of age of ignorance or of knowledge and those which proceed from your Legal unworthiness have all a present Remedy in the fullness and sufficiency of Christs satisfaction even for all the world so that no sin except the excepted sin is so great but it is fully satisfied for and though you are unworthy yet Christ is worthy and he came into the world to save only the unworthy in the strict and Legal sense 4. All your doubts and fears that arise from an apprehension of Gods unwillingness to shew you Mercy and to give you Christ and Life in him arise from the misapprehension of Christs unwillingness to be yours or at least from the uncertainty of his willingness these have all a sufficient Remedy in the general extent and tenour of the New Covenant Can you doubt whether God be willing to give you Christ and Life when he hath given them already even by a Deed of Guift under his hand and by a Law of Grace 1 Joh. 5.10 11 12. Object But yet all are not Pardoned nor possessed of Christ and so saved Answ I told you that is because they will not so that I pray you mark it well God hath in these four Means before mentioned given even to the Graceless so much Ground of Comfort that nothing but their unwillingness to have Christ is left to be their terror For though sin be not Actually Remitted to them yet is it Conditionally Remitted viz. if they will but accept of Christ offered them Will you remember this when your doubts are greatest and you conclude that certainly Christs is not yours because you have no true Grace Suppose it be true Yet still know that Christ may be yours if you will and when you will This Comfort you may have when you can finde no Evidences of true Grace in your self So much for that Direction DIRECTION VIII 8. The next thing that you have to do for building up a stable Comfort and setling your Conscience in a solid Peace is this Be sure to get and keep a right Understanding of the Nature of Saving Faith AS you must have right thoughts of the Covenant of Grace of which before the want whereof doth puzzle and confound very many Christians so you must be sure to have right thoughts of the Condition of the Covenant For indeed that Grace which causeth you to perform this Condition is your first special saving Grace which you may take as a certain evidence of your Justification And this Condition is the very link which conjoyneth all the General foregoing Grace to all the rest of the following special Grace The Scripture is so full and plain in Assuring pardon and salvation to all true Believers that if you can but be sure that you are a Believer you need not make any doubt of your interest in Christ and your salvation Seeing therefore that all the question will be Whether you have true Faith Whether you do perform the Condition of the new Covenant For all other doubts God hath given you sufficient ground to resolve as is said how much then doth it concern you to have a right understanding of the Nature of this Faith Which that you may have let me tell you briefly what it is Mans soul hath two faculties Understanding and Will Accordingly the Objects of mans soul all Beings which it is to Receive have two Modifications Truth and Goodness as those to be Avoided are Evil. Accordingly God 's Word or Gospel hath two parts the Revelation of Truth and the Offer and Promise of some Good This offered Good is principally and immediatly Christ himself to be joyned to us by Covenant as our head and husband The secondary consequential Good is Pardon Justification Reconciliation Adoption further Sanctification and Glorification which are all offered with Christ By this you may see what saving Faith is It is first a Believing that the Gospel is True and then an Accepting of Christ therein offered to us with his benefits or a consenting that he be ours and we be his which is nothing but a true willingness to have an offered Christ Remember this well that you may make use of it when you are in doubt of the truth of your Faith Thousands of poor souls have been in the dark and unable to see themselves to be Believers meerly for want of knowing what saving Faith is And it is a truth that cannot be hid that Divines who should have taught them better have been the great cause of their errour not well and cleerly understanding this themselves It is a shamefull confession but the world knoweth it already The Papists place almost all in the meer Assent of the Understanding Our great Reformers made it to be either an Assurance of the pardon of our own sins or a strong perswasion of their pardon excluding doubting or the moderatest a perswasion of our particular pardon though mixt with some doubting The Antinomians strike in with them and say the same Hence even the greatest of our Divines Chamier Polanus Twisse c. conclude that Justification and Remission go before faith a desperate errour because the Act doth alway suppose its object For they thought that Remission already past was the object of Justifying Faith supposing faith to be nothing else but a Belief that we are pardoned Yea ordinarily it hath been taught in the writings of our greatest refuters of the Papists That this Belief is properly a Divine faith or the Belief of a Divine Testimony as is the Believing of any Proposition written in the Scriture a foul error which I have confuted in my book of Rest Part. 3. Chap. 7. Most of late have come neerer the truth and affirmed Justifying Faith to consist in Affiance or Recumbency or Resting on Christ for salvation No doubt this is one Act of Justifying faith but not that which a poor troubled soul should first search after and try it self by except by Affiance any should mean as Amesius doth Election of Christ and then it is the same act which I am asserting but very unfitly exprest For 1. Affiance is not the Principal act nor that wherein the very life of Justifying faith doth consist but only an imperate following act and an effect of the vital act which is Consent or Willing or Accepting Christ offered for it lyeth mainly in that which we call the sensitive part or the Passions of the soul 2. It is therefore lesse constant and so unfitter to try by For many a poor soul that knowes it self unfeignedly willing to have Christ yet feeleth not a Resting on him or Trusting in him and therefore crys out O I cannot believe and think they have no Faith For Recumbency Affiance or Resting on Christ implieth that easing of themselves or casting off their fears or doubts or cares which true believers do not alwayes finde Many a poor soul complains O I cannot rest on Christ I cannot trust him who yet would have him to be their Lord and
Saviour and can easily be convinced of their willingness 3. Besides Affiance is not the Adequate act of faith suited to the object in that fullness as it must be Received but Willingness or Acceptance is Christ is Rested on only for our selves as our Deliverer but he is Accepted also for Himself as our Lord and Master The full proof of these I have performed in other Writings and oft in your hearing in publike and therefore omit them now Be sure then to fix this truth deep in your minde That Justifying faith is not an Assurance of our Justification no nor a perswasion or belief that we are Justified or pardoned or that Christ died more for us then for others nor yet is Affiance or Resting on Christ the vital principal certain constant full act but it is the Understandings belief of the truth of the Gospel and the Will 's Acceptance of Christ and Life offered to us therein which Acceptance is but the hearty Consent or Willingness that he be yours and you his This is the Faith which must Justifie and save you Object But 1. May not wicked men be Willing to have Christ 2. And do not you oft tell us that Justifying faith comprehendeth Love to Christ and Thankfulness and that it receiveth him as a Lord to be obeyed as well as a Deliverer and that Repentance and sincere Obedience are parts of the Condition of the new Covenant Answ I will give as brief a touch now on these as may be because I have handled them in sitter places 1. Wicked men are willing to have Remission Justification and freedom from hell for no man can be willing to be unpardoned or to be damned But they are not willing to have Christ himself in that nature and office which he must be Accepted that is As a holy Head and Husband to save them both from the Guilt and Power and all defilement and abode of sin and to Rule them by his Law and Guide them by his Spirit and to make them happy by bringing them to God that being without sin they may be perfectly Pleasing and Amiable in his sight and enjoy him forever Thus is Christ offered and thus to be accepted of all that will be saved and thus no wicked man will accept him but when he ceaseth to be wicked 2. To cut all the rest short in a word I say That in this fore-described Willingness or Acceptance Repentance Love Thankfulness Resolution to obey are all contained or neerly implyed as I have elsewhere manifested so that the Heart of saving faith is this Acceptance of Christ or Willingness to have him to Justifie Sanctifie Guide and Govern you Finde but this Willingness and you finde all the rest whether you expresly see them or not So much for that Direction DIRECTION IX 9. Having thus far proceeded in discovering and improving the General Grounds of Comfort and then in discovering the Nature of Faith which gives you Right to the special Mercies of the Covenant following it Your next work must be To perform this Condition by actual Believing YOur soul stands in extreme need of a Saviour God offereth you a Saviour in the Gospel what then have you next to do but Accept him Believe that this offer is general and therefore to you and that Christ is not set to sale nor doth God require you to bring a Price in your hand but only heartily and thankfully to Accept of what he freely giveth you This must be done before you fall on trying your Graces to get Assurance for you must have Grace before you can discover it and this is the first proper special saving Grace as it comprizeth that knowledge and Assent which necessarily go before it This is not only the method for those that yet never believed but also for them that have lost the sense of their faith and so the sight of their evidence Believe again that you may know you do believe or at least may possesse an Accepted Saviour When God in the Gospel bids you Take Jesus Christ and beseecheth you to be reconciled to him what will you say to him If your heart answer Lord I am willing I will Accept of Christ and be thankfull why then the match is made between Christ and you and the marriage Covenant is truly entered which none can dissolve If Christ were not first willing he would not be the suitor and make the motion and if he be willing and you be willing what can break the match If you will say I cannot believe if you understand what you say either you mean that you cannot believe the Gospel is true or else that you cannot be willing that Christ should be yours If it be the former and you speak truly then you are a flat Infidel yet many temptations to doubt of the truth of Scripture a true believer may have yea and actual doubtings but his faith prevaileth and is victorious over them But if you really doubt whether the Gospel be true use Gods means for the discovery of its truth Read what I have written in the second part of my book of Rest I will undertake now more confidently then ever I did to prove the truth of Scripture by plain full undeniable force of Reason But I suppose this is none of your case If therefore when you say that you cannot believe you mean that you cannot Accept an offered Christ or be willing to have him then I demand 1. What is your reason the Will is lead by the Reason of the Understanding If you be not willing there is something that perswades you to be unwilling This Reason must be from something reall or else upon a mistake upon supposal of something that is not in being If it be upon mistake either it is that you be not convinced of Christs willingness to be yours and if you thought he did consent you would consent willingly If this be it you do truly believe while you think you do not for you do consent and that 's all on your part to make the match and Christ doth certainly consent though you do not understand it In this case it concerneth you to understand better the extent of the new Covenant and then you will be past doubt of the willingness of Christ and see that wherever the match breaks it is only for want of consent in men for Christ is the first suitor and hath long ago in the Covenant proclaimed his consent to be the Head and Husband of every sinner on condition they will but consent to be his If your mistake be from any false apprehension of the Nature of Christ as if he were not a sufficient Saviour or were such an enemy to your comfort that he would do you more hurt then good if these mistakes are prevalent then you do not know Christ and therefore must presently better study him in the Gospel till you have prevailed over such ignorant and blasphemous conceits but none of this I suppose is
from Principles that are known by the meer Light and help of Nature and from the Knowledge of Conclusions which by Reasoning we gather from those Principles Though yet one and the same thing may be Known as Revealed in Nature and Believed as Revealed Immediatly of Supernaturally And so we both Know and Believe that there is one onely God who made and preserveth All things 4. But our Assurance is an Act of Knowledge participating of Faith and internal sense or Knowledge reflect For Divine Faith saith He that Believeth is Justified and shall be Saved Internal sense and knowledge of our selves saith But I Believe Reason or Discursive Knowledge saith Therefore I am Justified and shall be saved Only I must advise you that you be not troubled when you meet with that which is contrary to this in any great Divines For it is only our former Divines whose Judgements were partly hurt by hot Disputations with the Papists herein and partly not come to that maturity as others since them have had opportunity to do And therefore in their expositions of the Creed and such like passages in the Text they eagerly insist on it that when we say We Believe the Forgiveness of sin and Life everlasting every man is to profess that he Believeth that his own sinnes are forgiven and he shall have Life everlasting himself But our later Divines and specially the English and most especially these that deal most in Practicals do see the mistake and lay down the same doctrine which I teach you here God bids us not Believe as from him more then he hath revealed But only one of the Propositions is revealed by Gods Testimony He that Believeth shall be Saved But it is no where written that You do Believe nor that You shall be Saved nor any thing equivalent And therefore you are not commanded to Believe either of these How the Spirit revealeth these I have fully told you already In our Creed therefore we do profess to Believe Remission of sinnes to be Purchased by Christs death and in his Power to give and Given in the Gospel to All on Condition of Believing in Christ himself for Remission But not to Believe that our own sinnes are Actually and Fully Pardoned My end in telling you this again which I have told you elsewhere is this That you may not think as I finde abundance of poor troubled souls to do that Faith much less justifying Faith is a Believing that you have true Grace and shall be saved And so fall a condemning your self unjustly every time that you doubt of your own Sincerity and think that so much as you doubt of this so much unbelief you have and so many poor souls complain that they have no faith or but little and that they cannot Believe because they Believe not their own Faith to be Sincere and when they wholly judge themselves unsanctified then they call that Desperation which they think to be a sinne inconsistent with true Grace These are dangerous Errours all arising from that one Errour which the heat of contention did carry some good men to that Faith is a Belief that our sinnes are forgiven by Christ Indeed all men are bound to apply Christ and the Promise to themselves But that application consisteth in a Belief that this Promise is true as belonging to all and so to me and then in Acceptance of Christ and his benefits as an offered gift and after this in Trusting on him for the full performance of his Promise Hence therefore you may best see what Unbelief and Desperation are and how farre men may charge themselves with them When you doubt whether the Promise be True or when you refuse to Accept Christ and his Benefits offered in it and consequently to Trust him as one that is Able and Willing to save you if you do Assent to his Truth and Accept him this is Unbelief But if you do Believe the Truth of the Gospel and are heartily Willing to Accept Christ as offered in it and only Doubt whether your Belief and Acceptance of him be sincere and so whether you shall be saved this is not Unbelief but ignorance of your own Sincerity and its consequents Nay and though that Affiance be wanting which is a part of Faith yet it is but a hindering of the exercise of it for want of a necessary concomitant condition for the Grace of Affiance in the Habit and Virtually is there so that it is not formally Distrust or Unbelief any more then your not Trusting God in your sleep is Distrust If a friend do Promise to give you a hundred pound on condition that you thankfully Accept it If you now do Believe him and do thankfully Accept it but yet through some vain scruple shall think My thankefulness is so small that it is not sincere and therefore I doubt I do not perform his condition and so shall never have the gift In this case now you do Believe your friend and you do not Distrust him properly but you Distrust your self that you perform not the condition and this hindreth the exercise of that Confidence or Affiance in your friend which is habitually and virtually in you Just so is it in our present case The same may be said of Desperation which is a Privation of Hope When we have Believed the Truth of the Gospel and Accepted Christ offered we are then bound to Hope that God will give us the Benefits promised So hope is nothing but A Desirous expectation of the good so promised and believed Now if you begin to Distrust whether God will make good this promise or no either thinking that it is not True or he is not able or hath changed his minde since the making of it and on these grounds you let go your Hopes this is Despair If because that Christ seems to Delay his coming we should say I have waited in Hope till now but now I am out of Hope that ever Christ will come to Judge the world and Glorifie Believers I will expect it no longer this is Despair And it hath its several Degrees more or less as unbelief hath Indeed the Schoolmen say that Affiance is nothing but strengthened Hope Affiance in the properest sense is the same in substance with Hope only it more expresseth a Respect to the Promise and Promiser and indeed is Faith and Hope exprest both together in one word So that what I said before of Distrust is true of Despair If you do continue to Believe the Truth of the Gospel and particularly of Christs coming and glorifying his Saints and yet you think he will not glorifie you because you think that you are not a true Believer or Saint This is not Desperation in the proper sense For Desperation is the privation of Hope where the formal cause the heart and life of it is wanting But you have here Hope in the Habit and Virtually do Hope in Christ but the Act of it as to your own
Repented Believed in a Redeemer c. but for thy sin Yet I hope none will say that so doing is properly a sin though doing them defectively is God doth not will and approve of it that any soul that can see no signes of Grace and sincerity in it self should yet be as confident and merry and careless as if they were certain that all were well God would not have men doubt of his Love and yet make light of it This is a contempt of him Else what should poor carnall sinners do that finde themselves unsanctified No nor doth God expect that any man should judge of himself better then he hath evidence to warrant such a judgement But that every man should prove his own work that so he may have rejoycing in himself alone and not in another For he that thinketh he is something when he is nothing deceiveth himself Gal. 6.3 4 5 6. And no man should be a self-deceiver especially in a case of such unexpressible consequence It is therefore a most desperate doctrine of the Antinomians as most of theirs are that all men ought to believe Gods special Love to them and their own Justification and that they are justified by Believing that they were justified before and that no man ought to question his faith saith Saltmarsh any more then to question Christ and that all fears of our Damnation or not being Justified after this Believing are sinne and those that perswade to them are Preachers of the Law How punctually do the most prophane ungodly people hold most points of the Antinomian belief though they never knew that Sect by name God commandeth no man to Believe more then is true nor immediatly to cast away their doubts and fears but to overcome them in an orderly methodical way that is using Gods means till their Graces become more discernable and their understandings more clear and fit to discern them that so we may have Assurance of their sincerity and thereby of our Justification Adoption and right to Glorification Heb. 4.1 Let us therefore fear least a Promise being left of entring into his Rest any of us should seem to come short of it Psal 2.11 Serve the Lord with fear and rejoyce before him with trembling Kiss the Sonne lest he be angry and ye perish Phil. 2.12 Work out your salvation with fear and trembling Not only 1. A reverent fear of Gods Majesty 2. And a filial fear of offending him 3. And an awfull fear of his Judgements when we see them executed on others and hear them threatned 4. And a filial fear of temporal chastisements and lawfull and our duty but also 5. A fear of damnation exciting to most carefull importunity to escape it when ever we have so far obscured our evidences as to see no strong probability of our sincerity in the faith and so of our salvation The summe of my speech therefore is this Do not think that all your fears of Gods wrath are your sins Much of them is your great duty Do you not feel that God made these fears at your first conversion the first and a principal means of your Recovery to drive you to a serious consideration of your state and waies and to look after Christ with more longing and estimation and to use the means with more resolution and diligence Have not these fears been chief preservers of your diligence and integrity ever since I know love should do more then it doth with us all But if we had not daily use for both Love and Fear God would not 1. Have planted them both in our natures 2. And have renewed them both by regenerating Grace 3. And have put into his word the objects to move both viz. Threatnings as well as Promises That fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom includeth the fear of his threatned wrath I could say abundance more to prove this but that I know as to you it is needless for conviction of it but remember the use of it Do not put the name of unbelief upon all your fears of Gods displeasure Much less should you presently conclude that you have no faith and that you cannot believe because of these fears You may have much faith in the midst of these fears and God may make them preservers of your faith by quickning you up to that means that must maintain it and by keeping you from those evils that would be as a worm at the root of it and eat out its precious strength and life Security is no friend to faith but a deadlier enemy then fear it self Obj. Then Cain and Judas sinned not by despairing or at least not damnably Answ 1. They despaired not only of themselves and of the event of their salvation but also of God of his Power or Goodness and Promise and the sufficiency of any satisfaction of Christ Their infidelity was the root of their despair 2. Farre is it from me to say or think that you should despair of the event or that it is no sin yea or that you should cherish causeless and excessive jealousies and fears I shall shew you towards the end the sinfulness of so doing Take heed of all fears that drive you from God or that distract or weaken your spirit or disable you from duty or drown your love to God and delight in him and destroy your apprehensions of Gods Loveliness and Compassion and raise black and hard and unworthy thoughts of God in your minde Again I intreat you avoid and abhorre all such fears But if you find in you the fears of godly jealousie of your own heart and such moderated fears of the wrath of God which banish security presumption and boldness in sinning and are as D. Sibbs cals them the awe-band of your soul and make you fly to the merits and bosom of the Lord Jesus as the affrighted child to the lap of the mother and as the man-slayer under the Law to the City of refuge and as a man pursued by a Lion to his Sanctuary or hold do not think you have no faith because you have these fears but moderate them by faith and love and then thank God for them Indeed Perfect love which will be in heaven when all is perfected will cast out this fear and so it will do sorrow and care and prayer and means But see you lay not these by till Perfect love have cast them out See Jer. 5.22 23. Heb. 12. two last verses Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved let us serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear For our God is a consuming fire I am sensible that I am too large on these foregoing heads I will purposely shorten the rest lest I weary you DIRECTION XIX 19. Further understand that Those few who do attain to Assurance have it not either perfectly or constantly for the most part but mixt with imperfection and oft clouded and interrupted THat the highest Assurance on earth is imperfect I have shewed
the Will with the most forcible Arguments A perswading quickning Ministry that helps to excite your Graces and draw up your heart to Christ is more usefull then they that spend most of their time to perswade you of your sincerity and give you comfort 3. But specially lay out your thoughts more in the most serious Considerations of those things which tend to breed and feed those particular Graces which you would have increased Objects and moving Reasons kept much upon the minde by serious thoughts are the great engine appointed both by nature and by Grace to turn about the soul of man Thoughts are to your soul as taking in the Air and Meat and Drink to your body Objects considered do turn the soul into their own Nature Such as are the things that you most think and consider of I mean in pursuance of them such will you be your self Consideration frequent serious Consideration is Gods great Instrument to convert the soul and to confirm it to get grace and to keep it and increase it If any soul perish for want of Grace it 's ten to one it is mainly for want of frequent and serious Consideration That the most of us do languish under such weaknesses and attain to small degrees of Grace is for want of sober frequent consideration We know not how great things this would do if it were but faithfully managed This then is my advice When you feel so great a want of faith and love for those be the main Graces for trial and use that you doubt whether you have any or none lay by those doubting thoughts a while and presently go and set your self to consider of God's Truth Goodness Amiableness and Kindheartedness to miserable unworthy sinners think what he is in himself and what he is to you and what he hath done for you and what he will do for you if you do but consent And then think of the vanity of all the childish Pleasures of this world how soon and in how sad a case they will leave us and what silly contemptible things they are in comparison of the everlasting Glory of the Saints By that time you have warmed your soul a little with such serious thoughts you will finde your Faith and Love revive and begin to stir and work within you And then you will feel that you have Faith and Love Only remember what I told you before that the heart and soul of saving Faith and Love supposing a Belief that the Gospel is true is all in this one Act of Willingness or Consent to have Christ as he is offered Therefore if you doubt of your Faith and Love it is your own Willingness that you doubt of or else you know not what you do Now methinks if you took but a sober view of the goodness of God and the Glory of Heaven on one side and of the silly empty worthless world on the other side and then ask your heart Which it will chuse and say to your self O my soul the God of Glory offers thee thy choice of dung and vanity for a little time or of the unconceivable Joyes of Heaven for ever Which wilt thou choose I say methinks the answer of your own soul should presently resolve you that you do Believe and that you Love God above this present world For if you can choose him before the world then you are more willing of him then the world and if he have more of your will for certain he hath more of your Faith and Love Use therefore in stead of doubting of your Faith to Believe till you put it out of doubt And if yet you doubt study God and Christ and Glory yet better and keep those objects by Consideration close to your heart whose nature is to work the heart to Faith and Love For certainly objects have a mighty power on the soul and certainly God and Christ and Grace and Glory are Mighty Objects as able to make a full and deep impression on mans soul as any in the world and if they work not it is not through any imperfection in them but because they be not well applied and by Consideration held upon the heart that they may work Perhaps you will say that Meditation is too hard a work for you and that your memory is so weak that you want matter to meditate upon or if you do meditate on these yet you feel no great motion or alteration on your heart To this I answer If you want matter take the help of some book that will afford you matter and if you want life in Meditation peruse the most quickning writings you can get If you have not better at hand read over and seriously consider as you read it those passages in the end of my Book of Rest which direct you in the exercise of these graces and give you some matter for your Meditation to work upon And remember that if you can increase the resolved choice of your will you increase your Love though you feel not those Affectionate workings that you desire Let me ask you now whether you have indeed taken this course in your doubtings If not how unwisely have you done Doubting is no cure but actual Believing and Loving is a cure If Faith and Love were things that you would fain get but cannot then you had cause enough to fear and to lie down and rise in trouble of minde from one year to another But it s no such matter It is so far from being beyond your reach or power to have these Graces though you would that they themselves are nothing else but your very Willingness at least your Willingness to have Christ is both your Faith and Love It may be said therefore to be in the power of your Will which is nothing else but that Actual Willingness which you have already If therefore you are unwilling to have him what makes you complain for want of the sense of his presence and the Assurance of his Love and the Graces of his Spirit as you frequently do It 's strange to me that people should make so many complaints to God and men and spend so many sad hours in fears and trouble and all for want of that which they would not have If you be not Willing be Willing now If you say you cannot do as I have before directed you One hours sober serious thoughts of God and the world of Christ and Satan of sin and Holiness of Heaven and hell and the differences of them will do very much to make you Willing Yet mistake me not Though I say you may have Christ if you Will and Faith and Love if you Will and no man can truly say I would be glad to have Christ as he is offered but Cannot Yet this Gladness Consent or Willingness which I mention is the effect of the special work of the Spirit and was not in your power before you had it nor is it yet so in your power as to
thing before I confess it hath been a strengthening to my own faith to see the Devil such an Enemy to the Christian faith yea to the Godhead it self But perhaps you will say It is not meer Temptation from Satan that I complain of but it takes too much with my sinful heart I am ready to doubt oft-times whether there be a God or whether his Providence determine of the things here below or whether Scripture be true or the Soul immortal c. Answ This is a very great sin and you ought to bewail and abhorr it and in the Name of God make not light of it but look to it betime But yet let me tell you that some degree of this Blasphemy and Infidelity may remain with the truest saving Faith The best may say Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief But I will tell you my Judgement When your unbelief is such as to be a sign of a Graceless soul in the state of damnation If your Doubtings of the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come be so great that you will not let go the pleasures and profits of sin and part with all if God call you to it in Hope of that Glory promised and to escape the Judgement threatned because you look upon the things of the life to come but as uncertain things then is your Belief no saving Belief but your unbelief is prevalent But if for all your staggerings you see so much probabilâ—ty of the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come that you are resolved to venture and part with if called to it all worldly Hopes and Happiness for the Hope of that promised Glory and to make it the chiefest business of your life to attain it and do deny your self the pleasures of sin for that end this is a true saving Faith as is evident by its Victory notwithstanding all the Infidelity Atheism and Blasphemy that is mixt with it But again let me advise you to take heed of this hainous sin and bewail and detest the very least degree of it It is dangerous when the Devil strikes at the very root and heart foundation of all your religion There is more sinfulness and danger in this then in many other sins And therefore let it never be motioned to your soul without abhorrence Two ways the Devil hath to move it The one is by his immediate inward suggestions these are bad enough The other is by his Accursed Instruments and this is a far more dangerous way whether it be by books or by the words of men And yet if it be by notorious wicked men or fools the Temptation is the less but when it is by men of cunning wit and smooth tongues and hypocritical lives for far be that wickedness from me as to call them Godly or wise or honest then it is the greatest snare that the Devil hath to lay O just and Dreadful God! did I think one day that those that I was then praying with and rejoycing with and that went up with me to the house of God in familiarity would this day be blasphemers of thy sacred Name and deny the Lord that bought them and deride thy holy word as a fable and give up themselves to the present pleasures of sin because they Believe not thy promised Glory Righteous and Merciful God! that hast preserved the humble from this Condemnation and hast permitted only the Proud and Sensual Professors to fall into it and hast given them over to Hellish Conversations according to the nature of their Hellish opinions that they might be rather a terror to others then a snare I call their Doctrine and Practice Hellish from its Original because it comes from the Father of Lyes but not that there is any such opinion or practice in Hell He that tempts others to Deny the Godhead the Christian faith the Scripture the Life to come doth no whit doubt of any one of them himself but believes and Trembles O fearful blindness of the professors of Religion that wil hear if not receive these Blasphemies from the mouth of an Apostate Professor which they would abhor if it came immediately from the Devil himself With what sad complaints and trembling do poor sinners cry out and not without Cause O I am haunted with such Blaspemous temptations that I am afraid lest God should suddenly destroy me that ever such thoughts should come into my heart But if an Instrument of the Devil come and plead against the Scripture or the Life to come or Christ himself they will hear him with less detestation The Devil knows that familiarity will cause us to take that from a man which we would abhor from the Devil himself immediately I intend not to give you now a particular preservative against each of these Temptations Only let me tell you that this is the direct way to Infidelity Apostacy and the sin against the Holy Ghost and if by any Seducers the Devil do overcome you herein you are lost for ever and there will be no more sacrifice for your sin but a fearful expectation of judgment and that fire which shal devour the adversaries of Christ DOUBT XVIII I Have so great fears of Death and unwillingness to be with God that I am afraid I have no Grace for if I had Pauls spirit I should be able to say with him I desire to depart and to be with Christ Whereas now no news would be to me more unwelcome ANSWER THere is a loathness to Dye that comes from a Desire to do God more service and another that comes from an Apprehension of unreadiness when we would fain have more Assurance of Salvation first or would be fitter to meet our Lord. Blame not a man to be somewhat backward that knows it must go with him for ever in Heaven or Hell according as he is found at death But these two be not so much a loathness to Dye as a loathness to Dye now at this time 3. There is also in all men living Good and bad a natural abhorrence and fear of death God hath put this into mans nature even in Iâ—nocency to be his great means of Governing the World No man would live in ordâ—â— or be kept in obedience but for this He that cares not for his own Life is Master of anothers Grace doth not root out this abhorrency of Death no more then it unmanneth us Onely it restrains it from excess and so far overcometh the violence of the Passion by the apprehensions of a better life beyond death that a Believer may the more quietly and willingly submit to it Paul himself desireth not Death but the Life which followeth it He desireth to depart and to be with Christ that is He had rather be in Heaven then on earth and therefore he is contented to submit to the penal sharp passage God doth not command you to Desire death it self nor forbid you fearing it as an evil to nature and a punishment of sin Only he
requireth you to Desire the Blessedness to be enjoyed after Death and that so earnestly as may make Death it self the easier to you Thank God if the fear of death be somewhat abated in you though it be not sweetned Men may pretend what they please but nature will abhor death as long as its nature and as long as man is man else temporal death had been no punishment to Adam if his Innocent nature had not abhor'd it it was an evil to it Tell me but this If Death did not stand in your way to Heaven but that you could travel to Heaven as easily as to London would not you rather go thither and be with Christ then stay in sin and vanity here on earth so be it you were certain to be with Christ If you can say Yea to this then it is apparent that your loathness to dye is either from the uncertainty of your salvation or from the natural averseness to a dissolution or both and not from an unwillingness to be with Christ or a preferring the vanities of this world before the Blessedness of that to come Lastly it may be God may lay that affliction on you or use some other necessary means with you yet before you dye that may make you willinger then now you are DOUBT XIX GOd layeth upon me such heavy Afflictions that I cannot believe he Loves me He writteth bitter things against me and taketh me for his enemy I am afflicted in my health in my name in my children and nearest friends and in my state I live in continual poverty or pinching distress of one kinde or other yea my very soul is filled with his terorrs and night and day is his hand heavy upon me ANSWER I Have said enough to this before Nor do I think it needful to say any more when the Holy Ghost hath said so much but only to desire you to read what he hath written in Heb. 12. and Job throughout and Psal 37. and 73. and divers others The next doubt is contrary DOUBT XX. I Read in Scripture that through many tribulations we must enter into heaven and that all that will live Godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution and that he that taketh not up his Cross and so followeth Christ cannot be his Disciple and that if we are not corrected we are bastards and not sons But I never had any Affliction from God but have lived in constant prosperity to this day Christ saith Wo to you when all men speak well of you but all men for ought I know speak well of me and therefore I doubt of my sincerity ANSWER I Would not have mentioned this Doubt but that I was so foolish as to be troubled with it my self and perhaps some others may be as foolish as I though I think but few in these times our great friends have Done so much to Resolve them more effectually then words could have done 1. Some of those Texts speak onely of mans duty of bearing persecution and tribulation when God lays it on us rather then of the Event that it shall certainly come 2. Yet I think it ordinarily certain and to be expected as to the Event Doubtless Tribulation is Gods common road to Heaven Every ignorant person is so well ware of this that they delude themselves in their sufferings saying That God hath given them their punishment in this life and therefore they hope he will not punish them in another If any soul be so silly as to fear and doubt for want of Affliction if none else will do the Cure let them but follow my Counsel and I dare warrant them for this and I will advise them to nothing but what is honest yea and necessary and what I have tried effectually upon my self and I can assure you it cured me and I can give it a Probatum est And first see that you be faithful in your Duty to all sinners within your reach be they great or small Gentlemen or Beggars do your duty in Reproving them meekly and lovingly yet plainly and seriously telling them of the danger of Gods everlasting wrath and when you find them obstinate tell the Church-Officers of them that they may do their duty and if yet they are unreformed they may be excluded from the Churches Communion and all Christian familiarity Try this course a while and if you meet with no Afflictions and get no more fists about your ears then your own nor more tongues against you then formerly tell me I am mistaken Men basely bawk and shun almost all the displeasing ungrateful work of Christianity of purpose lest they should have sufferings in the flesh and then they doubt of their sincerity for want of sufferings My second Advice is Do but stay a while in Patience but prepare your Patience for a sharper encounter and do not tye God to your time He hath not told you when your Afflictions shall come If he deal easier with you then others and give you a longer time to prepare for them be not you offended at that and do not quarrel with your mercies It is about seventeen years since I was troubled with this Doubt thinking I was no son because I was not afflicted and I think I have had few days without pain for this sixteen years since together nor but few hours if any one for this six or seven years And thus my scruple is removed And if yet any be troubled with this Doubt if the Churches and Common trouble be any trouble to them shall I be bold to tell them my thoughts onely understand that I pretend not to Prophesy but to Conjecture at Effects by the position of their Moral Causes I think that the Righteous King of Saints is even now for our over-admiring rash zeal and high profession making for England so heavy an Affliction and sharp a scourge to be inflicted by seduced proud self-conceited Professours as neither we nor our Fathers did ever yet bear Except it should prove the merciful intent of our Father onely to suffer them to ripen for their own destruction to be a standing Monument for the effectual warning of all after-ages of the Church Whether pride and heady Zeal may bring Professors of holiness And when they are full ripe to do by them as at Munster and in New-England that they may go no further but their folly may be known to all Amen I have told you of my thoughts of this long ago in my Book of Baptism ALL these Doubts I have here answered that you may see how necessary it is that in all your troubles you be sure to distinguish between Matter of Doubting and Matter of Humiliation Alas what soul is so holy on the Earth but must daily say Forgive as our trespasses and cry out with Paul O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death But at the same time we may thank God through our Lord Jesus Christ If every sin should make
it sufficient to raise you from the dust and banish those terrours and troubles from your hearts and help you to live like the Sons of God He commandeth me to tell you that he takes notice of your sorrows he stands by when you see him not and say He hath forsaken you he minds you with greatest tenderness when you say He hath forgotten you He numbreth your sighs he bottles up your tears the groans of your hearts do reach his own He takes it unkindly that you are so suspicious of him and that all that he hath done for you in the work of Redemption and all the gracious workings of his Spirit on your souls and all your own peculiar experiences of his Goodness can raise you to no higher apprehensions of his Love Shall not Love be acknowledged to be Love when it s grown to a Miracle when it surpasseth Comprehension Must the Lord set up Love and Mercy in the work of Redemption to be equally admired with his Omnipotency manifested in the Creation and call forth the World to this sweet imployment that in Secret and in Publick it might be the business of our lives and yet shall it be so overlookt or questioned as if you lived without Love and Mercy in the World Providence doth its part by heaping up Mountains of daily Mercies and these it sets before your eyes The Gospel hath eminently done its part by clear describing them and fully assuring them and this is proclaimed frequently in your ears And yet is there so little in your hearts and mouths Do you see and hear and feel and taste Mercy and Love do you Live wholly on it and yet do you still doubt of it and think so meanly of it and so hardly acknowledge it God takes not this well but yet he considereth your frailty and takes you not at the worst He knows that flesh will play its part and the Remnants of Corruption will not be idle and the Serpent will be suggesting false thoughts of God and will be still striving most to obscure that part of his Glory which is dearest to him and especially which is most conjoyned with the Happiness of Man He knows also that sin will breed sorrows and fears and that mans Understanding is shallow and all his Conceivings of God are exceeding low and that we are so far from God as Creatures and so much further as sinners and especially as Conscious of the abuse of his Grace that there must needs follow such a strangeness as will damp and dull our apprehensions of his Love and such an abatement of our Confidence as will make us draw back and look at God afar off Seeing therefore that at this distance no full apprehensions of Love can be expected It is the Pleasure of our Redeemer shortly to Return with ten thousands of his Saints with the noble Army of his Martyrs and the attendance of his Angels and to give you such a Convincing Demonstration of his Love as shall leave no room for one more Doubt Your Comforts are now but a Tast they shall be then a Feast They are now but Intermittent they shall be then Continual How soon now do your Conquered fears return and what an unconstancy and unevenness is there in our Peace But then our Peace must needs be Perfect and Permanent when we shall please God and Enjoy him in Perfection to Perpetuity Certainly Christians your Comforts should be now more abundant but that they are not ripe It is that and not this that is your harvest I have told you in another Book the mistake and danger of expecting too much here and the Necessity of Looking and Longing for that Rest if we will have Peace indeed But alas how hard is this lesson learned Unbelievers would have Happiness but how fain would they have it in the Creature rather then in God! Believers would rather have their Happiness in God then in the Creature But how fain would they have it without Dying And no wonder for when Sin brought in Death even Grace it self cannot Love it though it may submit to it But though Churlish Death do stand in our way why look we not at the Souls admittance into Rest and the Bodies Resurrection that must shortly follow Doubtless that Faith by which we are Justified and Saved as it sits down on the word of Truth as the present ground of its confident repose so doth it thence look with one eye backward on the Cross and with the other forward on the Crown And if we well observe the Scripture Descriptions of that Faith we shall find them as frequently magnifying it and describing it from the latter as from the former As it is the duty and glory of faith to look back with Thankful Acknowledgement to a Crucified Christ and his payment of our Ransome so is it the Duty and Glory of that same Justifying Saving Faith to Look forward with Desire and Hope to the Return of King Jesus and the Glorious Celebration of the Marriage of the Lamb and the Sentencial Justification and the Glorification of his Saints To Believe these things unfeignedly which we never saw nor ever spoke with man that did see and to Hope for them so Really as to let go all present forbidden pleasures and all worldly hopes and seeming happiness rather then to hazard the loss of them this is an eminent part of that Faith by which the Just do live and which the Scripture doth own as Justifying and Saving For it never distinguisheth between Justifying Faith and Saving Faith as to their nature It is therefore a great mistake of some to look onely at that one eye of Justifying Faith which looks back upon the Cross and a great mistake of them on the other hand that look onely at that eye of it which beholds the Crown Both Christ Crucified and Christ Interceding and Christ Returning to Justifie and Glorifie are the objects even of Justifying Saving Faith most strictly so called The Scripture oft expresseth the one onely but then it still implyeth the other The Socinians erroniously therefore from Heb. 11. where the Examples and Elogies of Faith are set forth do exclude Christ Crucified or the respect to his Satisfaction from Justifying Faith and place it in a meer Expectation of Glory and others do as ungroundedly affirm that it is not the Justifying Act of Faith which Heb. 11. describeth because they find not the Cross of Christ there mentioned For as Believing in Christs Blood Comprehendeth the End even the Expectation of Remission and Glory merited by that blood so the Believing of that Glory doth always imply that we Believe and Expect it as the fruit of Christs Ransome It is for health and life that we Accept and Trust upon our Physician And it is for Justification and Salvation that we Accept and Trust on Christ The Salvation of our Souls is the End of our Faith They that question whether we may Believe and Obey for our own
your case If then the reason why you say you cannot believe be from any thing that is really in Christ and not upon mistake then it must be either from some dislike of his saving work by which he would pardon you and save you from damnation but that is impossible for you cannot be willing to be damned or unpardoned till you lose your Reason Or else it is from a dislike of his work of sanctification by which he would cleanse your heart and life by saving you from your sinfull nature and actions some grudgings against Christs holy and undefiled Laws and wayes will be in the best while there is that flesh in them which lusteth against the Spirit so that they cannot do the things they would But if truly you have such a dislike of a sinless condition through the love of any sin or creature that you cannot be willing to have Christ to cure you and cleanse you from that sin and make you holy I say if this be true in a prevailing degree so that if Christ and Holiness were offered you you would not Accept them then it is certain you have not true faith And in this case it is easie to discern that your first work lyeth not in getting Comfort or ease to your troubled minde but in getting better conceits of Christ and a holy state and life that so you may be willing of Christ as Christ is of you and so become a true believer And here I would not leave you at that losse as some do as if there were nothing for you thâ— do for the getting of faith for certainly God hath prescribed you Means for that end Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God preached Rom. 10.17 1. Therefore see that you wait diligently on this Ordinance of God Read the Scriptures daily and search them to see whether you may not there finde that Holiness is better then sin 2. And however some seducers may tell you that wicked men ought not to pray yet be sure that you lye on your knees before God and importunately beg that he would open your eyes and change your heart and shew you so far the evil of sin and the want and worth of Christ and holiness that you may be unfainedly glad to Accept his offer Object But the prayers of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord. Answ 1. You must distinguish between wicked men as actually wicked and going on in the prosecution of their wickedness and wicked men as they have some good in them or are doing some good or are attempting a return to God 2. You must distinguish between real Prayer and seeming prayer 3. You must distinguish between full Acceptance of Prayer when God delighteth in them and an Acceptance only to some particular end not intimating the Acceptance of the person with his prayer And between Acceptance fully Promised as certain and Acceptance but half-promised as Probable And upon these distinctions I shall answer your objection in the Conclusions 1. When wicked men pray God to prosper them in their wickedness yea or to pardon them while they intend to go on in it and so to give them an indulgence in sin or when they think with a few prayers for some Good which they can endure to put by that Holiness which they cannot endure and so to make a cloak for their rebellion these prayers are all an abomination to the Lord. 2. When men use the words of a Prayer without the desire of the thing asked this is no Prayer but equivocally so called as a carkasse is a man and therefore no wonder if God abhor that Prayer which truly is no Prayer 3. God hath not made a full Promise ascertaining any wicked man while wicked that he will hear his Prayer for all such Promises are made to Believers 4. God doth never so hear an unbelievers Prayer as to accept his person with his Prayer or to take a complacency in them So much for the Negative Now for the Affirmative I add 1. Prayer is a duty which God enjoyned even wicked men I could prove it by a hundred Scripture texts 2. There may be some good desires in unbelievers which they may express in prayer and these God may so far hear as to grant them as he did in part to Ahab 3. An unbeliever may lye under preparing Grace and be on his way in returning towards God though yet he be not come to saving faith and in this state he may have many good desires and such Prayers as God will hear 4. Though God have not flatly engaged himself to unbelievers so as to give them a certainty of hearing their prayers and giving them true Grace on the improvement of their naturals yet he hath not only appointed them this and other means to get Grace but also given them half promises or strong probabilities of speeding so much as may be a sufficient encouragement to any such sinner to call on God and use his Means For as he appointeth not any vain Means to man so no man can name that man who did improve his naturals to the utmost and in particular sought God in prayer so far as a natural man may do who yet mist of Grace and was rejected This is the true mean between Pelagianisme and Antinomianisme in this point 5. When God calls unbelievers to Prayer he withall calls them to Believe and when he works their heart to Prayer by that call he usually withall works them to Believe or at least towards believing If he that was unwilling to have Christ do pray God to make him willing it is a beginning of willingness already and the way to get more willingness In Prayer God useth to give in the thing prayed for of this kinde 6. Prayer is the souls motion Godward and to say an unbeleever should not pray is to say he should not turn to God who yet saith to the wicked Seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is neer Let the wicked forsake his way c. Isa 55.6 7. 7. Prayer hath two parts Desire is the soul of it and Expression is the body the soul can live separated from the body but so cannot the body separated from the soul so can Desire without Expression but not Expression without Desire When our blind Antinomians the great subverters of the Gospel more then the Law do rail against Ministers for perswading wicked men to Pray they are against us for perswading men to Desire that they pray for Prayer having Desire for its soul And do not those men deserve to be exterminated the Churches and societies of the Saints who dare say to a wicked unbeliever Desire not Faith Desire not to leave thy wickedness Desire not Grace or Christ or God and that will proclaim abroad the world as I have oft heard them with zealous reproaches that our Ministers are Legalists Seducers Ignorant of the Mysteries of the Gospel because
use of Infallible signs of Sincerity and take not those for certain which are not ANd to that end remember what I said before that you must well understand wherein the Nature of saving Faith and so of all saving Grace doth consist And when you understand this write it down in two or three lines and both at your first trial and afterward when ever any doubts do drive you to a Review of your Evidences still have recourse only to those Signs and try by them What these Signs are I have shewed you so fully in the forecited place in my book of Rest that I shall say but little now Remember that Infallible signs are very few and that whatsoever is made the condition of salvation that is the most Infallible evidence of our salvation and therefore the fittest Mark to try by And therefore Faith in God the Father and the Redeemer is the main Evidence But because I have elsewhere shewed you that this Faith is comprehensive of Love Gratitude Resolution to Obey and Repentance let me more particularly open it to help you in the Triall To prove any Grace to be saving it is necessary that you prove that salvation is fully promised to him that hath it Now if you will know what it is that hath this promise I will tell you 1. As to the Object 2. The Act. 3. The degree or modification of the Act. For all these three must be enquired after if you will get Assurance 1. The Object is principally God and the Redeemer Christ And secondarily the Benefits given by Christ and under that the means to attain the principal Benefits c. 2. The Act hath many Names drawn from Respective and Modall differences in the Object as Faith Desire Love choosing Accepting Receiving Consenting c. But properly all are comprised in one word Willing The Understandings high estimation of God and Christ and Grace is a Principal part of true saving Grace but yet it is difficult and scarce possible to judge of your self by it rightly but only as it discovers it self by prevailing with the Will 3. The Degree of this Act must be such as ordinarily prevaileth against its contrary I mean both the contrary Object and the contrary Act to the same Object But because I doubt School-termes do obscure my meaning to you though they are necessary for exactness I will express the nature of saving Grace in two or three Marks as plain as I can 1. Are you heartily willing to take God for your Portion and had you rather Live with him in Glory in his favour and fullest Love with a soul perfectly cleansed from all sin and never more to offend him Rejoicing with his Saints in his everlasting praises than to enjoy the delights of the flesh on earth in a way of sin and without the favour of God 2. Are you heartily willing to take Jesus Christ as he is offered in the Gospel that is to be your only Saviour and Lord to give you pardon by his bloudshed and to sanctifie you by his Word and Spirit and to govern you by his Laws Because this General containeth and implieth several Particulars I will express them distinctly Here it is supposed that you know this much following of the nature of his Laws For to be Willing to be Ruled by his Laws in General and utterly Unwilling when it comes to particulars is no true Willingness or subjection 1. You must know that his Laws reach both to heart and outward actions 2. That they command a holy spiritual heavenly life 3. That they command things so cross and unpleasing to the flesh that the flesh will be still murmuring and striving against obedience Particularly 1. They command things quite cross to the inclinations of the flesh as to forgive Wrongs to Love Enemies to forbear Malice and Revenge to restrain and mortifie Lust and Passion to abhor and mortifie Pride and be low in our own eyes and humble and meek in spirit 2. They command things that cross the interest of the flesh and its inclination both together I mean which will deprive it of its enjoyments and bring it to some suffering As to perform Duties even when they lay us open to disgrace and shame and reproach in the world and to deny our credit rather then forsake Christ or our duty to obey Christ in doing what he commandeth us though it would hazard or certainly lose our wealth friends liberty and life it self forsaking all rather then to forsake him to give to the poor and other good uses and that liberally according to our abilities to deny the flesh all forbidden pleasures and make not provision to satisfie its lusts but to crucifie the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof and in this combate to hold on to the end and to overcome These are the Laws of Christ which you must know before you can determine whether you are indeed unfeignedly willing to obey them Put therefore these further questions to your self for the trial of your willingness to be ruled by Christ according to his Laws 3. Are you heartily willing to live in the performance of those holy and spiritual Duties of heart and life which God hath absolutely commanded you and are you heartily sorry that you perform them no better with no more cheerfulness delight success and constancy 4. Are you so throughly convinced of the worth of everlasting Happiness and the intollerableness of everlasting misery and the truth of both and of the soveraignty of God the Father and Christ the Redeemer and your many engagements to him and of the necessity and good of obeying and the evil of sinning that you are truly willing that is have a setled resolution to cleave tâ— Christ and obey him in the deerest most disgracefull painfull hazardous flesh-displeasing Duties even though it should cost you the loss of all your worldly enjoyments and your life 5. Doth this willingness or resolution already so far prevail in your heart and life against all the Interest and Temptations of the world the devil and your flesh that you do ordinarily practise the most strict and holy the most self-denying costly and hazardous duties that you know God requireth of you and do heartily strive against all known sin and overcome all gross sins and when you fall under any prevailing temptation do rise again by Repentance and begging pardon of God through the bloud of Christ do resolve to watch and resist more carefully for the time to come In these five Marks is expressed the Gospel-description of a true Christian Having laid down these Marks I must needs add a few words for the explaining of some things in them least you mistake the meaning and so lose the benefit of them 1. Observe that it is your willingness which is the very Point to be tried And therefore 1. Judge not by your bare knowledge 2. Judge not by the stirrings or passionate workings of your Affections â— pray you forget not
God knows that a poor sinner in this humbled troubled case hath burden enough on his back already and indeed more then he is able of himself to bear The sense of his own sinfull folly and misery is burden enough If God should adde to this his frowns and terrors and should spurn at a poor sinner that lies prostrate at his feet in tears or terrours who then should be able to stand before him or to look him in the face But he will not break the bruised reed he will not make heavier the burden of a sinner He cals them to come to him for Ease and Rest and not to oppress them or kill them with his terrours We have not a King like Rehoboam that will multiply our pressures but one whose office it is to break our yoaks and loose our bonds and set us free When he was a Preacher himself on earth you may gather what Doctrine he preached by his Text which he chose at one of his first publike Sermons which as you may finde in Luke 4.18 19. was this The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blinde to set at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. O if a poor bruised wounded soul had but heard this Sermon from his Saviours own mouth what heart-meltings would it have caused what pangs of Love would it have raised in him You would sure have believed then that the Lord is gracious when All that heard him bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth Luke 4.22 I would desire no more for the comfort of such a soul then to see such a sight and feel such a feeling as the poor penitent Prodigal did when he found himself in the arms of his Father and felt the kisses of his mouth and was surprized so unexpectedly with such a torrent of Love The soul that hath once seen and felt this would never sure have such hard and doubtfull thoughts of God except through ignorance they knew not whose arms they were that thus embraced them or whose voice it was that thus bespoke them or unless the remembrance of it were gone out of their mindes You see then what is Gods own language to humbled Penitents and what is the method of his dealings with them And such must be the language and dealing of his Ministers They must not wound when Christ would heal nor make sad the heart that Christ would comfort and would not have made sad Ezek. 13.22 But will this means serve turn or must the same course be taken to remove the sorrows of the wilfully disobedient No God takes another course himself and prescribes another course to his Ministers and requires another course from the sinner himself But still remember who it is that I speak of It is not the ordinary unavoidable infirmities of the Saints that I speak of such as they cannot be rid of though they fain would such as Paul speaks of Rom. 7.19 The good that I would do I do not and when I would do good evil is present with me And Gal. 5.17 The flesh lusteth against the Spirit c. so that we cannot do the things that we would A true Christian would Love God more perfectly and Delight in him more abundantly and bring every thought in subjection to his Will and subdue the very remnants of carnal concupiscence that there should be no stirrings of lust or unjust anger or worldly desires or pride within him and that no vain word might pass his lips all this he would do but he cannot Striving against these unavoidable infirmities is conquering But though we cannot keep under every motion of concupiscence we can forbear the execution Anger will stirre upon provocations But we may restrain it in degree that it set us not in a flame and do not much distemper or discompose our mindes and we can forbid our tongues all raging furious or abusive words in our Anger all cursing swearing or reproachfull speaking If an envious thought against our Brother do arise in our hearts because he is prefer'd before us we may hate it and repress it and chide our hearts for it and command our tongues to speak well of him and no evil Some pride and self-esteem will remain and be stirring in us do what we can it is a sinne so deeply rooted in our corrupt Natures But yet we can detest it and resist it and meet with abhorrence our self-conceited thoughts and rejoycings in our own reputations and fame and inward heart-risings against those that undervalue us and stand in the way of our Repute and we may forbear our boasting language and our contestings for our credit and our excuses of our sinnes and our backbitings and secret defaming of those that cross us in the way of credit We may forbear our quarrels and estrangements and dividings from our Brethren and stiff insisting on our own conceits and expecting that others should make our Judgements their Rule and say and do as we would have them and all dance after our pipe all which are the effects of inward Pride We cannot while we are on earth be free from all inordinate Love of the world and the Riches and Honours of it but we may so watch against it and repress it as that it shall neither be preferred before God nor draw us to unlawfull waies of gain by lying deceit and overreaching our Brethren by stealing unjust or unmercifull dealings oppressing the poor and insulting over those that are in the way of our thriving and crushing them that would hinder our aspiring designes and treading them down that will not bow to us and taking revenge of them that have crossed or disparaged us or cruelly exacting all our Rights and Debts of the poor and squeezing the purses of subjects or tenants or those that we bargain with like a spunge as long as any thing will come out Yea we may so farre subdue our love of the world as that it shall not hinder us from being mercifull to the poor compassionate to our servants and labourers and bountifull to our power in doing good works nor yet shut out Gods service from our families or closets nor rob him of our frequent affectionate thoughts especially on the Lords day So for sensuality or the pleasing of our flesh more immediatly we shall never on earth be wholly freed from inordinate motions and temptations and fleshly desires and urgent inclinations and solicitations to forbidden things But yet we may restrain our Appetite by reason so farre that it bring us not to gluttony and drunkenness and a studying for our bellies and pampering of our flesh or a taking care for it and making provision to satisfie its lusts Rom. 13.14 We may forbear the obeying it in
come not among them or pitty them not as you should and do not your duty for the saving of their souls but think it belongs not to you but to others Do you use to deal with servants and neighbors about you and tell them of sin and misery and the remedy and seek to draw their hearts to Christ and bring them to duty I doubt you do little in this and that is sad unmercifulness for if you did truly you could not choose but finde such miserable ignorance such senselesness and blockishness such hating reproof and unwillingness to be reformed such love of this world and slavery to the flesh and so little savour of Christ Grace Heaven and the things of the Spirit and especially such an unteachableness intractableness as thorns and bryars and so great a difficulty of moving them an inch from what they are that you would have been willing ever after to have Ministers preach more rousingly then they do and you would be glad for their sakes when you heard that which might awake them and prick them to the heart Yea if you had tried how hard a work it is to bring worldly formal Hypocrites to see their Hypocrisie or to come over to Christ from the creature and to be in good earnest in the business of their salvation you would be glad to have Preachers search them to the quick and ransack their hearts and help them against their affected and obstinate self-delusions Besides you should consider that theâ— Case is far different from yours Your disease is pain and trouble they are stark dead You have Gods favour and doubt of it they are his enemies and never suspect it You want comfort and they want pardon and life if your disease should never here be cured it is but going more sadly to heaven But if they be not recovered by Regeneration they must lie for ever in Hell And should we not then pitty them more then you and study more for them and preach more for them and rather forget you in a Sermon then them should you not wish us so to do should we more regard the comforting of one then the saving of an hundred Nay more we should not onely neglect them but dangerously hurt them if we should preach too much to the case of troubled souls For you are not so apt to misapply passages of terror and to take their portion as they are apt to apply to themselves such passages for comfort and take your portion to themselves I know some will say that it is preaching Christ and setting forth Gods Love that will win them best and terrors do but make unwilling Hypocrital Professors This makes me remember how I have heard some Preachers of the times blame their Brethren for not preaching Christ to their People when they Preached the danger of rejecting Christ disobeying him and resisting his Spirit Do these men think that it is no preaching Christ when we have first many years told men the fulness of his satisfaction the freeness and general extent of his Covenant or Promise and the riches of his Grace and the incomprehensibleness of his Glory and the Truth of all to tell them afterwards the danger of refusing neglecting and disobeying him and of living after the flesh and preferring the world before him and serving Mammon and falling off in persecution and avoiding the cross and yielding in Temptation and quenching the Spirit and declining from their first Love and not improving their Talents and not forgiving and loving their brethren yea and enemies c. Is none of this Gospel nor preaching Christ yea is not Repentance it self except despairing Repentance proper to the Gospel seeing the Law excludeth it and all manner of hope Blame me not Reader if I be zealous against these men that not only know no better what preaching Christ is but in their ignorance reproach their Brethren for not preaching Christ and withal condemn Christ himself and all his Apostles Do they think that Christ himself knew not what it was to preach Christ or that he set us a patern too low for our imitation I desire them soberly to read Mat. 5.6 7 10 25. Rom. 8. from the first verse to the 14. Rom. 2. Heb. 2. 4. 5. 10 and then tell me whether we preach as Christ and his Apostles did But to the Objection I Answer first we do set forth Gods love and the fulness of Christ and the sufficiency of his death and satisfaction for all and the freeness and extent of his offer and promise of mercy and his readiness to welcome returning sinners this we do first mixing with this the discovery of their natural misery by sin which must be first known and next we shew them the danger of Rejecting Christ and his offer 2. When we finde men settled under the preaching of free Grace in a base contempt or sleepy neglect of it preferring the world and their carnal pleasures and ease before all the Glory of heaven and Riches of Christ and Grace is it not time for us to say How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation Heb. 2.3 and of how much soarer punishment shall he be thought worthy that treads under foot the blood of the Covenant Heb. 10.26 when men grow careless and unbelieving must we not say Take heed lest a promise being lest of entring into his Rest any of you should seem to come short of it Heb. 4.1 3. Hath not Christ led us commanded us and taught us this way Except ye Repent ye shall all perish was his Doctrine Luke 13.3 5. Go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature what 's that Gospel He that believeth shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 Those mine Enemies that would not I should raign over them bring hither and stay them before me Luke 19.27 Doth any of the Apostles speak more of hell-fire and the worm that never dyeth and the fire that never is quenched their Christ himself doth And do not his Apostles go the same way even Paul the greatest preacher of faith 2 Thess 1 7 8 9. and 2.12 c. What more common Alas what work should we make if we should stroak and smooth all men with Antinomian language It were the way to please all the sensual prophane multitude but it is none of Christs way to save their souls I am ready to think that these men would have Christ preached as the Papists would have him pray'd to to say Jesu Jesu Jesu nine times together and this oft over is their praying to him and to have Christs name oft in the Preachers mouth some men think is the right preaching Christ Let me now desire you hereafter to be glad to hear Ministers awaken the prophane and dead-hearted hearers and search all to the quick and misapply nothing to your self but if you think any passage doth neerly concern you open your mind to the Minister privately