unto thee Live Hast thou forgotten since he wounded himself to cure thy wounds and let out his own blood to stop thy bleeding Is not the passage to his heart yet standing open If thou know him not by the face the voyce the hands if thou know him not by the tears and bloody sweat yet look neerer thou maist know him by the Heart That broken-healed heart is his that dead-revived Heart is his that soul-pittying melting Heart is his Doubtless it can be none 's but his Love and Compassion are its certain Signatures This is He even this is He who would rather dye then thou shoulst dye who chose thy life before his own who pleads this blood before his Father and makes continual intercession for thee if he had not suffered O what hadst thou suffered what hadst thou been if he had not Redeemed thee whether hadst thou gone if he had not recalled thee there was but a step between thee and Hell when he stept in and bore the stroak He slew the Bear and rescued the prey he delivered thy soul from the roaring Lyon And is not here yet fuell enough for Love to feed on Doth not this Loadstone snatch thy heart unto it and almost draw it forth of thy breast Canst thou read the History of Love any further at once Doth not thy throbbing heart here stop to ease it self and dost thou not as Joseph seek for a place to weep in or do not the tears of thy Love bedew these lines Go on then for the field of Love is large it will yield thee fresh contents for ever and be thine eternal work to behold and love thou needest not then want work for thy present Meditation Hast thou forgotten the time when thou wast weeping and he wiped the tears from thine eyes when thou wast bleeding and he wiped the blood from thy soul when pricking cares and fears did grieve thee and he did refresh thee and draw out the Thorns Hast thou forgotten when thy folly did wound thy soul and the venomous guilt did seize upon thy heart when he sucked forth the mortal poyson from thy soul though therewith he drew it into his own I remember it s written of good Melancthon that when his childe was removed from him it pierced his heart to remember how he once sate weeping with the Infant on his knee and how lovingly it wip't away the tears from the fathers eyes how then should it pierce thy heart to think how lovingly Christ hath wip't away thine O how oft hath he found thee sitting weeping like Hagar
make use of discovering Signs drawn from the Nature Properties Effects Adjuncts c. 4. So far as this Trial hath discovered thy neglect and other sins against this Rest proceed to the reprehension and censuring of thy self chide thy heart for its Omissions and Commissions and do it sharply till it feel the smart as Peter Preached Reproof to his Hearers till they were pricked to the heart and cried out And as a Father or Master will chide the childe till it begin to cry and be sensible of the fault so do thou in chiding thy own heart This is called a use of Reproof Here also it will be very necessary that thou bring forth all the aggravating Circumstances of the sin that thy heart may feel it in its weight bitterness and if thy heart do evade or deny the sin convince it by producing the several Discoveries 5. So far as thou discoverest that thou hast been faithful in the duty turn it to Incouragement to thy self and to Thanks to God where thou maist consider of the several aggravatiors of the mercy of the Spirits enabling thee thereto 6. So as it respects thy duty for the future consider how thou maist improve this comfortable Doctrine which must be by strong and effectual perswasion with thy heart First By way of Dehortation from the forementioned sins Secondly By way of Exhortation to the severall duties And these are either first Internal or secondly External First Therefore admonish thy heart of its own inward neglects and contempts Secondly And then of the neglects and trespasses in thy practice against this blessed state of Rest. Set home these severall Admonitions to the quick Take thy heart as to the brink of the bottomless pit force it to look in threaten thy self with the theatnings of the Word tell it of the torments that it draweth upon it self tell it what joyes it is madly rejecting force it to promise thee to do so no more and that not with a cold and heartless promise but earnestly with most solemn asseverations and engagements Secondly The next and last is to drive on thy soul to those positive duties which are required of thee in relation this to Rest As first to the inward duties of thy heart and there first To be diligent in making sure of this Rest secondly To Rejoyce in the expectation of it This is called a use of Consolation It is to be furthered by first laying open the excellency of the State and secondly the certainty of it in it self and thirdly our own interest in it by clearing and proving all these and confuting all sadning objections that may be brought against them thirdly So also for the provoking of Love of Hope and all other the Affections in the way before more largely opened And secondly press on thy heart also to all outward duties that are to be performed in thy way to Rest whether in worship or in civil conversation whether publike or private ordinary or extraordinary This is commonly called A use of Exhortation Here bring in all quickning Considerations either those that may drive thee or those that may draw which work by Fear or which work by Desire These are commonly called Motives but above all be sure that thou follow them home Ask thy heart what it can say against them Is there weight in them or is there not and then what it can say against the duty Is it necessary is it comfortable or is it not when thou hast silenced thy heart and brought it to a stand then drive it further and urge it to a Promise As suppose it were to the duty of Meditation which we are speaking of Force thy self beyond these lazy purposes resolve on the duty before thou stir Enter into a solemn Covenant to be faithful let not thy heart go till it have without all halting and reservations flatly promised thee That it will fall to the work write down this promise shew it to thy heart the next time it loiters then study also the Helps and Means the Hinderances and the Directions that concern thy duty And this is in brief the exercise of this Soliloquy or the Preaching of Heaven to thy own Heart SECT III. BUt perhaps thou wilt say Every man cannot understand this Method this is for Ministers and learned men every man is not able to play the Preacher I Answer thee First There is not that ability required to this as is to the work of publike Preaching here thy thoughts may serve the turn but there must be also the decent Ornaments of Language here is needful but an honest understanding heart but there must be a good pronunciation and a voluble tongue here if thou miss of the Method thou maist make up that in one piece of Application which thou hast neglected in another but there thy failings are injurious to many and a scandal and disgrace to the Work of God thou knowest what will fit thy own heart and what Arguments take best with thy own Affections but thou art not so well acquainted with the dispositions of others Secondly I answer further Every man is bound to be skilful in the Scriptures as wel as Ministers Kings and Magistrates Deut. 17.18 19 20. Josh. 1.8 And the people also Deut. 6.6 7 8. Do you think if you did as is there commanded Write it upon thy heart lay them up in thy soul binde them upon thy hand and between thine eyes meditate in them day and night I say if you did thus would you not quickly understand as much as this See Psal. 1.3 Deut. 11.18 6.6 7. Doth not God command thee to teach them diligently to thy children and to talk of them when thou sittest in thy house when thou walkest by the way when thou lyest down and when thou risest up And if thou must be skilled to teach thy children much more to teach thy self and if thou canst talk of them to others why not also to thine own heart Certainly our unskilfulness and disability both in a Methodical and lively teaching of our Families and of our selves is for the most part meerly through our own negligence and a sin for which we have no excuse You that learn the skil of your Trades and Sciences might learn this also if you were but willing and painful And so I have done with this particular of Soliloquy SECT IV. 2. ANother step to arise by in our Contemplation is from this speaking to our selves to speak to God Prayer is not such a stranger to this duty but that ejaculatory requests may be intermixed or added and that as a very part of the duty it self How oft doth David intermix these in his Psalmes sometime pleading with his soul and sometime with God and that in the same Psalme and in the next verses The Apostle bids us speak to our selves in Psalms and Hymns and no doubt we may also speak to God in them this keeps the soul in minde of the Divine Presence
the duty When thou hast perhaps but an hours time for thy Meditation the time will be spent before thy heart will be serious This doing of duty as if we did it not doth undo as many as the flat omission of it To rub out the hour in a bare lazie thinking of Heaven is but to lose that hour and delude thy self Well what is to be done in this case why do here also as you do by a loitering servant keep thine eye always upon thy heart look not so much to the time it spendeth in the duty as to the quantity and quality of the work that is done You can tell by his work whether your servant hath been painful ask what affections have yet been acted how much am I yet got neerer Heaven Verily many a mans heart must be followed as close in this duty of Meditation as a Horse in a Mill or an Ox at the Plow that will go no longer then you are calling or scourging If you cease driving but a moment the heart will stand still and perhaps the best hearts have much of this temper I would not have thee of the judgment of those who think that while they are so backward it is better let it alone and that if meer love will not bring them to the duty but there must be all this violence used to compel it that then the service is worse then the omission These men understand not first That this Argument would certainly cashiere all Spiritual obedience because the hearts of the best being but partly sanctified will still be resisting so far as they are carnal Secondly Nor do they understand well the corruptness of their own natures Thirdly Nor that their sinful undisposedness will not baffle or suspend the commands of God Fourthly Nor one sin excuse another Fifthly Especially they little know the way of God to excite their Affections and that the love which should compel them must it self be first compelled in the same sense as it is said to compel Love I know is a most precious grace and should have the chief interest in all our duties But there be means appointed by God to procure this love and shall I not use those means till I can use them from love that were to neglect the means till I have the end Must I not seek to procure love till I have it already There are means also for the increasing of love where it is begun and means for the exciting of it where it lieth dull And must I not use these means till it is increased and excited Why this reasoning considering-duty that we are in hand with is the most singular means both to stir up thy love and to increase it and therefore stay not from the duty till thou feel thy love constrain thee that were to stay from the fire till thou feel thy self warm but fall upon the work till thou art constrained to love and then love will constrain thee to further duty My jealously least thou shouldst miscarry by these sotish opinions hath made me more tedious in the opening of its error Let nothing therefore hinder thee while thou art upon the work from plying thy heart with constant watchfulness and constraint seeing thou hast such experience of its dulness and backwardness let the spur be never out of its side and when ever it slacks pace be sure to give it a remembrance SECT III. 3. AS thy heart will be loitering so will it be diverting It will be turning aside like a carless servant to talk with every one that passeth by When there should be nothing in thy minde but the work in hand it will be thinking of thy calling or thinking of thy afflictions or of every bird or tree or place thou seest or of any impertinency rather then of Heaven Thy heart in this also will be like the Husbandmans Ox or Horse if he drive not he will not go and if he guide not he will not keep the furrow and it is as good stand still as go out of the way Experience will tell thee thou wilt have much ado with thy heart in this point to keep it one hour to the work without many extravagancies and idle cogitations The cure here is the same with that before to use watchfulness and violence with your own imaginations and as soon as they step out to chide them in Say to thy heart What did I come hither to think of my business in the world to think of places and persons of news or vanity yea or of any thing but Heaven be it never so good what canst thou not watch one hour wouldst thou leave this world and dwell in Heaven with Christ for ever and canst thou not leave it one hour out of thy thoughts nor dwell with Christ in one hours close Meditation Ask thy heart as Absalom did Hushai Is this thy love to thy friend Dost thou love Christ and the place of thy Eternal Blessed abode no more then so When Pharaohs Butler dreamed That he pressed the ripe Grapes into Pharaohs Cup and delivered the Cup into the Kings hand it was a happy dream and signified his speedy access to the Kings presence But the dream of the Baker That the Birds did eat out of the Basket on his head the baked meats prepared for Pharaoh had an ill omen and signified his hanging and their eating of his flesh So when the ripened Grapes of Heavenly Meditation are pressed by thee into the Cup of Affection and this put into the hands of Christ by delightful praises if thou take me for skilful this is the interpretation That thou shalt shortly be taken from this prison where thou liest and be set before Christ in the Court of Heaven and there serve up to him that Cup of praise but much fuller and much sweeter for ever and for ever But if the ravenous fowls of wandring thoughts do devour the Meditations intended for Heaven I will not say flatly it signifieth thy death but this I will say That so far as these intrude they will be the death of that service and if thou ordinarily admit them That they devour the life and the joy of thy thoughts and if thou continue in such a way of duty to the end It signifies the death of thy soul as well as of thy service Drive away these birds of prey then from thy sacrifice and strictly keep thy heart to the work thou art upon SECT IV. 4. LAstly Be sure also to look to thy heart in this That it cut not off the work before the time and run not away through weariness before it have leave Thou shalt finde it will be exceeding prone to this like the Ox that would unyoke or the Horse that would be unburdened and perhaps cast off his burden and run away Thou maist easily perceive this in other duties If in secret thou set thy self to pray is not thy heart urging thee still to cut it short dost thou not
dare to contend in love with thee or set my borrowed languid spark against the Element and Sun of Love Can I love as high as deep as broad as long as Love it self as much as he that made me and that made me love that gave me all that little which I have both the heart the hearth where it is kindled the bellows the fire the fuel and all were his As I cannot match thee in the works of thy Power nor make nor preserve nor guide the worlds so why should I think any moreof matching thee in Love No Lord I yield I am unable I am overcome O blessed conquest Go on victoriously and still prevail and triumph in thy love The Captive of Love shall proclaim thy victory when thou leadest me in triumph from Earth to Heaven from Death to Life from the Tribunal to the Throne my self and all that see it shall acknowledg that thou hast prevailed and all shall say Behold how he loved him Yet let me love thee in subjection to thy Love as thy redeemed Captive though not thy Peer shall I not love at all because I cannot reach thy measure or at least let me heartily wish to love thee O that I were able O that I could feelingly say I love thee even as I feel I love my friend and my self Lord that I could do it but alas I cannot fain I would but alas I cannot Would I not love thee if I were but able Though I cannot say as thy Apostle Thou knowest that I Love thee yet can I say Lord thou knowest that I would love thee but I speak not this to excuse my fault it is a crime that admits of no excuse and it is my own it dwelleth as neer me as my very heart if my heart be my own this sin is my own yea and more my own then my heart is Lord what shall this sinner do the fault is my own and yet I cannot help it I am angry with my heart that it doth not love thee and yet I feel it love thee never the more I frown up on it and yet it cares not I threaten it but it doth not feel I chide it and yet it doth not mend I reason with it and would fain perswade it and yet I do not perceive it stir I rear it up as a carkass upon its legs but it neither goes nor stands I rub and chafe it in the use of thine Ordinances and yet I feel it not warm within me O miserable man that I am unworthy soul is not thine eye now upon the onely lovely object and art thou not beholding the ravishing glory of the Saints and yet dost thou not love and yet dost thou not feel the fire break forth why art thou not a soul a living spirit and is not thy love the choicest piece of thy life Art thou not a rational soul and shouldst not thou love according to Reasons conduct and doth it not tell thee that all is dirt and dung to Christ that earth is a dungeon to the celestial glory Art thou not a spirit thy self and shoulst thou not love spiritually even God who is a Spirit and the Father of Spirits Doth not every creature love their like why my soul art thou like to fleshâ— or gold or stately buildings art thou like to meat and drink or cloathes wilt thou love no higher then thy horse or swine hast thou nothing better to love then they what is the beauty that thou hast so admired canst thou not even wink or think it all into darkness or deformity when the night comes it is nothing to thee while thou hast gazed on it it hath withered away a Botch or Scab the wrinkles of consuming sickness or of age do make it as loathsom as it was before delightful suppose but that thou sawest that beautiful carcass lying on the Bier or rotting in the grave the skull dig'd up and the bones scattered where is now thy lovely object couldst thou sweetly embrace it when the soul is gone or take any pleasure in it when there is nothing left thats like thy self Ah why then dost thou love a skinful of dirt and canst love no more the heavenly Glory What thinkest thou shalt thou love when thou comest there when thou seest when thou dost enjoy when the Lord shall take thy carcass from the grave and make thee shine as the Sun in glory and when thou shalt everlastingly dwell in the blessed presence shalt thou then love or shalt thou not is not the place a meeting of lovers is not the life a state of love is it not the great marriage day of the Lamb when he will embrace and entertain his Spouse with love is not the imployment there the work of love where the souls with Christ do take their fill O then my soul begin it here be sick of love now that thou maist be well with love there keep thy self now in the love of God Jude 21. and let neither life nor death nor any thing separate thee from it and thou shalt be kept in the fulness of love for ever and nothing shalt imbitter or abate thy pleasure for the Lord hath prepared a city of love a place for the communicating of love to his chosen and those that love his Name shall dwell there Psal. 69.36 Awake then O my drowsie soul who but an Owl or Mole would love this worlds uncomfortable darkness when they are called forth to live in light to sleep under the light of Grace is unreasonable much more in the approach of the light of Glory The night of thy ignorance and misery is past the day of glorious Light is at hand this is the day-break betwixt them both Though thou see not yet the Sun it self appear methinks the twilight of a promise should revive thee Come forth then O my dull congealed spirits and leave these earthly Cels of dumpish sadness and hear thy Lord that bids thee Rejoyce and again Rejoyce thou hast lain here long enough in thy prison of flesh where Satan hath been thy Jaylor and the things of this world have been the Stocks for the feet of thy Affections where cares have been thy Trons and fears thy Scourge and the bread and water of Affliction thy food where sorrows have been thy lodging and thy sins and foes have made the bed and a carnal hard unbelieving heart have been the iron gates bars that have kept thee in that thou couldst scarce have leave to look through the Lattices and see one glimpse of the immortal light The Angel of the Covenant now calls thee and strikes thee and bids thee Arise and follow him up O my soul and cheerfully obey and thy bolts and bars shall all fly open do thou obey and all will obey follow the Lamb which way ever he leads thee Art thou afraid because thou knowst not whither Can the place be worse then where thou art Shouldst thou fear to follow
4. punct 4. * That it is not properly any act of faith at all much less the Justifying Act to Believe that my sins are pardoned or that Christ dyed in a special sence for Me or that I am a Believer or that I shall be saved Besides what I have said in the Appendix to my Aphorisms of Justification I refer you for satisfaction to Judicious Mr Anth Wotton de Reconciliat Part. 1. Lib. 2. Cap. 15. N. 3 4 5 6 7 8. Pag. 87 88 89 90 c. * I use the word Evidence all along in the vulgar sence as the same with Signs and not in the proper sence as the Schools do * Therefore that saying of Cajetane is not so much to be valued as by some of our Divines it is Certitudine fidei quilibet scit certo se habere donum infusum fidei idque absque formidine alterius partis Except he take Certitudo fidei in a very large improper sence * Read Gataker Shadows without Substances pag. 83 84. * The distinction in the Schools used of Certitudo fidei Certitudo Evidentiae I deny not But that hath a quite different sence from this as it is used * Therefore I say not that our first Comfort much less our Justification is procured by the sight of Evidences But our Assurance is * Their common Error That Justifying faith is nothing else but a perswasion more or less of the Love of God to us is the Root of this and many more mistakes To Justifie us and to Assure us that we are Justified are quite different things and procured by different ways and at several times usually Vid. Aquin. ad 1. Sent. dist 17. art 1.2 3. q. 112. Scotum ad 3. Sent. dis 23. q. unicâ Bonavent 1. Sent. q. 17. Biel in 2. Sent. dist 27. q. 3. §. 5. * Yet I believe that their divines have some of them made the difference betwixt us and the Papists seem wider then it is as do these words of one of them Ex hoc unico articulo quantumvis minutus a plerisque reputari queat universus Papatus Lutheranismus dependet Martinus Eisengrenius initio Apolog. de Cert Salv. And so have some of our Divines on the other side as Luther in Gen. 41. Etiamsi nihil preterea peccatum esset in doctrina pontificia just as habemus causas cur ab ecclesia infideli nos sejungeremus §. 6. Hindrances of Examination 1. Satan Judg. 4.19 21. Judg. 16.21 §. 7. Read on thâ—s Subject Mr. Young his Books which handle it fully Luke 13.24 2 Cor. 13.5 2 Pet. 1.10 1 King 22.5 6 §. 8. * Or as Mr. Saltmarsh saith every man is bound to believe but no man to Question whether he believe or no. p. 92 93 And this Faith he saith is a being perswaded more or less of Christs love p. 94. So that by this Doctrine every man is bound to believe that Christ loveth him and not to question his belief If it were only Christs common love he might thus believe it but a special love to him is no where written §. 9. Hinderances which keep many that do Examine from attaining strong Assurance cause many to be deâ—ceived Mat. 19.20 §. 10. Some further Hinderances which keep some Christians without Assurance and Comfort Remedy §. 11. You sit poreing â— searching for pillers of hope within you be-bestow much pains to answer your own fears but the ready way to make the business clear is by going to Christ. Stand not so much upon this Question Whether you have believ'd in truth or no but put al out of doubt by a present faith The door is open enter live You may more easily build a new fabrick of comfort by 〈…〉 then repair your old dwâ—lling and clear all suits that are brought against your tenure Simonds Deserted Soul pag. 554. Flowings of Christs Blood c. pag. 95. §. 12. Mr Paul Bayne I think one of the holiest choicest men that ever England bred yet describeth the temper of his spirit thus I thank God in Christ sustentation I have but Su vâ—ties Spiritual I taste not any In his Letters §. 13. In watchfulness and dâ—ligence we sooner meet with comfort then in idle complaining Our Care therefore should be to get sound Evidence of a good estate then to keep those Evidences clear Dâ— Sibbs Preface to Souls Conflict As if a poor man should complain for want of money when a chest full stands by him and he may take what he wil Is it not better take it out then lie complaining for want §. 14. God wil keep the rich store of consistent and abiding comforts till the great day that when all the family shall come together he may pour out the fulness of his hidden treasures on them We are now in the morning of the day the feast is to come a breakefast must serve to stay the stomack till the King of Saints with all his friends sit down together Simonds Deserted Soul pag. 507. §. 15. So some think they are Gods people because they are of such a party or such a strict opinion and when they change their opinion they change their comfort Some that could have no comfort while they were among the Orthodox as soon as they have turned to such or such a Sect have comfort in abundance partly through Satans delusion and partly because they think their change in Opinion hath set them right with God and therefore they rejoyce So many Hypocrites whose Religion lieth only in their Opinions hâ—ve their Comfort also only there §. 16. §. 17. When men dally with sin and will be playing with snares and baits allow a secret liberty in the heart to sin conniving at many workings of it and not setting upon mortification with earnest endeavors though they be convinced yet they are not perswaded to arise with all their might against the Lords enemies but do his work negligently which is an accursed thing for this God casteth them upon sore straits Simonds Deserted Soul c. pag. 521.522 Some would have men after the committing of gross sin to be presently comfortable and believe without humbling themselves at all Indeed when we are once in Christ we ought not to question our state in him c. But yet a guilty conscience will be clamorous and full of Objections and God will not speak peace to it till it be humbled God will let his best children know what it is to be too bold with sin c. Dr Sibbs Souls Conflict Preface §. 18. See Dr Sibs Souls Conflict pag. 480 481. ☜ Souls Conflict pag. 480 481. Men experimentally feel that comfort in doing that which belongs unto them which before they longed for and went without Dr Sibbs Souls Conflict pag. 45. * Preface to Souls Conflict §. 19. Non est mirum si â—imenâ— Melancholici quia causam timoris continuo secum portant Anima enim estiâ—voluta cum caligine tenebrosa et